All too often, threads must be pulled from the public Forums for Moderator review because they start to get ... "unfriendly". Recently, such a thread was pulled from one of the Care Forums. As is normal policy, the original poster was PM'ed to inform her of the Moderator action and in the sole interest of helping her extremely needy cats, to offer assistance of a private nature. I think that everyone who posts on our Forums needs to see what happens when we cannot remember to be ... "friendly", so after editing a bit to protect the identity of the parties involved, here is the original poster's PM response:
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"Sorry, but no ... that thread was supposed to be about *** ... I just love it how everyone turned around and made me the enemy about my cats and only like 4 out of the 10+ response posts were even related to the thread topic.
So, thanks but no thanks ... I'll handle my problems on my own. And I won't be coming back to this site."
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It's been said countless times here that more flies are attracted with honey than with vinegar. It's clearly outlined in the Forum Rules and even more importantly, it is a matter of sheer common sense. The prime directive here is to help cats. So, it should be a very easy connection of clearly defined dots that if we want to help cats, then we have to treat the humans who care for them with kind understanding and gentle tolerance in order to keep them coming back, even if they frustrate the living heck out of us. If they go away and never come back, how can we possibly ever even hope to reach them?
We lost this one. We failed her and even worse, we failed her cats. This instance is different from others only insofar as we know she's not coming back, and that makes it an excellent example of what we must all remember in order to meet the goal of helping cats. Sadly, we cannot help her cats anymore, but it would add even further insult to injury if we don't use this as a learning experience, so we can hopefully prevent the loss of others in the future.
Please ... I am asking, no, begging ... can we try ~all of us~ to be patient with people, even when they are presenting a problem that is for us an old frustration, discussed to death already, and with simple solutions? Can we try to present our ideas and suggestions in a way that allows people to feel welcomed and safe here instead of criminalized and at blame? Can we try to remember that alienating people when they are being thick about things which seem horribly uncomplicated to us only serves to harm the very cats we have set out to help? And most importantly, can we shed our sense of indignant self-rightousness and remember that it isn't about US or what WE want or how it makes US feel?
I have been a Moderator at TCS for a long time now. I have developed many friendships with the people who post regularly in the Forums to which I have been assigned. Those of you who know me know that I take the loss of each and every member here due to the bad behavior of a few very, very personally. I do not like to feel as though I failed cats who are in genuine need of assistance. I literally go through stages of grief when it happens because I know those cats will continue to suffer and live in conditions way below the standard of care. And it just makes me sick to my stomach when I know it could have been prevented.
Please allow me to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of you for your participation in the Forums. We have helped so many more than we have lost. I sincerely hope that we'll all take this as a learning experience and move on, but keep it in the forefront of our minds when we post our responses from now on.
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"Sorry, but no ... that thread was supposed to be about *** ... I just love it how everyone turned around and made me the enemy about my cats and only like 4 out of the 10+ response posts were even related to the thread topic.
So, thanks but no thanks ... I'll handle my problems on my own. And I won't be coming back to this site."
-----
It's been said countless times here that more flies are attracted with honey than with vinegar. It's clearly outlined in the Forum Rules and even more importantly, it is a matter of sheer common sense. The prime directive here is to help cats. So, it should be a very easy connection of clearly defined dots that if we want to help cats, then we have to treat the humans who care for them with kind understanding and gentle tolerance in order to keep them coming back, even if they frustrate the living heck out of us. If they go away and never come back, how can we possibly ever even hope to reach them?
We lost this one. We failed her and even worse, we failed her cats. This instance is different from others only insofar as we know she's not coming back, and that makes it an excellent example of what we must all remember in order to meet the goal of helping cats. Sadly, we cannot help her cats anymore, but it would add even further insult to injury if we don't use this as a learning experience, so we can hopefully prevent the loss of others in the future.
Please ... I am asking, no, begging ... can we try ~all of us~ to be patient with people, even when they are presenting a problem that is for us an old frustration, discussed to death already, and with simple solutions? Can we try to present our ideas and suggestions in a way that allows people to feel welcomed and safe here instead of criminalized and at blame? Can we try to remember that alienating people when they are being thick about things which seem horribly uncomplicated to us only serves to harm the very cats we have set out to help? And most importantly, can we shed our sense of indignant self-rightousness and remember that it isn't about US or what WE want or how it makes US feel?
I have been a Moderator at TCS for a long time now. I have developed many friendships with the people who post regularly in the Forums to which I have been assigned. Those of you who know me know that I take the loss of each and every member here due to the bad behavior of a few very, very personally. I do not like to feel as though I failed cats who are in genuine need of assistance. I literally go through stages of grief when it happens because I know those cats will continue to suffer and live in conditions way below the standard of care. And it just makes me sick to my stomach when I know it could have been prevented.
Please allow me to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of you for your participation in the Forums. We have helped so many more than we have lost. I sincerely hope that we'll all take this as a learning experience and move on, but keep it in the forefront of our minds when we post our responses from now on.