In Defense Of Lee & It's A New Day
Greetings:
Ok ok, I think this current situation calls for one of my soon-to-be-famous long winded rantings.
I was critical of Lee at first regarding the current situation, and how he handled it. And honestly, I still am. However, I think we need to take a step back and look at things from a more omniscient point of view.
The previous company that I owned, before I entered this market, had a website and a forum. But, the forum didn't have a few hundred members, or even a few thousand. It had over 500,000 registered members. It was eventually acquired by a NASDAQ trade firm, who currently runs it.
Needless to say, after viewing the drama that has unfolded the past few days, you can only IMAGINE the type of drama that a half a million people can cause when they get pissy.
Having been in Lee's shoes, I understand what it's like trying to manage a "community", and trying to manage what's best for my "business" at the same time. It's a horrible, awful, and ultimately, unfair position to be placed in.
However, it's the reality of where he is, and where I have been. I know what it's like trying to protect a community that you've worked so hard on, and a company who's livelihood you depend on at the same time. I also know what it's like trying to balance that, with overseeing a group people, made up of members who in their own right, each are looking out for their own creations and livelihoods.
Lee did, at the time, what he thought was best. No offense to Lee, but I think his decisions were based more on "I am Lee operator of a company" then they were based on "I am Lee, founder of a community". It's very difficult to jump between roles, and to attempt to foresee the consequences of any action that you take in either.
As the GWW community grows, I think Lee will continue to learn, through trial and error, how to deal with things. I also think he'll find out that the best way to handle situations, is to simply not handle them at all. If users become a problem, the community will rally in defense of its founder, assuming the founder has shown himself to be fair, just, and patient in the past. Then, if the need to ban a user arises, the community is supportive, and the drama is not.
One thing that no human being is naturally inclined to tolerate, is feeling controlled and confined. It's something that we're programmed to rebel against. So, when situations such as this arise, when one individual (Lee), tries to put confines on others (the community), a revolution is the natural consequence. I learned that lesson that hard way many years ago, and Lee is learning that lesson the hard way now.
Now. What I propose is the following:
1. Lee removes all of the silly childish word bans from the server. Unban the words UG*S, Bed*Fellow, Cyber*Socket, and any others that may currently be in place. Come to the realization that it's silly nonesense to even attempt to remove words from the lexicon of this or any other forum, and move on.
2. From here on out go ahead and ban users that are disruptive to the point that they detract from the overall experience that each of us comes here for. I think you'll find the actual number of people that fall into that category is limited. When I ran my 500,000 member forum, we only had a ban list made up of 17 users. I hope that puts things into perspective.
3. Each of us need to lay off of Lee, and start contributing in a positive manner from here on out. Let lessons be learned from mistakes, and move on. My mistake was not making this my first post, instead of my "Forum Nazi" post. Although, despite the objections from a Jewish member, I still like the term. Put things into context people.
4. In the future, if such issues arise, Lee needs to learn to turn to the community to explain the situation, and the community needs to learn to respond with helpful, constructive suggestions on how any difficult situation can be handled in a way that doesn't disenfranchise us as a whole.
At the end of the day, no one owns a community. Lee no more has control over it than I do, or than anyone else on this forum does. A community is the collective sum of its parts. Each one of us makes the community what it is, and with the loss of any single one of us, or the addition of any new member, the community dynamic as a whole changes.
On a side note, can you even believe that the word "pissy" wasn't in my spell checker? What the hell's up with that? Pissy definately should be added to the common dictionary. Anyone have the number for Webster's?
