nickcharalambous's Blog

JD: I shouldn't be surprised really, but you must know me too well.

Challenging my guts and my desire to stand and fight ... well, I deserve your rebuke. I am most definitely not a quitter, but God has given me enough wisdom to know that there are some battles that aren't worth fighting and there are some battles where a victory actually is a defeat.

To put it plainly, the reason I have admired you, JD, since the beginning, is that you, of all the core users, seem to grasp instantly what I was trying to accomplish on this forum and, most importantly, how fragile a community like this really is.

As the week without the foul four showed, it only takes a couple of bad apples to destroy the whole barrel.

This forum needs healthy, healthy doses of light-heartedness, along with a willingness to learn, and the flexibility to realize that those who disagree with you aren't enemies, but worthy opponents. The worst thing is to take it too seriously, even when there's a serious purpose behind it.

Before I offer my 2 cents about what the history of this forum tells us about modern scoeity, I will say this:

I am willing to help transition this forum to whatever the core users want it to be. Part of moving to this platform -- bugs worked out and all -- was to give us more practical and legal flexibility for community moderation.

My core belief is clear and unequivocal: Let the people speak freely and be heard and the public officials who are supposed to represent their interests will act accordingly. After a stutltifying period between 1996 and 2006, I thought it was time to empower the grass roots. I forgot that around roots, there also are weeds.

BUT

If this forum is going to be an obscene free-for-all, I WANT IT TO DIE and quickly.

If the loyal users and readers know what it can healthily accomplish they will agree to the only reasonable recourse: a lightly moderated forum consisting of an operating board of moderators who have the discretion (and the respect of the community) to delete posts that are offensive, flaming or simply meant to cause trouble, greased with a few private messages back and forth, perhaps, just to make sure they moderators are not overreacting. (We can all be guilty of that.)

They should also have the power to ban, but the board would have to be unanimous on that in my opinion.

As far as the ground rules go, I think it might be a perfect opportunity for some collaborative writing ... perhaps we could ask everyone take a hand in writing them? Easy to create a topic, throw up some suggestions, and let folks "revise" them until we get the finished piece that we can mostly agree on.

Before I decided to close Straight Talk, I had come up with a similar moderation plan that got hung up on the technical and legal issues of turning over a platform (and it's operation, maintenance and private information) to everyday folks. I'll see if I can fish it out.

We could also vote for the proposed "gang of five" moderators -- two left, two right and one centrist -- by asking for a show of thumbs or some such..... (I do think the power of the thumbs is under-estimated. In a world of such sharp differences of opinion, and in a community as sizeable as The Cocklebur, anything from a -2 to +2 is basically an endorsement of it being within bounds. It's the two thirds rule: If two-thirds of people can agree on something, it's pretty much the most unanimity you're likely to get.

The Cocklebur can be saved ... and my decision to walk away was simply because it seemed to my ears as though some of the membership was either painfully naive or in outright rebellion, ridiculously suggesting that this whole enterprise was some oblique and crafty way to push my agenda ... "politics by other means." I can think of way easier ways to do that, believe me.... how about about resurrecting my blog for goodness sake!

From the moment that I ended my true blog, my sole purpose was to allow ideas from the left and right to live or die in the grand marketplace of ideas that our great American founders understood and were willing to trust with the fate of a far greater enterprise than this.

So, in closing, whatever happens here, the outcome will be a mis en scene of our poisoned and paranoid political atmosphere and it will be an object lesson in what happens when the public devalues professionally-sourced information and along with it, the role of the mainstream media in refereeing a rational, community-wide debate while doing its best to minimizing the noise that adds nothing to our collective understanding, except to alert us to "pain" or discomfort.

After a long career in journalism, I have certainly seen much to dislike about the business. But if the smart, relatively sophisticated audience of the Cocklebur can't figure this out, it says a lot about the new information wild west ....

Personally, I think it's going to brutal on our democracy, and far more importantly, brutal on our personal and professional reputations. God help us all.

Hank: That's how rumors get started. I said i would have no involvement in The Cocklebur ... didn't say anything else. Capiche?

Wonderful, Virginia. Good luck. If there's anything I can do to help (which I doubt) just give me a holler.

I certainly disagreed with some of Nick's columns and more recently with how he has handled the AIM site and the Cocklebur site. He appears to have lost all reasoning and has gone completely boo hoo at times. .... Nick deleted both of my replies but did not delete either of theirs that attacked me. .... This told me that Nick is heavily influenced by the liberal segment of his forums and that he will follow their lead as long as he is media administrator.
More later.........

-prevail

Prevail: Don't bother. If you and the rest of crazies who think I have enough time in the day to carefully read every ridiculous sentence that passes for intelligent thought in this forum and on Independentmail.com just so that I can remove opinions I disagree with, how could i possibly defend myself with a rational argument?

As I've said, I've given up on this site, so you can say whatever the heck you want to say. Just have at it. I have no stake, and soon enough, will have no involvement at all, in this Frankenstein's monster of a free speech forum that I ever-so-idealistically set up ....

Henceforth, I'm not going to waste a moment of my time banning anyone. If folks get annoyed by the ceaseless juvenile, offensive back and forth, they can only blame themselves for rejecting any reasonable efforts to maintain order here. Hope you continue to enjoy it.

Mr. Hankey's applied for and received his membership credentials once again. If it makes this thread any less vexing (which it doesn't) I'm willing to just admit that his banning was misguided. It was intended to send a message that bombthrowing isn't very productive conversationally. And that we'd all like to see a slightly more kind, gentle environment here. (That doesn't mean wussy. Just respectful.)

Hank just happens to be (was?) a hilarious bombthrower that I like(d) having around. (P.S. Zn706 started out that way too and look what happened there ... He did more to poison this forum in the last six months than Prevail and Rino's peeing contests combined.)

The "speech" everyone is so concerned about protecting was essentially a battle over who was the "most gay." Also, I think they will all but one be back in a week after they sit in the corner and think about what they've done wrong.

Let's all let this mess calm down and then schedule a nice blog lunch where we discuss our options for moderation and decide, with input from our "owners," what would be the most fair while also being the most effective.

-ibvirginia

Finally! Some sense!

Since so few seem to appreciate the wisdom and potential of community moderation (so much for the two years it took to get here.) And since so few seem to understand that freedom is protected by rules not license. And since so few seem to care about how bleak it is to live under anarchy, I have just have four words:

I... JUST... GIVE ... UP

I will do everything in my power from now on to have nothing to do with this enterprise. It is finished. "All ye who enter here abandon all hope."

Nick - shouldn't you have to be old enough to vote to be on here? We don't want any one's children getting hurt because they are too young to understand and just love their mentor do we?

-janedoe

Not much I can do there ... are we going to start doing passport checks :( I might not fare too well ;)

VOR: I didn't walk away ... what I did was respect the freedom and autonomy this forum said it wanted ... going back to a previous analogy: Daddy kept hearing his teenagers telling him that they were responsible adults and can be trusted with the house all to themselves. So, one day, he thought, "I'll take a vacation, a long one, somewhere sunny, and I'll check in with the older children and their responsible friends every once in a while to make sure everything is OK." So that's what he did and he'd hear about some issues "but it's all under control dad!" and then he'd go back to his vacation. When he finally returns, he discovers his house has been trashed and the thanks he's gotten for his generosity and trust is having his good name trashed also. Can anyone truly have control over an open forum? Probably not. But please at least respect the difficulty of the job and the fact that I'm obviously a believer in free speech, otherwise it would have been closed down a long, long, long time ago. Now please, can't we just go back to talking about issues? I may not have agreed wholly with Hank's sin bin stay, but I wanted to uphold the will of some core members who I think deserve to have their opinions heard given the frequency with which they post ....and given their true support for this forum.

Ernest: Posts voted down is not a mistake. That's the point. If folks disagree that a post is objectionable, they have the power to vote them back up. The point is that the "balance" of free speech will probably keep them up. Since even folks who might not like some points will vote up if they are made intelligently. Is there a chance of dormant accounts being misused? Probably. I'm thinking it will eventually get too tiresome for those trying to game the system, and they'll be outvoted by the responsible folks. Also, I'm manually approving accounts to try and prevent folks signing up a whole bunch of accounts in a short time span to skew a discussion. There may be a few days waiting period. I'll see how it would work. The bottom line: active members need to thumb ALL THE TIME!

Seeing as there appears to be no such thing as privacy (I'll remember that next time one of you all contacts me by email or pm by the way. How so very freakin gracious of you Mr. Voice-of-Reason), I'll copy what I wrote back to Mr. Hankey:

Hank: personally. I don't think you are a flamer in the true sense of that word at all. I am "sending a message" as it were - basing my decision on what some core members feel. )Your posting frequency and sense of humor I thought would mean you'd not be too concerned ;). Heck you are now officially in the sin bin! Who else can claim that? Seriously, just reapply for membership and we'll be cool. N.

-nickcharalambous

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I've had it with all you, seriously. I could not care less any more. If there's any freakin way to manage a bunch of malcontents who can't ever be pleased no matter what the heck I do, I'd love to hear it.

I've tried to be patient. I've tried to abide by the SPIRIT of free speech. For those of you who think that I'm somehow engaging in some kind of effort to "protect" whichever person's Ox you are goring that day, go right ahead and be paranoid and delusional. I have made a choice in my life not to listen to people who don't love me or respect me. Those who do know that's not what I'm about. And I don't have anything to prove to anyone else.

Anyway, for all my hard work to keep this public space alive, all I get in return is bitching and moaning.

Well guess what: Come and post or don't come and post. This is my house. These are my freakin rules ok? If you don't like it go somewhere else. If the Cocklebur dies so be it. I don't want it to live if its a bunch of crude, juvenile behavior that makes me sick to my stomach. I support this forum as a marketplace of ideas not a trash bin of I'll-say-whatever-I-want-otherwise-I'm-gonna-cry-about-censorship.

Boo hoo

P.S. One of the people temporarily banned already has indicated that he won't play by the rules. His ban has become permanent. I have also "locked down" TheCocklebur so that it won't automatically accept new accounts without approval. I am serious about giving this community a chance to self-moderate. If it doesn't work, it won't be for want of trying.

Nick, some will give any anti-Preston member a thumbs down regardless of what may be said.  This is already evident.  There are more pro-Preston members that participate than anti-Preston so the up/down does not seem to be well balanced to me.

-prevail

Prevail. No one side life was fair. There's no such thing as a perfect public space. Just community. Learn to live alongside people. Or choose to live somewhere else.

The following was sent out today as a private message to all registered users:
=============================================================================
Today I was forced to take an unprecedented step in my management of The Cocklebur: I deleted the topic "More Evidence of a Biased Media" in response to a flame war that had broken out between several users.

The action was in my opinion one of the only ways to bring an end to this unacceptable behavior in a timely and straightforward way.

>From the inception of The Cocklebur community, we have tried to provide an adult space for people to robustly discuss local affairs.

The community of users has, for the most part, brought wisdom, wit and a fair amount of good information to our local political debate. But we have always been "bedeviled" by posters who either don't care how their bad behavior might ruin an otherwise helpful public space for everyone else or who are intent on destroying this community space.

I believe Cocklebur users won't sit by and let that happen.

Our move to a new platform had much to do with giving the community the power to moderate this forum, and I am calling on every loyal user of TheCocklebur to use the power save this forum.

Please:

1. Routinely and consistently use the "thumbs up and thumbs down" feature on EVERY comment you read so that you send a message to the good citizens and the troublemakers about where they stand.
-- Thumb Up whenever you think a post adds to the debate.
-- Thumb down whenever posts are unhelpful.

Only by doing this consistently can we demonstrate the will of the Cocklebur community and ensure that we can take appropriate Democratic action to deal with the menace in our midst.

2. I will not hesitate to ban people who the community seems to have decided aren't worth having around. Don't bother trying to create new accounts. We intend very shortly to have a very sophisticated solution to prevent banned users from doing so.

In response to today's flame war, I am sending a private message to four posters -- each of them identified by a longtime and deeply respected user as those most responsible for "flaming" on this forum.

Their accounts will be placed in a "sin bin" for a week, and they will be asked to cease their bad behavior when their accounts are reactivated. If they don't want to play by the rules, they will be banned permanently.

I hope you agree that action is needed and that you can be part of the solution.

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to drop me a private message.

In closing, TheCocklebur is only as strong and as the community of users who live here. Let's take responsibility for making it a better place.

Because people like you would start complaining about each individual deletion that I made. Please read the private message I sent to the entire Cocklebur community to understand the context. You will also be receiving a second message from me to you personally.

Yes. They are back up. Please use them extensively.

One quick thing to point: Some of you may have noticed a double-posting or triple-posting here and there. It looks as though some of you may have gotten used to doubleclicking on the submit button. You shouldn't have to do that now. One click is enough! Let me know if you're sure that's not the problem.

Friends, Cockleburrians:

Lefora, the company that hosts TheCocklebur, has implemented a new site design to provide many of the long-awaited site enhancements requested by The Cocklebur community since the launch of the new, improved Cocklebur in June.

You'll notice faster loading and easier page navigation (less scrolling!), quoting and better marking of unread content.

The Lefora team is still working out the bugs on many of the improvements and they are eager to hear feedback from our pro users.

Lefora chief Vincent Lauria said:

"Please let (the users) know that we'll be making tweaks here and there over the next two weeks. We're in active development on this and there could be a few hiccups over the next few days, but nothing major."

Among the known issues:

- It will say '0 posts' count for every user, we'll put the real number here very soon

- Older posts may display '?' instead of 'founder/admin/member' (we're fixing)

- Quoting is very much work in progress - feedback here would be helpful

- The permalink is likely to move around a bit as we play with the layout.

- The topic listing/category page will be the next to get some attention, currently it doesn't show the number of pages, but it will.

- We'll also be adding support for locking threads.

We hope that you will find the new forum experience much improved. We believe that Lefora is committed to continual enhancements that you'll love.

Let us know what you think!

God bless. Nick

Why is there a need between the 'Smart Text Editor' and the 'Basic Visual Editor.?"

Embeding photos and videos works in both, the 'Smart Text Editor' is much simplier for embeding media, we added the 'basic visual editor' because some folks prefered that WYSIWYG way of posting. It is a bit confusing, and we'll clear up the names of each editor.

Here's some posts you might find useful:

What's the difference between the two editors?
http://support.lefora.com/2008/04/08/whats-difference-between-text-editor-and-visual-ed/

How to embed photos in either of the editors (with how-to videos):
http://support.lefora.com/2008/07/18/how-to-embed-photos-in-your-posts-using-the-differ/

How to embed videos in either of the editors (with how-to videos):
http://support.lefora.com/2008/07/18/how-to-embed-videos-in-your-posts-using-the-differ/

When you submit a post in one of the two editors, we make it your default for all future posts. You can change back at any time, though we don't recommend changing back and forth within a post, as that might loose some of the embed media or fontsytle markups.

Wait for the pm. Wait for the improvements and I think this site will go from a C- to a B+ or an A-.

ZN: (i'm assuming the burst bubble comment was aimed at me). This isn't about egos my friend. If I made a bad decision I'll be the first to admit it. The issue is that everyone acts as though this board is my full-time job, and that it is a core mission to our web products. It isn't.

It is supposed to be a fun side project. I can't spare any development/management cycles on it because we barely have enough development and management cycles to handle Independentmail.com!

We still want to support this forum and for it to be benefit from being associated with Independentmail.com. All we ask for is some awareness of the tradeoffs involved. That's all.

Frankly, I've had about as much of this griping as I can take about this darned platform. You would think we were charging for its use! I'm particularly upset by the fact that I have posted traffic numbers on this site to show how strong the community remains, and they have been twisted into some kind of proof that its dying. FYI: The so much loved old forum rarely got above 40,000 page views in non-election season...

Anyhow, NEWSFLASH: I got off the phone with Lefora this evening with a two-week plan to make improvements to this platform that should solve the speed problems (caused by long threads), give you more space to write new posts, more time to edit posts, the ability to quote other posts in your replies and generally do what you want to do ...

Now please recognize the fine line between offering good feedback and just being annoying and unreasonable .... I'll be sending out a PM to explain the details. Included will be a short reminder of the added benefits of this platform compared to the oh-so fantastic phpBB.

Our friend Andrew Hammett forwarded me this great powerpoint that includes some real interesting data on some upcoming elections. He says: "Obama vs McCain is pretty interesting and the 2010 Governor's matchups are definitely relevant to us considering your man crush Barrett beats Inez but gets beat by Jim Rex."

Enjoy!

Guys:

I have disabled the flash rss lineups from the sidebar. It is the only thing we can think of -- in our control -- that could be responsible for slowing the site down.

Please let me know if it makes any difference.

Thanks

anonmass: I'm sorry to hear you're unhappy. It certainly isn't our desire to kill TheCocklebur, slowly or otherwise. There's a few issues, such as slow load times, that I think we can solve. If we can't, then we'll weigh other options. P.S. What do you mean by unorganized?

So, the latest data from Google shows that TheCockleburrians are taking a summer vacation along with most everyone after the frenzy of election season.