They forgot to ask you first if they could use tags? How thoughtless!
They? One person. This is a community. Lets put change up to a vote before we implement it.
Not even if you hold your breath until you turn blue. Check the small print on the bottom of the page. See your name anywhere?
Not one person. But just the Mod group and Ed Zotti. I’m just the one that got it going and does most of the tagging. Believe it or not I got permission before starting the tags. Same again for The Game Room which I added a few months later.
Serious question. Why on earth do you dislike the tags? I honestly thought they would be slightly helpful. I can’t see how they hurt or detract.
But we haven’t voted yet on whether we should vote to implement changes.
I am not a mod in GD. I don’t usually read GD. I prefer to stick with IMHO, where the tone is gentler and the conversation runs more broadly… So I’m posting in this thread as not quite a mod, but not quite not-a-mod.
I have been active on several other BBs. This board cares a great deal more about keeping things like “great debates” on topic than any other place I’ve posted. And I discovered that before either What Exit or I became mods here. You have been here a lot longer than I have, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed this before.
I didn’t follow that thread closely enough to have an opinion as to whether the “on topic” moderation was too tight, too loose, or just right. But I will say that the moderation was done by mods, not by the OP. It was discussed some in the mod forum. OPs can request moderation of their threads, but it’s up to the mods to decide if they agree and how to want to implement any moderation. And if you don’t like the moderation, blame us, not her.
(And if you don’t like the tags… why the hell not? It seems slightly helpful and not even a tiny bit harmful. And I can confirm that Ed Zotti and the mods agreed that tags would be nice before What Exit started doing it.)
Not necessarily a vote but at least customer input.
I am OK with tags. I dont love them, mind you, but I cant see why they’d bother anyone.
Tags make me sad. I get a notice What_Exit? has posted to one of my brilliant threads, only to rush over and find out he only tagged it. Sometimes I cry.
Other than that, I don’t see any problem with tags. Often they are a good short cut to finding out just what the hell the title of a thread means.
I love that there are still posters that think our opinions about the boards rules count after so many clear indications to the contrary.
(EG: cuntgate, new improved cuddly pit, etc)
Are you suggesting that TAGS should have been put to a vote by the community at large?
I think this is, if anything, 180 degrees off course - they came into the thread because of (apparently) multiple flags. People obviously felt that several of the posts were either off topic or otherwise flawed, or otherwise in contravention to the rules. So while you can feel (as do some others here) that they were excessive in application of the rules, that’s the opposite of saying that board rules count.
Back to the subject, as a long time lurker but only a short time member, I’d say that yes it is likely to stifle a degree of argument, but it also stops threads that are 1k+ posts where there are page after page of hijacks and petty, thinly veiled attacks on other posters. There’s ideally some middle ground, but having participated in three other gun threads that derailed in the last month, it does make sense that @What_Exit was being more, rather than less aggressive in policing this one.
I’m surprised this isn’t a retired topic by now. I have no dog in this fight, just seems like these threads always go the same way.
Don’t know the thread in question but what is broad context for compare and contrast and what is a hijack is a judgement call for the mod to make. In that effort my personal belief is that the OP’s expressed wishes in that regard are not absolute but should be strongly considered.
Mods are not prescient. Hijacks can’t be prevented without stifling debate. It’s a terrible risk we take, the horror that a GD thread might have a few posts off topic, but we must somehow endure that tragedy until it actually happens before any mod action is taken.
Plainly untrue. Hijacks OTOH often are the killers of debate on the actual subject of the OP. The latter I’ve seen frequently the former hardly at all.
Sure most often it is a poster who does it frequently, hijacking many many threads into their own favorite territory, with reliable assist from one or two others, but sometimes it is distactabi… oh look a squirrel, I like squirrels do you like squirrels?
Seriously these thread are like first grade classroom discussions sometimes and a mod keeping the discussion attention focused some is required.
How are you going to prevent them? Do you have the power of predicting the future too? Hijacks can’t be stopped before they happen because they don’t exist until they happen. One post does not make a hijack if it is at all related to the subject.
More like an ability to remember the past, I would guess.
That’s not sufficient grounds for mod interference. The preventive measure we have is the rules. The mods have to wait for those rules to be violated. They should also probably read them at least once.
ISTM that the recent discussion is itself a hijack of this particular thread, which is not about the value or detriment of hijacks, but about the fact that much of what’s being moderated as hijacks these days are not actually hijacks but rather valid context and logical points which apply to the OP. The trigger-happy moderators are either failing to understand the nature of the debates they’re moderating, or don’t fully understand how rational argument is supposed to work.
Not that I’m complaining about it - by all means have at it - but I just want to be clear as to what the original intention of this thread was about.
Along those lines, and in re how much input the OP of a thread should get, I think you need to differentiate between different situations. In some cases it’s genuinely a hijack to someone looking for a narrower discussion and a non-hijack to someone looking for a broader discussion, and then I’m all for giving the OP’s opinion extra weight. But in cases such as this one, where it’s not a hijack at all, and the primary motivation of the OP in having it declared a hijack is in order to cut off an avenue of discussion that tends to undercut his position in the thread, then not at all.