To this, my feelings are summed up by @LSLGuy from upthread:
I think the board is resistant to change, in any direction. Not surprising, most people are hesitant about the unknown. So, again, this is a step, rather than a leap. If the OP doesn’t opt in, the result is a no-change situation. If this doesn’t work at all (a possibility), then we’ll consider other options, ideally with constructive feedback from posters that accept that there are differing views seemingly on every single rule in the TOS and P&E (okay, some exaggeration, I admit).
In other words, something of a SNAFU. We hope that while addressing a single (if with wide ramifications) variable we can figure out what is workable for the community and if it’s the right change.
I like this approach – including the strategy to vet it out in beta testing. I’m not a fan of all of the hijacks, especially the running Trump commentary, but I respect that others do. This gives us all a new option. And if it doesn’t work, we can try something new.
Even if it only reduces the workload on the Mods, that would be worth it.
Does anyone really favour “running Trump commentary” in threads intended to discuss specific issues? I sure don’t.
For the sake of clarity, I will say that this is misrepresenting the position that I and some others endorse against overly strict moderation. No one wants long-running digressions (except maybe in the Pit). The argument is about a single post, or a couple of subsequent ones, that may be only tangentially relevant, being moderated as a rules infringement. It tends to discourage people from posting at all, and perhaps providing interesting and relevant information.
I actually agree with this, which is why I have my 10-or-so-hijacks post rule. It’s personal to me, but I try to not moderate hijacks until they actually become, you know, hijacks. I think 10-ish off-topic posts is a fair number to clearly demonstrate that a thread is going off the rails.
But as I said, that’s just me. Different mods have differing tolerances for hijacks. And we have to allow for those differences.
I will add my agreement to @ParallelLines’ and @LSLGuy’s point that we should default to the existing rules and not try to turn them upside down. Not only based on the good points they raised, but also the fact that posters have no idea how many flags we receive for hijacking that we don’t act on. I can tell you without hesitation that there is a clear and strong preference for us to keep threads on track.
I don’t see this happening though. Usually I see mod notes if a post is a wildly off-topic one, or if a number of posts have drifted away from the topic, derailing the thread. One or two posts that are a slight divergence are rarely, if ever, being modded.
And I’m saying this as someone who has only received one warning on this board, and it was for participating in off-topic chat in a P&E thread. I’ve been on the bad end of these rules and I still think they’re not as draconian as you’re suggesting.
I have a wild discursive sense of what’s relevant. But I press on anyhow and am rarely cautioned. I’ve yet to disagree w any corrective guidance I’ve received. And wiith 65K+ posts, I’ve gotten whacked a time or three.
Well, I see dozens of them all the time. Of course “wildly off topic” is a judgment call, but managing the risk of a thread being derailed should be a common-sense judgment based on that actually being observed, not a hair-trigger reaction to a perceived rule. Not to implicate any one particular mod, here are two examples:
If there was a consensus on your admirable POV (a tall order, I acknowledge) so other mods see it the same way, I think this whole controversy would be moot.
This is the best group of moderators I’ve ever seen, here or on any other board. But it’s still not perfect.
There’s a reason that some threads fare better in the Pit. For instance, the “Elon Musk Buys Twitter” thread that was closed in IMHO due to excessive sniping and hijacks was re-opened in the Pit after objections from many posters who wanted it to continue. And it became one of the most popular threads that blew through its 10,000 post limit into a second iteration, now with a total of 13,225 posts!
If I could design the gift coffee mug that new SDMB moderators allegedly receive, it would bear the following inscription:
“The difference between moderators being a valuable asset to a message board, keeping civility and order, and being an oppressive nuisance is only a matter of degree.”
That’s the issue. One of your examples is talking about Tim Walz in the Governor of California election thread. That is wildly off-topic. If you see something that has nothing to do with the topic of the thread as a minor divergence, then I think that explains why you are objecting. Another one is talking about insider trading from Trump in a thread about Iran being bombed.
Neither example is a slight tangent or a natural drift of the thread. Those are both examples of someone bringing up a topic that has little-to-nothing to do with the subject of the thread.
Your examples, to me, are bolstering the argument that @LSLGuy and myself are making… When moderation happens, it’s not for something that’s a bit of a tangent but arguably on-topic. It’s either for a number of off-topic posts, or one very off-topic post that threatens to completely change the discussion.
ETA: In particular, I almost replied to the Walz post originally in that California gubernatorial elections thread, before remembering where I was and what the topic was. Back in the day I very much would have replied by posting something about how Walz would struggle with some controversies, but I’ve learned my lesson and I’m less prone to participate in hijacks than I once was in P&E.
I disagree, as I see tangential relevance in both those posts, but I also recognize that getting into detail here would be way off-topic. The main point being that those posts could have been left alone with no harm done. That’s so often been the case with these “hijack” moderations, over and over again.
Thank you both for illustrating our point, @wolfpup and @Atamasama. There is almost always a gap in perceptions between mods and posters, between individual mods (and forums!), and between individual posters. It’s that squishy human element again.
Not directing sass at anyone here, just how hopeless it feels when trying to thread the needle on the particular subject, and where the whole “some tolerance” didn’t seem workable in our workshopping.
Yeah, I think that this is just going to be a matter of very divergent points of view, and there isn’t much else to discuss about this particular subject. Sometimes it’s okay to just disagree.
A very good point @CaveMike, thank you. Granted, we don’t KNOW what the lurkers want, even if we tend to assume it’s the status quo.
Back to the reason for this whole new rules option is that we really can’t evaluate what percentage of posters of all stripes (and the lurkers!) actually want. Lots of self-selection going on, especially when it comes to P&E and the Pit.
So speaking of selection, and asking honestly, not as a “gotcha!”, do any of the posters choosing to participate in this thread right now see this new option as doing any harm?
We understand it may not be the magic bullet of a fix some of you want, or that you’d like a different fix altogether, but again, any harm in letting OP’s in P&E make a choice for how open a discussion they want to have?
Just chiming in to say that I would have moderated the Walz hijack in the Election of a new Governor of California thread, too. Walz is wildly off topic for that thread.
Appreciate the praise for us being a good group of moderators. We do really try, and we put a lot of effort into working on improvements.
No, not harmful. I see it as largely neutral, but not really addressing the fundamental problem, which IMHO is that Jonathan’s “super-strict moderation” rule against even the slightest perceived hijack was ill-advised in the first place.
I’m very appreciative of the lengths that the mods are going through to address this controversy. I’m just surprised that it became a controversy at all.
Well in Walz case the word governor appears in the OP … I kid I kid. I agree both seem pretty off topic to me. I have no problem with the strict moderatio in P&E. I don’t usually post there because I have a stream of conciousness way of thinking. If I do find myself throwing some things in that may not be related I always try to bring my post back to the subject at hand.
I think it’s worth a try to fix an ongoing issue. I appreciate the mods putting in the effort. Getting posters to be more specific in crafting what they want to discuss, and how far they are willing to stray from the topic is a good step. We are grownups for the most part, and we need to take some responsibility for our “creations.” IMHO