Speaking of "vox hunt" and qotd, here's my qotd to you all:
What is your rattie story? I really liked Mary Beth's story for Mitzy.
Some of our talented banner makers like Doreen and Jan might be able to win this Vox banner contest!
I've been accused of libel and copyright violation on this blog. If someone would kindly point me to specifics, I will have these sections removed.
Libel: Nothing that I've said here is a direct insult to anyone, as far as I know. Also, nothing that I've said here is a false statement. If I am wrong please correct me. This is why I've sent out invites to everyone who's asked me so far.
Copyright violation: Note that quotes from private emails are copyrighted by the sender, however attributed use of such content is covered under "fair use", particularly when it is used in forming a report of truthful events, as I have done here. Note that these accounts are mine, and I can only write from my own perspective, not anyone elses - I can only use quotes that people have emailed to me or posted on the site to back me up.
I've got new banner graphics waiting in line. Some really good ones. One of our new members even submitted a banner today that is really cool. I'll have to get it up before the summertime is over because its a great summertime photo!
Thanks to everyone who submitted pictures for both the book and the banner graphics. Keep sending them in. I almost have enough to finish the book, but we can keep adding!
1. Inside the Connect tab, give me an OPML for all of my neighborhood "friends". Should be an easy implementation. This way I can easily import all of my friends feeds into my feedreader.
2. After I make a post, you take me to a page that says "These are a few people who just posted publicly to their blog…". Useful, yes. But I suggest that you add another part to this page: "These are a few people who just posted publicly to their blog with the same or similar tags…"
3. Also, I really want to be able to include links to friends who are not Vox members.
I have no intention of limiting chat in the "Just Chat" forum in any way. After all - its just chat.
What I have considered, but haven't decided on yet, is not displaying posts from "Just Chat" in the "Recent Posts" list.
The "Nothin' Butt Ratties" contest was a blast! It finished today, and the winner is.... Congrats D!
Here are the answers, and a series of posts making fun of the last place entry. Some weirdo loser who doesn't know Katie Scarlet from James Bond. I heard he only got 10 of them right. Sheesh!
RT.com vs GRT, part III: Unappreciative
Steph, aka Sstanley, became a moderator a few weeks after Joan and Larry left us. Just a couple months later she was the third of the RT.com moderators to make the more or less permanent trek to GRT.
5/10/2006, Steph posted a message on the moderator forum expressing her dissatisfaction with the way things were on the site:
I have had enough of the crap on this site. I feel like I have been bashed too many times on this forum and the drama continues!!!
I love this site, but I dont feel like I want to be a part of all the crap that is going on here.
[removed some finger-pointing here to prevent any further hostilities - Lance]
I for one, dont feel appreciated for trying to make this site better and up and running like it was before.
I thought the private messaging would help out with the personal chat on the forum, but it hasnt helped one bit!!!
Let me say before I continue, that I agree with some of Steph's opinions above. Not all, but some. I certainly understood her frustration.
Steph felt that certain members, Scott in particular, were "taking over" the site and filling up Just Chat with personal stuff and making lots of negative comments. Frankly I have to agree with her a bit. Don't get me wrong though - I don't think that Scott should have not posted personal things - I think we are all here to chat not only about rat terriers but about whatever we'd like to. We're friends, after all. But what I do think is that Scott's directness and sense of humor sometimes was misunderstood. Also I do think that the "general" chatter in the Just Chat forum should not be listed in the "Recent Posts" section (by the way, what do you all think of that?) because it could be intimidating to new members who don't know our shining personalities yet. Anyway - now I'm getting off topic.... The point is, Steph didn't like the way things were going. She ended her message with this final sentence:
So I must say that I am leaving for now....I dont know if I will be back on or not...
She took a little hiatus from the site - about 2 weeks. When she came back she was surprised to discover that she was no longer a moderator. She emailed me to ask why - and I explained to her that I didn't know how long she would be gone, or if she would be back at all, and I didn't want to forget about her moderator status so I took it away. The way the website works is that it is *supposed* to automatically send notification to a member both when they become a moderator and when their moderatorship is taken away. I assumed that she'd been emailed this notification, and that is why I'd not personally email her to let her know. She accepted my explanation, I welcomed her back, and she was made a moderator again. Woohoo!
5/28/2006, Steph posted the following in the moderator forum:
Subject: Whats with these stupid avatars??
You know Nat..... I have been finding this site to be getting off the track of ratties. There are the usual people here talking about stuff that is not rattie related. Not that is has to be ALL RATTIE ALL THE TIME....It just sickens me to think that this site use to be so good, but now its a personal chat room between the same people. I have been saying for so long about how this site has changed and its definitely not for the better.
Steph was not alone in her opinion. Around this time I'd received several complaints that the site was too "cliquey" - that there was too much personal banter going on. On this issue, I wasn't sure what to do (as with many of the problems that we run into - I have learned from this experience that I could never be a successful politician!).
There was some discussion on this thread that Steph started, and Steph stated that she would like to leave the site and no longer be a moderator. The two of us also exchanged some emails, and she was just not happy with the negativity surrounding the site (which was a popular feeling at the time) and did not feel appreciated.
As far as I know, she is an active GRT poster now, but I cannot confirm this.
By the way, I would be happy to send an invite to anyone that asks me for one (while supplies last). Supposedly Vox will give me more when I run out.
This is an equal-opportunity invitation. No one will be denied based on forum loyalty or lack thereof. Any GRT takers? ;)
Also - just to add a little more transparency here:
All of these posts are configured to be commentable by "everyone". Now, Vox is still in "preview" stages and not officially released, so I'm not sure if "everyone" is supposed to really mean "everyone" - or if it means "everyone who is a member of Vox". I can tell you that the way it IS working is that you have to be a member of Vox in order to comment. Hopefully that will change and I will be able to configure this blog so that anyone can comment.
Part II: Transparency
Just because I'm long winded, lets go back to 2004...
I owned two rat terriers, and I was searching for rat terrier "stuff" to buy online. You know - tshirts, magnets, calendars... just "stuff". I couldn't find anything! At least not anything I would consider paying even a dollar for. Just junk. Thats when I decided that I should start a rat terrier website where people could come to chat and get rat terrier "stuff". At the time I knew of one other rat terrier site that got a lot of traffic, and it just was no good, in my opinion. It had traffic and good community, but I just couldn't stand the website itself. It was hard to read, hard on the eyes. Plus this site had nothing to buy.
I bought rat-terrier.com, put up the forum, and posted a message stating my goal of creating a community and a shop. The community is there (yay!) but not the shop! Yes, there is that "shop" link - but that is just temporary. Setting up a real shop takes a lot of time and I just haven't sat down to do the artwork and other things yet. My RT.com profile states my monetary goals for the site as well. FYI: Right now the site makes money through the Google, Amazon, and Petmeds ads. Am I pulling in fists of cash? You take a wild guess. ;) Admittedly the site now makes more than I spend on hosting, but I'm profiting roughly $80 dollars a year on the site. Big money, big money - no whammie's!!!
I have never been shy about my plans, or had any guilt whatsoever for wanting to eventually make a few dollars from it. I don't see anything wrong with that at all. I would see a problem with it if I were to exploit people or create content or work that harms someone in some way - but I'm not doing that nor do I plan to. I would see a problem with it if I were planning to use people's photos for my own gain without their permission and acknowledgement, but I don't have any plans on doing that either. What I want to do is provide something that I think people want: a source for good quality rat terrier "stuff".
Enter Larry. Larry joined RT.com not long after it started, on Dec 28, 2004. From the start it was obvious that he was thoughtful, intelligent, and loved his beautiful puppy Maggie. I still don't have anything bad to say about Larry, he has always been very composed, respectful, and polite to me personally. Eventually he became a moderator.
In early 2006, Larry was disturbed by the whole Aja/Jules situation. I think he was just generally disgusted by the negativity that was, at the time, looming over the site. Around this time, I made a post somewhere, I do not remember where - stating something along the lines of: "I'm going to create a 2007 calendar and put it up for sale on the site". Aja had made a 2006 calendar that a lot of people enjoyed. She sold them on Cafe Press and made $1 for each calendar sold - very fair I thought - since some small amount of work went into creating the calendar. This was my plan as well, though I don't think I mentioned that (after all it was many months before a 2007 calendar would be available!).
Sometime around the end of February, around the same time Joan was working on GRT and preparing to leave - somehow I found out that Larry was leaving as well. I do not remember how I found this out - if Larry posted about it, emailed, or what. What I do know is that I emailed Larry to find out the deal.
3/1/2006 - I emailed Larry, "Where are you going Larry?"
His response:
I will be spending more time at Joan's site. I'd still like to be able to visit rat-terrier.com and say hi to my friends, including you. I shouldn't be a moderator anymore though, so I hope it isn't too much trouble to change that.
Several of us have reached the point with Aja, where we just do not trust her in confidential situations (moderating a forum). This last thing was just the icing on the cake, it has been brewing for over half a year.I'm also dissapointed that you plan to personally profit from the photos of our pets.Carol and I have made some wonderful friends as a result of Rat-Terrier.com, and I thank you for that Lance. I hope you will allow me to pop in and say hi now and then. I have no ill will towards you, or anybody there.
Larry,Ok. Hope you'll come and visit us.Regarding Aja, I hate that such a situation happened. I wasn't sure what the best course of action was.Regarding profiting from your photos, I'll be happy to never use your photos if thats what you'd like. Any profits that would result from such a thing would be minimal, particularly given the fact that I can barely keep up with my own career much less throw on more work selling rat terrier stuff. One of the original goals of this website was to sell things like calendars and tshirts and such - because I wanted to buy those things for myself and couldn't find anything quality on the net (which is rare). If I can supply something quality, then I'll view that as a service to the rat terrier community.
