Enjoy your time here

[750hp]

A few have said that moderators should be more heavily involved. I disagree.

I work for a company with over 7000 employees. The marketing department was incredibly slow in embracing social media, and then only dipped a toe in the water to ensure that any damaging information or ill-considered opinions could be extinguished immediately.

That failed!

Now, the company has progressed to the point that it actively encourages unmoderated opinions on the company website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and I'm sure some other random emerging platforms. It's a hospital, so you can imagine that there are some heartfelt, gut wrenching stories and some of them are far from complimentary about their experience. What I've seen is that the over the top rants are infrequent, but the general consensus of other replies/comments make it clear for anyone reading that the original rant was just that. The broader unflattering experiences and opinions prove that despite individuals and organisations doing their very best, unfortunately, occasionally things don't go to plan. Whether that means a loved one passes away sooner than a family expected, or whether it means the parts you ordered for your Cobra didn't turn up on time.

For me, any question about service, delivery or quality issues can be managed by the company in question (if you have nothing to hide from, any publicity can be turned into good publicity), or it can be left for the reasonable majority to respond to. Some people will have good experiences. Some bad. To moderate the disgruntled to appease those on the sidelines seems like a pretty unnecessary approach.

What seems fairly clear to me is that we are all adults. By that I mean we are actually genuinely people who grow hair where others yet don't (ears and nose for most of you old codgers...). This is not a site that attracts a 13 year old kid who wants to pick fights with the world like you see in countless YouTube comments. As adults, and as per Aussie Mike's recent comment, if we take a deep breath before hitting the Post Reply button, we don't need moderators. If I'm genuinely upset about something, I'll try to resolve it with the other party. If it remains unresolved, heck yeah I want my mates to know about it. If someone has done the right thing, I'll be sure to recommend them to others. That's the way feedback works and it shouldn't require moderation...
I'm not bailing on this site. There are too many good people and there is too much good information around here to quit on it.