Friday, December 01, 2006

UNHAPPY READER

You're boring and uncreative and not timely with your moderation and comment posts. Sorry, but you got nothing to give to attract us.


Well we have a dissatisfied "customer" out there and it seems he speaks for all sergeants. Certain critics said SCC would fail when it went to moderation and that prediction obviously hasn't come true. Moderation is extremely important for many reasons but the most important one is we did not want this site to negatively reflect on the members of this department and police officers in general. We felt it was important to allow criticism of the department and those who implement its policies but we weren't going to allow ourselves to become another shithouse stall.
We try to review and publish comments as often as possible. Some days I'm able to spend a couple of hours out of my busy day to post and moderate comments and some days I don't have a free moment. Since this is only a hobby and not my livelihood I'm not about to apologize for my untimeliness in post moderation. We created this site because our union that we pay ($50 a month x 1200 members)$60,000 a month can't seem to update the associations site. We felt that information had to be put out there somewhere and when we run across it we publish it. We peruse various media outlets and police forums to find what we think might be interesting to our readers. Many times we publish a story we find and other times we will editorialise on a story. SCC does a great job in our opinion with hot-button topics but in the past (pre-moderation) some of the reader comments were pure garbage. We hoped to avoid the negatives that SCC experienced in the beginning. If our moderation policy and our timeliness in posting the comments aren't agreeable with you then create your own site.
We look at the site traffic and again we receive approximately 250 visits a day and we believe SCC receives approximately 2000 visits a day. In our case we feel that figures to be approximate 20% of our targeted readers. Maybe someone from SCC can comment. We are huge fans of SCC and as we told them when we started SCS they definitely inspired us.
So if you don't like us don't read us! Again if you think you could do better then create your own site.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Check out some of the district's websites. Some of them have success stories that are years old. In fact the supervisors or officers named in them no longer work there or have been promoted. Yeah great technology we have. Real informative for a city of what 3million people plus. BTW, our sgt's assoc. site is a joke also. They never return email. God I can't wait to retire.

Anonymous said...

Sarge...
Followed the link from ChicagoDispatchers to your site,
you're doing a fine job with the website! Keep up the good work.
Squuuaaad! :)

Anonymous said...

I thought your blog was interesting with some interesting topics.
That was probably some green eyed monster who couldn't run a blog to save his/her life.
Kudos to the blogmaster, it ain't easy but someone has to do it.
Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

I agree with you on the Sgt's union. It is a total farce. I once called there with a question about the medical roll. I was transferred to the "guy who answers those type of quetions". He told me I could find the answer in the G.O.'s. I told him I was at home and did not have G.O.'s and asked him to look for the answer. He informed me that he didn't have access to G.O.'s. What kind of answer man is this who can't reference a question on the department's rules.
I just needed to know our responsabilities regarding leaving the state when IOD. Our union does not have General Orders on hand WTF. Or mabey this A hole was sitting on his lazy boy at home? HMMMM I wonder, You know what Im going to run for President.

Anonymous said...

I would like to say that the PB&PA are what you, the Sergeants make it. They do not interject into CPD Sgts, LT's or Captain's business, YOUR ELECTED SERGEANTS are the only ones to blame if you are not satisfied, NOT PBPA. ALL administration of your contract and your union is carried out by them. PB&PA does collect dues, and provides legal representation, contract negotiation and legal defense functions. As far as the every day business of your union, it is totally handled by CPD Sergeants....

SCC said...

We have the same comments over at our site. We mean word-for-word comments, so obviously, we share some of the same audience.

When we started the site in May 05, we said that we would try to publish at least ONE article of interest a day, even if it was just some open post for people to rant. And when we had 100 visitors a day, a single post covered it - we could leave the comments open, weed out the ocassional garbage and let it run on autopilot.

As we sent out faxes to every Department machine and sent out business cards to unit reps, union people, coppers we trust and any boss who mentioned us at roll call, we began to grow. The photoshopped pictures made us REALLY popular. And suddenly, we had a lot more negative comments. We asked, pleaded and begged people to behave because it was only a matter of time before the media latched onto the site and would use it to paint all coppers in the most unflattering light possible. We shut down comments we had left up since the beginning and closed posts after 10 days just to keep the BS down. Then after 7 days. When we were only keeping comments open for 3 days, we realized that blogging had become a chore and was taking up too much of our limited time. Since we do it for free, this wasn't a good trade off. We agonized about it, but we instituted full moderation to save ourselves headaches.

Yes, we miss the give and take. But we no longer had to worry about someone typing the same word 50,000 times and posting it - and one time we figured the word count at about 125,000. Or a million other annoyances that made blogging not fun. So we'll take our 2,000 hits a day (we just passed 700,000) and our 2.7 million page views and be happy. We must be doing something right because Blogger is free and there haven't been too many attempts to do what we (and you and SCDicks) are trying to do in a Department of 13,000 (if the numbers are to be believed.) If anyone else can do it better, the readers will follow them. And if we don't adapt, we'll wither and die away. The free market at it's best.

leomemorial said...

Great blog and keep up the moderation!!!! Who needs 10 million Ole's, and the other assorted ... garbage.

Keep rolling and speak about whatever the hell you please!! stay safe

Anonymous said...

This site is clean and professional. You have posted interesting reads. Often I have done a prior read on what you end up posting from various media sites. Which either causes me to shake my head twice or double up on the laugh. I try to keep up on your posts but have not really posted.
SCC is an entirely different read and banter style, that's good as well. Yes, response is not quick time but your so right about what was happening to the SCC site. After OLE I knew I had my fill like so many other's apparently SCC as well, thus along came the Master Eraser. I credit anyone that takes their personal time and provides an informative forum for others. Might I add, thank you for your time it's appreciated.

Anonymous said...

Hey Gordie tell them why the sgt association site is not updated

Anonymous said...

Good blog SS Sarge. I am a regular visitor. Please keep the topics police or Sergeant related if possible. When I visit the SSC blog, I skip over the topics that are not police related. Lately, SCC has been posting more non-police topics much to my dissapointment.

Anonymous said...

Yes, somebody named Gordie, got pissed and did everything he could to screw things up at our union. He thought he was to be crowned king, but lost the election ..Good riddance to Sgt Barnhill

SECOND CITY SARGE said...

I would like to say that the PB&PA are what you, the Sergeants make it. They do not interject into CPD Sgts, LT's or Captain's business, YOUR ELECTED SERGEANTS are the only ones to blame if you are not satisfied, NOT PBPA. ALL administration of your contract and your union is carried out by them. PB&PA does collect dues, and provides legal representation, contract negotiation and legal defense functions. As far as the every day business of your union, it is totally handled by CPD Sergeants....

We have been hearing grumblings from a group of sergeants that would like to see de-certification of PB&PA.

Anonymous said...

Our Lodge of the PBPA (Chicago Sgts) made payments to the State Lodge of $54,000 as of the end of October...

So, where is that money going???

It's time to join the FOP (NOT Lodge 7) . . begin our own lodge.. The 'FOP' is the only "police organization" which is recognized in Springfield and Washington DC. The PBPA gives us NOTHING.

Please keep in mind that this is an open blog
that can and is read by people other than Chicago Police Officers.