TAY Atmosphere

Somebody actually "owns" this site. Really?? Guess I am dumb (said with a Forrest Gump drawl).

Love Scots last post. Goes to my point of all of us to stop taking this so seriously. It's just info on skiing. Not a freakin' phD dissertation. No one here is an expert or knows anymore then anyone else. We all just ski and love it. I could do it every day if that damn work thing/money thing didn't get in the way.

Got my reefer (well.....wish I did), my PB&J and heading with my kids (14 yo boy and 13 yo girl) to the Crystal SC (sidecountry) this weekend. What could be f'in better then that.

You all have a great weekend skiing too!

Peace!

Marcus you are doing an excellent job in my humble opinion, so keep up your good work and follow your true gut instincts on any things that may give you thoughts for consideration.
All the powder hound doggies on the site are more than a tribe or a community, we are like a pack of wild furry golden eyed wolves with our hair bristled up at the scent of winter and its storms; we all know without having to think or ponder that we are connected because of snow and that connection is a scent and a feeling that goes a long long way and like a pack or a herd or a flock the universal spirit of nature runs through us and with us and carries us to summits and back. Our love is shared and like all doggies some of us are tougher, smarter, kinder, more beautiful, more full of wolf's blood than others, but here we all are because of TAY.
There is a world of specific information here that has helped this dog more times than I can say.

Semi-random thoughts after a busy day away from TAY...

I'm going to keep an open mind about Scotsman's suggestion about making TAY more of a "community-owned" site (for lack of a better phrase). Of course Marcus would have to agree with this. Creating a panel of moderators has some appeal (at least superficially). But when I think about this a little more, I return to the fact that it hasn't been easy for Charles and/or Marcus to get moderators to volunteer. Where would a new panel of moderators come from?

I'd be interested to hear from other people who've worked in volunteer organizations. My experience is that most of them have involved one, maybe two, people who are really passionate about the mission and do the vast majority of the work. In the building of TAY that was Charles, with help from Ron and MarkHarf. Today we have Marcus with just Ron (I believe). Who would be willing to step in and really become involved if we tried to relaunch TAY with a more community-based ownership? Color me open-minded, but skeptical.

Related to this is the notion of software acquisition, maintenance, and tools. Several people have suggested adding features to TAY, including upgraded photo capabilities, an "ignore" feature, and perhaps more. This requires work. My sense is that Marcus is barely keeping his head above water presently and it is difficult for him to respond to these requests. Would a new organization fare any better? And, if there are people out there who can do this technical work, what's preventing them from stepping forward now?

Several people have said that it would be better for the TAY community to self-moderate, rather than having Marcus or Ron step in. I agree with that. But it seems that asking Marcus to do all the software work is asking a lot as well. Can somebody in the community help?

A few people have suggested creating a new forum as a home for more "lively" discussions. I can see how that might help. If a discussion started well in another forum and then went off the rails, it might be a simple thing for a moderator to just move it to this new forum. Call it "The Slush Pile" or something. On the other hand, I can imagine there might be unintended consequences that I haven't thought of.

Seems people are making this all much more difficult then it needs to be. Like a referee in a basketball game, the good ones are the ones that are seldom noticed but keep the game going at a civil pace.

I've been running my own site for 14 years as the solo moderator and I am the lone person who decides what is and is not posted. My rules were simple, no personal attacks. If some happen I simply delete them and go on (I actually did this today). Usually nobody even notices so there is not a big issue. Marcus is the man and he should just pull the trigger if he feels it should be done, no apologies....his site. How he does this will either attract users, or push them away. My 2 cents.....

Well, I've been here on TAY from the very start, when Charles first added a trip-reports section to what had previously been his personal website, at Ron's suggestion and as a continuation of the Mountaineers trip reports board. That was in early 2001, long before it became a user-postable forum in October 2002. Many of you know me to some extent, either just through my trip reports and my website, or having met in person. I've been watching this thread closely, but initially for some reason I just didn't feel like commenting -- but I think I should add my thoughts to the others:

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General atmosphere:

* I think that the most important thing is to not drive away any readers, current contributors, or potential future contributors. The site is useful because it has a critical mass of people posting useful information on a regular basis. That is the most important aspect of the TAY community, and not diluting or diminishing that should be the number-one priority.

It seems to be clear that the increasing harshness (and sometimes even outright nastiness) has driven away a number of contributors, and made a significant number of TAY members less likely to post for fear of harsh criticism from a small minority of overly-vocal critics. These critics (as evidenced above) just can not seem to understand why many people don't like to criticized and abused -- that seems to be easy to understand for me and most others, though. Telling the meek and timid that they need to "grow up or sack up" just feels like further abuse to them, and is clear evidence that the people thinking that way just don't get it. Something appears to be deficient in their interpersonal skills, at least online, which they should reflect on and try to improve.

I've always been overly harsh, argumentative, judgmental, and critical (having been raised in such an environment, and then working in an extreme example of such an environment as a physicist for over 15 years), so I understand well these types of mentalities -- they were (are) my own. Yet since my late teens (2 decades now), I've done everything I can to improve myself in these areas and reduce such behaviors as much as possible, both in real-life and online, with only partial success. So from personal experience, I say that perhaps it's you guys who need to grow up and stop acting that way: harsh, argumentative, judgmental, and critical is no way to go through life, and no way to treat others in person or online. It also seems (based on the few of you I've met) that perhaps you only act this way online, and behave much more civilly and nicely in person -- so why not do that online too?

Many people who are reticent, shy, or timid still have much to contribute. I think that fairly aggressive moderating / policing (as has been done in the past, and continues to be done somewhat now) is essential in this case to retain those members and contributors. If that atmosphere drives away a small number of overly-vocal and aggressive critics, then so be it -- these people have self-declared thick skins anyway, and they may even come back later if they miss the content TAY provides. But keeping out the trash-talk and nonsense will help retain those less aggressive and outspoken members who might otherwise leave and not dare to come back. Marcus (and Ron), I think you're doing well under a large workload and a tough balancing act.


* Real names vs. anonymous posters: It's obvious that anonymous posters cause most of the problems, on almost any internet forum. Those who post under their real name (either full or partial) tend to be more restrained from any unacceptable (or even marginal) behavior. Anonymous posting has always annoyed me, for a very simple reason: in many cases, you have no idea if you actually do know that person in real life. For some of the long-time anons on TAY (like Scotsman and PNW Brit), I happen to have met them, skied with them, and know their real names. But for others (like oftpiste and gravitymk, just to pick the names of 2 of the most vocal people above in this thread), I have no idea if I actually know them or not in real life. Perhaps I have met them, but I just have no idea, looking at their usernames here now. This makes effective communication, especially in difficult or touchy situations, much more difficult -- communicating and debating civilly with a human being is much easier than with an anonymous handle.

However, I realize that maintaining the option of anonymous posting is important for those users who feel they need it, and can't bring themselves to post without it. So I'm not sure what the fix is, other than perhaps strongly suggesting that members choose to post under their real names. Quoting oftpiste above, to these most vocal and aggressive members "I say sack up, grow up," and have the courage to post your strongly-held beliefs under your real name. Leave anonymous posting to the more timid members, who might wish the protection of anonymity. You guys clearly do not need it. More users posting under real names is a positive in any internet community, and would be a big step towards improving the TAY atmosphere.

One of the nice things about the TAY software is that the displayed name on posts is user-changeable (unlike many other forums where it is not), without having to change the username itself. Currently anonymous members could simply change the displayed name in their profile, or they could add their real name in their signature, if maintaining the currently displayed username is important to them. Either of these changes would be visible immediately on all of their previous posts, but could also be removed equally easily if there is later a need for more anonymity for some legitimate reason.

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Moderators and ownership:

* Transparency of moderating / banning: One of the problems of moderating / banning on these types of forums (TAY, CC, TGR, etc) is that the general community has no idea what was deleted, or why someone was banned. For example, I don't know what PNW Brit said in his post that broke the camel's back and led to his ban, since Marcus had already edited it out before I read it. Things work much better if there is some way for the community to know exactly what crossed the line, and why someone was banned.

To give an example of an internet forum where such openness is automatic and works wonderfully: Wikipedia, the world's largest user-created website, and containing a vibrant discussion community too, really a mega-forum of sorts which exists on the Talk:, User:, and Wikipedia: namespaces of the site. But also constantly under attack from an endless train of vandals, spammers, trolls, and biased/nationalistic/psychopathic editors (since anyone can edit it). I've been an administrator on Wikipedia since 2007, a community-elected position which is permanent unless revoked for cause -- it's both moderator and janitor, we can delete pages or block users, among many other maintenance capabilities -- there are now about 1700 admins out of 14 million registered accounts on the English Wikipedia alone. Because it's a wiki (which means that it maintains a complete public history of every edit and any other user action), every action an admin takes is visible and reviewable by anyone if they know where to look, in the public log files. Most objectionable content that is removed is also viewable in the page history of each page, so anyone can find out exactly what someone else posted in order to receive the block or ban that they got. This makes it easy to learn what behavior crosses the line, and what may be marginally acceptable, while easing any lingering doubts about fairness. Of course, as in any community, different admins have slightly different standards, and in some cases another admin may disagree with an action, in which case it can be discussed and perhaps reconsidered or changed.

On TAY, since it does not retain any such history or logs publicly, there is no such openness and transparency right now. Is there some way of adding that type of transparency, to some degree at least? Some way of just telling the community exactly why such actions were taken?  In some cases on TAY (at least one), users have been quietly banned by Charles (only from posting -- they can and do still log in), sometimes much belatedly, after nearly 2 years of abusive posts and PMs to other members. But those who had been most affected (the victims of the abuse and bullying) did not even know that these users had finally been banned, that they could safely return to TAY without fear of further attacks. That's not the way it should work at all.


* I definitely think that there should be a somewhat larger group of moderators, say 4 to 6. The site is large enough to need it, and what happens if both Marcus and Ron J are out of town at the same time, perhaps on hut trips without internet access? The spammers and wing-nuts would go wild and unchecked for several days. Two moderators is just too few. Of course, moderators need to be appointed with caution, since anyone with access to the "delete" button has the potential to cause a lot of damage very quickly if they become disgruntled or disgusted with TAY at some point in the future. Fixing such damage afterwards from backups would be a huge hassle.

* Technical assistance: I'd be willing to help, and have told Marcus so when he asked me (regarding fixing the broken thumbnails) -- I've heard nothing further since then. I've run my own website for nearly 14 years, including a PHP/MySQL database back-end for over 7 years, so I have some amount of technical know-how. However, I've been reluctant to take on any more tasks, since I can't seem to find enough time for the things already on my plate now, or get the things done that I really need to complete (the book). But I'd make an exception for TAY, and could contribute a useful amount of time and energy (a few hours per week, on average -- but occasionally much more in short bursts).

* Regarding ownership of the site, I don't see any pressing need to have it owned by a "Friends of TAY" group as Scotsman has suggested, although that is an interesting idea and worth considering. But in any case, I assume that Marcus has some contingency plan in place, in case of an unforeseen tragedy? The site's content has grown extensive and important enough that we, as the community that created the content, should have confidence that it will remain accessible permanently (as much as anything can be permanent). It would be good for the community to know what that contingency plan is.

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Adding or deleting boards on TAY:

* There's no need to get rid of the lift-served trip reports. Reports of snow conditions are an essential core part of TAY. The snow conditions info posted there is very useful, and getting rid of it would be a major loss. Even though I only very-rarely post a TR there myself, it's usually because someone else does so before I get home, anytime the conditions are notable enough that I'd want to write a TR.

* A portion of Random Tracks could be split off into a separate board: "Weather, Snow, Avalanche". I had been thinking about asking Charles to do this for several years, since a significant portion of the content in Random Tracks is hardly random. Just glancing at the latest 100 threads, it looks like about 20-25% would fall under the "Weather, Snow, Avalanche" category, which is an essential subject for backcountry skiing. Some TAY members who avoid looking at Random Tracks might not feel that way about the "Weather, Snow, Avalanche" board, and so the quantity and quality of posts and information on those subjects would likely increase following a split, which would benefit all.

This could be implemented immediately, as a new empty board. If Marcus needs help in sorting through the 3700+ topics in Random Tracks to figure out which should be moved to that board for posterity, I would be willing to help. Any topics moved should be done in a way that preserves the URL (or leaves a working redirect), to avoid breaking any existing links to and between these threads.

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That's it for now, once I started writing, this thing just grew way too long -- sorry.
But if I think of something else important, I may edit this to add it here.


[size=small](Edited to add an "a".)[/size]

A few people have suggested creating a new forum as a home for more "lively" discussions. I can see how that might help. If a discussion started well in another forum and then went off the rails, it might be a simple thing for a moderator to just move it to this new forum. Call it "The Slush Pile" or something. On the other hand, I can imagine there might be unintended consequences that I haven't thought of.

Others have mentioned this too, but I view Random Tracks already in this light. The TRs can be civil and pointed, in other words: useful. While Random Tracks is more community specific banter.