THE WEBMASTER'S RANT

I will not be snarky uncaring dishonest or say anything that would be sarcastic cynical argumentative or morose.

I will further remove any disrespectful humor from my posts and stick strictly to factual statements that are informative, helpful and sincere.  

In the spirit of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, I challenge you, Mr. Melvin, as moderator, and as an American,  to establish a "Free Speech" zone within this forum community. Keep in mind that even the most liberal colleges, loathe to free speech, have established "free speech" zones on their campuses, sometimes as small as a 10'x10' patch of grass.

Having established a free speech zone: (1) you may save yourself the effort of deleting posts; (2) the thin-skinned may avoid taking umbrage at others comments by avoiding this zone; and, (3) those who desire an open and honest exchange of ideas may do so without fear of being censored.

Again, I challenge you, Mr. Melvin, as an American, to immediately implement this. Put to an end the valid criticism you receive for your censorship, and make everyone feel valued and included in your community as persons, and as customers.

Accept my challenge, and I will immediately arrange for a paid subscription to your magazine.

I've read through the "Rant" and the responses.  As the recent recipient of more than a few deleted posts, I just gave up.  It seemed as though I was being singled out, and figured, what the heck, why continue to bother?  I attempt to create and craft my posts thoughtfully, and to abstain from political or irreverent contents.  

Sometimes, in fact, many times, my posts contain personal feelings and personal history, all with a connection to owning and operating trains as a youngster.  But, at some point, these posts are questioned by a disgruntled member as to their relevance, and subsequently deleted.  

It does take personal time, and a lot of soul searching to offer what I do in my posts.  To have them axed without any explanation is an insult to me.  

I offer, as an example, my farewell post.  Despite any negative commentary to this particular post, and more than a few positive comments and well wishes, and a great number of viewings, it was deleted.  "Thank you very much, don't let the door hit you on the way out" was how I felt after the post got the heave-ho. 

Hey Rich, if this is a pain in the behind, then drop the forum.  There are plenty of others. For most part I have stopped posting here,  I just do a weekly look see then go on to other more free speech ones.

That is my gripe also.  Sorry moderators if you are so thin skinned you don't want your members to know about bad actors or service or parts etc.  When you kow-tow to the advertisers, members suffer.  Pretty much reason I won't be renewing my subscription again.

^^^^^^^^^^

couldn't agree more, it's no joke and pretty much no fun being an admin or moderator of a service or site like this one.  One snarky reply which takes the author all but 30 seconds to write will likely cause Mr. Melvin upwards of hours of grief.  Thank you to Mr. Melvin and team for their time and support.

Everyone,

May I express my sincere thanks to the numerous members who have shared their similar experiences with heavy censorship and marginalization. Many of you, like me, have terminated their subscriptions because of the choices made by the OGR moderator, Rich Melvin. He must be abundantly aware, by now, that the impact of his choices is not inconsequential, and that these choices alienate subscribers and damage OGR's bottom line financially. Make better choices, make more money.

Pretty soon, no one but the "sheeple" are left who bleat the party line.

100% RIGHT!!!!! stop acting like morons...we have a good thing here...don't mess it up....

Very frustrating when good information in a thread is lost because 2 or 3 individuals decide to go after each other (sometimes a result of misinterpretation of a reply) and the entire thread is deleted.   

Same as e-mail, if a post upsets you, cool off before posting a reply.  Once you hit the enter key, it's to late to take it back.

Rich's forum, Rich's rules.  Follow the rules!

Larry

Webmaster wrote:

In your post you said, "Advertisement is a revenue stream for OGR..."  OF COURSE IT IS! What do you think we are selling here and in the pages of OGR, left-handed widgets?  Wow.

**************

Snarky much, Rich?  Just what you're railing against!!

Rich:

      This is a great forum. It is very informative. People on here, who I don't even know, have helped me with train questions and problems. Please keep it that way.

      I am on other (non-train) forums and the rules are similar to yours. One of the "rules" on another forum is that "posting is a privilege, not a right."

      I totally understand and support the rules of the forum.

Thank you.

John Knapp

Erie, not Eerie

thank you...

That's actually a good point.

I have noted many times over the years that we are held to a higher standard in the OGR "house" (this forum), than Rich feels he should hold himself to (or other's should hold themselves to) in someone else's "house" (i.e., the "arrows on the floors" topic when visiting the York TCA meet (the Eastern Division's "house".) 

That's just the one extreme (not extreme topic, but extreme disdain and rebellion against the guidelines/rules by Rich) example that comes to mind.  In fairness I will say there is not a huge list of them in my head, but that one sticks with me.

I am grateful that we have this forum.

Moderation is a tough, often thankless job.  Some folks gripe about threads being deleted, but it seems to me that there are fewer threads deleted than in the past.  It use to be, that good threads would sometimes go off track because of a few posts and were then deleted.  Now it seems when good threads go off track they are often scrubbed by the moderators and then locked.  Personally, I would rather see scrubbed, locked threads than deleted threads.  I thank the moderators for putting the time into this as it would be easier to just deleted the whole thing.

My personal opinion is that I'm pleased with about 95% of the moderation.  It is hard to not take it personally when your post fall into the other 5% and you think it should not have been deleted.  I had that happen to me when I was excited about the new (at the time) 3RS sub-forum and had a post (with pictures) of my scale Reading pacific trains deleted by the moderator because he felt it was not in the spirit of the new sub-forum.  I could have had a tantrum, but instead, took a hiatus from the forum.  After a period of time, I came back, although in truth, it did curb my enthusiasm for that sub-forum.  In the bigger picture, however, a 95% would still be a grade of "A" and a precious few things in life are perfect.

It is what it is, but I do share the gripe about posts that are less than flattering of forum sponsors.  While I understand that the sponsors bring in the money to keep the forum (and OGR) going, it is a two sided street and they would not be here if not for the forum members.  The forum is successful because: the good folks at OGR put in the commitment to keep the forum going, forum sponsors help pay to keep the forum going, AND because of the forum members themselves keep this an active community that make the sponsors want to been seen and heard here.

There are some folks who post just to get a rise out of others.  On the other hand, there are also folks (a couple of which have already posted to this thread) who are knowledgeable and want to help others, but sometimes lack the social skills and whose posts sometimes come off as brash or snarky.  The later folks mean well and the challenge, sometimes, is how to deal with their posts.

Its hard for me to believe that I have been a member of this forum for 9+ years.  99% of all my experiences here have been positive and its a place that I enjoy hanging out.  It has been fun and educational and I hope to be here for many more years.

Jim

WOW! Unbeliavable, I actually had a post here deleted in posting that this forum was being used in several incidents to promote a item(s) for sale at E-Bay. Is this against rules to say/write this?

Yes. Did you read the Rules & Policies"?

The discussion of the Webmaster's Rant has illuminated what is wrong with the attitude of all too many of the posters. Here is the issue summed up succinctly.

The Webmaster has explained that this Forum is NOT a democracy. If you don't like the fact that it is NOT a democracy and you are unable to respond to comments politely, then don't participate on this Forum. There is no deep philosophical underpinning to any part of this discussion. BTW, as a teacher of political science I can tell you there are few, if any, elements of our Constitution that guarantee totally free speech anywhere. Here, on a Forum owned by a free enterprise entrepreneur, there is a guarantee of nothing.

Well said, Rich.

How can anyone disagree with Rich's "Golden Rule"!

And--------------------- what did I miss?

The point is, this, if really meant to be a "rant" post. Then post are open to both positive and negative post. Unless of a slander or degrading nature, any post pulled, makes this a useless post and never should have been allowed to be open to further posts or discussions. But since he did open it, and then deleting posts----- not good.

In general I agree, Rich. I have read some of the nasty comments and think they are out of line. One problem with written comments is that there is no tone or facial expression. Something meant to be funny can come across as nasty. Everyone should proof read their post before hitting the submit button. We should always try to be polite even if we disagree.

Greg, as much as I am a staunch defender of free speech and against political correctness, and as much as I would like you to subscribe, what you are asking for does not exist ANYWHERE on the internet. It can't. Read the terms of service for Facebook and twitter, two examples on-line giants with vastly more users than we have. There are limits on what you can post there, too.

What you are essentially asking me to do is to set up a forum where anything goes with zero moderation. Members could talk about politics and religion, which is guaranteed to end up with posts calling people names, threatening people and all sorts of other negative things, without fear of moderation. This is exactly what would happen if we had a "moderation-free" off-topic "free speech" forum.

This was the ultimate demise of the old AOL boards. Moderation there was almost nonexistent and the entire forum degenerated into a handful of people posting nothing but crap about T-Rex. We aren't going to go there, Greg. It would mean the ultimate end of this forum.

Once again I suggest you read the Terms of Service for this forum, which you agreed to!

Item #8 in the Posting Guidelines section says this:

"When you post about a bad experience keep in mind that there are usually three sides to every quarrel: your side, the other side, and the truth, which is somewhere in the middle. When you post about such a difference of opinion, the other side usually doesn't have the opportunity to defend himself on the Forum so such things can become very one-sided and unfair very quickly. In the interest of fairness, if you actually name the other party in such a post, creating the potential, given the vast reach of the Internet, for what might be a very unfair character assassination, we are going to delete the thread. In a similar light, posts whose purpose we judge to be primarily to bash another person, vendor, manufacturer, etc., will be deleted."

You have to understand that when someone posts about a negative experience, it's not a fair fight! The vendor has no opportunity to defend himself and all we get is one side of the story. And even if the vendor chose to respond, all it would do is perpetuate an argument that would not be good for anyone involved. The blatant negativism would drive people away.

Another point we have to consider is this: How do we know that the person posting about his negative experience doesn't have an agenda of his own and is just making the whole thing up to attack a vendor? That has happened in the past on this forum.

We have a wonderful forum here and do not have to belong or contribute to it.  I have removed myself from another forum, and never looked back, because I felt it was being controlled by a few individuals.  As a result, I no longer beat myself up because of the way those individuals conducted themselves.

I offer that same option to those who feel that this forum is contrary to their belief or  the manner in which the forum is or should be monitored.  If you feel that you can live within the rules then stay on as a member. If you absolutely do not agree with the way it is run then leave and move on to other forums.  We may not have, as some have stated, freedom of speech.  However, we do have freedom of choice.

+1

You own the website, and you are right, you can control whatever goes here and I have no problem with that.

My only complaint is it seems a few times you have removed valid factual complaints about a mfg product.    If a manufacturer makes a shoddy product, I don't feel he should be protected even if he is an advertiser.   

Now if a complaint is just a rant without a valid factual reason for the complaint, just negative BS, then I have no problem with it being removed.

In either case, however, you can remove what you want because you own this site and it is private.    No problems with that.

I think this rant, as well as the responses to what could be useful criticism by the webmaster, tell me allI need to know. Yes, this is his forum and business, but, without members and readers, it isn't a money-making proposition. I'll continue to use the forum but without an online subscription, and I'll continue to buy the other magazines but not OGR, to vote with my wallet, so long as Mr. Melvin continues to hold the attitude he does regarding his customer base. The manner in which his post was written, regardless of its truth, was arrogant and rude (the exact issues he thinks he is addressing) and his unwillingness to soften his position or modify policy for his customers is telling. Using buzzwords like "family" means nothing.

I copy/pasted the "rant" into another group online without the references to OGR/railroading to see if I was out of line with my opinion, and got universal support that the message was one of someone out of touch with running a discussion site.

I appreciate everything that has been posted here, pro and con. There have been some good suggestions made in this thread about changing the way we moderate this forum just a bit. I have read them and will give them some thought.

Thanks to all of you who posted in this thread. It has served its purpose and I have chosen to close it.