Manual said:
i think most of till rules thoughts are out of Z's hands. That's not saying thy till rule is correct or wrong in his opinion. AFAIK, no one is breaking the TOS. So any comments or posts or are all fair play.
Tillrules said:
@Zbone, you kind of ignored the point of my post which is that there is now an organized effort by certain people to keep criticism from happening. You never once addressed the facts of the situation I raised, in fact, your post is essentially a rationalization for the events.
Since I didn't see the posts that you were referring to, I don't know what really happened and didn't want to talk about something I don't know anything about. However, I do know that what you are talking about can and has happened in the past. In fact, when clubs have complained to me about removing posts in the past (on Z1), my suggestion was to either post something as a counter-post or contact the poster and in rare cases, the poster was talked into removing their post. And one club has already had problems (on Z2) and before they removed their club page, I suggested the same thing to them.
Tillrules said:
Your position seems to be, this is the new Zbone, an advertising site for dancers and clubs on which criticism of the favored clubs and dancers is going to be derailed and prevented, so just live with it.
From some people's point of view, that could be the harsh executive summary of my position. Criticism of dancers and clubs (sponsors or not) will happen on the site. I have not, and will not tell any poster to remove their post. If it violates the terms the the site, I will remove it myself. I will not tell a poster NOT to post criticism of anything, including the site itself. I'm from the school of thought that open discussion is a good thing for everyone, and people can agree to disagree without name calling or shouting. I will continue to tell dancers and clubs to post counter-posts to criticisms to explain their position or to contact the poster directly to solve whatever the situation is.
Tillrules said:
This isn't just people being reluctant to post negative in general, its the fact that there are now people acting to stop it. Think about what happened here, A customer was pressured into removing a negative review of a dancer on this site who also works at one of the favored clubs on this site. The same group of people have also worked to remove other discussion as well.
I'm not sure what I can do about this problem. If you have something specific that you feel I should do, please spell it out for me.
If you're saying posters are being bullied, that's not a good thing. But if they are convincing the poster that their post should be removed for whatever reason, and the poster agrees, I'm not sure that's wrong. If it's a bullying problem, there will be a time when the poster that is being bullied will simply refuse and post something talking about how they were being bullied and the whole process will backfire on the bullies because they will appear to be bad people.
Tillrules said:
The point is that this is what I predicted would happen. I'm going to be honest here. It is irritating to me that every single response seems to be an effort to create a side discussion about issues other than the fact that the review was removed. Not one person has actually addressed the particular situation, just made general comments about criticism in general.
Your point is well taken. Apparently, your prediction came true. The reason why I didn't comment specifically about the poster removing his post was because I didn't see it for myself. That is not to say it didn't happen. I'm simply trying to explain why I gave other examples and shared experiences that I DO know happened, which is all I can do.
The bottom line here is: You are concerned that people are being bullied, just as you predicted.
My direct response to your concern: I do not condone bullying by anyone. If you have any good suggestions regarding what steps you want me to take, or expect me to take, please post here. I am completely open to any suggestions that will make this site better for everyone.
The poster was jeetkna (i forget his full handle), the posts were last Saturday. My issue with making this a self policing issue is that if people are using questionable means to convince posters to change posts, the posters aren't going to want to reveal it. The means I'd be concerned about are newer, more naive posters being told that if they say bad things about dancers, they won't be as liked on here and/or in the club. For example, the poster in question made at least 5 posts directed at Cassandra and in fact noted in his negative post that he had gone to VIP to see her, It would be my concern that one of the things that was used to make him take down his post is being told it would effect his relationship with her or other dancers on here.
I did not know that you could not read PMs, it had been my impression that this is the case in that a person contacted me about a PM I had sent to someone else. When I asked the original member if he had discussed the PM with the person who contacted me, the original member told me no. And I'm not asking about every single PM. Just if there are situations when posts are removed. If you cannot monitor the site all the time, my understanding is that there are other administrators who work with you. So getting notice of deleted posts should not be an issue.
Finally, as to privacy, the use of this site is voluntary and by definition, subjects the information to scrutiny. This is onviously an exagguration, but if I told you a member was sending PMs offering to sell crack, you would investigate it. Although it is clearly not as severe as drug sales, using PMs on this site to try to control information is still an abuse of the site and that abuse should be enough to subject people to a loss of certain amounts of privacy.
Manual said:
If Z inspected PMs, they wouldn't be private! lol.
They'd still be private and hidden from other members. Just the attempts by members to stop negative posts would be subject to scrutiny. And if the possibility of review existed, then maybe it wouldn't be happening.
@Tillrules: I sent the poster in question a PM and asked him what exactly happened. I'll wait for his reply before I proceed.
I understand your concern for new posters who may be more easily spooked and what you are doing on this matter is probably about as much as we can do.
Regarding PMs, I do not plan on adding a feature that would allow me to read PMs. It's a full time job deleting the spams and spammers. I don't need to be reading PMs and I don't want the moderators reading PMs.
Once I open up that Pandora's box, we will need to call it Ms and drop the P because nobody would use it.
One of the great features of Z2 is the PMs that allows private communications between users without giving out your email or cell #. This is a good way for users to let their friends know which dancers to avoid without being bullied.
Manual said:
the PMs are one of the best features of Z. it was in place in Z1, with members emails as PMs if they chose that option, but Z2 makes that extra step of checking email unnecessary. to be honest, if the PMs turned to Ms, I probably would start using email or other forms of messaging.
Yup. But a lot of users on Z1 didn't want to show their email address publicly, which I understand. I tried to get around that problem by offering a zbone.net email address for users but some people didn't want yet another email that they had to check. I totally understand that problem. I think the PMs in Z2 is more 2.0-ish and is the way everybody else is doing things on 2.0 sites.
The code to do Facebook type chatting has been tested here but I don't want to overload the server right now. I'm hoping to be able to provide that feature in the future.
des said:
So as I'm reading it... the problem isn't lack of ABILITY to post bad reviews. The problem is people not wanting to take any flack for their views and removing their posts? It sucks that people aren't leaving reviews they really mean and opinions they aren't willing to stand by. At least... until one of you says something mean about me and I can bully you into taking it down. ;P
That's exactly the point, des. The fear of taking flack and the fact that people are not only actively giving flack for bad reviews, but acting behind the scense to stop them is the problem I was pointing out.
If someone does write a negative review of or a dancer or club, of course, they have to expect the dancer or club to respond to it. If someone calls a dancer a ROB, then the dancer has every right to tear him up and/or correct his comment. The right to honest comments goes both ways here, if we criticize dancers or clubs, we have to expect them to come back with a response. The two things I don't like are (1) the mentalty that we shouldn't ever post negatives at all and (2) when its not a public response, but a behind the scenes effort to get people to remove the posts to protect the dancer or club.
cASSandra said:
when did jeetkna ever write a review "singing my praises"? and anyway i'm not a "ROB" and i don't give air dances so none of this even applies to me.
cASSandra said:
when did jeetkna ever write a review "singing my praises"? and anyway i'm not a "ROB" and i don't give air dances so none of this even applies to me.
The deleted review post was not about you, it was aboutthe night that jeetkna went to VIP looking for you (as sal noted) and danced with Luci. If you got the impression that I was accusing you of being a ROB or stating that someone else had, then I am genuinely sorry, Though I have never danced with you myself, your reputation is exceptional and I have no doubt you deliver a high quality dance to every customer.
The reason I brought your name into the conversation is that jeetkna made multiple posts to you and about you expressing his desire to meet you and get dances. My supposition was that your name may have been mentioned when the people who asked him to remove the post approached him, as if the negative review would affect the ongoing conversations between you and jeetkna.
Again, I can admittedly be abrasive (or worse, to be honest). I will not apologize for comments that I do mean to make, but I did not mean, in any way, shape or form, to imply that you were a ROB. if that is what it seemed like, then again, I genuinely apologize to you.
Tillrules said:
I am genuinely sorry...........I can admittedly be abrasive (or worse, to be honest). I will not apologize for comments that I do mean to make, but I did not mean, in any way, shape or form, to imply that you were a ROB. if that is what it seemed like, then again, I genuinely apologize to you.
Hey Till, since you you're always talking about how no one posts any Negative (I prefer to call them Honest) Reviews of the dancers anymore, WHY DON'T YOU HAVE SOME BALLS AND STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND POST A HONEST REVIEW of cASSandra??? And - You don't need to kiss cASS's ASS by apologizing so much, you're starting to sound like RONIN. LoL
