Yeah, I think I should have found this thread 5 days ago.
But let me respond to some perceived issues and concerns brought up back then.
(1) Newbies asking questions that could maybe be answered via the SEARCH function seems to be a hot topic. I think a LOT of people are forgetting what it is like to be new at something. New in the sense that not everything is understood as far as syntax, protocol, and terminology. Yes, in the hindsight of experience it is easy to know what keywords to use for a search that would get the best results the quickest, but this is not quite so easy when you just got your first corn snake and know NOTHING at all about this stuff. You don't even know what KIND it is! How can you search for "Anerythristic" or "Amelanistic" (it sounded something like that when the pet shop guy sold it to you) when you have no idea those words even exists, much less able to spell them? I remember years ago when Connie and I bought a new plant at a nursery and on the way home I asked here what kind it is. She didn't remember but thought the woman said "Bingle Dingle". Now imagine me coming home and getting on a horticultural website trying to find THAT term! How long would it take me to discover that what the woman at the nursery REALLY said was "Vinca Vine"?
Personally, I have had the opportunity to get involved in topics of interest lately where I am a COMPLETELY "wet behind the ears" newbie. I register on a site that may have 75,000 members and a couple of MILLION posts on it. And I have some questions about my new interest. But hell, where do I start? I've been reading posts until I am cross-eyed, but the topic matter is so broad and the number of posts so overwhelming, that I just give up and POST my question. Yeah, it's a basic newbie question to THEM, but not to me, and I really would like to know the answer. Now I will tell you this, nothing is more irritating and frustrating to then get some smart ass post a reply
Use the search..... Quite frankly, it is just damned rude to do that, in my humble opinion. It's like a virtual slap in the face, and I think anyone who wants to do that to someone really should put themselves on the receiving end to see how THEY like it. In my case, I don't require a long drawn out explanation or someone to produce a link to me, but quite honestly, I would be very grateful for the HELP I came there searching for. Excuse me, but I thought that was what a DISCUSSION FORUM is for. And quite frankly, any forum members that treated me that way basically chased me AWAY from that site. Maybe it was only one or three members there, but for all intents and purposes, THEY were that forum to me. And that didn't leave a favorable impression on me at all.
So am I wrong in thinking that someone treated that way HERE, would likely feel the same way I did under similar circumstances?
(2) The change in attitude and flow of this forum was commented on several times here. And the "between the lines" I was reading was perhaps that something SHOULD be done about it. And what would that be? Strict moderation? Someone to lord over such discussions? Which from what I also gleaned from this thread were often heated opinions about protocols and personal techniques in husbandry. So moderation in that sort of case would have to be someone choosing which protocol was "correct" in relation to one or more others? Well I would hope that is not the case. Differences in opinions are just part and parcel on any message board system. Yes, you can have a very tightly controlled environment with moderators sitting reading and filtering your posts almost as you are typing them, but excuse me if my memory is faulty, but from what I can remember, a LOT of people came to this site specifically to escape that sort of close scrutiny and overbearing moderation elsewhere. If I am to make mistakes here, I think I would prefer to be TOO lenient rather than not enough freedom for the members here. That does produce the danger that the bed you make may not be fit for anyone at all to sleep in, but really, do you all want to sleep in the bed that I specify for you?
(3) Back when I originally set up this site, I too had the thought of creating an "elite" or "advanced" forum that would be by invite only, and restricted to those members where "we" ("greats" and all) could discuss these advanced topics by excluding all the distractions of those lesser members (yes, there would have to be a dividing line somewhere) butting in. But the longer and harder I thought about it, I just could not figure out how such a thing could possibly work. How do you judge? Experience level based on what? Time doing this sort of thing? Number of animals you are working with? Book based learning with actual in depth hands on experience? Or varying levels of all those factors combined with the toss of a coin? Who in the world would want to have a website that would create an automatic division (chock full of resentment, no less) between the members like that? Who would want to have to be the person telling some member "Sorry, but no, you are not GOOD enough to become part of this "elite" forum." How could anyone even come up with some reasonable criteria in order to make that division? Every criteria I could come up with would have exceptions, which meant that somewhere down the line, there were going to be a bunch of pissed off people on the site feeling that they had been shunned for being not worthy of the attention of that "elite" crowd. So I canned that idea completely as unworkable and downright silly in a public environment like a message board system. Maybe someone else has figured out how to do it properly, in which case, more power to you in that endeavor.
(4) There was mention of the "chat room fiasco" as well. I guess I need to read that thread beginning to end again when I have more time, but my recollection of it was something that I really had no choice in doing. The chat room had obviously gotten WAY out of hand, and from the chat logs being sent to me, there were some people (yes, even some of the "greats") who just acted in a manner that I felt was just not APPROPRIATE on this site. If that did, in fact, precipitate those people leaving because of my stance on that issue, then they in fact laid down the rules as my taking their side or they were taking the highway. Of course I didn't realize at the onset that this was the case, but even if I had, my stance could not have changed. If my choice had been, either that sort of behavior from those "greats" would have to be tolerated, or they were going to go off and create their own forum, I would STILL have no choice but to chose the stance I did.
But for what it is worth, I am sorry that I allowed it to get to that point, and I am not really certain how long it was progressing to the boiling point before the top blew off. Quite frankly, at the time the lid blew, which was early September, the months prior to that were pretty much insanely busy with my own animals, and I certainly would not have had monitoring the chat room even on my priority list, much less anywhere near the top of it. So yeah, if I have to take the blame for having too many irons in the fire, then I will take my lumps for that. All I will say is that I tried to be my best with it. Not good enough, obviously, but that is a hindsight thing. I did have a moderator assigned to the chat room, and when people did send me chat logs, I did look them over and took what steps seemed appropriate, even banning several members who obviously needed that to happen to then from the evidence I was presented. I never asked anyone any questions or tried to verify the info, I just did what seemed expedient to fix THAT problem.
But obviously, that was not enough, and I do apologize to everyone that I allowed that to impact this site in the manner that it has. And quite certainly as I found members arguing with me about my stance within that thread, I am sure I got very short of patience with it all, and probably got quite upset with some of the people there who appeared to be justifying that behavior. Well they apparently had their reasons, but I was going SOLELY on the evidence I had in front of me, just as I had in the past. So to be blunt about it, I just was not willing to accept their arguments. Was that wrong of me? Maybe so, but that's the way it went.
That was the week we were preparing to go to the Mid Atlantic Show, if I remember correctly, and to say I was busy with animals would be a world class understatement. Quite frankly, I really didn't have time for an issue like that in which I TRULY thought that my simply posting that I wanted that sort of behavior to end in the chat room would simply have opened the eyes of EVERYONE involved to see what they looked like when looking in the mirror at themselves. I felt that simply pointing out that two wrongs don't make a right should have been sufficiently persuasive.......... Duh.....
Anyway, I'm sure there are other points I should touch on within this post, but the eyes are getting tired, and the mind is beginning to dull.
Sorry if I messed up the string of Haiku's, btw........