My PM rights

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What happened was that there was ONE forum member who noticed I was in India and contacted me asking me to give her some information. I don't remember what she was asking any more. But then I took apportunity and responded "by the way, can you send me money to help me pay such and such ... the money will be returned within one or two weeks". She responded that she can't do it.

Then few days later, SinsBoldly contacted me (she was mod back then) and said that she heard I was "starting up a business" and that I need "start up capital" so she asked me what terms I was willing to agree. Well first of all it wasn't a "business" (it was church and orphanage). But anyway, I thought it was genuine, so I similarly asked SinsBoldly to help me with money to pay this guy. She simply responded that I should not PM people with my "business opportunity" (again, it was not "business"! !!) and then immediately my PM rights were gone (I know they were gone right away because I tried to respond to her and couldn't).

I believe the very fact that she kept calling it "business opportunity" shows she didn't even try to understand my specific situation. She just lumped me together with "all other scammers". The fact is that *I* was not a scammer; the other guy was. But she couldn't see that since, the second I ask for money, I lose ALL of my individuality (hey, there are plenty of "robots" sending money requests through emails) so no one "bothers" to understand my situation any more.

The fact is that I shouldn't have lost my PM rights to begin with. Apart from the fact that I was not a scammer, I wasn't "mass emailing" either; I only contacted TWO people (the second one being a Mod trying to "test me") about it. And when I was TOLD by a mod it was not allowed, I wasn't planning to do it any more. But of course I have no way of proving I wasn't going to do it since I lost my rights on the spot.

If I recall correctly, Roman started sending people PMs, asking for money. At least one recipient told us what was going on. We asked him to stop. He refused, so rather than just banning him, either myself or sinsboldly blocked his PM rights. He made no response for quite some time, then he returned demanding that his PM rights should be restored. After some discussion, it was clear that he still felt he had done nothing wrong. I think this is maybe the third time he has returned - and his tone still seems to be that he takes no responsibility - that the "fault" was all the fault of "the scammer" who Roman was (purportedly) sending money on to.

I'm afraid I still don't have much sympathy for Roman. To my mind, a person who works for a scammer, knowingly or not, is still a scammer themselves.

I sent PM to ONE SPECIFIC person, asking for money. So it should be singular.

The way I selected that ONE person was because she contacted me FIRST, asking me for some info abuot India. So I "took an apportunity" and asked her for money. No one else contacted me FIRST about India, hence no one else got my money request.



I know who that recepient is, even though I was not told. How? Because I only emailed ONE person about it.



That is not accurate. I just re-read my PM exchange (and I have ALL of my PM-s saved). What happened was that when sinsboldly told me it is called "nigerian scam" I started to defend myself. DEFENDING MYSELF IS *NOT* THE SAME AS REFUSING TO CHANGE. In fact, in my everyday life, I am notorious for defending myself; and at the same time, I am equally notorious for insisting how "I will change". NT-s tend to misinterpret defending myself as a statement that I intend to continue whatever I was doing. This is not the case. The only reason to defend myself is to remove the "charges" for my PAST behavior for the simple reason that the past can not be changed. This does NOT mean I plan to continue to do the same in future. Quite the opposite: since I am so desperate in "removing past charges" I would most certainly NOT do it in future. Yet, NT-s seem to miss this point.



I actually made a public post about it one of the forums shortly after my PM rights were removed. That post was deletted because in one of my replies I quoted the detailed correspondence that I had with that forum member as well as sinsboldly. Since quoting PM is not allowed, they decided to remove the entire post instead of just the reply where I quoted PM.

Anyway, you are correct in saying that AFTER that post was removed you didn't hear anything from me for a long time. The reason, though, is that I was under a lot of tension as a result of losing money to scammer, so that I simply didn't have energy to think about other things.



I never said I haven't done anything wrong. All I am saying is that it was not intentional. I am GLAD that the member did NOT send me money, since now I know that she would have never gotten it back. But I am SADDENED that I lost my PM rights, since the "wrong" that I did was out of ignorance.



And that part I don't understand -- especially since you inserted "knowingly or not". So why would someone who NOT KNOWINGLY work for scammer be a "scammer themselves"? If someone DOESN"T KNOW something, their motives can be quite pure.

None of this changes the fact that what you are asking for is impossible. The people you are talking to have absolutely no ability to grant your request. If restoring your PM rights was as simple as dropping an email to Alex it would have been taken care of months ago when I sent the first of many emails to Alex that still remain unanswered. Your request was included among several others.

I understand that he does respond to Facebook posts, so try contacting him there.

I just have to say that it really makes me mad when people start railing on Alex for taking time to respond to requests, saying (or at least implying) that he doesn't care about the community here. If that were truly the case, he could save himself a boatload of cash and just shut this website down. I'm in a unique position to know Alex personally, and also know exactly what it costs to keep this site running. Let me tell you, it's not cheap. I know, both through my conversations with Alex, and through experience running and hosting websites, that the money he has coming in does not pay for the costs associated with keeping this site going. So he's funding this site out of his own pocket. To everyone who doesn't think Alex cares anymore, I would like you to explain that one to me. I know if I were running this site and paying for it, and I wasn't actively posting or really getting anything of value back from the community - I wouldn't continue paying for it.

So he goes out, and lives his life, and then when he has a few minutes to spare he works on this site. How is that a problem?

As far as getting someone to work on the admin parts of this site, that too has a bunch of problems. The software platform is old, inefficient, and largely hacked together with custom code all over the place. It's *the* reason this site slows to a crawl sometimes, and it makes doing many admin tasks near-impossible. I would love to be able to help out here, as would Toggi3 (whom I also know very well), but the problem is in order to be able to effectively admin this site, massive changes need to be made, and a lot of them are changes that the community as a whole would not accept.

So, with all that said, the reality is that you just have to wait for Alex to have time to carry out requests. It may not be fair, but it's just simply the reality of the situation.

Thank you for clarifying. Do you contend then that "effective administration" of this site is impossible only in the near term, or is this a permanent issue?

In my view, effective administration (by anyone other than Alex), is only possible if major changes are made to the site backend. Changing that would not only make everything run better by an order of magnitude, but it would do away with all the custom code that was done to make this site function as it does, which would be the part that enables people other than Alex to understand how the site works/operates, etc.

The downside to that is that there would be changes to how things look, and possibly function - which from my perspective is what has been holding everything back.

The problem is that he is the only one who can administer the site, as you have stated above, and he hasn't had the "few minutes to spare" that are needed in several months. Is there custom code involved in removing a couple of offensive avatars from the database? Maybe. Is there custom code involved in giving a moderator access to the ban tool more than 2 months after he was modded? Maybe, but I doubt it. Is there custom code involved in adding a moderator to the user group so she can begin working more than 2 months after Alex approved her addition to the team? I really doubt that.

The cause for complaint is that the tasks that the moderator staff (as well as the site membership) have been waiting for Alex to act on literally take minutes to perform, and they have been waiting for months for them to be acted upon. Nobody is (really) asking for more than an hour a week of his time. I resigned because I could not get 6 minutes of his time over a period of more than 60 days. If he is so incredibly busy that he can't spare 3 minutes a month he should hire or appoint someone who can.

He just completed a move cross-country, started a new job, etc. I have no problem at all believing that he hasn't had time. As for hiring someone, I ask you: with what money? As for appointing someone, I ask you: whom?

In a site that doesn't even show how many people are online half the time, do you really expect *anything* to be straight forward?

You can be mad at Alex all you want; you can think his decisions are wrong and think that he should do this and that, but making the allegation (either expressly or implied) that he doesn't care is unjustified based on the facts of the situation. I can tell you with 100% certainty that if Alex didn't care about this community or it's members, it wouldn't exist.

sliqua-jcooter, I disagree. Particularly as Alex is paying your wages.

MidlifeAspie, you seem to be correct... and if you've resigned, why do you still have a "Moderator" tag? (That was a a rhetorical question.)

While I find that statement particularly amusing, it's also a valid point. Alex is paying us for a server. He is not, however, paying us, or me, to defend him. I get paid exactly the same amount regardless of the outcome of this thread, or much of anything else that happens within this forum. From a business standpoint, this thread makes absolutely no difference to me at all.

But more to the point, your statement is the biggest proof of all that Alex does actually care. He pays us for this server, when he could very easily not. So, what exactly is it that you disagree with me about?

He could stop paying for the server, but then the ad checks would stop coming and the Autism Speaks money would stop coming in as well. Let's not be disingenuous just because this is a forum full of people with AS. We have social difficulties, we aren't stupid.

When gauging whose complaints seem to better represent the needs of this community I have to say this: Lau has 10,000 posts and a long history as a mod here. I have 3,000 posts and the other mods, who would back up what I am saying if push came to shove, have another 35,000 posts between them. You have 7 posts and you are paid by Alex. I am not sure why you are wading in here when TOGGI3 has a bit of an established relationship with the community and works for the same company. To come in here and say that Alex just finished a cross-country move, and therefore has not had 6 minutes in 2 months to respond to the website that is his passion is simply ludicrous. He was logged into the site 6 hours ago, and he has managed to find the time to post about The Office season finale.

Mate, cry me a river. I pay for the server I host the forum I manage on, too. That does not excuse me away from taking responsibility as the admin/webmaster of the forum.

And, as I've already stated before, his revenue coming in for this site does not match the expenses - so if he were to do that it would be a net gain for him. I'm not going to divulge any details on what I know about the finances without Alex's authorization, so you're just going to have to trust that I wouldn't/don't have any reason to lie to you.

And again, if you re-read my first post in this thread, I wasn't trying to make any kind of point that Alex is doing a perfect job, only that based on the evidence that I have seen, through all my interactions, there is absolutely no basis to make any kind of implication that Alex doesn't care about this community. I take offense to the sense of entitlement that certain people have taken in this thread. Specifically, I take issue with MCalavera's attitude and implications throughout this thread. I also attempted to explain why anyone besides Alex admining the site would be difficult, because I think not many people realize the issues that the software running the site has.

Hand me the keys to the code and I will do it if it's sooo difficult for you. And anyway the issue isn't that this forum needs to be upgraded to the latest version. The main issue is to have the glitches and bugs fixed that weren't there previously. I understand an upgrade is a big thing. Fixing glitches and bugs, however, is not necessarily so.

Oh, and money, if you want to whine about how Alex is losing from this forum, please give us the financial details or else take back what you said and don't try to fool us with imaginary problems. Paying for a server regularly isn't as bad as you make it sound if you have various sources of income online to keep you running the forum. I know Alex isn't stupid. He ain't going bankrupt any moment soon.

I'm not talking about an upgrade. I'm literally talking about moving to an entirely different platform. The software this board is based on is not designed to handle the amount of traffic that is being put on it. To compensate for that, Alex has written a lot of code to try and mash a bunch of things together, and over time it's grown to be the problem that it is.

As far as telling you exactly what's what - I won't do that. Out of a legal obligation and an ethical responsibility to keep customer's information private, I won't give details unless I've been allowed to. However, handling a site of substantial size is a huge challenge, and it's something my company specializes in. We host sites that are on national television, we host one of the largest creative professional communities on the web. We've hosted sites that have been through the Digg effect, and the Apple Hot News effect, and the Slashdot effect, and the Dateline NBC effect, and I have to say out of all of them, this site uses the most resources by far (something like 2-3x more RAM, disk IO, etc). And, it also has about 1/3rd the overall traffic of some of our other sites. All of those resources are taken up by inefficiency. There are a lot of things we *could* do to make the site run a lot better, but aren't able to do because the software doesn't support it.

All of that pushes the bill higher, and adds to the ridiculous complexity.

But again, I'm not making any kind of argument to defend Alex's actions, I'm defending Alex. He is not arrogant, or lazy, or selfish, or any of the things some people are making him out to be. You can think he's wrong, and say you think he's wrong, without attacking the man.

Of course, that brings up the reality of the situation, that no matter how much you think he's wrong, you can't take the site away from him.