[With my moderator hat on - for the second time in 24 hours and the third in 6 years]
Hello All,
It's been another long day and it's been made longer by 2 vast emails from Andrew and one long phone call from Joanna. As one of the two uninvolved moderators, I understand my duty to step in, even though I've got bills to pay and a house to maintain. So I haven't read the entirety of this thread but I have the gist of it. Now first to Vanman's query:
I would not like any of my threads removed or edited by a moderator. I have never heard of this happening on any other photography forum
For the record: None of Andrew's posts have been deleted. Not one.
What has happened, is that three of his posts got put in to one. That's all.
In the last 6 years, only one post ever got deleted by a moderator. That was when someone unleashed a personal attack. So it's not unheard of, but it's really rare.
The reason Joanna took on herself to sort out Andrew's posts, is to make the threads easier to read. We're all talking about the usability of the forum. We're talking about the confusion generated when there are too many forums. I have to ask how easy it is to read the posts of a member when he posts serially. Looking at this particular thread, I see that Andrew has posted 6 answers to his own post. So that's seven consecutive posts all by one person.
Now we get to the nub of the problem. Content versus style. A moderator on large forums with thousands of members (who rarely know each other offline) will only deal with content. When this forum started out, it was a bunch of people who got on really well at a physical gathering in the real world. The forum was small and the moderators kept it looking trim. There were no guidelines, no requirements to post in a particular style. It's just every now and again a thread's content would be tidied up for legibility. Joanna has done a sterling job. What we have now are growing pains. New members want things we hadn't envisaged and bring with them their experiences of other forums. So this forum is now adapting to the new reality.
In the meanwhile, we the moderators are still behaving as if the forum is a bunch of friends. So yes, as it happens, four of us agreed to administer the forum and keep it in good nick. But at the end of the day, we're just regular members. We contribute our questions and answers. We proffer opinions. Above all, we're human and approachable. Because of the duties we took on, the software has labelled Joanna and me as moderators. Some people here seem to think that as a consequence, we should be saints. It isn't like that.
I have told Joanna to be less forceful in venturing her opinions - less tub thumping - and now I ask Andrew (and those who agree with him) to give us the room to change. Joanna's recent comments have all been calm and considered (as ACS has said), so let's all just settle down and rub along. Please.
If you want to resume the original topic of this thread, please do. If not, I'll lock the thread and take the conversation offline.
Regards,
Charles
[Moderator hat off / Plumber's hard hat on]
do you 
- you'll find that there are an awful lot of people on here who are highly intelligent - they're not being asked to pick a particular paragraph out of the New Testament are they? OR perhaps in your 'day time' job you're used to dealing with infant children or something similar, therefore the apparent need for you to say that and to adopt this stance?
well........................
