(Site is a graveyard - How can boards save itself?) Any update?

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502063#Comment_122502063

What is this based on?

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502021#Comment_122502021

There's US posters, Irish people who have family or friends in the US and US politics isn't limited to the US. It tends to filter into other nation's politics plus their foreign policy has an impact on the entire globe. So it's not a matter of them being isolated from the world.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122501881#Comment_122501881

If people are calling you names, you can report it. If a viewpoint of somebody you support is racist and it's stated that you're(in the general sense rather than you) supportive of a racist, that's not necessarily a misrepresentation. There are posters that openly support people who are categorically terrible people and that's not limited to Trump. It's necessary to call it out at times imho, particularly when such posters repeatedly downplay the individual's actions.

Necro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502026#Comment_122502026

Eh… no… I've done my time there 😂

I did think about making myself available to help out again but to be honest I think it doesn't solve anything really as it just means I mod more areas of boards, and CA is a big beast to add to a workload which includes Soccer and Pro Wrestling presently..

Besides, current mods taking up extra work doesn't solve anything really, it's new mods that are needed, in my opinion so the workload is shared more evenly.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502081#Comment_122502081

Scroll up the page where posters have shown examples, or alternatively have a look at the DRP forum, reply times are shocking and very often replies only come once a poster "pesters" for it. There are many appeals started with ZERO replies.

You can claim a lack of resources, I am sure that is an issue but thats a cop out if other admin tasks are being completed.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502021#Comment_122502021

US Politics has long influenced Irish and European politics. Both directly, and even more so, indirectly.

There are a number of active posters on the topic on here who live in the US. I did for the last few years and may be back there again within the next few. I currently still live outside Ireland.

Trying to lessen the quantity of discussion with respect to those topics in here has zero benefit. By all means corral the conversation if it makes it easier to avoid for those with zero interest, but this nonsense of Ireland isn't part of the US is ridiculous.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122501961#Comment_122501961

Yeah, but that stricter charter started to be introduced a long time ago, 18 years +. The transition wasn’t that smooth either. There were countless feedback threads bemoaning these changes and one female mod was vilified on a regular basis. Sound familiar.

osarusan

Nothing will really improve until there are more mods, and more active mods. That is the main hindrance.

That is not meant as any kind of slight towards those with the current responsibility for CA, but notbody can fail to realise that the place is hopelessly undermodded.

I appreciate that Vanilla has fewer tools in comparison to VB, but more eyes on the place means chance that a thread can be viewed in context, means a reported post gets dealt with more quickly, means there (hopefully) is a lower chance of accusations of bias, means that when a reported post is in the grey area, the mod is more likely to know something about a poster, and whether this is a one off or this edgy posting is a typical occurance that needs to be dealt with.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502571#Comment_122502571

Where do you get them from, though? Based on this thread, they'd have to have no interest in Current Affairs and it's probably the forum responsible for most reports on the whole site.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502571#Comment_122502571

It's undermodded because of the GPDR and vexatious trolling by a small undercurrent of users who keep pouring toxicity around the site, attacking mods etc. and then turning around and doing it all over again under new accounts etc., for instance I think a lot of people would know I get namechecked a lot by re-reges still to this day, and that was especially so while I was still a mod of some of the lower traffic forums, and I'm sure I am and was not alone in that targeting over the years by trolls which other retired mods might attest to.

Given the timing of the passage and the enforcement it's hard to really tell if the GPDR or the Alt Right movement, verified political and international troll farms, etc. were the locus of the blame or if it was a combination of such things but it has become a much harder place to have a conversation while assuming many new faces and actors are acting in any semblance of good faith and that's reflected in internet culture at large too. Heck on Facebook not that long ago I was having an otherwise normal conversation about an election issue on a politicians page and one of the people who found my opinion onerous to him thought the best way to reply to that was to dox me, and let it be known they knew my personal address etc., so that's the other facet to it, and in both cases, trolling wins out, on one hand exploiting and attacking the good faith of others, while simultaneously shrouding themselves behind new privacy protections, making the internet a more hostile place that they then turn around and complain is too hostile.

As for vBulletin it's probably not a stretch to say the move to Vanilla was heavily influenced by compliance with the GPDR so I don't think there's a hope of going back to it. The same tools that made it easier to enforce bans and investigate trolling and keep the peace likely were at odds with the new laws.

Modding in CA-IMHO, IMHO, should be done by anonymous modding accounts, given the nature of it and the assumption that no human mod could possibly be impartial to all of the political opinions that fly across it, so to protect them from unreasonable accusations of bias their identities should be protected. That may already be the case, Beasty could be among us (ghasp) but it should be the case with a larger cadre of mods to sort through the noise. 'To fight anons we created anons' (Pacifc Rim theme intensifies).

Arghus

Must be very difficult though to recruit mods for CA though.

It's very busy, relative to the rest of the site, but I'd imagine, that while it is busy it's a part of the site that a lot people don't venture into.

Speaking for myself, I read it occasionally, post very infrequently there and generally avoid it.

I think you'd ideally want mods who know the craic a bit about the context and the nuance of the back and forth between the posters. Good moderation has to be firm and fair, but, there's always going to be a bit of nuance and discretion employed - there has to be, unless you want to replace things with a robotically black and white moderation policy.

And ideally you'd want someone with a bit of knowledge and awareness of the subjects being discussed.

So you'd probably want someone who's a frequent reader of CA threads, aware of the ins and outs, knows the context, but is largely free of overt bias and is objective and consistent.

Do these type of human beings exist?

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502938#Comment_122502938

In a political context, this would mean someone very interested in current affairs, world events and politics but with no opinions. It's an unfairly high standard.

OscarMIlde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502985#Comment_122502985

Perhaps if there were more Mods, people could monitor areas of current areas they are not as passionate about if possible. More Mods anyway would reduce how intense the workload is, give a bit of a break. Squabbles and spats must be more difficult/tedious to moderate if you are burnt out.

osarusan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502829#Comment_122502829

Why would they have to have no interest in Current Affairs? Or as you say later, no opinions?

There's nothing wrong with mods having an interest in and opinions on the content of the forum they are modding.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122503081#Comment_122503081

How else do you ensure a complete lack of bias?

OscarMIlde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122503081#Comment_122503081

As the mod of current affairs he is getting it on all sides from us complaining.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122500354#Comment_122500354

Maybe take a look at this one and similar before it…

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122496241#Comment_122496241

____________________________________

Warned: Drop it. It's a feedback thread. Arguing with other posters to prove a point is not feedback.

osarusan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122503097#Comment_122503097

I don't think you ever can, so why focus on that.

The 'unfairly high standard' you mentioned is something you've come up with which makes recruitment of mods virtually impossible. But I don't believe that is the standard that has previously been applied, and it's not the way it has to be now.

Find posters who post in a coherent way, and are able to engage those with different opinions in a civil manner, and start from there. There are still plenty of those in CA. If all they did as mods was cull some of the most blatantly dickish posts and bad faith posting, that'd go a long way to improving the forum.

The real question is whether they are willing to mod the place.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502829#Comment_122502829

they'd have to have no interest in Current Affairs

Can we take this off the table. It is way more important that mods have the ability to determine context on a thread than to avoid someone being able to be accused of bias.

Someone else said it, more mods will lead to spreading both the load and the impact of individual mods. If people see 2, 3, 4 different mods judging them similarly most will get the message.

Beyond that, the DRP (if applied) could fairly quickly show that bias will be identified if it happens and so should be less likely of happening.

archfi

On the subject of how to ensure mods of CA don't have political leanings which may affect their moderation, well that's impossible.

We would all hope that having political leanings but also the adultness to put aside biases whilst modding is the case 100% of the time, but that's as likely a very silly dream as thinking you can win an argument on a forum on the internet.

However, when seemingly biased/wrong mod decisions are challenged in the correct forum, site users must be assured that there is no circling of the mod wagon (which appears to be the case rightly or wrongly to a substantial amount of users), which leads onto the rules.

• The rules must be clear and simple - not a labyrinth of which some are made up on the spot ie the infamous selective anecdote one!
• Anything that breaks the law - for example actual threats of violence, actual inciting of violence, stalking, defamation, subjudice etc +
• No one should be listened to that takes 'offence' at something unless that post breaks the law/is personal abuse, being offensive isn't against the law. Yet.
• No personal abuse.
• No doxing.

• Simplify the penalties - as suggested, 24hour zero-death-by-pm appeals thread/forum bans→ escalating to 1 week/2 weeks/3 weeks/4 weeks (2 week bans upwards can be appealed to be decided by boards.ie→ site bans for breaking the law (see above) as well as whatever the boards.ie list of siteban offences is, which should be made public and be very clear in definition

• Draft in mods from low post forums to help with CA, helping with the multitude of reports escalating any 'worse' offences to whoever are the CA permanent mods. The extra mods should be asked to seek context when dealing with the many reports - this should have been the case all along but wasn't meaningfully implemented due to mod/volume of reports ratio.

Leg End Reject

Great Post, @archfi.

nachouser

Anonymous mod accounts that don't reply and scrapping DRP is the way to deal with CA.

EmmetSpiceland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122503771#Comment_122503771

No bias, only justice.

suvigirl

In a good example for on thread warnings, a poster quoted one of my posts earlier, when I saw it, I saw a warning on it, so now I won't reply. If there was no warning, I would have replied, causing more unnecessary back & forth.

archfi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122503771#Comment_122503771

Ooh, one of the thanks on your post appears to point at something that probably has support in the admin/boards.ie lair :)

Ezeoul

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122502571#Comment_122502571

Hence my suggestion that instead of waiting for new Mods to volunteer / be appointed to CA, that all currently active CMods, and all of the currently active category Mods be able to "put on their mod hat" and issue (0 point) on-thread warnings on CA where they see persistant rule breaking (e.g. trolling, flame baiting, racism, transphobia, etc), or simply "knock it on the head or take it to PM" where its needed, instead of it just being left to one / two "official" CA mods trying to do it all via poster reports.

Then if they do issue such a warning, they can flag those warnings (with a note to the give more context) to the official CA Mods for further action / review via the report system.

All mods on deck, so to speak.

Big Bag of Chips

Lads... I'm sick of saying it and am now locking the thread to go back and applying warnings. Discussing posters is not feedback.

Actions taken against other posters are not up for discussion. Never have been. There have been enough reminders on this thread for you all to know better.

Big Bag of Chips

Thread reopened. Posters warned and off topic posts deleted.

Can posters please stick to the very basic concept of this forum, and provide feedback on site wide issues?

Anyone unsure of what's expected should read this.

If anyone picks up a second warning on this thread an automatic tempsite ban will be applied.

Leg End Reject

I really like archfi's suggestion of escalating thread/site bans.

24 hrs for first offence, then 1 week, 2 weeks etc. If that was followed, and posters only allowed to appeal once they reached the 2 week stage that would reduce mod load.

If that's a runner on Vanilla, you could then use the suggestion of anonymous mod accounts to stop posters arguing with an individual mod. If that mod account can receive replies by default they could just be ignored.

In reality this approach would only be required in a limited number of forums.

Being "frozen out" from replying with any initial reaction a poster may feel is warranted would allow some reflection or perspective before the poster rejoins the discussion.

Backstreet Moyes

The majority of current affairs participants are not involved in US culture war left versus right.

Their are some people who I would class as right wing and some I would class as left wing.

The far left and far right posters seem to class anyone who is not in line with their views as against them.

I am sure their are plenty of people who could step up to mod the forum.

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122505989#Comment_122505989

I'm not an admin. And it was moved because DRP only covers infractions and forum bans. Your thread never mentioned either of those, just a threadban, so it was moved to the proper place that does cover them, which is Helpdesk. You posted in the wrong forum, it was rightly moved as per the very clear rules.