Welcome to the forums,

but as your a worker I'm afraid theres a problem with your avatar, wheres the moustache or beird

that and someone take the lockstick away from him.

I think he has progressed passed simple "worker" and has moved on to "giver of orders"

He must be Mario or Patrick from EV1 in disguise then

Must be, I think Klaude needs to give him the lowdown on how we act around here. (Slightly crazy and in some cases, British)

oi! i saw that :P

Ah, you mean very crazy

Yes, he seems to be a big lock-happy. He locked a thread because he replied to the customer's ticket, which is a bit of a no-no around here. Usually thread locking is reserved for threads that have been hijacked, become offensive, are useless, or really offtopic. That sort of thing.

It looks like he is confusing threads and tickets.

yep, sounds like it. Ambugious responses, closing stuff. I think he's got orbit.theplanet.com and forums.servermatrix.com confused.

*groan*

We're gently moving towards a new forum policy of locking threads where an individual complaint is resolved. Skinman's actions are evidence of this new policy. In the future we're not going to allow some of the rampant criticism that's shown up in the networking and suggestions forums. Don't worry, we're not going to turn into the forum mods from hell. We're just going to be a little less leanient on discussions that are negative towards us on our own forums.

That's right everyone, no more rampant critisism(WHT has contacted TP complaining that they are taking WHT job). For the next movement, we are changing over to vB and hiring EV1 Mods to assist us. <sarcasm off>
Forums have been operating fine for a while with the old policy. Just responding to complaints with ticket numbers by staff is probably the reason complaints have gone up (Pavlov dogs, if they see something getting fixed by posting, they will as well)

Locking means you have locked it, it doesn't mean you have fixed the problem. I understand you want to have your say. Then say we have responded to your ticket and I show it marked resolved. If this is not the case, please open another ticket referencing the original ticket. You could also respond to posts with ticket number with nothing then let people like nforcer go (and others) GIVE THEM A CALL BECAUSE MODS WILL IGNORE YOUR "CRY" FOR HELP.

I'm sure this has drawn attention kevin because you guys brought in fresh blood to "enforce" this policy instead of using existing mods to enforce it.

Hmmm, I have no problem with threads being locked when they turn in to a flame-fest, go seriously off-topic, or become offensive or abusive. I do have a problem with threads being locked when a moderator decides that a problem has been solved or the powers-that-be don't like the content. 99% of the time when someone posts because a ticket has gone unanswered for a long time and you, Kevin, tell them to PM their ticket number, nobody else posts anyway. If they do, it's usually a "did you get it resolved?" question. I don't see a problem with that.

Who determines how negative a discussion towards SM has to be before it is locked or deleted? While I agree that a deliberately derogatory and hostile thread that serves no constructive purpose should be locked/deleted, how will the line be drawn? If SM drops the ball occasionaly (and we are all human and it does happen) I see no problem in that being posted on the forum, especially if its in the form of constructive critisicm, designed to promote dialog and feedback, with the aim of improving service and preventing the same mistakes being made again.

I have always loved these forums because of their stance against locking threads needlessly and hands-off moderation. Take WHT for example, they are over-moderated, in part, I suspect, so as not to antagonise their advertisers. Look at EV1, who locked and deleted threads at the drop of a hat until their users kicked up a fuss. I believe that it would be a shame if this place ultimately does the same.

Now it may be that you, skinman and all the other mods here have agreed to only lock threads under certain conditions. However, once a new rule is put in to effect, it's only a matter of time before that rule becomes interpreted with more and more latitude. In other words, if your policy is "no thread locking" then nobody locks threads. As soon as you say that "you can lock and delete threads...." then the mind-set of the mods is that they can lock and delete threads. The strength of the SM forums is that users feel free to post both postive and negative comments, please don't ruin it.

Hello All,

So I was doing a little lounging today and noticed this thread. I just thought I would give you my 2 cents and let you know my thoughts on some of the line items you bring up.

As you know we (The Planet and other business units) have been growing at an astounding pace and everything we do heading into the future has to be scalable. Scalability is the key and automation is the answer. I know, you are thinking why is he saying this, but I do have a point.

As we continue to grow and automate the things around us we grow even faster. The larger and larger the company gets the more things like the forums get lost in the shuffle. If we don’t put policies in place now we might all be too busy someday and forget to check the forums (it could happen, but where is the fun in that). At that point everyone that has the even the smallest complaint could start a thread and someone with vengeance in mind could say just about anything they wanted and no one here would ever see the post. It took me how long to see this thread? See my point?

Ok, the policy – there is no set in stone policy. There is just a ton of gray area. The main difference is when someone asks about a delayed ticket or problem that wasn’t resolved; it is my job to resolve it. Whether it turns out good or bad for the customer is usually up to me and sometimes it will be bad. It is certainly not our intention to make unhappy customers; however, we understand we will never be able to make everyone happy. The policy is basically: if it is a support problem or issue that should be handled in Orbit through a ticket then the thread will be locked and the problem resolved. . All further communication will be in the ticket. I feel certain that if the problem isn’t resolved and they see the thread locked they will let everyone know in a follow-up thread. This is simply to keep “some” forum users from saying, “yea, that happened to me once” and pull up all the dirt they can think of that is history and has been hashed out in the forums over the past year.

All that being said, I am just a temporary band-aid for the forums, there will be another newbie (did I mention I am the worst newbie on a forum in the universe – so be nice) soon that takes over this role and will be held accountable for the forums. We tried for Klaude and he said you guys scared him! Or he scared you, not sure…

Our intentions are not to make a drastic change to the forums at all. We are just trying to keep it clean in our forums as best we can while maintaining truth. We really need the constructive criticism and welcome it. The things we want to stay away from are the blatant derogatory statements that have happened in the past. It’s that simple.

I think this is a great forum and will do my best to keep it just as open as I can (or at least until my boss tells me otherwise)

Hope that helps a bit, probably doesn’t, but hey I had to try, right? !

Anyone have a spot of Rogaine? My facial hair isn’t coming in very fast!

I view the forums as peer to peer support. It has changed from that when more and more staff started to get involved. I think the forums are pretty balance between complaints and people who are happy. More topics are created by people who complain but I think people who are happy mention that in those threads as well. If it needs to be taken care of in orbit, then simply mention your ticket has been updated in orbit. Locking threads that need to be taken care of orbit saying they will open another thread if it's not fixed wastes DB space, forum space and makes the problem look 2x as bad because there is now 2 threads on the same problem. If it's a problem that is dealt with in orbit, then mention it, and leave it. Unless you plan on changing the forum from peer to peer support (which it has always been) to place for customers to communicate to TP staff, why not just close the forum down? We have orbit, email and telephone to communicate with you guys and forums to communicate with each other.

They're just keeping the forum from turning into a breeding ground of senseless invective. I hardly see how you logically follow from that position to `may as well close the whole forum down'. The goals don't seem exclusive to me?


People love to complain, and people love to complain even more when they see someone else doing it. It's a mob mentality. You see one person start going nuts over something, then everyone else piles in with their (relatively minor) issues, and before you know it, the whole thing is just a waste of time. THEN later you learn that the original poster doesn't speak english, and has been hosting notorious spammers for a month or longer and the whole bitchfest was based on a non-issue. Woops!

well, anyway, we'll be nipping that sort in the bud, now. Personally, I favored the open atmosphere, warts and all, but that's just me. I can certainly understand management wanting posts to fit their model.

We can't go into details, but that has happened on occasion here. Someone doesn't like us so they make up a sob story here. People with actual, but more marginal stories pipe in, and all of a sudden I have to lock a 15 page thread. We're trying to minimize that kind of snowball effect.

Yeah, I don't mind that sort of crap being locked! Plus, there's nothing worse than someone who signs up to the forum purely to post "This happened to me" or "This sucks".

On the other hand, this place is a great peer-to-peer support forum and it would be a shame if the WHT-Nazi mentality started making an appearance when one wrong word out of place and you're banned.

And if any WHT-Nazis are reading this, I'm probably banned (no great loss as I don't post much there anyway )

Even we relatively long-term customers (2 years is long term, what a crazy industry), up until now, have not hesitated to tell SM when we think you guys have dropped the ball. This seems to be effective however. On more than one occasion, SM has announced a new offering or policy, and some of us have posted saying we think that the pricing or rule or offering is insane and SM must be stupid to try it. It's brutal honesty, and as I said, many of these things have been changed.

When the 50/100mbit unmetered ports came out, we here in the forum posted saying it was a ripoff at the announced pricing. Very shortly after, SM dropped the price quite close to what we had suggested was reasonable. I like to think that the forums had a part to play in that.

However if threads where customers were "harsh" towards SM/TP, that wouldn't happen anymore.

Anyhow, to sum up a rant, I don't agree with the new locking policy.

Oh, and don't you dare replace Kevin as resident Forum Czar

Yeah...i noticed that i havn't seen some of the old mods like Stephanie around here to a while. If sm/tp/i365 want to lock threads its there right as its theres, theres a clause that they reserve the right to lock/delete threads when you sign up and all over the place.
I wouldn't like it to become nazi mod style, but i do believe they are sincere when they said they don't want that either.

Hmm skinman seems like one that obeys strict rules and does his job, not even comes to the lounge to say hello

I think they should just give eddy2099 a crumby celeron to be moderator. He reads evey thread and he can just lock the one's that are heading down the wrong path.

We have considered this option!

skinman
Steve Kinman

The mystery is finally revealed

So it is, I though it was the skinner who skinned the forum

That reminds me maybe jrowan needs a introduction thread to

Poor Steve. The first time I read this thread, it seems that he got virtually skinned alive

patriotcow, do you want an intro thread on me, or just a post in the Introductions thread?

oh noes another one

It doesn't matter, you win staff avatar of the month either way

An intro thread will do, unless you want to post in introductions. But it can get a bit offtopic with new staff so best you have a whole thread