A Message for the Moderators

[ARtraveler]

I note that at the moment, I am the only moderator making a reply.

Let me tell you folks a tale. I am one of the "old fogies" on the site. Have been here since Feb 2010. I am not the oldest, by far, but have a little experience with the site. I have seen many people come and go. Many of the people who quit the site because of complaints, similar to yours, are back, and some are posting every day.

I have purchased and owned seven spyders and have close to 200,000 Spyder miles. I was able to purchase the first Spyder sold to a customer when they became available in Alaska in June of 2008. It was a GS SM5 (yes, a manual). I put a $500 deposit down in October of 2007 after I saw a "what's new" blurb in Cycle Magazine. I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly with Spyders over the years.

A couple times, even I thought of quitting the site, over many of the same reasons as mentioned above. Turns out, I did not, and I am still here today. I would say that the site is a bit different since active moderators were brought on to the site (Sept 2018 or so). I and one other were brought on in fall of 2018. Others were added shortly thereafter. In short, we had a toxic mess going on at that time. If you think the site is bad now, you ain't seen nothing. Hate posts were rampant in those days.

I would also like to mention that we still have the original staff of moderators that we began with, less two who left for various reasons.

When we tried to do our job, and learned as we went, the haters, and similar could not wait to jump on our every word or actions. I had my head handed to me several times in those days. We received much opposition from the haters and others as we tried to clean up the site. Happily, we have an excellent staff of full time moderators, that work together on all critical decisions. We have NEVER had a major disagreement, and IMO, we all work together well. Each of us have found our "special" niche, and continue to work together.

The site is tamer than it was, and IMO, much better as we move along. Since we have "freedom" to post within the "site rules," and since we deal with the full gamut of participants, we are still going to run into people on the site that will "disagree" or seem to be perpetual complainers. That is where the "ignore" button can come in. Me, I do not use it. I want to see who the "opposition" is and what it is that they are saying. Sometimes things happen "behind the scenes" between the moderators and the "opposition." None of us take lightly the ability to sanction someone, or to outright ban someone. We have developed internal policies on these subjects and they are always subject to internal review. I was given the task to write the first draft of these policies. Refinements were added by others and these are the policies used today. In the early days, I was accused by admin to be quick on the trigger. I am much more mellow these days, but all my actions as well as those of the others on the moderator staff, are all done with the preservation of this site in mind, and keeping it suitable for "family" viewing.