A Word About Feuds and Flare-ups and Flamewars

Guys,

Something has come up a lot recently that I don't know if I can fix effectively.

Let me just spill it out as honestly as I can. It is not my intent to hurt anyone's feelings, I'm just trying to get it all out on the table because, as I say, it's come up quite often recently.

If this hasn't happened to you, if we haven't discussed it specifically, then I'm not talking about you, okay?

Several times in the past few years, I've had people I regarded as friends, or at the very least people whose posts I enjoy, suddenly drift away from this forum, and often, when they DO mention me and/or this forum, it's with anger, scorn, and sarcasm. When you have no idea what you did to a friend and they're trashing you regularly elsewhere, believe me, it's a rotten feeling. Or, they leave and simmer, or they simply leave with bad feeling and sometimes they don't come back.

This process goes on at every board, I think, but it seems to take on a personal dimension here that the other boards at ILX seem to be a bit more exempt from.

That is, in all cases, the people who leave are mad at me, or disappointed in me, because I didn't have their backs.

GUYS.

Listen, I've had my feelings hurt on message boards plenty of times. I've been mad, I've been sad, I have both over-reacted and under-reacted. I have apologized to people who have treated me quite shabbily, and I have FORGOTTEN to apologize to people who deserved it.

In short, I run the gamut of behavior from good to horrendous, and I confess to the world that to almost everyone's definition, I am a horrible, terrible moderator, possibly the worst ever.

But I'm the kind of moderator I like, which is the kind that lets everyone say their piece and at worse, comes in to ask people to please take a conversation to PM. That's actually the kind of modding I'm most comfortable with. I know this is a poor fit for a lot of people, and some have gotten their feelings hurt because of it. But can we not at least agree that it's a perfectly valid approach, as long as I'm fair in applying it? If everyone is allowed to have their say, it is damn near a guarantee that you will be both the pissed-offER and the pissed-offEE at some point, and I ask people to understand that when they start posting here. The average busy message board probably averages one little flare-up a day, with more serious things happening maybe twice a month. I can't follow all of that, and I don't really want to.

But about this 'he didn't have my back and he says he's such a loyal friend,' thing.

Guys, let me just explain myself a bit here.

First, I do not read every post. I do not even read every thread. And when I DO read a thread, I pick and choose. When a thread starts getting a little bit flame-y, the truth is, usually? I just skip over it. First, I come here to relax and visit with friends and learn about people, like most of you. I don't make a ton of threads about myself and frankly, I get bored talking about myself pretty damn quickly, usually, and you can count the long posts I write about ME ME ME in a month on one mutilated hand, in most cases. I come here for the community, just like most of us do. I think I am like a lot of folks that when the little flame embers start to burn, I usually skip over them. It's not me abandoning anyone. It's that, nine times out of ten, the people here work them out for themselves. And also, I've had enough flamey situations of my own that I'm really not out hunting for them. I'm not like the mods who do sterling work by catching every unfairness. I'm afraid I'm too busy and too lazy and philisophically too lax to do that.

So the ODDS are, if you felt you were treated really bad, that I was not aware of it at all. I have a few message boards I post on regularly, and this has always been my home, but sometimes I can't even keep up with the thread TITLES, let alone posts.

Which brings me to point two. Guys, dogpiling helps no one. Even when I'm the most mad, I don't feel aided by having a ton of people helping me attack someone. I just feel worse. I know it's happened in the past, but I don't want it to happen any more, period, where I'm concerned. I know people want to defend their friend, but what happens is, there's too much noise and too little genuine help. People's old angers show up. This helps no one. I have too often posted something intended to be funny or diplomatic, only to have one of the posters or both, FURIOUS at me. That is a no-win situation, and I resent being asked to jump in every time it comes up, because of point four.

Third, and please remember that I find this almost IMPOSSIBLE TO RECONCILE, because I simply don't think this way, but when I post here, with a lot of people, it seems to carry more weight than it rightfully should, as just another poster. I have never really thought of this as MY board, I've always thought of it as a community board. But because I wrote ASK CHAKI! and most people first came to this board because I'm on it, this board has a personal appearance that the others don't. It LOOKS like it's my board. Thus, and this is where I believe a lot of misunderstandings take place, I put a face and name to any event that makes someone unhappy here. I have people furious at me for threads and posts I didn't even know existed because for some, I equal ASK CHAKI, regardless of my participation.

Fourth, Guys, guys, guys. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to sort some of this stuff out as an outsider. Two people you like cross hairs at each other. Suddenly, one person is talking about something that happened two years ago. The other defends that and mentions someone I don't know who posted something on another board THREE years ago. Then they're furious at each other, and BOTH are pissed I didn't jump in and defend them. I honest to god have no idea what to do in that situation beyond, "I like you both, I don't understand what's going on, can you both take a step back?"

And finally, yikes, the heat of battle is a poor place for conversation. One guy whose name I won't mention is absolutely beside himself with rage, and had a long explanation of why, when I asked. So I went back and read the thread and it was NOTHING like he described. NOTHING. Is he a liar? No. He was mad, he was insulted, and he felt abandoned. But he was MAD with a capital M, so it was very easy for him to overlook REPEATED requests from me for both parties to step back, how I liked them both, and hated to see this happen over a situation I STILL don't understand to this day. What is point five? Point five is, YOU ARE MAD when you're at that point. You think everyone is seeing the same thing you are. When in fact, the odds are, we don't understand the context at ALL.

Okay. Have I messed up as a mod? I sure as hell have. Have I committed all these behaviors myself? Absolutely I have.

And I'm ashamed for doing it.

But guys, if you EVER thought of me as a friend or even someone you like a little bit, could you not please have the respect to TELL me when you think I've let you get attacked by wolves? I have been treated very shabbily by some people I always thought of as friends and I STILL have no desire to mock and insult and humiliate them. I prefer to think of them as the friends we used to be, if they can't see their way clear to being friends again at present.

So in short, I don't read every post. I don't understand every feud. I don't think dogpiling helps. And I hope you can work these things out for yourself.

If I see someone being a jerk for no reason, yes, I will try to catch that person and ask them to stop. But the idea that I'm willfully allowing a friend or even a stranger to be bashed for no reason? It's bullshit, guys. I'm sorry, but it's bullshit. And I'm tired of being accused of it when I don't even know what's going on most of the time. I have a bad memory for my OWN flame wars, let alone anyone else's.

I am trying to fix my own past bad behavior, and I want this board to be a welcoming place. To that end, I have tried something that many ASK CHAKI detractors have been recommending for a good while, which is, having moderators who can catch some of this stuff that I clearly have been missing. I do not WANT people to be bashed here. I do not WANT people to feel insulted or unwelcome.

Just, everyone, give people a chance. If they make a mistake, give them ANOTHER chance. Maybe even two or three MORE chances, okay? Sometimes it turns out to really be worth it. I have some friends now of people I thought I would dislike forever, and I have had some people I thought were good friends push themselves away quite decisively. I can't control all that any more than I can control every insult or joke gone wrong.

But everyone deserves a second chance, and if someone has pissed you off, I'm asking you give them that, okay? It will almost certainly be worth it.

None of this is to say that if you have a genuine beef with something I've done, that it's not legitimate. Just please, for the love of god, don't make the assumption that I left you out to dry intentionally. Because that really is NOT my way. ASK CHAKI is not a place that cries over every skinned knee, and I think we all know that. But if you were actually treated badly by me or a mod, I want to know about it.

Whew.

That was long. Sorry.

Hope it makes some sense, though.

Thanks.

Chaki