To new members and those who don't post - Page 7

Blitzen,

I just spent an hour going through the abuse reports back about 14 months and I see one instance we deleted a whole thread you reported and edited two others. I think I know what thread you are talking about at this point but would you be so kind as to PM me the thread/s you are referring to so I know better how to respond to your questions?

I think my ears are ringing......lol.

Imo allot of this "rude" ......(fill in the blank) behavior being reported is really; I don't like what you have to say and you're being blunt with me doesn't make me feel good, or hurts my feeling or what have you.  

Just as the comments about being right or wrong. Well sorry but sometimes there is a right or wrong way to train or do things and if I feel your wrong I'm going to say it.  As a trainer, which is how I approach almost all of these threads, my concern is what's best for the dog and what are the people who are lurking learning from this about their dogs or training in general. I get that most of the times I'm not going to change the op of the threads mind. But by using their post and going through each of their points  logically from the dogs perspective or from my vantage what's best for the dog, hopefully those who are gaining the most from these threads will learn something. Even though I realize that it pisses the op off, that's not my intent. It's a side effect of the teaching and the thought process that's needed to train.

Case in point, blitzen in the ob thread with the pup over the down training made kind off what came across as a smart Alec remark . Whether it was or wasn't isn't important. I thought about it and decided to take her up on it because I could see it having validity for newbies.  I will be posting an ob video with one of my dogs that shows in one video four steps to wean the dog off the toy in ob.  Well discuss it and explain it for everyone's edification.  I hope I learn something out of it too.  

Without the arguments and the debates, these kinds of ideas will never be born. And yes this was blitzen's idea.

^ is that bc ??

yep.  bzcz is mklevin courtesy of Gsdadmin

and what was the cause and the expected effect of a user name change?

Honestly, I wish I had a way to combine names and that would resolve all issues with people with multiple names for whatever reasons they have to want a new name. I also wish like FACEBOOK that this site would require that all users use their real names to sign up, but it doesn't and therefore I deal with the system I have.

It would be very boring here if we were always in agreement on everything. It has been proven that the less drama here = less members signing in but those same members lurk in the background  for their next drama fix. So, it is apparent to at least this admin that many many members have used this site over the years for drama and conflict.

Examples:

The stiff resistence to stop personal attacks that I met at one time here.

The constant whining we hear when a member is liked by some but causes problems for others and gets banned.

Show vs Work

The amount of posts and views on drama filled threads.

The amount of posts and views on a long thread once drama shows up.

The drama members cause when they disagree with admins.

Plus many more examples I really don't have the energy nor time to think about at this moment.

When it comes to cleaning these things up we try to strike a balance between both sides and lets face the facts when these are reported we look at them and make a decision, we may not know all the history between every interaction these 2 members have had. And that puts us at a disadvantage to always get it right every single time. Plus we are humans and we may miss something or make a mistake, it happens.

I think the key to the whole thing as far as member to member disagreements is try not to be as confrontational even when you know you are 100% right. If you know you have a problem with someone or they with you avoid them when possible or try to not us words like ignorant, stupid, dumb, coward, stay away from words you know will only flame the situation and please stay away from calling each other bitches and so forth.

^ i agree, when mods try clean up forums in a way the minority of the most fragile members want, the content suffers, the traffic slows down to nothing, the views stop, and the forum dies.

fact of forum life imo the so called bad apples nourish the forums and keep them alive.

FB may well be the death of the message board concept tho, it would seem that way imo.

There has to be a balance. A common ground. A compromise. Facebook is pretty much the death of forums in general, to a certain extent. But comment sections on most news type sites and other sites hurt forums, also. Sites like Twitter also don't help forums. It is a dying breed for sure. For this time and this place adding mods is what the owner has done because of a few members who went way overboard on mostly off topic non-sense that didn't really have a whole lot to do with dogs or pedigrees. He was well aware before he added mods and redid the site that these changes would affect the number of users who use this site.

The good thing for Oli is most of the traffic by a wide margin to this site is pedigrees and classifieds, it has been like that for years. The forum has pretty much always ranked behind pedigrees and classifieds by wide margins.

One more tidbit about drama is the amount of users who had multiple user names and used those names to fan some of the flames here. If I provided a list of every banned member a good guess would be that about 95% of all banned members fall into 3 categories 1. multiple names, 2. scammers 3. spammers.

Blitzen,

I will look into better defining number 5. Generally (off the top of my head) it is the attacking of a person rather than the ideas or actions of a post. Prime example: A person posts they were scammed and immediately a member seizes on they must be a breeder because they are buying expensive well pedigreed dogs and therefore open to attack because said person thinks all dogs should be rescued. Instead of attacking the idea of breeding, they turn it on the person; you must be a breeder.

Off course you have the you are; ignorant, stupid, dumb, gay, retarded, cowards and on and on. But those should be apparent by the off the top of my head definition posted above.

IMO there is nothing wrong with this system. In fact this is the most informative GSD site I know of. I don't see any FB account ever coming close to being able to offer so much valuable breed information.

The reason I see for opening another GSD FB account is to give people a less hostile environment for breed discussion. I would hope it would attract some of the more knowledgable people who have left here or who read but do not post often some not at all anymore, because they fear being treated badly or who don't want to read all the back and forth that goes on here at times. I don't expect the mods here to admonish any member because they have hurt  my or another's feelings which is really not the issue most of the time anyway. It generally goes a lot deeper than that for me and I suspect others here feel the same - baiting and belittling others to make a point sooner or later simply takes all the fun out of it.

To kill a snake you have to cut off its head.

This link was sent to me by a member and I hope all will read it and then look inside and see if you see yourself in this. I know narcissists will have a hard time ever believing that these things apply to them but the first and most important step in self betterment is admitting you have a problem or need to improve. This is in no way directed at any one member but posted as a reminder that your beliefs/opinions are your beliefs/opinions and may not be the same reality as others no matter how right you may feel you are, no matter the knowledge you have, no matter that some may agree/disagree with you or no matter how big your ego may be.

http://divorcedandscarednomore.com/the-9-characteristics-of-narcissism/