Totally agree about Finsky and Bjorn - both a wealth of info, from generations apart and climates as different as night and day. Finsky is active on the European forum (not sure of the name - someone please fill it in if you wish) and I know that Bjorn spends lots of time here mostly reading and occationally posting, around 8-10 a month instead of twice that a day.
Do I think it a loss to us? I'm not sure except to say he offered opinions and knowledge which helped many - his latter posts were often found in the Coffee House and some were a bit heated, and we had good dialog in PMing in which I found myself asking him to be a bit less heated. I don't think he enjoys being told to cool his jets and the whole Youtube Video was a lame collection of thoughts where no matter what I did, I could do no right - so I chose not to please him (since you can't always please everyone) it might as well have been him not getting his wish since he was the only one complaning.
First I moved the Night Ops video from General to Coffee House, where (when you join the forum you have to choose an age under or over 13) if you choose UNDER you cannot even see the coffee house forum - it is blocked. That wasn't good enough because kids lie about their age, I was told.
Then I placed warnings about the language content and that was even worse so I was told, it was (in my own words) like leaving a Playboy Magazine out at a boy scout meeting with a sticky on it saying KIDS DON'T LOOK AT THE PICTURES.
So our forum (in his words) would no longer be talked about when he promoted the National Honeybee Awareness Day, nor mentioned EVEN TO ADULTS as a great resource for new and learned beekeepers (again paraphrasing). He even believed his promotion of Beemaster Forums was a major reason we set records nearly every month in 2009, but after he stopped talking to me, we had 3 even larger record growth month, shame he didn't stay social, he could have taken credit for those - so I wonder how much of a loss that really is - he is still there, lurking and occationally posting, nothing really had occurred except his NOT replying to my private messages - which, I figure that is his choice, I think rude RUDE as can be when an admin writes a kind letter asking questions, and you are online nearly every day and choose to not answer a single one, but not a crime here. Most forums I'll promise he would have been out the door long ago. But we have rules and none had been broken by him. That is why he is still here, if he chooses to read and not write is his choice of course, but I think it is hypocritical if family values means so much to him, but that is only my opinion.
So as strange as it may seem, I miss seeing Bjorn posting several times a day. He generally behaved well here and brought much discussion to the forums. Sadly though, he has issues with either me or the way we operate the forum and choose to be silent except in some random posts throughtout the forum. I have nothing against this man, he obviously does me, because if it were the forum - I assume he wouldn't post at all and if he just became a lurker then he is of no use to any of us. I assume as a member he has a strong PM database and is in contact with many members here. If he became a lurker only, he would quickly lose that priviledge - we cannot be anyones underground railroad, where many commercial beekepers I know make money, via private messaging. Surely we will not be used like that, and he would disappear just as sales did on the trading post. It is only fair, we are no one's store front and I'm merely suggesting this as a possibility, but if posting were to stop, then this member would go away very quickly - I think concidaring all, we have been more than fair. This is the kind of stuff that passes our screens as Mods, thankfully rarely and honestly I have never had a member who would not talk to me before, ever. I wonder what any of you would do if it were your forum?
I won't expand any further but to say hundreds of posts come to the moderators in any year and we weigh the content and its relevance to the members. Not always is it a perfect video clip from youtube, and how many articles from news papers concern the horrors of war in great and grusome detail. It all goes back to "does the information serve a greater good to the membership than it does harm". Should I or any moderator here be doing the work of parents, who should be watching where and what their kids are doing on the Internet.
As young Buzzbeejr (now 14 and starting in the Fall junior high) I hear worse language on the bus every day to and from school that I would ever be exposed to on the forums and he has been a member for almost 3 years.
We have few children as members and those we have here have active parents here too. I expect the parents to make the final call on what their kids should see and read, not me or the staff here and especially no Bjornbee who has been a wonderful member here, no one dragged his past into this forum and I really doubt the video with the F-word barely discernable in it was the true issue of his complaint, if it was the start of our emails back and forth, and when he found I would not take down the link - and if being told NO was the reason he refused to write to me again, then he is shallow minded- but I don't believe that about him, so I'm still confused on his reasoning and thinking.
Finsky taught me a vital lesson, agree to disagree began when we lost him to the small cellers who ganged up on him like pack wolves on a crippled fawn. Seeing Finsky fight his battles on at least 6 fronts was as sad as viewing a video of a handful of thugs kicking a homelsss man to a pulp.
I grew as a moderator during that time and frankly many decisions since have used the Finsky Scenario as a template. Arguing a topic is okay, arguing a person is not - ask SGTMAJ about that. He said he didn't care WHO he offended and that was all I needed to see before letting him go. So having a member with 1200 or so posts has no more priviledges than someone new in the door - he learned that after being given a second chance from a warning long before the postings of recent months, which were just foolish statements and lame attacks on other members.
NOTE: every case is different, some people just leave cause they move on, others ask to be removed and we allow that (we do not ban a member who has done nothing wrong - but we unlock their button allowing them to delete their membership) others see the writing on the wall and raise a stink on the way out, and some choose to go out with one big bang. There are a few other ways to find the forum door hitting you on the butt, all you need to do is read the rules in the first forum to learn the fastest ways to get banned.
Others are like an infection, always lurking in the background and you just can find the right antibiotic to get rid of them. Then there are the THOUSANDS of members who play the game by the simple rule book, and it is all those people who make the hard work caused by the other fraction of a percent well worth dealing with.
And as far as any forum I have belonged to, or seen - our staff has an easy job and all staffers have the ability to ban a problem member on the spot, no questions asked. But with such power, they express in detail the whys and how-comes of such action to the rest of the staff and without fail we all see and agree on the reasoning of the decision. That is why we need no larger of a team or a difference in staffers - they are the eyes and ears of all members, but EVERY MEMBER can complain with the "report to moderator" link in every post of the forum - giving YOU the power to spot trouble early on and help us keep this a FAMILY PLACE no matter what some people think!
That is the last I'll write on this post. I needed to vent a little because rumors travel faster than the speed of light - facts can never keep up with rumors or incorrect statements, so when clearing things up - the truth often needs a bit more content to separate the fact from the fiction. I hope I have done that tonight.
Topic: Finsky (Read 3987 times)