Maintaining a Healthy Forum

[sonex1374]

SonexBuilders.net Forum,

You may have seen Chris's recent post reminding users to abide by the community rules for the forum, and noting that moderators will be more active in enforcing them. This is a response to a disturbing trend on the forum, and I'd like to elaborate.

SonexBuilders.net has always existed as a neutral entity, designed to facilitate pertinent, respectful discussion within the community of Sonex builders and pilots. The forum aims to provide support and encouragement to builders, share best practices and useful information, and provide a resource where builders in need of support can seek help from experienced builders and the accumulation of tribal knowledge. The cornerstones of the forum are respect for others and the sharing of factual and useful information. In this regard, the forum has been highly successful in the past.

However, a recent trend has immerged where a small number of users have begun disrupting these aims. Typically, these users post inflammatory, highly opinionated messages, and have aggressively pushed their beliefs, choices and viewpoints onto others. This behavior is counterproductive, and undermines the stability and usefulness of the forum.

The administrative team has observed these trends, and has carefully considered how to best correct the situation. A number of users have contacted the team with concerns about the direction of the forum, and have requested positive action to restore a healthy balance. Likewise, a significant number of very experienced builders and pilots have already faded away from active participation in the forum out of frustration, resulting in a tremendous loss to the Sonex community at large.

Going forward, moderators will begin a period of increased oversight of postings. The aim of this oversight is to ensure users follow the community standards of conduct, reduce "thread creep" where postings obviously go off track into unhelpful directions, and to facilitate the honest sharing of information free of personal agendas and inflammatory aims. Moderators ask that all users abide by the spirit of the community standards and hold themselves to a high standard of conduct.

SonexBuilders.net is a tremendous resource for the Sonex community. Its success is due to the passion and commitment of its users. A strong and healthy forum benefits all of us, and lays the foundation for future builders to learn from those who have gone before and to add to the growing body of community experience.

Thank you for your continued support in making this resource the best it can be!

Jeff Shultz

[NWade]

My thanks to the Admins & Moderators for their (often thankless) time and effort in providing this space for us to swap stories, share frustrations, seek advice, and motivate each other to complete our projects safely and effectively!

--Noel

[WaiexN143NM]

jeff,
how many moderators do we have and who are the moderators?

waiexN143NM
Michael

[DCASonex]

I hope our moderators use a light touch. We are all grownups on this forum and most anyone using any social medium in this day and age has developed their own defenses against the overly opinionated, but free and open discussion is still valuable. We already see too much biased censorship by our news media, and other forums on most any topic with bias both for and against, which tends to end up with each following a group that matches their current opinion and we do not get exposed to contrary opinions. Living in our own safe little information cocoons may be comforting, but in an aviation forum, if it drives away those with contrary opinions, we may miss something that could save a life. Everyone has their own biases which tend to creep into any censorship which makes attempts at unbiased censorship difficult at best.

David A.

[mike.smith]

We are all grownups on this forum

I think the unfortunate truth is that that's not always the case. And I don't mean that to be snarky; it's just true if you read a lot of posts here. I'm all for the added moderation in this case.

[Fastcapy]

Wow, what did I miss.

I haven't been on here lately because I honestly feel this group has become censored to the point where if you are not praising Sonex you are in the wrong. I have received many messages from other users who agreed with what I said on threads but are afraid to say so on the group because they don't want to face the backlash of some others in the group, including some of the moderators.

All I am saying is that it does go both ways. I personally want to hear peoples positive and negative experiences, not just the positive, which to a lot of people seems to be the case since the factory started hanging out on this board.

[builderflyer]

I hope our moderators use a light touch. We are all grownups on this forum................

David A.

David A., unfortunately it doesn't appear to me that will be the case. I took the time to write and post a message on the "stupidest" topic which was as appropriate as the one that you posted on that subject and my message was quickly taken down. (note, it also did not include drilling a hole through my finger) I won't be taking my valuable time to compose any more messages on this group in the future only to have them removed by an unknown source without explanation.

The original "sonexbuilders" group with members like Tony Spicer and David Koelzer was the best one out there only to be replaced with other more and more censored ones thereafter and that is a shame. Apparently, we need to be "protected" from ourselves.

Art,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Sonex taildragger #95,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Jabiru 3300 #261

[chris]

I hope our moderators use a light touch. We are all grownups on this forum................

David A.

David A., unfortunately it doesn't appear to me that will be the case. I took the time to write and post a message on the "stupidest" topic which was as appropriate as the one that you posted on that subject and my message was quickly taken down. (note, it also did not include drilling a hole through my finger) I won't be taking my valuable time to compose any more messages on this group in the future only to have them removed by an unknown source without explanation.

I just reviewed the moderator logs and there were not any edits or deletions of your post. Your statement is 100% completely false. Perhaps you did not hit submit. Please contact me if you need technical assistance. Thanks.

[onex28]

Can I presume that when a moderator edits or removes a post, said moderator emails the poster with the justification for such action?

David W

[Rynoth]

My thanks to the moderators for helping to keep a healthy and constructive (pun intended?) forum.