Why Close Any Thread? Censorship

Maybe you just need to realize that adults don't require babysitters. (Except in specially designated age play areas)

Hey, you whiny cat lover!!

I love seeing Torley go pop!! I was ready for popping myself.

LL decided the forums do, to keep them from complete anarchy, and LL owns the forums, so they can decide to close every single thread about kittens if they want to and there is nada anyone can do about it. America has free speech, but that stops at the door to Linden Labs forums.

There's that old appeal to emotion fallacy again.

It doesn't matter one whit that you don't get paid, as you chose to do it.

It's surreal that an emotional community outburst is being met with emotion from it's leaders.

Believe me, I'd rather have paid mods. One immediate benefit would be the erasure of the attitude, "I don't get paid to do this, so if I get pissed off and complain about my job, it's my right to do so."

I'll ask again; if it were not Torley, would I be getting this same response?

Do you feel you had the bejeebers beaten out of you by a large purple font?

This whole business is very sad. I think more than one resident is going to get suspended and or ban before this is all over. Some people will not accept the simple truth that no matter how hard we try, we can not force someone to accept our point of view.

Also redirecting the dissusion toward a paid employee of Linded Labs will not work. How about disussing Miso Soup instead?

I have no idea to which poster or thread this applies, but assuming "the person in question had already been told a couple times to drop the subject" means "told by a forum moderator" it seems like that is good cause to suspend their posting privileges. Am I missing something?

I get paid to do my RL job, and I feel I have every right to get pissed off there too if it warrants it. My inalienable right as a human being to tell someone to fuck right off applies to all aspects of my life.

I can tell you that there's NOONE immune to taking out their frustration with their work on their work from time to time.

And I'm in an industry that sometimes involves repossessing cars and homes.

Torley's response fit the situation. I respect her more for it.

And yet they cite free speech when refusing to act when it comes to other more dire issues.

Can we sing the hypocrisy song again?

In most cases that would get you fired from a real job. Especially if you said it to the customer/client.

Oh I think there are millions of people running customer service oriented businesses that will disagree with you 100%.

After the "fuck off" thing Maeve, I am through debating this with you. You've amply proven my point better than I ever could have.

The forums are a specially designated age play area.

To much to read here but you guys do know in a lot of forums it is even against the rules to even discuss moderators actions, they say take it up with them in private. Hmmmm maybe they should implement that here, something to think about.

Actually last time I did say something to that effect my manager laughed, and I kept my job. So sorry to kill your tirade there

I've worked customer service most of my life, and the customer is right about 99% of the time 1% of the time they are a completely unreasonable asshole, and the fuck off bit was no directed at anyone in particular, was just an expression, I edited it to make everyone happy. I need to go to work now so all of you have fun beating up Torley. If you're lucky you can make her quit, after all she is supposed to be so very professional about everything, so gods forbid she have feelings that aren't sunshine and roses.

Yet Torley censored Bella when she got angry that people accused her of being a closet pedophile because she was so upset about what she had seen and how it made her feel in the context of her own personal experience with the issue.

I don't see where you supported bella losing her cool. Some might argue that was far more fitting a response to the situation she was dealt with.

Maybe losing your cool is only okay if you are irritated by some behaviors but not by being called a pedophile for trying to raise awareness of pedophila?

I've managed and owned businesses geared toward customer service, and you and your boss would both be fired in mine, as well as those run by most others. If your story is true <cough> your boss should be demoted or fired.

You and he are an owner's or manager's worst nightmare -- loose cannons and a lawsuit waiting to happen.

You addressed me with the "fuck off", you said "you", and you were responding to me.

Keep digging Maeve.

Most of those threads a I read it were closed for naming names. If the discussion had remained within the stated rules I doubt very much they would have been closed. Doesn't look like Censorship (on the scale the OP wants us to imagine) to me.

It's one thing to lose your cool with people who are in your charge, as forum policies dictate when you sign up for them, when they don't adhere to those policies after repeated warning, which is why Torley popped off. Leadership isn't being nice, it's addressing people in the form they understand, which could be a pat on the back sometimes and a swift kick in the ass others.

You're addressing someone who came on and stated something was criminal, when it isn't, and accused all of her opponents of being child molestors straight out of the gate. That's a tad different.

Nolan, I hate to break it to you but the old thoughts on professionalism are dying quickly with the companies that follow old business practices. One of my best customers when I used to sell computers stayed glued to me because when he first told me about his old machine, I asked in a polite tone, "did you fuck with it?"

My employees now respect when I get angry because they know it takes quite a lot, and when the line is crossed, they shuffle their happy asses right back over to their side of it again.

It's just a dying form these days, man.

well, did he?

Part of my job is customer service... in 2004 I had ONE situation where I lost my cool and forgot the adage "the customer is always right" -- that one memorable moment was included on my performance evaluation and specifically came into play in the amount of my raise.

That said, I do feel bad for any role I played along the way in pushing Torley to haul out the big watermelon font.

That said, the rules of conduct for the forums are no mystery -- all one has to do is click on "guidelines" at the top of the page. There are a lot of specifics and explanations and none of us have grounds for playing the "oh, I didn't know" or "oh, why are they doing this to me" cards.

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Not in my experience, and I've dealt with a plethora of companies and still do.

Displays of anger are not acceptible in any form in a customer service environment, despite what some small minority's personal experience may be.

This concept is not lost, even if a few persons with impulse control problems see it otherwise.

I have never been into a Nordstroms, a book store, a McDonalds, a Radio Shack or what have you, and been yelled at by an employee, even if they were being hassled by a customer. Never. And you can bet that had I been, I would have had the manager out there on the spot, and had he continued in that vein, I would go right on up the ladder, because someone along the way, probably not any higher than district mgr., will have some business savvy and understand the concept that it it never ok to blow up at work. Yes, we all do from time to time, as others have said we are humans, but that is not an excuse to reject the notion of professionalism as a whole, and Torley doesn't fit that -- it was an isolated event, and I am over it -- what's disturbing me now is this attitude that "It's ok -- Johnny just has these moments" self-indulgent hogwash. It's not conducive to growing up.

Maybe that's lost on the folks whose parents were Nintendo and VCR, but there will be other generations upcoming, and hopefully they will be able to understand that self interest does not trump professionalism.

I have no idea of your background, and the above is not directed at you, unless you identify with it.

Edit: It's not about the customer always being right for me. I think that is just as bad as the attitude of saying it's ok to flush professionalism down the drain because we are all human. OF COURSE the customer is wrong sometimes, it's how we deal with that which determines the perception other customers will have with regard to us.

For instance, if a customer wanted me to knock some of the price off of an item, and I obviously can't because of corporate policy. I would tell them as nicely as possible that it's not possible. If they persisted and started getting nasty, I would then turn it over to my supervisor, not freak out on them.

I think the concept behind "the customer is always right" is good, but the phrase itself is a misnomer.

I think the degradation of professionalism is more largely to do with how the companies themselves handle complaints.

At the end of the customer complaint chain, the most that typically happens is that the complainant gets a coupon in the mail, the employee gets asked what happened which is usually a muting point where no chew-out occurs and the employee suffers no reprocussion, and the company files away the complaint in case the employee gets a chain of them in a row. One from time to time is considered acceptable, and in some venues (such as mine) a mandatory sign that the job is being done in a manner that interests the company more than the customer, the real goal of any major corporation.

Knowing that, the employees have no need to restrain themselves as much, which is probably psychologically healthy, but also decreases customer satisfaction.

On the other end, the customer knows their complaint will go nowhere fast without an attorney's expensive involvement, so they just shrug off the experience and go to a competitor. The lost business doesn't hold much weight because all the companies have employees doing the same thing.

People also are taking a more liberal swing, especially youths, when dealing with businesses and business practice. Edit: This is largely due to the fact that people see professionalism more and more as a control system than a social more. As such, even customers become uncomfortable when dealing with someone who is "too professional". It's near synonymous with "corporate hardass". I know when I was a salesperson, I always worked with the most casual looking customers and left the well-dressed to the other employees. I knew that I could sell more high-margin equipment to the casual person, and as a result I consistently outperformed my peers. Both Best Buy and CompUSA had me assist their trainers on a regional level because of this.

I'm surprised you haven't had the issues you've cited you've yet to deal with, as they are pretty common.