[Looks down, pokes the ground with a toe]
I…I used it to get a free extra espresso shot at Starbucks!
[Flees, crying]
Once they asked us to refrain, I knew they would never let us use the powers in moderation. Because there are a few posters who I know eventually would look at a use of Level 3 that was obviously legit, for instance moving or retitling a post at the request of the OP, and say “:waaah! They said no use of level 3 powers! I’m gonna TELL on you!”
I don’t really see what the fear is, anyway. Why shouldn’t established users have a bit of power to edit spelling errors in titles, etc.? If someone abuses the privileges, the mods have other forms of resource.
Discourse is used in many other places. Do the Regulars in those forums immediately go mad with power?
Perhaps once the moderators are able to establish rules or protocols for when Regular users should re-title or re-categorize topics, they’ll let us acquire the status once again. And it might be helpful when there are new topics that are clearly spam. If we’re able to spot and re-categorize them before the moderators are able to get to them, that’s less time the spam is available.
I have had a number of ATMB threads complaining irately about innocuous changes to thread titles or moving threads to other forums. Should regular posters who move threads or edit titles have to respond to complaints about it in ATMB?
One thing I have learned here is that there is no feature so innocuous that it hasn’t been subject to abuse (and bitter complaints when it was moderated because there was no formal rule against the manner in which it was abused).
I would not necessarily be adverse to giving some trusted members limited powers of this sort. But I’m completely against it being an automatic status simply granted because of reading posts. That simply doesn’t assure that someone is trustworthy. If we ever did so (and I am not suggesting we will) it would be granted to a limited number of posters after a vetting process.
The rule can be simple: Regulars should only make changes upon request by the OP. All other changes should be left to the mods. Regulars that fail to abide by the rule (with some leeway for honest mistakes) get warnings, same as any other rule violation.
Regular status requires posting and a lack of flagging, too. But really I favor the approach of trying something, and if it doesn’t work out we can always go back. I see no reason to believe the privilege will be abused. After all, a few dozen of us did have the ability with no limit on our behavior except a request that I’m not even sure was codified into a rule. Everyone politely abided by the request.
I favor the approach of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” We don’t really have a problem of threads going unmoved and titles unedited for extended periods. (And there would be even less of a lag if we weren’t currently understaffed.) There is minimal benefit to either mods or posters in enabling this minor ability. Even if the likelihood of abuse is small, the benefit is also small. While we appreciate the fact that posters want to be helpful, this doesn’t really help us in a significant way.
Or is access to the Lounge that is the big attraction?
Actually, I’ve never seen it. I’m only Trust Level 2. I’ve never seen the Lounge.
It was actually rather nice…before.
Then isn’t it a benefit to simply reduce mod load for trivial requests? Less time on simple things mean more time spent on things that require careful judgment.
It’s not much to speak of. We were in the process of installing new furniture.
Actually the Wiki feature (which we tested there) seemed fun. I was considering setting one up for a SpaceX launch thread since it’s an ongoing thing.
Why in the world should the mods of this board be forced to try something simply because the software tries to force it? Why should they have to have to have another thing to moderate because of a feature that came entirely unbidden?
I’m not a fan at all of the software trying to control things and make things happen. Software should always be subservient to the users.
It’s ridiculous the amount of stuff they had to turn off to make the board work. I mean, it has like-based sorting: that’s obviously going to create an echo chamber.
And you guys already have wound up closing threads due to your extra flagging power, even when you don’t mean to-again, more work for the mods to undo.
There’s essentially no load. I might see a request for a thread move or title edit once a week maybe. The vast majority of thread moves/title edits are not by request.
I miss the Lounge. I’m pretty sure I left my jacket there when they locked me out. And my drink is still on the counter, half full. Now when I go past, I can hear laughter inside, but I can’t see in through the windows…
I suppose there might be more of them if it didn’t impact the mods. I know I’d make minor edits to my own thread titles on occasion. I wouldn’t flag them unless there were a serious error, but still it’s nice to make minor capitalization or punctuation tweaks.
The claimed problems are entirely theoretical. As far as I know, they aren’t borne out at other boards using Discourse.
Every piece of software has a natural way of using it. That isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be any customization, but moving to a new piece of software and immediately trying to make it look exactly like the old software is rarely a good way of going about things.
The upside of trying the new method is potentially high, and at the very least unknown. The downside is zero, because we can always go back. So, try it and see what happens. Especially if it’s the default.
Overall agreeing with this.
What we hear here is that the mods could use some more mods. We also have a group of posters here volunteering to help as “Mod-lites”.
ISTM the fix (if any is really needed) is to persuade them to put up or shut up by becoming mods themselves.
In general I agree with @Dr.Strangelove’s sentiment in the immediately prior post: use new software in it’s natural form, not as a bastardized repaint of the old stuff. But …
That is a forward-looking approach and works far better on the job than it does at a leisure activity for gray-hairs, which we largely are.
IOW, any software changes need to be socially acceptable to our user base as they are, not as we might wish them to be. The volume of whining about Discourse was huge at first & a number of folks flounced out. SDMB already has a membership crisis and keeping the current membership is a necessary precondition to lasting long enough to build a new one.
If any other experiments or changes to make the board more natively Discourse-style are to be made, they ought to be made only at the rate the audience can happily absorb that change. A rate I submit is real slow.
The Big Bang cutovers always feel good to IT-folks such as myself. They always cause excessive pain to user-folks. IMO the leadership here and Jenny, bless her, hit that compromise about as well as they could. After the Big Bang let the social aftershocks die down and only then start driving in the little tweaks once everyone’s nerves are calmed.
And then there were…only admins
The Great Level 3 Purge is complete!
Damn! I should have taken advantage of my near god-like powers when I could!
(Plus I never did get that drink I was promised at the Lounge.)
It was nothing special, just Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’. It’s Level 4s that get Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.
I finally found “Trust Level” in my settings: I was hoping to see something like,
“Trust Level 3”, or maybe, “Goddess Level Access”.
My trust level, basically, is: “Don’t touch anything.” 