Trophy Girl (THSCC Facebook drama)

JamesMilko · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 12:53 pm

Andrew Jonell wrote:

edit: deleting harassment isn't censorship, just fyi

It is, but not all censorship is bad.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 1:19 pm

Scott Johnson wrote:

I'm inclined to agree with this. It's pretty clear that we don't know how to manage our social media accounts properly, so maybe it's best not have them. Our public spaces should be for putting out information, and honestly, should be heavily moderated BEFORE something gets presented, not censored after. If the moderators put the "offending" pictures out there, then we got exactly what we asked for via the electoral process, and there are methods in place to remedy the problem (coming up soon, I might add).

Woot, woot, railroads a comin'

Scott, I don't think you are on Facebook. But regarding 'management of social media accounts' there is really no "management" on FB groups. There are admins who basically can just delete content and approve members. As in the only management is reactive and it has been used before when random people join the group and then post spam or something inappropriate. While it could be argued that we could have filtered people asking to join better, the pictures at the heart of this debate were posted by long time members anyway so I would say it wouldn't have helped. One of the main points of the FB was exposure and given there are 800 people in that group, and that I have met people at events (mostly NCCAR and Fayetteville) who only found out about the club and events through FB, I'd say it has done it's job. That coupled with people liking the fact that our club photographers like to post pictures/albums for everyone to see (appropriate pictures that is) it also serves a benefit in those regards.

So while I wish there was a mechanism for some more proactive management of the group (only allowing certain people to post pictures or having an approval workflow in place), those features do not exist.

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

Richard Casto wrote:

Andrew, a few time here and in PMs you have mentioned harassment. Can you or someone else provide some details? I would like to understand what the nature of what happened as the topic keeps coming up, but without info nobody can respond. Was the entire FB thread considered harassment, individual posts, private messages or was something else going on? I don't think harassment is acceptable.

Richard

RamVennam wrote:

1) THANK YOU for starting this thread here. The photos were controversial enough that it started multiple conversations (some last week that were also removed, that I think most people here missed)... and the attitude between people in those conversations did not reflect well on the club in a public forum -- regardless of whether you thought the pictures did or not. I think pulling the photos & the conversation was a good call, based on how mean people were being about it.

Andrew Jonell wrote:

Brice deleted the pictures that Karl had posted because more than a few people, including both Belinda and Kolu, contacted him. Keep in mind, after Belinda and Kolu had posted their controversial opinions of "these are gross and weird", they were shouted down by people arguing that this is history and postulating that it would be great if we still did the trophy girls thing.

Matt McGrain · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 2:04 pm

Actually our FB page is well managed and the mods are pretty careful about screening new 'members' and spam that comes across from time to time.

It's 2014 and love it or hate it, promoting club motorsports events & attracting other clubs/new members through a private forum ain't going to cut it. Facebook's what you make of it and overall we do a good job I'd say. :thumbsup:

Just my $.02

RamVennam · **Joined:** Thu Nov 11, 2010 7:31 pm **Posts:** 132

I can't believe we are talking about removing our FB page. Really shows how out of touch people are. Lets remove this web site too. Just mail out flyers about our events. Enjoy the "good old days" again.

Kevin Allen · **Joined:** Thu Aug 28, 2003 6:42 pm **Posts:** 3479

shawnwhipple wrote:

The decision to delete postings of trophy girl pictures from the facebook page has made me feel very excluded.

The way this was handled has also clarified a lot of things for me. I've been hearing the whole "Tarheel is unfriendly" thing since I got back into autocross 3 years ago and I've pretty much been in denial about it, while never really feeling welcome at the clubs events. I can now see why people say that. It's not pictures of trophy girls on facebook that keep people from coming to events, it's the overbearing attitude of some of the leadership.

Agreed. Just don't post it on facebook, because they'll delete it. :roll:

Come to a rallyx - the "leadership" hasn't started showing up there too often, so far. It's still a pretty decent way to spend several hours.

Like I said on facebook (and I'm sure some asshole here will delete it, just like he/she/it did there, but whatever)...

Quote:

Y'all are a bunch of idiots. This is why you're having trouble getting people to join your club, and why I'm no longer a member. I know several people who feel the exact same way. My trophy girl/stage rally co-driver/ fiancee Elizabeth Cordara is one of them. I just want to go have fun with my cars and hang out with people who don't have a stick up their ass. One reason rallyx > autox... although based on the last rallyx, that may not be the case for long. Very few of you idiots make it to a stage rally in any capacity, so we're thankful for that. Keep autoxing for life! Thanks.

steve remchak · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 3:09 pm

RamVennam wrote:

I can't believe we are talking about removing our FB page. Really shows how out of touch people are. Lets remove this web site too. Just mail out flyers about our events. Enjoy the "good old days" again.

Like the Heel n Toe? What's it been, a year?

I don't know why all don't just close half of the sub forums and have two,

AutoX. ..... All that other crap nobody cares about. ....

steve remchak · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 3:13 pm

And while we are at it..... why does our website have a moderator that lives in the PNW?

George Bright · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 3:27 pm

shawnwhipple wrote:

The decision to delete postings of trophy girl pictures from the facebook page has made me feel very excluded.

The way this was handled has also clarified a lot of things for me. I've been hearing the whole "Tarheel is unfriendly" thing since I got back into autocross 3 years ago and I've pretty much been in denial about it, while never really feeling welcome at the clubs events. I can now see why people say that. It's not pictures of trophy girls on facebook that keep people from coming to events, it's the overbearing attitude of some of the leadership.

Auto-X g lost it's fun for me years ago when the club started running the events so efficiently to run over 100 cars. I think rally-X still has the more laid back attitude that all our events had. I guess the peak of the "fun" years were during Kurt Spitzner's
years a club president.

Oh Neal I still have my old Politically incorrect logos.

JamesMilko · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 4:47 pm

Kevin Allen wrote:

Quote:

Y'all are a bunch of idiots. This is why you're having trouble getting people to join your club, and why I'm no longer a member. I know several people who feel the exact same way. My trophy girl/stage rally co-driver/ fiancee Elizabeth Cordara is one of them. I just want to go have fun with my cars and hang out with people who don't have a stick up their ass. One reason rallyx > autox... although based on the last rallyx, that may not be the case for long. Very few of you idiots make it to a stage rally in any capacity, so we're thankful for that. Keep autoxing for life! Thanks.

Can we get an account purge up in here? At least then I'll only have to read the same boring shit Kevin rehashes over and over again on Facebook.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 4:51 pm

Kevin Allen wrote:

Like I said on facebook (and I'm sure some asshole here will delete it, just like he/she/it did there, but whatever)...

Quote:

Y'all are a bunch of idiots.

Likely over the line. So one and only warning. No insults.

Also you mention you are not a member? You have PM. Forum access for members only. No posting until you let me know what your membership status is.

steve remchak wrote:

And while we are at it..... why does our website have a moderator that lives in the PNW?

No clue. I stopped doing that work when I relinquished primary admin duties. PM me details and I will look into it. We also need to see if there was a yearly purge last year to remove those who are no longer club members.

Andrew Jonell wrote:

Richard Casto wrote:

Andrew, a few time here and in PMs you have mentioned harassment.

I am not going to quote your entire reply (quotes of other people with no text from you). I assume you want me to read between the lines in those posts to piece the harassment part together myself? My assumption then is that in general the entire FB thread is considered harassment? I don't quite agree with that. People there and here and on both sides of the argument have been quite aggressive, rude and insulting to each other. Not fun if you are on the receiving end at all, but not harassment in my book. If my reading between the lines is wrong (which I am tired of doing) please stop the vague hints and explain.

Scott Johnson wrote:

It's pretty clear that we don't know how to manage our social media accounts properly, so maybe it's best not have them.

So this brings up a good point. I think FB can be useful for the club and as someone mentioned, it (and its warts) are a fact of life. We likely need to keep it around. While I was/am critical of the deletion of the thread on FB, I also posted (on FB) that I think the admins have good intentions. I don't think anyone expected or wanted it to play out as it has. But... I do think this entire exercise should be a learning moment for the club around how to manage social media. As a volunteer organization it is hard to have a "plan" as people just jump in and do it. V1.0 is always rough. But, we are capable of making improvements once we have something in place. So my suggestion is that whoever currently runs the FB page needs to work with senior staff to figure out how to make things better in the future. I also think the forum should be part of that, but I am tired of fighting the battle of trying to implement change here. Maybe the time is right?

This is not a reply to anyone in the quotes above, but a general comment to this thread...

I wanted to expand upon the comments above about me censoring by locking the thread. I locked the thread because we had had at least two warnings to people about breaking forum rules (personal attacks) and a few other people were walking the line. A few people including Rodney has requested people take a break. Sadly Belinda had just posted about the time the straw broke the camels back. So I locked the thread to give everyone a pause. Later yesterday evening I decided to leave it locked unless others who had not voiced their opinions wanted to speak. I updated my last post to include that info. The thread up to that point had mostly been dominated by just a few people and I felt that wasn't productive and was mostly shouting.

But I never deleted content, I didn't tell people they could or couldn't talk about it. What I did was try to slow down the train-wreck in this thread, but leave the door open for opening it up again if people wanted. If it gets out of control again (trending in wrong direction regarding forum rule breakage) then I will lock it again. But at long as people follow the forum rules the thread will remain open.

Richard

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

Richard Casto wrote:

I am not going to quote your entire reply (quotes of other people with no text from you). I assume you want me to read between the lines in those posts to piece the harassment part together myself? My assumption then is that in general the entire FB thread is considered harassment? I don't quite agree with that. People there and here and on both sides of the argument have been quite aggressive, rude and insulting to each other. Not fun if you are on the receiving end at all, but not harassment in my book. If my reading between the lines is wrong (which I am tired of doing) please stop the vague hints and explain.

What do you have to gain by being so pragmatic and scrutinizing these claims of harassment so much?

Jason Mauldin · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 5:37 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

Andrew Jonell wrote:

edit: deleting harassment isn't censorship, just fyi

It is, but not all censorship is bad.

And HERE lies the problem.

Censorship is bad. End of story. Just because you don't like something, and you delete it from in front you, doesn't mean it stops existing.

You speak about how your parents "hid" the feelings of losing from you. They effectively censored that out of your life. Somehow you're smart enough to recognize the issue with that, but you can't recognize the issue when you do it yourself. Losing is bad, let's censor that. Objectifying women is bad. Let's censor that out of lives. That will make the world a better place!

You live in a fantasy land, where as long as you shut up enough people around you and can hide the things that you don't agree with, you think things will just fall into place and the world will be perfect.. Good luck with that.

You've already won, there are no longer trophy girls at your events, but that's not good enough, you have to tell people that they can't even reminisce about it. Not in front of you, because that will destroy your little utopia.

Meanwhile in Egypt, women aren't even allowed to expose their elbows without fear of being beat and raped. Way to pick your battles! If you truly cared about the plight of women, you'd be helping these women out. But none of you have the sack for that, or else you don't care half as much as you want your peers to think you do. You'd rather sit here and pick on the old, balding men that laid the foundation for the events that you enjoy today, and that you're so willing to insult. Those guys don't have a place in your little utopian autocross club.

steve remchak · **Posted:** Sat Sep 27, 2014 5:39 pm

Andrew Jonell wrote:

Richard Casto wrote:

I am not going to quote your entire reply (quotes of other people with no text from you). I assume you want me to read between the lines in those posts to piece the harassment part together myself? My assumption then is that in general the entire FB thread is considered harassment? I don't quite agree with that. People there and here and on both sides of the argument have been quite aggressive, rude and insulting to each other. Not fun if you are on the receiving end at all, but not harassment in my book. If my reading between the lines is wrong (which I am tired of doing) please stop the vague hints and explain.

What do you have to gain by being so pragmatic and scrutinizing these claims of harassment so much?

As long as I have been here this has been Richard's forum.

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

Jason Mauldin wrote:

And HERE lies the problem.

Censorship is bad. End of story. Just because you don't like something, and you delete it from in front you, doesn't mean it stops existing.

You speak about how your parents "hid" the feelings of losing from you. They effectively censored that out of your life. Somehow you're smart enough to recognize the issue with that, but you can't recognize the issue when you do it yourself. Losing is bad, let's censor that. Objectifying women is bad. Let's censor that out of lives. That will make the world a better place!

You live in a fantasy land, where as long as you shut up enough people around you and can hide the things that you don't agree with, you think things will just fall into place and the world will be perfect.. Good luck with that.

You've already won, there are no longer trophy girls at your events, but that's not good enough, you have to tell people that they can't even reminisce about it. Not in front of you, because that will destroy your little utopia.

Meanwhile in Egypt, women aren't even allowed to expose their elbows without fear of being beat and raped. Way to pick your battles! If you truly cared about the plight of women, you'd be helping these women out. But none of you have the sack for that, or else you don't care half as much as you want your peers to think you do. You'd rather sit here and pick on the old, balding men that laid the foundation for the events that you enjoy today, and that you're so willing to insult. Those guys don't have a place in your little utopian autocross club.

Haha, you do realize that we have a married couple who were born in Egypt in the club? This is incredibly tone deaf.

The point has been about making people feel comfortable and inclusive in the club, and this includes not being at the receiving end of extremely pointed attacks on our Facebook page when they have controversial opinions of "Trophy girls are weird and objectify women".

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Trophy Girl (THSCC Facebook drama)

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