From raisindot@yahoo.com Sat Nov 30 09:24:24 2013
Subject:RE: Polls/Surveys - lets move on

Craig,


As the owner and moderator of several Yahoo Groups, I totally support your right to run this place however you see fit and put rules in place that reflect your editorial judgement. Contrary to what some may think, this is not a place where 1st amendment rights are guaranteed. Yahoo is a private company which has the right to censor any content it wishes. This is a forum run by moderators who have the right to make it as freewheeling (or not) as they wish. There are plenty of unmoderated forums out there swimming with spam, foul invective and all kinds of other garbage. These forums end up being abandoned. Given the occasional passion and grumpiness levels around here (for CLONES, nonetheless!), there needs to be a firm hand at the controls, and Craig is doing a great job.


Jeff in Boston


---In CloneWheel@yahoogroups.com, wrote:

I fully expected that I would wake up to a lot of discussion regarding this survey/poll on "best Hammond Clone" and my actions with respect to the member involved, and I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case. I hope that means that most of the membership understands my position. Having slept on it, and having a clear head this morning, I thought I might add a couple of points for the membership to consider, and then hopefully we can move on.

The Moderator job is a little new to me (I think I've been in this roll for about 6 months) and I am running on instinct rather than experience at this point, so I hope all of you will take that into consideration. One of the things I have to do as moderator is to "protect" the membership from things, thinks like "spam", misinformation, biases that affect the reliability of information, hidden agendas, conflict, members that don't play well with others, etc. etc. There are a number of things that go on behind the scenes, and it's a fair bit of work.

Regarding surveys/polls, I have no problem with them IF they are well constructed, and they serve a purpose that would be deemed valuable to the membership. In this case, the purpose of the survey was to "kick a dead horse".. ask the same old question that was the cause of many a flame war here, and I didn't feel that this was in the best interest of the group at this time. Right now, I think we have a pretty good level of maturity and tolerance for different opinions and I'm very proud of how this forum conducts itself, and I don't want this to change.

In this case, I asked the member NOT to create this poll, but he went ahead and unilaterally created a survey that was so poorly constructed that I deemed it to be entirely unreliable, and a waste of the memberships time. I don't want the group to be bothered by spam, I don't want the members to be subjected to political propaganda, I don't want the members to receive letters from Africa asking for money, I don't want the membership to be bothered with requests to join dating sites and I don't want the membership to be bothered by surveys, whether it's "who makes the best baby diaper" or a poorly constructed survey regarding "who makes the best clone".

Last but not least, as the moderator, I have little tolerance for people who don't play well with others. To ignore the moderators request, act unilaterally in this manner, and then when you get your knuckles wrapped you further waste the members time by spouting off about the 5th amendment and freedom of speech. That's someone who doesn't play well with others, at least in the opinion of the moderator.

Some of you may not agree, but I hope that you appreciate that I have tried to be entirely transparent in this instance, and I also hope that you will all try to understand and accept my position. If anyone has any concerns, please send me a private message so we don't waste any more of the members time on this subject.

Let's move one. Thank you!

Craig MacDonald
Moderator