| ??? 07/24/05 19:01 Read: times |
#97918 - Reason for Michael's leaving Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Kai Klaas said:
If you ever have prepared such a post, containing a picture and a schematic, then you will know how much time and efforts this costs, not even mentioning the time needed to develop the idea behind! And he posted the message and it remains there to this day for all to see. Normally we waited several days in the past before closing a thread for this reason. So, the decision to close the thread so early was totally arbitrary and was just wrong, even if it had made sense to Steve at this very moment! As I said, I know I would've opened the thread again if Michael had asked me. Michael didn't ask me--he asked Steve. And he didn't ask Steve, he ordered Steve. To Michael this closing of thread must have looked very insulting, especially if he already had prepared a second post which he also wanted to publish, again containing a picture and schematic, where he again had spend lot of time and energy! I don't see why it'd be insulting. It's not like his work and contribution has been deleted. If I had been in his position I would've just shrugged and moved on to the next thread. If I really felt there were more to say, I would've contacted the moderators and asked (not ordered) them to consider re-opening it. Considering the huge respect that Steve and I have for Michael and his contributions, do you think we would have rejected that request? Of course not! Craig, please, closing the thread so early, means after only 27hours, defintely was a mistake, wasn't it? Like I said in my original post, I did think the thread was probably closed a bit too soon. I would've reopened it had Michael (or just about anyone) asked. But no-one asked. Trivial matter?? Now I ask you, would you ever spend time and energy if you must assume that the thread will be closed, just during the time that you prepare your post??? What sense does it make to contribute to a forum, where threads are arbitrarily closed?? What sense does it make to spend your costly time and energy, when your efforts become totally useless and senseless? This would be a valid question if Michael's very time-consuming post had been deleted. It wasn't. His effort was not in vain. Nor is it correct to assume that a thread will be closed while you're composing a reply since most threads are not closed. If he had, in fact, composed another time-consuming message then I would have certainly re-opened the thread so he could post that had he asked me to. He didn't. He just left. Michael was angry, because he was right! Because it wasn't the first arbitrarily closed thread! That's the reason, why Michael wasn't "polite" enough. As recently as a week or two prior to the incident, I had been talking to Michael about other issues--how to improve the forum technically speaking. He suggested that the time to edit a post should be expanded from 20 minutes to 3 hours. I took his advice and posts can now be edited for up to three hours specifically because Michael made that suggestion. I also had recently talked to him via email about a hardware design and he was most helpful in giving me his feedback. In short, he gave me absolutely no idea that he had any problems with how the forum was run until he asked me to delete his karma, etc. Had Steve not informed me of the email exchange between Michael and him, I would've had no clue whatsoever as to why Michael was leaving when he sent me that email. Since we've been on such close terms via email, you'd think he would've at least sent me a message explaining his grievances before jumping ship. It doesn't matter how mad you are, it seems rather illogical to jump ship without "escalating" the problem to the highest authority in whatever organization you have a problem with. Especially when you frequently talk to the highest authority! Letting Michael leave this forum was the badest decision you have ever made, Craig! The alternative would be to let any important person essentially dictate how the forum is run and overrule the moderators. Or maybe just make every important person a moderator? I'm a calm, reasonable, flexible, and patient person. I started this thread because I'm flexible--I want to figure out how to make things better and I think the members here have as much interest in making things better as I do. I'm also flexible to opening threads that have been closed if someone asks me to open them. But as flexible and tolerant as I am, no-one orders me to do anything. Not in my house, not on my website. Kai, if you had a guest in your house and you ran out of water, what would your reaction be if your guest ordered you to go out and buy some water? He might be right but that doesn't excuse the form in which he requested the water. And he only left the forum because of a series of arbitrary acts. None of which he informed me about despite the fact that we talked frequently via email. Regards, Craig Steiner 8052.com Webmaster |
