What's going on here - are you trying to drive people away?

[mikazooki 0]

db ya little devil , sniffle,

youre back!!

thats the longest 2 days ive had this year.

dont go runnin off like that again, y'hear?

crazy liitle tyke,

run along now and get some postin done.

[SnowJapan#Andrew 6]

Welcome back, db, good to see you're still around.

 

 Quote:

with all due respect to SJ.com people, the forums health is largely independent of there efforts as moderators

Most correct. Luckily, we don't do much apart from read posts (which has admittedly become an increasingly large task over the last year!)

 

[Fattwins 0]

This post is moving faster than I can type. db good to see your back.

 

Having met ender I will say that his harsh words came as a shock. A shock mostly cause he such cool mellow guy to hang out with. That is the ender I know.

[proudtobegay 0]

Good post db. I agree with you on most points, but not on the one about the "mice". I don't worship (god forbid) any website, I just appreciate it. And yes, a forum is only as good as the people on it. And so we should congratulate ourselves - some more than others

 

This site has done a fabulous job though of getting people to actually get here in the first place and stay here, as well as the rest of the site too.

 

Not worship, just appreciative! I like good things that are totally free!

[damian 0]

most of the responses to enderzeros post where not yet posted when I wrote the above. Having now read them I fully assert the notion of servility and serfdom in many members. Give it a break guys. The self righteous indignation is way to thick and sticky.

 

My defense of enderzeros post was not a personal obligation to someone I have boarded with. However I can tell you from my one or two meetings with him that any negative personal opinions about the chap that you have drawn from what he wrote are wrong.

 

And I also feel that in terms of quality, he has given more to this forum than nearly any other. He never is offensive, aggro, argumentative, childish, boring. So those that don't post much (ie contribute very little to nothing), try not to cast stones.

[Markie 0]

Cool or not, right or wrong, I think Enderzero has a right to give is honest views here, just as it is the right of others to say they don't think those views are cool.

However, let's not make this a "line up and give enderzero a bash" thing. I think the point has been well made. Let's now concentrate on posting more positive and fun stuff...for example let's polish our "on the snow" skills, capture them and other fun stuff and post them up here like our good friend Dane.

[proudtobegay 0]

Of course, you are free to your opinion db ....others are entitled to theirs.

[proudtobegay 0]

Good point, Markie!

 

Next....

[DumbStick 13]

db, just like you, I and others have an opinion. I personally couldn't give a crap about whether another user posts a critisism of SJ or not, but I feel that the original mail in this thread was just out of line - as do other people on here it seems.

 

That's their opinion, it doesn't mean that they are mice. The original post - constructive critisism it was not.

[cal 6]

Critisism is fine if it is valid and backed up.

 

The original post on this thread does seems rather unnecessarily harsh.

 

As they say in the textbooks, we are different

 

PS I am not a mouse.

[nzlegend 1]

This forum is the best forum or newsgroup I have ever been on, almost everyone on here is a person I would like to be friends with, which is saying something about how good this forum is. As with life you get people who you generally dislike and wouldnt give them the time of day if you ever met them. There a couple on this forum who I think are in the category no name calling, no aggro, I just dont read there token attempts at posts and ignore them. Plain and simple I would be wasting my time and distract to the quality of the forum if I did that. We know who these people are, I have discussed them with other forum members and they had similar sentiments. The easy answer is ignore them. Dont reply to their drivel, dont be tempted by their forum belligerence, if we as a whole ignore them and dont reply they will soon get tired and in all hope bugger off.

For a long time I have posted on Usenet - Rec.sport.rugby.union a massive Usenet forum with hundreds of posts a day. It is unmoderated and there are some vile utter utter w***kers on the forum. Intense bigoted, racist, egocentric, acrimonious, negative, spiteful vitriolic garbage is littered through all the postive interesting stuff. BUT the only redeeming feature of this is with Usenet you view through Outlook express or other mail programs and you kill can "killfile" people, block them so you never get their posts ( except when others dont delete the killfiled persons message when they reply to it and you are exposed to the garbage through the post of another) It would be oh so nice to have that feature with UBB, but ......such is life.

 

ender dude chill out, dont get dragged into the realm of the "virus" posters who destroys forums.

keeping riding, posting and enjoying.

 

Keep your stick on the ice.

 

K

 

TO ALL THE COOL POSITIVE FORUM MEMBERS - PLEASE IGNORE THE POSTS OF THOSE WHO ARE BRINGING DOWN THE QUALITY OF SJ -FORUMS. DONT GET DRAWN INTO THEIR GAME

[grungy-gonads 54]

As long as they don't overun the place, some of the more outrageous characters make the place a bit more interesting, don't you think?

 

But like kamoshika said, this is one of the better forums - and one of the reasons for that is because it doesn't get overrun with utter trash, insults.

 

And, you know, I think we maybe have SJ to thank for that original bottom line being laid down in the first place. If they had let it get out of control from the beginning, the forums would be a much worse place than they are.

 

On another point that db brought up - and a good one - yes, its very much a 2 way thing. We make the forums what they are, after all. In the times I have contacted the SJ people they have always been receptive, very fast to respond and helpful.

 

Ni, ni, ni, ni

 

Not a mouse, more like a bear.

 

 

PEACE TO ALL!

[nzlegend 1]

 Quote:

Originally posted by grungy-gonads:
As long as they don't overun the place, some of the more outrageous characters make the place a bit more interesting, don't you think?

Yep Cheeseman, sexually excited cat, meat and veg man are all making the place interesting

[IIIII 2]

It seems to me that some of the responses to the original post were as way emotional and out there as that original post was harsh (for what it was saying). The original mail came across as way too confrontational, some of the reponses too emotional.

 

I don't see the hero worship theory thing going on, just people who really enjoy and respect a really great service that they're lucky to have. Nothing wrong with that. I can identify with it.

 

Nothing wrong with critisisms either.

 

But hey, as they say, "lets be friends" shall we.

 

 

Respect.

[scouser 4]

Well it was a busy night last night. Calmed down now have you dearies?

[snowboard_freak 0]

Hard to get a word in in this thread!!

 

I think most of this argument has been covered by other members, but i'll chuck in my 2 cents anyway.

 

I was a BIT shocked by ender's last couple of posts. But not that shocked. This is his opinion on the matter and thus should be allowed to express it. You may not agree with his opinion but thats not reason to have a go at him.

 

I love this forum and there is only one other forum that i know that is as good as this one in terms of "community". Although the the other forum gets a lot less traffic. SnowJapan is a great source of information and i have enjoyed my time here. Heck, i am still an active member even though i have nothing to do with Japan at the moment! (But i am planning another trip to Niseko next season ) I keep coming back because i like the group of people who post here, sure i have the odd difference of opinion with people but thats life!

 

This forum is not very heavyily moderated compared to some of the others i have visited, however in the last couple of days i feel that it has become slighty heavier. I do believe that the closing of the two threads was not needed, but that was the choice that SJ made.

 

Well thats about all i have to say on it at the moment. I wonder how many posts have been posted since i started writing this?

 

cheers,

snowboard_freak

[SnowJapan#Andrew 6]

We feel a few things need to be said after this thread and all the comments contained in it and the emails that we have received since last night.

 

The reason why a forum is a success or not is, as was mentioned earlier in this thread, the people who use the forums and post messages. We are very lucky in that our forums have a very large readership who post frequently who, along with a lot of lurkers, total several thousand people a day. There are a great selection and wide range of interesting, fun characters on here. The forum grows each season (and is even busy in the heat of the summer months), and has benefited from everyone taking part and joining in. We initially created the forum, the members pages, and all the other interactive parts to the site to do what we can to create the "community" that now exists. That was the main reason the site was created in the first place, and continues to be an underlying concept of SJ now.

 

We respect and highly value all of the members of the forum - from those who post occasionally to those who post in the thousands. Thank you. But whether a user is one of those posters who posts only occasionally or posts in the thousands, they all get the same treatment and there are no separate rules and policies applied depending on who a poster is and how popular they may be.

 

There are probably 2 main kinds of internet forums that are really no good - ones that hardly anyone ever uses and is like a ghost town, and the other that is full to the brim of useless, unconstructive, offensive, meaningless, racist, (whatver)ist posts. We won't allow our Forum to become like that, and believe that none of you would want that either. Luckily our Forum has grown, thanks to you, to become a healthy forum as mentioned earlier. That's also why we won't and don't let it run wild. As such, we monitor what goes on and from time to time, after much thought, delete offensive posts (or even close threads). As we mentioned earlier, in the 10 weeks of 2003 that have passed so far, we have deleted less than 10 posts (out of multiple thousands), and closed a small handful. That is far from heavy-handed. And from the responses we see (both on the forum and in emails, questionnaires, etc), the majority of our readership seems to agree with our decisions.

 

Furthermore, there has been no policy change whatsoever. It just so happened that we had a new poster coming onto the forums and littering the threads with insults and offensive comments a few days ago - and so a couple of that posters' posts were deleted. (At the request of a number of other users).

 

We feel that we are very open to criticisms of our site. Anyone who has contacted us over the years will (we hope) know and be able to testify that we respond to both comments and criticisms quickly. The site has in fact grown and developed over the last 3 years based largely on comments and criticisms from our users. The reason that we make a detailed Questionnaire each year is so that we can find out more about you and your thoughts on SJ - what you like and what you don't like. And we use that information in planning for the following season, to make it all better for all of us.

The most effective way to communicate with us - and to get things directly on the "in" pile - is to email us at editor@snowjapan.com. Mails sent to this address get sent to the people involved in the direction of the site.

 

If a criticism is made in the form of a (confrontational or non-confrontational) thread on the forums, it creates a whole different situation that has to be dealt with differently, instantly and in full view of our thousands of readers. As can be seen in the case of this thread, a criticism laid out in public can be the start of a long discussion/argument involving both the criticizer, us, and other forum readers - and creating a lot of bad feeling in the process. While that is not necessarily a terrible thing in every case, we do not feel that we should have to discuss any and every aspect of our operation out in the public with literally thousands of people watching every comment, and have to do so even with issues that may be misguided and/or incorrect (not to say that is the case this time). As a site, we simply do not have the time to be able to do that. To a certain extent, us having to do that is also detrimental to the future development of the site - for example, this thread alone has already taken up many hours of our time (and will surely take up more) that would have otherwise been used in more productive pursuits, like further improving the site for everyone's benefit. That is why we ask that the first step in any criticisms are sent to us directly - where they will be seen - to our editor@snowjapan.com email address. They will not be ignored. They will be answered.

 

So to sum all this up, we sincerely thank all of our users for making the forums so much fun for so many people. And in order to keep things that way we reserve the right to delete posts and close threads as we see fit. Policy has not changed, and nor will it, unless we feel the need. So we hope it can be seen from the number of posts that we do eventually end up deleting (again, less than 10 in 10 weeks, all of which were offensive and/or insulting) that we are far from heavy-handed in moderating the forums.

 

And we also ask that criticism such as the original post of this thread be sent to us initially by email, where we will respond and hopefully resolve any issues in that format.

 

We certainly don't want anyone at any time to leave or stop posting!

 

Thanks for your understanding.

 

Enjoy!

 

SJ

[rach 1]

Wow, look what happens when you turn your computer off for a couple of hours!

 

Just my comments, for what they are worth. I think that the fact that you don't let the forums go wild with insults and drivel, and the fact that most users here seem to know that and stay away from that kind of activity, is a big part of the attractiveness - and I fully support your policy.

[damian 0]

cant I just point out here, most respectfully, that SJ.com don't really do anything to keep this forum clean of rubbish. They themselves admit as much. It is the members and the demographic from which we are generally sourced that keeps this place so great.

 

- SJ are great for hosting this site.

- Memebers are great for breathing the life into the structure.

 

As the bald dude from Hot Chocolate would say "everyone's a winner, babe".

[ex-lurker 0]

I think people get your point, bd, there seems no need to keep on pushing it.

 

An ex-lurker.

[SnowJapan#Andrew 6]

No offence is taken.

 

 Quote:

cant I just point out here, most respectfully, that SJ.com don't really do anything to keep this forum clean of rubbish. They themselves admit as much. It is the members and the demographic from which we are generally sourced that keeps this place so great.

Our point exactly, we do little to disturb what goes on here - but we do step in when something out of place does happen.

 

If you were around at the very beginning, db, you would know that there was a lot of growing pains with the forum. Happily it now seems that the majority of posters here want the forums to be positive, fun and drivel-less, and post by that concept.

[MistaSparkle 0]

Well, whatever you may think of enderz original post.... I think he provoked a good discussion, and brought db back!

 

p.s.- Enderz is a very cool laid back dude in person, and just like everyone else, he's entitled to rant every once and a while. While it's 100% cool to disagree or trash his post, some of the posts in the beginning, personally attacking him, were pretty lame.

[BigSausage 0]

Well I personally don't care if db comes back or not, but the whole thread seems like a whole big waste of energy to me.

[cheeseman 1]

Eat cheese, that's what I say.

 

I do keep on asking SJ to open up a new Cheese Forum, but they just don't action on it.

[Antonio 0]

ho hum....all a bit self important as far as i'm concerned...