A General Feedback thread

nesf

I wanted to give you guys a chance to give us some general feedback on the forum. Is it not strict enough? Where could we improve things? How are you finding the moderation of the forum in general?

Please do not use this thread to argue individual bans or warnings, the DRP forum exists for that purpose.

I look forward to your input. If you don't want to comment publicly, feel free to PM me with any concerns you have.

raymon

nesf wrote: »

I wanted to give you guys a chance to give us some general feedback on the forum. Is it not strict enough? Where could we improve things? How are you finding the moderation of the forum in general?

Please do not use this thread to argue individual bans or warnings, the DRP forum exists for that purpose.

I look forward to your input. If you don't want to comment publicly, feel free to PM me with any concerns you have.

I agree will all warnings I have received .

Also I have seem real trolls get banned and duplicate accounts get shut down

Well done to all mods here

I disagree however with threads being moved to politics cafe randomly

mikemac

If you lock a thread can you add a one line explanation in the last post on why it was done

It's normally done but the odd time it isn't

blahfckingblah

from my experience it is very well run, i seem to read it a lot more than i post here. mods usually let threads/arguments run their course. pat yourselves on the back

Laminations

I'm generlly not a complainer, someone can throw pretty low blows before I'd report them but some ppl report posts at the drop of a hat. That's fine but when mods do respond to reported posts can they be more consistent in checking the backlog of comments by the reportee as often you'd find they were not contributing very nicely either. Alternatively I could report more posts but it'd feel petty as I'd just be doing it because I'd know that given the chance the person I'm arguing against would report me.

Other than some small issues on consistency, modding is very good

anymore

I would suggest that if someone has the ' Moderator' tag attached to thier name, they should be required to display a minimum level of courtesy towards other posters and to avoid being provocative - that fact that they are not moderators on the political section should not exempt them setting a good example.

johnnyskeleton

raymon wrote: »

I disagree however with threads being moved to politics cafe randomly

+1.

I think politics cafe is a mistake because moving what could be quite a sincere thread by one poster into the cafe is to belittle their views as being "politics lite". Plus, it also suggests that there is no room for humour in the main politics threads.

Scofflaw

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

+1.

I think politics cafe is a mistake because moving what could be quite a sincere thread by one poster into the cafe is to belittle their views as being "politics lite". Plus, it also suggests that there is no room for humour in the main politics threads.

Actually, we haven't really defined the role of the Café very well as yet, and the result is a high degree of inconsistency.

It would help if people could tell us what they think defines a Café thread - and why on earth people start quite serious threads in there.

cordially,
Scofflaw

southsiderosie

Scofflaw wrote: »

Actually, we haven't really defined the role of the Café very well as yet, and the result is a high degree of inconsistency.

It would help if people could tell us what they think defines a Café thread - and why on earth people start quite serious threads in there.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Ideally, the Politics Cafe threads would be things like "Presidential Big Brother" or "Famous Lookalikes", i.e. political threads that are kind of speculative or silly and fun. However, I think it would be easier to define a Cafe thread if we could first actually define what constitutes a Politics thread. As other posters have noted, I see little to no difference between political threads in AH and on Politics (and I don't mean this as a knock on AH).

If Politics threads are just going to be a collection of loosely formed opinions, cut-and-paste from right-wing websites, and repetitive rants, then honestly I'd rather just post in AH because there is more volume, and despite the high noise ratio you do get interesting, thoughtful posts. At the end of the day, better a fast-moving thread with a lot of useless comments than a slow-moving thread with a lot of useless comments.

Scofflaw

southsiderosie wrote: »

Ideally, the Politics Cafe threads would be things like "Presidential Big Brother" or "Famous Lookalikes", i.e. political threads that are kind of speculative or silly and fun. However, I think it would be easier to define a Cafe thread if we could first actually define what constitutes a Politics thread. As other posters have noted, I see little to no difference between political threads in AH and on Politics (and I don't mean this as a knock on AH).

If Politics threads are just going to be a collection of loosely formed opinions, cut-and-paste from right-wing websites, and repetitive rants, then honestly I'd rather just post in AH because there is more volume, and despite the high noise ratio you do get interesting, thoughtful posts. At the end of the day, better a fast-moving thread with a lot of useless comments than a slow-moving thread with a lot of useless comments.

There's a Feedback discussion about that very issue here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056346749

I'd particularly draw your attention to this:

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.

In other words, AH doesn't try to weed out low quality posts, and nobody expects it to - but Politics, under the press of events, has found itself in a position similar to AH by virtue of the current volume of interest. We're absolutely open to realistic suggestions as to how higher quality can be maintained in the face of the flood, but they need to take into account the resource constraints involved. We can improve things to some extent with a few rounds of brutality - deleting every instance of AH style stuff, for example - but that in turn implies banning posters who don't seem to get the difference, because otherwise they'll simply go on posting more.

So you're looking at crackdowns plus purges, and all of that will only cover the situation until the next major influx, which is already on the horizon in the form of the Presidential race, and may not even keep ahead of the ongoing influx drawn by the ongoing global crisis.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Nodin

I might suggest two things - firstly sticky this thread, and secondly, a reminder to Mods that using bold when speaking in "mod" mode is something yez all might adopt.

Fergus_Nash

Well as we all know one of the sub-forums is political debate with question for Paul Gogarty TD. That was loike, so last year. Roysh. Therefore one is of the opinion that said forum should be discarded or updated to include a set of declarative statements made in an attempt to garnish an answer from one of our current group of delinquents, sorry TD's.

Apologies my post went a bit loike bi-polar there.

MadsL

Could we have a casual racist thread sub-forum? I would find it easier to find them then; although there is usually one started at least every other day.

Seriously, if we could have a certain level of discussion maintained. The AH level of comments on a lot of those threads should just get binned IMHO.

southsiderosie

The London Riots thread is a perfect example of everything that has gone wrong with the Politics forum.

Casual racism, obvious trolling, ridiculous throwaway comments that do not even have the benefit of being funny, conspiracy theories, derailment...It is 20+ pages of carefully considered comments shoulder to shoulder with absolute utter nonsense (much of which has nothing to do with the topic in question).

If the mods feel that the political situation is too intense, and the level of users too unwieldy, then I would almost suggest flipping what the main forum and the Politics Cafe are meant to be: let the main forum be more of a free for all, and turn the politics cafe into a sub-forum where things can be discussed in a reasonable fashion, and where comments are more tightly moderated. Of course, that raises the issue: why not just go to the Humanities forum? It also, I think, would be a disservice to what people have tried to make the Politics forum be: a place that is (used to be) free of the kind of hysterical 'discussions' that are on the comments page of most major newspapers.

Scofflaw

southsiderosie wrote: »

The London Riots thread is a perfect example of everything that has gone wrong with the Politics forum.

Casual racism, obvious trolling, ridiculous throwaway comments that do not even have the benefit of being funny, conspiracy theories, derailment...It is 20+ pages of carefully considered comments shoulder to shoulder with absolute utter nonsense (much of which has nothing to do with the topic in question).

If the mods feel that the political situation is too intense, and the level of users too unwieldy, then I would almost suggest flipping what the main forum and the Politics Cafe are meant to be: let the main forum be more of a free for all, and turn the politics cafe into a sub-forum where things can be discussed in a reasonable fashion, and where comments are more tightly moderated. Of course, that raises the issue: why not just go to the Humanities forum? It also, I think, would be a disservice to what people have tried to make the Politics forum be: a place that is (used to be) free of the kind of hysterical 'discussions' that are on the comments page of most major newspapers.

One might equally say that the London Riots thread is a perfect example of what's been happening to the Politics forum. A major event happens, and the forum floods. Depending on the type of event, we get different posters - this one gives us a particularly excitable mix. 311 posts in about 4 hours, with posters who should know better, including Mods of other forums, slinging about casual racism and emotional guff. First reported post from the thread is about 2 hours after the start of the thread.

Sigh. Anyway - water cannon.

wearily,
Scofflaw

nesf

anymore wrote: »

I would suggest that if someone has the ' Moderator' tag attached to thier name, they should be required to display a minimum level of courtesy towards other posters and to avoid being provocative - that fact that they are not moderators on the political section should not exempt them setting a good example.

Mods are just regular posters outside of their own forum. That said, if I do have to dole out a punishment to a mod it's always tougher than for a regular users because, well, they should have known better.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I answered you in the thread on Feedback, but I'll answer you here too.

We've 3 active mods right now, Scofflaw, Black Swan and myself. Eliot Rosewater and Lockstep are semi-afk due to college issues/work issues for the most part. We've two longer term afk mods that you've pointed out. This is less than ideal, I agree. Thing is, **** happens, we all have lives and people need to go afk every so often. We just got unlucky with two mods needing to go afk at the same time.

Edit: I've started a thread in the Politics Mods forum asking if the other mods think we need more mods.

Laminations

Scofflaw wrote: »

One might equally say that the London Riots thread is a perfect example of what's been happening to the Politics forum. A major event happens, and the forum floods. Depending on the type of event, we get different posters - this one gives us a particularly excitable mix. 311 posts in about 4 hours, with posters who should know better, including Mods of other forums, slinging about casual racism and emotional guff. First reported post from the thread is about 2 hours after the start of the thread.

Sigh. Anyway - water cannon.

wearily,
Scofflaw

Casual racism should always be confronted but emotional guff? People are incensed, are we expected to check our emotions at the door like good little Vulcans? These are real people's real feelings. It may not be intended at elitist but it sure sounds it when people make comments like we don't want the common newspaper commenters here'. You either have high brow detached discussion of political theory or visceral debate - visceral debate shouldn't involve racism or name calling especially against other posters but it shouldn't be censored in the way it is either.

FreudianSlippers

Laminations wrote: »

Casual racism should always be confronted but emotional guff? People are incensed, are we expected to check our emotions at the door like good little Vulcans? These are real people's real feelings. It may not be intended at elitist but it sure sounds it when people make comments like we don't want the common newspaper commenters here'. You either have high brow detached discussion of political theory or visceral debate - visceral debate shouldn't involve racism or name calling especially against other posters but it shouldn't be censored in the way it is either.

I "get" the rationale behind the "scum/scumbag" rule but I agree with you here. Certainly there will be instances where the rules need to be applied in a discretionary manner.

Racism, on the other hand should never be tolerated IMO - it's effectively trolling as it is certainly going to inflame the average poster on the site.

I guess in short, using the "s" word to describe rioters burning down London for the craic is one thing, but throwing it around all the time referring to politicians etc. should be tightly moderated. Permabear hit the nail on the head there, it can only be done with more and/or more active moderators; not a zero tolerance rule.

Lockstep

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Yes, I apologise for my semi-abscence. My job recently had a spate of people quitting so those of us who are left are working extra hours (I worked 60 hours last week ).

It's only temporary and I hope to get back involved ASAP once my hours become regular again. Again, I apologise for any problems for Boardsies.

nesf

Laminations wrote: »

I wouldn't use the s word to describe rioters for the Vedic, I'd use it (although I haven't as per the rules) because that's honestly what I think they are. That may be very tabloid of me, but miscreants doesn't quite express my utter disgust at these people and their actions. Banning words (used in context) is limiting expression. I completely agree that people should be infracted for throwing the word in everywhere and anywhere and I completely agree that freedom of expression shouldn't allow freedom to spread racist hate speech or incite violence. But is me saying that the police should baton charge any looters and break limbs inciting violence in the dame way as some poster saying we should attack Roma Gypsies. I think not, and I think mods should use more common sense in distinguishing between the two. The former can quite easily be justified, the latter cannot

I'd agree with you if I thought that saying that a group should be baton charged added anything useful to the debate.

Colonialboy

Scofflaw wrote: »

The reason we don't allow the use of the words "scum"/"scumbags" etc on the forum isn't because we have some weird down on the word. It's because the use of such tabloid terminology is emotive and mindless in itself.

So the "blah blah thugs blah subhumans" et al? That's the same thing. If you can't operate above the tabloid level, there's no real value in your being in the debate. We already have tabloids.

moderately,
Scofflaw

isnt this type of attitude part of the problem that got the UK into this situation.

nesf

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

I totally understand the point, I do... my point is that there is a time and a place for everything. I'm sure you could say that Bertie was not the most scrupulous individual, but he was not an "s"-word (I think a line can be drawn between the London rioters and Bertie tbf).

I think a line can be drawn there too, I just don't think everyone would get that.

Jelle1880

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Would you please kindly supply a word that can be used to refer to the those people who forced people to strip naked, and robbed injured passers by? Ideally a single, descriptive word - not a long phrase.

On behalf of many of the posters here, I would welcome your suggestions.

Thanks.

Imo the word 'scum' is about right.
'Subhuman' however is something else, that makes it sound like supremacy.

sink

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Sounds a bit tabloid to me, tbh.

Ok, so pick one you prefer.

• bad guy
• cad
• evildoer
• heavy
• knave
• miscreant
• ne'er-do-well
• rapscallion
• rascal
• rogue
• scamp
• scoundrel
• swindler
• varlet
• villain

Scofflaw

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

On the other hand, when some posters are attempting to argue that these rioters are rightfully protesting the killing of an "innocent" man, isn't it mildly acceptable to point out that they are robbing, looting, degrading and injuring people and places completely unrelated to the police and that is the definition of s-bag behaviour?

But what's the point of calling them "scumbags"? Does it somehow prove your point when the other people argue that these people are "protesters"? Hardly, so what does it add? Well, it annoys those who do think the rioters have some excuse, and it establishes you as a right-thinking member of the "call in the Army and shoot them all" brigade, which encourages mindless chants of support from others without two brain cells to rub together.

cordially,
Scofflaw

FreudianSlippers

rapscallion!

Spudmonkey

Colonialboy wrote: »

isnt this type of attitude part of the problem that got the UK into this situation.

I don't believe that means he is a sympathizer.

Laminations

Scofflaw wrote: »

"Visceral debate" seems to just consist of name-calling, though - "thugs", "subhumans", "bottom feeders". None of these words mean anything useful, and since none of our posters as far as I know are actually being rioted at, the "visceral" is a poor excuse for mindless name-calling and tabloid emotionalism.

You don't have to be Vulcans, but you don't need to be mindless echo chambers for the tabloids. Nobody is asking you not to call them rioters or criminals, since they're very clearly those things.

regards,
Scofflaw

Those words of course have meaning and are used to describe people's 'feelings'. Using more acceptable words is simply a cognitive clean up of an emotional issue, and therefore it weakens the sentiment. Looters and rioters lack any emotional judgements. It sanitises people's views and lessens the expressions of shock and the condemnations. Words can be powerful. By gentrifying our lexicon in these circumstances you limit our response.

Tut tut, I wholeheartedly condemn those lawless youths. Those words can be expressed more strongly and succinctly with one word - it just so happens to be the s word

OhNoYouDidn't

Colonialboy wrote: »

isnt this type of attitude part of the problem that got the UK into this situation.

The Mods point is that if all you have to contribute is to call someone scum, whether you believe it justified or not, you really have nothing to contribute.