I think Isa said it best when responding to Jade's post. "You deserve to be happy," and everyone does.
We know quite a lot about Jade's situation and I agree that the purpose of the boards is not to "coddle" but to support and assist. I did not find any of the posts in this thread of be of an "attacking" nature though I might have used some different phrasing and attempted to soften some hard questions and taking up space with personal jibes is just well,,, taking up space. Let's face it, when someone spends more time trying to prove they are right, the original problems in the post aren't being addressed and there is no communication taking place. What I did find objectionable was the continuance of the "I'm right behavior" even after Countrigal and a couple others stepped in attempting to pour oil on the waters...
In light of Countrigal's admirable attempt to diffuse a thread which showed marked indications of running amuck and of the fact that she was ignored I will now step in and repeat a familiar motto, that some of you have heard before. "play nice or play elsewhere"
There are several other places on the web where people can go to be shredded on a daily basis by those whose only way of feeling superior is to hurt others and then claim it was done under the guise of "being direct."
Opinions are one thing, but to blow off someone's issues in favour of proving how "right" you are is unacceptable. Where was the address to the issues in the last few posts in this thread, no it's all about ME!!!,,, Or them as the case may be. " I Said this because" . Where was the address of the original poster's issues?
You will (and I do mean all of you) participate in these forums in such a manner that indicates you at least care about another's feelings. You want to take issue with someone personally? Every single one of you has a Deskdemon email account or you'd not be able to post here. Use it. That way the person on the other end can click you into oblivion at their discretion rather than being placed into a public defensive posture.
In short, getting along is about caring about other people's feelings, being supportive is about understanding and responding to the points which were raised and not trying to "prove a your own point."
While not everyone will always agree with each other it's important that when one person feels hurt others understand that there is no tone of voice available in a posting to soften the blow, to deflect the intention or to help make more clear a meaning.
People under stress tend to read things that aren't there, by the same token, people who aren't under stress need to understand and to consider before hitting the "post" button.
This is a professional forum with a clearly defined common community. Further it's our forum, all of us and a place where no one should ever be afraid to post for fear of being "jumped on" by others.
Unpopular opinion? I have them all the time. I preface those posts with "you're probably not going to want to hear this but have you...." There are ways to say things. Find them.
When you feel the need to slice and dice someone, please feel free to visit other areas of the web, most notably
www.monster.com find their admin community and do feel free to try to hold your own in the piranha pool of miscreants who delight in posting painful messages just to add some depth to their one dimensional personalities.
While there are a few good people over there with legitimate questions and concerns, and a few who manage to keep their personal feuds to a minimum while offering helpful advice, they are most often overridden by spiteful idiocy and little in the way of anything constructive ever occurs since if you don't belong to the "in crowd" you don't get heard.
I happened to check in over there a few months ago and saw an entire correspondence posted by a user who had a personal feud with another. Personal emails from one to the other posted without permission, extremely personal and private information posted to the WWW, horrible attacks, and it stood there until Monster could remove it. It amazes me sometimes the ways people can find to hurt each other, and more importantly to ruin for others what should be a resource. Even Monster says it's out of control and frankly they're tired of spending money to keep something this ludicrious online when there are others who could and do benefit from peer based support.
We are all entitled to our opinions, what you are not entitled to do (at least not at Deskdemon) is to disrupt the community.
My Email overfloweth (over this situation) and not from the moderator team, from outraged others who will not see this forum turn into a Monster forum. A plethora of egos running rampant, and no thought given to how another might feel, or to anything really except being able to say "I was right! HA!".
Well, being right means absolutely nothing if you've managed to disrupt the Deskdemon community in order to prove it. Think how impotent you'll feel when you're unable to post.
Why? Because you won't be here. IP addresses are logged and we track back to be sure before we delete accounts, but delete them we do.
We have the ability to lock you out of being right if you aren't constructive and then m'dears it doesn't matter how
right you were, because you can't post to tell anyone about it. And you can yell and scream and carry on all you like, the simple fact of the matter is, until you start writing my paycheck, I and the moderator team will do what we feel is right for the community.
Don't like it? Fine. Go find another community to post in. Want to take issue with our stand on what makes a community? Great! Forward a few thousand pounds (British please) put the work into this community that we have, pay for servers in the Docklands to handle the traffic, find moderators who will support not yourself, but the community, and you can have some space to spew venom. We'll create a new forum, just for you and people can choose to come in or not. Until then, you will respect each other and you WILL Respect Deskdemon's moderators when they ask you to address the issues of the poster.
When they decide to step in, they do it only because it's their job to make sure that the sense of community stays intact, and no one is better at understanding this community than they are.
Am I being harsh? Probably. Am I right? Maybe not, but then again, as I stated earlier, if you can do it better, by all means visit a less diverse community or start one yourself and let people body slam others so you can sit back and watch the fun. Whatever trips your trigger.
"I'm RIGHT!" means nothing in the scheme of things when the only one to believe it is yourself and when you've no platform from which to shout it. It will echo from your cubicle walls, and mean nothing because you couldn't be bothered to consider that there are ways of being "right" which do not injure another's feelings.
Having an off day? Don't post.
Want to be part of the world's largest community for office professionals and take pride in that fact? Great! Do so by respecting others first, you'll find benefits in your professional life will come about because of it.
Otherwise take a gander at what life could really be like, this thread is from Friday
http://forums.monster.com/viewmessage.asp?messageid=3174609I'll tell ya right now boyz and gurlz I'll personally pull the plug on these forum boards before I see it turn into this. Like I said earlier, play nice or play elsewhere and have a care for the sense of community.
Andrea
