Hello there. Yeah I'm a firm believer in education rather going right for punishment. At least...that would be my style of management if I were to ever land such a position anywhere. People are gonna screw up at some point for the simple fact people are not perfect. Giving guidance that happens to include why their actions are considered a mistake is a better approach though you can't go into it with the whole "I'm the boss, you do as I say because I say it is so" mentality. Doesn't work. Creates a hostile work environment actually not to mention unhappy employees (in this case, volunteers). After all a happy employee is more often than not a productive employee.

Dragoneer would benefit a lot from some basic education in human relations in business if not flat out a full on course in business as is. Might seem a little extreme for someone that's more or less just managing a website but it is a high traffic site that is shockingly still around after blunder after blunder after blunder. But there it is. Though probably in his mind he thinks it's a success doing what he's doing and probably doesn't feel much of a need to change his practices. He forgets while yes he did dole out cash from his paychecks to keep the site going but it was largely donations and the community itself that has kept it going. Quite remarkable considering there are other more stable alternatives in the furry community to go to.

One of the things at Amazon they pushed into us was taking ownership. If you have an idea that would benefit the company, you own it. For example when a small team of us were investigating fraudulent Kindle warranty claims (people would say the Kindle was broken and cannot return it because of shit like the battery exploded or caught fire and UPS won't ship it due to the broken lithium ion battery or that they cut themselves on the screen and that they have HIV and do not want to put anyone at risk by shipping it. Stupid shit) in which people would register a Kindle mere minutes before calling us with these outlandish claims. Anyway, I noticed a pattern that these registrations were being done so fast someone had to have cracked the serial number algorithm used to assign serial numbers to devices as they were produced but it was entirely dependent on registering the Kindle via the website. My solution was put a cork in that by removing the ability to register a Kindle via the website. I did the research, gathered the data the higher ups wanted to take away a customer convenience but considering at the time we had lost over 7 million bucks worth of devices due to that sort of fraud... well it went through and the ability to register online at the time was taken offline. Another one I had involved Kindle content returns. Each call to an Amazon call center costs the company on average $5 no matter how long the convo is. So something as simple as "Hey, I bought this book on accident" was costing us money not just in bandwidth but also that call. I was included in a Kaizen to improve on some other aspects of Kindle, brought up my data to that meeting. About 3 weeks later the option to return a Kindle book online was made available with limitations to help reduce abuse of the refund system.

Anyway, that's the kinda stuff I learned in a mere call center and the impact I was able to have as a mere level 3 associate. Dragoneer worked in a freakin' data center (I'm amazed he was even able allowed to run FA while on the clock though. Data centers are supposed to have far far tighter security measures than a call center) so it amazes me that despite some shitty operations managers that he hasn't implemented any of Amazon's ideology in how he runs FA. The ideology is sound when applied properly. Just it seems the higher up you the more the power gets to their heads. Dragoneer has.. or had.. a team of admins to help him run the site, people that are so dedicated to it they seem to be more volunteering than actually getting paid (unlike him who gets a paycheck more or less from IMVU). He had people he can get input from and even have them take some ownership and let them do their thing to make FA a better place. From what I've heard thus far the mods and some admins seem to be more in touch with the user base than he actually is, despite his beliefs on the matter.

I see a site owner with a lot of potential and has been given more chances than he probably deserves. However, if he can grow up some more and get better educated on how to be a leader then FA can move forward from being this...drama-ridden site with some policies that seem rooted in Middle School politics to being an actual professional website that grows with the times. A modern FA with rules that do not come off as some sorta "iron fist" style of leadership would be fantastic.

Added. :) Sorry for the delay. Birthday weekend and what not.

I was about to say human but.. I'll go with dragon based on your icon o.o