Announcement Regarding the Most Recent Viral Thread
- Messages
- 6,199
- Location
- Neverland!
On Behalf of DPF Moderation:
Unless you have been living in a cave, under a rock, or even more improbable, just not going online, you most likely are aware of the latest excitement surrounding a certain thread (hereafter referred to as 'The Thread'). When we said we wanted to bring DPF back after the hack, we should have been more specific and said we were not intending to bring back those days when DPF stood for Drama Pin Forum. To be fair, the comparison is more than slightly hyperbolic and we will address it along with the circumstances that led us to where we are now.
There is - or should be - no question that there are some very serious and complicated problems here on DPF. Only a fool would deny it. And only a bigger fool would promise easy solutions to these problems, because there are no such things. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. In order to best understand where we are now, we need to go back and explore how we got here. But ... and this is not a sarcastic question ... how far back do we go? Because each decision we made was informed by a previous one, which in turn impacted the next - and all of those choices shaped the path that brought us here.
Do we go all the way back to the founding of DPF? One of the points of contention in The Thread (as we understand it) is retroactively applying a new TOU/TOS to a period of time prior to the purchase of the database. That would not apply here as DPF still is under the same ownership and its TOU/TOS remain fundamentally unchanged. When DPF was founded as DizPins was closing its proverbial doors, one of DPF's fundamental principles was - and remains to this day - an environment with very light touch moderation and open discussion encouraged. The idea was - and remains - that we want to treat our members like mature, responsible, and respectful adults - and we expect you to act as such. No topic is or ever has been prohibited and we have no idea why some people would have gotten that idea. As long as a conversation remains polite, courteous, and respectful, you can discuss whatever you want. Only when a thread derails and non-productive personal attacks outweigh the benefits of keeping the thread open is when we will close it. However, just because a moderator has not posted in a thread does not mean that we are not aware of it. Many times, members of the moderation team are aware of these threads (as was the case in The Thread), but are refraining from posting in case intervention becomes necessary. It should go without saying that the members of the DPF moderation team who were posting in The Thread were not posting in the capacity of DPF moderators.
Or do we, perhaps, go back and look at the moments when each of us was tapped for moderation? DPF's moderation team has changed more times than is worth counting, but each of us was tapped at some point because there was a fundamental problem with DPF that our placements as moderators was meant to resolve. To a certain extent, it helped, but it really was a bandage that just kept us going until the initial problem re-emerged and made it clear that we did nothing to really address it. We now are at a point where we need to figure out what is going wrong and fix it ... because giving up is not an option.
One of the biggest problems that we have had is a failure to communicate between DPF ownership and the moderation team. For the longest time, Cicada just has not been present. The problem is that he left us with no instructions, no guidance, and no ideas of what we could or could not do. And at the end of the day DPF still is his site. It's 100% Cicada's generosity that keeps the lights on and nothing else. So literal years of paralysis and inertia boiled down to that: not only did we not know what we could or could not do, we also believed we needed to cover for Cicada's absentee ownership, which put the moderation team squarely between the owner and the members. We were afraid if the members knew the extent of the absenteeism, the forum would fold. Going forward, we are going to have clearly defined roles for the moderation team: what is expected from administrators, moderators, and correspondents, for the benefit of both the moderation team and you, our members, so you know who is responsible for what and who to approach when problems arise.
And now DPF's moderation team is going to change again. We have been debating addressing this and we think you, our members are owed an explanation. When The Twins were asked to join the PinPics moderation team, they came to us first and asked if there would be a conflict of interest. We said that there should not be, since both PinPics and DPF are sister sites with the same goals: advancing and educating people about pins and the pin trading community (while providing our own little online family). We just asked that they inform the DPF community of their dual positions and if anyone objected, we would deal with it then; they did as we asked, but to be fair, they did bury the lede and we wonder how many people actually read it.
But for us, the problem with The Twins was not so much with what they were posting, it was how they were posting it. They were defending PinPics, acting as PinPics moderators, while signed in and posting on a DPF moderator account. A parallel situation would be if one of us were to be made a PinPics moderator ... and then spend all of our time defending DPF on PinPics from a PinPics moderator account. How long do you think it would be before we were banned from PinPics? And all of this after The Twins promised they could - and would - be impartial moderators on DPF. We suppose they can be impartial except where it comes to PinPics? If The Twins had made - or requested - a non-moderator account to use to post regarding PinPics, this whole situation could have been avoided. It would have been clear that any comments regarding PinPics were coming from The Twins, DPF members, as opposed to The Twins, DPF moderators. The Twins, as DPF members, have the same rights as any other members: as long as opinions are expressed in a mature, polite, and respectful manner, post away ... but be prepared for other members to engage with you if they do not agree with you. That is the definition of a free and open conversation, which is encouraged here. But by posting as DPF moderators, they created a clear conflict of interest and the problem could not be more evident - except, perhaps, to them.
But all of this is irrelevant. As we said, PinPics and DPF ultimately have the same goals and do not need to be at odds with each other. The same is true of PTDB, Pin&Pop, or any other pin trading database. DPF is a pin trading forum, full stop, and when it comes to pin trading databases, we are Switzerland. We are waving the white flag of neutrality. We want to see all databases survive and thrive because it is good for the hobby. Our members can use whichever databases they choose. If you like or do not like a database, use it or do not use it as you see fit. But we are not going to restrict discussion on our forum just because you may not like either the topic or the position or both. To quote a friend, honest critique and dialogue does not equate to bullying or negativity.
But we suppose, in a weird way, they did us a favor and we should thank them. This latest drama is finally forcing us to confront a problem that has been plaguing this forum for more years than we can count. We are bringing on new members, people who should have been part of our team a long time ago, and we are going to make the changes we need to transform this forum into the forum it should have been years ago.
We can only apologize for the past so many times, now we have to move forward together. If you have any thoughts, ideas, or concerns, we want to hear them. We are asking your help to build DPF into the community we all can be proud to call home. We hope we can count on all of you to help us make DPF into the site that we all know that it can - and should - be.
Unless you have been living in a cave, under a rock, or even more improbable, just not going online, you most likely are aware of the latest excitement surrounding a certain thread (hereafter referred to as 'The Thread'). When we said we wanted to bring DPF back after the hack, we should have been more specific and said we were not intending to bring back those days when DPF stood for Drama Pin Forum. To be fair, the comparison is more than slightly hyperbolic and we will address it along with the circumstances that led us to where we are now.
There is - or should be - no question that there are some very serious and complicated problems here on DPF. Only a fool would deny it. And only a bigger fool would promise easy solutions to these problems, because there are no such things. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. In order to best understand where we are now, we need to go back and explore how we got here. But ... and this is not a sarcastic question ... how far back do we go? Because each decision we made was informed by a previous one, which in turn impacted the next - and all of those choices shaped the path that brought us here.
Do we go all the way back to the founding of DPF? One of the points of contention in The Thread (as we understand it) is retroactively applying a new TOU/TOS to a period of time prior to the purchase of the database. That would not apply here as DPF still is under the same ownership and its TOU/TOS remain fundamentally unchanged. When DPF was founded as DizPins was closing its proverbial doors, one of DPF's fundamental principles was - and remains to this day - an environment with very light touch moderation and open discussion encouraged. The idea was - and remains - that we want to treat our members like mature, responsible, and respectful adults - and we expect you to act as such. No topic is or ever has been prohibited and we have no idea why some people would have gotten that idea. As long as a conversation remains polite, courteous, and respectful, you can discuss whatever you want. Only when a thread derails and non-productive personal attacks outweigh the benefits of keeping the thread open is when we will close it. However, just because a moderator has not posted in a thread does not mean that we are not aware of it. Many times, members of the moderation team are aware of these threads (as was the case in The Thread), but are refraining from posting in case intervention becomes necessary. It should go without saying that the members of the DPF moderation team who were posting in The Thread were not posting in the capacity of DPF moderators.
Or do we, perhaps, go back and look at the moments when each of us was tapped for moderation? DPF's moderation team has changed more times than is worth counting, but each of us was tapped at some point because there was a fundamental problem with DPF that our placements as moderators was meant to resolve. To a certain extent, it helped, but it really was a bandage that just kept us going until the initial problem re-emerged and made it clear that we did nothing to really address it. We now are at a point where we need to figure out what is going wrong and fix it ... because giving up is not an option.
One of the biggest problems that we have had is a failure to communicate between DPF ownership and the moderation team. For the longest time, Cicada just has not been present. The problem is that he left us with no instructions, no guidance, and no ideas of what we could or could not do. And at the end of the day DPF still is his site. It's 100% Cicada's generosity that keeps the lights on and nothing else. So literal years of paralysis and inertia boiled down to that: not only did we not know what we could or could not do, we also believed we needed to cover for Cicada's absentee ownership, which put the moderation team squarely between the owner and the members. We were afraid if the members knew the extent of the absenteeism, the forum would fold. Going forward, we are going to have clearly defined roles for the moderation team: what is expected from administrators, moderators, and correspondents, for the benefit of both the moderation team and you, our members, so you know who is responsible for what and who to approach when problems arise.
And now DPF's moderation team is going to change again. We have been debating addressing this and we think you, our members are owed an explanation. When The Twins were asked to join the PinPics moderation team, they came to us first and asked if there would be a conflict of interest. We said that there should not be, since both PinPics and DPF are sister sites with the same goals: advancing and educating people about pins and the pin trading community (while providing our own little online family). We just asked that they inform the DPF community of their dual positions and if anyone objected, we would deal with it then; they did as we asked, but to be fair, they did bury the lede and we wonder how many people actually read it.
But for us, the problem with The Twins was not so much with what they were posting, it was how they were posting it. They were defending PinPics, acting as PinPics moderators, while signed in and posting on a DPF moderator account. A parallel situation would be if one of us were to be made a PinPics moderator ... and then spend all of our time defending DPF on PinPics from a PinPics moderator account. How long do you think it would be before we were banned from PinPics? And all of this after The Twins promised they could - and would - be impartial moderators on DPF. We suppose they can be impartial except where it comes to PinPics? If The Twins had made - or requested - a non-moderator account to use to post regarding PinPics, this whole situation could have been avoided. It would have been clear that any comments regarding PinPics were coming from The Twins, DPF members, as opposed to The Twins, DPF moderators. The Twins, as DPF members, have the same rights as any other members: as long as opinions are expressed in a mature, polite, and respectful manner, post away ... but be prepared for other members to engage with you if they do not agree with you. That is the definition of a free and open conversation, which is encouraged here. But by posting as DPF moderators, they created a clear conflict of interest and the problem could not be more evident - except, perhaps, to them.
But all of this is irrelevant. As we said, PinPics and DPF ultimately have the same goals and do not need to be at odds with each other. The same is true of PTDB, Pin&Pop, or any other pin trading database. DPF is a pin trading forum, full stop, and when it comes to pin trading databases, we are Switzerland. We are waving the white flag of neutrality. We want to see all databases survive and thrive because it is good for the hobby. Our members can use whichever databases they choose. If you like or do not like a database, use it or do not use it as you see fit. But we are not going to restrict discussion on our forum just because you may not like either the topic or the position or both. To quote a friend, honest critique and dialogue does not equate to bullying or negativity.
But we suppose, in a weird way, they did us a favor and we should thank them. This latest drama is finally forcing us to confront a problem that has been plaguing this forum for more years than we can count. We are bringing on new members, people who should have been part of our team a long time ago, and we are going to make the changes we need to transform this forum into the forum it should have been years ago.
We can only apologize for the past so many times, now we have to move forward together. If you have any thoughts, ideas, or concerns, we want to hear them. We are asking your help to build DPF into the community we all can be proud to call home. We hope we can count on all of you to help us make DPF into the site that we all know that it can - and should - be.
