In Response to a Few Questions/Statements on the Forum

Lavender Room
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first, as to my role here: nothing’s changed, i’m still a moderator, and if you haven’t seen me moderate much in the past few days it’s because i haven’t found anything that needs moderation.

i am a mod, but i’m not part of the planning. i find out what changes occur in this forum (and all others) when i get up in the morning and log on. just like you.

subforums: i don’t like them, beyond those that i had already created. i think that’s been made clear over the decades. I believe the rationale with these new subforums is to make the forum the place that discussions on front page articles take place. i am 100% in agreement with that, because FB has deliberately and actively, muscularly, with intent, badly managed its own comments plug-in that we used to use. so we - this forum - are now and always should have been the front page article “comments section”. this the case, there is some utility in the idea of swim, bike and run subforums as comments buckets for articles we write. but there is that “first, do no harm” admonition and i don’t know that this has been heeded. is there a way to not have this new proliferation of subforums while using the forum for front page article comments? maybe. i think we should’ve investigated that and i don’t know if we did because i wasn’t part of the design group. perhaps there might be a rethink of this. i don’t know. perhaps the subforums are a good idea and we just don’t see it yet.

on the choice of these owners: this has been brought up a couple of times here in the last few days; i have addressed this in the past and i’ll do so again. the finances weren’t important to me. as long as i eschew the name brand tomato paste and buy good & gather i can make ends meet. this group - as opposed to others, and there were several other new owner options - had a plan. large format images on the site. professional video. monetize and supercharge the classifieds forum. age group team. they had the vision and the energy that no other group had. i still believe all that remains true and - hiccups aside - i think you see some of the fruit of moving the ball forward in this new site design.

the LR: here is what so many people just don’t get about this place: how often do you get to be in an online community where those with opposing worldviews are not filtered out? where is the reader forum or FB group that is as civil as this one on the world’s hard topics, with all sides participating? tylertri and i couldn’t see the world more differently, yet we’re both bibliophiles and regularly (and eagerly) read each others posts on the “what are we reading” threads. you might say that’s all fine, but it’s not pertinent to the tri forum. the LR adds dimensionality to the entire forum because it creates and rounds out the community of folks that use the other forums (tri, classifieds, etc.). every other non-slowtwitch forum and FB group with which i’m involved are wholly transactional: i don’t care about them; they don’t care about me. we’re just there for information. not so here on slowtwitch, and the LR is a big part of that.

what i hope our new management (and it’s not that new, they are about 2 weeks away from 2 full years of ownership) will do is onboard the feedback they’re getting as they push forward with the good work on site redesign and feature enhancements. nobody likes change. so there’s that. but change that diminishes rather than enhances user experience cost elon musk and his investors $32 billion of their $44 billion investment in that platform. so on my tombstone i will have this epitaph for anyone coming after me who makes any consumer good or service: measure twice, cut once.

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An ignorant slut could never write this. You sir, are no ignorant slut.

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Thanks for the updates and description (and your long term moderation). Very apt description of the Lavender-room. Haven’t found anything matching it the last 20 years.

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thanks for your input. Owners can do what they want and set the parameters they want including what can be discussed and how it can be discussed. If they are clear and consistent about these two things I’m sure those that want to be here will adjust accordingly (if necessary).

Hopefully those that want to speculate on whether they as posters are any harder or easier to moderate than anyone else will let the moderators do the moderating and spend their time worrying about their own posting.

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Perhaps I’m in the minority but I don’t come here (ST broadly and LR specifically) for tri content. Those days are past for me. I’ve stayed for the interesting people in the LR.

Change is fine. I hate it only slightly more (or less, depending on the day) than stagnation.

I’ll continue to linger and post sporadically, as I’ve done for 20 years. Until such time as it’s untenable - either because the changes prove to suck that bad or the people (that make this place interesting) are gone.

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I’ve done 1 triathlon in the last 10ish years and yet ive frequented the LR consistently since my triathlon participation fell off.
Dan’s moderation and infrequent use of the ban hammer has been impressive over the years.

Generally, threads here are conversations as opposed to tearing people down. Go to other places where comments are posted and it gets ugly fast.

I hope the new moderators reconsider how quickly they “put people in time out”.

I also hope they take all of our comments into consideration before dismantling, i mean breaking up, the LR.

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@Slowman thanks for taking the time to give us some insights and your thoughts.

We are a rather smart bunch and can understand things will be in flux with any changeover.

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i’m interested in what you think of James. i hope to read your comments in the appropriate thread. when you said you were reading it i immediately pushed that book up in the queue and began it a day or two ago. i have my opinion but i’d like to see yours first before i share it :wink:

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I understand the need to modernise the tech

Whilst I haven’t completely figured it out, it doesn’t always appear in the right order for me, and I have loads of threads I’ve never read dating back years at the bottom, I like the functionality

Badges and all that nonsense are a non issue.

I think musk should be a salutary lesson, once the good will is gone, it’s much harder if not impossible to regain it

It’s slightly concerning that they’ve been involved for two years and thought the breezy FIFO (fit in or…) post that kicked it all off was appropriate but then that goes to the wider point of just very poor comms on their part.

Hopefully they will take some of the feedback on board, but given the tone todate I suspect many are sceptical given we’ve spent two decades here it’s obviously a concern, but as we were told, we can always leave…

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Thanks for this, Dan, and for your long term moderation of this wonderful community.

There has been a lot of talk about new ownership not understanding the value of this type of forum. And while I agree, the problem is that value is subjective. People who are looking for an open forum to discuss a wide array of topics in good faith without fear of heavy moderation value it immensely. People who just want to buy a website about triathlons and grow it to suit their vision might not value it all - in fact they might see it as a drag chute to the progress they want to make and the kind of value they intend to bring to the site.

I see this kind of thing all the time in my world, which is the construction and development space. A wonderful neighborhood will develop organically over decades. People fix up character houses, a community garden is formed, someone builds a nice bench or pergola by it, a cool bakery or food truck opens up across the road - all of a sudden there’s this vibrant community there and people come from other areas just to grab a coffee and hang out.

Then, a developer comes in and thinks “man, what a cool spot. what a shame there’s only 4 houses around this community garden. I could put 40 chic condos here so more people could enjoy this area, with commercial space for a bigger bakery that could serve more customers!”

The neighbourhood complains to the city but ultimately the condos get built, the small local bakery can’t afford the rent of the larger space so a Starbucks goes in, the community garden is cast in shadows by the condos and nothing grows, and a year later passers by would have no idea that not long ago a cool, funky, vibrant community existed here, they only see the same generic development with a Starbucks and an empty courtyard that you see on every other corner.

Did the developers ruin the area? Depends on who you ask. The project was a success for the developer, their investors, people who live in the new apartments, but clearly ruined the neighborhood for other folks who treasured it for what it was.

Now, that was just an insanely long winded way of asking your opinion on what the new owner’s values are. How aligned are they with yours? Are they the type to foster a quirky neighborhood community garden, or the type to maximize the development potential of a plot of land? We can talk about value this and open speech that until the cows come home but if their values don’t align with ours on this subject it really won’t matter in the end.

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@BCtriguy1 damn

::satisfied and impressed clapping::

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ownership and management of slowtwitch was transferred to the group who now owns it because their plan prioritized service to this community rather than, say, leveraging you all against the “larger” goals they had in mind. whenever a suitor said to me, “we really admire your community” i struck them from consideration. that was always code for, “we want your readers over there to give us a win with what we’re doing over here.”

everybody hates change. any time i tried to execute a change you all cried to high heaven. this new forum platform is going to be great. we’re just going to need some time to get our arms around it. in a couple of months we’ll be talking about how much better it is.

i think they failed to fully think through some of the execution of the old-to-new platform. as often happens. just, know that they want you, not a subsection of you, they want the whole family and they want to serve you better. engage you more. find out what it is you want to do - multisport, gravel bike, skyrun, or coach others - and equip you to do it. i’m still here and so are ryan and jordan, 2 years later. that should say something to you because that’s very rare in acquisitions.

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@Slowman again thank you for the insights.

I’d be lying if I said that seems straightforward however a lot of that doesn’t seem to align with what has happened the last few months.

We have had very little interaction with them. And what we have seen seems contradictory to previous information, haphazard, and suspicious that the admins are all on the same page. Maybe this is a fundamental misunderstanding on my part.

If they want us they have gone about showing that a very odd way. They want to serve us and the community better? But they haven’t asked us anything or communicated anything.

What you mentioned is all endurance related; not lavender took related. So again I just done see how “we” fit into their goals of service for this ST community as a whole, and not a subset.

If I want to serve someone better then I ask them what they want and what they need and see how it aligns with my options and resources. But if I’m not looking to serve the people that are already with me and instead my focus is on making changes for my vision which is the priority and I’m also at the mercy of some new regulations (Google ads?) then I’m not really going to bother to ask…I’m just going to do.

Thanks!

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I whole-heartedly agree with the new platform. we’ll all have forgotten about the old one soon enough.

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Where else could we read/contribute -On alert in Alert, Nunavut](/t/on-alert-in-alert-nunavut/831608 and Trump, eaten dogs, in same forum? Those pictures and commentary on the arctic are just stunning.

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[quote=“Slowman, post:13, topic:1278696, full:true”]. just, know that they want you, not a subsection of you, they want the whole family and they want to serve you better.
[/quote]

Dan there was legitimately more unification of opinion on the slicing and dicing of the LR than Trump being shot.

There is an assumption that there is a “better.” It’s quite possible there is not and almost assuredly definite the stated plan for the LR is not “better.”

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i’m not sure what you mean by this. but look, by every objective metric the LR is not what slowtwitch is about. i can tell you for sure that if this portal had ended up in other hands the LR would’ve been gone within the first 60 days.

you have certain advertisers (most notably google) that just will not as a matter of policy advertise anywhere that has politics as its content. but the LR is the place where the community gets rounded out. if you want to service the whole person you show him or her how to put on his or her wetsuit correctly, and you show them how to deal with the loss in the family. (if it comes to that.) so, let these folks figure out how to service you all in a way that does not detract from their mission and their finances.

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Yeah, i really don’t see how from a financial standpoint keeping the LR benefits the current owners. It probably is even a turnoff for potential advertisers since the LR community is not in line with Tri/endurance sports. At best, keeping LR around is an act of altruism+ grandfathering.

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I find this entire issue funny. People are all worked up because their little safe space is changing. In my humble opinion if you have been on here for 10-20+ years with 10s of thousands of posts you really need to get a life. You have been arguing for years with total strangers that 90% ++++ will never meet someone on here. All the hours wasted that could have been spent with family, friends and other loved ones wasted on here arguing over nonsense. The change is good. But what would be better is if many of you took this opportunity and actually reevaluated the time you spend here and how it impacts your life.

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A very short-sighted reply that misses the mark entirely. I would worry less about what other people do with their time and how they value their efforts and interactions with others.

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