Why so many "Visitors" and so few "Members"?

gecko zzed said:
Sure . . . it is a thread about member retention. And there are a variety of reasons why retantion chabbges. Some wer ementioned. I'm not sure about the non-sequiteur about off topic forums being off topic forums. If one measures the level of vitriol by the number of reports, HR would currently be a virtual Shangri La compared top, say, a decade ago. And sure, there are fewer members to converse with now.
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It's kind of humorous to hear people complaining about the off-topic nature of the Prime Time sub-forum, when there are many other sub-forums here that are strictly "on topic" supposedly more to their liking... but here they are... as though they lack some self-awareness? I'm trying not to be critical. Self-awareness comes in the 20s for a lot of people. I have my flaws too, but I really don't feel personal malice toward anyone.
 
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Nah.......not complaining about an off topic thread of any type. The more the better. If you think about it.....many of our threads here go off topic and that's cool....and fun.

It's all about personal attacks. If people have no personal malice.......then there won't be any personal attacks.....period. There's no need for that and certainly no value in any of that....except to maybe the person who just needs to live their life that way.

I'm not being naive about human behavior. My wife is a mental health professional and trust me.....I'm her on-going experiment. It's normal to express anger and frustration....and in one's own life.....if personal attacks are cool...ok....live it. But we're talking here about this forum and why people don't join or don't stay.

As always........just my 2 cents worth of opinion.

Mick
 
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60's guy said:
EZ wrote:
"And there is still the same vitriol as ever but if I had to guess it would align with the mod team's vitriol now."

I don't understand why EZ would accuse the current mod team of being vitriolic. Nothing could be further from the the truth. The current mod team here at HR has time and time again demonstrated their tolerance of the occasional differences of opinions between posters. There wasn't any "clever sarcasm" involved, as TAE suggests.
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There are PLENTY examples of how the mods let right wing leaning threads fly. They made it a point a long time ago to discourage political threads. I THINK I know why now based on how "lenient" they have become regarding political posts.
 
Steenamaroo said:
My assessment of HR, looking at the close-knit core community idea, is that there's a bit of talk of missing how things were but not that much talk about shaping how things will be.
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Come on, man. Suggestions have ben made and ignored. Do you REALLY want new ones?
 
ez_willis said:
There are PLENTY examples of how the mods let right wing leaning threads fly. They made it a point a long time ago to discourage political threads. I THINK I know why now based on how "lenient" they have become regarding political posts.
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I could be wrong. It's very possible, This forum leans very right. It didn't used to. That's all I meant.
 
ez_willis said:
There are PLENTY examples of how the mods let right wing leaning threads fly. They made it a point a long time ago to discourage political threads. I THINK I know why now based on how "lenient" they have become regarding political posts.
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There are also examples of left wing leaning threads that the mods have let fly. The best example of the mod team tolerance would be the "America Rejects Trump" thread posted by IBB shortly after the 2020 election. The mods allowed the thread to continue until the exchanges between posters became vitriolic. The thread was closed.

The mods may have discouraged threads of political nature, but I THINK it was HR ownership that deemed it that "current events" were out of bounds for discussion in Prime Time.

Eventually the restriction was slowly relaxed. A few threads of political nature ran their course with no problems. I thought it great that civil discussion might be possible. I was wrong. I also have no doubt that HR ownership and the mod team may determine that threads of political nature will not be allowed in Prime in the future.

I look forward to that.
 
Politics is always touchy but that doesn't mean the subject should be banned. And BTW......there have been un-called for personal attacks in other threads as well.....though not common.

It's funny........and this might just me.......but you can call me an asshole and I'm ok with that. But...call me a commie.........and you've really hit home. My father and others in my family served our country and I'm as red white and blue as you can get. Some people just NEED to hate.....in order to have someone to blame for misery.

Just my 2 cents.

Mick
 
The site owners aren't involved and haven't been for many years.
The last time they were was when Armon was Admin and, even then, he wasn't really here enforcing what AF wanted.
I saw him as one of the team, with his own opinions and values.

The fact that AF have no active staff here and made me admin should be factored in to any conspiracy theories. :ROFLMAO:
Sorry fellas - It's just us.

When formulating theories about how the current mod team operate just picture four guys having their morning coffee, opening their email, and going "aw. ffs" at the list of reports, because that's about as complicated as it ever got.


Any banning of specific topics was a forced reaction to the fact that people regularly discussing those topics just couldn't be trusted to be civil.
Every thread of that kind would inevitably end in shit-slinging and endless reports.

At some point it was easier to just say "don't talk about that stuff" but we still ended up having to cull a heck of a lot of people.

These days there's less of a problem, fewer reports, and no real need to enforce a ban on specific topics but, of course, you could counter that's because there's far fewer people having discussions.

I've never cared what people are talking about as long as it's civil - I think the other mods feel, and always have felt, the same.

It's a shame when moderators have to take drastic measures to keep a place healthy but, for some reason, HR has always been that way or, at least, has been that way for a long time.
I'm involved in plenty of other communities where this has never been a problem.
 
Mickster said:
Really? Beyond help?
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Hey, maybe I'm wrong, but when we're only just teetering on the beginnings of a discussion about it and the largely dormant mod team as has already been accused of steering discussions with right-bias, it doesn't fill me with hope.
 
Steenamaroo said:
At some point it was easier to just say "don't talk about that stuff" but we still ended up having to cull a heck of a lot of people.
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Or you could have created a separate God and Politics sub because some people want to talk about that garbage and some reasonable people don't want to fucking look at it.
 
ez_willis said:
Or you could have created a separate God and Politics sub because some people want to talk about that garbage and some reasonable people don't want to fucking look at it.
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I think the idea was that we'd probably discourage those who are here to talk about those subjects, and retain those who are reasonable.

If we thought it was a good idea to have a separate section specifically for people who can't be civil, we'd have left the cave open.
 
Towards the end there was a tremendous amount of hostility, and it bled out into the on-topic forums.
Not sure if you were here for that period or not.
 
Steenamaroo said:
....and it bled out into the on-topic forums.
.
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Absolutely unacceptable. Those users should have been dealt with individually. But I get that there's only so much a few mods can do. And you guys did what you determined to be the best course of action for the board. I just think it was short sighted, but that's just MY OPINION. And I have no dog in this fight. From my perspective a team of mods that were for the most part new users collectively didn't have the pulse of the forum like some of the members that had been here longer. I am NOT one of those members I'm referring to. Who knows, man.

And that's not to say that the events that led to the discussion about member retention or lack thereof have anything to do with each other. But they might. There's just no way to know now.
 
"Those users should have been dealt with individually."
Well, that happened too but you can only swat so many moths before you consider just turning off the light.
 
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I think sometimes the mods have given into bad motives.

For example, long ago a few assholes decided they wanted to end all political conversation on HR and in the Cave. I can name names if you like but those people were eventually banned anyway. Nevermind that they could have simply stopped clicking on those threads or avoided those subforums. They wanted control. So they deliberately behaved poorly in political threads, and as a direct result the mods gave them everything they wanted and shut down all political conversation.

More recently, if you post a Republican thread it is left alone, even if you are spreading dangerous lies about COVID that are getting people killed. But if you post an anti-Trump thread, the conservatives act uncivil, and so the thread they hate gets shut down.

So again, the people exhibiting poor behavior get precisely what they want.
 
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