Moderation in this forum
OK, here goes.
For a long time there has been little or no evidence of any hosts, moderators or Adobe employees in here. John C and kanguyen make very welcome appearances from time to time, and both show an immaculate attitude, but little happens to improve things - although thanks to those who made a proper sticky about the use of this forum.
We have been relieved of a host who was allegedly a Community Expert in 'Creative Suite', but had apparently fulfilled none of the criteria for a Community Expert - such as being an expert in something. Nor did this person have more than a very wobbly grasp of how the forums actually work. With zero credibility, said person annoyed people by moralising and lecturing at them.
So now we have a pretty bolshy group of people who are sitting about, kicking their heels, hoping against hope that someone will sort out this buggy, defective software. Many have made very detailed, constructive suggestions and requests, others have gone to the trouble of making work-arounds. In the meantime they are chatting amongst themselves, which is normal behaviour for bored people in a waiting room who are still hoping for something to happen.
There are people who have used the WebX forums for years and years and appreciated them, even with their faults. These people are still grumpy about being shifted onto something they see as much worse. So there are bad moods around.
In my personal opinion, there have been quite a lot of posts, probably some of them mine, that are unnecessarily off-topic, sarcastic and hostile. A bit of a tug on the reins would be no bad thing in my view.
However, moderating a group such as the one gathered here is not easy. To be successful, it is necessary to show good humour, a sense of humour, a willingness to explain actions, and a degree of courtesy and respect, even to those who are not behaving particularly well at the time. Oz was a shining example, and brought a considerable degree of order to the Lounge (an even wilder corner of the West
) without antagonising anyone - well, maybe just the one serial reprobate who is unreachable anyway.
The proverbial 'firm but fair' - and a very nice bloke.
To suddenly begin mass deletions, without showing any of these qualities, may well be counter-productive.
For me, Jochem has a head start, since I believe he is the possessor of a minor-planet-sized brain and the skills to sort this mess out in minutes if he were given the chance. Good start. Now we need a better balance between discouragement of excessive pointless and snarky posts, information about what progress is being made / might be made / won't be made on forum fixes and improvements, individual help like JC has always provided for people who have weird stuff going on with their account, and a degree of visible humanity - please - to gain the consent of those being moderated.
