We have decided to write this post because we feel it is very important that everybody knows what has been happening on WLSurgery over the past few weeks or so.
As you remember the original layout of the site was becoming cramped and different surgical procedures were getting on top of each other. The banders section was created. From here it was proposed to have a poll, in which the majority voted to separate all of the various surgical procedures into their own respective sections, as we have done.
Moderators have spent a lot of time since then slowly but surely transferring posts to the appropriate new sections and this is still a work in progress due to the enormity of the task.
Since then, we have been noticing that the site has not been running as smoothly as it should. With various individuals making claims that they do not feel safe on WLSurgery, or that its terrible that people were attacked and treated in such a horrible way. We found this rather troubling as none of us could understand or see what these members were talking about.
As Administrators (Mini & Pierce) of MiniMins since 2006 and WLSurgery since 2009, we attempted to gather information from these people stating these claims so that we could understand what is happening and then take action to protect the members of WLSurgery.
However, when pressed for information people could only vouch for hearsay and did not actually see it happen for themselves and were unable to tell us on what posts/threads this had happened. One individual even said they considered the matter closed but would not retract their claim from the public forum! It seemed that rumour's were circulating about us deleting threads and posts which simply wasn't true - with the exception of one thread which was removed at the request of a few individuals who have been the ones making the accusations.
On the 11th of April 2011, the "Private Message" thread started, in which a member requested that we remove the progressive permissions system (you know where you had to get to 50 posts before you could view your own profile and set an avatar, that system in which you simply had to write 50 posts to earn your privileges). We explained that this was done to prevent new people from spamming our members via PM's or crawling through profile pages in order to collect various pieces of information.
This member eventually said to a new person "Play the game" in order to bulk up their post count. We have never heard this expression before. Of course we see threads where members are told to go onto the word count threads to help get your post count up, but typically in reference to larger signatures and viewing profiles.
This member was then told by Mini that it was disappointing to see somebody directly try to skirt the rules, especially one set up to protect you, our members. The reaction of this member was aggressive and rude. We decided to infract this member ( an infraction is whereby we disable a users account for 7 days, a bit like the naughty step ). The mods on WLSurgery are also advised to use this when a member is refusing to take the direction of a moderator so this is not a special case.
All of a sudden we had an avalanche of posts saying we went over the top was posted on this thread, and we tried to explain the infraction was not given because of skirting the rules but in the aggressive manner in which the member conducted themselves.
Again this is something we have never seen. We understand that yes some individuals have a lot of friends but those friends and usually only 2 or 3 of that members friends will contact me directly. At least half a dozen individuals all repeated the same thing completely ignoring the issue at hand and unable to see it from our perspective.
This got me thinking, it was an awfully unusual occurrence to have a constant disruption on a site and then to have a thread explode for no reason at all.
I logged into our website analytics and looked for the referring websites (anybody who has a blog at some point probably has seen in their stats "Referring websites"). One website caught my eye. On clicking the website to get more details it showed that we started getting an influx of traffic from that site on the 3rd of April.
We registered an account and we were shocked to find the following. Most of the people on the Private Message thread were subsequently logged into this website at the same time. On further investigation we found this:
The first member, the individual to create this website was Angler, the second member is Bev, the 3rd is sugga, keeley was the 9th, angie790 is 23. There are others too numerous to mention.What is more shocking is that their site was created all the way back in September 2010. Since then certain members have manipulated this situation to their advantage in an attempt to make WLSurgery.com look like the bad guys in all of this.
Of course at this point all the blocks fell into place (especially for me!), these people had created a new website and they were trying to get members to join their website. So by creating an unease on the site and trying to tear apart the social fabric of WLSurgery that you all have worked very hard to create, by having a few people say they are stepping back from the website, or saying they couldn't trust the website or that they heard a member got attacked, they were hoping that people would leave WLSurgery. The starting point for all of this is the banders vs gastric bypassers.
It saddens me to think that they were trying to create a community by first destroying your WLSurgery community first. All we have ever tried to do is to provide you with a safe haven in which to share your concerns, successes, worries, thoughts etc in relation to your WLS journeys.
Now I would like to make it clear to all reading this thread, if you are thinking of creating your own website, or your own facebook support group I whole heartedly encourage you to do it. But you do not need to solicit members on WLSurgery or try to destroy an existing community to do it.
So where do we go from here? Well of course our first and primary objective is the safety of our members. That is why all the members directly linked to the recent events have been banned for life. All the mods are here every day for you, so if you see anything and want to discuss it with us please do so.
It has been a very difficult, trying and emotional couple of weeks for everybody involved. Admin and moderators give their time freely to ensure the smooth running of this site - something we do willingly, however this has been draining on all of us and we have all had to give far more of our time than is reasonable to expect in order to get to the bottom of what has occurred.
We would like to move forward in a positive progressive manner and get everybody back up and supporting each other before, during and after their surgical journey.
If you see anybody asking "have you seen".... please report the post and we will redirect them to here.
I would like to thank everybody at this time for reading this post and I appreciate any comments you have. If you feel that PM would be better you are very welcome.
Thank You,
Pierce and The Team
As you remember the original layout of the site was becoming cramped and different surgical procedures were getting on top of each other. The banders section was created. From here it was proposed to have a poll, in which the majority voted to separate all of the various surgical procedures into their own respective sections, as we have done.
Moderators have spent a lot of time since then slowly but surely transferring posts to the appropriate new sections and this is still a work in progress due to the enormity of the task.
Since then, we have been noticing that the site has not been running as smoothly as it should. With various individuals making claims that they do not feel safe on WLSurgery, or that its terrible that people were attacked and treated in such a horrible way. We found this rather troubling as none of us could understand or see what these members were talking about.
As Administrators (Mini & Pierce) of MiniMins since 2006 and WLSurgery since 2009, we attempted to gather information from these people stating these claims so that we could understand what is happening and then take action to protect the members of WLSurgery.
However, when pressed for information people could only vouch for hearsay and did not actually see it happen for themselves and were unable to tell us on what posts/threads this had happened. One individual even said they considered the matter closed but would not retract their claim from the public forum! It seemed that rumour's were circulating about us deleting threads and posts which simply wasn't true - with the exception of one thread which was removed at the request of a few individuals who have been the ones making the accusations.
On the 11th of April 2011, the "Private Message" thread started, in which a member requested that we remove the progressive permissions system (you know where you had to get to 50 posts before you could view your own profile and set an avatar, that system in which you simply had to write 50 posts to earn your privileges). We explained that this was done to prevent new people from spamming our members via PM's or crawling through profile pages in order to collect various pieces of information.
This member eventually said to a new person "Play the game" in order to bulk up their post count. We have never heard this expression before. Of course we see threads where members are told to go onto the word count threads to help get your post count up, but typically in reference to larger signatures and viewing profiles.
This member was then told by Mini that it was disappointing to see somebody directly try to skirt the rules, especially one set up to protect you, our members. The reaction of this member was aggressive and rude. We decided to infract this member ( an infraction is whereby we disable a users account for 7 days, a bit like the naughty step ). The mods on WLSurgery are also advised to use this when a member is refusing to take the direction of a moderator so this is not a special case.
All of a sudden we had an avalanche of posts saying we went over the top was posted on this thread, and we tried to explain the infraction was not given because of skirting the rules but in the aggressive manner in which the member conducted themselves.
Again this is something we have never seen. We understand that yes some individuals have a lot of friends but those friends and usually only 2 or 3 of that members friends will contact me directly. At least half a dozen individuals all repeated the same thing completely ignoring the issue at hand and unable to see it from our perspective.
This got me thinking, it was an awfully unusual occurrence to have a constant disruption on a site and then to have a thread explode for no reason at all.
I logged into our website analytics and looked for the referring websites (anybody who has a blog at some point probably has seen in their stats "Referring websites"). One website caught my eye. On clicking the website to get more details it showed that we started getting an influx of traffic from that site on the 3rd of April.
We registered an account and we were shocked to find the following. Most of the people on the Private Message thread were subsequently logged into this website at the same time. On further investigation we found this:
The first member, the individual to create this website was Angler, the second member is Bev, the 3rd is sugga, keeley was the 9th, angie790 is 23. There are others too numerous to mention.What is more shocking is that their site was created all the way back in September 2010. Since then certain members have manipulated this situation to their advantage in an attempt to make WLSurgery.com look like the bad guys in all of this.
Of course at this point all the blocks fell into place (especially for me!), these people had created a new website and they were trying to get members to join their website. So by creating an unease on the site and trying to tear apart the social fabric of WLSurgery that you all have worked very hard to create, by having a few people say they are stepping back from the website, or saying they couldn't trust the website or that they heard a member got attacked, they were hoping that people would leave WLSurgery. The starting point for all of this is the banders vs gastric bypassers.
It saddens me to think that they were trying to create a community by first destroying your WLSurgery community first. All we have ever tried to do is to provide you with a safe haven in which to share your concerns, successes, worries, thoughts etc in relation to your WLS journeys.
Now I would like to make it clear to all reading this thread, if you are thinking of creating your own website, or your own facebook support group I whole heartedly encourage you to do it. But you do not need to solicit members on WLSurgery or try to destroy an existing community to do it.
So where do we go from here? Well of course our first and primary objective is the safety of our members. That is why all the members directly linked to the recent events have been banned for life. All the mods are here every day for you, so if you see anything and want to discuss it with us please do so.
It has been a very difficult, trying and emotional couple of weeks for everybody involved. Admin and moderators give their time freely to ensure the smooth running of this site - something we do willingly, however this has been draining on all of us and we have all had to give far more of our time than is reasonable to expect in order to get to the bottom of what has occurred.
We would like to move forward in a positive progressive manner and get everybody back up and supporting each other before, during and after their surgical journey.
If you see anybody asking "have you seen".... please report the post and we will redirect them to here.
I would like to thank everybody at this time for reading this post and I appreciate any comments you have. If you feel that PM would be better you are very welcome.
Thank You,
Pierce and The Team
