TAY Atmosphere

This is a great thread and a lot of good information has been posted here. 

I come to this site for the great info contained within the trip reports posted here.  It seems to be quite easy to skip over the small amount of drama to find gold. 

I have only just begun posting trip reports so I haven't had any drama directed at me, but from what I've seen so far my thick skin will repel any animosity.

That being said I believe this site is well moderated.. thank you Marcus

Just to be clear, are you referring to my mention of Marcus's congratulatory post for " slapping down some people who need to hear it" that he sent to PNWBrit, TWO WEEKS before announcing he was the new owner of TAY and NOT..... "years before he took over management of TAY "  as Lowell  has spun above. He then banned PNWbrit  for doing the thing he had congratulated him for  doing just over a year ago.  That is germain when discussing the tone/atmosphere of the site and the moderation theroff no matter how much his apologists say it isn't.

If we accept that is germain, how does it support your argument? The PM was sent as Marcus the member, the banning as Marcus the owner/moderator. Taking on a new role or responsibility always changes your perspective. I am assuming that Brit was warned before his banning that Marcus no longer approved of the tone of his comments. Should Marcus be compelled to always support behavior that he has supported in the past? Should he be caned for past collusion?

I see a lot of complaining that others are attacking you. From my perspective it is usually (not always) in response. You seem to give as least as good as you get. You object that others are not restricted and then you advocate for looser moderation. It appears as part of a pattern to frame reality in a way that vindicates you but is not necessarily accurate. An example of this is referring to Marcus' "apologists". I haven't seen anyone apologizing for Marcus, on the contrary, I see only congratulations and gratitude.

To be fair, I have recently looked back through some past posts looking for examples of annoying behavior expecting to find many from you. I found myself mostly appreciating your wit and humor (how terrible for me). If we could all stick to logically reasoned arguments (however forceful), I think the tone would improve on its own.

Scotsman, hold me accountable for what I say and have said, but not out of context.
Since you asked. I am referring to you calling out my character based on a post I made concerning fish “gut” (your term, not mine). Well, since it was so infamous, how come you didn’t seem to notice at all in 2006 www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...dex.php?topic=3871.0 , or object to it very much in 2009 www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ex.php?topic=13450.0 ? Also, taken in context (context which you ignored) it is not so irrational or radical. Perhaps that is why you did not object to my words at the time in 2009 with anything stronger than a “Tssk-tsk-tsk” (that is a quote). Later on in that same thread, you contemplate an armed conflict between skiers and snowmobilers on the Easton (I guess that was a “joke”). Since we are ratting up the past, my statement is not too far off your Jan 14 2009 post suggesting “Non violent civil disobedience”. As to my 2006 post, you did not seem to object, one could reasonable assume you agree by your statement later in that thread of “However, if it is legal then the snowmobilers have a right to be there without being hassled aslong (sic) as they don't endanger or hassle me.” I interpret that statement as if they hassle you, then they do not have the right to be there, which was sort of the topic of the thread.
To clear up my past statements concerning conflict between sledders and skiers, yes, they were statements I should not have made in a public forum, they were dumb, and I deserved the “tsk-tsk”. I am sorry if others were offended. I have done a bit of sledding and I support sledding in areas where it is permitted by law and conducted in a safe manner. I do not support sledding in areas where it is not permitted. In skier/sledder conflict I generally support the concept of safety of the skier, as I generally support bikers in bike vs. car conflict, pedestrians in pedestrian vs. car conflicts, nerd in nerd vs. bully, etc. I still should not have made a statement of non-violent civil disobedience and potential destruction of property in the case of conflict between skiers and sledders and for that I am sorry. I will continue to use sleds as road approach vehicles every chance I get. I have been and will continue to put time, money and effort into avy safety programs that benefit sledders as well as other members of the winter travel community.
Just to set the record straight, it was not my post where you where you brought this up, but another post that you created to critique and criticize FOAC with a shortage of fact (which, by the end of the thread you finally found the facts).
As to the note of sarcasm (did I mis-perceive your tone?) as to my wish to prevent avalanche deaths, yes, that is something I have been putting 2-5 hours a week into for the last 9 months and considerable time before that in addition to considerable sums of money. I stand behind my work, putting deeds and $$ where my mouth is. I would like to invite you work with me, but suspect you will let someone else do the heavy lifting, as that is your M.O. most of the time.

This whole thread blows me away. This site is about skiing. Sharing joys and information. There is a loud minority (granted, a very active experienced core minority that I greatly respect) that want to change things. But the majority of users don't come here to piss and shout. The TR's are great. Most of the random tracks are great. The technical information and sense of community is an amazing resource.
The moderator can do what he wants and if it's against the majority's wishes the forum will lose a lot of users. From what I can gather from posts in this thread, users are going away because of the negative tone of other users not because of the moderator's unwillingness to share the duties. Marcus do what you want to keep this a positive place focused on the joys of skiing.

Griff's got it: "Have fun. Relax. It's all about the skiing kids, not about opinions. Ski as much as you can, and be a good soul. Peace."

another mostly lurker here with my 2 pennies.  The above post pretty much reflects my sentiments.  For me, the main point of this is information - conditions, novel tours, gear, BC-relevant news.  I like the "NPR-like" quality and I think that comes from the fact that this is the focal point of a community.  As I understand it, TAY is about BC skiing in the PNW, and that is fine with me.  (as an aside, I do enjoy TRs from outside our area and maybe dividing TRs by region like cascadeclimbers would be helpful).  The great thing about the internet is that you are free to go anywhere that matches your interest.
To Marcus I would say you are doing a good job, this is yours - own it.  I believe you have an interest in maintaining the sensibility of the site that you inherited, as you said when you took on the job, and I was relieved by that.  We have something unique here and I would hate to lose it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Singapore
At some cost.

Yup at some cost.  Everything comes at a cost.  I am not advocating a dictatorship for countries just making a point. 

To that point; how many years has TAY been up and running?  Would you say that the vast majority of people who participate (even just lurking) seem pretty happy with what TAY is?  Even you said it mostly gets it right and yet you are the one here who seems to uniquely be calling for a change in ownership.  I think that there have been some logical suggestions made in this thread to make some things about the site more attractive, but they amount to tweaks.  You seem to need wholesale changes.  I have an engineer colleague who has a saying for people who just never seem to be able to finish a job, or worse yet fail or break something because they just need to make it a little better.  "The enemy of good is better"  Not saying that we do not all want to strive for excellence, but for those who fail to recognize that for a certain purpose "good" is ""better" things can get broke.  "Lets just tighten that bolt a little more..."  The Tim Allen method of doing things, i.e. if a 5hp lawn mower is good, then a 25 horse turbo charged hand mower should be 5 times better.

I am not saying you are wrong.  What you are suggesting is the typical frustrations of an entrepreneur.  You are representing an outlier position that can often lead to bigger and better things.  Sometimes companies create other competing lines to test the waters and see if they need to replace the old.  Maybe Marcus can set up a new TAY, the OPEN TAY to test the waters (just kidding)?  However, maybe you should lead an initiative to make your own site.  It might succeed.

Regarding TAY and rule by committee, you seem to want to institute a democratic system of management.  I wonder if a community-wide vote were taken as to whether the TAY community would support such a change?

Unlike a true dictatorship, we all have choices and can come or go as we wish.  I certainly hope that no one who participates on TAY feels that they actually live here.  If TAY should close up shop I think everyone would find productive outlets on their own. 

On the topic of cronies.  I would like to think that all the participants here are cronies as rabid fans of wilderness skiing.  Conversely, we would likely not agree very well on politics, cars, movies, etc.  That's what other sites are for.

Gosh, I am writing way too much on this so I will leave this as my last post on this and trust that my points are understood, if not agreed upon.

Alan

Just to put in a vote, I think that Marcus' loosening of the moderation has been a positive.
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I'm saddened to see so many asking for more aggressive moderation, particularly from lurkers, but that does seem to be what's being called for. I hope Marcus and others are ready for the even larger amount of effort that entails, at least at first.
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I know a lot people in this thread believe that ramping up the moderation will create a more welcoming climate and bring in more users, or perhaps reactivate former posters. I happen to agree with gravitymk when he says that it will drive perhaps just as many away. It's convenient to believe that those driven away are all foul-mouthed jerks you don't want around anyway and can go to TGR or TTips, but I suspect that it's not that simple.

My opinion was leaning this way until I read MarkHaf's post. Having been a moderator here, he has a POV that most of us are missing. I may be reading something into his post that was not there, but it seems that he's suggesting that there was more swift application of standards back in the "Charles Era," and that this on net made it easier to be a moderator. A key passage from his post:

I've been fascinated watching Marcus' style of moderation, which clearly has certain advantages and disadvantages over other styles we've seen here (including my own), but in the balance I prefer the results achievable through more aggressive moderation--that is, quick and decisive application of consequences following posts which do not follow stated standards.   I believe that the absence of this kind of moderation will at best make the site more and more effort to run (and correspondingly less and less rewarding), while driving off a great many members whose participation I value greatly.  As I've stated elsewhere, I believe that the driving-off process is already well under way here, and others posting in this thread have confirmed my belief.  I hope the process can be stopped.

Now of course there are always confounding factors - maybe things would have gotten even harder under the "old regime" due to some other change having more to to with the membership, not the moderators. But, for the moment, I'm buying Mark's take. His post begs an interesting question - have we seen a significant increase or decrease in actively participating members since Marcus took over? It seems to me that most if not all of the folks on this thread joined the site in the Charles era. So I'm assuming we'd not lose any of them if moderation practices reverted to the "state the rules clearly and enforce them swiftly" approach Mark describes (is this more "active" or less "active" moderation if it means less work for the moderators??). There are a few assumptions baked in here that could be fairly questioned, but we seem to have evidence to suggest that such an approach won't drive too many people away (else they'd have left some time ago). This leads me to buy the "set the TOU the site owners want, and moderate according the TOU" notion.

Scotsman - I'm missing way too much context to make much of your "smoking gun" tale. I don't know what the post that Marcus congratulated said and what it was replying to. I don't know how many times Marcus warned PNWBrit, nor what his "final transgression" was (if memory serves, it was yanked before I saw it). So I don't know whether fair and clear warnings were simply ignored; if they were issued and ignored and if the final transgression was in a similar ven or worse than what produced warnings, then hanging on to that one PM as some sort of "standard setter" would seem to me to miss the bigger picture. At minimum, though it does tell me that Marcus is a human. What a relief.