The problems with boards - in my humble opinion

CAPSLOCK365

1) If anyone tries to have fun, they're a troll or a wum
2) If a thread meanders, it gets locked - almost all great debate comes from tangents to the original point.
3) The moderators - most I've had the bad luck to come across so far seem to be part of some clique or have to play up to the more moronic of the posters. So you'll get 3 or 4 of the posters who add nothing shouting 'bye bye' or 'ban him/her' and to plamas them he/she does.
4) If a debate is too high brow for a mod, i.e. beyond the realms of his/her understanding, it is likely to be locked, citing some spurious claptrap about how it contravenes the rules.
5) A mod 'can see where this is going' and locks/deletes the thread. This usually occurs when anything that would attract the less intelligent poster to make a racist comment. Thus, many important issues can't be debated.
6) Obviously there is a need to ban people for entering a forum with blatant baiting tendancies - e.g. someone who goes into the rugby forum and calls them all tossers - but banning people for poking fun at othersseems, to me, to be over the top.

Most of these are things I've picked up on from reading posts in helpdesk and not from personal experience, though a couple have happened to me.

I've also been banned from a forum by a mod and when I took it here, had the mod explain hisf/her reasons by using 'the likes of you' in his/her response which seems like an insult to me, which would contravene the rules, no? Not that it bothered me, but are we not all supposed to be treated equally?


Obviously the 'super' mods don't want to upset the ordinary 'Joe the Mod', I understand that, but there does seem to be alot of abuse of 'power' having a blind eue turned to it.

seamus

I'm afraid all of your issues vary from forum to forum. "Having fun", for example, is tolerated in some forums and not at all in others.

If you have any actual examples of where you think things have been done wrong, feel free to post them up and we can discuss it with you.

CAPSLOCK365

Jesus, I expected a ban. Fair play.

I'm not going to quote any specific examples, as I said, most of the things have been gleaned from reading this forum and following the links given with each issue. (The majority of the 'bannings' have been fine as far as I can see - but there are alot where the poster has a good point which is glossed over using 'read the charter' but not pointing to which part of the charter has been contravened - usually no part of it)

The very fact that you say it varies from forum to forum is, in my opinion, an indictment.

In my experience, when it comes to moderating a forum, the 'less is more' approach works better than the heavy handed approach.