Posted by ayuda on March 23, 2003, at 11:25:43
In reply to Re: Shutting down the Babbles » shar, posted by Dinah on February 21, 2003, at 10:16:48
Dinah, I haven't read anyone else's response to your post, but I was perusing the thread concerning Dr. Bob's administration of this board and the use of blocking people, and as a researcher, I wanted to offer my opinion that perhaps stymies the average user of this board:
First of all, I think it was another post of yours in which you said you were looking at the message boards of a news site and you implied that the lack of moderation makes it difficult to bear. I have had the same problem, to where I've notified the FCC about some of those sites because of the filthy and hateful language that can be seen by anyone. You are right that Dr. Bob's civility standards make this a much more pleasant board.
To answer your question in this thread, though, Dr. Bob IS conducting research. It is counter-productive to the researcher when people just start name-calling and arguing. He is looking for specific information, and that information is obscured by incivility. He did not set up these boards so that people can verbally abuse others, he is looking at the psychology behind interactions of people who are supposedly under psychiatric care of some kind. If he wasn't conducting this research, my guess is that hosting a board like this would not be productive to his career, as it seems to take a lot of his time and patience just to moderate this board.
I am perplexed by those people who do not agree with Dr. Bob's moderation, and who submit posts criticizing him. They have the choice of just not reading this board ever again, and why they insist on being troublemakers instead is beyond me. Their meds may not be working! Or they are not on them, and may need to be. This is not a public forum, though people may think it is because it is on the Internet. It is really a private forum, we "sign" agreements to use this board according to Dr. Bob's rules, and anyone who ends up disagreeing with those rules just needs to un-bookmark this site from their browser.
In addition to moderating this site, Dr. Bob and his staff still need to evaluate every post for the research information they are seeking, which I always assumed was much more about medication and psychiatric care than about the administration of this site.
I commend Dr. Bob for conducting this kind of research, because it is the hardest to evaluate yet is probably going to be very helpful to the psychiatric community as a whole.
poster:ayuda
thread:201678
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20030221/msgs/211758.html