I will probably get harsh in this post, (FWIW, I've been known to rip usenet posters to shreds for lesser offenses) and I know it. Even at that I will be pulling a few punches in recognition to Andrew's age and the decorum of the forum. I know I've said that no one ever wins arguing against a person under eighteen, and that I hate pissing matches, but limiting Andrew's disruptive posts will apparently only happen if enough people speak out and voice their opinions strongly.

I am tired of Andrew's repeated posts and repeated failure to learn from those who attempt to help him, and would appreciate others stating their feelings as well, positive or negative, with the intent of provoking a response, either from Brad or Andrew, or even from me if I am off-base or over-reacting.

I chatted with Brad last night (deleted by J.C.)

After reviewing the business plan post and doing some hard thinking, I'm following Ian's lead and writing Andrew off entirely until he grows up. Sorry kid, learning is more than asking questions and then ignoring the answers and doing what you want.

My personal feeling is that Andrew's continued posting would be a detriment to the forum. As has been stated before, Andrew asks for advice, gets a thread going, then blatently ignores the wisdom in that thread and continues on his merry way, making more posts. The "business plan" is just further proof of this. On usenet, this behavior is called trolling. However, when I read usenet, I have the luxury of filtering out such garbage posters who troll for attention and the enjoyment of raising a stink. Regrettably, this forum doesn't seem to support killfiles.

When I read the "business plan," I was dismayed (deleted) At least "Apathy Theatres" was mildly humorous.

If some individual wanted to take Andrew under wing and filter his posts to the forum, I think I'd have less of a problem with responding to him. As it is, I distrust his intentions, and I strongly dislike his "owner in the making" attitude. Any theatre owner who acted like Andrew would be a total asshole.

I'll stop now before I start firing big guns.
I don't like having to get my fur up, but I do tend to get protective of groups where I participate or learn.

BTW, I posted a link in the forum recently, to see how many active readers of the forum there are (including lurkers). There seem to be only about 40 or 50, although people reading past posts might up that figure slightly. Andrew needs to understand that he is not posting in front of millions of film-tech lurkers, but in front of a small group of people that are getting increasingly pissed-off.

I have a couple cousins and nephews like him. He means well but his enthusiasm gets the best of him a lot of the time. Usually, kids like this are a bit more intellegent than your average early/pre-teen kids. . Of course, because of his age, his level isn't quite up to that of your average adult but it's above the level of the average "kid". This leaves them kind of out in left field so they don't have anybody to talk to on "their level". (I was probably a lot like him when I was that age. )

Everybody has their own little set of idiosyncracies. This is America. To each his own. (Up to a certain point)

If I were the king of the world I would say:

1. How about we cut the kid a little bit of slack?
   
2. How about we remind Andrew that this is an ADULT forum and if he wants to participate he should do his best to act like an adult?
   

My biggest problem with this entire situation is the fact that Jerry is quoting comments made on a private chat forum. Yes Jerry, that is a PRIVATE chat and non-members are NOT invited to lurk there as they are here. The fact also exists is that what you wrote here that "I said" in the chat room is not entirely accurate either. So I will say this and I hope people listen and take me seriously:
The next time people quote things said in the chat forum, they will be banned...PERIOD! I don't care if George Lucas himself is quoting things that Andrew McCrea says in the chat forum, in this extreme example Mr. Lucas would be banned. I will add this to the rules page. I don't care if you are quoting me or any other member, if I wanted to say something to the general public, then it is MY decision to post it publicly under my name. I honestly cannot believe that I am having to say this and turn it into a rule. I would've figured it to have been pretty obvious.

As to your link, wow is your stats program waaaaaay off. There are far more people reading this site. 40-50? Try the thousands category! Sure there is a "hard core member" participation of around 40-50, but if this is what you are trying to count, you don't need to try and place some link to see that. Perhaps you are just referring to how many people clicked on a link to your web site from Film-Tech?

Now onto the other problem. Andrew, I do get lots of emails from people who are sick to death of you and your posts. (You are one of two people whom I get constant complaints on.) What Jerry said IS true. You ask a plethora of questions and then completely ignore the advice you are given. Then when questions are asked of you from members, you do NOT go back and answer them. You have still not been able to provide you even exist as a 13 year old kid. The only proof you have sent is an incredibly bad faxed newspaper article for which I HAVE ALREADY POSTED ELSEWHERE, COULD HAVE EASILY BEEN FAKED by someone in less than 10 minutes with Photoshop. I am NOT going to pose a time limit simply because Jerry has decided to give me a gentle nudge (which is obviously the intent), but will do so if the members speak forth. By proof I mean either you provide the members here a link to a newspaper article that does not originate on one of your servers and is from a REAL newspaper's web site (supposedly you have been in numerous articles, so this should not be a problem) or you mail me an ORIGINAL newsprint article. I know of no other way to prove that anyone under the age of 18 exists. Please get on this quickly, but as I stated above I am not going to pose a certain time limit as of this moment. If anyone has any ideas as to how to verify Andrew's existence since he is so young, please speak forth. It is very possible we may end up with another teenager who is hard to verify in the future.

To the rest of the members, now seems to be a good time to point this out...if you aren't going to complain publicly on the forum, don't complain privately to me. I am getting real tired of it. While I am happy to help and answer questions, I do not appreciate the emails some people have been sending me ranting about Andrew (and the other unnamed member), but then they won't say ANYTHING about it on the forum. While sure, some of the emails I have received are far too harshly worded for that person to post publicly, they could be reworded and "toned down" a bit to be acceptable, yet still get the point across. As it is, this just makes me look like the big evil guy here and it seems no matter what decision I make when it comes to banning people, all I get is slack from it. So people......speak your mind on the forum or keep it to yourself. If you have something to say, but won't post a toned down version publicly, I am going to completely disregard it.

Please remember though that Andrew isn't directly attacking other members personally, and that is the number 1 rule. This means any ban would be based upon his professionalism (or lack of it) on these forums with his posts. Perhaps a better question is, should the "quality" of posts be moderated?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, I feel better now.

I would rather sway with the breeze than to see him on the streets getting into big trouble.

However, I think Andrew should sit back and enjoy the ride, and maybe he can actually learn something from those who have been in the theater industry for years on end.
 

Instead of simply ending this thread since it is already started, can everyone use their brain power to recommend some new rules or procedures for moderation? I freely admit that my moderating is not perfect, but am doing the best job I can and am having to make this up as time goes along. So if anyone would like to request any new rules to be added (such as an age limit) or would like to see "content moderation", meaning completely useless posts be moderated, or has any other possible ideas...please speak up. Thanks to everyone in advance. Sooner or later we'll get all of these little bugs worked out.

First, I happen to be strongly against censorship (which is really what moderation amounts to) in general. I don't like the idea that someone might be trying to hide something in an ostensibly public forum. On the other hand, I also understand that there are sometimes legitimate reasons for limiting discussions to avoid "flame wars" in favor of productive discourse. More importantly, I realize that Brad does really "own" this forum insofar as he pays the substantial costs (both in time and money) of running it; thus, he has every right to run at as he wishes. Anyone who disagrees can very easily either not read the stuff that's posted here or set up another web site, mailing list, etc. and run it differently (and attempt to get the same kind of traffic that this one gets.)

Basically, I think that this forum is better moderated than just about every other mailing list, web forum, or moderated usenet group that I've seen. The rules are pretty clear (real names only, no personal attacks, don't post stuff that's off-topic for a particular forum) and are enforced consistently, and with explanation. A perfect example of over-moderation (IMHO, of course) is the CML Cinematography mailing list--the content is fascinating, but the moderation bot will auto-bounce messages for stuff like more than 5 consecutive quoted lines from a previous post or something absurd like that. A perfect example of under-moderation would be any of the alt.sex.* Usenet groups, which generally contain 1-900 number spam and useless off-topic posts.

My own feeling is that it is better to err on the side of having a signal-to-noise ratio that is slightly high, rather than to risk banning individuals who might post some content of interest, or, at least, start discussions which result in an interesting exchange of information. Even those who are tired of reading Andrew's posts can (I hope) see that most of the threads that he has started have resulted in some interesting discussion (I'm thinking of Ian's post on the "business plan" thread, among others), and he hasn't really posted anything that's horribly off-topic or a direct personal attack (I'm not counting his private email to Gordon, which I agree was totally inappropriate.)

Second, I happen to have some knowledge of Brad's web stats, and I can say with certainty that this forum is getting many times the number of hits that Jerry implies. It is important to realize that there is both an art and a science to getting good user statistics for web sites. While every hit is, of course, logged by the server, there is no truly simple and efficient way to get an accurate number of unique users of any web site.

Counting the number of times that a particular link within a post is clicked on is _not_ an adequate indicator of the number of users, as many people will simply not follow every single link that is posted (if they happen to be interested in reading the thread in which it is posted in the first place). Even links to an image file would give a little bit better indication of the number of users, but ignores several factors:

• not all users are using graphical browsers (I use the text-only Lynx browser about 90% of the time, for example), nor are all users using graphical browsers configured to auto-load images (due to slow connections, etc.); thus, hits from these users would not be counted
  
• some ISPs (AOL, for example, as well as many European ISPs) force all web traffic through a caching proxy, often transparently. While the actual forum pages would not be cached (because they are generated dynamically), the images would be and, thus, would not show up as hits more than once until the cache expires, even if more than one user of AOL or a particular trans-Atlantic fiber link, or another ISP happened to be looking at the forum and loading the image (which would come from the caching proxy for every user except the first)
  
• obviously, an image would only be loaded if a person were to read a particular thread and is thus not indicative of overall forum traffic
  
• multiple hits from the same browser on the same computer would probably not be counted, due to browser caching of the images (which would result in over-counting if the same user were to view a particular thread/image more than once or under-counting if more than one individual user were to use the same browser/computer to look at the forum); note that I"m ignoring Unix and other multi-user systems for the sake of simplicity here, but the point remains valid
  
• finally, this method of counting the number of readers of this forum doesn't count users who may view various posts through venues besides this web site (for example, threads may be emailed to others or printouts may be circulated among several people)
  

It wouldn't be appropriate for me to post actual stats without Brad's permission, but I can confidently say that this forum is read by a nontrivial number of users, ranging from employees of various theatre chains, manufacturers, service organizations, and labs, to others who are simply film fans or are interested in the technology that is discussed here. Obviously, many of these users never post, which is unfortunate, but creating a hostile environment for people who have somewhat unconventional views will not encourage them to begin posting stuff that may be of interest here.

Sorry for the long post...

I am extremely impressed with the way some of our members answer these posts. I wish I had this forum to ask questions to in the late 50' and 60's. I am nearing the end of my career and I have loved every moment that I have had in this industry. It's in the blood and I feel a certain comraderie with all of you. I know I do not take myself too seriously, I love to laugh and I love to put people on. Life is too short to dwell on depressing items. Put them behind you and move on.
 

As for repeating the things said in chat, I view chat between myself and a member as a way of increasing my skills and getting quick answers. Apparently, many see chat as having other functions that for whatever reasons need to be kept from public view. I don't care for that protocol, but I can understand and respect it.

It is apparent by your response that you see any breach of protocol of chat more disturbing than other areas of concern. Learning this, I have immediately deleted reference to our conversation, as short as it was. I was under the impression that I had asked the same question a while back in open forum, but I apparently was in error. I regret the lapse. To solve ANY possibility of my making such an error in the future, I will be avoiding the film-tech chat option from now on. If anyone appears in chat using my name (which is possible, as someone pointed out) it won't be me. Check server logs if you need to, I won't be there again.

I have no need to dispute web stats. If you state that more people read the forums regularly, fine. I believe you. Watching a public counter on a linked page, doesn't make it "secret" though. It could have been an unpopular subject, or not be clicked on for a multitude of reasons. My referencing numbers should only be taken in the context of the statement I was making, and a representation of "click-through" on a single subject.

I made gentle nudges before to Andrew. I regard my first post to this topic as a gentle nudge to you, but not to Andrew. If Andrew wants to play with the hardball teams, he can't expect to play with T-ball rules. While I'm not in the ump's face, I am questioning a couple of calls. I guess I have to take the risk of getting thrown out of the game by doing that.

I'm going to the refreshment stand and have a cold one and peanuts.
 

I wouldn't post too many rules, or future members might be afraid to post. I think everything should be handled on a case by case basis. Every situation is different. But I agree with Brad that if people are bothered by someone on the forum, mention it politely in a thread (preferably in "Yak"). This would also give the targeted individual a chance to see firsthand what is bothering other members and rebut the comments. If it gets out of hand then action should be taken. From what I have seen many people have mentioned their frustration with Andrew publicly on the forums about how he does not listen to advice.

If I had a problem with Randy Stankey, what good would come of me e-mailing Brad saying "I don't like that Randy Stankey guy. He sucks!". What is Brad supposed to do? E-mail Randy and say "Joe Redifer thinks you suck. Membership revoked!" NO! I could more effectively either e-mail Randy privately or post a thread that says "Randy, you aren't into the Mac as much as I am. I have a problem with that." Randy could come back and say "Joe, you're weird." or whatever. Point is that if others agree with me on my views towards Randy, they can comment as well (making sure to remain professional). Randy will get the message or other action will be taken if neccessary. I hope I didn't make that point too many times here.

By the way, Randy is only used as an example here. I don't really have problems with him

On the chat, by all means do continue to visit. My only point is that no one should be quoting things said in the forum or via private email without the other party's permission. Lots of people tell me things that would be detrimental to their job if I was to repeat it. Do I ever pass it further than my own eyes and ears? No, absolutely not. While the conversation isn't exactly detrimental to anything, this example is still a valid enough reason to keep private conversations private. Upon re-reading the post I made rather quickly earlier (in an attempt to get a response quickly before the thread started to wander too much), I think I worded it poorly in my overall annoyance with the topic. My apologies to you for that Jerry.

Onto the newly wandered topic, suggestions anyone? Now is a good time to modify membership rules.

Limiting people who have an interest in the industry but no experience to one area might make things smoother. Everyone here grandfathered to all forums, of course.

 

People that post here to 'fantasize about their theatrical exhibition wet dream' or 'to ask when "Shrek" is coming out' do *NOT* belong on the forums, INCLUDING Film-Yak (as I have mentioned before, if it is for non-film handling related discussion why bother calling it FILM-Yak at all?), IMO.

Proof of employment in the industry probably is a bit extreme, as the collectors, etc wouldn't have any. but age limits may be a good idea.

Aaron

PS: No offense taken, Joe. I thought it was funny.
 

I don't see the need for a minimum age to post messages. Myself, I was aware that Andrew was of a very young age (13 isn't it?). Taking that into consideration. I knew what to expect when reading one of his posts. I certianly hope that Andrew continues to read these forums and continues to learn about the industry that he has an obvious interrest in.

 

That being said, I am opposed to rules in general. I know there must be some, but rules are inflexible by there very nature. I deal with enough stupid, inflexible rules at my workplace, I don't need to deal with more of them at my one place of escape.
 

If this is to be a forum for professionals, there has to be a minimum standard of conduct. If it is not a forum for professionals, then that needs to be stated.

Ever watch how quickly and casually a top-flite executive will dismiss a person who is wasting their time? That same executive will take months and years grooming someone else who has a grasp of a situation and is willing to learn. Compare the situation to a pitcher of water and two cups. The difference is not the pitcher of water, it is the difference between the cup that holds water and the one with holes in the bottom.

I don't dislike Andrew. I do think that he showed repeatedly that he didn't want to learn and his cup was full of holes. Until that changes he has no business being in a forum that caters to professionals in any industry, any more than a kindergartener belongs in a board room. It is just that simple to me. Asking simple questions isn't a big problem. Asking and not heeding responses is.

Maybe a lower age limit is an answer. Maybe a mentoring program is an answer. Maybe just sitting back and waiting for natural attrition is an answer. Which is the right answer? I don't know. What I do know is that there is no single answer and not everyone will be satisfied with any answer.

If it were humanly possible to limit membership to 16-and-up, that would be great. Anyone under that age should probably be working directly with a mentor anyway. I can say this because I had a mentor who started working with me in the booth when I was 11. Lurking and reading the forums should be a valuable tool to complement working with a mentor. However, membership verification is just not possible without running up Brad's phone bill to verify employment or whatever.

It appears that the best thing would be to leave the rules the way they are. Let the lurkers lurk and the posters post. We are all in this forum together and it should be up to us to politely police ourselves (do I sound like a theater manager ranting about MPAA ratings? ) If someone who should be lurking inappropriately posts, it should be up to the members to point it out publicly. Should the public hints fail, only then should the moderator step in and help out. I'm sure Brad would rather participate than play big brother.

The only thing I would change would be adding more to the email I got with my registration information. Add a comment about "please read the FAQ (insert direct link here)" and also include the paragraph from the FAQ that starts with Very Important.

It's pretty clear that the members are striving for quality here. I hope we can keep it that way without disrupting the cosmos.

 

(Sorry to temporarily interrupt the discussion regarding more suggestions. That one is just so simple and so straightforward that I am surprised neither myself nor anyone else hasn't thought of it sooner.)

Sean, I have been toying with the idea of seeing if it is possible to implement new fields for the member profiles. If I can make this work, how about an age and number of years in the business fields? Do you think this may help to cut down on such issues? Anyone have any other suggested field additions? (Also, feel free to send in a different picture any time you wish.)

When I was 13 all I wanted to do was open my own theater, I was going to have Stereo sound (take in mind this was 7 years ago), High back purple comfy seats with (oh my) CUP HOLDERS, a rug in the lobby that was black with big yellow (tell me if this one sounds familiar) glow in the dark stars with "Stars" (get it?) names on it. I wanted to have my box office window out side and when you walked in have the concession stand go across the whole lobby until the point where you enter the hall to the theaters. <--- That was my perception of owning a theater at the age of 13. Luckily I got into the business!!! Those aren't the things you think of when you are opening a theater (at least not at first). I think most of us on the forum know this and that is why it was so annoying to see (for example) Andrew’s business plan….OH IF IT WERE ONLY SO EASY! Hey if it WERE so easy, I’d own a theater.

I think Andrew meant well, I really do. That is in no way saying that I didn't find him extremely annoying. Ultimately it is Brads choice what to do with the members he has on the forum, he pays the fee's, he may run it however he likes. Personally I think an age limit of 16 or older would be great. Implementing that rule would be a whole other problem though. Is the task of implementing the rule worth having the rule? That’s a question that only the person implementing it can answer. But hey, Brad, if you’re up for the task, that’s my vote.

Andrew, if you are still reading these posts, good luck with your business but please take in mind all of the advice these people have given you. No one wants you to fail, I'm sure we all wish you good luck.

Let's just move on, and learn from our mistakes. We have movies to run and equipment to maintain, as well as a wealth of information to share with each other.

Brad has done a superb job with these forums, and if we conduct ourselves in a professional manner, it should not be necessary for Brad to make make new rules and regulations.

Since I have been a member of Film-Tech forums, I only saw two people get a little out of hand. Not bad for over 25,000 posts from a membership of 700 + ....In fact, that record is quite impressive!

Let's keep this fun for Brad. If these forums become a pain for Brad to administer, WE ALL LOSE! End of story!

Grumpy Paul

AMEN

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

When it comes to "posting", I'll usually only post something that I actually have knowledge about. I tried last weekend to "chat", but found I was way over my head to participate intelligently.

When I pulled my first pair of projectors out of about 2 feet of water, I wouldn't have known the first thing to do without the help of the members of Film-Tech. When I bought my first "Booth" back in May of 2000, it was the members of Film-Tech who told me what was a reasonable amount to pay for the equipment. When I needed parts for my obsolete machines, members like Ken Layton and Robert Throop stepped in and saved the day.

Sometimes just reading and lurking is better than posting.

------------------
Barry Floyd
Floyd Entertainment Group
Nashville, Tennessee
(Drive-In Theatre - Start-Up)
 

I wish I could remember the author. I have often thought of this quote, during lifes journey.
 

As for Andrew, I was bothered by some of his posts, but, as a former middle school teacher, I know he had good intentions. I also think he was enjoying all of the attention he was getting. Middle school students LOVE to feel important.

I was pleased at the gentleness of the posts regarding the business plan. I saw a genuine effort on the part of many here (especially Ian) to try to guide Andrew to rethink some of his plans.

This forum has one of the highest signal/noise ratios of any I have ever particpated in. We rarely see the "I agree" posts that flood USENET. To me, the key to the success of this board is the use of real names. If my name is on the post, I'm only going to put up something I can back up.

Brad does an excellent job of moderating the board, keeping a close eye on things but mostly letting things run their course. I think in this case, just letting things go is probably the best course of action.

I don't see a need to change Film-Tech at all.

Mark Lensenmayer
------------------
"As a moral to young men who come down to the city, don't go round breaking people's tambourines."

Andrew was somewhat annoying, yes, but he did stimulate some interesting topics and a lot of info got posted that might have been considered "common knowledge" by many of us, but a lot of people (new to the industry) might not have known about some of these things yet

I've made a few stupid posts myself, and gotten corrected within hours... which has proved to me that I DON'T know as much as I thought I did, even though I've been in the business over 20 years.

We all have our own set of problems and experience level. Even though I've been around a while, I've learned a lot from this forum and I've learned to appreciate some of the problems and situations my big-city colleagues have to deal with. (I've also learned to shut up once in a while! )

As to the signal-noise ratio... if you want to see another side of the coin, go to www.bowl.com (that's the ABC (American Bowling Congress) website) and check out their forums. They allow anonymous posting. I can't believe the amount of useless crap there, compared to here.

As everyone else said, I think Brad does a great job here and I would hope that if anyone has a problem with posts of mine, they would take it up with me personally instead of bothering Brad about it.
 

------------------
John Eickhof President, Chief Slave
Northwest Theatre Equipment Co., Inc.
P.O.Box 258
Wendell, ID. 83355-0258
208-536-5489
email: jeickhof@nteequip.com
 

There have been, at times, posts I would have loved to reply to or comment on, but due to the very nature of working for a major chain, I feel, at times, it is best that I not voice my idea/opinion as it may be misconstrued by others as representation of the company, which is not rightly so.

I would like to see teh ability to remove the film-handler. master film handler & jedi film handler tags from the bio pics and incorporate an "industry affiliation' moniker. This would allow one and all to know a poster's tie in with the business prior to ever reading the post(s).

Brad, aside from that, I would like to thank you for the site and the time and effort you have placed into providing this for us.

------------------
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!
 

So, to wrap this up and get back on topic, I like the current culture we have here, no one really cares about your post count. I, for example, have a higher post count than Pat Moore of Ballyntine (manufactures of Strong and Simplex products), however, I consider Pat to be a much more valuable asset to this forum than myself, no matter how many posts he's made. Adding special titles is an interesting idea. I'm not sure how much time it would take Brad though. The alteration to the UBB code is only two lines if I remember correctly, but you have to manualy enter each members title.

Thank you all,

Joshua

P.S. I think Red Green said it best;
"I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together"