Politics standards

K-9

We had a long drawn out thread on the standards expected in the politics forum a few months ago and there was supposed to be a harsher line taken on lower standard posts.

From reading the politics board in the the last few days, hadn't read it in a while, I can't see this enforced.

Maybe posts aren't being reported and mods just don't have the time to deal with it. Still, even given time, I don't see the stricter line that was agreed between the mods and users enacted on at the minute.

There is no difference between AH and politics threads on Norris and immigration threads at the moment, even when posters ask for a higher standard. I thought we'd gone through this.

Basically, there was a feedback thread and it doesn't seem to have been acted on.

Overheal

not sure what its like upstairs much but US Pol is better than it was. I havent seen anything worth reporting in a couple weeks.

If you arent reporting anything though you cant hold the mod's feet to the fire. If its about a poster, report them and in the report link to any of their other posts if you need to use them to draw a connection. For instance if the poster keeps stating fact without citation, putting the links inside a report to all the incidences helps a mod a whole bunch in identifying soapboxers and seagulls. Usually though you have to give leeway to challenge the claim and give them time to respond. I don't get too bothered about it unless they repeat the claim later. If they don't repeat it after it's been refuted on thread - whether they acknowledged it or not - I just assume they have no rebuttal and want to save face.

gandalf

To be honest bar the very occasional post I am steering clear of politics these days. The standard has slipped and I do not see it improving at all in the near future.

starbelgrade

gandalf wrote: »

I am steering clear of politics these days. The standard has slipped and I do not see it improving at all in the near future.

And as for the politics forum..

nesf

1) Posts aren't being reported then. What's being reported is being looked at and dealt with where appropriate.

2) It's not entirely clear to me what you mean by standards. People still get strung up by a mod about backing up their sources and similar when it's brought to our attention that this is an issue which is more than what goes on in AH.

3) Politics is "popular" now, which lowers the standard of debate but there's not a whole lot I can do about that without micromanaging peoples' arguments for them which would be very wrong for us to do. The Norris threads were and are fairly bad because a lot of people aren't making any effort at all to be logical or reasonable in them, I'm not exactly sure what you want me to do about that or what can be done outside of extremely draconian and potentially biased measures.


What exactly is the issue here that you'd like to see fixed? What are standards? Can you give me a few examples from a few different threads showing what you mean? I'm suspicious that what's changed isn't so much standards but the average person likely to stray onto a Politics forum and start arguing and that this evolution is what's making people uncomfortable rather than any lack of action by the mods, but I could be wrong about this.

K-9

The main issue is that after the last feedback thread on this a tougher line was taken on soap boxing and constant thread spoilers. The mods seem to have less man power the last couple of weeks and don't seem to have the time to deal with that.

I'd be very surprised if posts aren't being reported!

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

The main issue is that after the last feedback thread on this a tougher line was taken on soap boxing and constant thread spoilers. The mods seem to have less man power the last couple of weeks and don't seem to have the time to deal with that.

I'd be very surprised if posts aren't being reported!

I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw a person reported for soapboxing. Nearly all reported posts are abuse related, with a handful of trolling and not backing up their posts thrown in.

Thing is, if you're seeing this stuff, why aren't you reporting it?

K-9

nesf wrote: »

I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw a person reported for soapboxing. Nearly all reported posts are abuse related, with a handful of trolling and not backing up their posts thrown in.

Thing is, if you're seeing this stuff, why aren't you reporting it?

I've reported a couple of posts at least in the last couple of days, not for soap boxing though. I'd forget about the feedback thread on politics when I set this up, think you mentioned there that you've been under manned on politics so maybe it's just that posts aren't being acted on as quickly or visibly as usual.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I've reported a couple of posts at least in the last couple of days, not for soap boxing though. I'd forget about the feedback thread on politics when I set this up, think you mentioned there that you've been under manned on politics so maybe it's just that posts aren't being acted on as quickly or visibly as usual.

Posts are being acted on, where appropriate, but we're not online all the time so don't expect an immediate response.


Thing is, we crowd source this stuff, sure sometimes when I'm reading the forum I'll come across abuse, thread spoiling or whatever but I don't have time to read the entire set of sub fora carefully so it really comes down to the users reporting the posts. The good side of this is that only stuff that genuinely bothers the community gets acted on for the most part so there's less unnecessary mod intervention.

Overheal

Speaking of soapboxers if you see anybody promoting Singapore or Thailand, gimme a holler.

K-9

Thinking about it and I think I mentioned it in the previous feedback thread, busy times just bring out more posters. General Elections naturally and the Norris and Pamela threads seem to have aroused the interest of certain special interest groups.

Anyway, I'll bring any future issues up on the politics feedback thread.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

Thinking about it and I think I mentioned it in the previous feedback thread, busy times just bring out more posters. General Elections naturally and the Norris and Pamela threads seem to have aroused the interest of certain special interest groups.

Anyway, I'll bring any future issues up on the politics feedback thread.

Elections bring 'em out of the woodwork. It's always going to be a running battle with something like the Norris thread because muppets will be turning up faster than the mods can keep the peace for a while. We do sanction them though there's just a lag between them appearing and us getting everything back under control. Also the biggest problem is such threads bringing in new people who just don't know the forum and whose posts look out of place etc.

Scofflaw

nesf wrote: »

Elections bring 'em out of the woodwork. It's always going to be a running battle with something like the Norris thread because muppets will be turning up faster than the mods can keep the peace for a while. We do sanction them though there's just a lag between them appearing and us getting everything back under control. Also the biggest problem is such threads bringing in new people who just don't know the forum and whose posts look out of place etc.

There is a cyclical issue, which is that whenever a major event happens - and they have been happening pretty frequently over the last while - we have a deluge of posters new to the forum, and the regulars complain that standards have slipped, because it takes a while to deal with the deluge.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Overheal

Perhaps a dumb (or brilliant) question, but why not repurpose the General Election 2011 subforum for the Presidential Election? Hasn't the GE forum served and retired from it's purpose?

Better yet simply remake it as the Elections Forum, plain.

easychair

K-9 wrote: »

I've reported a couple of posts at least in the last couple of days, not for soap boxing though. I'd forget about the feedback thread on politics when I set this up, think you mentioned there that you've been under manned on politics so maybe it's just that posts aren't being acted on as quickly or visibly as usual.

If they are under-manned in politics, I have the ideal solution. Why not appoint djbarry as moderator there, and relieve him of his duties in SEI? That way its a win win situation!

later12

In the past 3 weeks there have been 162 reported posts in the politics section.

This breaks down to a mean of just under 8 reported posts per day.

113 reported posts (69.75%) were read.
49 reported posts (30.25%) were unread.


Of the past 30 posts, going back approximately 4 days,

14 reported posts were read
16 reported posts were unread.

There might be a good explanation for this when the forum appears to be working correctly, one could say that mods are already on top of things in the forum and don't need to read reported posts.

But when there are ongoing complaints about posts in the forum, and from my reading everybody seems to accept there's an issue, yet 1 in 3 reported posts are going unread, then that looks like it needs to be addressed.

My own interest in politics is tapering off lately, you can get the same quality of discussion in AH.

Overheal

the read mark on reported posts is misleading. when you get the email you see the reason and a direct link to the thread or post, yes?

XXXXXX ( http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/member.php?u=### ) has reported this post:


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=######post######

This is part of this thread:
YYYYYYYYYYY
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=###

This is the reason that the user gave:

ZZZZZZZZZZ

A discussion thread has been created at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=######

This message has been sent to all moderators of this forum, or all administrators if there are no moderators.

Please respond to this post as applicable.

If a Pol Mod never clicks on the bottom link, the reported post never gets 'read'. Doesn't imply it was never acted upon.

later12

Perhaps. There is also a possibility that a moderator simply looks at the post in the reported posts section and doesn't open it, but knows immediately what it's about, and corrects the problem.

There are lots of possibilities There is also the possibility that of the reported posts that were read, they were not read by politics moderators

I've stopped reporting posts on politics a while ago now, because there seems to be an inaction towards problems on the forum, even where posts are reported. The real testament to this is on the forum itself, and through the fact that issue seems to be ongoing, and is being raised in feedback or on the forum by people like the OP who are not simply criticising for the sake of criticising.

Or are we imagining it, is this all just one big co-incidence?

Scofflaw

later10 wrote: »

Perhaps. There is also a possibility that a moderator simply looks at the post in the reported posts section and doesn't open it, but knows immediately what it's about, and corrects the problem.

There are lots of possibilities There is also the possibility that of the reported posts that were read, they were not read by politics moderators

I've stopped reporting posts on politics a while ago now, because there seems to be an inaction towards problems on the forum, even where posts are reported. The real testament to this is on the forum itself, and through the fact that issue seems to be ongoing, and is being raised in feedback or on the forum by people like the OP who are not simply criticising for the sake of criticising.

Or are we imagining it, is this all just one big co-incidence?

It's not unusual for a mod to open the 'reported post', and decide that no action is necessary. A third of cases wouldn't be out of line there - we don't agree with every report.

However, what I'm seeing on this thread is an issue being raised by posters whose judgement I respect, and it would accord with my own views. The problem is, though, that as already said, we do have a heavy influx, so it's not just a question of housekeeping, but of spring-cleaning. And we can't do that without the cooperation of the users through the reporting system. So, if you give up on reporting things, and don't even draw that to our attention, it would be a little unfair to expect us us to have read your minds and acted on your unexpressed issues.

What do people suggest we do with respect to the AH-style contributions, though? Penalise them? Ban the posters? Close any thread which has such contributions? Delete the posts in question? All of the above?

Answers will be taken on board - none of us want a situation where it's just not worth contributing to the forum. But bear in mind that the effort needs to be ongoing, and if people can't be bothered making it, there's no reason for the mods to supply that effort for you unless they happen to fancy doing so.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Black Swan

later10 wrote: »

In the past 3 weeks there have been 162 reported posts in the politics section.
This breaks down to a mean of just under 8 reported posts per day.
113 reported posts (69.75%) were read.
49 reported posts (30.25%) were unread.

...yet 1 in 3 reported posts are going unread, then that looks like it needs to be addressed.

I will only address this invalid and unreliable quantitative counting assessment performed by later10; i.e., quality of posts is subjective and not objective like counting, and because we are all unique individuals, there are probably as many opinions about quality as their are readers and posters of Politics.

Please be advised that what you have counted to make your point was uninformed and in error. I have read 100% of all reported posts in all of my forums since being appointed a mod 2 years ago (almost a year ago in Politics). I have a special email account that all reported posts are forwarded to, and when I am online daily (sometimes several times daily) and see them, I go immediately to the post reported, not the reported post thread. If it is obvious that a violation has occurred, or if one of my co-mods or Cmods have already taken action, then why bother visiting the reported post thread? If it is not obvious and no action has been taken, then I visit the reported post thread. Although I cannot speak for them, my co-mods and Cmods probably do something similar.

Furthermore, sometimes when a member is reporting a post, I am at the same time reviewing it, and may have already taken action, which eliminates the need to go beyond the email report that I later receive.

Consequently, there is a huge under count on the reported post threads, because in practice (with email redundancy) it would be 100% if I bothered to waste my time on the busy Politics forums to visit every reported post thread, so these above percentages and your “1 in 3 reported posts are going unread” are in error and meaningless in practice.

May I suggest that before you start counting things and making false assumptions based upon those counts, that you do more research, and perhaps show a bit of professional courtesy by either PMing the mods and ask them how they do things in practice; or if the forums you are inquiring about fall under Politics, then ask questions on the Politics “Discussion on the rules” thread about how we practice moderation as pertains to the reported post threads before falsely concluding "...yet 1 in 3 reported posts are going unread, then that looks like it needs to be addressed?"

Or you may want to ask Overheal, who understands how this works in practice:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=73685636&postcount=17

So in practice, 100% of reported posts are read, if not counted on the reported post threads, then 100% by forwarded email.

nesf

later10 wrote: »

In the past 3 weeks there have been 162 reported posts in the politics section.

This breaks down to a mean of just under 8 reported posts per day.

113 reported posts (69.75%) were read.
49 reported posts (30.25%) were unread.


Of the past 30 posts, going back approximately 4 days,

14 reported posts were read
16 reported posts were unread.

There might be a good explanation for this when the forum appears to be working correctly, one could say that mods are already on top of things in the forum and don't need to read reported posts.

But when there are ongoing complaints about posts in the forum, and from my reading everybody seems to accept there's an issue, yet 1 in 3 reported posts are going unread, then that looks like it needs to be addressed.

My own interest in politics is tapering off lately, you can get the same quality of discussion in AH.

I go straight from my emails to the reported post, I almost never go to the reported post thread itself. If I was the only mod on the forum, they would all appear unread but would all be checked.

K-9

Thought there'd be more reported posts tbh.

I'll try and report more posts and see if it makes a difference.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

Thought there'd be more reported posts tbh.

I'll try and report more posts and see if it makes a difference.

E.g. there's been exactly 3 reported posts in the past 20 hours, all three for abuse. All three dealt with and the users sanctioned. All three threads unread in the Reported Posts forum.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

E.g. there's been exactly 3 reported posts in the past 20 hours, all three for abuse. All three dealt with and the users sanctioned. All three threads unread in the Reported Posts forum.

I assume the reported posts come in bursts, quite days like today not much, busy times maybe 10-20 a day?

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I assume the reported posts come in bursts, quite days like today not much, busy times maybe 10-20 a day?

Yeah, very much so. Often multiple reported posts for the same post. The Norris thread in its heyday generated quite a lot. Irish Economy goes through extremely quiet patches and then really busy patches, generally when some group of new posters join and aren't used to the unwritten rules drawn up between the various camps (especially the pro- and anti-Public Service camps which seem to be able to disagree without coming to blows these days when it's just the regulars involved most of the time).

The forum's quite quiet when there isn't any major new out usually. Except when someone starts a very controversial/divisive thread.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

Yeah, very much so. Often multiple reported posts for the same post. The Norris thread in its heyday generated quite a lot. Irish Economy goes through extremely quiet patches and then really busy patches, generally when some group of new posters join and aren't used to the unwritten rules drawn up between the various camps (especially the pro- and anti-Public Service camps which seem to be able to disagree without coming to blows these days when it's just the regulars involved most of the time).

The forum's quite quiet when there isn't any major new out usually. Except when someone starts a very controversial/divisive thread.

The Norris and Pamela threads spring to mind for me. It's a tough one to call, it isn't quite soap boxing, it's not abusive or a clear abuse of the roles, more just taking over threads, IYKWIM?

Everybody loses the will to live trying to argue with posters trying to get the last word in?

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

The Norris and Pamela threads spring to mind for me. It's a tough one to call, it isn't quite soap boxing, it's not abusive or a clear abuse of the roles, more just taking over threads, IYKWIM?

Everybody loses the will to live trying to argue with posters trying to get the last word in?

Yeah the problem is that it's ok (if very annoying) for a poster to be a "last word" poster, we've quite a few of those, but it isn't ok for someone to be a soapboxer (we try to remove these). Can take quite a while before one can be sure that someone is soapboxing though and not just enthusiastic for their viewpoint. Sometimes it requires a bit of poking to see how they react, which can be a bit unethical as it can look like you're baiting the poster.


Anyway, report stuff and I guarantee we'll at least look at it. We might not agree that there's a problem that needs fixing or we might not agree there's enough evidence yet to act but it will be looked at.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

The Norris and Pamela threads spring to mind for me. It's a tough one to call, it isn't quite soap boxing, it's not abusive or a clear abuse of the roles, more just taking over threads, IYKWIM?

Actually one problem we get, especially on Pamela style threads, is people reporting posts that they just disagree with strongly. I can think of one or two users in particular who do this fairly regularly. But conversely both of them also report posts that need action, so it's not like we can/should ask them to stop reporting posts.

That said, we have had problems in the past with people only ever reporting stuff that really wasn't actionable and have had to ask them to stop because they're wasting every mod's time (since we all can't see if another mod has checked a reported post from our emails so we have to check it ourselves etc).


The core problem is a) what's the line between acceptable and unacceptable in terms of quality of post and can all the mods manage to agree on this and enforce it consistently over time and b) should be kowtowing to the wishes of a sub group of the posters on the forum (a minority I think) who have a major problem with how the forum is run at the moment? These are both tricky questions, the second especially because the people raising the problem tend to be some of our better posters.

nesf

Overheal wrote: »

Perhaps a dumb (or brilliant) question, but why not repurpose the General Election 2011 subforum for the Presidential Election? Hasn't the GE forum served and retired from it's purpose?

Better yet simply remake it as the Elections Forum, plain.

Already being discussed. On the cards I think as far as I know.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

Actually one problem we get, especially on Pamela style threads, is people reporting posts that they just disagree with strongly. I can think of one or two users in particular who do this fairly regularly. But conversely both of them also report posts that need action, so it's not like we can/should ask them to stop reporting posts.

That said, we have had problems in the past with people only ever reporting stuff that really wasn't actionable and have had to ask them to stop because they're wasting every mod's time (since we all can't see if another mod has checked a reported post from our emails so we have to check it ourselves etc).


The core problem is a) what's the line between acceptable and unacceptable in terms of quality of post and can all the mods manage to agree on this and enforce it consistently over time and b) should be kowtowing to the wishes of a sub group of the posters on the forum (a minority I think) who have a major problem with how the forum is run at the moment? These are both tricky questions, the second especially because the people raising the problem tend to be some of our better posters.

I've no doubt some posters are too precious, that isn't the issue, I trust mods on that aspect.

I think the problem is the lack of difference between AH and politics.

That's the problem.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I've no doubt some posters are too precious, that isn't the issue, I trust mods on that aspect.

I think the problem is the lack of difference between AH and politics.

That's the problem.

What's the line though between AH and Politics? Like, on Politics you'll not get away with AH style factual claims because you can be forced to back them up and reference them. It's the users own fault if they're not pushing for this in threads. If someone refuses the back up their points then the mods will step in and force the user to either put up or shut up and if the poster constantly does this they'll be removed from the forum.

I'm completely open to suggestions on practical ways we can improve the standard of debate without being overly harsh on people. Should we be warning people for having poorly informed opinions for instance? Because that's part of the problem as I see it (but I haven't any clue on a good and fair way to deal with it).

K-9

nesf wrote: »

What's the line though between AH and Politics? Like, on Politics you'll not get away with AH style factual claims because you can be forced to back them up and reference them. It's the users own fault if they're not pushing for this in threads. If someone refuses the back up their points then the mods will step in and force the user to either put up or shut up and if the poster constantly does this they'll be removed from the forum.

I'm completely open to suggestions on practical ways we can improve the standard of debate without being overly harsh on people. Should we be warning people for having poorly informed opinions for instance? Because that's part of the problem as I see it (but I haven't any clue on a good and fair way to deal with it).

Honestly I can't answer that question.

There used to be a difference.

People can argue away in AH to their hearts content. There used to be complaints that politics was too harsh, I don't see that anymore.

I'd say if some posters aren't saying politics is too harsh, something is wrong! It's supposed to be harsh.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

Honestly I can't answer that question.

There used to be a difference.

People can argue away in AH to their hearts content. There used to be complaints that politics was too harsh, I don't see that anymore.

I'd say if some posters aren't saying politics is too harsh, something is wrong! It's supposed to be harsh.

I think some of it is Politics was a lot smaller. The regulars had much more of a presence and it was mostly filled with hacks and people with a serious interest in Politics rather than ordinary posters with just an opinion. There just wasn't that much popular interest in politics in general which lead to the standard being quite a lot higher naturally.

Nowadays every man and his dog has strong opinions on how the way the country is run should be changed. This has dragged down standards because people are a lot less informed. Unless we ban a large number of the posters from the forum and set up some kind of access requests forum like Soccer, this isn't going to change any time soon.

We can clamp down on abuse, soapboxing and spam but we can't really do much if the average person venturing into the forum isn't very well informed on matters. It used to be the case that the dominance of the regulars would ensure that the new poster would be "trained up" quite quickly but the size of the inflow of new users in 07/08 meant this didn't happen.

Effectively Politics had its own Eternal September around that time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

Scofflaw

I suppose one forgets to some extent that we're currently going through one of the more exciting times, politically, in the history of the State.

amused,
Scofflaw

nesf

Scofflaw wrote: »

I suppose one forgets to some extent that we're currently going through one of the more exciting times, politically, in the history of the State.

amused,
Scofflaw

Indeed. We get crisis after crisis, event after event, with no long stretch of time for the forum to settle down and for newbies to mature and become serious regulars.

The closest place I can think of to this on the forum at present is the Public Sector debates. Both sides have gotten used to each other and while bitterly opposed in many respects the standard of debate is an awful lot higher than it was a year ago.

Scofflaw

nesf wrote: »

Indeed. We get crisis after crisis, event after event, with no long stretch of time for the forum to settle down and for newbies to mature and become serious regulars.

The closest place I can think of to this on the forum at present is the Public Sector debates. Both sides have gotten used to each other and while bitterly opposed in many respects the standard of debate is an awful lot higher than it was a year ago.

We put in quite a lot of work on the NI issues as well, and I think that had some positive results. Now, though, the world and his dog have arrived for the Presidency fight. Also, the Pamela stuff was never going to pull in the quality crowd.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Dr Galen

nesf wrote: »

Nowadays every man and his dog has strong opinions on how the way the country is run should be changed. This has dragged down standards because people are a lot less informed.

Scofflaw wrote: »

I suppose one forgets to some extent that we're currently going through one of the more exciting times, politically, in the history of the State.

amused,
Scofflaw

In two lines, the lads have captured what has happened in the politics forum over the past 3 odd years.

Honestly, I don't think that there is a lot that can be done tbh. The forum is far too high traffic to be able to go in and delete or warn on every AH style post that gets posted. You'd need a huge team of Mods to do that, and you'd end up with more warnings, directions and deleted posts than quality ones.

The forum is somewhat looking to find a new identity imho. Somewhere that Joe the fireman/office worker/cab driver can pour out his opinions and ideas for fixing the country, but also allows for Joseph, the political historian/academic/graduate/intelligentsia card carrier to talk about the higher end of things. Sorting that out will take time, patience and a bit of creativity really. I hate online elitism, so having a similar system to soccer wouldn't be great in my eyes. That was created for very specific reasons, and to my mind those reasons don't really translate to what is going on in politics.

Good luck with that lads

Nodin

later10 wrote: »

..........
My own interest in politics is tapering off lately, you can get the same quality of discussion in AH.

You might note that the quality in AH has gone up a tad, while politics had dropped a bit. The two are not unrelated.

gandalf

Dr Galen wrote: »

Honestly, I don't think that there is a lot that can be done tbh. The forum is far too high traffic to be able to go in and delete or warn on every AH style post that gets posted. You'd need a huge team of Mods to do that, and you'd end up with more warnings, directions and deleted posts than quality ones.

So is your answer leave it descend into the cesspit that it is obviously heading for. The clean up would be painful initially but once it has taken hold and the regular posters know how things are working then it will settle down (I know this from experience).

The forum is somewhat looking to find a new identity imho.

The forum is going downhill rapidly it has been for a while now. This is just another of a series of threads where some of us regulars have pointed this out. (actually I would class myself as an ex-regular at this stage).

Somewhere that Joe the fireman/office worker/cab driver can pour out his opinions and ideas for fixing the country, but also allows for Joseph, the political historian/academic/graduate/intelligentsia card carrier to talk about the higher end of things.

Please the Politics forum was for everyone but its premise was that people structured their argument and thought about it before they posted. I hope that is how I posted there and I would definitely not describe myself as an intelligentsia.

Sorting that out will take time, patience and a bit of creativity really.

At this stage this has been going on for a long time.

I hate online elitism, so having a similar system to soccer wouldn't be great in my eyes. That was created for very specific reasons, and to my mind those reasons don't really translate to what is going on in politics.

As the person who helped set up the soccer access system I agree with you 100%, that system is not the answer here.

What is the answer is to increase the number of mods even bolstering them with temporary ones drafted in from other forums and make very clear posting guidelines to ensure quality that should be in the Politics forum and separate it from the type of posts that belong in After Hours. Most importantly enforce those rules rigorously and ruthlessly.

Dr Galen

gandalf wrote: »

So is your answer leave it decent into the cesspit that it is obviously heading for. The clean up would be painful initially but once it has taken hold and the regular posters know how things are working then it will settle down (I know this from experience).



The forum is going downhill rapidly it has been for a while now. This is just another of a series of threads where some of us regulars have pointed this out. (actually I would class myself as an ex-regular at this stage).



Please the Politics forum was for everyone but its premise was that people structured their argument and thought about it before they posted. I hope that is how I posted there and I would definitely not describe myself as an intelligentsia.



At this stage this has been going on for a long time.



As the person who helped set up the soccer access system I agree with you 100%, that system is not the answer here.

What is the answer is to increase the number of mods even bolstering them with temporary ones drafted in from other forums and make very clear posting guidelines to ensure quality that should be in the Politics forum and separate it from the type of posts that belong in After Hours. Most importantly enforce those rules rigorously and ruthlessly.

I really hate having to re-quote a multi quote answer. Especially when I'm knackered, so I'll sumarise if thats cool.

Firstly, I'd broadly agree with your first point, it would be tough. I wouldn't argue otherwise. I'm just saying that unless a radical overhaul of a) the numbers of Mods and b) how the forum is moderated happens, it's just not practical tbh to do much. I think, bearing in mind the resources that they have, the Mods do a good job. To do the sort of cleanup etc that might be required, they'd nearly need to double the numbers.

I'd also class myself as an ex-regular-ish. Tbh, i've even stopped reading the forum as much as I used to. You do get tired of the same arguments over and over again, and banging the head against the brick poster.

You are right, in that the standard of post has dropped. I used to spend ages just reading things, not even posting in the forum. You'd learn a lot about things, things that you might not have agreed on, but still learned something new. That doesn't happen as much. Ok so maybe my analogy was a bit tongue in cheek, but I think we mean essentially the same thing. FWIW i didn't always agree with you but I always found your posts a good read.

I still stand by my thoughts that the Politics forum is changing, and trying to re-find itself. maybe it does need a shove in the right direction, to make sure that standards can be maintained. Whether people have the stomach for that fight is another thing altogether though.

later12

Black Swan wrote: »

Please be advised that what you have counted to make your point was uninformed and in error. I have read 100% of all reported posts in all of my forums since being appointed a mod 2 years ago (almost a year ago in Politics). I have a special email account that all reported posts are forwarded to, and when I am online daily (sometimes several times daily) and see them, I go immediately to the post reported, not the reported post thread. If it is obvious that a violation has occurred, or if one of my co-mods or Cmods have already taken action, then why bother visiting the reported post thread? If it is not obvious and no action has been taken, then I visit the reported post thread. Although I cannot speak for them, my co-mods and Cmods probably do something similar.

Yes, that's a reasonable explanation, as I mentioned earlier there are lots of reasons why the read and unread reports in the reports section correspond inexactly with moderator attention. Nobody is disputing that here.

The evidence of the quality of posting in the politics thread is not something that necessarily has to be sought out in how the reported posts are read, or responded to. It is visible in black and white on the politics forum. It is visible in the fact that this seems to be an ongoing issue raised by regular users over a few different threads recently.

Clearly the problem that has emerged is a user problem, not a modding problem. But at a certain level, user problems become moderators' problems. Although the politics moderators are, imo, more open to criticism (and possibly get more stick than) any other mods on this site, nevertheless this criticism ultimately doesn't bear fruit. The problems persist.

I haven't been around here long enough to know whether the issue is cyclical, although I'd imagine that Scofflaw is indeed correct on that. But I really don't see why this isn't acted on a bit more decisively, and the ban stick isn't applied a bit more liberally. (True, in that case you guys are probably going to get heaps more users starting more feedback threads, arguing the flip side of what some of us are saying here)

There could be no question in our minds as to what is required of us when we read the politics charter. Yet these relatively firm requirements are not borne out in practice, they are completely undermined by what actually happens.

I would agree with Dr Galen above. At present the politics forum appears to be in a no-mans-land. Maybe it would be best if moderators establish a position and stick to it, not all of us regular users will be happy, but at least we will all know where we stand.

gandalf

Dr Galen wrote: »

I really hate having to re-quote a multi quote answer. Especially when I'm knackered, so I'll sumarise if thats cool.

Apologies I am a multi-quote whore

I agree with nearly everything you said in that post.

I still stand by my thoughts that the Politics forum is changing, and trying to re-find itself. maybe it does need a shove in the right direction, to make sure that standards can be maintained. Whether people have the stomach for that fight is another thing altogether though.

This is the crux.

From my perspective at this stage I believe the admins need to step in and decide what standards they want in one of the higher profile forums on this site and to communicate that to the users of that forum. They then need to ensure that whatever direction they decide on taking that the moderators have the numbers and the resources to implement that direction.

nesf

Part of the problem is that people just aren't reporting posts. The London Riots thread had 3 infractions and a ban on the first page but we didn't get a reported post for 2 hours by which point the trolling had done its damage.

Edit: Even under our current rules and ways of applying them that thread resulted in a heap of infractions and some bans for the worst offenders, but if people aren't reporting posts it's going to take a lot longer for those punishments to be handed out and threads will go even further off-topic in the meantime.

I'm not sure a purge is even possible Gandalf if the users aren't behind it and aren't reporting posts.

nesf

later10 wrote: »

Clearly the problem that has emerged is a user problem, not a modding problem. But at a certain level, user problems become moderators' problems. Although the politics moderators are, imo, more open to criticism (and possibly get more stick than) any other mods on this site, nevertheless this criticism ultimately doesn't bear fruit. The problems persist.

Well, the problem is modular in nature. This can be clearly seen in your thread on the US downgrade. There was some nonsense in it but it didn't get out of control and the more serious users stamped down on it without the need for the mods having to deal with it. That's the ideal for the forum. The mods only having to step in when someone is seriously out of line.

What we have is subsets of users frequent certain types of threads. Norris threads bring pro and anti gay posters, Immigration threads bring pro and anti foreigners posters and so on. There tends to be very little cross pollination across these threads for the most part.

We've made some progress on NI threads and PS threads, both are a lot better than they were, though neither are where I'd like them to be yet, but changing them takes a long time and a lot of user education on what is and what is not acceptable. It can also take a long time to root out who is soapboxing and who is just passionate. The latter are welcome the former are not.

It's complicated and if we want long term change it takes time. It takes time to turn vociferous posters into reasonable regular posters and that has to be the goal, not simply to ban everyone who doesn't meet our standard (though on the immigrant threads banning racists seems to be the only answer in a lot of cases).

We've made progress since the last feedback thread, not as much as I'd like, but some has been made. The thing is, I'm not convinced that a mass purge is the answer because it'll just dump the problem onto AH's lap and other forums. Better to slowly guide the conversation towards something more reasonable and use the time to divide posters into the majority who can change and the minority who won't and to ban the minority. A mass purge gives no time for users to recant and honestly I think that it would savage the traffic on the forum in an unnecessarily harsh way. I'd prefer a more lively forum that was a bit messy than a nearly dead forum that was very serious.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

nesf

We've an issue with people being afk at the moment. 2 mods are afk for the moment but should be back in the near future on top of those you mentioned. GuanYin just hasn't been removed. Sceptre moderates in bursts, and honestly is still useful to the mod team as such. He doesn't post much but does sweep in and clean up a mess every so often. Right now we have three active mods in myself, Scofflaw and Black Swan. This could be better I agree.

The problem with the London Riots thread was people waiting so long before reporting posts. Once the posts were reported the mods knew they had a "problem thread" on their hands and 3 of us have been monitoring it since, i.e. Scofflaw, Black Swan and myself.

Mod absenteeism isn't really the problem, it's just that college schedules caught a number of our mods this time around dumping the forum onto the mods no longer in the college exam/thesis system, otherwise we'd have 5 mods active and that'd be more than enough for day to day stuff.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Dr Galen

3 Mods really isn't enough tbh. In fairness, life totally gets in the way from time to time alright, for everyone. Would it be an idea to set up a temporary panel of people, who when such things occur, could be asked to step into the breach? Then once one of the regular mods comes back on stream they head back to the panel? That way you'd be getting people involved, who understand the gig, the forum and how things run.

I've come across similar issues with noise/signal before in two of the forums I moderate. It's a tough nut to crack alright.

Personally I think the only way to really get on top of it, is to be really engaged, and not necessarily waiting for reported posts to come in. Sometimes Mods have to step in and put in the guiding hand, to help shape a discussion in a certain manner. That takes a fair bit of time to be given up, so again I'd say that extra hands to help out is whats needed.

nesf

Dr Galen wrote: »

3 Mods really isn't enough tbh. In fairness, life totally gets in the way from time to time alright, for everyone. Would it be an idea to set up a temporary panel of people, who when such things occur, could be asked to step into the breach? Then once one of the regular mods comes back on stream they head back to the panel? That way you'd be getting people involved, who understand the gig, the forum and how things run.

I've come across similar issues with noise/signal before in two of the forums I moderate. It's a tough nut to crack alright.

Personally I think the only way to really get on top of it, is to be really engaged, and not necessarily waiting for reported posts to come in. Sometimes Mods have to step in and put in the guiding hand, to help shape a discussion in a certain manner. That takes a fair bit of time to be given up, so again I'd say that extra hands to help out is whats needed.

I've brought up the idea on the Politics Mods forum. We'll see what the others think.

Scofflaw

3 active mods is certainly too little. I think we've discussed the 'standby mods' idea before, but they need to be mods, generally, otherwise the hoops we have to jump for them to be given modding powers in Politics make the process too slow. We would also need fast response by Admins, which is something we won't necessarily get.

cordially,
Scofflaw

later12

Could the solution not be less moderators and not more? As Permabear indicated, some mods are already pretty much absent from the day to day involvement with the forum (apart from reading reported posts maybe), whereas more regular mods like Lockstep, nesf and Scofflaw are much more involved.

In corporate structures, it tends to be recognized that rule-by-committee often leads to weaker governance or slower progress than a a more direct management system.
Individuals can be less inclined to take decisive action, perhaps down to failure to reach consensus on policy, the Abilene paradox, or groupthink. There is also greater scope for inconsistencies to arise. Or it becomes tempting to step back and wait to estabish others' thoughts by waiting for others to intervene, and if everybody does this, the result can be complete inaction.

So perhaps the problems could be solved by a more authoritarian, more empowered moderating team. Not by introducing even more moderators, with even more obstacles of agreement to surmount, even more potential for inconsistency, an even less clear direction for the forum, and perhaps an aggravation of the problem.

Of course I appreciate that as this would imply more effort on behalf of the likes of nesf and scofflaw who already put plenty of effort in, and some moderators being asked to step down, and an appearance of more monocratic, stricter posting environment, it could be an unpopular solution all round. But I do believe it would ultimately benefit the quality of posting in politics.