Devastating Developments

Many of you have likely noticed some recent changes as far as member engagement at Precisely Parrots. I feel that you deserve an explanation. I'm going to preface what follows with some background about Precisely Parrots.

Background

Precisely Parrots was created in response to a rampant disregard for companion bird safety by members of a well-known parrot forum site where I happened to be a member. It was on that website where I met my ex co-administrator and partner at Precisely Parrots, Wendy. She held a staff position there at the time. I had joined said forum site in June of 2012 after my best friend had passed away, leaving her beloved Green-wing Macaw, Salsa, to me to care for and love. Salsa brought my total Macaw count to four (4), and to this day I absolutely adore him!

My experience on the aforementioned forum site was initially pleasant. I made some friends there, and I tried to assist folks with their bird-related concerns when I felt I had adequate knowledge to do so. It seemed that my involvement there was appreciated by many members. There was however a prevalent negative element among certain folks on the site (including among certain factions of the staff). This bothered me considerably. What I mean by "negative element" is the presence of an attitude which often emerged within the threads condoning the unnecessary placement of companion birds into situations where they may become victims of brutal attack by other household pets. Any time concern were expressed about this risk, the response was typically either avoidance, or denial that such a thing could ever happen. Whenever I encountered comments within threads there that supported predator-pet/prey-pet contact, I expressed the dangers involved as best I could. I felt it was important to do this because many folks are encouraged to duplicate the activities that others have shared with them by placing their own pets into similar situations. Sadly, this copycat tendency among folks can lead to a number of unnecessarily maimed or dead companion birds. From my standpoint, allowing comments to stand unchallenged that promote predator-to-bird contact would have been irresponsible, as well as heartless.

In response to a thread concerning bird safety and caregiver responsibility that I created on the described parrot forum site, I encountered some opposition (as you might imagine). The thread became hijacked by two forum members early one morning while I was asleep. Once I had awakened, I found the thread had been closed by the site's staff. Standing within the closed thread for all to read was a barrage of comments in support of dangerous predator-to-bird contact with YouTube video links to bolster the position. It became a permanently preserved record within the site's archives.

I left the forum site over this very matter. I vowed never to return because of the dysfunction that allowed such harmful opinions to prevail, since opinions like that often provide rationalization for some folks to do things that result in serious harm to certain pet birds. Wendy empathized with me over the situation. She talked me into returning to the forum site as a member under the condition that a sticky thread on pet bird safety be created and remain in place. I agreed and returned as a member. From this point, our private discussions on the issue evolved, and we ultimately decided to create our own parrot forum website with the requirement that its policy would stringently endorse bird safety measures. That parrot forum website is PreciselyParrots.com

Our Current Sad Situation

Unfortunately, two of our most popular members at Precisely Parrots -who happened to as well hold Super Moderator positions- recently decided that they had more important priorities relating to their involvement on this website than enforcing our bird protection policy. Specifically, the member who had served as a Super Moderator for the longest period recently engaged in a thread dialog that contained a potentially bird-harmful comment, but failed to take remedial action. She neither warned the member who posted the comment nor edited out the comment from the text body. She failed to even notify site administrators of the comment's existence. To make matters worse, none of our other staff members who had browsed the thread had alerted on the comment either.

I personally discovered said harmful comment during a browsing session and thus deleted it. I subsequently placed a warning in the moderator discussion area, highlighting the oversight. The warning went unanswered by the Super Moderator member described above. Said Super Moderator member was then approached by my ex co-administrator (Wendy) with a request to send me a private message on the matter so we might resolve things. The Super Moderator member opted against sending me the private message, and instead submitted a short, coarse (and relatively rude) statement in the warning/discussion thread I had created. For unknown reasons, this member had developed negative feelings toward me at some point and had thus decided to demonstrate the attitude that accompanied those feelings. And this incident was not the first presentation by her of said attitude. She had as well failed to respond to a prior private message that I had previously sent her concerning my removal of a potentially harmful comical thread which she had created (the starter post contained an image of a dog with two parrots hovering above its head). Within said private message I explained that in response to the subject matter of the comical thread, and especially to the image, a new member had proceeded to post a reply with an attached photo of a parrot sitting upon the nose of a large dog. It's that attached photo that prompted my deletion of the thread and my subsequent explanation via private message to the Super Moderator member. Yet she seemingly felt that the matter lacked enough importance to warrant even a short reply of acknowledgement.

And there was yet a third recent incident involving both of the demoted Super Moderator members mentioned above. A few months ago, I asked our entire staff for some input on the adoption of a new Member Dispute Policy that was intended to curtail any development of false and vicious rumors among members. Despite my request for input from each of our staff members, the two aforementioned Super Moderator members refrained from involving themselves in the discussion. They wouldn't even reply to the proposal. Consequently, the policy was adopted without their involvement. I gave them the opportunity to help shape the new policy, but they ignored my offer without as much as a comment.

After the most recent incident involving the potentially bird-harmful comment, I made a final request of our staff members that they each share their personal feelings on our bird protection policy. This request was not only ignored by the Super Moderator member who had not responded to my other bird protection policy communications, it was as well ignored by the other Super Moderator member described above who had ignored the new Member Dispute Policy (proposal and discussion) along with her. Because any willful violation of our bird protection policy by a Precisely Parrots staff member is not something that can be tolerated (the protection of birds is, and will always be the top priority of this message board), I was compelled to remove Super Moderator status from these two members. They ignored important policy-related communication efforts and failed to respond to the bird protection policy opinion thread within a reasonable time frame. Unfortunately, their lack of cooperation justifies the consequence. The critical point was that they refused to communicate with me concerning important matters, either privately or within our staff area. I thus could no longer trust that they would work with me on future important matters.

It has been no secret that the first and most important duty of a Precisely Parrots staff member is to support our bird protection policy. This responsibility entails full compliance with policy expectations, as well as courteous respect to administrators when they are attempting to enforce said policy. In this case, however, the above described individuals elected to demonstrate allegiance exclusively to my ex co-administrator while ignoring my efforts and requests. Their conduct in this regard was unacceptable. It was certainly detrimental to the bird protection standard that Precisely Parrots was founded upon.

I personally established our bird protection policy to protect birds... not to generate attitudes among staff members who carry a chip on their shoulders. Whether or not to follow the requirements of said policy has never been a choice for anyone who hopes to remain on staff at Precisely Parrots. I will never tolerate someone placing a personal grudge above doing the right thing to protect pet birds at serious risk! All it takes is someone with a pet bird and a dog (or a cat) to see a single photo depicting permitted physical contact between predator and prey species to result in the bird's death. That's because many folks are encouraged by such photos to re-create the scenes with their own pets. Lots of cherished birds have been brutally shredded or crushed due to this phenomenon. It's a perpetual problem in our world which the Internet serves to provoke. I specifically set the bird protection priorities here so as many instances of this tragedy as possible might be avoided. As long as Precisely Parrots exists, those priorities will be practiced and respected! There is zero room for attitude interference on the matter!

Negative Repercussions

Sadly, there has been a significant breakdown among our staff because of the described bird protection expectations and failures. The two former Super Moderators mentioned above, together with my ex co-administrator (Wendy), have taken it upon themselves to move on to the management duties at another message board. Said board has been virtually inactive for one year (or so) and is currently hosted as a subdomain. These former Precisely Parrots staff members obviously believe that their bird protection values and views are better than the ones I have established. Knowing their practices and tendencies, as I do, I strongly disagree!

It is most unfortunate that cliquish defiance can so easily become the priority for folks who are entrusted to oversee matters that can help prevent unnecessary death to pets. I'm sure it's easy for many of you to tell that I'm feeling more than a bit bitter over all of this. Actually, I think I'm just feeling plain sad. It has been such a struggle to gain sincere and total staff member compliance with our bird protection policy. It's a policy that can save lives, yet compliance from everyone without resistance or failure has been extremely difficult to obtain. I'm just unable to comprehend that.

So What's Next for Precisely Parrots?

Precisely Parrots will remain online. Our bird protection policy will continue to be enforced. Our database and all of our archives are preserved and will remain intact and accessible. Whether or not our thread activity stagnates to a standstill is anyone's guess. In case that is to be, I am prepared to accept and deal with it. I will do my best to maintain a meager staff presence here. I cannot however guarantee what may or may not lie ahead for our community. It's my hope that many of our current members will stick around. But that's entirely up to them. Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to each and every one of you for supporting our website and our mission during the past year.

I will always be available to PM should anyone care to contact me.

Tony (plax)