A General Feedback thread

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

You've After Hours or other sites if you can't meet the higher standards here.

He's perma-banned from AH, so it's not an option for him.

BluntGuy

The IRgAy wrote: »

Secondly, swearing neither adds nor detracts from proceedings, so it should not be blocked just to appease overly sensitive posters. I'm sure the majority feel this way. You can conduct a poll to be sure.

Well it certainly doesn't add to proceedings but it does have potential to detract and unfortunately the line has to be drawn somewhere. Sure, I suppose the mods could for example ban gratuitous swearing, but someone is going to be unhappy with that too. "Why was my swearing banned and his wasn't?" etc. Surely it makes more sense to avoid that needless situation in the first place, with the added benefit of maintaining a higher standard of debate. If there was a tangible net loss in banning swearing, where certain points were prohibited from being made, I might agree with you. But that simply isn't the case. Every possible relevant point can be made without swearing, and the benefit of a better standard of debate outweighs the loss of "freedom of speech/expression" if you will.

Soldie

There are too many stickies and sub-forums. Above all, though, a much, much stronger moderator presence is required. This latter point only ever seems to be resisted by those who have nothing but sound bytes and glib one-liners to add. I'm both surprised and disappointed that virtually nothing came out of this thread from the Feedback forum. The General Election thread should be deleted after having its contents merged into the main forum. The European Union, Political Debate and Political Theory sub-forums are used so infrequently that it I think it would be more sensible if they were integrated into the main forum, too (perhaps add more thread icons). I still don't understand the purpose or need for the Politics Café forum. The Irish Economy sub-forum also seems strange to me, although I'm not quite sure how it could be reformed.

I have no issue with the quality of Politics forum's moderation, but I do have an issue with the consistency of the moderation. It seems clear to me that there are just not enough moderators for the forum, and the quality of the discourse is suffering badly as a result. The arbitrary and pointless sub-forums seem to compound the problem, as do the stickies taking up far too much room (admittedly, to a much lesser extent). Given that this is a feedback thread, I hope that I can enjoy some kind of parliamentary privilege when I say that this thread was clearly started by a troll with no interest in honest discussion. I would otherwise have been very much interested in participating in the discussion, but after having my report ignored I realised that I'd do myself a favour by steering clear of the thread instead. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who ignored it for similar reasons. There are many, many threads that follow along this line (see, for example, the discussion in the London riots thread being drowned out by casual racism and other nonsense).

Overall my feedback is that I greatly appreciate the effort and time put in by the mods, but please bring in a lot more mods and overhaul the sub-forums. There seems to be a great reluctance to do this, but I don't know why - it's like a papal conclave. Every time one of these threads crops up either here or in the Feedback forum, there seems to be a whole lot of talking and very little action. I know that a lot of posters have been driven away from the forum as a result of how the standards have slipped over the last year or two. On a final note, the whole "scumbag" debate seems so much more secondary to the more systemic problem the forum clearly faces.

Monty Burnz

nesf wrote: »

He's perma-banned from AH, so it's not an option for him.

Fair credit to him. You have to go a bit to get perma-banned from there.

Lockstep

Personally, I find the biggest problem to be trench warfare threads: issues like Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, the public sector and libertarianism to name but a few. Posters see see the thread and rush to take sides, digging into the thread and firing shots at each other, reporting the other side's posts constantly, claiming personal attacks (when there is very little to go on)

These threads quickly become trainwrecks, with multiple tangents and clunky, unreadable posts that dissuade any newcomers getting involved.
It also results in accusations of mod bias when they either sanction a troublesome poster. Either that or they don't see anything wrong and get accused of bias for NOT reprimanding the poster.

Liam Byrne

Since we've banned the sweeping generalisation of "the s word", can we also ban the sweeping generalisation of "populism" and "rabble, rabble" ?

They're just an obnoxious way of dismissing what - in my case at least - has SFA to do with what tabloids might say (because I don't read them) and what is - despite what whoever uses them might want to imply - is an informed opinion based on the facts.

Permabear

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Lockstep

Permabear wrote: »

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To be fair, the thread in question was difficult to moderate mainly as tone is a difficult thing to moderate and that's were most of the problems arose. Where personal attacks and accusations were made, interventions were made. However, the vast majority of reported posts from both sides were completely oversensitive and smacked of each side trying to get one over on the other through mod intervention.

The thread wasn't locked because of refutations. It was locked because it was incapable of being saved and had descended into sniping and tangents.

Permabear

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nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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The problem is that it's near impossible to have a open mike good form debate on any controversial ideology as libertarianism is. The only possible way of doing it is to restrict the debate to a handful of pre-picked debaters from the pro and anti sides of the discussion.

If we have an open debate on libertarianism, conservatism, socialism or whatever, then we'll have thread spoiling by people fundamentally opposed to the ideology whether they realise it or not.

Lockstep

The problem is that it can be very difficult to decide when someone is trolling or not. Tbh I saw little enough trolling in the thread, rather, people with fundamentally different viewpoints who argue back and forth. Again, this is something very common to trench threads.

Permabear

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nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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How do you tell deliberate thread spoiling from someone with a fundamentally opposed point of view sharing their opinion on the ideology? If someone is obviously trolling we can step in, but someone isn't obviously trolling just because they have some fanciful ideas of the implications of an ideology. Be it thinking socialism leads to communism or libertarianism leads to child labour.

Permabear

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nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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You do realise that because you're a committed libertarian it's likely a lot of stuff will look like trolling to you that other people might not view as trolling?

coffee_cake

nesf wrote: »

You do realise that because you're a committed libertarian it's likely a lot of stuff will look like trolling to you that other people might not view as trolling?

Are you serious? Half the thread was about baby killing and other ridiculous stuff

The IRgAy

What is evident here is an alarming lack of agreement between the mods on what defines trolling. This explains why some mods wade in and lock threads while others are more relaxed and allow the debate to flow without interference.

Too many decent discussions are killed by over eager mods itching to click the lock button.

Lockstep

More so people asking about what happens to kids and the poor in a libertarian society and using hyperbole. That's not trolling and it's something that trench warfare threads quickly revolve around: posters equating disagreeing with them as being trolling.

I appreciate it seems like trolling to you as you believe so strongly in libertarianism, but trolling is a different kettle of fish entirely.

nesf

bluewolf wrote: »

Are you serious? Half the thread was about baby killing and other ridiculous stuff

Which is the kind of utter nonsense that some hard lefties hold about hard right positions. You see the exact same stuff, except claims about inevitable mass killings instead of child labour etc, coming from rightists about anything remotely hard left.

It's not necessarily trolling, just people arguing against straw men.

Permabear

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The IRgAy

Permabear wrote: »

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If you were a true Libertarian you wouldn't believe in forum moderation.

Permabear

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nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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He started the thread with:

Putting my cards on the table I really dislike libertarianism. I think it is a selfish ideology that doesn't take reality into account and is a detrimental influence on society. It would be fine if kept as a theory but the libertarians are influencing society in the form of disaster capitalism and particularly the republican party in the us. Also I see posts in almost every thread telling us how if only we understood it we would see what a great idea it is.

That's hardly playing the innocent bystander luring people into the discussion, he opened it being completely hostile to the ideology!

coffee_cake

Lockstep wrote: »

More so people asking about what happens to kids and the poor in a libertarian society and using hyperbole. That's not trolling and it's something that trench warfare threads quickly revolve around: posters equating disagreeing with them as being trolling.

I appreciate it seems like trolling to you as you believe so strongly in libertarianism, but trolling is a different kettle of fish entirely.

Were you answering me there?

Permabear

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Permabear

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Lockstep

Permabear wrote: »

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And I don't need to be told "I've been at this game longer than you have." when being accused of being patronising.


You're accusing others of trolling with little basis. Probably because it's a personal issue. Sorry, but I'm just not seeing it.

bluewolf wrote: »

Were you answering me there?

Sorry, no. That was for PB.

(I opened the reply box then got caught up looking at pictures of cats. By the time I'd responded the thread had moved on)

gandalf

Some feedback as requested.

When infracting/warning users put the reason in the post so others can learn from problem with the post. Otherwise and especially for users using the mobile site it appears that those type of posts are ok.

Be more proactive. Just by scanning over the Politics and Irish Economy forum I can spot threads that either don't belong there or are not of high enough quality to be deemed a discussion. You need to start to do this on a regular basis and either move or close threads.

More active moderators. 3 active moderators are not enough. Moderators disappearing for six months are not the type needed in high volume forums like Politics. I know when I couldn't commit to the work load I stood down as mod here and as the cmod of Society. I'd expect the same from any others who couldn't commit to being available on a semi-regular basis. Politics is too high profile a forum to have fair weather moderators.

One thing is clear from this thread and the four threads that have appeared in the feedback forum in the last six months about politics and the standards in it and that is a lot of contributors care about the standard of discussion in the forum. Now between this and those other feedback threads it should be clear that simple things need to be done properly and if more resources are needed they should be made available. If not then eventually the feedback threads will no longer occur and a lot of people who in the past have made politics a quality forum to read and contribute to will abandon it.

K-9

Permabear wrote: »

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Personally, I'd say you should look over the threads he/she has started and report it to the mods. If it's soap boxing, they'll act on it.

From reading a couple of the threads you seem to be the voice of reason on the libertarian side but get caught in the middle. There's one or 2 Libertarians you should be reporting as well as they don't help your argument at all!

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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Is there something fundamentally wrong with asking for that? And given his full frontal attack earlier were people expecting him to be an unbiased listener or something because that's extremely naive.