Theoretically that’s true, but pit topics often involve liberal doses of insults against other posters. People may want to discuss a topic with more freedom, but they might not want to be denigrated while doing it. Perhaps there should be a category which has looser moderation like the pit, but with the decorum rules towards posters that are common in the other categories.
Typically when a thread is started the OP wants to keep the discussion fairly tight. Then over time, if the original topic has been fully thrashed out (so it’s not about a continuing situation or anything), people feel they can slightly diverge.
And IME, the mods are pretty light touch when this happens. All this to say, I’m happy with the way this is being modded at the moment.
Honestly, the impression I have is that some are having issues with us as moderators. I feel like we’re all talking around this and not taking it head on.
I have indicated a willingness to adjust my approach if needed. My feelings will not be hurt if someone wants to speak in a forthright manner about how I moderate hijacks.
Just bear in mind that sometimes there are factors that are not obvious to all posters, such as an OP flagging their thread for action.
I agree with @engineer_comp_geek that we don’t need to rewrite the rules in an effort to make sure people aren’t afraid to post. No one should be afraid to post, but they do need to be mindful that not all threads are a dumping ground for every thought a poster may have.
Perhaps some moderator behavior modification will take care of the concerns.
IMHO can work for that, especially if the OP specifies a broad range of discussion.
Well said. Thank you.
I think the underlying driver is mostly folks not really grokking that our categories are a mess / historical accident which each have the nature of accetable OP thread topic on one axis and nature of acceptable responding poster behavior on another axis.
Each category serves two masters. In our current politically feverish world both domestically and internationally, ISTM that tension is stretched to the breaking point.
IMO even skilled long time posters such as myself tend to think of the categories in terms solely of which sorts of OPs belong where. Which, as to contentious topics, is more wrong than right.
And lately, they’re all contentious topics.
Yeah, I think IMHO would work in most cases. I’m personally fine with the tight moderation. There’s no way to make everyone happy. Keeping the topics on the tighter side rather than the looser is going to be more manageable and makes for easier rules for everyone to understand.
For those complaining about the mods stopping tangents too early or being too strict, it would be really useful to post specific examples (and hopefully within the last 6 months or so). It’s difficult to come to consensus or even put forth useful arguments when we all have different things in mind.
So much this.
My sense is that the mods give a decent leash to brief asides and then nudge back.
The bit I love that they try to control is preventing long running other subjects with their own thread(s) from flooding a different issue thread. There are threads to discuss those subjects; keep the discussions on them there.
I like the anti-hijack rules that we have. If you want to make an aside, then it’s easy to spin off a new thread. I’m not sure why there’s resistance to that.
And if you want a freer discussion, where hijacks are allowed and the opening poster can junior moderate, we already have a forum where you can do that:
I like this idea. Or maybe base it on the Forum. I think hijacks should be more tightly controlled in FQ whereas in some other fora the threads can grow more organically.
You’re not alone.
Aggressive modding is annoying in the extreme. It stops a natural discussion flow and causes a lot of splinter threads that are really hard to follow to decide where your new post should go.
I appreciate the mods do a lot of work and it is not easy but it has been weirdly and unfortunately aggressive the last few months.
One mod is more aggressive than most but I won’t name names.
In other words, exactly how it’s done now.
Could you provide some examples?
I’d rather not get the ire of some of the mods so no. I hope they can sort it out on their own. If not…fine.
That’s exactly how I feel about letting hijacks continue. Hijacks divert the natural flow of discussion from on topic into tangents and make a thread really hard to follow. And new “splinter” threads make it easier for others to follow the hijacks’ topics as well, instead of trying to pick them out of other threads.
It’s easy to make new threads, there’s unlimited space for them, and the board automatically shows links between them.
Were I a mod I think I’d be more irritated by vague accusations of aggression and vendetta than by concrete examples of areas that could be improved.
But I think we all know what you mean, because this isn’t the first thread complaining about tight moderation in GD and politics.
And each time it plays out the same way. Some posters say the moderation is stifling discussion, more posters say they prefer it that way, and the mods point out that the current rules are a response to previous untenable behavior.
And so it goes.
I really appreciate that we use the ancient path of single threads rather than nested discussions like Reddit, but this is definitely the perfect use case for a system like that. Don’t like the tangent? Collapse the tree and read on.
But taken in aggregate, reddit threads are like a cafeteria with a hundred conversations buzzing all at once and creating a homogenized din of noise. Our threads are more like a panel with everyone participating in the same conversation. I love that about the SDMB and, much like a panel discussion is made better by a host who is skilled at keeping conversation focused, so are our threads in these particular forums.
Well said.
And – unlike the In Real Life panel discussion – you really can be in two places at once (ie, follow the primary thread and any new threads created as side discussions, rather than pursued as hijacks) here.
So the ‘split it off into a new thread’ approach really costs nothing but a very small bit of extra front-end work.
I also like the idea that – depending on a bunch of factors – a single OT post doesn’t inherently constitute a hijack, but a hijack is an ‘I know it when I see it’ proposition – trying to avoid bright line rules and all that.
But I still don’t really know what he means. Are we talking about moderation that I would agree is overly tight and just didn’t see, or are we talking about instances where I’m happy a tangent was cut off and he is not? My response to those cases would be very different, and without examples I don’t know if I should be agreeing with the complainers or arguing against them.
I totally agree with this. For the reasons you state, I find Reddit to be nearly unreadable and impossible to follow.
There’s also little sense of community there, any more than the comment section of a newspaper.
I love the fact that we have a community of posters whose names I recognize and who have participated in discussions over many years and even decades.
snopes refugees tried moving to reddit, but we found it impossible to keep up message-board type of discussions there; they all died after a few posts, and were very hard to follow even while they were active. It may be a better format for some types of interaction, but it’s a much worse one for at least most of what we have here.
Agreeing with all of that.
Reddit may have something resembling a community in any individual reddit – but there’s no commonality among them; so no sense of getting to know the people in a more general sense. Each reddit is something entirely on its own. It’s like only seeing somebody in one very specific context, and never knowing anything about the rest of their lives or the rest of their interests.