Stricter Guildelines Enforcement Now In Effect

[IanG]

Perhaps there's sometimes a need to break rules.

What about Sales where items are being sold at above the market price (I'm talking new prices here) ?

We aren't allowed to comment on the thread, do we report this to moderators or what ? In the case I have in mind I can buy and then sell the same item(s) for 20% of the price and still double my money.

What about the rather dodgy sale from a new member (no posts), when I pointed out the seller had been selling the same items a few years ago my comment was deleted. There was a very good reason why the items haven't sold. It warranted an honest explanation from the seller.

Ian

[sanking]

To be perfectly frank. I think what is confounding and grinding down Ken and I in particular is the fact that a small number of people cause 90% of the problems and never seem to actually change their behavior except for a very brief period following moderator action. This is soooooo "not fun" anymore that after 4 years I am seriously questioning whether I want to do it anymore.

I hope you and Ken don't quit. Just remember that well over 95% of the people on the forum really appreciate the work you moderators are doing.

As a survivor of the Pyro wars there is no doubt in my mind but that strict usage guidelines need to be enforced for the good of the community. I encourage you moderators to be ruthless in doing your job.

Sandy

[Ken Lee]

Perhaps there's sometimes a need to break rules.

What about Sales where items are being sold at above the market price (I'm talking new prices here) ?

We aren't allowed to comment on the thread, do we report this to moderators or what ? In the case I have in mind I can buy and then sell the same item(s) for 20% of the price and still double my money.

What about the rather dodgy sale from a new member (no posts), when I pointed out the seller had been selling the same items a few years ago my comment was deleted. There was a very good reason why the items haven't sold. It warranted an honest explanation from the seller.

Ian

The moderators do their best to distinguish between constructive suggestions on the one hand, and mean-spirited or meddlesome behavior on the other.

If there's any confusion, a quick scan of previous comments in this thread will clarify the intention of the moderators. We've expressed it several different times, and several different ways.

[Darin Boville]

You could take excellent forum moderators from a chess, 4x4 wheel drive, or Wiccan(for that matter) message board, transplant them here and they would be good forum moderators here or vice versa.

That sounds like what they used to say about CEOs and other executive types. "Pepsi, Apple. Doesn't matter what you are managing as long as you are a good manager."

--Darin

[Sylvester Graham]

Ken, as another post here pointed out, the LFF has more active members than ever before. Yet I believe there are the same number of moderators as when I first joined in 2004. Is it possible the root cause of all this stress is not so much bad behavior on the part of members as over-work on the part of the mods? After all, if the *rate* of posts needing moderating stays the same, as the forum grows you will nevertheless eventually be overwhelmed with more and more work. Maybe you need one or two more mods?

--Darin

My vote for more moderators. How many dozens of members are there with more than 1000 posts? If thats a good criteria. Im not going to spend too long crying over any changes to guidelines, or for that matter losing access to the forum. This is an Internet forum, after all, not reality. But those are, and were, some pretty broad guidelines that can be interpreted by the mood of the moderator.

Also, why not try and appoint some younger members, some females?

[Greg Miller]

That sounds like what they used to say about CEOs and other executive types. "Pepsi, Apple. Doesn't matter what you are managing as long as you are a good manager."

--Darin

I would think a better analogy would be the court system. Judges and juries apply set rules to all sorts of various situations they never heard of before. The court system isn't perfect but nobody seems to have come up with a better system so far.

[Lachlan 717]

Perhaps there's sometimes a need to break rules.

What about Sales where items are being sold at above the market price (I'm talking new prices here) ?

We aren't allowed to comment on the thread, do we report this to moderators or what ? In the case I have in mind I can buy and then sell the same item(s) for 20% of the price and still double my money.

What about the rather dodgy sale from a new member (no posts), when I pointed out the seller had been selling the same items a few years ago my comment was deleted. There was a very good reason why the items haven't sold. It warranted an honest explanation from the seller.

Ian

With all due respect, Ian, why do you feel the need to comment at all in these cases? Putting a price on goods that is too high should simply mean that the item won't sell. It's not breaking any of the forum guidelines. After all, the classifieds are clearly marked as being at users' risk.

What about for older items (i.e. no longer available new)? How do you determine if these are too high? It seems to me that, with the demise of so many new LF products, the majority of items sold here are no longer available new.

If someone's stupid enough to purchase without researching market values, isn't that their issue (just as it is the Seller's issue if they, like in your example, price the item well above worth, leaving it for sale ad ifinitum)?

[Peter De Smidt]

To be perfectly frank. I think what is confounding and grinding down Ken and I in particular is the fact that a small number of people cause 90% of the problems and never seem to actually change their behavior except for a very brief period following moderator action. This is soooooo "not fun" anymore that after 4 years I am seriously questioning whether I want to do it anymore.

Just ban them.

[Darin Boville]

Darin - I'm sorry, but I honestly don't understand.

Could you please illustrate your point with an example, or state it in a slightly different way ?

I'll offer one (long) example, a fairly straightforward one. There are many more.

The way I understand it this board is intended to have Large Format Photography at its core. Surrounding that are other related areas--darkroom printing, digital printing, lenses, and so on. You also have image sharing areas and a general "On Photography" area. As a catch-all we have the Lounge and by popular demand we have a Buy and Sell area.

That sounds at first like a simple, aesthetic-less breakdown of all possible discussions, at least all likely categories for such discussions. While all of the mods and the board owners are photographers in the West Coast tradition, that doesn't affect the functioning of the board. Or does it?

Well, where is the lighting forum at? For many photographers, lighting is right up there with breathing and yet here we have almost no discussion of lighting, no real discussion of lighting gear, and I'd be hard pressed even to remember when the last time I saw a piece of lighting gear go by on the classifieds. Odd?

Another category. Models. There no area for discussing this important area of the photographer's profession and art. Yet modeling has embraced the internet age with a passion.

Why are these categories missing--and not missed? I'd suggest that it is because this board really isn't about LF Photography at its core but about the West Coast photography aesthetic at its core. All of the mods, almost all of the people here are photographers shooting, more or less, in that mode. Landscape guys don't generally include a lighting kit when they go backpacking. So no need for alighting board--most members probably never even noticed its absence. With the exception of the creepy/puzzling "Nude in primeval forest" sub-genre, landscape photographers don't usually deal with models (or people at all, for that matter), so, again, never noticed it wasn't there.

Painting with a huge broad brush here with plenty of exceptions--I know--but I think the general direction of what I'm saying is accurate.

Then you look into categories like "On Photography" looking for a discussion of contemporary art...well, here are the names from the first page of titles: Edward Curtis, Willard Van Dyke, Edward Weston, O Winston Link, Gregory Crewdson, Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, Ed Burtynsky, Weston, Ansel Adams, Richard Misrach....that's a pretty narrow focus, largely pre-World War II.

Yet you go to an art museum or a top gallery and almost all you see for the past ten years are LF images, made by still living photographers.

So, again, the board is really serving a certain aesthetic, whether purposely or not, and excluding others, whether purposely or not. Whether you agree or whether that was obvious to you all along will depend on your "world view" (as I put it).

[And I've gone on far longer than I intended--I'll stop there, halfway to my goal! But I think you'll see where I'm going with this...]

--Darin

[RichardSperry]

That sounds like what they used to say about CEOs and other executive types. "Pepsi, Apple. Doesn't matter what you are managing as long as you are a good manager."

--Darin

No!, what I wrote sounds like what I wrote. And what I wrote is different.