One of ZN.o's three main moderators blamed one forum member's "constant negative posts" for causing another forum member to stop posting on ZN.o.

The second of ZN.o's three main moderators says it doesn't make sense for forum members "to continually editorialize every decision or comment by other posters."

The third of ZN.o's three main moderators agrees with #2, and says "this is the complaint I hear most from former posters."

So what the heck is going on with ZN.o?

I absolutely love having a place to discuss Zips sports with a bunch of great people, and I greatly appreciate the efforts of everyone on the ZN.o staff who helps make this happen.

I try to be a good citizen and abide by the rules as best I understand them.

I just don't get some of the things that go on here.

I see some forum members being chastised for what look to me to be sincere attempts to help raise the level of discussion, and I see other people get away with negative drive-by sniping at others.

There's at the very least a strong appearance of favoritism at work here that some forum members are allowed to get away with stuff because the moderators agree with the positions of those forum members, and others are on the crap list because they regularly post dissenting opinions.

Some of this may be more perceived than valid. But if it's all just perception, then at the very least those forum members should have the opportunity to hold an honest, civil discussion with the moderators to clear the air.

ZN.o would be a better place for everyone if everyone believed they were being treated fairly and equitably.

I know I'm not the only one who believes this because I've seen it mentioned in public posts and private PMs.

Could we please have a calm, rational discussion here without people pointing fingers and throwing insults at each other?

Could everyone making a post in this thread please try to be constructive and think twice before hitting the Post button?

I've seen this sort of complaint on every forum that I have ever regularly participated in.
Occasionally you do actually get some favoritism... but for the most part, it isn't favoritism as much as familiarity.
"oh that's just ____ being ____". It's more like tolerance than favoritism.

But also, you get the appearance of favoritism. It's deceptive. Sometimes someone strikes a nerve, and because of the response they get, they feel that it's personal. Usually it's nothing of the sort. It's just that you stumbled upon a hot button, or an overly beaten horse. Things that stand out get picked out.

I feel like there is a relatively Liassez faire moderating approach here, to a degree, and I like it.

While we're on the topic, what the hell happened to SeeTeeZip?

SEETEEZIP LIVES! Actually I fell off of the face of the ZN earth because I spent the Summer transferring for work to the West Coast. We still haven't moved into a new house and with things in flux there just hasn't been much time to post. I have been lurking regularly though. Here are the ZN goods and bads about being so far away now:

The good: not having to see an almost-empty Info. I still can scarcely believe how badly UA blew it with the opening of the Info precisely as the football program began the great belly flop into an empty pool. Astounding really and quite depressing.

The bad: missing the coming of age of the basketball program under KD.

I'll keep on lurking and soon will become one of those annoying posters who posts with more certainty from 2500 miles away than I ever did while I lived 4 miles from the campus!

Go Zips!

Excellent!

+1

Z.I.P. still has you by another 2500 miles or so

This is a topic that will be difficult for many to discuss. If you are not on the _hit list...you surely will not want that to change by saying something offending or stupid. If you ARE on the _hit list...well you will certainly not want to dig your hole deeper if you want to continue participating. Then there are the many members that don’t have a clue what you are referring to because it does not affect them. The odds are that these guys spend their time and money so they can have a forum that THEY enjoy...not what you or I would do or enjoy. So we have only a few options...get in line and play ball as the referees want...take your ball and go home....or find a new game. It really does not matter if we think there are some inequities. The simple fact is that despite its warts…ZNO is still the best (and only) game in town.

Thank you, moderators, for sponsoring this forum in spite of some unrulely and unreasonable fellow board members. It is a true pleasure to participate on a daily basis and enjoy the passion for UA and the Zips with other alumni and fans.

@Doug Snyder, you may be right in everything you say. Productive direct discussion of something that keeps popping up indirectly all over the forums may not be possible for a variety of reasons.

Some of those who think they've seen problems may be seen as problems.

The typical response to threads like this is that life is imperfect; learn to live with it.

If it can't be openly discussed here, it's probably not worth addressing indirectly in the other forums or privately.

Dave,

This is the only board I have ever posted on. It is not my nature to participate in these forums. But it is debate/discussion about the Zips..so that interests me. My initial foray onto this board was in defense of you on some highly analytical position you took a year or so ago. My respect for your rational and analytical view is always there…even if we do not always agree. With regard to your opening post in this thread…I admire the courage it took for you to write this and know that you would not have done so without much forethought. I want you to know that I agree 100% with all you wrote. Favoritism and inequality cause people to be frustrated and give up...and go away. I would be very disappointed if those I perceive to be “out of favor” would get frustrated and leave. And I certainly don’t feel like a “friend of Bill” …so my opinion probably does not matter anyway.

And...for the most part...ZNO is a great place. Kudos to those who made it happen.

I do. It's a fan webpage, not the Roman Senate. Some see the board as a serious discussion. I see it as a fraternity party as it is mostly a place to have fun and at times have a serious discussion.

ZN.O it is a fun place to post and discuss the Zips. One of the things that makes it fun is with the exception of ZipsWin! and CK, I have no idea what anyone looks like. I met DrZ once, but I wouldn't be able to pick him out of a crowd now because it has been so long. I saw a bald guy who looked like JZ84 Satruday and I went up to say hello. When I saw his shirt it said Can't State so I knew it wasn't him thus avoiding an uncomfortable situation with someone at a football game.

I have no outlet in my life for discussing the Zips other than this board. When you live 600 miles away, you lose contact with the folks who really care. This is a place where people really care so why not discuss the Zips with them.

Who started this thread again???

@GP1, that's a really excellent point you make about the mix of having fun and partying here while at times having serious discussion. Some of the misunderstandings no doubt come from taking humorous comments too seriously and vice versa.

Everyone sees things a little differently, and some are just inherently more serious than others, so misinterpretation is inevitable. For example, I personally find some of your posts to be among the most interesting I've read on ZN.o, and others to be way off base. But I'm sure there are others who think that way of my posts. Interpretation of intent is imperfect.

I started this thread in this forum for board comments because the discussion among the moderators and some forum members in a basketball thread about why some people won't post on ZN.o was, I thought, an example of why some people may not want to post here.

People who might participate more on ZN.o if it was focused on sports talk and not posting habits could easily bypass discussions like this in this forum and stay 100% focused on sports talk in the dedicated sports forums. The small number of people who might have interest in this subject could discuss it here without stepping all over those who only want to talk sports, hopefully encouraging more people to participate on ZN.o.

I totally understand why some people get tired of negativity on ZN.o. I voluntarily took a 10-day "vacation" near the end of last basketball season when the basketball forum became filled with negative posts trying to pin blame on various players.

That break gave me a chance to think things over and realize that I was only punishing myself if I let what a few other people posted chase me away from a place I really enjoyed hanging out. I returned with thicker skin and more respect for the opinions of others, whether I agreed with them or not.

I would hope that others could come to a similar conclusion and not let anyone else's negative posts interfere with their fun here. Like others, I don't want to be part of the problem, and am willing to reconsider the way I address issues on ZN.o. GP1 reminds me that I sometimes tend to err on the over-serious side.

Like others, I try not to be out of line with the tone that I see other forum members and moderators use when posting on ZN.o. Like others, I want to be a member in good standing of this community, and treated no differently from anyone else. What more can we ask for on an internet forum?

I'd just like to add that I appreciate the moderators letting this free and open discussion go on among those forum members who want to participate.

I think our country needs to look at college sports as more fun and less serious. Unfortunately, college athletics are so out of control and has been built up in a physical way (see the number of building projects that go on), it can never come back to reality or the new facilities at schools across America will become in disrepair. Upkeeping many of these facilities will cripple the schools that built them. Everything about it has gotten bigger so when a team loses, the anger gets bigger. Blame administrations for this condition and that includes Athletic Directors who have never seen a building project they didn't want to do regardless of the long term impact on the school. Most don't stick around long enough to live their mistakes.

Many see people like coaches at great mentors of men...intellectuals who "build" programs. I see them mostly as ex-jocks who like the sport/competition and want to teach others about the sport as a way to make a living. I've been around a lot of coaches in my life and they aren't splitting the atom. I think we have all learned a valuable lesson in the past few months about how dangerous it is to hold coaches up as something they aren't. Coaches didn't ask to be looked at like that. Fans did it.

Many see players as great gladiators on the field of play. I see them mostly as guys trying to do their best on the field while at the same time, trying to live a normal college life with school, bars, girls, etc. Believe me, most aren't going to be flying a ship to the moon any time soon. We need to stop taking players and coaches so seriously.

This is where it gets serious though. I shouldn't speak for eveyone because I can only speak for myself, but my guess is many fans are angry because they aren't getting the basics out of the Zips (football wise since it is still football season). I pay over $700/year to go to Wake football games and I couldn't name more than six starters, and I really don't care to learn their names. However, it is fun, entertaining and enjoyable to go to a game when I'm not taking the home team too seriously. They are probably going to finish the year 6-6 and maybe go to a lame bowl game. It's worth $700 to watch them play (I write the tickets off as a business expense, but don't tell the IRS). Zips football is not fun or entertaining to watch; thus, it is not enjoyable to watch them play. Neither the Administration, coaches or players are doing enough to make it worth the average person, with low expectations, to spend a few hours going to watch them play. Fans aren't asking for greatness, just something to make it worth a few hours and some hard earned money. I believe this is why people lash out. I don't need the football team to be good for me to be a proud UofA grad, but I do expect them to do their best and we haven't been getting that from anyone involved for a couple of years now. It has gotten so bad it I can't even have fun joking about it anymore because it is so pathetic.

@SEETEEZIP - Where did you move to? I also live on the west coast.

I wonder what happened to Zippyrifle32? Our only consistent female poster.

@GP1, you've made more good points about the current situation on ZN.o. A lot of the current negativism and snippiness around here is directly related to Zips football. A lot of fans really take their college sports seriously, and there's a serious sense of anger and hopelessness now on the football forum that makes it no fun to visit. I've pretty much run out of things to say about Zips football. You may not speak for everyone, but I think you speak for a lot of Zips football fans with what you just said about the program.

+1.

Well, this thread has now been up for three days, and there has not exactly been an outpouring of concern from forum members about some of the problems that some have perceived on ZN.o.

What this tells me is that any perceived problems on the forum are not so great as to cause a large number of members to want to speak out about them.

That should be good news to the owners and moderators of ZN.o. They devote many hours of their personal time as well as their own personal money to keep ZN.o running smoothly for the benefit of all Zips fans. It's not easy work, and, like regular forums members, they also want to have fun here and not constantly be playing policemen.

On the specific issue of some people not participating on ZN.o due to the way some forum members post, I'm not sure there's any perfect solution for that one. I've been participating on many forums for many years, and I've never seen one where at least a few forum members don't leave because they don't like the tone of the forum.

On virtually every internet forum, the number of posters is generally way less than 10% of the total members -- closer to 1% in many cases. Nothing is ever going to cause all forum members to want to post. There are as many reasons not to post as there are forum members who choose not to post.

We don't all like the same sports, we don't all like the same TV programs, we don't all like the same restaurants, and we don't all like to see forums run exactly the same way.

In the end, it's all about compromise. We spend the most time on the forums we like the most. We can influence the tone of the forum by the way we choose to post ourselves. But we can't force others to do the same. Well, forum members can't. But the owners and moderators can if they want by kicking people out who refuse to behave according to the rules of the forum.

I don't think the owners and moderators of ZN.o have a problem with any forum member suggesting changes, or they wouldn't have a forum with this name. But getting into a debate about changing the way the forum is run in the middle of a football or basketball thread is not the best place. That just ticks off the majority of forum members who only come to read about or discuss Zips sports.

This Board Comments, Suggestions & Technical Support forum appears to be the perfect place to suggest changes. Anyone is free to float an idea, as I did to start this thread, and any interested forum member is free to respond. The owners and moderators can read what forum members think and add their own comments if they choose.

It all seems pretty fair to me.

It's getting a little frustrating once in a while...

@mes102, I think we all see little things on internet forums that frustrate us from time to time. We see little frustrating things in everyday life, too. If most people are not bothered by these little frustrations, they rarely get addressed. Is there any specific areas of frustration that you think rises to the level of being worthy of discussion?

I brought one up, but quickly edited it to "just frustrating"...A particular moderator keeps closing threads after they make their point...When i said that, a thread quickly opened again...so i quickly edited and just said that...

@mes102, I must not have been reading that thread, as I haven't seen a thread closed in awhile. In fact, I've seen very few threads closed on ZN.o compared with some other forums I've been on. I believe the oft-stated philosophy of the moderators here is to try to let people say what they want as long as they don't get way out of line.

Personally, I agree with that philosophy. Generally speaking, I don't think it accomplishes much to lock a thread unless it gets way out of control. In most cases, hot threads tend to cool off on their own as people eventually run out of words and lose interest.

As far as a moderator posting a comment before locking a thread, that can be productive when the moderator explains why the thread is being locked so that forum members will be more likely to understand what is unacceptable and will be less likely to do the same in the future.