Losing members

[Ian A.]

I do support emoticons, but if decide to use them, can we get find different ones to put on top than the choices that I now see over to my left? I think you need the British palate! This one is rather american , don't you think? The full smile, the half smile, the quarter smile, the chatter chatter one?

I quite like that set, though rarely use the straightforward smileys. The ones I mainly employ, sparingly, over on ours tend to be the shocked stare (left on second row - several people have cheekily suggested it's a self portrait!), the blush on the third row, the devilish grin, upwardly rolling eyes and knowing wink on the fourth row, and the lightbulb moment.

Having said that, we did have one former member so prone to smiley abuse - every post peppered with them like a plague rash - that I had to ask her to stop.

But back to Charlie's reservations: the thing they do is provide a momentary pause for thought. People skim read things on the web, don't take them in properly, bang out an ill-considered response instantly. A little sign which in effect says "just hang on a mo, I'm not that serious . . . " does seem to make a difference. You'll have to trust me on that one.

Many of the members of this forum are music-obssessed men whose behaviour is often a bit weird - tending towards autistic.

Why does this remind me of a famous quote by the late folk agent Jean Oglesby (Davenport) that once appeared in the Melody Maker, where she praised folk clubs for saving the NHS millions on its mental health care budget by providing a weekly place for all the weird loners with no social skills to hang out? Now that started a flame war too, via old-fashioned letters. Nothing's new!

[Jamie Renton]

A lot of this is because many of the members of this forum are music-obssessed men whose behaviour is often a bit weird - tending towards autistic

I find the idea that male behaviour is naturally obsessive bordering on the autistic hugely offensive.

In fact, I was so upset when I read Ted's comment quoted above, that I had to go & re-file my record collection in order to calm down!

Smiley 'that was a joke' emoticon, Basil Brush style 'Boom Boom' etc etc

Jamie

[Nigel w]

Jamie wrote

Basil Brush style 'Boom Boom'

Now that really is offensive, Jamie! Basil Brush? Wash your mouth out : true story below from today's Mail on Sunday:


BBC ban Basil Brush gipsy sketch
By MARTIN DELGADO and JAMES TAPPER

Last updated at 22:48pm on 22nd March 2008


The BBC has backed down over allegations of anti-gipsy racism in children's TV show Basil Brush.

Bosses admitted that an episode which caused offence was "inappropriate" and have told police it will not be shown again.

Officers have now decided no further action will be taken.

The bizarre complaint was made by a gipsy living on a travellers' site in Northamptonshire.

He alleged a scene showing a gipsy woman trying to sell the puppet fox wooden pegs and heather was offensive and insulting.

The gipsy made an official complaint to Northamptonshire Police, which referred the matter to its Hate Crimes Unit.

[Ted]

Has anyone noticed the startling resemblance between one of the London mayoral candidates and Basil Brush?

tw

[CantSleepClownsWillGetMe]

Smileys can be good. I like smileys.

Subtlety is also good - I like subtlety - but, no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to find the 'subtlety' key on my PC. Maybe I could use dove grey font instead of black? Oh dear ...

[Dayna]

What I'm saying is, in the words of AT&T, reach out and touch someone. Call up and just say "Hi". And you will find that 99% of the miscommunication that happens on here will all become water under the bridge. Especially in the face of a wonderful gesture of actually calling that person up.

The phoning thing is always exciting. It would be so great to know everyone here beyond just here. It's so frustrating to me. I definitely don't want to put my number on the web though, as mentioned before. Boogieman might get me. It can sometimes be hard getting a hold of me because I am always online, & I have dial up.

[Rob Hall]

Let'e even wind each other up a bit, because that can be quite fun if done in a good spirit.

I'm afraid that I disagree with this Nigel. Winding each other up may well be relatively harmless in certain contexts, but an open public forum such as this is not one of them. Take for example, your spats with Ian: you may know that no real harm is meant, he may undertsand that no real harm is meant, but someone coming to the forum new, who knows neither of you, could well be put off at the sight of your taking pot-shots at each other; or, worse still, they may decide to join in and, thus, matters escalate to the point where things get out of hand.

Now, I wouldn't suggest that you refrain from expressing yourself in whatever manner you see fit, but I think it is a mistake to encourage others to engage in "wind ups" in the context of SoTW.

As for emoticons: I am active on another forum where there is a detailed list of rules and regulations; it is actively moderated and transgressors are (a) reminded of the rules, and (b) shown the door if they prove themselves unable to comply with them. A lot of people (me included) like the resulting friendly atmosphere; other people have said that they resent the moderator's "micro-management" of the forum - they either fall into line or they leave. However, the price paid is that the moderator - who styles himself as a "benevolent dictator" - has a thankless task which takes up too much of his time and he frequently loses sleep over decisions. I doubt very much that Charlie has the resources or the inclination to go down that route - and, by and large, his hands-off approach to moderation has been very successful; there's more than one way to run a successful forum, obviously. I think that, in the absence of active moderation, it is up to ourselves as forum contributors to exercise a little self restraint with the objective of creating a forum that is both a welcoming online environment and a useful source of information. Anything over and above that - friendships, etc. - is a bonus (but always welcome) in my opinion.

Still reading? Anyway, this other forum that I use is a veritable hive of emoticon users: they pepper every other post, and people get very imaginative in their use. But the moderator recently decided, as an experiment, to suspend the use of emoticons, and all hell let loose - people have been threatening to leave because of it, polls have been held, and toys have been thrown from prams. So far, the moderator is holding is own, but I'll bet he wishes that he'd never had the damned things in the first place.

[c hristian]

reposted from the other thread..

well let's see, on here, we have now lost the woman of color, the working class guy, and the musician. Sounds like the isle of Manhattan. Gentrification in all it's forms.

So how do we get them to come back?

[Charlie]

Today, a third contributor has written to say that, after realising they were approaching the forum with trepidation after having made a potentially controversial post, they did not want to go through the stress of worrying about what the reaction might be.

Three of our most valued contributors, gone in one weekend.

I suppose it is asking too much, to suggest that an apology could be made.

Much more of this, and the heart of the forum will be terminally spiked.

I doubt if I can persuade those leavers to come back, but can only ask that the rest of us take one last look before posting our messages, to wonder if this might cause somebody to feel they will go away and never return?

If that's the intention, I suppose the post must be made.

But if you are simply engaging in lively dialogue, and can find a way to say the same thing without such violence, please consider the alternative.

[c hristian]

from what I hear now, it's 4 and possibly ***5*** people who are looking to no longer contribute.

[Con Murphy]

I have had messages today from two regular contributors letting me know that they are not going to join in the discussions any more.

One said:

"I find I am too easily upset by [contributors'] remarks, attitudes, insults etc. It takes up too much headspace."

The other:

"I have come to the decision that I don't wish to contribute to the forum any longer, this is in response to some of the things written."

There are not enough of us that we can easily afford to lose valuable contributors.

I'm not sure what to do except to ask people not to turn these mostly fascinating and entertaining discussions into personal confrontations.

It would feel heavy handed to say to particular people, "please either tone down your remarks or go away and stop spoiling things."

I leave it to you all to suggest what we should do, if anything.

Spare the rod, spoil the child is my very old-fashioned answer to that question, because see what happens when you try the hands-off approach. Any parent will have recognised the pattern of the Brown Sugar thread as a poster who clearly didn't like the discussion in hand grew ever more shrill in their objections to it, which eventually led to them stomping over to other side of the room and pouring metaphorical sticky orange juice on the carpet whilst swearing at the one adult who had told them (rather ill-advisedly, arguably) to go and read a comic in the corner.

I love Des's posts, I think he's a great asset to this forum, but when he started SWEARING IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS on the Brown Sugar thread it was obvious we were in attention-seeking territory, and it was time for Charlie to politely ask him to exercise some restraint and avoid returning to a topic on which he had already expressed his opinion a number of times but which still clearly irritated him. It's all very well being a liberal parent, but sometimes you just have to slap a few individual wrists for the good of the whole family.

[Nigel w]

The irony is that barely a week ago I was talking to the editor of a rock music magazine where I am a contributing editor about how they might improve their web-site and forum (on which every post has to be 'approved' before it appears and topics can only be started by the mag's full time staff , resulting in a very sterile top-down vehicle). "Go take a look at the Sound of the World forum," I said. "That's the way to run a proper,lively interactive debate."

Then sod's law, as soon as I'd said it, this forum was struck with a plague of name-calling. But I still don't think it's terminal if people mean what they've said in this mostly emolient thread.

We don't know the identity of those who've written to you, Charlie, and whether they are bystanders who just got sick of watching us all scraping or are actually the people who were in the thick of hurling the insults around. In a way it doesn't matter which, because either way we would like them back and I think we have to move beyond the stage of blame and recrimination and who's guilty and who's innocent.

The names that have suddenly gone very silent over the last few days are fairly obvious . However, that some of them are still around and reading but not posting is equally clear because their names are appearing at the top of the forum as other users currently on-line. Over on the solipsism thread that Des started, Howard has made a very reasoned plea to Des and Nikki to return. After reading his words, I added a similar plea to another poster who has gone suspiciously quiet.

And no, emoticons are not the issue and won't help at all. Looking at them as I write (first time I've ever bothered, actually), I can't even see one that adequately conveys how I feel...

[c hristian]

i have not once hit my child, and he is the most well-behaved child i know. My wife and I, both being the products of physical punishment when we were young, remained absolute in never hitting. It's about respect and closeness.

I know what you are saying here, but there are many different ways to go about remedying the situation, the person doling out discipline can remain flexible and communicative. The British boarding schools , believe it or not, aren't always an oasis of enlightened thinking. i bet you know that already.

[Dayna]

The name calling makes it kind of nerve racking. I wasn't called any names or really insulted about anything, at least.
I think it's terrible to loose some great people over it.
I'm not sure what to do about it. Something like what Con suggested. Deal with the problem right before it gets out of hand, maybe.

[Nigel w]

Christian wrote

I have not once hit my child

Me neither and they are both completely beyond control and don't listen to a word I say. Mind you, they are 31 and 29 years old respectively...