Pat:
Your words have high value but they are probably ineffectual. Verbal chastising and appealing to an individual's sense of decency assumes that there is some basis for moral, ethical, or intellectual reproach to effect change.
Reading those posts, do you really think there is? J C Dithers' posts touch upon some of the problems. Anonymity allows frank and open investment talk but it also allows for everything from complete drivel to open war.
Some people antagonize others simply get their kicks from watching the reactions that result. Some are narcissists who enjoy seeing their name mirrored and repeated on the board as often as possible. I'm sure that somewhere out there is a social researcher doing a paper on these types of problems in this medium.
What is completely absent is accountability. Sure, certain individuals have been booted by SI for completely atrocious activity but how far does the envelope have to be pushed for this to happen? A longgggg way. There is no incremental or tiered disciplinary approach. As we have seen, attempts to rationalize disagreements with thoughtfully written posts have as little success as in-your-face posts to embarrass the SI delinquents. There is little or no positive impact and most often it seems to just spur further diatribe.
When Tim began to get serious about running a controlled environment, I really thought he was on to a good idea. By using the encryption, he had the ability to let people in and lock them out. He could have even established control groups within this environment in order to monitor leakage.
Unfortunately, Tim lost the desire. He has been thanked, applauded, admired, and congratulated but he has also been taunted, hammered, betrayed, ridiculed, and denigrated. Trying to fend off the detractors clearly takes its toll.
Those of us that abided by Tim's rules and made a good-faith effort are the ones who lose the most. He cannot trust anyone and is shutting the door to all. It's a great pity and a great loss for all of us.
However, I do wonder why Tim never held those who broke his rules accountable? How many times did he identify incidents where others talked business on the open thread or posted business to other threads? Upon each discovery, Tim said it was the last time, the final warning, people were going to be cut... it never happened. I cannot help but think that, had Tim identified identified and locked a violator out EVERY time, the incidents would have quickly stopped and his group might have been cut to a more manageable size.
Being a stern disciplinarian is not Tim's fort‚. He truly wants to help people. Tim has demonstrated that desire time and again and he has gone out of his way to try and teach, mentor, and support those of us with less experience. Jon Salmon mentioned altruism and that's exactly right. Tim does not receives or expect monetary reward for his acts, they are truly a selfless expression of caring. Yes, he gets cranky and he bleeds when he's back stabbed. So what? We all have our days. There are a lot worse examples of human behavior out there and we've witnessed much of it in the recent posts.
Keep up the good fight Tim.
Buck |
