13124740:Anathema said:
maybe that's a part of the problem. phatttim, rebel, cedric, even to some degree the creators in harvey and nopoles, all used to be active members of the community and goofed around with the best of them, but in a "modly" way.
I think your entire post is summed up by this sentence - and its a great point.
Now a point of clarification - I was one of those guys back then too. Hell, I hired NoPoles, introduced cko and Harvey, have met rebel and cedric many times and was very much an active part of the mod team in the phattim days.
What you guys don't realize is that the site has always been relatively strictly moderated for 'dumb' stuff. The original mod crew was probably more harsh on that than we have been in the last 3 years by a landslide. Dumb wasn't tolerated, and never has been. There is a significant difference between being loose, out of control, calling people out, scathing and funny.... than being those things and just plain fucking stupid. The latter brings nothing to the table, and its never been tolerated.
Trolling used to mean something. Lilhorsey was a character in its own that had an extremely witty message. They and others were the Yin to the Yang of the rest of us. It provided a much-needed balance that is often missing in our overly white-washed industry.
I fully, completely believe we need out of control shit on NS. It just needs to live within a eency-tiny bit of confine. It just needs to be actually funny. If its funny, witty and well done then more power to you. Troll on. If its fucking dumb, then it gets deleted - just like it always has and always will.
The only thing that will come of this 'rule change' is that you guys who want to watch the world burn will have to think for 10 more seconds about your post and actually make sure you're not just being a complete git.
What amazes me is that people always miss the last rule in anything we do -
"Is deemed by us to be unsuitable for any reason whatsoever.
If we decide that a post is unacceptable, we will remove the post. Depending on the severity of the post or the past history of the user who made the post, we may drop a ban on your ass."
https://www.newschoolers.com/forum/thread/340690/Forum-Rules
I made that post on January 3, 2008. Has anyone in this thread yet argued that it was only before that post that Newschoolers was fun? Note also that was just a re-hashing of the old rules set out by Harvey before I ever was on staff in 2004.
Bottom line: NS isn't about being stupid. What makes this place awesome is the actual level of wit that exists. We aren't the meathead masses that are only capable of dick jokes and have an IQ of 27. We're the future of skiing, and the ones that can actually make a difference. Does the world of skiing matter? It does to some of us - and for those people NS should be their home.
Now the point you make that is incredibly good is that mods need to be more active in the community, so that they better understand what is going on. Upon hearing calls from all corners of the site (Staff, members, donators, SG people, PMs, emails, etc) that we needed to clean things up a bit, the very first thing I suggested is we need more mods that are active, contributing members of NSG. We want you guys to help regulate yourselves, as I'd continue to challenge the fact that a massive portion of you actually like the way things have gone over the last year.
I know that I have been guilty of being distant from the site for a few years. We have a lot of business challenges to take care of, which I've been doing an enormous amount of work on. We've grown into a very successful business... but we need to make sure we're in touch with what is going on. You've seen a flurry of activity from all staff lately - myself included - and this is all to address that exact issue. If we can't understand and be part of this community, then none of us deserve to continue running it.
As long as you guys are willing to engage in active conversation about our direction with us, we will do the same with you.
We can shape the direction of this site together.
However, the more you don't listen to us, the more we aren't going to listen to you. If you're one of the people simply flipping out and bashing, take a long look at this whole thing and consider engaging in decent debate for a few days. That way your voice will be heard, we will incorporate it into the vision of the site and we'll all move forward together.
Everyone will not be happy all the time. That isn't possible. However, we'll do what we can to make Skiing's online community the single best place for a skier anywhere in the world to gather online and meet their brethren.
