Moderation Questions for Whiners
The last iteration of the moderation discussion thread was a complete disaster. Numerous attempts to keep it on topic failed, and it became a general discussion thread with almost no moderation related posts at all. And those that were posted were so buried in non-mod posts that it became a huge time drain on the mods to sort through them. Then, when off topic posts were deleted posters complained about that.
This led to the closing of the mod discussion thread, replaced by the post report/pm approach. This has filtered out lots of noise, but has resulted at times in the General Discussion Thread turning into a quasi-mod thread. This is not desirable, but going back to the old mod thread is also not a workable option.
Therefore, I have created this new moderation thread, but with a different purpose and ground rules than previous mod threads. The purpose of this thread is to provide a place for posters to pose questions to the mods about how policies are applied; to bring to the mods attention posts they think are inappropriate and reach the level of requiring mod action; and for mods to communicate to posters things like changes or clarifications to policies, bannings, etc.
Now let me tell you what this thread is NOT a place for. It is not for nonmoderation related posts, even if the discussion originates from a comment in in a mod related post. It is not for posters to post their opinions about other posters or whether a poster should be banned. It is not to rehash past grievances about mod decisions from months or years ago. The focus of this thread will be recent posts that require action now. Or questions about current policies and enforcement.
So basically, this is a thread to ask mods questions. Which means, pretty much that only mods should be answering those questions. If a poster asks why a particular post was deleted or allowed, only a mod can answer that. Everyone else who wants to jump in with their opinion or their mod war story needs to stay out of it. It just increases the noise to signal ratio and does nothing to answer the question.
Everyone needs to understand that this thread has very different rules than the old mod thread and any other thread. Any non-moderation post will be deleted on sight. Not moved to the appropriate thread, just deleted. So don't waste your time crafting a masterpiece post about wars or transgender issues or the presidential election and then post it in this thread. It will be gone. Also, this isnt a thread for general commentary about our mods performance. Posting "browser sucks as a mod" or any such posts that don't actually ask about a policy or request a mod action will be deleted. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about the moderation of this forum. But this thread isnt for complaining about mods. You are free to go to the ATF forum and make your concerns about modding in this forum there.
So with that intro, this thread is open for those who need to bring questions about mod policies or bring inappropriate posts to the mods attention. Again, it is NOT a thread for group discussions about other posters or for other posters to answer questions directed to mods.
We'll see how this goes. If you have what you feel is an open issue raised in the General Discussion Thread, please copy that post or otherwise reintroduce the issue here.
Thanks.
The last time I ran numbers on this, in 2017, Politics was #7, which amounted to 4.5% of the site's pageviews. Not insignificant, but also not dramatically forum changing on its own were it to go away. Whether it would drive away or reduce other site activity for any posters who spend a lot of time in Politics would be another question.
Because like I've said before, the market options is saturated with where you can go from that timeline. BBV in 2025 looks pretty grim, likely even compared to P.
You've got a pretty solid foundation here that has endured the test of time. If help is really needed, Ill consider - but I don't think more help is needed.
you could say that none of those individual forums are particularly "dramatically changing on their own" outside of NVT either.
Well, forums 2-4 were close to double the traffic of Politics, and thus more significant, but sure. That doesn't really change anything WRT this forum.
and 2017 was a long time ago. its hard to believe that most of those arent significantly lower.
It is, which is why I mentioned it as I wouldn't want to mislead anyone. I'd expect all of them are significantly lower, but it's their traffic relative to one another that's at play here. I don't know that I can make a strong case for any particular forum(s) having lost less traffic than others, with one exception - Poker Goals & Challenges (now Poker Blogs and Goals) is incredibly popular. The front page for NVG (50 threads) has threads that haven't been posted in for almost 3 weeks. In Poker Blogs & Goals, nothing on the front page that hasn't been posted in for 4 days. Of course that doesn't neccesarily mean more traffic, as posts don't equate directly to pageviews, and you could also have a smaller number of threads in NVG getting a lot of pageviews. Regardless, I doubt it gets only 40% of the traffic that NVG does now - it's not impossible that it has surpassed it. Of course, I'm very biased, as I came up with the idea for the forum and created it in 2010 (completely unveiled brag). :p
But I digress - the point is, I don't see any reason to believe Politics is more than 5% of site traffic now; if anything, I'd suspect less. This isn't me speaking in favour of shutting the forum down, just providing some information that I didn't think anyone else would have.
bfi basically died once toothsayer left
despite that he would have been banned had in posted in politics for his divisive style, he still drove discussion ad there were a lot of really good discussion that yielded some pretty good investment ideas along the way
He did and he was.
Sadly some details ate buried in the privacy of PMs
We’re did D2 go?
I know he was on a CN protected list .
Forum sure is slow
Hey I wish you would go back to Mod and yes its a thankless job .
Were did D2 go? Take away his constant degradation of people's opinions he did not like and I still thought he was a good contributor
As well a big Thanks to Crossnerd for her moderation
Id like to just see open discussion without personal insults
Hey I wish you would go back to Mod and yes its a thankless job .
Were did D2 go? Take away his constant degradation of people's opinions he did not like and I still thought he was a good contributor
As well a big Thanks to Crossnerd for her moderation
Id like to just see open discussion without personal insults
If you were trying to thank CN, you picked an awkward way to do it. I think D2 has just been busy with other things.
I don't want to go back to being a mod.
I'm here, just observing with amusement how I leave you kids to your own devices for a few weeks and everything inexorably goes to ****.
Can I not have the opinion that she had some bias but still overall I thought did a good job?
Of course. You can have whatever opinion you want. I've had lots of opinions on moderation over the years. In most cases, I didn't bother to share them, mostly because I understood that it was a thankless job done by a volunteer.
Can I not have the opinion that she had some bias but still overall I thought did a good job?
same, i think importantly that she's always been receptive to feedback and on some of the things i took larger umbrage with she was always willing to discuss via pm and on some stuff she did ultimately come around and adapt such as freeing mets
that was an unprecedented level of discussion and flexibility on decisions already made, i can't think of any situation where a mod ever even allowed discussion of unpopular past decisions let alone eventually reversed course without being told to do so by other mods/admin
she's too new to the game to be on rushmore right now, but she was definitely on her way and i'm very sad to see cn is stepping down but wholly understand the position because it causes nothing but stress and grief
i wouldn't want to be a mod in a million years, thankfully, nobody in their right mind would ever ask me to be one either so it works out nicely
same, i think importantly that she's always been receptive to feedback and on some of the things i took larger umbrage with she was always willing to discuss via pm and on some stuff she did ultimately come around and adapt such as freeing mets
that was an unprecedented level of discussion and flexibility on decisions already made, i can't think of any situation where a mod ever even allowed discussion of unpopular past decisions let alone eventually reversed course without being told to do so by
That is the sad part of it that you will not be considered because of your political opinions. I as well sent a text to CN never got a response on a mod question
You are right its a thankless job.
It's a thankless job and I'm sad that you can't do it?
same, i think importantly that she's always been receptive to feedback and on some of the things i took larger umbrage with she was always willing to discuss via pm and on some stuff she did ultimately come around and adapt such as freeing mets
that was an unprecedented level of discussion and flexibility on decisions already made, i can't think of any situation where a mod ever even allowed discussion of unpopular past decisions let alone eventually reversed course without being told to do so by
CN can speak for herself, but I suspect that her natural inclination to explain her decisions made the job harder for her. And that's because some people don't want explanations. They just want to accuse the mods of playing favorites, being on a power trip, etc.
My personal view is that people should be warned in thread to knock it off except in the most extreme situations. If they don't knock it off, they should get a ban. Generally speaking, I think that bans should be a last resort. But when a ban occurs, I don't think the mod should feel any obligation to relitigate the decision or give some sort of detailed explanation to the group. If the mod is erring on the side of letting people be mild-to-moderate *******s without getting banned, then it should be relatively easy for people to discern why bans occurred in egregious cases.
I also don't like deleting offensive posts unless they are from some new person who just stopped by to talk about how certain races are genetically predisposed to crime or some other obviously dubious topic. If you are a reg who just decided to be a raging ******* for a few hours, that should live forever. Mods shouldn't be changing diapers for problem posters after they get drunk and **** their pants.
Also, everything would run more smoothly if people would simply acknowledge when they have gone over the line. All you have to do is what nate did a few months ago. He said something over the line. He accepted his short ban without complaint. And when he came back, he acknowledged that his comment had been over the line. That's it. Done and done. Move on. Be an adult.
CN can speak for herself, but I suspect that her natural inclination to explain her decisions made the job harder for her. And that's because some people don't want explanations. They just want to accuse the mods of playing favorites, being on a power trip, etc.
My personal view is that people should be warned in thread to knock it off except in the most extreme situations. If they don't knock it off, they should get a ban. Generally speaking, I think that bans should be a last resort. But
These are the knots that mods tie themselves in when trying to be fair with their bans and post deletions.
You really should at least try minimal moderation for a period of time.
