sick

Has anyone contacted Fodors about being a board administrator? I just did, and am waiting for a response, if I get a response. I'm tired of all of the useless silly posts, and am willing to give my time to delete them!

Lesli

If you are talking about the hostile attacks on individuals, I say more power to you!

However, if you are offering to delete other "useless silly posts", I'm not sure I agree that there's a need. Who gets to decide what's useless and silly? There are plenty of postings here which are not strictly travel-oriented, but which many of us enjoy - i.e., those about books, movies, etc. Deleting posts which are blatantly offensive would be a service, but I'm not in favor of deleting anything else.

silly

Sounds a little scary to me Adolf!
Sound like you don't even like the funny posts, so you want to be able to wipe them all out because they don't fit into your idea of a travel website?
Please Fodors don't give any poster the right to do this! We need some fun, but do get rid of the sickies!

serious, but practical joker

I agree with Leslie and "Silly". The jokes, tall tales, chitchat about books and clothes and food are harmless and many people enjoy them at least sometimes. I wouldn't want some unimaginative dullard deciding which ones are not sufficiently travel-related to rate space on the forum. The vicious personal attacks are disgusting, hurtful, DEFAMATORY and totally inappropriate.

I'm really not

I'm talking about the posts that are attacking others. Mean spirited posts, name calling etc. Sure, eventually they sink to the bottom, but I still don't want to see them when they are on top.

BTW, I belong to other boards, where every day people are the admins. Mainly weeding out personal attacks.

xxx

Okay, Mr. Ms. "admin" applicant - - here's an audition/interview for you - - what is your judgment call on this:

The "header" was: "Paranoid bride-to-be has two questions" - - I don't remember what her questions were - - the thread is still here, by the way. One smart-ass response was: "Gee, I thought your questions were going to be <<Will I like it?>> and <<Will it hurt?>>"

Is this mean-spirited? Would you take this post down?

Fodor's did.

And yet, look at what other stuff they leave up here.

What should the criteria be?

Useless
Silly
Hostile
Disgusting
Hurtful
DEFAMATORY
Inappropriate
Mean spirited

These have all been mentioned. Who will be the judge?

For the most extreme cases, I suppose a court of law may come into play. I undertand that there have been a few successful libel lawsuits won, involving Yahoo! message boards, and Yahoo! files were subpoenaed into evidence.

not hitler

I would have left that up. Calling someone names because you think their info is not up to your standards is quite different.

I think the criteria should only be to remove items that are:
Defamatory (I would put hostile, hurtful and mean spirited under this catagory)

Of course, my efforts will be futile, in that Fodor's won't consider my interest in this. Oh well, I tried.

Puck

Those wishing commisar status may wish to apply to places like the Sudan or North Korea.

There is clearly a need for a bit of censorship here. The right to do that belongs exclusively to the forum owner, Fodor.

The obligation to do so belongs to Fodor as well.

whichiswhyI

Puck,

That's why I contacted Fodor's.

some

If name-calling is to be the criterion for removing posts, then get ready to watch two thirds of the board disappear. It's nearly impossible to offer your own travel advice or opinion without being subjected to those who just "can't resist" disagreeing, usually while putting down all dissenters in the process. Character assassination just seems to be part of the increasingly shrill and escalating tone of everyday disagreements on Fodor's now.

This cycle of people trying to control what other people post here has been going on since I started visiting this site. Yet for all the complaining, there are still a large number of people visiting this site. Probably the reason Fodor's chooses to do nothing. Why should they? They'll never make everyone happy and their site still receives lots of hits every day. Why should they bother?

xxx

Reviewers of web sites is why they will care, and they will show (and already have shown) that they know to do the right thing when it needs to be done.

Why is this site great? Great questions, and good answers - - but reviewers acknowledge this and publicize the quality of this site to thousands of potential new visitors. Reviewers will tolerate risque postings, but not the vile spewings of hate-mongering.

Fodor's censorship will be quiet, discrete, almost unnoticeable - - even if not lightning swift. The difference it makes will be noticed.

Stalin

Stalin agrees that vicious personal attacks by those who must have the last--and perhaps the ONLY--word on a subject should be removed QUICKLY before generating (or is it degenerating?) a lot of responses.

Fortunately, some of the recent idiocy has been removed.

stealth

Just who are these so-called "reviewers," for whom or what do they "review" and why would you think these mysterious never-before-heard-of entities would have so much power to control a site's content? If you're talking about getting a nice write-up in a magazine or prime position on a search engine, that's all relative to the amount of advertising dollars you spend.

If it ain't broke, you don't fix it! If you're receiving enough hits per day to secure your ad revenues, why employ labor to change what is already working? That's just not good business.

xxx

I don't know whether this help, but here's what I did. I forwarded two very offensive, vicious threads to [email protected] with the subject "FYI" and just a one line comment about the thread being inappropriate or crossing the line. (One was the strange thread attacking a person who appears not to deserve any personal criticism and the other was one crudely and viciously atacking a person who does seem to irritate many but certainly didn't deserve these attacks.)These were both nasty inappropriate threads doing nothing else travel related, or humorous, or of any "redeeming social value" -- bad, bad threads,and we know them when we see them. Fodors never replied to me, but the threads seem to have been removed, although not until several days after I sent the e-mail. Mysteriously, one silly but perfectly harmless posting on a travel-related, but mostly humorous, thread also disappeared at the same time, possibly since it seemed to say the word "piss" (????). The latter type of censorship seems totally inappropriate and unnecessary. The former -- the removal of those vicious personal attacks -- shoulkd have occurred much sooner and without our nudging.

mk

I have a feeling quite a lot of us contacted Fodors about the truly offensive posts. In light of that they certainly weren't too speedy in getting rid of them before a lot of cruel comments were made. Hope no one was prissy enough to complain about the little jokes though.