Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

This post is directed at all of the moderators at SuN.

I just received a PM from Cookie informing me that he was a moderator. Why haven`t we as members been told about this? What`s the big secret?

I wrote this post because in his PM, Cookie suggested I not post anymore of my articles. He also suggested any future posts of mine be marked as "opinion pieces." What???

Because of our strained history, those suggestions  made me more than a little suspicious, to say the least.

My question is this, if Cookie is indeed a moderator, why haven`t we been told about it?

What`s the point of having secret moderators - especially those whom have a personal conflict with other members?

Will a "moderator" please explain this to me?

Dale King

 

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Hi Dale,

You raise a fair question. Here`s the scoop ...

The Society of Secret SuN Moderators has been operating stealthily on the site complete with secret handshakes and midnight meetings.

I am totally kidding around! I hope you appreciate my 3rd-cup-of-coffee-already-this-morning attempt at humor ...

The real scoop is ... As StartupNation Chief Community Officer I have been acting as sole moderator for the forums since we launched in April 2006. As the site has grown it has become abundantly clear that the need for SuN members to play the role of moderator is necessary and, more properly stated, perfectly appropo.

I have extended invitations to 10 SuN members to be SuNBassadors. They will play the role of moderator to be sure, but much more than simply moderating, they will proactively engage, stimulate, encourage, direct and do-all-things-possible-to-bring-value to the community.

We will make the public announcement of this initiative in the coming days and each SuNBassador will be publicly designated as such with a badge that will appear just next to their avatar on each of their forum posts and on their profile. The SuNBassadors will work closely with me to implement the philosophy & strategy of StartupNation within the public forums and they will also contribute to the evolution of those strategies.

We are more excited than ever about the vibrancy of the SuN community and our stated goal of providing the greatest value possible to every site visitor on every visit!

Stay tuned for more details as we make the official announcement soon and also for continued great things.

Hey Dale.  My name is Steven and I am the "moderator" of the marketing and PR forums, the section you have been most active in.  I just sent you a message.

moderators are needed to reduce spam and advertising and posting of articles that are made to look like topics for discussion, for example.

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James Lindon, Ph.D. Patent Attorney
Lindon & Lindon, LLC
Cleveland, Ohio
Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Pharmacy Law, Litigation
[this is not legal advice - provided for discussion only]
Intellectual Property for the Individual and Small Business: Identify, Protect, Enforce, Defend.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
http://www.LindonLaw.com

I couldn`t agree more. It`s become a cancer @ SuN.

Yeah.  I personally don`t want to log on to read a "book" written by somebody else with very little meaningful content.  We are exchanging ideas here, not trading propaganda.

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James Lindon, Ph.D. Patent Attorney
Lindon & Lindon, LLC
Cleveland, Ohio
Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Pharmacy Law, Litigation
[this is not legal advice - provided for discussion only]
Intellectual Property for the Individual and Small Business: Identify, Protect, Enforce, Defend.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
http://www.LindonLaw.com

Also, the "cut and paste" results of a google search by the "member" have to be stopped.

-------------------------

James Lindon, Ph.D. Patent Attorney
Lindon & Lindon, LLC
Cleveland, Ohio
Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Pharmacy Law, Litigation
[this is not legal advice - provided for discussion only]
Intellectual Property for the Individual and Small Business: Identify, Protect, Enforce, Defend.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
http://www.LindonLaw.com

Society of Secret SuN Moderators ..... Haha.

For the record, I asked Dale to clearly mark his opinion pieces as "opinion". I also suggested he stop posting rehashes and stop engaging in personal attacks. I can count at least three or four occasions in which Dale has made statements such as "you must be the most miserable/negative/poisonous" and so forth, in addition to other posts in which Dale, in an effort to disguise his attempt at bullying several members of this forum, converted a straightforward personal attack into an off-topic article that was inappropriate for the Marketing forum. Dale`s personal attacks have emboldened BlondieBlue to engage in personal attacks. This is classic bullying.

Dale has written numerous "articles" that contain his opinion presented as fact. Here`s why it is important to mark opinion pieces as opinion.

An opinion piece contains the writer`s interpretation of the facts. An article contains a presentation of facts and allows the reader to reach their own conclusion. An opinion piece presented as an article will appear to contain numerous factual errors because an opinion is an interpretation of a fact.

Dale`s articles attempt to educate the reader on best practices for marketing. Except these "articles" are Dale`s opinion of best practices, and Dale`s opinion of what constitutes best practice is just that... his opinion. Yet he presents his articles as facts by using the word "article" to describe his contributions. Dale should not disguise an opinion piece as an article in an attempt to convince anyone that his methods constitute best practice.

I have no problem whatsoever with opinion pieces as long as they are clearly marked. This is a simple and entirely reasonable request.

Dale, I`m going to address your remarks about personal conflict. In my role as a moderator, I made a few simple, reasonable requests with respect to your conduct on this message board. Now that you are aware that I am a moderator, I do expect that you`ll be more than happy to follow instruction from any moderator - including myself. Feel free to post the contents of my private message to you - so that everyone can see that my message was friendly and my requests entirely reasonable.

I`m just wondering why it matters to you that there are or are not moderators?  Did you know that you were doing things that annoyed people - but did them anyway because you felt free from moderation?  I believe people should do what`s right because it`s right, not because they might get "punished" if they don`t do what`s right.  People should be self-moderating and intuitive to the dynamic of a group.  That`s an important skill for an entrepreneur. 

This site isn`t a place to bloviate from a soap box.  I really believe SUN is here for people to discuss and support one another as they start-up or run their businesses.  I think that it`s appropriate to give advice and PARTICIPATE in a discussion, but not use it as a place to publish articles that are essentially ads for your service.  There are other sites for that. 

~Kim

Another member of the Secret Society of SuN Moderators