I totally agree with your suggestions as a responsible leader. Alas, there are a lot of inexperienced leaders out there who wouldn't think of that. Especially if they agree with Member B's objection to a warning. And there are always more inexperienced leaders on a new platform like Imzy.
There's always a balance to be found between flexibility and features and abuse prevention, unfortunately.
I haven't heard of any drama on imzy, but I've been both a member and leader in other blogging services (LiveJournal, Reddit, etc.) and this sort of thing does happen when leaders can edit posts. I wish I could say it didn't, but it does.
Sometimes the leader is being malicious about it -- put a large enough group of people in one place and there's going to be someone in it who gets a kick out of screwing with other people.
But sometimes it's really well intentioned, and it still goes horribly wrong. Here's a fictional example:
Member A posts a story to a fiction writing group. Member B is offended by something in the story. Member B goes to the Leader and says, "This story contains offensive material X and there should be a warning on it." Sounds reasonable. The Leader edits the post and adds the warning. Member A sees the warning and gets upset. They go to the Leader. "Adding that warning totally ruins the emotional impact of the story! And besides, thing X shouldn't need a warning anyway! Why'd you do that?" Leader explains, but does not divulge Member B's identity. Member A makes a post to the comm, "Hey, who did this thing?!?" Friends of Member A chime in. Friends of Member B, and people who agree with them, chime in. Suddenly, flame war.
You see how easy it is for a simple, apparently reasonable, post edit to go wrong?
Better to make it impossible for the leader to get into that situation. Granted, Member A and B could still yell at each other, but in that case the Leader remains a neutral party who can step in to manage things.
I am 100% opposed to adding such an ability, as both a leader and a member.
Removing a post is a totally different thing than being able to change what someone else is saying. If someone says something a leader objects to, having that post deleted can suck (if it's not justified), but giving the leader the ability to make it look like the member said the opposite, or said something offensive justifying further "disciplinary" action is far worse, imho.
Sure, I'd like to be able clean it up when someone forgets to use proper formatting in one of my comms. But from my perspective, the potential for abuse is much, much, much greater than that minor irritation.
Also, not having that ability means that the leader can't be pressured by other people to change things members have posted.
I normally don't like Dorbz either, but those two are so perfect it's amazing.
Nice! Mind if I ask the URL of your urban fantasy site? I'm a big fan of that genre.
After a conversation with my brother reminded me of it, I've been poking at a space opera concept that's been sort of on the mental back burner, slowly acquiring details.
It's basically a far(ish) future scenario, where humans are colonizing space. They encounter a race which are basically space dragons. It's not a hostile encounter, but the two races have trouble relating to each other because in this 'verse dragons are extremely individualistic and territorial while humans (due to how space flight and colonization have affected humanity) have became extremely social and group/community oriented.
The funny thing is, I have tons of details worked out regarding how dragon society works, but almost nothing about the humans...
Ooh, sounds like fun! Blogging on imzy, or elsewhere?
I sympathize with wanting things to sound different, but still make sense. I'm glad I could help some!
Oooh, that sounds interesting!
On the subject of treaty structure, according to this article on wikipedia, which I poked through for inspiration, "article" does seem to be standard, but they also mention that articles can be organized into "chapters". It seems to me like you could easily use "Chapter" as your section name.
Other ideas, just spitballing:
Member
Not just for people! I'm a geologist, and "member" is also a technical term for a distinct portion of a larger geological formation.Sphere
As in "sphere of influence".You could refer to them as a fraction. Like, if there are four, they could each be a "Quarter". If there are twenty, they could each be a "Twentieth", etc.
District
I admit, this one feels too much like a geographic area.Division
I thought of this one late, but I kind of like it!Block
I feel like this could be a bit confusing, but it reminds me of "blockquote", which is a name for a specific section of text....okay, I'll stop now. lol.
Geothermal power might be an option. Oceanic crust is 1/4 the thickness of continental crust, and many oceans have spreading ridges and hot spots where the lava comes right to the surface.
I also feel like there must be room to explore power generation via pressure variation. I'm not technically savvy enough to figure out the details, but I know many sea creatures use both water and air pressure variations for motive power, among other things.
Awwww, kitty!
Gotta admit, I would pay money to watch people attempt to wrangle actual cats for this musical.
I haven't noticed this one on my feed, but when I went into my personal blog the other day, I noticed a bunch of double-but-not posts there.
I also dislike the button. A few folks have echoed my thoughts, so here's a quick summary:
"Start a conversation" is a confusing phrase. I looked at it and thought, "Do they mean chat with someone? Who? Support staff? A community? Which community? Is it a new one I'm being directed to join? I guess I'll click the button and see what it does..."
Every time I want to make a new post, I have to remind myself to click the "Start a conversation" button, because that really, really doesn't feel like a button one uses to make a post. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but it's not intuitive at all. When encouraging my comm members to post to the comm, I now feel like I'll have to give instructions on how, instead of just saying, "Go ahead and make a post!" It's hard enough to get folks to participate without making it seem complicated. And for someone starting out on their own, I could seem them looking around and not seeing anyway to contribute, and not attempting the button because it looks like a chat feature, and live chat is super intimidating when you're new to a platform.
This seems lazy, but I really don't like the extra clicks to make any post but a text post.
Related to all the points above, removing the icons for the various post types and using the phrase "Start a conversation" also makes it seem, at least to me, like text posts are the only option.
Honestly, I'd like to see the post type icons come back, but the drop down menu idea sounds okay -- as long as the name of the menu is something other than "Start a conversation". Even "Make a post" would be better, imho.



Feedback[Post deleted by author]Mar 18 at 2:40 PM

