[bairy]

Originally Posted by EasyTarget

.....If a member makes a public attack toward a staff member maybe a better response instead of getting defensive would be [snip]

Originally Posted by Tim Skellett

Demanding that staff bend over backwards in the face of what are mere personal attacks is a kind of "Blame the victim" POV that in my experience only leads to more attacks.

I don't see it quite that way.
Yes, personal public attacks are bad, of course, and they shouldn't happen, and it's possible that the attacker will re-read their post later and realise they went over the top.
But if someone is so worked up that they feel it necessary to make such a post then you have to ask why, and you have to try and rectify it. Responding with something like "say something nasty against us again and you'll be banned" is only going to make things worse. Telling people to do as they're damn well told and be happy is not going to help the situation.
One of the roles of admin is to take the crap and try to resolve it, not compound it. By resolving it calmly and neatly, that admin looks good and the original poster will look not so good and may even say "hey you know, I'm sorry I said those things, I was just really upset. And it has the bonus effect of making the admin look accessible and open to suggestion which puts everyone else at ease.

One thing that I have not seen here is routine dismissiveness, arrogance or nastiness from the staff here (I have seen suchlike on other sites)

I'm not a heavy .org surfer and I've seen at least 2 instances of dismissiveness, a few instances of arrogance and even nastiness (provoked perhaps, but read below). As I said earlier, it isn't a case of disgruntled tantrum-based newbies, we're mostly admins here and most know how to construct a proper argument. When it comes to the point where multiple people are removing their hacks and threatening to stop participating on the site - it can't be just kneejerk/tantrum based.

With some of the actions I've seen by admin, I geniunely can see why people get upset.

That's not to say all staff actions are bad, by any means. Sometimes there are pleasant responses, and day-to-day-wise a lot of the behind the scene stuff is very beneficial. I personally think the site is in good shape overall, minus some hack organisation and attitudes of certain people and I think there are a lot of innovative features and the site in it's current site is pretty well built.
But all that doesn't give staff the leeway to be dictator-like.