Now, seriously, I like this Navbar. It had an animated gif image - which of course doesn't show (because it's a screen shot of the Navbar, because of my stubborn refusal to host one single Navbar on my Site). So, I stole the picture from the place where I saw the Navbar. Find it on the left here.

I agree...

After 4-5 weeks of talking on WebRingnews, the official Yahoo! Club where questions and issues about the Yahoo! take-over are discussed lately (and a Club, monitored by Yahoo!), James S. Huggins, one of the central people in the discussions, posted this item (#5633, 5 October 2000)

For me, personally, the issue is not whether Yahoo! WebRing listens. I know that they listen.

If they were not listening, "offensive Y! IDs" and "flaming posts" would not  matter. If they were not listening, we would not need a moderator. If they were not listening the club would permit all posts to remain because it would be completely detached.

And I am confident that information regarding specific operational glitches flows from this community to the technical staff where it can be resolved as quickly as possible, given the resource constraints.

No. It is not that I think I am not heard. Rather it is that I do not hear them.

Oh, I hear the isolated, specific responses to isolated specific problems.

But what made this country great and, in fact, what distinguishes modern man, are not individuals solving isolated specific problems. What distinguishes the grand endeavor from the routine task is not the ability to address an isolated specific problem. Rather, it is the ability of the human community to conceive of the abstract, to elaborate broad principles, to evoke a vision, to share, to build a consensus, to channel action and, ultimately, to create.

These characteristics (abstraction, principles, vision, sharing, consensus, action and creation) are also what helped to create that thing that today we call the Internet. And they are the things that keep it both vibrant, free and almost out of control as well as structured, compliant and cohesive, what I have called in my writings, "structured anarchy".

When Sage Weil began the journey we now refer to as WebRing, he unleashed upon this infant infrastructure, an energy. That energy enabled isolated individuals, using the tools that he and his coworkers created, to assemble communities. They were communities of content, communities of purpose, communities of connection, communities of communication, communities for the sake of community and even communities opposed to community.

All across America, and reaching out across this big blue ball, these characteristics of abstraction, principles, vision, sharing, consensus, action and creation gave rise to something. It is something you and I both became a part of. It is something that you and I both share. And it is something that you and I now both struggle with as it continues to evolve.

It is not that I think we are not being heard. Rather it is that I am not hearing them. I am not hearing the abstractions. I am not hearing the principles. I am not hearing the vision. I am not hearing the inspiring call for consensus and action. And, perhaps most troubling to me, I am not hearing either the sharing of information nor the encouraging words of creation.

Instead, the image that is conveyed is of a corporate culture that values secrets and that controls information. The image conveyed is of a culture of isolation, of adversaries, and of mine/yours. The image conveyed is of culture that ignores the human spirit of those outside the wall who were once part of the holy quest and now seem disenfranchised.

You know (because you have personal ties to the people of the organization), and I know (because I believe in people), that this is not reality and that the individuals at Yahoo! WebRing care about their work and about the difference it does make and might make in the future.

But, despite that, we also both know that communition is restricted, that information is confined to the isolated and specific and that generalties, plans, futures, ideas and concepts are off limits.

You asked "You want Y!WR to listen to you?" Sure. But even more than that, I want Y!WR to talk to me.

James S. Huggins

Subject: Re: Q&A [Yahoo! Clubs: webringnews]
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 06:36:45 -0700
From: Pamster
To: webringnews@yahoo.clubs

Well, y'know Bob - when you treat people like children, they frequently
start behaving that way. It's a fact of life. It's human nature.

It's been a month now. There have been HUNDREDS - even THOUSANDS - of valid questions asked - of real problems reported - of helpful, useful posts in this club. Posts which have helped Y!WR fix this mess that they made - at least as much as it can be fixed. Posts which helped them find and fix problems that they were unable to find themselves before they went live.
Posts in which members of this club have helped each other figure out how
this works - because we get little to no help from anyone else. Posts that
pointed out problems with the help text - where it was incorrect. Yet all we
hear about from the "parents" are what we've done wrong - the tiny percentage of off-topic posts. The entire group is painted with one broad brush of "flamers, off-topic posters".

But why, I ask, should we even try to stay on topic, when our on-topic posts aren't responded to by those who might know the answers? Many, maybe even most, of us really don't care about what Yahoo thinks of us, we just want our rings to work. What we'd really like is to have them BACK, but baring that, to at least be functional. And, we'd like to be able to explain things to our members - and in order to explain things we need to understand them.

I might be alone in this, but at this point, I don't care of this is an "official" club, or not - cause I haven't seen where it being official has gotten us much. Sure occasionally, we get a response that a problem we've posted has been "sent to engineering" - and even more rarely, we'll get a response that "your problem has been fixed".

But what about the bigger picture? What about all the questions where we've asked - "how is this supposed to work", "how can we do this", "how can we contact our member", "what's the list of messages that goes to our members - can we modify them", "when will AMT start working", "what about rings that were deleted before the redo"? And we've received no response. How about the total disregard for the problem list that James so kindly maintained - using hours of his volunteer time to aggregate, describe, track in a professional way - only to be told, yesterday, that "we're really not interested in your list" (which many of us suspected anyway.)
These situations can be helped or worsened by the moderators. I think that
being a good moderator is similar to being a good parent. Moderators can be a calming presence in a club - they can answer questions, relieve frustrations, lighten tense moments, be attentive, value the participants - let the kids know that they're being heard. So that frustrations don't increase and flames don't get out of hand.

Or they can be stern disciplinarians, that complain about the kids, delete their off-topic posts no matter how inocuous they are (I mean REALLY - what DID that "5600?" post hurt?), constantly tell them what they are doing wrong, never answer their questions, never tell them what they've done right. This lets the kids know that they don't matter, their comments, opinions, input are of no value. Then the kids think, shoot, if we can't do anything right, why should we try?

Respect begets respect - and vice versa. From launch date, actually before
launch date, I have felt that this group is totally not respected. We asked to see the prototype/design, we were ignored. We asked to help beta test, we
were ignored (actually I guess we did beta test it, they just called it "launch"). We've had Yahoo employees come in here and tell us "you'll just have to wait for things". We've had posts deleted. We've been repeatedly yelled at for off-topic posts or what some consider flames. We've had a fellow club member yell at us, go off in a snit, and then return as a moderator. Not ONCE has anyone said - gee thanks James for keeping that list, here's a status update - or thanks for identifying all these problems, here's a status update - or here's what we're working on, we have some questions about how YOU use the system. Sure y_webring gave us a status update once on all the problems in James list - then we didn't hear from that ID again - what happened - did !!some yahoo in a suit tell him not to do that any more?

I have a lot of respect for those who y_webring represents. I've worked with
programmers for over 10 years, and in my experience almost all of them would want to do what y_webring did for us that weekend. They WANT to talk with the users, and fix their problems, and make it work for them. I mean, that's why they write code - for someone to use, and to enjoy using.

If you want a structured place to report problems - this isn't the place to do it. You don't take a place that was used for one activity and try to change it overnight to another. You set up a specific place to report problems. If someone wants to file an "It's Broken" report - they fill out a form - with blanks for Site ID, Ring ID, date identified, description of the problem. You maintain a page of reported problems that users can check before they file a report - you respond to people who send in a report - you update the status of problems reported. THEN things will stay on track.

But the longer you ignore people who came with the best of intentions - the more and more frustrated they will become - and the more likely they will do whatever they can to get some attention. ANY kind of attention - even if it's negative - cause it means the "parents" are noticing.

So, this is probably the end of the line for me. I'm not sure why I stayed around so long, being as I decided long ago to move my rings. Maybe it was like slowing down to look at the car wreck along the side of the road - only, in this case, I kept going round and round the block to look again and again. Always hoping it wasn't as bad as I thought - hoping against hope that maybe I could help. Hoping that the patient wasn't as dead as he looked - maybe the emergency crews could resuscitate the patient. But, it's been too long. The brain has been without circulation for too long - they may resuscitate the body but the brain is dead. A good doctor knows when to pull the plug.

Bob - thanks for what you've tried to do for us.

Bye all

Pamster

More discussions about "Trouble at WebRingNews" on Page Four.