Chopping off their own feet....
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As many of you know, a website many of us used has had secret groups that certain levels and abilities had to be reached to obtain access. In these top secret groups they had private chat rooms, maybe for testing purposes if its a good idea, which is what I think it was. And it was a huge hit, we loved it. There were a handful of us who used it every day to discuss in real time IT related things, bacon things, waffles, or whatever was on our minds.
It was fantastic, it helped me learn faster, it helped me get the steam off my brain faster, it was pretty gosh darn awesome. Why am I posting here you ask? Turns out they decided it was a better idea and use of their resources to remove that feature and transfer everything over to irc chat which is a much inferior product, but looks like its cheaper as well. One more reason, for me to step back from them and head more in this direction.
Mango, I wasn't a huge fan of you at first, but the tides are changing. If you guys were capable of stealing my boy IRJ, I think you're starting to get me more as well.
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Does Mango Lassi intend to have secret groups for high ability members then? Sounds a bit cliquey to me.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Does Mango Lassi intend to have secret groups for high ability members then? Sounds a bit cliquey to me.
No, no secret groups here. That was discussed when the community was created and acknowledged as being a huge mistake of some other forums. The idea sounds benign when you first propose it but having exclusive content for an "in" crowd will cause very bad things long term. That will never be allowed here. But we are very glad to have had the chance to learn from others. Without that insight we might otherwise have thought that it was a good idea too.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Does Mango Lassi intend to have secret groups for high ability members then? Sounds a bit cliquey to me.
I don't think so, its one of the things I think people hated. I know of three commonly accessed groups that are either invite only, or ability prohibited. Only one of them is really 100% acceptable and that's the administration and moderation private group, discussing what would be the best option of attack on thing A or thing B. The other two groups were mainly you were active and proved you were capable of being in the elite group of silence, or the other group that had almost no rules and you can do anything in an elite group of silence. They are in fact very cliquey though.
But why access these groups if they are so cliquey? They were hidden from the rest of the internet, I could say what I wanted when I wanted. Some people would trash talk other users, where I spent time venting about work. Its nice to be able to rant with a group of your peers without it being public facing like facebook. But there is still a clique limitation.
Hide from the world and rant in peace? Will attract those who just want to be "cool"
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I hated the secret groups over there and had my account removed from them. I appreciate the goal that they had but not what it became. Very cliquy indeed. It didn't end up being a healthy thing.
Lots of bad came from that and continues to.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I hated the secret groups over there and had my account removed from them. I appreciate the goal that they had but not what it became. Very cliquy indeed. It didn't end up being a healthy thing.
Lots of bad came from that and continues to.
I agree completely. Shameful and hurtful things were said about people who didn't have access to "the cool club", and it was outright disgusting. Truth be told I encouraged someone to try their hardest to get into that group, knowing what had been said about him, I wanted him to know and see what everyone had said. It was very off putting, and very shameful indeed.
Now as for the ranting in silence aspect, that was literally the only thing I liked it for. Its far from that now.
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I really dislike the secret groups and am happy to see some of that not be here on ML.
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@Minion-Queen said:
I really dislike the secret groups and am happy to see some of that not be here on ML.
They became parasitic.
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Something that people miss, because it is less around cultural problems, is that it moves the traffic from being public to being private. So any questions discussed there are not available to the world. Knowledge is lost. Google can't find it.
Neither the community nor the individuals nor the world benefit from the network effect. It really crippled the site. And considering what a huge percentage of the traffic it became that is really significant.
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well, i was never cool enough for those groups.
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Given that the value of a community is... Community, private groups rapidly undermine that in many ways.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Given that the value of a community is... Community, private groups rapidly undermine that in many ways.
I still respect the hidden rant ability, but the culture in certain groups have become negative. Some people became overly aggressive in some regards, some became annoyed, and like the administration and moderation group, there is a power struggle. Long timers say we do it one way, new people say we do it another. The secrecy became a parasite.
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@RAM. said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Given that the value of a community is... Community, private groups rapidly undermine that in many ways.
I still respect the hidden rant ability, but the culture in certain groups have become negative. Some people became overly aggressive in some regards, some became annoyed, and like the administration and moderation group, there is a power struggle. Long timers say we do it one way, new people say we do it another. The secrecy became a parasite.
It's a tough balance - people do need to blow off steam if they are acting in a moderator/poweruser capacity, but it can get out of hand. I tried to keep things balanced but it can quickly go south.
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@Nic said:
@RAM. said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Given that the value of a community is... Community, private groups rapidly undermine that in many ways.
I still respect the hidden rant ability, but the culture in certain groups have become negative. Some people became overly aggressive in some regards, some became annoyed, and like the administration and moderation group, there is a power struggle. Long timers say we do it one way, new people say we do it another. The secrecy became a parasite.
It's a tough balance - people do need to blow off steam if they are acting in a moderator/poweruser capacity, but it can get out of hand. I tried to keep things balanced but it can quickly go south.
Oh absolutely, the fact they are hidden from the world means their tongues are untied, they will be as harsh and cruel as they want. Your actions in these groups aren't going to be seen my potential employers. I liked blowing off steam, that was pretty much it, but people would start joining and going "look at this ass" and post a link to a newbie asking about proper hard drive required for his server. The fact is arrogance blossomed at some point in time, and the wild fire couldn't be extinguished fast enough.
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I think it is an extension of having community mods. While handy that carries a lot if risks too.
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By community mods I mean community participants that act as mods. Not separate mods.
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@scottalanmiller said:
By community mods I mean community participants that act as mods. Not separate mods.
that in itself became a thankless job, volunteering to help for free to maintain a product that we loved became a struggle of who was right and who was wrong. Hire a new CM, the new CM was more powerful and had more say than the mods and admins, that person could override everyone. EVEN IF that CM was in the wrong, didn't know what they were talking about, or out of context removed a post based on ignorance; they still overrode the free mods. And that in itself caused so many problems its mind numbing.
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Yes. Although lack of CM management was a separate issue. That itself wasn't a result if the mixed mods. Although the "hired guns" feel that came about wasn't good. Newbies with no view of the community as a continuum didn't do it any favors. People with almost a decade of participation given no more clout that bot accounts.
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@RAM. Thanks for the mentioning me, buddy.
I post on that other website less for a few reasons:
Quality over Quantity. The people over here are top problem solvers for the other website.
The other site is now run by vendors. Every thing they do is sponsored by a vendor. To me that means that there is an obvious motive for every event. No vendor is going to pay for sponsoring an event and receive nothing in return.
The power struggle a few months ago showed that money was the number one concern of the other website now. You can see they are just hiring like crazy. You cant hire the best people anymore when you are constantly hiring. From my understanding, Everyone that was employed with them in the past was highly technical. If you have observed some of the new employees, you will know that is no longer the case. They are just like the sales people that haunt us on a daily basis.
Loss of vision and backbone. They definitely lost their original vision. They are no longer good guys that sell ads just to pay for development of their helpdesk software. There is money being passed around like crazy. When you have so much money from different places coming in, you dont want to offend anyone. That is why you are starting to see less and less heated discussions.
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There are a few Spicy Peppers that avoid me now because of my participation on here. Anyone else on Mangolassi experience this?
