The MC has been monitoring the thread about our decision to take the Spin Zone off line for three days. We are concerned that some people did not understand why we are doing this, and that some people seem uninformed about the process involved in dealing with reported violations. Since that process is a factor in why we made this decision, we'll start there.
When someone hits the "Bad Post" button, the following process begins:
- A new thread is started in the Disciplinary Action forum (MC members only) including the post in question, the comments of the reporter, and the names of the reporter and alleged offender.
- An email is generated to all six members of the MC including the same information.
- Each member of the MC goes to the site, logs in, reads the report, and then reviews the post in question as well as the thread leading up to it.
- Each MC member posts their comments and recommendations in the DA forum thread.
- One member will formulate a proposed action to be voted on by the MC.
- Other MC members will either vote to take action, recommend changes, or vote to not take action.
- Once a majority approves the plan of action, one member will write a proposed message to the offender explaining what action is being taken, and why, including what portion of the RoC was violated. This step may be combined with the formulation of the proposed action.
- Once again, the other members will either approve or recommend changes to that message. Again, this may be combined with the prior approval.
- When a majority approves, the action will be effected and the message sent to the offender from the PoA Management account.
This usually takes a couple of days of MC members checking in and out, making their inputs, etc. In some cases, the offender will appeal this action to the MC, stating why s/he feels the action was unjustified. At this point, the first MC member to see that message will copy it to the thread in the DA forum, and the process above starts again at Step 3. Decisions to suspend or ban users (with the exception of obvious spammers) are NEVER made unilaterally or without majority vote of the MC. And those decisions often involve considerable discussion.[/
Out of respect for our members' privacy, and to avoid embarrassing anyone, we conduct this process out of the public view. We do not post publicly any of the actions taken, nor whom they are taken against. Further, we expressly forbid the public discussion of any disciplinary actions taken -- we, the MC, are simply unwilling to engage in public debate over the operation of this privately owned and operated site. Even if a member violates that rule, we will not expose to the public what we did or who we did it to, or even present the full story when a member posts less than that. We reserve the right to delete threads that publically discuss disciplinary actions, especially ones that offer only one opinion of an action. We are always willing to listen to suggestions on how to improve our processes or to do things better, but we are unwilling to engage in public debate (or whining) about specific actions. We understand that there are always one or more opinions on the correct course of action, but at some point we have to be decisive. Public discussion after the fact doesn't alter the need for the MC to be the decider.
In addition, when a member of the MC feels that a conflict of interest exists, that member will recuse him/herself from the process; in some cases, other MC members have suggested that one member do so, and the MC member in question has always done so.
Likewise, where an individual MC member acts quickly to stop egregious violations (like SPAM) or threads that are spinning into an abyss, that action is subject to review and reversal by the MC as a whole. We have reversed such decisions in the past, and we will continue to look at them closely in the future.
As we said a couple of weeks ago, the MC members had concluded that the number of reported violations in the Spin Zone had reached the point where we were becoming unable to keep up with them. This was causing long delays between reports and actions, and that is a bad way to do business. We posted a message to the membership explaining that, and requested that all people posting in the Spin Zone take heed, as we were on the verge of eliminating it completely in order to keep our voluntary workload manageable. Instead, the number of reported violations picked up -- reaching five violations in a 12 hour period this week, albeit involving only three posters.
This cannot continue -- we, the MC, simply do not have time to deal with this level of trouble.
We considered briefly pulling the plug on the Spin Zone immediately, but chose instead to give it a 3-day "time out" as a final chance for those participating in the Spin Zone to reconsider how they present their points there. If upon reopening, the level of rhetoric does not return from "heated personal insult" to "civil discourse," we
will end it without further discussion. To clarify, discussion - even heated discussion - regarding topics are permitted,
discussion, baiting, insults, attacks of a personal nature are NOT acceptable.(Example: "The /insert political party/ has really fornicated the pooch because...." or "/Insert whipping boy media network/ is a tool of the /Insert political party/..." are perfectly fine. "You are a steenking pile of /insert political term/ dung..." or "Why are you even back here in this forum..." are NOT ACCEPTABLE.)
We realize that the vast majority of posters in that forum play by the rules, but because we, the MC, simply do not have the time to deal with the few people who do not, we cannot let this continue. Our alternatives would be either to stop enforcing the rules there and allow it to degenerate into anarchy, or to permanently suspend from that forum everyone who breaks a rule even once. Because we are not willing to accept anarchy, considering that this site is chartered as an AVIATION COMMUNITY, not a POLITICAL or PERSONAL INSULT site, and we likewise don't want a one-strike-and-you're-out environment, we have chosen a temporary shutdown of the Spin Zone over those other alternatives. We are currently contemplating whether to delete the current threads in Spin Zone and start with a clean slate.
As with so many things in an civilized society, the actions of a few will decide whether a privilege is allowed for everyone. We realize that this can be viewed as unfair by the many people who participate civilly in the Spin Zone. We realize that in normal society, there are ways for peer pressure to deal with such situations. However, peer pressure doesn't seem to work in the cyberworld, and we, the MC, simply do not have the time to deal with the not-small-enough minority of posters who cause these problems too often, but cannot accept their actions.
For all these reasons, the Spin Zone is on the chopping block, and it won't take but a few of you to bring the axe down.
