The new WordPress.com moderator (with the telltale staff-yellow background) who shall remain nameless (OK, a hint: virus) obviously doesn’t like to be corrected in the forums when he makes a mistake.
The moderator in question had mistakenly told a blogger that he was self-hosted when in fact the blogger had domain mapping to his own domain (15 second trip to “whois” told me that). I mentioned the fact and my “correction” along with his “incorrect reply” quickly disappeared from the thread in question.
The moderator in question obviously then dug a little deeper and discovered that the blogger’s domain mapping had expired, posted that, and then “resolved” the thread.
Lesson to WordPress.com volunteers: If a moderator (particularly with a staff-yellow background) makes a mistake, or gives out bad information, just ignore it.
The Sacred Path
Feb 7, 2008 at 3:29 pm
[...] What caused my self-exile was the little, probably-noticed-by-few comedy summarized here. [...]
Feb 7, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Since being gifted with “inactivated” status, I have come to recognize that volunteers are not at all “welcome” on the wp.com forums. Indeed, as Automattic is paying both mtdew and hanni and, as trent drops in from time to time and, as isdora will come across when needed (she voluntarily works many hours ont he italian forum) then, I’m wondering why bloggers like yourself are still answering questions at all.
I was using the “sanitized” forum searchbox when what you described went down. I read the post to the thread in question and I also did an immediate whois search so, and knew the first answer from mtdew was not correct. Remarkably, my capacity for caring about what’s happening has been slipping away.
Get the heck out of there before you are “inactivated”!
Feb 7, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I am out of there officially as of about an hour ago. I had thought of titling this post “I’ve been wanked!!”
Since I’m “outta there” I could care less if I’m inactivated.
I can’t tell you how much it sucks when a paid moderator covers up his mistakes instead of owning up to them. Not an action that would build respect in the eyes of most people.
I suspect he’s a republican.
Feb 7, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I just noticed that your avatar has “disappeared” in your off-topic post to the Grrrrrrrrrrrrr thread. I’m wondering if that was a coincidence or merely the first step in deactivating you. http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=12414&page=33#post-164356
If it’s any consolation to you remind yourself that those who do not own up to mistakes and apologize for them are insecure people. I’ll sure that Alex (tellyworth) will be speaking to mtdew.
Feb 7, 2008 at 4:56 pm
A single finger salute does seem to be in order. http://thefinger.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/img-0176-2.jpg
Feb 7, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Actually I uploaded the blank avatar on my own.
If Alex even finds out about it perhaps he will. I’ve never seen anyone else on staff do that. They have always owned up to things, not tried to cover them up. Perhaps Mt. Dew just needs some additional training, or perhaps it’s new policy. Staff will always be right, no matter how many of their wrong answers they have to delete.
Feb 7, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Sadly, since I didn’t think anything like that was going to happen, I didn’t do a screen capture. Too bad I didn’t. I tried using my browser back button, but it disappeared from there as well.
Feb 7, 2008 at 5:15 pm
What can I say? These people are not worthy of our support. The lack of respect and gratitude towards volunteers who have worked many hours free of charge indicates to me their level of personal development is on a level with junior high kids.
Consider that their “leader” Matt has dis-entitled several members from receiving any support through the forums at all, while they continue to project the image that they do listen to members and that all members have the same service when they don’t.
I hear a Coyote howling and I’m about to join her.
Feb 7, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Matt gets an email shortly.
Feb 7, 2008 at 5:52 pm
[...] edit: Hmm, maybe my initial suspicion is true, though not in my case. This entry was written by sulz and posted on February 7, 2008 at 8:00 am and filed under [...]
Feb 7, 2008 at 6:04 pm
boy, i don’t know what to say about that… maybe wp.com doesn’t appreciate your efforts, thesacredpath, but the users you’ve helped and us volunteers sure do! thank you for all you’ve done. hope to see you around…
Feb 7, 2008 at 6:17 pm
sulz, Thanks for the kind words. I’ll be around, just no longer in the support forums. Final straw and all.
I have to wonder if I’ll find “inactive” next to my name in the not to distant future.
Feb 7, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Once you can take a big step back form the situation you will recognize that the “community feeling” on the wp.com forums has nothing whatsoever to do with staff. It was created by the volunteers.
Once the last volunteer has been “offed” then where will that feeling be? It will still exist but only between volunteers, who form relationships (email, chat, etc.) outside of the wp.com off-topic forum.
BTW sulz do you recall Mark posting on his favourite music group the cunninlinguists to the off-topic forum thread on what are you listening to now? Do you recall that you posted to it too? Well where are those posts? It seems to me that threads are being sanitized and closed.
Feb 7, 2008 at 7:29 pm
yes i remember them…
Feb 7, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I always expect them to do this. When I put things out, I feel that the value in them occurs when I put them out and thus, whatever happens to them after that point is moot. Hopefully they’ll help someone. Maybe they won’t. But I don’t own the outcome, just my own action and intentionality. It’s more restful than having expectations of organizations I know to be … uh … arbitrary.
Feb 7, 2008 at 10:19 pm
How thin-skinned can they be? And it makes them look so small.
Didn’t the world learn from Watergate that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up?
Feb 7, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Small indeed, and I don’t know if we’ve seen how thin-skinned they can be yet.
The world seems to have a pretty severe learning disability that is going to require summer school and some really intense tutoring. I wouldn’t doubt that it will be held back a grade or two.
Feb 8, 2008 at 1:25 pm
IMHO Matt has enough staff (tellyworth, hanni, mtdewvirus) plus volunteer moderators (trent and isadora), to be sure that support through the forums is delivered in a timely manner. The stats show the vast majority of support is provided directly from wp.com staff support and, not through the forums. There is no deluge of neglected bloggers, who are not receiving answers. Moreover, those who get non-descriptive answers from volunteers on the forum simply contact support directly to get the rest of what they need.
I have no difficulty with the fact that management makes “management” decisions on service delivery, and not volunteers.
I have also believed and espoused for a long time that Moderators should be paid staff members with backend access to blogs, the database and, to other staff members and their expertise.
I do argue that TPTB can choose to adopt a transparent management style if and only if you place serving your end users’ needs above all else. Once you have established that as your focus then you can freely share what you are doing, why you are doing it, where you are going and, how you intend to get there.
In this case we are witnessing “management by stealth”. You keep the end users in the dark like mushrooms and you feed them ambiguously worded shit. I cannot see any indications that wp.com TPTB want to improve their communication with end users and build a healthy relationship with them. Their ears appear to be only tuned into the fanboys. Moreover, I can’t say wp.com has the best “community” because at wp.com “community” is exactly what’s being eliminated from the forums.
While “community” is being eliminated from the wp.com forums by picking us off one at a time while posturing that we are “bad elements” what else do we see?
There are hundreds of thousands of wp.com bloggers who don’t have a clue as to what’s going on. They are busy blogging and not hanging out in the forums. Moreover, even if they did know what was going on most wouldn’t care. Their focus is on blogging and building “community” on their blogs, and not on the forums.
The reason I helped other bloggers was because it made me feel good to help them and hear them say thanks to me. I’m still helping people every day. For example: when wp.com volunteers give forum answers that are non descriptive like “you must do this or that” but, fail to provide links to “how to” instructions I get emails and, I respond to them. I also get emails from those whom I have helped before, who come directly to me rather than going through the wp forums.
By and large I direct those asking for help to my blogging tips blog posts here http://bloggingtips.tumblr.com/ or to the back-up, mirror blog at http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/ (The latter is set to allow visitors but not search engines and the comments are turned off).
As everyone knows, I could care less about stats on my bloggingtips blog. The stats on the tumblr blog show that it’s getting more hits every day and indicate very soon it will get the approximately 100 hits daily that the original wpbloggingtips blog got before I deleted it. Meh
What I do care about is being treated with respect and dignity and, that’s what thumz was expecting rather than the treatment he got. I think we can reasonably conclude that the treatment that other volunteers will receive in return for their forum contributions will simply be a “play it again Sam” scenario.
Feb 8, 2008 at 9:18 pm
[...] Opposable Thumbz? Not necessarily a sign of intelligence « Moderator has a hair trigger [...]
Feb 14, 2008 at 3:25 am
Try the laid back moderatir on http://wordpress.com/blog/2008/02/08/summarize-more/ . who has my comment “This works real great on regional stats! http://forestneeds.com/regional-stats ” waiting since
February 10th, 2008 at 9:29 am.
Feb 14, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Oops! wp doesnt want the world to know about regional stats – yet. See comment 3 on my about page http://forestneeds.com/about/