Politics standards

Scofflaw

I'm guessing that if people were coming on here to say that the mods were doing a brilliant job and the forum was running beautifully, you wouldn't be implying we were an unrepresentative minority of occasional posters who don't know what we're talking about.

To be fair, we do have such a set of posts in the thread in the main forum, so we do have to consider that satisfying one set of posters may not satisfy all posters.

I'd agree that those you mention are regular contributors to the forum, and are indeed some of the better posters as well. However, they don't constitute all the better posters either, and, again, what suits some of the better posters will not necessarily suit all the better posters.

I've said this before, and it remains my basic position: we can't make the Politics forums adhere to the standards of a small club without making it a small club. We've had three years of consistent turmoil in Irish (and other) politics, and there is a wider interest in politics than before. Short of banning/vetting all new posters, that inevitably means discussion will move towards a less informed level than would be possible with a smaller forum made up of the politically knowledgeable.

Does that make us a less popular version of AH? No, it doesn't, despite several claims that this is the case. What we now share with AH to some extent is the broad baseline of relatively uninformed posters. Where we differ is that Politics in general goes up from that baseline, whereas AH in general goes down. Our aim is to try to maintain the upward pressure, but a lot of our time is taken up resisting the downward pressure.

Such upward pressure obviously isn't in the hands of the mods alone. If posters want to see better discussion in Politics, then it's also up to them to help educate the new posters, improve their understanding of politics and discussion, identify those that cannot be improved and let the mods deal with them. But have a bit of patience and a bit of tolerance, too - don't constantly call on us to smite the freshers for not knowing the ropes, or get discouraged when we don't do so.

As to reporting in general - the majority (maybe 80-90%) of reported posts result in some action. Something that concerns me is that this doesn't seem to be noticed by the users - we get continuing reports on some posts well after the user has been infracted - and if that's a technical issue, particularly with mobile platforms, we'll have to come to an agreement on how to resolve that. The most obvious way is to leave a comment in the infracted post - but the poster can edit those out again. Where an on-thread warning has been issued quoting the post this is apparently not always noticed either - presumably people click the report button before reading down the thread.

Also, some threads now happen very quickly - it's not uncommon for a popular thread to move along at several posts a minute. Issuing an infraction or a ban takes a couple of minutes at the best of times - when Boards is busy, it can take a very aggravating 5-10 minutes, between page waits and 503 errors, during which time the thread is moving along. One fast-moving thread can easily absorb the entire attention of a couple of mods, who are likely to be duplicating each other's efforts repeatedly - and who may have other calls on their time, such as family. There is no point in complaining that such a thread is not being handled real-time - it is quite simply not possible to do so.

Finally, bear in mind that the mods are all volunteers. Some of you being mods, I know you appreciate this - but there's a very big difference between moderating a small and relatively slow-paced forum and moderating Politics. Currently, I devote a number of hours to the forum that if I were charging it to a client (and the time I spend on the forum is taken from time in which I could do that) I would value at something like €80k annually. The thanklessness of the task is something of a factor in considering whether to keep doing it.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Permabear

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Scofflaw

Permabear wrote: »

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I appreciate that, but when nesf has pointed out that the views on this thread are only known to be the views of the posters expressing them, he has been accused of belittling those views.

Permabear wrote: »

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I agree - on the other hand, there are a number of debates that completely fail to interest me, and in which I'm unlikely to express any opinion (Norris, for example). There's also the issue that - again, I'm afraid this comes back to DRP - it's harder for mods to argue objectivity when they both participate in a discussion and moderate it. I rarely make mod decisions in threads about environmental issues, because I'm aware that I suffer from the urge to simply eradicate certain ignorant idiots may be less than objective there - and most of the other mods would be less interested in such issues.

Permabear wrote: »

I think this is an issue with people using mobile platforms. The new touch.boards smartphone interface gives the capacity to report posts, but it doesn't indicate whether a red or yellow card has been applied, which is a frustrating limitation.

It does seem to be an increasingly noticeable issue. One for Dav, perhaps?

cordially,
Scofflaw

coffee_cake

Scofflaw wrote: »

The most obvious way is to leave a comment in the infracted post - but the poster can edit those out again.

I seem to recall a poster in DRP getting a lot of trouble for editing out a mod's infraction comment so maybe you could still go down that route.

Permabear

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nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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What worries me is this:

a) We've had reports saying both that we're doing it wrong and that we're doing it right.
b) The vast, vast majority of users of the forum are being silent and just going about posting as per normal.
c) We get very few complaints in terms of volume of users but quite a lot from a small subset of users.

When I said regular user, I meant average rather than frequent. The average user seems to not have much of an opinion either way about the forums' moderation and seem to be content enough.


I'm worried that if we enact a broad range of very strict and serious rules we will alienate the average forum user. I don't want to do this because I think they have as much right to express their opinions and views as anyone else does on the forum and I don't want to turn the forum into something they will no longer use in the hope of making it better for a small group of vocal users.

I'm not sure if there's a right or wrong way to react to your and others' views criticising the forum. At times I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do, should I be giving a lot of weight to people who've in good faith given us negative feedback or should I be respecting that the average user seems happy enough with how things are?

Scofflaw

nesf wrote: »

What worries me is this:

a) We've had reports saying both that we're doing it wrong and that we're doing it right.
b) The vast, vast majority of users of the forum are being silent and just going about posting as per normal.
c) We get very few complaints in terms of volume of users but quite a lot from a small subset of users.

I'm afraid that's entirely true. There is a thread in the forum which people can certainly use to complain, but the complaints we're getting are from a relatively small and relatively consistent group. On the other hand, we have a pretty large stock of regular posters who haven't said anything at all either way, but who continue to post, as nesf says. And we also would be aware of people who don't post in the forum on the basis that the moderation is too strict - a fair number of politics.ie posters appear to feel that way (mind you, that's OK in my book).

That doesn't mean these comments aren't taken on board, or that we simply don't worry about them - if we genuinely didn't care, or didn't think there was any meaning to the complaints, we'd just ignore these threads and assume that either the problem or the complainers would go away eventually.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Here's a practical example: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056365264

Not a high-quality thread by any stretch - what should happen to it?

cordially,
Scofflaw

K-9

nesf wrote: »

What worries me is this:

a) We've had reports saying both that we're doing it wrong and that we're doing it right.
b) The vast, vast majority of users of the forum are being silent and just going about posting as per normal.
c) We get very few complaints in terms of volume of users but quite a lot from a small subset of users.

When I said regular user, I meant average rather than frequent. The average user seems to not have much of an opinion either way about the forums' moderation and seem to be content enough.


I'm worried that if we enact a broad range of very strict and serious rules we will alienate the average forum user. I don't want to do this because I think they have as much right to express their opinions and views as anyone else does on the forum and I don't want to turn the forum into something they will no longer use in the hope of making it better for a small group of vocal users.

I'm not sure if there's a right or wrong way to react to your and others' views criticising the forum. At times I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do, should I be giving a lot of weight to people who've in good faith given us negative feedback or should I be respecting that the average user seems happy enough with how things are?

Agree with all of that but as you say posters don't report enough as in the Riots thread. Posters seem to be taking a laisse-faire approach and reply to personal remarks.

When posts are reported Scofflaw said the vast majority are acted on. That doesn't back up the above at all.

From that, precious posters are a tiny minority of reports.

Scofflaw wrote: »

I'm afraid that's entirely true. There is a thread in the forum which people can certainly use to complain, but the complaints we're getting are from a relatively small and relatively consistent group. On the other hand, we have a pretty large stock of regular posters who haven't said anything at all either way, but who continue to post, as nesf says. And we also would be aware of people who don't post in the forum on the basis that the moderation is too strict - a fair number of politics.ie posters appear to feel that way (mind you, that's OK in my book).

That doesn't mean these comments aren't taken on board, or that we simply don't worry about them - if we genuinely didn't care, or didn't think there was any meaning to the complaints, we'd just ignore these threads and assume that either the problem or the complainers would go away eventually.

cordially,
Scofflaw

The thread was never stickied, last post IIRC was a week ago.

Common ground.

When posters do report the vast majority are deemed actionable. Tends to be regular posters reporting and they tend to get it right.

Mods are generally in agreement with their perception.

There is an issue of not reporting and like in the riots threads posters arguing back rather than reporting.

We had our own riot thread on politics funnily enough, no mods about, thread descends into chaos, mods come in too late and hand out yellow cards and bans all round. Loads call for more mods and unlike the Tories, it looks like we'll get the manpower!

nesf

Scofflaw wrote: »

Here's a practical example: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056365264

Not a high-quality thread by any stretch - what should happen to it?

cordially,
Scofflaw

I think the thread is ok since it's asking a sensible question. But I can see why people might have a problem with it.

southsiderosie

Scofflaw wrote: »

Here's a practical example: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056365264

Not a high-quality thread by any stretch - what should happen to it?

cordially,
Scofflaw

It's a legit question and the poster doesn't seem to be trolling. Some of the responses are flippant, and that is probably in part due to the casual way the OP is phrased. They seem to be a new user, so this is the kind of thread where it seems like mod involvement could 'nudge nudge' things on course; nesf seems to have stuck his oar in, so I guess it would be a wait and see.

I think this thread in particular highlights why some posters have emphasized mod involvement as key, which brings us back to the numbers issue.

Just to clarify my personal opinion in regards to feedback, I think the mods when involved do a good job (Scofflaw was particularly heroic during the elections), but there are only so many hours in the day, and this is not how anyone here puts food on the table, so with the expansion of users, I see how the edges get frayed a bit. I think a slightly larger, engaged moderator staff who are on the same page about things would really address most of the issues that have been raised in these threads. But I guess what the mods have to decide is if they are going to have a night watchman role (i.e. respond when alarms go off) or more of a caretaker role. It sounds like under the current system, only the former is possible, but for the latter to be a reality, there does need to be a bit more coordination between mods, and between the mod team and users.

nesf

southsiderosie wrote: »

Just to clarify my personal opinion in regards to feedback, I think the mods when involved do a good job (Scofflaw was particularly heroic during the elections), but there are only so many hours in the day, and this is not how anyone here puts food on the table, so with the expansion of users, I see how the edges get frayed a bit. I think a slightly larger, engaged moderator staff who are on the same page about things would really address most of the issues that have been raised in these threads. But I guess what the mods have to decide is if they are going to have a night watchman role (i.e. respond when alarms go off) or more of a caretaker role. It sounds like under the current system, only the former is possible, but for the latter to be a reality, there does need to be a bit more coordination between mods, and between the mod team and users.

The problem I see with that is that we'd have to work out some kind of rota or system for keeping the forum watched. I'd personally strongly oppose such a move, boards.ie gets my time when I can give it and that is the only basis that I'm willing to work as a moderator as.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

The problem I see with that is that we'd have to work out some kind of rota or system for keeping the forum watched. I'd personally strongly oppose such a move, boards.ie gets my time when I can give it and that is the only basis that I'm willing to work as a moderator as.

Yeah and I'd have sympathy with that and understand that.

But! If the politics board is busier and has far more posters the mods have to move with the times too. You are asking regular posters to cut some slack, we seem to be looking for mods to cut some slack. Saying I can't be around at certain times is fair enough, if you get more mods in it should become a possibility.

You set out the times you are usually, or will be about and work around that. That doesn't mean we expect 24/7 care, more manpower, space it out a bit.

AH tends to do that and has done for a good few years. Politics must be getting near the amount of AH posts from say 4 years ago?

Scofflaw

But I guess what the mods have to decide is if they are going to have a night watchman role (i.e. respond when alarms go off) or more of a caretaker role. It sounds like under the current system, only the former is possible, but for the latter to be a reality, there does need to be a bit more coordination between mods, and between the mod team and users.

The problem is that we aim for the latter, but the former tends to happen when we're busy with real life.

On coordination - the problem with coordination is that there really aren't any sort of tools for coordination. There is no mod signal beamed into the clouds for us to respond to, and the only coordinated area we have as such is a forum itself, with all that that implies. If something happens - such as the riot thread - that requires rapid response, there is no way to get coordinated rapidly. And I mean by that that a discussion of how to respond that reached a consensus amongst a majority of mods would probably have taken a day or two.

Also, sadly, for some reason my email notification of reported posts suddenly stopped about 6 hours before that riot thread - still no idea why, and still not fixed.

cordially,
Scofflaw

coffee_cake

Scofflaw wrote: »

Here's a practical example: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056365264

Not a high-quality thread by any stretch - what should happen to it?

cordially,
Scofflaw

That is a good example. I know I posted, but I was wondering if I should report it or not. I'm surprised everyone seems to be saying it's ok...

Permabear

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nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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You're misreading me. I'm not saying that I'm going to ignore your concerns, only that I have to balance them against the obvious high number of people who find the moderation ok (I won't claim they think the moderation is good).

I was more trying to get across that I can't only listen to you guys rather than trying to say that I won't listen to you guys.

Scofflaw

Conversely, we might well say point out that we do engage on these threads, we do take the points on board, we do get more mods, and we do try to engage more at the expense of our time, and the thanks we get from some posters is:

With that, I'm through with this and any and all other feedback threads relating to Politics. At this point I feel like I'm just wasting my time trying to talk to mods who don't appear to have any interest in listening, so I'll do you all a favour and shut up.

Now, we could simply come onto these threads and say "a thousand apologies, oh patient ones, the problems you wisely see will be rectified immediately" - but it wouldn't alter the fact that we can't change the forum overnight. We can try to move the forum in a particular direction, and we've said that we will do so - but we're not sitting here surrounded by coke and hookers wilfully not pushing the big red "forum reset" button just to annoy people.

wearily,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

bluewolf wrote: »

That is a good example. I know I posted, but I was wondering if I should report it or not. I'm surprised everyone seems to be saying it's ok...

I am myself - I would have thought it was exactly the sort of thing that was being pointed out here.

cordially,
Scofflaw

K-9

Scofflaw wrote: »

I am myself - I would have thought it was exactly the sort of thing that was being pointed out here.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Not the most thought out of OP's but it seems genuine and open to debate.

coffee_cake

K-9 wrote: »

Not the most thought out of OP's but it seems genuine and open to debate.

It was done a month ago
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=73267744
and with a proper OP, not a one-line offhand question. Honestly, I would have thought it'd belong in AH, though it does seem to have turned into a real discussion.
If we are linking threads, I was kind of confused about the "do my assignment for me" one

Scofflaw

K-9 wrote: »

Not the most thought out of OP's but it seems genuine and open to debate.

I agree, which is why I didn't close it. However, it really isn't high quality, and I thought that was what the issue was here. If that thread isn't the sort of thing that's being commented on here, what exactly is? Is 'quality' being used to mean something other than this?

I appreciate people may not feel it's entirely fair to link to threads they consider low quality, but I don't think we're going to get anywhere without practical examples of what people consider to be the problem.

perplexed,
Scofflaw

southsiderosie

Scofflaw wrote: »

I agree, which is why I didn't close it. However, it really isn't high quality, and I thought that was what the issue was here. If that thread isn't the sort of thing that's being commented on here, what exactly is? Is 'quality' being used to mean something other than this?

I appreciate people may not feel it's entirely fair to link to threads they consider low quality, but I don't think we're going to get anywhere without practical examples of what people consider to be the problem.

perplexed,
Scofflaw

I don't think anyone thinks it is a high quality thread; the question is what should the response be, and that I think is the core issue of this thread (and the previous ones).

Should a mod lock it an be done with it?

Should they lock it temporarily and offer some guidance as how to better construct an OP, especially considering that the OP seems to be a new user?

Or should they let it run for a bit and see if it improves?

Again, I don't think there is anything wrong with the question, it's just how the thread is set up that is problematic.

K-9

Scofflaw wrote: »

I agree, which is why I didn't close it. However, it really isn't high quality, and I thought that was what the issue was here. If that thread isn't the sort of thing that's being commented on here, what exactly is? Is 'quality' being used to mean something other than this?

I appreciate people may not feel it's entirely fair to link to threads they consider low quality, but I don't think we're going to get anywhere without practical examples of what people consider to be the problem.

perplexed,
Scofflaw

Personally I wouldn't have a problem with a thread like that if it develops as this one did.

I'm more perplexed at 80-90% of reported posts deemed actionable, the majority reported by regular posters and these posters seen as not representative of the politics forum.

After all we are told over and over to report posts so I'd have thought those opinions should matter.

nesf

Update:

We've asked 3 people. One has said yes, one no and one is taking more time to think about it.

I'd like to welcome bluewolf as a member of the moderating team.

Scofflaw

K-9 wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't have a problem with a thread like that if it develops as this one did.

I'm more perplexed at 80-90% of reported posts deemed actionable, the majority reported by regular posters and these posters seen as not representative of the politics forum.

After all we are told over and over to report posts so I'd have thought those opinions should matter.

OK, I wasn't at all sure what you were getting at earlier when you said that the 'actionable' reports conflicted with the view that a majority of posters had no particular issues with the forum!

People reporting posts aren't usually expressing an issue with the forum's moderation, though - they're expressing an issue with a particular post or poster. And those are largely acted on, although some users do report people for disagreeing with them too vehemently, or may have misunderstood humour, for example.

So I'm not quite sure why that would lead to perplexity?

cordially,
Scofflaw

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't have a problem with a thread like that if it develops as this one did.

I'm more perplexed at 80-90% of reported posts deemed actionable, the majority reported by regular posters and these posters seen as not representative of the politics forum.

After all we are told over and over to report posts so I'd have thought those opinions should matter.

The thing is the average boards user just doesn't report posts. They either don't know how or can't be bothered or whatever. It was ever thus.

Scofflaw

southsiderosie wrote: »

I don't think anyone thinks it is a high quality thread; the question is what should the response be, and that I think is the core issue of this thread (and the previous ones).

Should a mod lock it an be done with it?

Should they lock it temporarily and offer some guidance as how to better construct an OP, especially considering that the OP seems to be a new user?

Or should they let it run for a bit and see if it improves?

Again, I don't think there is anything wrong with the question, it's just how the thread is set up that is problematic.

Sure - so what would people suggest? My own views are pretty much balanced on it, and I could easily swing either way. If I got a couple of reports about the thread, I'd probably close it. Absent any reports, which is the case so far, I'd be inclined to leave it and see how it developed - and doing so has produced a thread which, despite a very unpromising beginning, is gaining some traction as more quality posters turn up. Had it, on the other hand, continued with snappy one-liners, it would have been closed or sent to the Café.

So there's part of the problem in a nutshell. Turns out I can't see the future. Who knew?

cordially,
Scofflaw

dr.bollocko

Scofflaw wrote: »

Here's a practical example: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056365264

Not a high-quality thread by any stretch - what should happen to it?

cordially,
Scofflaw

It appears boards.ie loves a bit of a joke and that thread is now "thread of the day".

coffee_cake

nesf wrote: »

Update:

We've asked 3 people. One has said yes, one no and one is taking more time to think about it.

I'd like to welcome bluewolf as a member of the moderating team.

Thanks everyone

I'll do my best to make sure there is no more trouble out of permabear ;)