I have no issue with it being closed. I thought it was yet another curtis nonsense thread, and as such, won’t be missed.
Right, you didn’t like it, so it shouldn’t exist. That’s the exact attitude that causes the problem (once it is combined with the power to close the thread).
We’re supposedly adults here. We can make our own decisions. We don’t need the mods acting as parental figures deciding which threads are good enough for us to read.
Just to see if we agree on some basics:
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Do you think that moderators should be tasked with closing anything besides commercial spam?
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If so, what, if any, criteria should they use to decide if a thread should be closed?
I have no problem if you answer “No” to the first question, I just want to see if we have common ground. If you answer “Yes” then what we are doing here is trying to define the answer to the second question, and again, that can be a healthy debate.
I think that this was asked earlier but it was never answered: If 75 choices are too many for a poll, why are we allowed that option? Why not limit us to only 51 choices or whatever the hell is deemed allowable?
I disagree with the decision, but I can see that Czarcasm isn’t saying “75 is too many” - he’s saying “75 from Curtis is too many, in that fashion”. I could easily come up with a very legitimate 75+ option poll. For instance, you could lump all the various Academy Awards polls from last year into one easy, concise poll with all the categories and all the nominees (and that’d be close to 200 options). In sports, you could put all the year-end awards into a poll that had 100+ options.
In my opinion, the moderators should only pre-emptively close a thread for a rules violation not based on their opinion of the quality of the OP.
I’m not Rand Rover, but I’ve been arguing against thread closures for years.
Almost never. I can see one or two exceptions, below. But that should be the general rule.
Real-world info (here’s so-and so’s home address). Real-world threats. Stuff that will get the secret service called on the SDMB. Illegal stuff.
If a poster posts a thread of all "q"s, the first time there should be a warning, the second time, a banning. Clearly jerk-ish behavior. “Too stupid for MPSIMS”? Leave the thread, warn the poster. Manny, years back, laid down the law in GQ with a “No political fighting–period. Facts only” and started insta-banning posters who broke the rule. Many of them were reinstated, but it made an impression that lasts 'till today. I’d like to see more of that style of moderation.
If a poster or several are breaking the rules in GD, don’t close the thread, moderate the posters–one or two (at most) warnings then insta-bans, whatever it takes… There’s a weird “Well, little Timmy was naughty so no-one in the class can take recess because of HIM.”
As it’s structured now, it’s possible for a few yahoos to get a thread shut down by their misbehavior. I’d rather see the posters moderated than threads.
We used to have (still do?) a recurring troll who posted decent OPs. He’d create a sock, get a good conversation going and then, when he was caught, POOF the thread…and all the good responses…would be disappeared. I hear and understand the Mod’s reasoning: anything less doesn’t discourage the troll. But I still say that punishing your customers to stop a troll isn’t sound policy.
There are many. But closing a thread before an infraction occurs isn’t one of them. The closure was wrong and, IMO, personal. I still would like an answer to my question of what harm it would be to give it a page to test the moderator’s gift of seeing into the future.
ETA: I think the lack of the usual circling of the wagons says a lot.
In addition to commercial spam, I think it’s reasonable for mods to close threads that are posted solely to disrupt the boards and not to ask a question, start a debate, solicit opinions, rant about someone or something, talk about a movie or recipe, and whatever the hell goes on in MPSIMS and the game forum. So, I’m fine with closing the “QQQQ etc.” thread, but I don’t think it’s necessary to close the thread discussed in the OP.
I realize that it’s difficult to determine exactly where the line is between the two, but I don’t think it’s all that necesary to do so either. The problem here is with Czarcasm’s intent. Czarcasm clearly closed the thread just because he thinks it’s a stupid idea, not because he thinks it’s spam or plainly disruptive like the QQQ thread.
If you can’t see the infeasibility of “Let’s discuss 75 different unrelated points throughout all of history in the same thread”, then there isn’t anything else I can say to you. I relied on my many years of experience on this board(experience that some of you are dismissing as useless) to make my decision, and I stand by it.
Now you are just being disingenuous, the OP didn’t say, “Let’s discuss 75 different unrelated points throughout all of history in the same thread”. He ask to vote on which of the following POD would produce the best world today. That’s a valid poll. The amount of choices is irrelevant.
Many of the people you are talking down to also have “many years of experience on this board”. Being a mod gives you the power, but it doesn’t make you right.
Aren’t you glad you came back to moderating?
One decision, four pages.
It’s not that 75 choices is too much for one poll in all cases, it’s that in this case 75 complex options requiring detailed justification is too broad for one thread.
OH please. Other mods come in to defend an action - “THEY’RE CIRCLING THE WAGONS!!” Other mods don’t come in to defend the action - “SEE, they won’t bother to circle the wagons on this one!”
No, he didn’t say it was a bad idea or a bad question. He closed it because the number of options requiring detailed justifications for each comparison would likely make for a cumbersome thread.
No, he said “Let’s vote on 75 different unrelated points throughout all of history, and defend your position.” Wait, that’s pretty much the same thing.
People can end up discussing pretty much anything. There could be 5 options or 5,000 and the thread would naturally be the following things simultaneously:
- Interesting and fun to some posters
- Un-interesting and no fun to other posters
The only logical reason I can think of regarding the difference between your opinion and those of most of the posters responding, is that you must be working under instructions that support your view of the matter and the posters on the SDMB must not be aware of those instructions.
So here is the question that could make it more clear to the posters (and might even answer other ATMB type questions):
Aside from the specific rules of no threats, etc. what are the general instructions you have been given as a moderator regarding IMHO and modding on this board in general?
Note: If you look at my posting history, you will see that I almost never have anything to say about mod decisions, other than posting jokes in ATMB regarding avatars, etc., so hopefully you will take the question above in the spirit intended.
Nonsense. Check out the archives of soc.history.what-if.
Saying “Here’s 75 points of departure. Pick the one you think would make the best world and defend your position” would generate great discussions. (Ok, generate short essays that would be great to read). It could and (IIRC–it’s been years since I read the usenet) has been done.
With respect, Czarcasm, you are not his thesis adviser. Also, there is a qualitative difference between 14 lines of the letter Q and 75 options in a poll.
The quality of this board is not a result only of the moderation, but also of the members.
I, too, think you should have trusted the Board to pass judgement on the post.
(I also love where posts like “What’s your favorite?” meander.)
In this case, I would argue, there isn’t much. The poll was essentially a random collection of thoughts and ideas with no connection. It could have been a reasonable poll with some significant work by the OP, IMO, but it wasn’t. I’m not sure I would have closed the thread if I were moderator, but I certainly approve of the moderators being tasked with killing threads “too diffuse to live”.
Since the moderators have had that task since the early days of the forum I think we’re just arguing about whether this mod drew the line in the right place on this thread. I don’t have a strong feeling either way, but I’m pretty sure the thread would be another one of Curtis’ semi-random ideas that don’t pan out. If it was the first time he ever did this I wouldn’t mind, but he does post a lot of threads with similar results.
The mods are thesis advisers (or traffic cops) on some level. They are tasked with keeping the level of discourse above a minimum threshold. I see closing threads like this as performing that duty. I could also see the argument that this particular thread did in fact meet the minimum threshold, but it’s a judgment call, not an abuse of power.
You are being completely ridiculous. Even if we accept your judgment that it was a “random collection of thoughts” that is, in fact, entirely different than a bunch of fucking q’s. The fact that someone else had written an article about 50 great inventions doesn’t alter the fact that the poll on inventions was essentially the same concept as the one closed by czarcasm.
Thinking about this specific issue for a moment, what about a “What was the worst/best movie to win the Oscar” thread? That’d certainly be ok–there have been similar threads if not that one in particular…there were 83 Oscars and yet such a thread would clearly be appropriate. Putting a poll at the beginning wouldn’t change the appropriateness of the thread.
So why is this one out of bounds? His points of divergence were interesting–he didn’t just pick the obvious ones–and the question “Which change would make the best world today” made the focus pretty narrow.
Heh–I just remembered this one. Started with a list of 100+ choices…and was just fine for over 100 posts.