A Community Statement

[Hookbill the Goomba]

He has said he is sorry about the whole thing.

I'd say that was an apology on Mr. Dave's part. If the mods would pay him in kind, I think we could (and probably should) put the matter to bed.

There is a lesson to be learned here, I think. Keeping short accounts is always best, if someone feels insulted by you, apologise immediately, and don’t let the matter drag on or we might end up with a situation such as this again.

After all this trouble, I hardly think it's going to happen again in the foreseeable future. I think we're all tired of this argument and it would be best to resolve it sooner rather than later.

As I said, it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong. What matters is that we make amends for any wrongdoing. I don't want to take sides, but it seems that Mr Dave has attempted this (through lal). So, can the mods put aside any bad feelings towards all this? I hope so. We all make mistakes. If we held a grudge against anyone that had done something wrong, we'd have to hate everyone in the world.

Or should we have that dance-off?

[Mithadan]

I see a lot of names I do not recognize on this thread mixed in with names of people I am familiar with. This is understandable since I have barely set foot into this Barrow in several months. I pretty much decided to return a few weeks ago, though I did not intend to return quite so soon. But when I peeked in a few days ago, I realized the time had come.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am one of the original four Administrators of this forum; Barrow Wight, Mr. Underhill, Sharku and Mithadan – the original cabal. We have been working together at making this into a special community for six years now. During this time, we have experienced an array of problems and issues ranging from spamming and flaming all the way up to alleged stalking (fortunately the purported victims and the persons accused turned out to be separated by a rather broad ocean). In order to maintain order and to preserve the character of this place, we have been forced to delete posts and threads, give warnings to members, close contentious threads and suspend and ban members. In addition, there is constant redirecting of posts to the proper forums and work to make the site and discussions better. BW started this place as a community for serious Tolkien discussion. Unfortunately, we have often been so busy putting out fires, fielding complaints and suggestions and working to maintain order that we barely have time to post ourselves. That’s why I left for a while. I got burnt out. To any of you who may have a contrary perception, it is really not easy being an administrator.

I am writing here as a disinterested and uninvolved insider. To define terms, I am uninvolved in that I was not part of the Moderator/Administrator group discussing the problems that had arisen with Davem and the Lord of the Bible thread and took no part in the decision to ban him – I wasn’t around. I am disinterested because I have not and will not take the time to reconstruct what happened. I am an insider because I am intimately familiar with how this site is operated and what goes into decision making here. We determined early on that we had to have rules so people understood how to comport themselves on the BarrowDowns. They boil down to “stay civil and stay on topic” although they go farther than that. We also have to enforce those rules. Sometimes, its easy. Spammers get nuked out of hand. Newcomers who engage in flaming and demonstrate no real interest in participating get banned without discussion. I’ve done this many times myself. Newcomers who don’t get how things work but actually seem to want to be involved get directed to the rules or get guidance.. It’s more difficult when a long standing member starts acting up. These cases get debated, sometimes for weeks or months. Warnings or suggestions are sent. If the member doesn’t straighten out a temporary ban comes next. A permanent ban is the last resort. Often, even “permanent bans” aren’t always really permanent if the member shows real contrition, recognizes what he or she has been doing and promises to shape up. Such decisions involve lots of angst and concern; the decision to ban a long standing member is NEVER made lightly. We try to give people chances and regrettably have, in the past, given people too much rope.

A few years back, there was a well-respected and long standing member that I’ll call “X”. X joined even before I did. X was given a lot of leeway and apparently believed X was indispensable and untouchable. X became rude and abrasive, ridiculing posts of others and actively harassing newcomers. X was given warnings and even a temporary ban. But members avoided posting in the forums X frequented; they were intimidated or scared and some claimed X received preferential treatment. There was another member, “Y”. “Y” was about as knowledgeable in things Tolkien as anyone. Y knew HoME inside and out, and developed unique theories and opinions, some of which were fascinating and some of which were disputed. Y had a set of issues as well but was a valuable member. X didn’t like Y and engaged in a campaign against Y. The Admins didn’t know about this. Finally, Y had been insulted enough and left. No amount of requests made Y return. X was permanently banned but Y never set foot in the Downs again. Y was not the only member to leave because of X. Since then, the Admins have been very aware that there is such a thing as giving a member too much rope and too much leeway. We also learned that we shouldn’t even appear to treat one member differently from others because of who he is. This place is a community and the needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the one.

As I said, I have not researched what happened in this case. I have not even read the Mods thread in any detail. I have read this thread. Some people have posted to say they felt Davem had acted improperly. Even some of Davem’s supporters concede that he was not acting in a sterling manner. The Mods that have posted have reported that this issue was discussed at length; this is true. Warnings and a temporary ban were given. What was done was clearly not arbitrary or capricious.

I have found some of the posts on this thread to be a little offensive or, at least, lacking restraint. There is no pro-religious slant to this site. Look back at the Tolkien and the Bible thread from a few years back. I personally closed that thread a few times when tempers flared. Without naming names, I will tell you that some of the Admins and Mods are not even Christian. If this forum were suddenly swept up in a revolution of fundamentalism, they would vote with their feet. They haven’t.

The theme of this forum is Tolkien-related free expression within reason, reason being civility and some degree of propriety. This site has always been this way and will stay this way. We have always been the “serious” Tolkien board.

The quality and volume of posts in the Books forum has always been in a state of ebb and flow. I’ve peeked in and there are some good threads there right now. But people are not posting as much there right now. Why? We could publish traffic information showing thread hits but it’s not necessary. Everyone is watching this entertaining sideshow rather than posting elsewhere.

If the Admins and Mods were the evil dictators some have implied, this thread would have been killed on day one. It wasn’t. People need to express themselves, state their dissatisfaction and maybe rant a bit. So we’ve allowed everyone to vent a bit. But I think enough is enough.

We appreciate Lalwende’s post indicating Davem’s regret and sorrow. If he had expressed those sentiments early on, we might not be here. Our members need to feel free to post in Books and elsewhere without fear of ridicule, disparagement or even condescension. An “I won’t do it again” might have sufficed at the beginning if it was sincere. But now there is an awful lot more to apologize for than his posts before he was banned. There has been a campaign of disruption since then and some truly nasty things have been posted on blogs. This whole thing has been truly sad.

Could I wave a virtual wand and unban Davem? Yes. Will I do so? No. That is up to the person that made the final decision. I won’t second guess his judgment. Will Davem be allowed to return? Maybe. I won’t close the door. Some healing needs to take place before we can even consider that and some semblance of normalcy must be restored. I think that all that can be said in this thread has been said for now. It is time for healing and this thread is antithetical to that. This thread is temporarily closed for a few hours so that members can reflect and so that tempers can cool down. If posters cannot act civilly once the thread is reopened it will be closed again.

[narfforc]

Being possibily one of the only members on this site to have met both Davem and Lal on a number of occasions, I can only say what a pleasure it was. They are both sensible, articulate, friendly and funny. It grieves me to see what has happened to Davem, I for one enjoyed his threads, I enjoyed even more his humour. I think the main reason for this is that we are both of the same ilk, the type of humour employed by Davem is quite localised to the North of England, and we just do not see sarcasm as an almost physical attack on another, as some people quite obviously do. I have no doubt in my mind that had Davem known he was causing peoples personal worlds to collapse around them, he would have desisted, in the same context I think some have taken things he said too literally and blown it out of proportion, react first and think later. Davem would be the first to admit that on reflection, he may have gone too far. I have many of the same beliefs that he has, yet this is not the place to use them as a battlefield against those that don't, I may as well try to convince a door that it is a window. Nothing at all has been achieved by that post other than The Banning of Davem, everyone still thinks there own views, and the same ideas are still going round and round, only now there is no-one to contest them, how banal..........

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I've been giving this a lot of thought lately, although really it only involves me insofar as I'm a long-standing member of the forum. I'll make no bones about the fact that I've met several of the senior mods personally and that I like to think I can count them as friends. I wouldn't feel like that if I believed that any of them were in the habit of kicking people off the forum arbitrarily or without due consideration. I was one of the first to comment on The Saucepan Man's initial explanation and I freely admit that my main motivation was to calm down any controversy, not because I necessarily agreed with the decision, but because I've been around long enough to know that heated public argument is the best way to ensure that a ban remains permanent.

I like davem. I've enjoyed his posts and I respect his opinion. I also share his distaste for hijacking Tolkien or any other literature as propaganda for a particular religious or political system. Although I felt very uncomfortable with the tone of some of his last posts here, I was no less uncomfortable about his ban, which came as some surprise despite his mild antagonism towards the moderating policy here. It's never easy to be told that one must be more polite when one is confronted with opinions that one considers foolish, but that's the way we do things around here. It's possible to be provocative and substantial without sarcasm or ridicule, and in fact I consider them to be fairly weak and inelegant rhetorical techniques that undermine one's own argument as much as anyone else's. Nonetheless I felt certain that davem and the mods would come to a satisfactory agreement and that he'd continue to post. For whatever reason, that didn't happen, and as always I'm very reluctant to start attributing motivations in a dispute in which I wasn't involved.

Since I'm well-disposed to all parties in this matter I don't want to take sides. What I will say is that my personal experience of conversations with those moderators most closely involved is that they are not petty-minded or vindictive people, and I have never known them to say or do anything in fits of pique or offended pride, male or otherwise. If this was a mistake, it was an honest one, and made with the best interests of the forum at heart. That's not to say that I wanted davem to go, or that I wouldn't welcome him back if he were reinstated; I don't think that he has been responsible for a lot of the invective that has been written on his behalf, and I'm sure that he has also acted in good faith. However, he is wrong about the reasons for his ban and there were several points at which he could have defused the situation by forgetting what other people were doing and looking to his own conduct; that is, after all, the only thing that any of us can control in any argument.

I should also like to address the issue of tone and regional speech. Yorkshire and the North of England are not the only parts of the English-speaking world in which forthrightness and acerbity are common features of speech. We have members, some of them very long-standing, who hail from other places where bluff, tough honesty is highly prized, and they have managed not to get themselves banned. The point is that it's possible to be forthright without being rude, and sarcasm is specifically mentioned in the section of the forum regulations mentioning tone. I sometimes use sarcasm myself in everyday speech, just as sometimes in everyday speech I swear and tell crude jokes. None of those are allowed here, so you won't see me doing them here. On one occasion when I was aggresively sarcastic towards another member I was publicly reprimanded and posted a public apology, not for my argument, but for my rudeness. What I did not do was to argue with the moderator who had issued the reprimand, make more sarcastic comments or question the policy of frowning on aggressive sarcasm. It might also be helpful to say that the moderator made no objection to my point.

The reason I joined this forum and more importantly the reason I stayed was because I could see that courteous and friendly debate was the encouraged norm. People disagreed with one another, but without the nasty fights that can break out elsewhere; but that comes at a price, and that price is that sometimes we have to take a deep breath before composing a rebuttal. We're allowed to crush arguments with ruthless logic and quote chapter and verse to prove someone wrong; we're just not allowed to belittle people, for example by using sarcasm on them. The more senior a member is, the higher their reputation, the more strictly should they avoid that sort of behaviour. I may not like it that davem is gone, and I certainly don't think that he meant any harm or offence in his posts, but the fact remains that he repeatedly set a poor example in a thread that was already dangerously emotive, which is how this whole situation began. The tu quoque approach that others were doing it too does not excuse it: I've been on the receiving end of sarcastic and belligerant posts myself without descending to the same level, and in the end I was not the loser thereby. It's rather sad that our members let themselves down so badly on that thread, and it's even sadder that it has caused members to question one another's integrity, but the thing to do now is to make sure it doesn't happen again. If we treat each other with the respect that courtesy implies then it won't. As for rectifying the ban, it will be some time before I can see the way clear to that: the dust must settle first.

Mithadan, whom incidentally it's good to see back again, has made a very good point, which bears repeating. In the recent atmosphere it's been highly unlikely that anyone would reverse the decision about davem. If I were responsible for maintaining forum discipline I too would be reluctant to reinstate someone in response to a campaign, particularly one involving off-site attacks on the moderating team. It's not impossible, though, that private persuasion would stand more of a chance than public pressure once all of this furore has calmed down. However unpleasant it may be to let things that upset us pass without public comment, undermining the authority of those responsible for running the forum is not the best way to right wrongs or iron out problems with the rules.

I don't like making statements like this, so anything else I say on this subject will be said in private. I'm aware that this won't be a popular line to take, but I'm not about to keep it to myself either. Davem isn't the only person who has feelings, nor is he the only member who has made a significant contribution. That's how one gets offered a moderating post in the first place.

[Anguirel]

I have nothing like the stamina to deliver an oration on the subject, but I fear Squatter's on the whole wise and conciliatory post makes the mistake of a bit of pigeonholing towards the end.

I do not regard the statement I signed as a "campaign", nor, certainly, as an "off-site attack on the moderating team", and as for "undermining the authority of those responsible for the running of the site", I regret to say that I think that is venturing upon insult.

That letter was extremely carefully, consideratedly couched expression of regret, unease and malaise. I didn't write a word of it, but I wish I had done; a masterpiece of articulacy. It was an attack on nobody, only a request for a conversation which I think is even now proving healthy.

If the authority of those responsible for the running of the site really is undermined by this refreshing breeze, then it is an authority I have little enthusiasm to support.

On the other hand, it is good to know that fears about the Slough parody instigating davem's ban were unfounded.

That we are surer about such things is a result of that community statement, and in that case it is not a matter of undermining authority, but demystifying and restoring confidence. It is to bolster such confidence and, er, general well-being, that this chat should continue.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Sorry. The community statement is not a campaign, and I support both its sentiments and the language in which it was couched. Close to the end of an exhausting and reluctant post I got sloppy and drifted away from the community statement onto other ground. At that point I was thinking of certain comments made both on the Downs and elsewhere that were unrelated to the community statement, but which touched on the same issues. Those comments call into question the competence, integrity and fairness of the moderators here, and as such seem calculated to undermine their authority. I should have made it clear that I was trying to address those reactions as well as the community statement, which is in itself a laudable and well-conceived reaction.

Some of the other reactions have been less constructive and can be interpreted as a campaign, although they might easily be nothing more than angry responses to a perceived injustice.

Yes, I know I said I wouldn't make any more public statements about this, but I thought I'd make an exception in this case.

[Lalwendë]

Yes, this was not a 'campaign', just a lot of people who ended up finding each other's blogs, e-mail addresses and whatnot and there was the idea to put up a statement - partly to stop people bombarding mods with PMs it must be said. There was nothing 'sinister' going on, just a lot of emotions ranging from confusion, through regret to simple anger, and this statement covered all sorts of people, some of whom remember are quite young and might be upset to think they have been naughty - and its just mean to accuse them of that kind of thing.

As for anything else, its just a lot of people who felt frustrated and angry mouthing off and moaning to one another. As people do. 'Campaign' is more than a bit too strong a word for what are just rants from lots of different people.

Now back to your posts!