Feedback.

[Merli]

Okay here it is.

For some reason, a lot of the SAU moderators seem to have a petty grudge against me. Which is fine... Squizz and Skyzerr are openly hostile towards me, and I back at them. This arrangement works for me.

But when Moderators bitch about you behind your back, and act like the sun is shining to your face, that's when I get angry.

ndr wrote: "I'm off to UAS in the morning,,,Bett I'll get an ear full off Nick,,,,But me thinks he's gonna get one back. As for Merli,,,he's just an arrogant sub-human,,,lots of money and lots of attitude. If nobody has spoken to him,,,,I WILL. I deal with his kind everyday."

I shall come to UAS tomorrow... Neil, please call my mobile when you are heading there and this little arrogant sub-human will also come and have a little chat to you.

To Squizz and Skyzerr33. This is not just limited to you two, but it seems like a lot of people are resentful towards people who do well for themselves... Is this the society we live in? Why can you not sit back and say "Well good on him. I'm glad he's done well, and I'm glad he's got a nice car/house/boat/mansion/island/country"? A good friend of mine, owner of a high-profile R33 GTR in NSW, ran a 9.7 second pass on it's first drag meet. Did people say "Congratulations! But I think we are yet to still see it's true potential"? Some did, yes. But the majority made comments such as "$500,000 and it runs a 9.7?! HA!" or "Mario, why is your car so slow?"

We are all car enthusiasts, we all love our cars. This is what we are here for, is it not??? We will never have equal cars. Some will be better than others, God knows there are countless cars that would pound mine into a million little peices. Should I get all jealous and say "Damn chequebook racers" or "HELL! If I had $50,000, I'd be running 9s too!"? Well I don't think so. I'd like to pat them on the back and admire the hard work and dedication they have put into being able to afford such a beautiful car/house/boat/etc... Believe it or not, those people work bloody hard to be able to afford to pay someone to build them such amazing machines.

Now I'll address all these people calling me arrogant. Yes. I can be arrogant. We all can. But my arrogance only shows when I am challeneged, or insulted.

Yesterday, a friend of mine made a post which linked to a photo on my server. As a joke, I changed the image to a penis, and then promptly changed it back to the original image. Unfortunately I stuffed up and didn't take into account Linux's case sensitive filenames and it didn't overwrite the intended file, so the penis photo stayed. My bad. No worries.

So this morning I wake to find Skyzerr33 had deleted the link to the image (more than fair enough, and I thank you for doing that), but felt the need to add "very thin ice Merli".

For what purpose??? Was he going to ban me for making such a stupid mistake? Was he going to suspend me for making such a stupid mistake? Is that reasonable? Why would I be on thin ice? Personally I think a PM asking for an explanation would have been more appropriate.

I replied: "what're you going to do? shake your finger at me? ban me? laugh"... This reply was laughing at the fact that Skyzerr33 actually took it seriously enough to think that it warranted such a threat.

Then Squizz interjected out of nowhere and said "Yeah, cos it would be such a loss to lose your valuable suggestions of throwing truckloads of money at our cars to fix problems"...

This was 100% uncalled for, and Squizz basically took the opportunity to take a cheap shot at me (with reference to money, see above). So I replied with "laugh laugh laugh, 'Jealous much?' cloud smiley, gay pink smiley"...

Ex-Static, then came into the thread (btw, this was just an honest For Sale thread :bahaha: ) and said something to the likes of "blah blah blah, you're being arrogant, blah blah blah".

How was I singled out? I was threatened for no real reason by Skyzerr33, and then attacked by Squizz out of the blue. Yet *I* get called arrogant for responding?

I clicked on the "Repost post to Moderators" on Skyzerr33's post, which should have been sent to the forum moderators (meggala, ndr, YO88O), asking them to please delete all posts upto and including Skyzerr33's, as it did not pertain to the For Sale thread. This went unanswered, I assume because none of those three moderators were checking their email.

Fine, so I then posted IN THE THREAD, asking for the same action to be taken, and I know at least three moderators were look at it, because they replied to the thread, but it still was not done.

Instead, the thread was locked, and then deleted shortly thereafter.

What's with the double standards? I make an funny, off-topic post in one of my friend's For Sale threads and it immediately gets deleted and I get a warning.

Skyzerr33, Squizz and Ex-Static can run rampant posting aggressive threats in my thread at their whim, and ignore requests to stop and delete all offending posts? Nice.

Why shouldn't we have a Moderator's Forum? Because people talk behind your back. "No bitching" claims Christian?

"As for Merli,,,he's just an arrogant sub-human,,,lots of money and lots of attitude. If nobody has spoken to him,,,,I WILL. I deal with his kind everyday."

What is "my kind" exactly? You work at BMW if I'm not mistaken... I ask again, what is "my kind" exactly, and how do you propose "to deal with me"? It's very easy to make such threats when you're in a "closed forum" isn't it? What happens now that your two-facedness becomes public domain?

This is unacceptible. You "moderators" decide our fate on biased feedback from other "moderators", without giving us a chance to give our side of the story? A Moderator's Forum is needed. It should be used to make decisions on forum changes and development. IT IS NOT A PLACE FOR YOU TO INSULT MEMBERS BEHIND THEIR BACKS.

Also, a lot of people seem to hold resentment against me because I was a moderator at SDU at the time when SDU executives moved to cut back the "idle chat" and move to a more performance based forum... It's quite funny because it seems you all hold me responsible for SDU Executives "taking away all your rights", when in fact I had no say in it whatsoever, and I would have moderated perhaps 5 or 6 threads during that entire period.

Anyway. The move was made away from SDU (which I supported 100% and subsqeuently got into many an argument with SDU Executives about) because you all (myself included) didn't like how oppressive the SDU Executives and Moderators were.

NOW LOOK AT THIS FORUM.

Think back to those days in SDU when we were being told to put up or shut up. If you don't like it, leave. SAU was founded on the ideals that free speech was a basic right, and no Nazi Moderating will ever take place. Moderating was to be done only on truely offensive posts, and SAU would be a place where we all could say what we felt, whenever we wanted. Is SAU today, what you imagined it would be back then?

Now alot of you old SDU'ers have been given the privledge by Christian to moderate these forums. It's not as easy as it looks is it?

When you are given power, you are also given responsibility. Responsibility to enforce forum rules as Club Executives direct, and responsibility to keep law and order. You hated it when SDU moderators and administrators oppressed you, but now you have a voice as moderators of SAU. Think about how you may or may not be oppressing normal members on SAU. Are you doing the same thing that SDU mods/admins were doing to you 8 months ago?

I have been contacted by several SAU "moderators" about how they are unhappy with the current stand of the forums, and how they are being run. If you think I'm talking about you, and the email you sent me, believe me, there are many others who sent me similar emails. You are not alone.

There have been proposals of running rebel forums, and even breaking State clubs away from SAU and forming their own club. I do *NOT* want this to happen, and I have not encouraged it in any way, shape or form. Please remember the overplayed cliche: "Together we stand, Divided we fall". It's a cliche because it's true.

How about we have a little less hate on this board, and a little more love? We're all here because we share a love of Skylines. That is our common bind. That is what makes us strong. When we lose focus on that, and instead concentrate on hate and trying to ban members, and seperating state clubs, it will only make us weaker or indeed kill us.

Make this your new mantra, and repeat after me: SKYLINES ABOVE ALL ELSE.

[PranK]

Andrew,

Let me start by saying thanks - i really do appreciate the feedback (and in length too!), i know it was neccassary.

I am unsure as to how you gained access to the moderators forum, but I agree with you - what was said was completely uncalled for, as was the way they dealt with your thread.

The problem is, that all this shit with moderators has only really become apparent to me recently! i had never noticed it before (whether i am just ignorant or for whatever reason).

I think that some moderators should be removed from their status, as you may know - there are only 2 admin's now.

Regarding you being an SDU mod, i am happy for you (and for them), i was a mod there a long time ago and did my best to keep the peace between the users and the mods/admins, it was a difficult thing to do.. and now with this 'unwritten rivalry' between SDU and SAU (which is COMPLETELY unneccassary!) it certainly makes it difficult for people who continue to post on both forums.

I apologise for your request to have your thread deleted being ignored, in the future, i ask everybody if their emails to mods goes unanswered, email me directly - i am online for the best part of every day (damn jobs!) I will make sure its looked after.

Things have to change and I understand that - Thanks again for the feedback. If you do have any other q's - email me, or reply in here,

Christian

[skyzerr33]

PM message space is to small so i'll reply here

Andrew

I'll start by stating what i did to your thread yesterday. I revieced an email from squizz as was the only other moderator on the board at the time squizz got some emails complaining about the penis picture.

He asked for the thread to be moved so it could be discussed in the moderator forum. I read the thread and saw the picture. Squizz removed the link and then I put the thread back in the for sale section with the "thin ice" message. That was my roll in the matter. Apart from disscusions with the other moderators about the attitude of a number of forum members.

I to have a sence of humour and found the humour in your pillar pick, but Prank has told us to enforce a strong policy on pornography (even if its in jest) on the forum, so thats what I meant by thin ice. I didn't think it a threat but a warning.

Yes i found your responce arrogant, but in the past had been told thats just the way I perceive your personality.

As for it being in your friends post (well maybe you shouldn't let them post under your name as the thread the pic was in was started by username 'Merli') I have no idea if it was you or not.

In the end I don't like being called a rampaging nazi for doing my job as a moderator (removing the p0rn) and issueing a warning.

I've copied this to Prank aswell if you wish take it further aswell.

Troy

[meggala]

glad to see you vented merli

I recieved the removed thread but at that time I was out running around

and merli is right skylines b4 every think.

I cant stand the fighting.

cheers

[kabab]

can't we all just get along and going racing or something :uh-huh:

abit of mutal respect never hurt anyone

[PranK]

Originally posted by kabab

can't we all just get along and going racing or something :uh-huh:  

abit of mutal respect never hurt anyone

i love you babs!

but in all honesty, this cruise on the 14th - lets all make an effort to have a good day!

Merli - when you get a sec, can you email me; [email protected]

Thanks Guys,

Christian

[2rismo]

Merli, skyzerr33, Prank et al,

Whether the more recent bouts of in-fighting that have been taking place on and around this forum is a result of personal vendettas, professional disagreences, arrogance or the weather is as nothing. It is time that the admins/execs/mods of this forum started adhering to the charter of the group.

Whilst one person's harmless joke is to anothers utmost distatste, explainable and inconsequential mistakes such as what will forever be known as 'le phalus debacle de merli' should be taken for what they are. Mistakes.

In my opinion, it is about time that the MANY mods/admins etc started taking more responsibility for the content of the forum, the threads therein and the consistent barrage of offensive material that adorns this car related b.b.

Perhaps this is part of the problem. Too many chiefs etc? I don't know. When a post is "reported to a moderator" it should be dealt with in a set amount of time by more than one impartial respondant In the very few times that i have 'clicked the button', it has been dealt with accordingly and in a reasonable amount of time.

My question is this. How, on a forum with almost 1400 members and goodness knows how many posts per day, can order possibly be maintained?

No good has ever come of complaining so a suggestion is needed. How hard is it for any post that it reported to a moderator to go into 'moderated mode'? i.e. the post is reported, and all future posts are sent through the mods prior to posting.

Sorry if this is a bit hard to understand but i just can't understand why any forum that is supposedly BASED ON SKYLINES AND THE LIKE, can have any place for a discussion, PRIVATE OR OTHERWISE about personal vendettas, arrogant claims, (i.e. I deal with people like this ") etc, or downright jealousy?

Let me give you a quick, theoretical example:

**Say a regular poster to this forum, lets call him Andrew, posts something that another member finds offensive and that person reports the post to a moderator. You with me so far? Good. Then I'll continue. That moderator should:**

A: Lock the thread, leaving the whole world to view the assinine behaviour of the postee and/or the mod who did the locking?

B: Delete the thread and pretend like it never happened, all the while praising whatever deity they beleive in and themselves for the good work they've done in keeping such outrageous opinion from the free-thinking world?

OR

C: Choose to moderate/filter all future posts whilst contacting via email/pm/icq/phone/carrier pigeon, the original poster of the contentious text to find out what the story is and IF NECCESSARY request an explanation, revision, or edit of the post.

I think I'll lock in C thanks, Eddie!

How hard is it, people? It's not just a picture of a penis or some CHILDISH namecalling/jealousy that we're talking about here. This happens a hundred times a week here! I know that you can't please all of the poeple all of the time but you SURE AS HELL can do a lot better than you are.

In short I think everyone needs to chill the fark out and take some deep breaths as they count to 33. It's all OK if everyone acts like adults.

Peace.

Adrian

[PranK]

Adrian,

I am about to set out on a long journey of writing rules of conduct for the moderators. which, if un-adhered to, could possibly result in them being replaced by a more appropriate member.

Your feedback will certainly help, i appreciate that.

I can also assure you that personally, I have no vandetta's, grudges, jealousy (ok, maybe for the guy that owns the yellow '34 GTR) or any other haste towards any members - i lOVE this place and what it has become, so i dont like to hear when people are upset with how its being run.

Apologies to all if they have been disgruntled by how i myself have handled something in particular. If you have feedback for me or more suggestions, bring them on because we cant make this place better without help from you guys!

Wheels are in motion, i ask you guys to be patient while i try to fix things. If you have q's for me personally - email me or PM me or post it in here, you can be sure that I am checking this thread more than daily.

Christian

[Merli]

My Bigpond Cable has been down all day, and now I have to go out for a friend's farewell dinner/drinks.

I'm sorry that I cannot respond to your replies, but I am very grateful that my vent/rant was left untouched, and even replied to in a civil manner.

I shall address all points directed at me as soon as I can.

Thanks again guys. This is how SAU should work. US, WORKING TOGETHER.

[PranK]

Originally posted by Merli

Thanks again guys. This is how SAU should work. US, WORKING TOGETHER.

amen to that!

[red900ss]

Merli, as I hope you, and everyone else who is part of SAU would already realise, any vent or rant put in a constructive, sensible manner will be dealt with by us in a similar fashion.

There is a law of the universe known as "Entropy" which you may all well be familiar with. Eventually eveything will devolve to it's most base form. In any anonymous, open forum such as this it is almost impossible to fully control what is posted. The best we can hope to do is get the respect of all who contribute so they don't "s**t where they sleep" as it were. The pace, or even if, it turns sour is up to all of us.

If there was a "Rebel" forum started up they would face the same problems down the track. How many times have you seen it happen before??? Let's just make this one work.

As far as the removal of Posts/Threads goes it's a necessary evil. Like it or not we have to have standards. There are many reasons for this including legal, minors visiting the forums, off topic etc.

Call it Nazism, Fascism or Communism....whatever. IMHO, these are all totally inappropriate descriptions of what happens here. Anything that is posted is so trivial in the scheme of things ( by it's very nature of being on an anonymous forum) that being compared to the perpetrators of genocide and persecution just doesn't mean anything.

If you have read through this thread all this way then you probably have enough of an interest in the running of the forums to probably not part of the problem anyway.

To echo the previous sentiments, can't we all just get along???

[red900ss]

Oh yeah...one more thing.

We need a private Admin/Moderators area to be able to openly discuss issues without having to worry about "pus5y footing" around what we are trying to acheive. This is the same as conducting a private conversation with someone. It would be ludicrous to suggest that we post a transrcipt of all conversations about the forums and the Members as well.

[Merli]

Phew... Okay, I'm still a little sleep deprived from the last two nights, so please bare with me

I am so glad that this was recieved positively, and didn't draw knee-jerk reactions like I feared it would.

Troy... I'll explain exactly what happened re: that cack photo.

Basically, I had the photo of the GReddy pillar on my server for my For Sale thread. A friend of mine also had one to sell, but didn't have a photo handy, so he posted the photo I had on my server. I thought I'd be a funny bugger and change it to a photo of a "different type of pillar", show him, laugh at him, and then change it back to the original photo.

Unfortunately, when I attempted to overwrite the cack photo with the original, I uploaded greddypillar.JPG, instead of greddypillar.jpg, and Linux and it's case sensitive filenames obviously didn't overwrite the intended file.

My mistake, I'm sorry. Let this be the end of the whole episode, that Adrian so nicely labelled: "le phalus debacle de merli" :bahaha:

Skyzerr33 wrote:

"Yes i found your responce arrogant, but in the past had been told thats just the way I perceive your personality. "

The problem with the internet, is that it is a sterile, emotionless medium. We have never met in real life, so you have no idea of my personality, and I yours. So it makes it very hard to judge emotion, intent and tone of posts. When I see a post from kabab, I can take a very well educated guess on his INTENDED tone, humour and emotion, because I know him quite well. It is infintely harder to do so with posts from people I don't know. Please take this into account when you interpret another person's post as being "arrogant", as it may not be the intended tone in the slightest.

meggala... I don't expect moderators to sit by their computer 24/7 to attend to reported posts, so it didn't really worry me that it wasn't addressed straight away. Thanks for deleting it when you saw the email!

Kabab... I'd love to go racing with you, but I'm worried you'll go off into the kitty litter and I'll follow straight after you because I'd be too busy laughing to steer

Adrian came up with a few good points and suggestions there... I pretty much agree with everything he said.

Dino. At no point did I say that there shouldn't be a private Moderators Forum. Of course there should. Forum leaders should have a place to discuss the everyday running and future direction of the forums amongst themselves.

It just worries me when these "closed forums" are used as stomping grounds for disgruntled moderators to insult and berate general members behind their backs. That is 100% unacceptible, and does not promote member-moderator confidence.

Basically the whole point of my post was to try and get people to step back and think about what they want SAU to be, and how to achieve it.

Double standards and over-moderation of posts/threads is what we tried to escape from when SAU was started, and I would HATE to see SAU divide because people didn't feel confident enough to vent their thoughts and troubles, instead bottling it all up until they exploded and broke away from SAU.

VENT PEOPLE!!! Share your thoughts and hopefully Our Administrators and Moderators will take your thoughts on board and make moves to fix whatever is bothering you.

[Squizz]

Originally posted by Merli

Then Squizz interjected out of nowhere and said "Yeah, cos it would be such a loss to lose your valuable suggestions of throwing truckloads of money at our cars to fix problems"...

This was 100% uncalled for, and Squizz basically took the opportunity to take a cheap shot at me (with reference to money, see above). So I replied with "laugh laugh laugh, 'Jealous much?' cloud smiley, gay pink smiley"...

If you wish to quote me fine, but how about using what I actually said?

Now Merli, your hostility back and forth may work for you, but it doesn't work for me. I have a distain for you which I make no effort to hide based on the simple fact that you refuse to listen to others when you perceive them to be wrong. The perfect arguement for this is the time I tried to tell you what turbo charger was fitted to my car. Even after providing you links to the Greddy website where you could order the said item you still were adamant that it did not exist, implying that I am a liar.

Now about chequebooks racers, find me a post where I sent Marios car was crap? Can't find one? didn't think so, that's because I quite like his car and visit his website regularly to check for updates etc etc. I even tried to talk to the man in question at drag combat but was less than impressed with his attitude towards me. But that's the man not the car.

If you can afford to throw wads of cash at your car, hard earned or otherwise, then more power to you. But there is nothing wrong with thinking outside the box and doing things on the cheap. My old R32 is a classic example, they bloody thing is now a reliable 13.sec streeter driven everyday by the new owner, but was turbo'ed for under a grand using mostly n/a angine parts. All I got was "no it won't work blah blah blah" and in the grand scheme of things I think it's a far greater achievement because it was built in a weekend by people with next to no experience with **** all tools as a bit of fun, which by the way is why I bother owning cars.

No you can go on and on about how the Internet doesn't show emotion but I think it's pretty clear that my feelings are coming across here.

I feel I moderate fairly and justly, if you think otherwise, take your own advice and just tell me straight out.

[Merli]

I couldn't take exact quotes, because I thought the thread was deleted, but in fact it was moved to the Moderator's Forum.

I thought I paraphrased your quote quite well, but here's the quote:

Originally posted by Squizz

What? And risk losing your oh-so-valuable contributions to the forums telling us all what we do wrong and how a truckload of cash can fix it. We could never do that...

Is that the kind of attitude we should expect from our esteemed moderators?

I seriously think you have some kind of personality disorder... You just won't let things go... You hold grudges like no-one else I know, and quite frankly, it's extremely immature.

Actually I said that I though that there was only a T517z and T618z, but you claimed that there was a T518z, which I had never heard of... After you gave me the link to the GReddy website, listing the T518z, I said something to the effect of "Okay... I guess you learn something new everyday"... How the hell is that "adamant that it did not exist, implying that I am a liar."??

Originally posted by Squizz

find me a post where I sent Marios car was crap?  Can't find one? didn't think so

Where did I say *YOU* made any comments about Mario's car? In fact I specifically said "This is not just limited to you two, but it seems like a lot of people are resentful towards people who do well for themselves..."

You have serious issues Squizz. You think everything I say is hostile, threatening and arrogant. Even if I wasn't even talking about you or to you, you take personal offence at everything I say. It's actually quite amusing... I say something in jest to one of my friends and you will take offence at it... Amusing indeed.

What's all that crap about your R32? Do you want me to congratulate you or something? What the hell did that have to do with the matters at hand? Nothing? Right.

Originally posted by Squizz

I feel I moderate fairly and justly, if you think otherwise, take your own advice and just tell me straight out.

Originally posted by Squizz

Damn these new super-mod instead of admin powers. We'd be two members shorter after this morning I can assure you.  

I've had it, every bloody week I have a run in with Merlis and I am really getting the shits now.

You don't have the maturity to wield powers of a moderator, let alone an administrator. You are rash, impulsive and are too quick on the "BAN" button.

You weren't chosen to be a moderator because "you were the best person for the job", you were chosen because you posted a lot and spent a lot of time browsing the forums. Don't think for one moment that because you are a moderator, you are better than everyone else my little friend. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[Squizz]

Originally posted by Merli

You weren't chosen to be a moderator because "you were the best person for the job", you were chosen because you posted a lot and spent a lot of time browsing the forums.

And that conclusion is drawn from what?

[Merli]

Originally posted by Squizz

And that conclusion is drawn from what?

Observation, Attitude, and conversations with other Administrators/Moderators.

Thanks for your time. If you don't have anything else constructive to add to what was an attitude and insult-free thread, please feel free not to post here.

[Squizz]

Well then, would a resignation make you happy? I'm here for the forums mate, not my ego.

[Squizz]

Actually, even better, put it to a poll, let the members decide, open and fair, should I stay or go... I'll even let you open the poll so I have no control over the wording.

[Merli]

I have no say in who becomes a moderator.

That is not my role here.