This right here is the real reason I don’t like twix as a mod. I reported someone for calling another poster a little girl. That clearly violates the rules, but she refused to moderate. I pointed out the exact rule that says it’s not allowed, but she ignored that and responded to an unimportant part of what I said.I was going to bring it up in ATMB, but the only way I could think of doing it at the time would risk a Warning
We went from Czarcasm’s over application of the rules (in his latter years), to twix’s fear to get involved with anything.
And Czarcasm’s defending her. Have your opinions on how to moderate changed so much? Or do you just defend everyone?
What you see as favoritism, others may see as applying their judgment to the situation to look at the bigger picture. For example, a poster who generally contributes meaningful and positive things to the message board, helps out others whether it’s answering quesitons, doing reserach, providing genuine humour, or being a sympathetic ear for complaints, should get leniency and a “pass” for occasional slips. Whereas a person who pretty much has no redeeming value or positive presence, and who spends an inordinate amount of their time complaining about Moderation and trying being a “kewl”, hipster snark machine should get no leniency whatsoever.
And let’s of course not forget that some people seem to take a perverse joy in gaming the Rules and Rules lawyering to see how far they can push the Moderators and Adminisrtators of Cecil’s message board.
Listen, you ignorant person, the only thing that refusing to enforce board rules because you like someone does is make people distrust your ability to moderate effectively.
Perhaps you should only moderate when you have time to moderate properly instead of doing half a job.
Gee, I wonder who this is referring to?
Having two sets of rules based on who the staff likes more is the stupidest, most damaging rule for a community I’ve ever heard of, and it would probably be guaranteed to run this place into the ground faster than stocking the site with malware-laden ads.
How does that work, anyway? For every mailbag article you write, you get to call me a cunt three times?
Please show me where this is located in the ‘Agreement’. Please. It really, really sounds like there is a process for a poster to receive ‘karma points’ or other quantifying things that would place them into such a category. How is this accomplished? Or is left to mods to know everything posted in every area of the Board in order to give poster full measure of their input(s) to SDMB? Please be specific in how this is accomplished so that I may understand it clearly.
I see another thread asking about “like” buttons - is this in relation to what you are saying, Una? That there is (or should be) a way for a poster to receive latitude based on posting history, right? In no way am I putting words into your mouth, but to say that posters are treated differently based on their ‘history’, I wanna know how that history is compiled - specifically as per the Agreement that is mentioned quite often.
If this is a different subject, then split off to a new thread or whatever, please. I just want clarification that there is a process of judging posters based on their contributions (as Una states). Thanks
Seriousface answer: I believe you want to email an admin and explain what your background is in whatever obscure subject you believe you’re an expert on and would be able to contribute for.
Since you know that it’s not in there, you could perhaps have put your question in a different tone.
It’s not a matter of “karma”, it’s a matter of allowing the Staff of a message board to use judgment about what is best for the community as a whole. This has been the case since the first modem BBS’s I was on in the early 1980’s. Unless you want the Staff of a message board to be bio-robots substituting for PHP and SQL auto-warn scripts, that’s the way it needs to be.
The Moderators and Administrators spend a lot of time on this message board reading threads. Likely more than anyone on here except for a couple of members. I would wager that for 99% of the posters most of them (the Staff) have a pretty good idea of whether they’re a drama manufacturer or someone who actually has value. Just as people cannot be placed into binary bins of “good” and “bad”, (almost) every call by Moderation is a judgment call. Ed picks people whose judgment he trusts.
There were several problems with “like” buttons, one of the main ones being that some of the snarkiest, meanest, bullyingest, most useless individuals can be very popular while being destructive to the community as a whole. I could name names, but I think that would prove a needless distraction, and plus everyone would have a different opinion on who creates value and who is just a snarkapotamus seeking validation for their rather meaningless personal and/or professional life.
And repeating, the Moderators and Administrators spend a lot of time on here. They know what the score is and what’s going on.
I’m not stating any official policy, I’m stating common sense - ALL message boards, unless the Staff are the aforementioned bio-robots, have to rely upon their staff to make judgment calls.
Contact Dex and he will give you an idea of what sort of things they’re looking for, and send you some potential questions to tackle which line up with your interests and/or skills.
Discretion in how to punish people for infractions? Absolutely. Discretion in whether to even acknowledge that an infraction occurred? Unprofessional and destructive. I know that you’re involved in producing a lot of great *content *for this community, but have you ever *moderated *something like this? Because an assertion like this suggests to me that you haven’t.
My cite is having been an operator in IRC channels that regularly ran to hundreds and thousands of users and a moderator on a community with over 500k registered users at the time I was a mod.
Well, I was skimming this thread before posting, intending to say exactly that. Doesn’t the way Giraffe puts it seem reasonable?
I’m no fan of rules-lawyering myself, but applying one’s judgment differently to different posters for the same infraction based on one’s memory of impressions of how much intangible value has been contributed is a formula fraught with chance for error and misunderstanding even in the best light. And many might not see it in that best light.
What if you didn’t even read Poster X’s enormously moving and valuable post two years ago in another forum? Your own idea of value will differ from…well…your own idea of value if that contingency had happened differently.
I’m not unsympathetic to Inigo’s frustration, but isn’t it possible to imagine moderating the post in a sympathetic way? Not every moderator interaction has to be negative and heavy-handed. Whatever happened to “Dial it back, please. No warning issued.”?
Una runs her own board, which is sizable (not as large as here – but I’m not sure the size is terribly important). I haven’t spent any time there in a long time, but when I was there I was always impressed with how efficient and well-run it was.
I agree that moderators should have some discretion and show some leniency (just as I agree that, within their guidelines, the school administrators in the thread that spawned this one should as well).
I just wanted some acknowledgement here that the list of blatant insults used against me, which I posted here, was indeed over the line for MPSIMS. I had always understood the rule outside of the Pit to be “attack the post, not the poster”, and for attacks in general to be infrequent outside of the Pit. Much of the language used seemed to be pretty clearly in violation of those rules, and I was surprised that there was absolutely no reaction by any moderator, even a note saying “Too bad you got slapped, you totally had it coming, deal with it.”
I had no idea who – if anyone – received the note of a reported post, who – if anyone – looked at the thread in question, and who – if anyone – made a decision to give Inigo Montoya a pass. I never called for a banning or a warning, I was just very confused by the total lack of response.
Really? And she still thinks “let people I like personally break the rules without so much as a comment” is a valid method for running things? That’s… interesting.
OK, let’s define this a little bit better. There must of course be some infractions where the “status” of the person making the infraction should have no bearing. Such as violent threats, legal threats, posting illegal materials, openly defying a Moderator or Administrator’s instructions, etc. I’m not going to make a comprehensive list of major infractions because I’m not sure what they might be, but I think many will agree that there are some things where no, who does the bad deed doesn’t matter.
However, in the process of running a message board, there are innumerable small infractions. Some of which at most might only warrant a “cool it”, or might need a full-fledged warning. Or even cases where no infraction has occurred, but the Moderator wants to step in to just act…well, as a “moderator” of a heated discussion. What I’m saying is that in these cases the Staff have to be trusted and given the benefit of the doubt that they understand the infraction severity, they understand the context in the thread in question, they understand the bigger picture, and they know when to apply what severity of action.
For some people who might be infrequent offenders, or never had any offense before in a long history of posting, I would imagine the Moderation would say “OK, just cool it”, or, maybe drop them a PM or mail. I’ve received an e-mail once from an Administrator asking “Hey Una, can you stop doing that please?” and sure enough, I never did it again, and I sent a formal apology to the person who I had offended (which just got me a sexual slur and a threat back in reply, but oh well, I tried). For someone who has been a frequent thorn in the side of the board Staff and Members, someone who has oppositional-defiantly been obsessed with creating discord and generally being a negative influence, then yeah, maybe they get the more brusque advisory, or warning.
Many times in the past the “bar” analogy has been used to describe the SDMB. It’s quite easy to see the difference between telling a person who normally has good behavior and who is a good “Joe” to cool it down when they have a little too much - versus giving the local bully, who comes in every night and does little more than eat peanuts and harasses the other patrons, the heave-ho.
Of course, some say the bar analogy is crap; YMMV.
And of course even a valuable member of any message board ought to get only a limited bit of extra rope. We’ve all seen formerly valuable people who over a very short time went completely bad and started throwing metaphorical punches at anyone who moved.
A long-time member shouldn’t be tossed out for a single lapse in judgment (in most cases…), but if no moderator steps up to say even “Hey, pull it back a little here, you’re over the line. No warning.”, no one knows whether it’s acceptable behavior for everyone or whether that member just got a pass for being a nice person. It’s down to guessing what the rules are.
I thought (and still do) that both posts I linked were clearly over the line for MPSIMS. I want to understand what the rules are so I don’t violate them, and when my report was seemingly ignored, it called into question my understanding of the rules.
Bizarrely, Twickster’s response in this thread (and she hasn’t been back to clarify otherwise) seemed to indicate that certain behaviors aren’t, in fact, against the rules if you’re pissed off, and that I didn’t deserve a response to my report because she was busy. This didn’t really clarify my understanding of the rules a whole lot. And sadly she hasn’t been back to [del]tapdance[/del] explain. Currently, as I understand it, I (well, probably not “I”, but therein lies part of the problem, I suppose) can call someone an ignorant person (not accuse them of being ignorant of a topic or situation, but just an ignorant person in general) and tell them they’re talking out of their ass. In MPSIMS. If I’m pissed off. Which the mods are supposed to know somehow.
I certainly understand (and to an extent agree with) adjusting the penalty to fit the situation, including the poster(s) involved and the provocation, if any. “Listen, ignorant person,” was Inigo’s first interaction with me in that thread. His first words in that thread, in fact. We hadn’t been sparring. It wasn’t that tempers were on the rise. To continue the analogy, he was walking by the bar, overheard something through the window, walked in the door and popped me in the mouth. I responded with a cool temper, even agreed with part of his post, and he decided to bloody my nose. And the deputy sat at the poker table, sipping her whisky and barely looking up from her cards.
FWIW I understand what you’re saying. I’m highly reluctant to comment directly on most specific Moderator rulings because I’m on the Cecil side of the wall (and to emphasize for anyone who cares, absolutely nothing I say on here is official either directly or via implication with respect to the message board). I know it sounds like a shopworn blow-off, but maybe PMing or e-mailing twickster or an Administrator may help you get an answer which is satisfactory to you?
