IMO: Troubling trend here at GRM

bobzilla said:

Javelin said:

How does the saying go? If you keep finding that everyone around you is a shiny happy person, maybe you are the shiny happy person?

1 in 4 people is an shiny happy person. If 3 of your friends aren't, well......

I'm not angry at all. It's hard to be angry on your day off, sun shining, chilling out with your kids and dogs while my wife is making more money from her loyal breakfast diner customers even after it's been shut down. (Btw, thank you for the offer regarding the shut-down, you know who you are!)

Im not sure how anyone would think these comments (as light-hearted as they are) in a thread I started weren't directed toward me but I'll accept your version of the story lol!

Unless I missed something I haven't seen people banned for unpopular opinions.  What I've seen is one thread locked as it was getting seriously out of hand with more than one person.  I've seen a couple of threads temporarily locked to allow a cooling off period.  And one person given a 'timeout' temporary 'ban' who was (I assume) deliberately misinterpreting a comment and going off in a personal manner on that commenter.  They carried on and on even when told multiple times by both mods and non mods he was out of line and misunderstanding/misrepresenting the other persons comments.  That's not censorship, that's play teaching in the school yard, which was unfortunately needed.  If I've missed something else I apologies, I can only spend so much time here while working!

I think this thread is a great example of how this forum usually works--everyone is usually able to back themselves away from the ledge, whenever we approach it, with no intervention necessary. It's a good conversation 99% of the time.

When it stops being a good conversation, there are times when the mods do need to step in. We have to tread a very fine line between suppressing thoughts (censorship) and moderating the conversation; to that end, instead of deleting and editing posts, we hit pause on a thread and give people time to cool down. Sometimes, if the threads have become absolutely toxic, we leave them locked; more often, we reopen them ASAP so the conversation can continue without (hopefully) personal insults, spurious claims and general bullE36 M3tiness.

Understand and appreciate that we all come from different places, some of us extremely different places, and that is a beautiful thing.

Margie

bobzilla said:

Wait... I make a joke and you're angry? Dude.... time to chill bro. I prefered the "1 in 4 people are insane. If your 3 friends are sane, it's probably you!" version but I adapted to flow with the theme. I directed nothing at you. If you're this worked up, it may be time to walk away from all things electronic for a little bit.

Your posts did not seem at all like a joke to me, and ebonyandivory didnt seem the least bit mad.  

I like Ford vs Chevy arguments ,  and car related stuff , 

But politics just wants me to turn the page.......

Stay safe , its going to be a long ride

AngryCorvair said:

RealMiniNoMore said:

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Agreed. Other forums I've read are sometimes too heavy-handed, when it comes to censorship. 

How do you measure that? ;-)

LOL that's me trying to be funny because how do you know it was too heavy-handed if you can't see what was censored because it was too heavy-handed.  Damn I crack me up.

Maybe censorship was a poor choice of word. Other forums would bring out the ban hammer, members would be excommunicated, and threads would be deleted. 

Although i dont always agree with it, I do like the cooling off thing vs lock/delete.  Its nice that the threads can still be read too, as it allows you to see where and why things went south to know what is "too much"

We need to somehow be able to write in tones to avoid the sarcasm misunderstandings, the "i was joking, couldnt you tell by reading" and how print shows no body language or facial expression. 

I really did think the comments mentioned above were shiny and happy to find out that wasn't the intention.  

I try to add an "lol" at the end of a comment made in jest

In reply to Justjim75 :

I was lead to believe no one took me seriously here. Or at least they shouldn't. I mean, I drive korean cars (when they're not strewn across the garage) for crying out loud. Who could ever take that seriously?

I feel for you ebonyandivory. I have no idea which thread you are referring to, because for the past couple years I've tried to just stay out the ones that will get me in trouble. Place used to be a lot more interesting/engaging/though provoking, but the rules make sense and there seems to be an attempt to fairly enforce them for the most part.

I miss some of the debates from back in the day, but in the end they usually were pointless exercises that just ended up raising people's blood pressure, but not changing anyone's opinions.

bobzilla said to ebonyandivory:

. I directed nothing at you. If you're this worked up, it may be time to walk away from all things electronic for a little bit.

As an impartial observer, I post this screen shot of the first two posts in this thread:

...

Then again some threads  go on too long.

slowbird said:

Since I was involved one of the threads in question:

I was doing my best not to get argumentative, just stating my case and trying to back it up with evidence. That said, I accept the fact that the discussion was getting more intense and I understand why it was locked.

I think I can get along with most people, I try not to stir E36 M3 up too much. But that topic is one that I feel strongly about, not only because of who I am, but because my friends have been through much worse stuff than me, and I want the world to be a better place for them and for everyone.

Me too.  I pointed out something about a car and one of those cars owners took offense to it.  I wasn't trying to be inflammatory, but it was taken that way.  I think many of us are faced with two things: we're on edge about things, and we have too much time on our hands.  I've been spending a lot more time here and responding to threads and topics I normally wouldn't.  That's the internet equivalent of putting 50 stressed people in a tiny room and somebody farts.

In reply to Curtis73 :

Reminds me of an old rhyme:

Artie Fartie had a party, everyone was there
Tootie Fruitie ripped a beauty, everyone ran out for air!

slowbird said:

In reply to Curtis73 :

Reminds me of an old rhyme:

Artie Fartie had a party, everyone was there
Tootie Fruitie ripped a beauty, everyone ran out for air!

 

Thanks, man!  That was beautiful! 

californiamilleghia said:

I like Ford vs Chevy arguments ,  and car related stuff , 

But politics just wants me to turn the page.......

Stay safe , its going to be a long ride

 

What argument? Chebbys are junk sir

I have noticed a few have pretty thin skin, and everyone comes from all walks of life but if you wanna make a threat directed to someone over memes or whatnot you need a hobby that doesnt involve the internet

That being said the mods usually have a thankless job and on a popular forum such as GRM even more so. They do what they can so send them a thank you. Been there done that and have no desire to do it again lol

Seems to be working as good as can be expected to me.

This, from probably one of the few here, who had my personal safety threatened (from what I think was a drunk Canadian!)

That said, I am sure feedback is always appreciated.  There is almost nothing that can't use some tweaking and improving.

In reply to aircooled :

As a sober Canadian I would like to apologize for the actions of my countryman(or woman) as cliched as that may be.

Ill even throw in a compliment: I like your screen name. 
 

On topic if the thread I find this place to be pleasant because it's so respectful. I've only been hanging around a couple years but it's a great corner of the web. I have only really questioned why a thread wasn't locked once. 

Either way, best forum on the internet in my opinion. Much love to all. Glad you're all my people. Even the biggest pricks (I'm likely to be included in that group) on here would go to pretty extreme lengths to do right by each other if the need arises (have seen it enough times to know that's true). 

People seem to forget that

1. The forums are an extension of GRM. GRM is a buisness that supports the lively hood of its employees  and it owners. 
 

2. GRM has a reputation to maintain. They can not afford to offend advertisers nore can they have there reputation tarnished by the ongoings here in these forums. 
 

3.  We users are allowed to play in the GRM forums at the complete pleasure of the owners of GRM. We have no rights. We are entitled to nothing. Here in the forums it is a dictatorship not a democracy. There is no freedom of speech. The owners of the forum can do anything they want. Lock any thread for any reason. Ban any user with out any explanation.  
 

Understand and accept the above three things and you will be happy.  I have never understood people that think otherwise.

As the owner of another car forum I am often surprised at the patience GRM has with its user base.  I keep an alter ego admin on my site that may visit the place every now and again that has cleaned house a couple times. All he has to do now is post in a thread that he is not pleased and all you here are crickets and people suddenly get nice to each other again. Sometimes the new blowhard gets a time out but it is not before they are warned by other users what is coming. If the timeout does not work they go away along with there ip being banned. I hate doing it. As an admin/owner it is your least fun thing to do. I know some will not believe this but trust me. Not having the power you think that you want the power and it will be fun to have. Once you have it you quickly learn that it is not fun. The last thing any admin wants to do is drop the hammer on a misbehaving user or lock a thread. 

In reply to dean1484 :

"YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER SUDDARD LAW!"

I want to add some perspective as a moderator. Which might be a bad idea. 

I moderate on two general priniciples. 

1. You can't say berkeley in church. There is a time and place for all language and types of speech. Because GRM is written communication I think we need to err on the side of politeness and caution when choosing words. This is why we have filters for curse words, but those filters are also a reminder that we're in very mixed company including kids. We should also use more smiley faces.  That's why they're there. 

2. There are wrong opinions. If we're having a conversation and you tell me that husbands get to decide whether their wives work or not because women don't really have rights once they get married, you're wrong. I also acknowledge that even though this opinion is wrong, at one point, it was right! Which is both horrifying and helps explain why people sometimes continue to hold it even when society stares them in the eye and says "nah". There are opinions that I hold now that I know are right that will be wrong during my lifetime. That makes moderating hard because we're not a community in the traditional sense. We come from all over the country and world. We interact with people that we normally wouldn't just through normal life segregation. It's highly unusual in real life to have a room full of people from teens to their 70's, both genders, HUGE range of life experiences, all talking about the same thing. Within this idea, I need to constantly remind myself that my opinion might be the wrong one. We have to have a line as a group, we also have to let people walk themselves back when given a chance. 

I don't need to (metaphorically) shush people in church very often here, but language is sometimes still an issue. I also don't need to tell people to take they're wrong opinion and go home hardly ever, and for that I'm happy. What usually happens is that a clash of opinions that are both ok leads to a cursing in church situation. 

That's the life of a moderator. Suuuuuuuper glamorous. I love it. 

In reply to ebonyandivory :

Different people experience the same events differently. What you have posted is but one perception of what occurred. Discourse can only be productive after we open ourselves up to the experiences and perceptions of others as well. When we do this, we choose to be a part of the solution rather than the problem.

The real problem is that we as a society are pretty terrible at this.

I'd love to see one of two pictures hotlinked in any thread that's temporarily locked, as it might help set the general tone of what is happening:

OR

This is nothing compared miata.nut. That place is some kinda lab experiment. The entire population over there breathes hate toward everyone's posts. Fault finding is the norm, thread locking is the norm. I've been censored so many times in the last three months it's not even funny. I refuse to be censored. This ain't Soviet Russia. I ain't Russian. It ain't happening.  
 

that said, this forum is a haven from the awful awful AWFUL forums out there. And don't even get us started on the wastelands of social media.