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Last post Author Topic: Two classes of membership here?  (Read 38081 times)

Josh

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #50 on: November 17, 2012, 12:54 PM »
^Agree w/wraith on that one. Wouldn't be surprised to see the lock removed before long.

Removed

cmpm

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #51 on: November 17, 2012, 12:57 PM »
lol, good one Josh!

cmpm

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #52 on: November 17, 2012, 12:58 PM »
I know you meant the 'lock', but I took it 2 ways.

clean

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #53 on: November 17, 2012, 01:07 PM »
That's what the lapdogs are for: nice senior cop, bad sub-cops: the work is done, and that's what counts.

No irony, 40hz is one of the posters here who make this forum a lot less dull than it would be without him, I've seen this all the year long I've followed this forum.

Sorry for repeating myself in the second paragraph or so, above, the field for entering your post has been a nightmare one year ago, it's a nightmare today. (And it reverts to the upper part of your text so you don't see what you're writing. So whenever you don't write elsewhere, then do the pasting here...)

Steve Jobs said, "I'm an a...", in full letters, and he was proud of it. So, I think I owe my being kicked out here to some words with asterisks, in spite of my explanations, when a simple deletion of the incriminated paragraph in one of my posts would have be largely sufficient. (And at the time, I made a note I was kicked out by a certain mouser, but perhaps I just presumed so.)

Both of my problems, btw, are resolved, the first one by extensive use of AHK, the second one by the two-screen setup I detailed in the other thread. As these posts from November 2011 confirm, yes, I consider sw, and I consider treatment of users. Have a look at the forum policy (you must accept before entering the forum) at the Directory "Opus" forum. Isn't it illogical to pretend your sw is the best of its kind, and then not allow any mentioning of competition sw's, when it should be of much interest rather often to discuss the respective realization of a feature in similar sw? (x2, XY and SC all permit this kind of discussion, and I own a paid license for any of those - not for DO, and that's not a coincidence: If you allow sw developers to treat you like s*** - delete the paragraph here -, they will never cease to do so, hence the interest of buying 3 competing products instead of just 1. And then, DO ist not THAT splendid, e.g. compare processing of metadata in x2 and DO.)

Citations are 1:1, with typos and all:

https://www.donation....php?topic=28852.new

Better Mouse Drivers? Mouse Driver Tweaks? Shift-Click, Control-Click, Scope...
« on: Today at 05:35:11 AM »

Hello everybody,

I

For more than 20 years now, I've been using mice, from Logitech, and I'm profoundly unhappy with them, because of driver limitations. Once, I bought a Microsoft mouse, just for having a change to try the driver, since no information whatsoever was given, neither by Microsoft nor within the web in general, as to the possibilities of its driver, except if you installed the driver, AND a physical MS mouse; the MS mouse had been advertized as "programmable" which was a big lie at least at that time; perhaps they amended the driver in the meantime, but then, I would have to buy another MS mouse to find out...

"Programmable" with Logitech means, at this time - please correct me if I'm wrong, I own an old Logitech mouse, and an old Logitech driver consequently - that you can 1) assign many Windows commands to the mouse buttons (one button, one such command, that is), and 2) assign "any" key combination to these buttons (one key combination to any of these buttons, e.g. 3 key combinations to 3 different buttons, but no sequences of such commands on any such button).

"Programmable" with Microsoft meant, at the time, only alternative 1) above, without alternative 2), meaning that you didn't have the slightest chance to assign a macro, within an external macro program, to a key combination, and then trigger that combination with a MS mouse mouseclick, as has indeed been possible with Logitech mice.

Thus, "programmable" with Logitech means "can trigger macros at least", whilst "programmable" (that was indeed their advertizing at the time) with Microsoft meant "can't even trigger a simple key of your choice, let alone trigger external macros, we're simply lying to you". (Has this changed, in the meantime?)

II

What I've been searching for, for more than 20 years now, without ever finding it, is, as the title indicates, the possibility to assign a shift-click, and / or a control-click, to a mouse button, on any mouse out there.

Shift-Click / Control-Click: I'm not one-handed, but there are one-handed people needing this feature; I would need it for selecting several graphics elements in programs like Freehand, etc., while my other hand lies on a print-out of what I see on my screen, progressively reaching out for the elements there, in order to indicate "done" for my decision if those elements are to be included in the selection or not, and depending on my hand-written notes on that print-out; since I need my second hand for pressing the shift key manually, I lose focus on my print-out again and again, having to do a lot of visual switching back and forth between print-out and screen, just for checking if things to be done have been done already or not yet: It's a continual pain in the youknowwhere - younger people with better short-term memory could perhaps do without that feature, with less incredible fuss than the lack of it causes me.

Control-Click: Even for the general public, this feature would come extremely handy, since we all know that in the MS Internet Explorer (at least, and I suppose, other browsers do the same or likewise?) a click upon a link replaces the currently displayed web page (or whatever), whilst a control-click opens that page within an additional tab: We all know how extremely handy such a function is, and to not have to use your two hands for such a simple command you need 100 times each day would be extremely handy for everyone. (BTW, it would be far more logical since it's a mouse command, and why then, your principal hand working with the mouse, your secondary hand must touch the keyboard then? It's when both of your hands are on the keyboard that such needs of keyboard use are logical, not when you're "away from the keyboard" for a moment or more.)

Shift-Control-Click: Even better would then be the possibility to COMBINE such additional keys, since, in IE8, etc., that click would open the clicked-on link within a new tab, but without your current tab leaving focus: Perfect for doing several links in a row in a given web page, without succombing to the "lost in hyperspace" phenomenon or having to switch back and forth after each link clicking.

III

Many a macro prog allows for scope-based, individual execution of a macro, which means that you can assign a key combination to a (Logitech - what about MS now ?) mouse, let's say control-F12, whilst in the macro prog, you assign one macro to control-F12 if the caption of the focus window contains the name of application a, whilst the same control-F12 (triggered both times by the same key pressing and / or by the same mouse button pressing), within application b, would trigger another macro - this works like a charm if you've got the right macro program and a mouse allowing for assigning key combinations to a mouse button.

But then, this does NOT work for assigning such a key combination (or a Windows command) to a mouse button, with scope any (other) applications, whilst in ONE application only, the scope of that mouse button would be to send a shift-click (or some other "special" click), because for such a behavior, you'd need to have this different, scope-wise behavior within the mouse driver yet, not within your macro prog only.

The importance of such scope-driven alternatives within the mouse driver would be, assign a special mouse-click to a given mouse button, but for within a special program only, whilst that mouse button, by this special assignment, will not to be "sacrified" for every other prog - most "good" mice (handling-wise) just don't have more than 5 buttons (or more than 5 easily reachable buttons if ever), so there's a need to have all these buttons available for important commands in all of your progs.

Hence:

Please comment on the different aspects enumerated here, please, and especially on the problem to obtain shift-/control-clicks with ONE mouse click, by native implementation into a mouse driver of any mouse, or by an existing tweak of such a mouse driver - or if there's the possibility to do such a tweak, by programming a little add-on, for some driver (whilst some native drivers could allow for such tweaking, while with others, that might be impossible or far too complicated to realize; when I've just mentioned Logitech and MS here, that's because I know these mice and their (in the case of MS, old) drivers; I'm in no way bound to these if there are possibilities for mice of other brands.)

https://www.donation...x.php?topic=18160.25

Hello everyone,

We're November 2011 now, and I've just tried this product, and I'm not pleased with it.

My observations (please comment):

- Normally, windows got 3 buttons, AWM adds FOUR others, making it 7, which is unnecessary and ugly also on big windows, not speaking of tiny dialog / message windows that also get the additional 4 - this is UNACCEPTABLE. Since somebody here said, "the group button is enough for me", is that to say that when trying, I missed a function to preset that not 4, but only 1 additional button is added to every window? (If you want additional functionality, shortkeys are fine, no need whatsoever for 4 additional buttons forced upon you.)

- Somebody here said that "on opening", windows can trigger many pre-defined actions. Well, we need to specify and clarify here: They distinguish between first opening, and then, disappearing / reappearing. For first opening, there's a whole catalog of possible actions to trigger indeed, very fine, but for any disappearance / reappearance, possible actions are extremely limited to the point of making all this virtually useless. When you start your programs, you can do a lot of actions yourself, manually, no big need to have AWM do these actions for you, but it's afterwards, when programs run, for hours, days, that on opening and minimizing windows again and again, actions triggered by this would be more than handy.

- I dared asking them, kindly, about this distinction between very first opening of windows where a lot of triggering is possible, and further opening / closing of windows (= minimizing, resizing of windows) where almost nothing is possible, and they DID NOT ANSWER me. I call this the "a**ho** factor - not to designate people but their behavior -, developers being responsive or not to INDIVIDUAL communications - quite evident that they are "responsive" in a public forum like this one -, and this "a**ho** factor with Actual products seem to be 100 p.c., as I see it for now; it goes without saying that for any profeessional use, a prog with such a high a**ho** factor is useless even if it's better than this product is at this very moment.

- What about the memory leak discussed above? This product has got a "mirror" function, and such, and I had thought for a moment that would make it suitable to be used in a security cameras environment (where dedicated progs cost a fortune), but with that memory leak (and WITHOUT the above-mentioned functions: trigger actions when windows pop up, after their initial very first opening), that idea is not to be brought into practice, unfortunately.

- To my knowledge, this product does NOT offer any VARIANTS of opening for a given window? Let me explain: Most of my windows, I'd like them to open just normal, full size (which is not "maximized" but simply full-screen, with borders); but for SOME, I really need a window manager, hence my search for one. And what I want for this group of windows, I want to have a CHOICE: Normal behavior = normal, full size, AND alternatively, some other size so that a specific additional prog can take the remaining desktop real estate, and I want to have shortkeys to display those windows in their normal state, or in reduzed-size state... or better explained, I need shortkeys not for their display, but for their current state setting:

- One of my own macros (= external to AWM) would trigger the display of a given window in normal state (by sending the shortkey for setting the window's display setting to normal, then by sending the shortkey for displaying the window).

- Another one of my own macros would then send the shortkey for setting the window's ALTERNATIVE display state (= let's say to "leftbound, 2/3 of the screen's width"), send a similar shortkey to set the setting of a second window to alternative display state (= in this example, to "rightbound, 1/3 of screen's width"), and finally "open" BOTH applications (= display those alternative displays of both windows by activating both applications both running in the background = in minimized state). As you can see here, I don't want to do AWM all this, I just want it to store alternative display states for given windows, that then could be accessed by external macros / scripts; as far as I know, all this is NOT possible at this moment. (And the "always on top" option for given windows, available in almost every such window manager, is far too primitive to be of any use as such, since most of the time, this "on top" you don't want it to be "always", but in combination with specific other windows only. Which is all to say that such programs, especially when the cost 50 dollars, should NOT only give presets once-and-for-all, but should make available FLEXIBLE settings that can be accessed upon request whenever you need them.)

- So I de-installed the software, and got one of these "bye, would you leave your comment please" web redirection screens that become more and more common nowadays, but with that difference mentioned by somebody else here: They offer a discount then, which is to say that they say: "We acknowlege that our prog is too expensive, so would you take it for something less, then?" - had it not been for the 4 additional (mandatory???) buttons it adds to every and even the tiniest window (people complained about that in 2008, now 2011 is quite over - anything new on this, then that I might have missed?), I might even had said ok to that offer:

- So if you want this product for less, install the trial, de-install it... and get... not 50 p.c. off like some years ago, but 30 p.c. off, which makes it something like 33 dollars instead of 50 (I must say that I did not encounter such offer, on de-installing software, yet, and marketing-wise, it's very clever imo: I know some other progs that simply don't offer the value for their price, but at a lesser one, they'd become interesting again!)

mouser

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #54 on: November 17, 2012, 01:37 PM »
Couple of points:

I'm finding it hard to follow much of what you are saying and I can't say I get the warmest feeling from the posts you have made recently,

BUT:

As I understand it, you have now posted the content of 2 messages of yours that were deleted.

And I do see that the account you used to post those two messages above was in fact banned by a moderator in November 2011 because they concluded your account was spamming, when looking at your posts it seems to me that they were not spam.

I can kind of see why the moderator may have thought you were spamming -- you signed up and then made 2 giant posts within 2 hours of each other.  Your account was not banned because of the content of your posts, it was banned because we were over eager in thinking you were a spammer.

From looking at the posts it seems clear you were not spamming and your account should not have been banned.

I apologize for that. It should not have happened.

I wish we had been made aware of the problem at the time as we would have removed the ban right away.

I can understand why having that account banned with no explanation would have given you a bad feeling about our site, and a feeling that we were trying to censor your posts.  Especially if you took a long time writing those long posts (ironically the length of those two posts was no doubt part of what made the moderator suspect it was spam).

Please do feel free to re-post those 2 posts that were deleted.

Again let me encourage you and anyone else who feels they were incorrectly labeled a spammer to contact me about it.  Realize that we deleted dozens of spammers a day whose only purpose is to post advertising on this forum.  Often such spammers are obvious, but sometimes they employ tricks that we have adapted to and implemented special alerts to catch.  But we're not infallible, and there's always the possibility that we have jumped the gun.  Perhaps one thing we can put in place now is a message to those whose accounts have been banned with clearer info on who to contact if they feel they were wrongly banned.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2012, 09:46 AM by mouser, Reason: struck out comment about previous posts »

40hz

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #55 on: November 17, 2012, 02:03 PM »
@Mouser - FWIW, some places with auto-spammer systems I'm familiar with have have introduced a semi-obligatory "come say hello and tell us a little bit about yourself" first post request - and require some non-privacy invading info in the user profile be filled in. Supposedly this goes a very long way towards intercepting many of the more clever bots and spammers we're seeing.

People who don't introduce themselves first get watched fairly closely (and occasionally moderated) for their first several posts. People who don't put meaningful answers in the very few required profile spaces get e-mailed back and reminded to do so to gain posting privileges. Usually a spammer or bot won't provide a real e-mail address.

mouser

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #56 on: November 17, 2012, 02:07 PM »
I think with the new system we have in place, which alerts us when people change their profiles or edit posts to include spam, we have a pretty good way to spot spammers, and I'd rather not add additional hurdles for new posters to jump through.

This was simply a case where a moderator jumped the gun and should have more carefully read the posts and given the benefit of the doubt to the poster.  With our new alert system it's not a big deal if we don't catch a potential spammer right away so we can afford to be less trigger-happy.

I think the better solution is as I said earlier, a clear notice to users whose accounts have been banned about what has happened and a way to contact us if we are wrong.  Many of us, if we found ourselves suddenly banned for spamming a forum that we didn't spam on, would contact the forum and say "wtf?!!!!"  but I can understand that some people would just walk away angry.  We can't guarantee that premature banning will never happen again, but we can make it much easier for people to contact us in such a case.

wraith808

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #57 on: November 17, 2012, 02:39 PM »
That's what the lapdogs are for: nice senior cop, bad sub-cops: the work is done, and that's what counts.

Actually... not.  I actually totally agree with a lot of the bad sub-cops and think that certain things should be regulated.  In every case (not just a few that come to light because of dissenters), Mouser chimes in on the side of let it slide, no matter what happens.  That's why everyone jumped in on mouser's side- no matter if you agree or disagree on his policies, etc., he won't censor nor jump in, except in the case of spam, and won't even really defend, other than the most passive of ways.  People that lead by example like that, and don't take offense tend to garner support as they don't cross the line even to defend themselves.

Sorry if your experience has made you assume otherwise, but he's very much always been the voice of reason.  I've found myself on the other side of some of his opinions, and found myself less for that- mostly because in the end, reason used well is more than a match for any sort of righteous indignation.

cmpm

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #58 on: November 17, 2012, 03:29 PM »
Well, I think there is a little responsibility on the banned poster to make it right too.
If the person wants to make it right.
The administrator's email is easy enough to find.

Renegade

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #59 on: November 17, 2012, 10:25 PM »
My very first post here could well have been considered spam if I had not written it like I did.

https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=896.0

Hello Zaine (and all),

First, just to be clear, my name is Ryan Smyth and I'm the ALTools Evangelist at ESTsoft. But maybe ALVangelist sounds better~!  :o   I also maintain the ALTools English web site at http://www.altools.net (and a lot of other things too).

...

(Just FYI - I no longer work for ESTsoft.)

First posts are always touchy simply because there are so many spammers out there trying to game the system. They really ruin it for people.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

vrgrrl

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #60 on: November 17, 2012, 10:31 PM »
I don't know...yours sounds pretty reasonable to me! Well, written, etc.

Paul Keith

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #61 on: November 18, 2012, 12:25 AM »
That's what the lapdogs are for: nice senior cop, bad sub-cops: the work is done, and that's what counts.

Actually... not.  I actually totally agree with a lot of the bad sub-cops and think that certain things should be regulated.  In every case (not just a few that come to light because of dissenters), Mouser chimes in on the side of let it slide, no matter what happens.  That's why everyone jumped in on mouser's side- no matter if you agree or disagree on his policies, etc., he won't censor nor jump in, except in the case of spam, and won't even really defend, other than the most passive of ways.  People that lead by example like that, and don't take offense tend to garner support as they don't cross the line even to defend themselves.

Sorry if your experience has made you assume otherwise, but he's very much always been the voice of reason.  I've found myself on the other side of some of his opinions, and found myself less for that- mostly because in the end, reason used well is more than a match for any sort of righteous indignation.

Can't blame him. It's common in the internet and if he felt passionate about his posts being removed, even more so.

I think one thing to keep in mind for the future is the idea two posts hurts more than one.

Everyone keeps bringing up first post but someone who was banned for their 1st post is more likely to be pissed and contact mouser or leave forever with no comment.

Someone who has one of their post enter circulation and then get banned after their 2nd post would much more likelier feel corruption/censorship was afoot.

I think another flaw with this being a public topic is that it can cross the line between explaining the situation and defending the admin as more personality enters the thread.

It's not like we're acting any better.

Without getting into specifics (of details I don't know of)

The whole established community is typical of a sub-cop behaviour and it's typical of many forums. There used to be a time when this card isn't pulled here/and there were less mouser defenders. We let mouser do his job and we share our personal stake. Nowadays, we're more groupthinky but then we don't get enough troubles to really be a "we" but anyone who sees us saying something nice about mouser is likely to think that we're a "we" since they don't have any idea of who the troublesome posters are. They have to rely on certain established usernames they follow until they actually post.

The only position we're slightly above of is that we don't gangbang on users but that still doesn't change the times we may make a joke inside a topic where the thread maker may be feeling the strains of serious drama.

Equally, mouser is not really as reasonable as many of us are depicting him with our words. This is typical behaviour for forum admins:

can't say I get the warmest feeling from the posts you have made recently

It's a common boss admin power statement and mouser's not above this.

The only difference is that mouser is really a reasonable admin who can admit his mistakes and is willing to converse with us beyond the normal levels of reasonable admin. That doesn't change the reality that any newcomer who hears words like this wouldn't immediately expect forum admin corruption or at least expect that only forum sycophants can get away with saying anything controversial.

It doesn't mean mouser should never use these words nor was he wrong/I'm morally against him stating these words. It's just the bare reality, we're not a 100% rational forum community. This is still one of the best forums out there and mouser is a reason for that but we're not a group of people that is above hypocrisy such as the Bartelsmedia statement may have applied back when DC didn't have a The Basement section but not anymore or the idea of group of friends when many of us argue within our community all the time and it was these heated arguments that made us respect mouser's way of being an admin. Not the fact that we're posters that are similar to many forums where we get along because we always share the same ideas or we're smart enough to avoid being banned everytime we say something controversial. Even the first post rule, the mere suggestion of it, shows given a chance we'd rather abide by the same hypocritical and irrational idea of raising a rule as events were forecoming rather than let this situation play out and only after do we establish a rule in order to avoid making the victim sound like it's their fault for being dumb at not being a rule/forum veteran when they first signed up.

« Last Edit: November 18, 2012, 12:36 AM by Paul Keith »

40hz

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #62 on: November 18, 2012, 01:14 AM »
@PaulKeith - quick question. Did you read this entire thread and the one that this one emerged out of?

worstje

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #63 on: November 18, 2012, 02:25 AM »
Equally, mouser is not really as reasonable as many of us are depicting him with our words. This is typical behaviour for forum admins:

can't say I get the warmest feeling from the posts you have made recently

It's a common boss admin power statement and mouser's not above this.

...

It doesn't mean mouser should never use these words nor was he wrong/I'm morally against him stating these words. It's just the bare reality, we're not a 100% rational forum community.

...

(Bolding courtesey of me, so I can keep PaulKeith's words in context rather than focus on one snippet that serves my point. Snipping the rest though; it's too long a post! ;D)

So, PaulKeith, after reading that I am somewhat puzzled. On one hand, you are against mouser speaking out with his thoughts and impressions, which imo are as valid as anyone elses, simply because he is an admin and is easily misunderstood as him throwing his 'weight' around. On the other hand, you praise him for speaking along with all of us, in-depth and taking the time to involve himself as opposed to a more hands-off style of moderating and administering a forum. There is no perfect solution for something like this, and I don't think there ever will be either.

I myself have not read any of the other relevant topics, so I do not know who this 'clean' is on his normal account, nor do I need or want to know. However, from what I have seen, the negativity in this thread has not come from mouser or the moderators, but rather from the tone set at the beginning where all kinds of bad things are implied and suggested, thus basically putting mouser in a position where he either bows his head in apology, or slams down the hammer of the law and is called the not-so-benevolent dictator. (The apology happened, for those too lazy to read back.)

Or in other words: in my eyes, the way this topic started blocked off any kind of civilized discussion, pushing it towards the extremes of either defending or attacking, apologizing or punishing. Likewise, there are those who should have tried to avoid the 'protect mouser' mindset that PaulKeith referred to; it just reinforces the appearance of an established order that keeps newer members out. Neither 'side' contributed to having a discussion we can be proud of to have on this board. To summarize: politics season is over, and we can go back to normal now. :tellme:

We are all civilized people. Let's respect one another as fellow people, and discuss matters like equals. Because that is where our strength, both as humans as well as the Donationcoder community, lies. If we can't do that, haven't we failed the purpose of this forum? (In which case I wish that there'd be some hope left for humanity as a whole still... :))

Paul Keith

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #64 on: November 18, 2012, 06:25 AM »
@PaulKeith - quick question. Did you read this entire thread and the one that this one emerged out of?


I read this entire thread but am unsure of which thread emerged out of this thread so probably not.

I think worstje demonstrated that either is unnecessary and it can be confined into a general statement.

As for the puzzling aspect: it can be easily distinguished into, I'm not overtly praising nor overtly against what mouser is doing. Doing so would be counter to my statement that if there's any notable moral merit to why clean is reacting with the lap dog statement, it would be because we are not above the general characteristics of what a forum is and the general characteristics of most forum are bad: new comers who don't know group rules if not blamed outright are being told to excuse their emotions because these are the so and so limits of forums, mods/admins not only throwing their weight around and inserting bias between admitted mistakes/calls for decorum on both sides, calls for brotherhood in cases where there might be a singular enemy found but then individual as individual when the idea of a group is no longer beneficial to establish a defense against newcomers.

Essentially we're the same breed as most forums. Just a milder and less biased extreme that at times can forget that and step closer to the average forum attitude expressed in most forums across the internet. As a consequence, certain new comers who find themselves receiving that treatment can easily assume we're no better than the forums and we can't blame them since they don't have much experience or information to serve as reference for mouser's attitude/ our experiences/beliefs with mouser. It doesn't even matter if it turns out this time the poster was a troll or this time the poster was extremely rude or this time it's some other exception to the rule. The principle of the statement remains true that any new comer exposed to a hint of a nice senior cop-bad subcop can't be blamed for calling out an observation whose hints are common all across forums.

40hz

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #65 on: November 18, 2012, 07:34 AM »
The principle of the statement remains true that any new comer exposed to a hint of a nice senior cop-bad subcop can't be blamed for calling out an observation whose hints are common all across forums.

Assuming there are such "cops."

I've seen very little administration or moderation here beyond an occasional mild reminder to not get personal and stay on topic.

If individual members take issue with something, there's not much to be said except: "That's life." When annoyed by something, some people feel hurt, some walk away, and some push back. That's pretty much the way human society works when dealing with personal conflict. Something most people eventually realize and subsequently moderate their behaviors in recognition of. And DoCo, being part of human society, is no exception.

I'm very much in favor of extending every courtesy to a newcomer and granting them the benefit of the doubt. However, I also expect people to reciprocate when that happens - and be willing to accept that a similar courtesy requirement exists on their side. And said reciprocal courtesy includes such things as accepting an apology when one is offered for a mistake made in the past - and allowing bygones to be bygones. To not do so is rude. As is continuing to try to get the last word in on something when the rest of the community has already moved on to more worthwhile topics.

So if it's true that it isn't all about us, it's also true it shouldn't be all about any individual either.

I guess I'm old fashioned enough to still believe that groups have rights, even if that belief does fly in the face of our current obsession with focusing almost exclusively on "exceptions," "entitlements," and "individual needs."

Which is probably why I go out of my way not to be "in charge of things" most times.

I'm a dinosaur. ;)
 :)

wraith808

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #66 on: November 18, 2012, 08:07 AM »
^ Well said!  :Thmbsup:

mouser

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #67 on: November 18, 2012, 09:50 AM »
Perhaps the thing we are most guilty of on this forum is beating meta discussions to death  ;D
Can we begin to wind this one down now?

40hz

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #68 on: November 18, 2012, 10:34 AM »
^I'm out.  8)

vrgrrl

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #69 on: November 18, 2012, 01:30 PM »
Hear hear Mouser!  :Thmbsup:

Paul Keith

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #70 on: November 18, 2012, 07:23 PM »
I was never here and there are always cops just as there are always cups.  :P

Renegade

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #71 on: November 18, 2012, 11:57 PM »
I was never here and there are always cops just as there are always cups.  :P

Hahahah~!

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Nudel

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #72 on: November 24, 2012, 02:31 PM »
Have a look at the forum policy (you must accept before entering the forum) at the Directory "Opus" forum. Isn't it illogical to pretend your sw is the best of its kind, and then not allow any mentioning of competition sw's, when it should be of much interest rather often to discuss the respective realization of a feature in similar sw? (x2, XY and SC all permit this kind of discussion, and I own a paid license for any of those - not for DO, and that's not a coincidence: If you allow sw developers to treat you like s*** - delete the paragraph here -, they will never cease to do so, hence the interest of buying 3 competing products instead of just 1. And then, DO ist not THAT splendid, e.g. compare processing of metadata in x2 and DO.)

I'm the Opus forum admin these days, and I take issue with this.

Here is the wording of the relevant part of our forum rules (which have not changed recently):

These forums are not for the discussion of other companies' products unless they are directly related to the usage of Directory Opus. You may post about products which other users will find useful in concert with Directory Opus (e.g. tools suitable for integration into Opus toolbar buttons). You may post about products you are having problems using alongside Directory Opus (e.g. if you need help figuring out how to make Opus and another program talk to each other). Most other mentions of third-party products will be considered off-topic and unacceptable.

The forums have a "Coffeeshop" area where rules are more relaxed and off-topic discussions are allowed provided they are not spam, abusive, illegal, etc.

That rule is there so that people don't post questions about using Windows or Photoshop or whatever to our forum. They are there because people do it a lot, even with the rule there. (I imagine many people don't read the rules.)

People ask questions about general Windows usage and completely unrelated software on our forum because -- and they've said this themselves -- we tend to be better at answering questions than the support for the other software they were asking about.

I'm not saying we're better than the support for all other software, but we do engage with our users and spent a lot of time trying to help them. Some software authors don't even have support forums. Some have forums where posting is about as useful as firing your message into a black hole. (Ever had Microsoft or Adobe care that you're found a bug in their software, let alone actually fix it, let alone within several years of the report? We don't solve every problem, but some companies don't solve any problem, at least if you're Joe Public. So people sometimes come to us for those problems as well.)

People get used to us answering their questions and helping them, and forget that we are not a general "help you do anything with your computer" support forum. We sometimes answer those threads in our spare time but we obviously don't have the resources to do it all the time and for free, and we'd rather people went to whoever makes the software they bought to get support for it, rather than provide free support for someone else's software while whoever wrote it takes the money and ignores their users.

People can, and do, mention competing products on our forum. Where it's relevant we are fine with that. Where it's not relevant, and just someone having a cheap dig at us, it can be annoying. -- e.g. People fixate on a pet feature and say "program A does this so why doesn't Opus?" when that has little relationship to whether or not the feature is a good idea or a sensible use of our limited resources, and when there are a larger set of true statements of the form "Opus does this so why doesn't program A?" -- Even then, we don't generally do or say anything unless someone does it repeatedly and is basically trolling us and our forum.

And, as it says in the rules, we have an area where people can talk about more or less anything they want (as long as it's legal and decent).

We run a tech-support forum for Directory Opus, and the rule is just there to make it clear it isn't a tech-support forum for anything else.

clean

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #73 on: November 24, 2012, 09:19 PM »
Wiener, you left out the punitions part, where paying customers can be cut off from any help if they dare say something not finding your approval, e.g. praise a competing product or criticise yours.

Oh yeah, people coming to you with their Photoshop problems, I almost wet my pants. No sir, you simply apply all means at your disposal to hide the ugly fact that your product isn't superior to those you can buy combined without reaching the price of yours alone: x2, XY, SC. Do as you like, but don't take us for debrained imbeciles swallowing your claim (to put it in a friendly way instead of speaking plain English) you're afraid of simpletons mistaking you for an information bureau. That would be too insulting, Wiener.

(Sorry for the edit but the figure "swallowing" instead of "taking" was absolutely mandatory here.)
« Last Edit: November 24, 2012, 09:45 PM by clean »

mouser

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Re: Two classes of membership here?
« Reply #74 on: November 24, 2012, 09:47 PM »
Ok, I think that's enough of the negative insults, etc.  It's off topic and it's not appropriate for this forum.  Move on guys.