I had certainly not intended to come back here to comment and am doing so now simply to add my name to the list, along with 13thDukeofWybourne (noted by chekhov) and MontanaWildhack.
There may be others but I think chekhov is right about Wybourne - although it is his choice entirely and we may both be wrong - and Montana has made her own declaration.
When we had the great moderation debate around the banning of JayReilly and many others, I felt that we were allowed to speak and then told what we were going to get.
We have had a number of people recently questioning the vast discrepancy between the stated moderation policy and the way it is actually seen to operate. There are many people who seem to think this is just sour grapes or sporadic fits of pique and not a matter of principle which is central to how a site like this operates. That is their choice or their lack of perception and they are welcome to whatever positions they occupy.
Georgina recently wrote a piece celebrating CiF's forth birthday. Perhaps those of us who brought up the moderation question were simply regarded as churlish and bad-mannered spoilsports to ruin the party, but the question was raised and again left unanswered.
As long as the moderation remains inconsistent, apparently malicious, apparently operating to an agenda outside the stated community guidelines, apparently motivated by each moderator's own prejudices and feuds and as long as this apparently officially sanctioned hidden set of rules operate as a form of censorship and crowd-control, why would anyone want to be part of CiF?
During the moderation debate mentioned above, many people, including MrPikeBishop said that they regarded CiF as a community. MrPikeBishop said that he regarded many of his fellow posters as friends. The official line tended to seem to want to play that down.
A community is more able to be flexible and accommodating to foibles and mishaps and allowing its members to stray from the accepted line. If CiF is not that, it is simply some kind of moderately open forum for debate and it will only have credibility if it can be seen to be operating to guidelines which are both acceptable and consistent. It is failing to do that.
Whether or not you like the editorial style or the people chosen to write or the apparent use of the site as a propaganda machine or sounding-board by politicians are all separate issues.
At the moment, CiF seems to be like an incompetent parent. It wants to be firm and consistent, but by the time it has been on the bottle for half the day and is becoming frazzled, bedraggled and at its paranoid wits' end, it simply lashes out and keeps forever proving itself unable to master the task.
Anyone who chooses to walk away from CiF knows very well that they will not leave a ripple and will not really be missed.
You simply get to the stage where you also know that you will really not miss CiF.
So, given the context of the other farewell letters and news above, this is me signing off and walking away, in all my various and mutating instars and avatars.
Atomboy
Good to see someone keeping an eye on them ;)
ReplyDeleteYou probably need to try and advertise this site a bit more so ciffers know its here. They could send you copies of unduly deleted posts which could be stored for reference. Not simply to sneer at the Graun, but hopefully long term to convince them that there really are patterns and problems that ideally would be addressed.
JR
Just come across this site and you've made a good move setting it up Atomboy. I've valued your posts on CiF, having first come across you there in February of last year.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm going to explore this place while mulling over how to respond. I'm also someone who's also been permanently banned from CiF after three and a half years of posting - with no warning or explanation, other than the rather Kafkaesque statement:
"You can appeal to us via this email address if you'd like us to take another look at your case in the future, at a time when you feel you would be able to more closely adhere to house rules. However, the fact that you maintain you have never contravened our community standards illustrates that perhaps CiF is not the forum for you."
Hope to post again later.