"You people"? Really?

[tinm]

I've been busy and away from TMC for a while, which means I'm hundreds/thousands? of posts behind in the main investor forum.

Last night I spent a few minutes reading some of Thursday morning's early posts, and came across a poll by @KarenRei poll regarding service, which looked like an effort to debunk a suggestion @neroden had made for a Say dot com question for the earnings call on the 24th. Neroden's post was a bit hyperbolic in expressing his concerns about Tesla service and customer communications -- issues I largely agree with.

I wanted to participate in the poll but found it closed. So I looked at the results and they were not the least bit suprising: overwhelming disagreement with Neroden's points, debunked one by one right down the line. But the reason this wasn't surprising is because I felt the poll was flawed, and its results meaningless.

So I clicked on the "reply" link on KarenRei's post, and typed up a reply, where I argued that there's a strong likelihood that LOCATION is the key to whether service/communications is good or not. If there is no service center in the region, or state, or province where you as an owner are located, yes, you can experience "Tesla service hell." If you are in LA or SF or NY or FLA or Norway or somewhere like that, maybe it's Nirvana. I argued that if you don't ask the Tesla owner's location in a poll, then the poll's no good.

That was it, I typed up the reply, and submitted it and went to bed.

This morning I was curious to see what folks thought of my comment. But I noticed it was gone.

Then I noticed this in my Alerts:

Clearly some irate moderator. Conveniently, no idea who.

But . . . "you people"? "Can't you read"?

Read what? I saw a "reply" link and I replied. So I went back and looked, and noticed hours and many posts after KarenRei's poll had been posted, a moderator had declared in pink or green or purple or whatever text color moderators are wont to post in, an edict that nobody was allowed to comment about Tesla service anymore in the investor forum.

Guess what: I did not see that.

The moderator clearly thinks I should have seen that. Well, I did not. And I don't deserve to have my post outright deleted, and I don't deserve to be spoken to this way.

You know, this TMC management attitude (and I blame management for any behavior of the moderators) just about does it for me. The attitude of TMC's management is unacceptable. TMC's outright ownership of participant content has always been a problem for me.

And you know what? Don't trot out the volunteer trope about moderators. I don't give a flying kcuf if moderators are volunteers. This is a for-profit business, this TMC enterprise, and the owners must be laughing all the way to the bank at the idea that the moderators are willing to be volunteers rather than get paid. Moderators: you should quit rather than treat people like tihs.

Here's the thing: if TMC management doesn't want people posting on some arbitrary topic, then you need to disable "Reply" buttons. Change the software. Add a control that enables you to disable the "Reply" buttons on selective posts. Mark them as no longer replyable. What you don't do is capriciously and arbitrarily delete someone's legitimate post at 1:44am in the morning, and attack the author with a shitty attitude.

That's how you lose forum participants.

Like me.

I'm taking some time off from TMC. Maybe a lot of time off. I'm not sure I'm coming back.

 

[Xenoilphobe]

Its the same kind of censorship I see on Reddit. If they dont like the information they quarantine the whole thread. I used to be a paying member at Reddit, but stopped my subscription after a politically motivated quarantine. I still post, but censorship is not something I will ever support.

 

[AWD>]

But they can’t moderate the for sale section?

Talk about some “you peoples...”

I’d assume service is a good thing to discuss in an investment forum. Service declines will result in profit declines when mid to high end buyers may choose to buy another brand and be treated well.

 

[Shock-On-T]

The mods really are too heavy-handed sometimes.

 

[DJVoorhees]

I had a post deleted because I mentioned that Tesla lost nearly a billion dollars a quarter, the reason was "we don't allow falsehoods" or something similar. This is seemingly a shill site mainly, no open discussion allowed. I'm looking for a way to delete my account, I find reddit a much better place to discuss model 3 and Tesla issues.

 

[tinm]

Absolutely chilling behavior by TMC management today. I expect this kind of thing from fascist dictatorships, not car forums.

 

[bhtooefr]

I get that there's issues with posting volume in the roundtable thread, but from the outside, it looks like something undiscussable happened, because, um, a few too many posts about service got posted in the roundtable thread instead of the service thread, and someone who apparently cannot be named was complaining about their posts being deleted? And the service thread was locked for a while, too.

I feel like that just makes it so much more important to discuss this, because this is not a good look. A degree of transparency is needed to maintain trust in a community, and right now? That's not happening.

I get that if there was some massive misconduct, you don't want it to keep being a thing and for people to endlessly re-litigate the moderator action. But, when the moderator action seems to, quite frankly, not fit the infractions that were seen by the members (...before they were deleted, at that), and was apparently done silently? Yeah, you're going to get people re-litigating that.

IMO, the moderation team should post a statement about what they did (rather than trying to hide it and delete any posts about it), and why they did it. I'm not going to say that that's going to stop the questions at this point, but transparency will at least help, when you're performing drastic moderator actions against a long-time active member. (I'm not gonna call for transparency on spammers and drive-by trolls, and in fact shadowbanning the drive-by trolls - an anti-transparent action - can help when you're being trolled heavily. But in this case, yeah, I'm gonna call for it.)

If I get banned for this post, I can be found under the username bhtooefr pretty much everywhere. (I do not use my Twitter account, though.) I guess I'll be trolling the coal rollers that predict the demise of Tesla over in the EV thread on TDIClub?

 

[tinm]

TMC management has zero credibility and I have no illusions they’re going to suddenly do the right thing including being transparent.

 

[bhtooefr]

Hey, I see the moderation team has, um, finally admitted that they banned @neroden after everyone already knew he was banned, and after scrubbing the first round of posts asking about the ban. So the fact that he's banned is no longer undiscussable? Yay...

But nah, just saying that it's not due to his complaints about Tesla isn't quite enough. That's why he wasn't banned, not why he was banned, and it's still not clear why he was banned. I mean, I get it if there's something really bad that we didn't see, but, well, we didn't see it.

 

[Matias]

Edit: Yes, @neroden is banned. No, it wasn't because of his criticism of Tesla. Now can we let it go?

Ok.

 

[tinm]

Chilling.

 

[cucubits]

Wow, so this is how the "MODS" spend their time.

...while in the TMC basement corner things like this are running wild: 2016.5 Model S P90DL Over $175K Invested Aero Kit Version 3 Battery

 

[Xenius]

Look, Mods of any public forum have a hard time.

On the other hand I had an innocuous post flat out deleted because of a euphemism for 'fecal matter' which I felt was flat out ridiculous.

 

[Unpilot]

Any suggestions on other well traveled forums for Tesla folks?

And no I don't like the heavy handed way things have gone lately.

I also have had post's removed with little or no explanation.

 

[tinm]

Niedermeyer and the TSLAQ crowd reading this: you’re just as bad.

 

[Xenius]

Niedermeyer and the TSLAQ crowd reading this: you’re just as bad.

No, they are far worse.

And if there are heavy handed actions here, they have nothing to do with Tesla the company, or the mission.

TSLAQ, if you are here, a proper f you to you.

 

[bhtooefr]

Oh, also, as it came up in the investor thread: yesterday's discussion that was removed as undiscussable said that the ban was permanent. My calls for a statement from the moderation team for the reason for this ban are based on that, as pushing someone entirely out of the community who regularly contributed positively - criticism is not inherently negative and can be positive - is not something to be done lightly.

There's discussion in the investor thread that this is likely only a temporary ban, as even the shorts only get week-long bans. If that is true, then I'd merely advise that the moderation take a long look at the PR impact of what's happened, and wish that in the future they would get ahead of this before misinformation spreads rampant, especially with Tesla's enemies apparently seizing on all of this. (Simply saying that someone's on time out for a week, for instance, would be enough IMO.)

 

[Matias]

Why was neroden banned?

 

[Unpilot]

If it is a permanent ban that would IMHO be a huge move against the community.

Any forum survives or not based on the community.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

I don't think the mods get paid, and frankly I wouldn't want their job. I find it hard to criticise people doing voluntary work thats as unrewarding as moderating forums. By definition most of us don't see most of the posts they moderate away, God knows how much crap needs weeding out.