Censorship and Control of Views

auerillo

I attempted to post the following on the Help Desk thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055375700&highlight=oscar+bravo and got the following message “Thank you for your posting! Your post will not be visible until a moderator has approved it for posting. You will now be taken back to the forum. If you opted to post a poll, you will now be allowed to do so”

It seems now members are not even allowed to post to a Help Desk thread without a moderators approval. Boards.ie seems to not want to allow any views unless they are now “approved” by moderators, which is seems to indicate that the site is becoming less and less open and valuable.

Perhaps this exciting development should be extended to all other forums, to avoid any views being expressed which are not in accordance with those approved by moderators.

Auerillo wrote: »

Having not been on boards for a while, I an sad to see that OB is still being cited by members as the reason they no longer take part in the Politics forums.


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055659498


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055653881

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055576099&highlight=oscar+bravo

It is sad that members are still treated as children by the moderator, and sadder that boards.ie still seems to prefer to back up a moderator at the expense of interesting debate.

How many other members have decided to vote with their feet, and avoid the politics forums for fear of being treated in the same manner, is not known. What is certain is that many members (over 50 members as evidenced by this thread) no longer contribute to the politics forums due to the behaviour of this moderator, many of whom are intelligent, interesting and polite, and have decided to no longer participate in the politics forums and cite the reason, in their own words (see previous posts in this thread) as the behaviour of Oscar Bravo.

Help Desk is unique in that moderators and users are equals. Only Admins can approve posts in Help Desk, and posts have to be approved for both users and moderators alike.

The End Of Days

Sorry? Are you saying that the Help desk is pre moderated?

That can't be right? I think I posted there ok.

If you start a new thread, it's not premoderated (as far as I know). But, if the OP, or any moderator, attempts to post in that same thread after the first post, it'll be premoderated by Admins.

The End Of Days

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

If you start a new thread, it's not premoderated (as far as I know). But, if the OP, or any moderator, attempts to post in that same thread after the first post, it'll be premoderated by Admins.

How....eh....weird.

The End Of Days

The End Of Days wrote: »

How....eh....weird.

One thing: it's important to know that, if you're the OP, every post that you make will be approved.

The system is in place to allow moderators reply to threads which involve them or their forum.

The End Of Days

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

One thing: it's important to know that, if you're the OP, every post that you make will be approved.

The system is in place to allow moderators reply to threads which involve them or their forum.

Like I said ...how..eh....weird. Never seen that before on a site.

Reminds me of those hostage videos from the first Iraq war were the American prisoners made happy clappy comment videos about how well every things was. Under no duress and of their own free will, of course.

orestes

The system is actually in place to keep mods out of Help Desk, not users, and the posts aren't premodded, they are preadminned

Gordon

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

One thing: it's important to know that, if you're the OP, every post that you make will be approved.

The system is in place to allow moderators reply to threads which involve them or their forum.

No that's not correct, the OPs post has not been approved because it has not been seen as it has taken so long for a post. I've approved the post now.

HelpDesk only gives auto post access to Admins and the first post of the thread starter afaiu. The OP and Mods posts will be premodded. We may not allow all mods to have their posts approved but the OPs get approved.

Gordon

Gordon wrote: »

No that's not correct, the OPs post has not been approved because it has not been seen as it has taken so long for a reply. I've approved the post now.

HelpDesk only gives auto post access to Admins. The OP and Mods posts will be premodded. We may not allow all mods to have their posts approved but the OPs get approved.

Just for clarification, which part of what I've said isn't correct? I just said that, if you started the HD thread, all of your posts into that thread will be approved by the admins, i.e. they're not going to block anything that you say.

Jonathan

orestes wrote: »

The system is actually in place to keep mods out of Help Desk, not users, and the posts aren't premodded, they are preadminned

Whats the difference?

Gordon

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

Just for clarification, which part of what I've said isn't correct? I just said that, if you started the HD thread, all of your posts into that thread will be approved by the admins, i.e. they're not going to block anything that you say.

Sorry, aye that's correct.

The OPs posts won't be auto-approved by the software, Admins have to manually approve them. I should have said it that way.

orestes

Jonathan wrote: »

Whats the difference?

Just pointing out that the admins are the only people who count as "mods" in the Help Desk and that regular mods have nothing at all to do with approving posts

Gordon

Gordon wrote: »

Sorry, aye that's correct.

The OPs posts won't be auto-approved by the software, Admins have to manually approve them. I should have said it that way.

My fault, my post was very ambiguous. Thanks for clearing that up.

The End Of Days

A user can start a help desk thread? Yes? But it has to be approved by an Admin?

Or it can be started without pre approval?

The user can continue to post in the thread but mods posts have to be pre approved?

That seems a litte bit crazy if not unwieldy.

The End Of Days

The End Of Days wrote: »

A user can start a help desk thread? Yes? But it has to be approved by an Admin?

Or it can be started without pre approval?

The first post doesn't have to be approved.

The user can continue to post in the thread but mods posts have to be pre approved?

Every post has to be pre-approved, but the admins will approve all posts from the OP, while they may not approve all posts from Mods.

That seems a litte bit crazy if not unwieldy.

When you don't understand what the alternative was, yes it would seem that way. Maybe an Admin will explain the old way to you.

Gordon

The End Of Days wrote: »

A user can start a help desk thread? Yes?

Yes

But it has to be approved by an Admin?

Or it can be started without pre approval?

It can be started without pre-approval

The user can continue to post in the thread but mods posts have to be pre approved?

All non-Admin posts will be in a validation queue.

That seems a litte bit crazy if not unwieldy.

We've had many types of helpdesk throughout the years. This may be the best so far, it may need work, but it's an ongoing evolution.

orestes

The End Of Days wrote: »

A user can start a help desk thread? Yes? But it has to be approved by an Admin?

Or it can be started without pre approval?

The user can continue to post in the thread but mods posts have to be pre approved?

That seems a litte bit crazy if not unwieldy.

The thread can be started and doesn't need approval but all replies to the thread need to be approved by an admin before they are seen (not all replies are guaranteed to be approved). All replies, regardless of whether they are by a mod or the original poster of the thread need approval, the original post in the thread is the only post that does not.

Hundreds of thousands of users, hundreds of mods, less than 20 admins. If there is a better way to run the complaint/appeals system we haven't found it. You should have seen what the feedback forum was like when everyone was allowed to throw their oar in and give their 2cents. Entertaining as hell, definitely, but not a great way to filter out the bullshit and keep the noise/signal ratio up when complaints were raised and needed to be dealt with rationally.

I do still miss the catfests though

The End Of Days

Not wanting to multi quote but I have read and understood the points made.

This seem a little unfair for both the OP and the mods? Were is the clarity in this sytem? Why can't the OP state their facts or complaint and the mod or admin rebute them, change their opinion or enlighten the OP?

How is the current system broken? It seems very well policed.

If you stop posts been shown then the next help desk thread will be "Why was my post xxxxx in HD thread xxxxx not approved" or will Admins be informing OPs/Mods why their posts were not apprioved?

Still think this is weird.

orestes

The End Of Days wrote: »

This seem a little unfair for both the OP and the mods? Were is the clarity in this sytem? Why can't the OP state their facts or complaint and the mod or admin rebute them, change their opinion or enlighten the OP?

Doesn't work, we tried it before. Read this thread for the ultimate example of how it can all go horribly wrong:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055121460

The End Of Days wrote: »

How is the current system broken? It seems very well policed.

The current system isn't broken, that's why it's used

The End Of Days wrote: »

If you stop posts been shown then the next help desk thread will be "Why was my post xxxxx in HD thread xxxxx not approved" or will Admins be informing OPs/Mods why their posts were not apprioved?

Mods would generally understand why their post wasn't approved after reading the thread and the admins posts in it, sometimes we can inadvertantly muddy the water and do more harm than good (we are human after all). Users will have all of their posts to a thread they start approved regardless since the forum is there for them to voice their concerns.

BuffyBot

As the OP's post in Help Desk has now been approved, this thread seems to have zero point

seamus

For clarification of the whys and whats, post are premoderated because of a technical limitation, not any wish to control information.

Our intention was that we wanted moderators to have general access to respond to threads on the helpdesk, but their posts would need to be checked by us first. The problem in the past is that sometimes a moderator's response isn't necessary, or may not help the situation. So having open free-for-all access was a no-no, it'd be no better than Feedback.

The Helpdesk is somewhere that users appeal to the admins, not to the moderators who banned them.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, it is not possible to make Help Desk premoderated for moderators only, and not premoderated for other users. This is because vBulletin recognises moderators as both mods and regular users, and so they get all the rights of regular users - including posting without premoderation.

There is a long and painful road we could go down to work this out, but it's not worth it. We decided the best compromise was to make all *responses* premoderated (people are free to start threads unencumbered). It's policy that the OP's posts will *always* be approved, regardless of their content. You won't find anyone who's been censored or not had their posts approved. With only 5-10 Admins actually managing helpdesk, it's very easy to ensure this policy is uniformly applied.

We will pick and choose appropriate responses from the moderators, but *only* from moderators directly involved in the issue. Responses from uninvolved moderators get deleted.