[ music | Badly Drawn Boy – Pissing In The Wind ]
MozillaZine’s forums are nearly worthless these days. I know of moderators that have been complaining about other mods for ages, but now they’ve taken to new lows. Today, Daifne has seen fit to mouth off and scurrilously accuse the wife of a lead developer of trying to scam people out of personal data. Basically, the egos on some of these people would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.
For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to ignore how Lucy was the prime mover on the “Bookmarks missing after installing Firefox 2” problem when FF2 was first released. Why? Well, because Daifne did. Either out of ignorance, or because she was too lazy to check up on a person before accusing them of nefarious activities, she put her foot squarely in her mouth, with her sidekick “malliz” there to keep the foot embedded. When learning identities later, Daifne didn’t bother to do anything like apologize or even acknowledge a mistake, she instead decided to defame and insult Mike Connor.
And yes, after watching the forums at MozillaZine go downhill for years, I had enough. I made a statement. I stand by it. There are too many trollish moderators at MozillaZine. And it’s sad.
At least Lucy was able to still help the user. Not that it mattered to the mods.
P.S. Wow, ok, well, they’re still at it. Daifne? Can you hear me honey? You’re a troll. And I’m not the only one who is saying so. (Please don’t post, just read unless you’re going to be constructive)
P.P.S. Ok, Dartman? You can go to hell too.
P.P.P.S. Wow. Mega kudos to Alex Bishop for this post. He said everything I was thinking in a far more cogent manner than I did off the cuff. Bravo.
This is bound to happen with a forum that attracts underage fanboys (regardless of which product) – sooner or later the fanboys will drive all rational users away and the forum will have to be closed just to make sure it doesn’t harm the image of the product.
It doesn’t look like underage fanboys this time.
Yeah, I’ve noticed some big egos there. Esp.- one that roars like a Lion, to be Frank.
This is what happens when 12 year olds are given the cap that says "Moderator".
I remember watching a "Make way for Noddy" episode with my little girl, where Noddy acts like Deputy policeman. Daifne, imho, should see that episode. Even if she is not 12 year old, she definitely acted like one.
What’s wrong with underage boys or girls? Do u have no children? I coach +/- 200 minors in Internet Security, and I can tell you: they are fans of Mozilla and not of M$, in contrast to her parents!. Be careful with such comments! 🙁
You bunch of nutlicks!
The wife of a Dev plays ‘Ask me who I am!’over and over again on a busy Support Forum and you fools think that’s REALLY great.
As the man said ‘Basically, the egos on some of these people would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.’…that would be the mconnors then.
I pretty much stopped going to the MozillaZine forums a while back when it became clear that a small, vocal minority had an ax to grind with the Firefox developers in general and mconnor in particular. My efforts to coordinate communication between the folks on the forums and my fellow Firefox developers didn’t go very far, because when a small group knee-jerk rejects everything you try to do, assumes the worst about you, and badmouths your character and intentions 100% of the time, you eventually lose the motivation to talk with the other people that continue to hang around with them.
While in this case I think the original moderation request was fair and not intentionally vicious (just a little poorly worded), I can’t believe the stonewalling reaction that happened when a request was made for some caution/research/benefit of the doubt (which was also fair). It is that followup reaction, not the original "please don’t ask for emails" post, that suggests to me that some of the Mozillazine moderators are now squarely in the camp of that small minority I ran into before.
Depressing. Frankly, among some geeks who don’t know they’re not the same, mozilla.org has gotten a bad name from the MozillaZine folks, and I wonder if Mozilla shouldn’t either make clear that MozillaZine is not affiliated and is not a sanctioned way to get support (if it isn’t), or else try to get MZ’s act cleaned up a bit (if it is). "With friends like these" and all that, which is sad since there are a lot of dedicated, hardworking people hanging out at MozillaZine who care.
P.S. sherwins45: Calling people "nutlicks" and "fools" is neither good argumentation nor likely to convince anyone of your point of view.
Umm. There are rules on every forum. In this case the rule is: "No e-mail support. All support is posted in the forums so that everyone learns.
Just because someone is sleeping with an open source dev, that makes it OK to dis-regard those rules?
The woman in question donates more than her share of time and skill, to help others with what we all believe to be a worthwhile project.
The fact is, whether you’re a dev, son of dev, dev twice-removed, or whomever, it doesn’t entitle you to run ruffshod in the forum threads.
Good luck with your rant.
No, there is no such rule, I asked np and he was kind enough to answer. Even if there were, did you see ANYONE actually come out and say "it’s against the rules?" I explained why I wanted to leave my email, and that didn’t get a single other response from the moderators. What happened next was the "I don’t know you/prove yourself if you’re going to ask for info" argument. Which certainly implies it’s ok for some people and that it’s not a rule.
The only policy I was EVER made aware of regarding emails is that a) you shouldn’t post them because they’ll get spammed – ok that’s not a problem cuz it’s my bugzilla mail and that’s already taken care of, and b) you should try to leave things on the board – just like we try to leave things in the main channel on IRC. I know that and respect that. I put everything I thought the user should try IN MY POST and asked to be NOTIFIED of the results either via the board or my email.
sherwins – I was most definitely not playing ask me who I am. I was told I wasn’t known, point blank, end of it. I wasn’t given any sort of impression that Diafne actually *wanted* to know who I was at that point, just that she was using the fact that she didn’t know who I was to back up my argument. I was taking GREAT pains not to play the wife card, and if I *had* been asked who I was, I still wouldn’t have mentioned it. I would have mentioned my work in the community, the kb and the bookmarks bug. I was NOT going to devolve the argument into "oh yeah well I’m so and so, so I’m better than you." Not once was there any indication that it mattered to Daifne anyway. By the time she was talking about me proving who I was the plot was already lost. Any explanation at that point would have been met with "yeah well you still don’t run the board" rather than "well say that next time."
jimfitter: I think you completely misunderstand the rant.
The issue is not whether Lucy’s original post is in keeping with the forum rules. The issue is whether the appropriate response to such a post is one that first insults the poster’s honesty and then continues to insult, stonewall and threaten without reasonable discourse.
"The woman in question donates more than her share of time and skill, to help others with what we all believe to be a worthwhile project" is true of both Daifne and Lucy, and is irrelevant to both.
I’m not convinced that a single honest attempt to help someone, inadvertently breaking one of the forum’s sacrosanct rules (disregarding the "no personal attacks" rules that were subsequently broken many times by other posters), qualifies as running "roughshod" (spelling corrected), but even if it did, a poster "running roughshod" would not be reason for multiple moderators and non-moderators to pretty much fly off the handle with direct and implied ad hominem attacks.
Thanks for bringing this to light, Grey.
My thoughts:
http://forums.mozillazine.o…
"
Umm. There are rules on every forum. In this case the rule is: "No e-mail support. All support is posted in the forums so that everyone learns.
"
I can’t believe there is such a rule on the mozillazine forums, and if there was such a rule, then I think it should be removed.
Where can I find the page that say there is such a rule?
It was a bad thread and a bad situation, but I don’t see how you can say the forums are nearly worthless because of it. Hundreds of people get the help they need every day. Calling the entirety of the forum (and thus its members) worthless because of the actions of a few members and moderators is uncalled for.
Grey Hodge aka: jesusX
I take it you did not consider your first post in the thread to not be trollish as all you potentially did was to help make things worse, or perhaps that is what you were going for.
No, I don’t. I think I called a spade a spade. I could have been more tactful about it, sure, and that was probably a mistake. But I’m a big boy and can take the fault for that. I stand by my comment.
The whole thread in question here(and in the Mozillazine forum falls under the General Posting Guidelines at
http://forums.mozillazine.o…
And no! there is no rule about ‘No email support’. However, there should be a rule that says all support sis to be posted back to the forums for others to see.
I have been a user of Mozilla products for over 6 years, and a member of the forums for near as long as there have been Mozillazine forums. I basically quit posting responses to questions because of one particular moderator. She came along a ‘stepped’ on every damn post I made for over a year, and then she became a moderator, and it got worse. It was almost like, ‘I got the job! You are not need any longer’.
So I lurk and respond where I feel I can help.
And I STAY THE HELL AWAY from MZAD and it’s clique. Why it is still there is a large mystery to me. Nothing but a platform for unrest and backstabbing.
"
And no! there is no rule about ‘No email support’. However, there should be a rule that says all support sis to be posted back to the forums for others to see.
"
Yeah, I agree, but I would not call it a rule, more like a good advice.
Lucy:and I’d love to get a hold of some of your personal info.
Lucy:email me at majken@gmail.com
malliz:Please don’t do that It is much better to keep things on the boards.
Daifne:You are not in charge of these forums. We help here, not in private. Please stop telling people to email you. It really does look suspicious.
I’d like to stop here and state that this means that ANYONE could do the same here. Register, use Lucy. as a username, that site in profile, posted ANY DAMN Gmail address and ask users in trouble to post their profiles to it. Using the Password Extractor extension, I can get those encrypted passwords out of there and into a readable .XML in 5 minutes, and I’m a Union Pipefitter.
Personal security and the fact that everyone learns is why we like to keep things above board.
malliz:So your equating yourself with a developer?
Daifne:Since I don’t know who you are, that is a moot point.
malliz:The Goddess of IRC
Lucy:No, since you don’t know who I am maybe you should ask or assume I know what I’m talking about…malliz – not exactly, but close enough.
Here Lucy decides to be coy. The Aussies have an acronym for this kind of person: FIGJAM
F*ck I’m Good, Just Ask Me.
But much to her chagrin, no one did.
Daifne:I am not assuming anything.
Lucy:Accusing you of what? Treating me unfairly? Maybe I misunderstood "Since I don’t know who you are, that is a moot point." What exactly is a moot point?
moot point
A debatable question, an issue open to argument; also, an irrelevant question, a matter of no importance. For example, Whether Shakespeare actually wrote the poem remains a moot point among critics, or It’s a moot point whether the chicken or the egg came first. This term originated in British law where it described a point for discussion in a moot, or assembly, of law students. By the early 1700s it was being used more loosely in the present sense.
Lucy:malliz – hardly an assumption, I suppose could explain, but no one has actually asked.
FIGJAM, just ask her.
Daifne:Once again, should we not be concerned when you post a comment like this:
Lucy wrote:
I’d love to get a hold of some of your personal info.
Lucy:you could have asked about *that* in the first place. I meant *profile* info, thanks for pointing that out, since that’s entirely not what I meant.
Well that’s different. Can’t harvest anything from that, can you?
Time to throw petrol on the fire:
mconnor:While I understand the concerns here, I think people should take the time to figure out who someone is within the community before jumping the gun and directly or indirectly accusing someone of having malicious intent.
My name is Jim. Who the f*ck are you, and why are you leaving absurd comments like the one above, in this thread?
Why didn’t you introduce and qualify yourself at the beginning of the post, so we could all take note?
Another FIGJAM.
malliz:Sorry mconner but I have a problem with people harvesting information by email when they have no apparent official permission from either Mozillazine or Moz.org
Lucy:All Mozilla support is community based. Any information anyone sends to ANYONE helping them is without official permission. That’s just not how it works.
Daifne:I have no idea who this Lucy is and with a comment like the one I quoted, are you saying that I should not be concerned? This was very inappropriate here as well as soliciting an email reply. If Lucy is "someone" within the community, shouldn’t she be responsible for showing her credentials rather than simply posting as she did with comments such as that? If that comment shows the true intent and a user falls for it, isn’t that as bad or much worse for the "community"?
Lucy:Shouldn’t you as a moderator be *asking* for them rather than just telling me I don’t run the forums or telling me not to give out my email?
FIGJAMs need to be asked.
mconnor:Even 30 seconds spent Googling would reveal that there’s only one Lucy
Insert your own joke here. The more I read that line, the more I laugh.
Daifne:In this situation, where you are requesting personal information from a user by email, it is your responsibility to prove who you are.
Agreed, and that is where I would have locked it.
Jim – I’ve stated in several places why I didn’t volunteer who I was. malliz and daifne seemed to be acting like it mattered, but not actually saying so. The first time I said it was in response to that "I don’t know you." "Ok well, if you don’t know me, you can ask who I am…" No where did they actually act like they WANTED to know who I was, only that the fact that they didn’t know me backed up their argument that I must be up to no good.
I know what "moot point" means. Daifne said "that’s a moot point" but it was completely unclear what she was referring to.
"Agreed, and that is where I would have locked it."
Except that’s ignoring that what I was told in the *first place* was to stop telling people to email me. If you’re saying that what I should have done was provided some credentials, then Daifne’s original response to me is completely out of line, which was my point with the last statement of mine that you quoted. mconnor and I both asked what would qualify as said credentials and were never answered.
Yes anyone could have registered the account, but it wasn’t new, and I’ve used it to do a lot of good on the forums (not as much as a regular, but certainly for a casual poster). Someone also would have had to get a hold of my email as well, since that can’t be faked, otherwise any personal information would have ended up in the inbox of a trusted community member. Neither Daifne nor malliz tried to confirm any of that.
Not to mention the fact that I never actually asked for any information at any point, I only said that "if x works, I’d like to." Even so, Daifne still didn’t remove my email from my post, if that was even her original concern. She didn’t even mention concern with my wording until 30 min after her original response and never responded once to my follow up post explaining why I’d left my email address. Well I guess "Since I don’t know who you are, that is a moot point" might have been in response to that, although what part of it (all of it?) I don’t know.
Jim: Way to quote out of context, that really makes your points stronger.
"I’d like to… to throw petrol on the fire. F*ck… Me. My name is Jim. I… like… leaving absurd comments like the one above."
I couldn’t have said it better, Jim.
Lucy -"Someone also would have had to get a hold of my email as well, since that can’t be faked, otherwise any personal information would have ended up in the inbox of a trusted community member."
Right, now all please mail copies of your Firefox profiles to [redactamafied and censorated] and let’s see what happens,shall we?
How about that Peter Kasting? is that good argumentation and likely to convince anyone of my point of view?
Argumentation? I think you misunderestimate the level of our strategery. Also, don’t be an evil-doer and try to flood her mailbox.
"
Right, now all please mail copies of your Firefox profiles to [redactamafied and censorated] and let’s see what happens,shall we?
"
Sure, no problem. Why do you think that is a problem?
Martijn – "Sure, no problem. Why do you think that is a problem?"
Simply this, Martijn, that GMail address I gave – [removed] is a FAKE one that I just created. Notice that it was close enough to fool Grey?…and HE KNOWS LUCY.
Now, I’m one of the good guys, what if it had been one of the bad guys?
Do you begin to understand NOW why Mozilla people should not be inviting total strangers to send Firefox profiles to GMail addresses! …is it finally sinking in?
Is it finally sinking in why a Mozillazine Moderator would be concerned about this!
You didn’t fool anyone, I assumed you typoed her name.
Can’t help but feel that because this is a female partnered to a male that there is a lot of sexism in the reactions to her relationship to mconnor.
Time for forums.mozilla.org – given the more corporate structure of moz.org/.com the uptight and frankly juvenile reactions of the MozZine mods can be seen as damaging to the image of Mozilla/Firefox and perpetuating a possible future FUD source for Redmond.
sherwins – yes, someone could have faked an address, but then it wouldn’t have matched my bugmail, and upon checking it out, someone would have been able to discover it was clearly fake and malicious.
I didn’t ask for a profile (this time – I have in the past, I’m not sure if any of it is on the forums, you might have to get IRC logs to see how I handle the situation). I didn’t ask for ANYTHING. Again, this is a step a mod could have clarified what I was going to ask for. Unless you’re assuming *anyone* can be faking and *no one* should ask the users to email them. In which point all of the "I don’t know who you are" becomes entirely inappropriate because that’s besides the point. The first response or the response after my explanation of why I wanted to leave my email should have been to inform me that MZ has a strict no email policy.
It may have not been the intention but Daifne is gone. You’ve made your dent and shed light on the negative aspects of the forum.
Will anyone ever admit that the forum has helped a countless number of people and does a lot of good? Find me a forum of that size that has no problems and you get a gold star.
It’s apparently more entertaining for everyone to point out negatives. Positive feedback is just plain boring.
So because it’s a large forum, when there are problems you should just ignore them?
There is plenty of positive feedback on those forums, but if you’re in it just for the feedback then you’re going to be disappointed.
Yes the forum does a lot of good and helps a lot of users, if it didn’t we wouldn’t care, and we wouldn’t come back and there’d be a lot more talk about an official Mozilla support forum.
It sucks that Daifne is gone, but as everyone has pointed out she does a lot of work. People need breaks, especially when they start to take it personally. I think the idea of anyone taking a break to cool off is much preferable to guilting them into staying and letting them break the rules. What really sucks is that other mods saw the situation and let her continue. Everyone has bad days, everyone can make poor judgements. Dartman should have taken over in the support thread and explained what the policy is as if none of the rest had happened, then he should have shut down the discussion in the mod thread and probably had a nice PM conversation with Daifne to let her vent and make sure she was ok.
"""Zac wrote:
It may have not been the intention but Daifne is gone."""
As far as I know Daifne is not gone, just that she came down with something and has taken a break, a coincidence in timing at most.
Lucy -"sherwins – yes, someone could have faked an address, but then it wouldn’t have matched my bugmail, and upon checking it out, someone would have been able to discover it was clearly fake and malicious.
I didn’t ask for a profile (this time – I have in the past,"
What planet are you living on here? A total stranger who had Firefox profile trouble and was advised by ‘a’ Lucy to send their profile for checking to a GMail address – would do just that, they WOULD NOT check your bugmail…they wouldn’t know who you were.
This is the Internet and people fake stuff AND users do silly things, like not checking. It is shameful that you pretend not to see and accept this point.
[Admin Note: This comment has been edited, three paragraphs have been removed. I won’t host ad hominem attacks such as the one in this comment. Act like an adult or go home.]
Lucy: "So because it’s a large forum, when there are problems you should just ignore them?"
That’s just silly. Where did I say that? Maybe something was needed but this has been blown completely out of proportion. Some people need to get off of their high horse.
It may seem unoriginal or lazy to some but "sherwins45" pretty much sums up the way I feel about this.
You’re right, a user wouldn’t, but a mod could. Daifne and malliz were on it pretty quick. Both of whom indicated in the moderation thread that they remember me from past threads. My account isn’t new, so I’m not just "some" Lucy. My email address was in the post, they could have checked it out. My blog is in my account information.
These are all decent arguments for having a "no emails on the board" policy, but one doesn’t exist.
Zac: Well then what exactly did you mean by your post? It sounded very much like you were upset with jX for posting about a negative experience. Although if you were referring specifically to his "nearly worthless" comment, yeah I’m with you. Anyone that reads this blog regularly, or knows him, won’t even take notice of that part of it. It’s still overly dramatic, though. Also, keep in mind an opening sentence like that tends to immediately suck out credibility to a reader. Even so, it’s definitely still going to be hurtful to the people who do all the great work over there. *I* think he should take that part back, but if that’s how he feels that’s how he feels.
I’m sorry this problem got so blown out of proportion. Everybody shares some of the blame, at the very least for not being tolerant enough to let it go.
A small town cop starts out trying to help and protect, two years later he’s stopping anybody and everybody who even annoys him, simply because he IS the law. This doesn’t necessarily mean the town is corrupt, nor does it mean he’s a bad cop, although it sure seems so to the people he’s hassling. (Not that I’d know) If it’s a good town the offending officer is dressed down and once again becomes a helpful member of the community.
Mozillazine is a good community, staffed with good people who try to help, sometimes they may get carried away but corrections are made and the community goes on.
We’re all on the same team and I hope we can put this behind us. It obviously takes two sides to Tango and the admins and mods on Mozillazine have made positive steps to remedy the problem, I hope some of the posters above are willing to do the same and move on.
MeCasa
I seem to remember having a problem with the mods as well.
They’re at it again:
http://forums.mozillazine.o…
No andkon, you didn’t have problems with just the mods, you had problems with everyone. And that was mostly because of your attitude. Go play on a very busy street.
Some of the comments lead me to believe that Frank Lion is getting special privileges because he’s been around a long time , and he makes some themes, and according to Dafine, he ‘contributes’ to the forums.
Bullshit! Look at his postings. Most are in MZAD, and the ones in support NOT related to his themes, are more often than not, bitching someone out because they don’t meet Franks’ personal idea of humanity. He is a sub-par individual at best, and at worse, just a plain arse.
Dafine should go! there are other and much better moderator’s in the MZ forums ,and one’s that know how to placate someone rather than piss them off.
BillL or should I say, couldabeen, as that is your MozillaZine username, at least have the guts to say your dross to my face and not behind my back like a little girl. Just because I don’t tolerate racists and bigots doesn’t make me a bad person…only in your eyes.
Frank:)
But Frank, you ARE a racist and a bigot in your own fashion. Open your mind to some influence other than your own, and read some of your acerbic and abusive posts about new, short term and long term members of Mozillazine forums.
I have changed my mine. you are not an arse, it at least serves a useful function. You do not! Except possibly take up space and breathable air that would better serve some of those that you have abused with you rapier type wit and sharpened tongue.
Now, go away little baby boy. You are a bother.
What would help to post here? Here’s a new to MozillaZine’s experience…
I have been on the MozillaZine site less than a week to report some bugs and look for peer support on a few issues and it is out of control, never have i met up with a turf gang as these people there.
I have a differing agenda than to be cowed into the "Create an New Profile" and get lost mantra they PUSH out to people looking for Firefox help, which reminds me of the "just reboot it" mantra we Windows all heard.
I have personally felt attacked by all the ‘helpers’ who say follow their word or leave, with the exception of two Mods,
I feel like pulling the OSU plug on the whole scene there, those ‘helpers’ break all the rules, they’re rude, attacking, baiting, trolling, and seem to delight in spoofing. Why the heck are they running the show? I hear they are volunteers?
We have the KB, BugZilla, and the forums if they’d let USERS actually help USERS.
These helpers could play a much smaller role maybe if Mozilla itself would find some people to cover forums, if these people are from Mozilla fire them please! At least summarily execute two or three of the worst there, i think you all know who they are.
Oh, lest i forget, i’m no poster child for this issue, when i get done with my posts i’m out and back to supporting my users, i may return but i’m way wiser!!
Frank Lion and Daifne are very arrogant and dominant people. Only one example: One of Frank’s favorite words is »Quite«. You are not in his opinion? Be quite! Othewise he asks Daifne for disabling you. With success. He is a joke on two legs! Fortunately the community is not identical with mozillazine.