Best Practices

[douglasrfix]

Let's understand the variable here: LargePrime left. With everyone being polite and allowing the forum to grow, we actually managed to take a step forward.

 

We all can work to improve our social skills, including myself without exception. As far as your own social skills go, if you had made such an offensive remark to anyone else here on this forum, I'd be left with few choices, including consideration to ban your account. You have done this before to others, and have been asked nicely to refrain from your offensive posts. Please stop, for everyone's sake.

 

I personally disapprove of organizational censorship. I prefer a more burtal approach which is to personally ignore (using in this case, the ignore list each of us can build) the offending source. It is difficult to hold an individual or organization responsible and therefore biased when each individual that disapproves takes the initiative and is therefore invisible. Most people eventually give up shouting when they decide that no one is listening.

[douglasrfix]

I'm sure we'll all be better for it if we can hit the reset button on all of this and continue onward building our planes. This is a Discussion Forum for ALL planners, builders, and flyers to participate in.

Here, here. Clearly this thread is rapidly loosing airspeed and the ground is reaching up to smite it. I'm done with this thread and will revive the discussion after I have done some research so that metrics of some sort can be evaluated instead of raw opinion. Sorry about the heat generated, just looking for some light.

[dust]

dust said

 

"This is the politest and most considerate place on the internet i have found in 16 years. Diferences of opinion are not made in a negative way, and shouldn't be and appear not to be here. Thanks"

 

I did not say this on THIS forum. I said it on http://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/

 

The level of knowledge on that forum surpases this forum by a hundredfold and when a point is raised or a question is asked a POLITE answer is given.

 

On this forum, more often than not a condescending answer is given. The people that are giving these answers, i hear, are quite nice in person, but, on this forum they are curt, blunt, condescending and often times just "plane" rude.

 

enjoy the build, come to "plane day", they are running out

 

Dust

[LargePrime]

Just so we dont forget the history and so the casual reader can be informed.

 

Where Jon insulted Dust and never explained really what he said and why he said it

But really didn't want it known what he said.

 

http://www.canardzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=679

http://www.canardzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=667

there are more but i didn't want to waste any more time on it.

 

What started it for me personaly, was marc zetlin rebuking a total newb in public on a total non event, that all but marc feel is common practice on the net. What does the reader think?

 

http://www.canardzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=682&highlight=patterson+largeprime

 

Where he banned me, not because i insulted anyone, but because I rejected the idea we should slap newbs.

 

http://www.canardzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=690&page=2&pp=15

 

I never told you Joe that i never felt you caved in. Thats not it. It was you were slaped around in public on your, what 5th post? Over total BS.

 

For the reader I have posted here plenty. I have disagreed with jon on how he treats people, and lets people be treated. I have No history of insulting people or anything at all. In Jons mind my "history" was disagreeing with marc as publicaly as he rebukes newbs.

[Jon Matcho]

LP, congrats, you have taken yet another thread into the toilet. I would throw you a rope to climb out of the hole you've dug yourself into, but it seems you're way to proud to consider acting the least bit social.

 

For the record (again), nobody has been banned from, although LP you seem to be trying your hardest. Prior to me there was little-to-no administration, and now there is just a touch. I do not necessarily need to be political about every maneuver, but I shall endeavor to do that in the future. In the end, my responsibility is to keep this forum intact and growing for the next 10+ years, and if I need to be blunt about it along the way, I will.

 

Here are what my initial thoughts and differences were that I tried to communicate to you guys:

 

to dust: please let others have a chance to post -- you're a valuable and contributing member, but you're not the only builder with something to say and it's becoming hard to "hear" anything else at times

to LP: please be nice to others

 

I did not communicate this as well as I could have, but this was my intent.

 

The forum appears to be done with this thread, as am I, but you can have the last public word if you like. It's up to you if you want to fan this fire further, or we can get back to contributing some substance.

 

I decided to build a Cozy because these forums and the www.cozybuilders.org site and list simply existed. I have great appreciation for Marc Zeitlin generously giving us that means of support. Go to a fly-in, shake hands with some of these good people, and you just might change your tune.

[mplafleur]

I'm sure that I must be reading 'between the lines' incorrectly. Are you saying we have a member that posts 'too much'?

 

This is not possible.

 

It would be just as bad to say that the rest of us post 'too little'. Come on guys and gals, we're not meeting our daily minimum post requirements!

 

Except for improper language, behaviour, etc, all posts are encouraged.

 

Please post away!

 

As for the rest of you...

[Wayne Hicks]

<Mike LaFleur said:> Suggesting they have to go elsewhere and read all the archived e-mails, old newsletters, Rutan's CPs, books and God knows what....

 

I guess I should answer that. Those reference sources are certainly good places to START while waiting for some enterprising soul with too much time on his/her hands to compile these source ideas into a single place. Sorry if it sounded like I meant it as a mandatory.

 

For the record, I think an all-encompassing document/web source is a GREAT idea. I'd compile the document myself, but I've got an airplane to build! I'm more than willing to add my input.....

 

.....AND THAT'S MY POINT! I know that ALOT of us are already trying to do this with the Zeitlin archives, the Zeitlin FAQs, and the tips, hints, suggestions on builder websites.

 

Take the FAQs, for example. I wrote 7 of the chapter FAQs by reading each and every email over the years that were available. I distilled them into the FAQs you see there. They contain all the good stuff, the wheat! The chaf (spelling?) and the B.S. was left on the floor. The other authors have done the same. If you READ and UNDERSTAND those FAQs, then there's really no need to go back through the archives. Marc set these up as legacy, time savers for those that would follow.

 

Take the builder websites. Rick Maddy clearly categorizes his Tricks and Tips. I present my Lessons Learned. Etc. (There are others...)

 

All I was trying to do was share resources. As a newbie, I "discovered" these resources one by one. I was like a sponge looking for established ways of doing things, as well as the better mousetraps, and off-the-wall ideas. Of course, I ran them all through my own filter, deciding for myself what to keep and what to discard. I even invented a few myself....

 

......which leads me to my long-winded, last comment. Personally, I'm ABSOLUTELY convinced my process of jigging/assembling the fuselage upside-down is BY FAR the best way to complete Chapter 6. I'm very passionate of my idea. Only three builders I know of have followed me. Am I upset about the rest of you NOT following me? Do I think you're all a bunch of idiots? OF COURSE NOT! Mousetraps aren't for everyone. How we collectively decide what is, is not a best practice is a subjective exercise in futility. Maybe we can all meet around burgers and beer twice a year at Sun N Fun and OSH?

 

Now, if you DON'T use drywall screws, then you ARE an IDIOT!

 

====================

Wayne Hicks

Cozy IV Plans #678

http://www.maddyhome.com/canardpages/pages/waynehicks/index.html

[LargePrime]

You reap what you sow Jon.

 

Let's really understand the variable here

 

We had/have a great community that was growing and helping people and Jon Match became administrator and started offending people and everyone stopped posting.

 

Jon never did post all the offensive messages he sent to Dust. Dust posted them and Jon immediatly DELETED them. So we could not see what he really is like. I have been told he did the same thing to others but they did not say anything.

 

With no warning, no private message, no personal email to me Jon banned my account. He sent me a reactivation email, THAT DID NOT WORK.

After me not posting for some time dust asked me whats up and I told him I was banned. After Dust and Clifford posted on this, Jon sent me a second reactivation email to my "problem" account and did work.

 

I guess as a new admin he was feeling his oats. I do not belive I ever had a problem with my email. But if i did there are a thousand ways to fix it without banning me.

 

I never posted any form of an offensive post prior to zetlin slapping around Joe Peterson. Even today I, after this whole thing turned my stomach so much I did not come here for months, I am still one of the top posters. The only one i used a "offensive" word in was the one above.

 

Even the posts Jon calles offensive were me calling light to the silly behavior of zetlin and matcho.

[Jon Matcho]

(Sorry Wayne, I know you tried to get us back on topic, but I thought best not to spawn another thread at this point.)

 

If anyone is falling for any of this nonsense, please feel free to private message or e-mail me directly and I will be happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have.

 

As Wayne has posted here, and many members have mentioned to me privately, public rants and quibbles like this do nothing positive for this forum, let alone our community of planners, builders, and flyers.

 

With all that said, I need to dispute the following statement with some actual facts.

 

 

We had/have a great community that was growing and helping people and Jon Match became administrator and started offending people and everyone stopped posting.

I became Administrator of these forums on November 11, 2003. Since that time, I have read nearly every post in order to come up with the now current hierarchy. The original forum hierarchy left something to be desired, leaving members posting 95% of the time in the Coffee House section (I have since filed many to their appropriate sections). Messages were being thrown around liberally in chat room fassion, occassionaly off-topic and without substance.

 

After feedback by several members, I agreed to take the task of raising the bar on the quality vs. quantity factor, improving the overall value of the forum. While "chatting" is fine for certain forum sections, like the Coffee House, I also did not want this mode of communication to become the forum-wide norm. To offload the post-chatting, I created the Chat Room section, with Chat software to quench the thirst for real-time messaging.

 

On December 17, 2003, www.canardzone.com was born, just a Web page, and a wrapper for these forums. It was just thrown together as part of the Web address, mainly to connect with search engines. Given the time available, the site unfortunately only supports Microsoft Internet Explorer versions. However, the forums remain fully accessible through many browsers, thanks to the vBulletin software itself.

 

I have also put in a fair amount of time to move the site to a dedicated environment, address security concerns, upgrage to include new functionality, and market the site. This also included further visibility to search engines on the Internet. This past Sun-n-Fun, I brought ~200 Canard Zone business cards to hand out to prospective builders. I left half with Nat at the Cozy booth, and handed out the rest to people I met. I brought 50 back.

 

Most all of this was based on members suggestions and feedback.

 

As you can see from the charts below, posts and membership are hardly on a downward trend -- they are at record levels, even when paired with efforts to effectively reduce the post count (chat room posts). In spite of some of the misguided and destructive comments made in this thread, it seems to me that the forum is thriving with activity. I'll let everyone judge for themselves.

 

 

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