I just went back and re-read a significant amount of this thread.
Could someone point out to me any thread on any publicly accessible board which comes anywhere close to this in terms of quality of having a real discussion about real issues where all sides "let it all out" and have highly charged, emotional issues debated? because if it's out there, I haven't seen it, and would consider the type of suggestions which allow this type of discussion while at the same time make the board "more friendly" to a certain group.
I mean, I look at these boards which are put forth as "better" places than UG, and I see the vast majority of thread have 10 posts or less, I'm hard pressed to find threads with over 50 responses, and threads with over 100 responses are pretty much unheard of. And then I see this thread with almost 700 posts. And this is the place which needs to change?
NB: Please do not take that last statement to mean I don't think we need to change. I've asked for suggestions to change, I've recently implemented a bunch of concrete changes. But I'm just not clear on what it is that some people really want this place to turn into. I guess what I'm saying is that most of the talk is not based on any sort of facts, reality or true direction. Which is typical of backseat drivers. But since I'm the guy behind the wheel, when I ask for directions and get "lets go someplace nice", it isn't as productive as it might be.
In addition, everyone in the world works on feedback. I'll repeat the story which appears in the little pocket book "The Greatest Salesman In The World" by Og Mandino: (I couldn't find the direct quote, but this is basically what OG had to say):
"A man went fishing one day. He looked over the side of his boat and saw a snake with a frog in its mouth. Feeling sorry for the frog, he reached down, gently took the frog from the snake, and set the frog free. But then he felt sorry for the snake. He looked around the boat, but he had no food. All he had was a bottle of bourbon. So he opened the bottle and gave the snake a few shots. The snake went off happy, the frog was happy, and the man was happy to have performed such good deeds. He thought everything was great until about ten minutes passed and he heard something knock against the side of the boat. With stunned disbelief, the fisherman looked down and saw the snake was back with two frogs! "
The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter what behavior you want to occur, wish to occur or pray to occur: the behaviour which gets rewarded is what you get more of.
So, what does this have to do with UG? Well, as I've said so many times that you all must be sick of hearing it: whenever in the past I've made changes which people had requested to make this place "more friendly", the feedback I've gotten has all been negative in one way or another. If what people really want is the type of change which I'm hearing, in my mind I've made some very significant changes this week towards those ends. But how I'm going to react, and the direction of this site moving forward is going to be based on positive, negative or non reinforcement by all of you users out there.
If you really want this place to be more "provider friendly" and thus attract more providers, it's only going to be apparent to me that it's "real" if I actually see this happening. In the General Section I made a challenge to all lurking providers to prove me wrong by posting here. I expand that challenge to all the members here: if you want this place to be more provider friendly, show me that "it's going to work". Encourage the women you know to make their presence known here. If there's no positive reinforcement that I can see from the changes which have been made, it's going to be hard for me to convince myself that:
a) the actual problems are those which were presented, and
b) the solution of making this place "more friendly" is worth the effort/costs.
As said in the other thread: to those who want change, the ball is in your court.
