The issue I have with the room is the change of mentality of the users.
The original intent of the site was to bring people together to have interesting conversations with the under-riding theme that most, if not all, of the members were either disabled, had disabled family or worked with disabled. Disabilities was not the subject, it was our bond. We welcomed the few non-disabled if they too could add something interesting to the conversation.
This has changed; the bond is broken.
We now have 3 types of people who enter the room and they're all working at cross purposes. One type comes in looking for romance/cybersex. They only talk in private and blatantly violate the safety rules and influence others to do the same. When things go bad, the blame the site rather than their own stupidity. They add no value to the group. The next type is the public speakers. They only talk and never listen. At times I have quietly muted them completely for months at a time and they never even noticed. These people added no value to the group.
The third type is the conversationalists. This is the type I stayed for. Some are friendly, some are curmudgeons, some are well educated and others not. We talked about ideas, not about people. We all found a way to get along (or at least pretend to.)
What has changed is that some of the conversationalists began to become xenophobic elitists. Every new person was put under suspicion. I'm not talking about people asking 20 questions (which I did not like), I'm talking about the "GET EM!!!!" crowd. Waiting for someone to make an honest mistake (because they mistype or are not native English speakers) and then everyone goes into attack mode.
I watched this last week with an engineering student. People were tossing out all sorts of accusations about the student and I could refute each one of those accusations by quoting the log back. Logs aren't magic. If I can read it in the log it is because it was stated in public. If I can read it, everyone should have been able to read it too, but they were too busy planning their attack to notice what was being said.
Tonight I saw it again. A foreigner mistyped something. If you actually looked at the entire sentence, it was plainly obvious what his question was. But people attacked him without taking the time to understand. Everyone branded him a pedophile which he clearly was not. He apologized profusely for the misunderstanding but nobody cared. Then someone else made a joke in regard to another user and then blamed the new person for saying it. After that, these same people misquoted the new user which really did make it sound like he was a pedophile even though he never said what they were quoting him as saying. Nobody cared. GET EM, he's not like us!!!!!
About a month ago a user quietly came to me to tell me about something he saw as very racist. I reviewed the logs carefully, noting what was said, how it was said and specifically WHEN it was said and the history of who supposedly said it and I came to the conclusion that his emotions got the better of him. He was already upset and there was no way I could talk him out of what he thought he saw, even though the logs showed otherwise. Him I respect because he brought it to me privately. Afterward, everyone remained friends. That’s how it should be.
Others aren’t so nice to me. I get the most vile hate mail every week from people. People spread false rumors about me and the room itself. People blame the bad things that happen on me and say I should have warned them even though the rules are posted so they must be read and they are warned every single time they enter. People accuse me of banning or not banning people based on how much they donate. Let me tell you all something about that. Few people actually donate. Out of all the people who came in last year, people donated $280ish I think. That number is off the top of my head so could be a few dollars plus or minus. As for me personally, I added another thousand dollars out of my own pocket. There is no profit in this site. Consider that before you accuse me of playing favoritism or living off your largesse.
I don’t know what else to add to this other than how disappointed I am in how something we spent 17 years in building can be torn down by so few so fast.
Daniel
The Attack Mentality
The Attack Mentality
Last edited by daniel on Fri Mar 14, 2014 6:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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jmacfall
Hi Daniel,
I'm brand new here and my hope for this site was to learn about new technologies, get into creative and innovative conversations, and learn more about others out there that are like me. I'm a 29 year old T-7 paraplegic who has spent most of my life trying to make it in this world like every other human being.
Growing up I didn't care so much about making a lot of friends with others in my situation as I didn't want to be defined by my disabilities. I thought that if I gravitated away from everyone else and immerse myself into the disabled culture that I would be un-relatable to the rest of the population. As I grew older I realized how ridiculous that was and I wanted to make more friends with similar challenges in life. By this time I felt un-relatable to the disabled. I've sat on the sidelines contributing nothing for too long. I've spent my time innovating, creating, and motivating others while ultimately ignoring a large part of my life. So here I am. I've started a new business in hopes to make life easier on people like myself, and I've found a few forums like this one to try and get plugged in. I'm here to learn from others, ask questions about things I need answered, find tools that help me improve my quality of life, and to share with others what I find.
I've been apart of many forums in the past. Most of them were creative forums in regards to video editing, graphic design, and other technical genres. I've noticed a trend on every forum.
People get rude. They are unkind and simply take, take, take. Then there are a few who make the forum worth it. It seems to be the case in every forum I've ever been apart of. My goal is to always be a part of the few who make it great.
I see you have had a tough time getting people motivated to donate. I don't have a lot of experience raising funds. However I do know one thing to be true. If the users of this forum believe they would experience a personal loss by not having this forum, they will donate money. Maybe $2, or may $1k. But if they feel like this site is responsible for bringing them joy...they will not want to see it go. So how can we "few" give others joy? That's the question we should ask ourselves.
This is a lifestyle forum, right? Maybe we could create and sell lifestyle merch to increase your revenue. This does create more work for you but it also increases your cash flow. T-shirts, coffee mugs, decals, posters, screen savers, PC wallpapers, etc.... for this to work you would probably need to spruce up the brand a little. Set up a contest for your users to submit logos, t-shirt designs, etc... this would be more community involvement and would offer an opportunity for the forum users to feel valuable.
I hope to see this forum grow and I'd be happy to be apart of it. I have a background in marketing strategy and brand design. Please feel free to reach out to me and we could talk in more detail at a later time.
Until then, I feel your pain and understand your frustrations. Let's not lose hope just yet and keep giving as value and joy to the users as we possibly can. Thanks for all your hard work!
I'm brand new here and my hope for this site was to learn about new technologies, get into creative and innovative conversations, and learn more about others out there that are like me. I'm a 29 year old T-7 paraplegic who has spent most of my life trying to make it in this world like every other human being.
Growing up I didn't care so much about making a lot of friends with others in my situation as I didn't want to be defined by my disabilities. I thought that if I gravitated away from everyone else and immerse myself into the disabled culture that I would be un-relatable to the rest of the population. As I grew older I realized how ridiculous that was and I wanted to make more friends with similar challenges in life. By this time I felt un-relatable to the disabled. I've sat on the sidelines contributing nothing for too long. I've spent my time innovating, creating, and motivating others while ultimately ignoring a large part of my life. So here I am. I've started a new business in hopes to make life easier on people like myself, and I've found a few forums like this one to try and get plugged in. I'm here to learn from others, ask questions about things I need answered, find tools that help me improve my quality of life, and to share with others what I find.
I've been apart of many forums in the past. Most of them were creative forums in regards to video editing, graphic design, and other technical genres. I've noticed a trend on every forum.
People get rude. They are unkind and simply take, take, take. Then there are a few who make the forum worth it. It seems to be the case in every forum I've ever been apart of. My goal is to always be a part of the few who make it great.
I see you have had a tough time getting people motivated to donate. I don't have a lot of experience raising funds. However I do know one thing to be true. If the users of this forum believe they would experience a personal loss by not having this forum, they will donate money. Maybe $2, or may $1k. But if they feel like this site is responsible for bringing them joy...they will not want to see it go. So how can we "few" give others joy? That's the question we should ask ourselves.
This is a lifestyle forum, right? Maybe we could create and sell lifestyle merch to increase your revenue. This does create more work for you but it also increases your cash flow. T-shirts, coffee mugs, decals, posters, screen savers, PC wallpapers, etc.... for this to work you would probably need to spruce up the brand a little. Set up a contest for your users to submit logos, t-shirt designs, etc... this would be more community involvement and would offer an opportunity for the forum users to feel valuable.
I hope to see this forum grow and I'd be happy to be apart of it. I have a background in marketing strategy and brand design. Please feel free to reach out to me and we could talk in more detail at a later time.
Until then, I feel your pain and understand your frustrations. Let's not lose hope just yet and keep giving as value and joy to the users as we possibly can. Thanks for all your hard work!