First Pepe plush revealed!

[Luke]

Originally posted by beaker
But what am I to do?

I'm not attacking you here Cory, but if it truly pains you, the really smart thing is to not create the crap in the first place. You brought Jessica into this yourself, Nate and Artie are just very occasional TP posters active much more here, and this has absolutely nothing to do with Toughpigs, in-fighting, Day 9, Phillips problems etc etc. I know it would be a great excuse to claim some sympathy if it were, but it's just pure fantasy. You've just been doing this kind of thing as an attention seeking effort for the past few weeks, tumbleweeds and all that, you admitted it, you said sorry - thats fine, but you knew people were getting annoyed with it and you carried on.

While this 'Pepe' thing isn't the biggest of deals on it's own and quite funny at first, you were warned by Jamie that some people wouldn't like it and you should have realised that in combination with the other stuff thats been happening some people would take offense with you. It's not part of some conspiracy - the Palisades forum people are ragging on you for the same reason as people here and they're just action figure collectors, defintely not some big ol scary Toughpigs lynchmob. As far as i'm concerned you apologised and i'm happy to leave it there but trying to bring other people into it to divert attention will only blow this up even more.

I like the regular Cory - even when i disagree with you, but sometimes you have these times (like the KSY thread) where you'd be better off taking a chill pill and not posting when you're in those moods, so that you don't have to clear up the mess later on. I think it'd be kinder on yourself - if you don't like a post, a user or a site to just ignore it and concentrate on the things you do like - just relax a little dude, it's a Muppet site for craps sake, we're not waging nuclear war on each other. I hope this didn't sound like an attack - i just want you to get the point that we all have to be responsible for our own actions and if we don't like what comes from them - better not to do stuff that people will flame you for in the first place. I wouldn't want you to turn into a monk or something though !

Jamie

You have some great advice there, and i respect you very much as a friend and a member of the forum. It's a little late though to take the moral high ground and decide the thread should remain open for 'productive discussion' when you've been personally involved in this and could have saved it from happening in the first place. As you say, you gave Cory the link and didn't realise it would be posted, and then warned him what could happen when it was too late - kudos to you for that - but you know Cory as well as i do, and although a lot of the recent heat has happened at Palisades which you might not be aware of, you're a smart guy and would have noticed the way the Cormeister was acting lately here and how people had responded to it - maybe as Moderator, and one who had a feeling this could go down badly, you might have either persuaded the entropic one that while a potentially funny joke, it was probably not the right time for him to do this or just used your powers of deletion and saved the other forum members from this mess. I know it's a learning curve, and you may have a more relaxed personal opinion about this, but as you say, maybe there could be defined rules as to what the mods do in this kinda situation so things are clearer and sticky situations prevented. I know you have much more important things to do with the graphics and stuff, but it would help some.

Phillip

This may sound like one enournous over-reaction but apparently you want productive discussion on how these things should be handled so :- I'm sure you realise that it's not all about how many members you can get signed up to a forum or how many prizes you can give away in one day - you and the other 'staff', if you do intend this place to be the 'central' site for Muppet fans (including YOUNG Muppet fans) to hang out, also have a moral responsibility to them while they are here. It's no different from running a 'real life' club and letting young kids do drugs in the doorway. There doesn't seem to be any well laid out rules here, and the moderators don't seem to be well informed on when they should and shouldn't react to something, and how they should react. If you just leave it vague and upto each persons discretion they obviously all react differently according to their own ideas, but the downside is it makes the policy uncohesive, and gives the impression you guys couldn't moderate your way out of a paper bag. Obviously you can't babysit everybody, but sometimes these things have been left to run and run when they should have been addressed much quicker and more responsibly - it only took 'Palisades' five minutes to decide that the 'Pepe Plush' thread, seeing how it blew up, was something they didn't want on their forum and got rid of it - and i think that was a lot kinder to Cory than putting him through all this. He's been given enough rope to hang himself time and time again here on countless occasions and so have quite a few other people in dubious threads. Although it's cool you obviously believe that people should have their say, freedom of speech etc, it'd be very cool if sometimes in recurring situations like the one's Cory seems to get himself into, you could be cruel to be kind so to speak and give these people some kind of 'time out' period so they can get their thoughts together before creating even more trouble for themselves, and close the threads so that the other forum members don't have to deal with all this going on and on too.

I'm sure some action at times would be welcomed, not criticised, and would make the forum a much happier place. At least some clearer rules when you get around to implementing your 'forum guidelines' will give people a much better idea of what is/isn't acceptable and what to expect, hopefully making the moderators job a lot more clearer and easier too. Some great work goes on here, the site looks pretty, the competitons are a great idea, great content new and old, but as the site and forum grows (especially with the freebies and action figure news) so will the problems - especially with more and more younger kids joining who might not understand how things are here, in contrast to some of the other forums they might hang out at (hence all the gaps between posting and incredibly long sigs) so making the rules clear for everyone might be a better option now things have changed than relying on people to be adult about things - which seems to go horribly horibbly wrong occasionally. Just my thoughts and opinions, not like i'm running the place ...... the challenge is yours ! (Gulp !)

 

[frogboy4]

Luke

In life, the real solved arguments are the ones that you worked out yourself without other people stepping in. But sometimes that is necessary. Being a moderator is not my life. It is simply a part of my day. It is our job to watch over the forum and moderate it - not control it.

I stepped in when things started going too far - not to take some moral high ground, but to create something productive out of the argument. There is no real dialogue in a flame debate, but there is value in calmly talking out the issues.

I honestly don't think I would have done anything differently. I feel that Cory had a right to post that picture just as you had a right to debate his motives. I don't agree with Palisades deleting that particular thread and I don't thing Phillip should close this unless there is more unproductive arguing.

As a moderator, we can't step in every time someone gets a hangnail. We sometimes have to wait for the situation to play out. Most of the time the discussion is dropped or the parties involved work it out.