diy solar

diy solar

I would have not locked the thread, even if there are personal attacks against me.

There is just too much there and not worth the time. I wish I could engage but just dont have the spare time. Only exception to this is the example of the edited post. That post has 2 separate and distinct parts. First part is an outright insult the second being actual information. You didn't alter the information, you simply deleted the insult. Far different than the editing that has been done to my posts.

The post of mine that was edited was a very carefully crafted slap in the face to try to snap someone out of arguing a point that was obviously wrong, he was coming from a perspective that was misinformed and no one seemed to be able to get through. And it worked. He stopped arguing, looked at what everyone else was trying to explain to him and got it. However, hours later it was edited and by the time the moderator was done with it it was ridiculous.
 
You didn't alter the information, you simply deleted the insult.
That is 100% the goal, and the most usual case thank god.

The post of mine that was edited was a very carefully crafted slap in the face...
Seen those. They are much harder to edit and I don't take the time to be too careful around the carefully crafted part. As you have little time yourself, I'm sure you'll have sympathy for moderators.

The mistake is thinking you're entitled to slap someone in the face. You are not. It is a violation of the T&Cs regardless of motive.

Sure it might even work one in ten. But more often than not slapping someone is a way to get punched.

But even if they thought about it and came around, others are sure to think you rude, report it, and so it gets edited or deleted as it violated the T&Cs. A review won't do you any good because it was probably hard to edit cleanly.

It's not anyone's job to prove themselves right, win an argument, or snap someone out of it.
 
Seen those. They are much harder to edit and I don't take the time to be too careful around the carefully crafted part. As you have little time yourself, I'm sure you'll have sympathy for moderators.

The mistake is thinking you're entitled to slap someone in the face. You are not. It is a violation of the T&Cs regardless of motive.

Sure it might even work one in ten. But more often than not slapping someone is a way to get punched.

But even if they thought about it and came around, others are sure to think you rude, report it, and so it gets edited or deleted as it violated the T&Cs. A review won't do you any good because it was probably hard to edit cleanly.

It's not anyone's job to prove themselves right, win an argument, or snap someone out of it.

No one ever said they were "entitled to". It gets done sometimes to try to help snap someone out of being an idiot. Some people do it to be a prick. What ever the case is, if its a problem then the moderator should step in. If it is simple and easy to edit like the example then do it however if a moderator does not have the time or skill to edit it, then delete it. Dont put words in my mouth. There is a huge difference between saying I cant say something and putting words in my mouth.
 
No one ever said they were "entitled to". It gets done sometimes
You said you did it and were justified to do so. Ergo, entitled.
Entitled isn't a bad word. For example, you work hard you're entitled to a paycheck. Not saying it can't be a bad word, just depends on the context and how the reader perceives it.

I'm not trying to argue about the right or wrongness; I'm saying there are the T&Cs everyone agreed to so they could enjoy the forums. Don't like the T&Cs get them changed, leave, or accumulate points and be banned.

I agree editing complex "faceslaps" can be difficult and hopefully you realize moderators don't have doctorates in how to deal with all possible cases of violations. We're just doing the best we can.

....putting words in my mouth.
Many people dislike those coming into the country illegally. They feel that as they broke the law they don't deserve the protections of the law.
So, there are bound to be some that think you have no right to complain what-so-ever once you've violated the T&Cs.

But the active mods (haven't heard from all of them), think members should have a right to complain about it.
So, please in the future report the posts that were edited in which you feel this way stating where it went wrong and someone will address it as soon as they can.
 
You said you did it and were justified to do so.
Where exactly did I say this. I said it served a purpose.
I agree editing complex "faceslaps" can be difficult and hopefully you realize moderators don't have doctorates in how to deal with all possible cases of violations. We're just doing the best we can.
So delete it if its not ok. Dont change it.
 
So delete it if its not ok. Dont change it.

99.999% of mods online don't edit posts, unless its to screw with people and that's rare...Delete and move on

Don't want them edited or deleted, don't break the T&Cs.

I can understand why you'd want the solution you present deleted with the insult. Maybe that's only fair. IDK.
 
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99.999% of mods online don't edit posts, unless its to screw with people and that's rare

Delete and move on
I have hosted and moderated multiple forums for the last 25 years, moderators edit peoples posts all the time, especially mods with liberal views who dont like opposing view points being aired. Its wrong. Mods with agendas ruin forums and social media all the time. Reddit, Fakebook and twits are us are just a few examples. I run martial art forums and used to think we were the worst, I was wrong. Ive seen it happen here, its happened to me. Mods allow peolle with similar views quite a bit of leeway before deciding its a TS violation but jump all over people who dare to respond. I had a self admitted terrorist trying to use this forum to identify me and my post pointing it out were deleted.... It happens everywhere these days.
 
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... moderators edit peoples posts all the time, especially mods with liberal views who dont like opposing view points being aired. Its wrong.
That certainly is. In those forums where it was abused, did they have a system allowing the member to request the edit be reviewed?

I said nothing about breaking rules,
No post should ever be edited or deleted if it doesn't violate the T&Cs. If it has been, just report it.
 
That certainly is. In those forums where it was abused, did they have a system allowing the member to request the edit be reviewed?


No post should ever be edited or deleted if it doesn't violate the T&Cs. If it has been, just report it.
Some do some don't. Dont question the mod is also fairly common. Its not uncommon for most of the mods on a site to be friends and share views so sometimes the review is nothing more than the "government" /rule maker investigating itself.
 
While skimming thru this .... I remembered an instance some time ago where a thread was edited..... a guy asked a question for the 2nd time that I had answered a few posts prior to that by me .... As I remember it, it was a pretty cut and dried question.
My post was deleted because it was somehow too rude to ask a person if they had read my other post where the question he was asking again .... had already been answered. If that is too rude, then it seems that challenging a person in any way would be too rude.

I thought that was a little over the top to delete that post, but didn't complain about it at the time. I think it may be easy to get a little carried away once the deleting or editing has begun.
 
Remember.

every member on here can report ANY post made or edited by anybody.

Will doesn’t have many moderators. And as one, I KNOW I don’t have a lot of time to dig in and follow all the threads. I peruse the reported posts, jump in, decide if the report needs attention, and do it, then move on.

I can’t imagine editing the content of a post more than deleting a portion to solve a rule issue. Or deleting the entire post. And I would NEVER use my mod power to force or control a conversation in my favor. If I’m engaged in a post, I won’t moderate unless there is a direct T&C violation.

I moderate a LOT of forums, and I feel I have been fair with my use of those powers. I hope everyone trusts that at least.

Svetz is a great mod, and I hope everyone can understand his style of moderating.

but feel free to report ANY post, or if the post is deleted, report one near where it was, and report your post was deleted etc. We mods can ALL see what any mod has done, and can reverse, or repair any wrongdoing… but if it broke the rules, it is unlikely to be reversed.
 
I'm a rule-breaker, I've had my posts deleted and I didn't like it.

In one example, I wrote a long review (when are my posts ever short?) regarding a device I had acquired. It had graphs, tricks I'd learned, reliability information, shortcomings, and could have saved someone a lot of time. What it also had was a link to an obscure freeware library on github and that broke the T&Cs so they deleted it.

It took me hours to write. I was pissed. All that information lost. If they'd just edited out that one link or made the contents available to me I could have and would have fixed it.

I have also been called out on other forums by moderators who edited out the bits that broke the T&Cs. The moderators gave a few words as to what was wrong, and told me to not do it again. Always easy to agree with them in hindsight once it was pointed out how I was in violation. Stuff happens.

So I prefer to have my posts edited because when they're deleted the community as a whole loses out. And I know in most cases I'm not going to post it again. This is probably why most of my posts have a dozen edits.

The difference of course is intent. I never set out to break the rules. I was talking about issues rather than people (Why would anyone talk about people on these forums?). When my post was deleted the mods were just doing their jobs. They had no say or latitude in the matter. But on those forums I've never posted there since then. It's not worth my time. I have lots of choices where I can post.

Perhaps I'm a self-deluded narcissist in thinking that what I write might be of value to others. Of course, perhaps when someone writes something like:
So you're still pro editing, i said just delete, I said nothing about breaking rules, you like arguing with people and thinking your right and are better and smarter than everyone else, even with Will.

they also feel they are trying to help me? IDK for sure, but feels like bad intent. As one guy said earlier, his intent was to "slap the person" to help them as if they were hysterical. I think violence begets violence, I'm not only not swayed by it, but it's the sort of thing that makes me flip the bozo bit on them - anything they say in the future I'll just view that they have bad intent with a desire to harm rather than help.

That's why it was nice to hear from Primal1. I thought long and hard about what they said above, that even with protections like we have some moderators still abused their authority in other places.

In the end, I came to two conclusions. First, it comes down to the caliber of the moderator. This is essentially the dilemma every "boss" has, bad employees will drag other employees down and destroy the reputation of your company. Employees come and go, and it's a struggle for the owner. Will's the boss, members and moderators are like employees. It's like any small company you might work for... want it to stay healthy so you can enjoy the benefits then you do what you can for it. From the lowest ranking peon to the CEO, it makes a real difference what everyone does.

The second conclusion was based on intent. From his description as to what went wrong, it was moderators abusing their powers to push a shared belief (if it wasn't shared moderators wouldn't support the other and the situation should be resolvable). For example, if the moderators were liberal that view would predominate. Most of the conversation on the forums is technical, staying to such topics inherently prevents that form of abuse because it's knowledge transfer/teaching rather than opinions. It goes back to the YOU word, stay away from it and it's far harder to go wrong.

Recently there was a thread about a vendor (yup circling back to what this thread is about). Some people are always going to have good or bad experiences on anything and they're happy to share. The YOU word was dragged out and bad blood flowed. Even perfectly reasonable posts were reported as they were cabal members trolling the thread. I think at the heart of the problem was one side felt sure the other side had evil intent. Undoubtedly the YOU words weren't helping. A moderator stepped in, edited and deleted posts, everybody was warned. The next day it started right back up and the thread was closed. A new thread appeared (after the moderator suggested it) to continue the discussion and both sides not only refrained from attacks but I believe also came to a conclusion.

So what's funny is, deleting and editing didn't solve the root issue. Closing the thread solved the issue because when the players came back they were more careful to not be disrespectful. Being respectful works.

So, my best advice remains unchanged and is the tao of Bill & Ted, be excellent to each other.
 
@svetz ..... It's interesting that YOU mentioned the use of the YOU word ..... That shows me YOU have a pretty good understanding of communications ... and in particular how to communicate negative things that is sometimes necessary.

At a family get together, my brother and I got into a discussion of the customer communications class we had both gone through ... completely different companies.

My brother was the service manager for a major name brand tire store ... and his training included the best example of the YOU word I have seen yet.
Their objective was to communicate to a customer that he had damaged a tire on his car by hitting something ... and therefore the tire warranty couldn't be in play.

The instinct of most people would be to simply say something like .... "YOU have hit something with that tire and damaged it and we can't give YOU warranty on it."
Now, 90% of people are going to get angry and all hell will break loose and you will have lost a customer for life. He has been accused of doing something and goes into defensive mode.

A simple exclusion of the YOU word would go something like .... "It looks like that tire has hit something and damaged it, so we can't give a warranty on it.
A big percentage of the time, the customer will think about that .... and say yeah ... that tire has probably hit something .... and you will still have a customer.
Here, the negative information has been "de-personalized". It was just noted that it looked like the tire has hit something and nobody has been accused of anything .... it was probably the wife that did it ....LOL

I am well aware of how inflammatory YOU can be when communicating negative information, be even then sometimes forget to avoid the word.
 
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Nice post!
...the wife that did it ...
ROFL! I bet no one says that if the wife is standing there.

The YOU word is extremely common in casual speech, sounds like your brother's company is pretty good. I wonder if there isn't something to your analogy where some members feel like customers and entitled to post things that don't add to the conversation or are hurtful?

There's a genius in the tao of be excellent to each other. Excellence to self is the norm, everyone is probably aware the brain will make up good intent excuses for themselves they'd never do for anyone else. It doesn't make sense to be suspicious of ourselves, we only need to be suspicious of others.

In a universe of us and other, in the us set filters are typically applied (lest they be so abrasive they wind up excluded from that set too). But even in the us set, there's always a pecking dominance order achieved either through skill or audacity. In the us set, people feel safe.

It's the others that are universally trampled and history is replete with examples. The genius part I like about the quote is the word each, it puts others in the set us. So, the quote doesn't ask for the same level of understanding for self, just us. At least that's what I think and why I like it.
 
@svetz ..... It's interesting that YOU mentioned the use of the YOU word ..... That shows me YOU have a pretty good understanding of communications ... and in particular how to communicate negative things that is sometimes necessary.

At a family get together, my brother and I got into a discussion of the customer communications class we had both gone through ... completely different companies.

My brother was the service manager for a major name brand tire store ... and his training included the best example of the YOU word I have seen yet.
Their objective was to communicate to a customer that he had damaged a tire on his car by hitting something ... and therefore the tire warranty couldn't be in play.

The instinct of most people would be to simply say something like .... "YOU have hit something with that tire and damaged it and we can't give YOU warranty on it."
Now, 90% of people are going to get angry and all hell will break loose and you will have lost a customer for life. He has been accused of doing something and goes into defensive mode.

A simple exclusion of the YOU word would go something like .... "It looks like that tire has hit something and damaged it, so we can't give a warranty on it.
A big percentage of the time, the customer will think about that .... and say yeah ... that tire has probably hit something .... and you will still have a customer.
Here, the negative information has been "de-personalized". It was just noted that it looked like the tire has hit something and nobody has been accused of anything .... it was probably the wife that did it ....LOL

I am well aware of how inflammatory YOU can be when communicating negative information, be even then sometimes forget to avoid the word.
So in summary, avoiding the "YOU" allows an individual to escape from being held to "account" even if they were the party at fault. Well heck! Who don't like being responsible for their own actions?! The government, politicians, criminals, extremists, and people who drive solo in the car pool lane. Although without having witnessed the aforementioned tire damage, to say "You" would be accusatory. This would incite a conflict, so I get it. Sticking to just stating the facts presented would suffice.
 
So in summary, avoiding the "YOU" allows an individual to escape from being held to "account" even if they were the party at fault. Well heck! Who don't like being responsible for their own actions?! The government, politicians, criminals, extremists, and people who drive solo in the car pool lane. Although without having witnessed the aforementioned tire damage, to say "You" would be accusatory. This would incite a conflict, so I get it. Sticking to just stating the facts presented would suffice.
Well .... I guess that understanding the inflammatory nature of "you" could be used the other way around. Depends on whether the desire is to achieve a result .... or just create some chaos.
 
So in summary, avoiding the "YOU" allows an individual to escape from being held to "account" even if they were the party at fault. Well heck! Who don't like being responsible for their own actions?! The government, politicians, criminals, extremists, and people who drive solo in the car pool lane. Although without having witnessed the aforementioned tire damage, to say "You" would be accusatory. This would incite a conflict, so I get it. Sticking to just stating the facts presented would suffice.
I do agree with you summary.

My version of the summary is:

It allows someone with some skills to keep probing a situation with a potential or probable "at fault" individual whos fragile identity is based around being smart, skilled, fast, brave or some other characteristic that will eventually at some time or situation fail. In order to maintain their identity, they have to "defend" their identity no matter how much avoidance, denial or absurdity is required.
 
I'm a rule-breaker, I've had my posts deleted and I didn't like it.

In one example, I wrote a long review (when are my posts ever short?) regarding a device I had acquired. It had graphs, tricks I'd learned, reliability information, shortcomings, and could have saved someone a lot of time. What it also had was a link to an obscure freeware library on github and that broke the T&Cs so they deleted it.

It took me hours to write. I was pissed. All that information lost. If they'd just edited out that one link or made the contents available to me I could have and would have fixed it.

I have also been called out on other forums by moderators who edited out the bits that broke the T&Cs. The moderators gave a few words as to what was wrong, and told me to not do it again. Always easy to agree with them in hindsight once it was pointed out how I was in violation. Stuff happens.

So I prefer to have my posts edited because when they're deleted the community as a whole loses out. And I know in most cases I'm not going to post it again. This is probably why most of my posts have a dozen edits.

The difference of course is intent. I never set out to break the rules. I was talking about issues rather than people (Why would anyone talk about people on these forums?). When my post was deleted the mods were just doing their jobs. They had no say or latitude in the matter. But on those forums I've never posted there since then. It's not worth my time. I have lots of choices where I can post.

Perhaps I'm a self-deluded narcissist in thinking that what I write might be of value to others. Of course, perhaps when someone writes something like:


they also feel they are trying to help me? IDK for sure, but feels like bad intent. As one guy said earlier, his intent was to "slap the person" to help them as if they were hysterical. I think violence begets violence, I'm not only not swayed by it, but it's the sort of thing that makes me flip the bozo bit on them - anything they say in the future I'll just view that they have bad intent with a desire to harm rather than help.

That's why it was nice to hear from Primal1. I thought long and hard about what they said above, that even with protections like we have some moderators still abused their authority in other places.

In the end, I came to two conclusions. First, it comes down to the caliber of the moderator. This is essentially the dilemma every "boss" has, bad employees will drag other employees down and destroy the reputation of your company. Employees come and go, and it's a struggle for the owner. Will's the boss, members and moderators are like employees. It's like any small company you might work for... want it to stay healthy so you can enjoy the benefits then you do what you can for it. From the lowest ranking peon to the CEO, it makes a real difference what everyone does.

The second conclusion was based on intent. From his description as to what went wrong, it was moderators abusing their powers to push a shared belief (if it wasn't shared moderators wouldn't support the other and the situation should be resolvable). For example, if the moderators were liberal that view would predominate. Most of the conversation on the forums is technical, staying to such topics inherently prevents that form of abuse because it's knowledge transfer/teaching rather than opinions. It goes back to the YOU word, stay away from it and it's far harder to go wrong.

Recently there was a thread about a vendor (yup circling back to what this thread is about). Some people are always going to have good or bad experiences on anything and they're happy to share. The YOU word was dragged out and bad blood flowed. Even perfectly reasonable posts were reported as they were cabal members trolling the thread. I think at the heart of the problem was one side felt sure the other side had evil intent. Undoubtedly the YOU words weren't helping. A moderator stepped in, edited and deleted posts, everybody was warned. The next day it started right back up and the thread was closed. A new thread appeared (after the moderator suggested it) to continue the discussion and both sides not only refrained from attacks but I believe also came to a conclusion.

So what's funny is, deleting and editing didn't solve the root issue. Closing the thread solved the issue because when the players came back they were more careful to not be disrespectful. Being respectful works.

So, my best advice remains unchanged and is the tao of Bill & Ted, be excellent to each other.

Changing someone's words is not being "Excellent" to anyone. Deletion as a consequence of violating the rules should be understood and accepted by all persons posting on this forum. Changing intent or otherwise which takes away from the posters overall message is abuse of authority IMHO.

In your case, to spend hours to post directly on the forum and not have the forethought to put the post in a Word Doc prior, then cut and paste it into the forum.... well that's on "YOU"... oops sorry... "that's on the individual who elected to not back up his or her data, or not deem the data important enough to back up at the time of posting " but only found it important when it was removed AFTER being posted. If people held themselves to account (yes we are talking about integrity and personal responsibility here) Being excellent to other people would be a natural by product. Perpetuating denial and irresponsibility of ones actions only further deteriorates the founding fabric of what's good and just. I.E. see something... say something.
 
I do agree with you summary.

My version of the summary is:

It allows someone with some skills to keep probing a situation with a potential or probable "at fault" individual whos fragile identity is based around being smart, skilled, fast, brave or some other characteristic that will eventually at some time or situation fail. In order to maintain their identity, they have to "defend" their identity no matter how much avoidance, denial or absurdity is required.
Ahhh... today commonly referred to as "Karen Syndrome".
I learned this in Kuwait and Iraq. Their belief fundamentally is that it is better to" lie than create conflict". I don't agree with these values but am not about to have a "come to Jesus moment" with them either. I simply say "We're done here" and be on my way.

Thank you for your pin point eloquent post. It is 100% dead on. I for one appreciate having members like you on this forum.
 
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