Dispute with mod

Wezz

I've seen some modding by Beasty that made me wonder if he/she was on some kind of power trip but seeing the response earlier in the thread I realise I was quick to judge.

But with respect to the mod team, no one should be in a position where they have to stay up into the early hours of the morning to trawl through reports I wouldn't do that for my paid employment, I certainly wouldn't be doing it for free for a site that seems to give nothing back in return.

There seems to be very few mods compared to other sites also relying on volunteers and that doesn't do the site any favours.

The_Macho_Man

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122748836#Comment_122748836

I used to post on boards until about 2012 and I am absolutely shocked at how much the standard of posting, and the general intelligence of some of the posters, has plummeted since then. Genuinely it’s like the entire country’s water supply has been poisoned with lead.

Rooks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749011#Comment_122749011

I think it's the Twitter effect. That app has taught the general public that having a good argument or being factual doesn't matter when you can make a snide remark and run off.

The_Macho_Man

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749061#Comment_122749061

I think it’s more like the echo chamber effect from curated feeds on Twitter etc.

“Approved views” I mean what a load of paranoid tosh.

o1s1n

<Snip: Do not discuss moderation on thread>

I do think though that it's in no way being perpetrated a left wing 'woke' clique in the moderator forum (as some would like to think) and more just a lack of consistency / oversight.

We're all guilty of looking for patterns to explain things. It's easy to get sanctioned a few times and think you're being targeted when it's probably just coincidental. (Or you've just got a posting style that's a bit too spicy)

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122748614#Comment_122748614

I thought one was asking a question laden with implication and designed to stir things up, and the other was a tongue in cheek response....

Agent Coulson

Genuine questions here,

How many active mods and admins are actually left on the site?

What is considered active once day logging in once a week logging etc.

Does the owner of the site have any real plans for the site other than just about keeping the lights on.

Does the owner of the site or at the very least the one paid employee have at least a bi annaully check in meeting with the admins and mods asking for the State of the Union on Boards.ie?

EmmetSpiceland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749140#Comment_122749140

I guess it all depends on how you view the “approved views”.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749208#Comment_122749208

It's hard to answer this question.

We have a lot of mods who are active, but I would say the majority of mods have to do little-to-no mod work, and many only have to do administrative style stuff (e.g. closing/moving threads opened in the wrong forum, merging threads, pinning threads).

Most of the difficult mod work comes from only a handful of forums, typically CA, AH and then a few of the major sport forums. Outside of CA, these forums are pretty well resourced with mods who are active.

CA is, by a massive margin, the biggest workload on this site. Not only is it the most work, it's also the hardest work.

It should come as no surprise that not all mods are equal and the bar for modding CA is quite high. This is not because we have notions or anything, it's cause we can see what it takes to mod that forum. Mods that are approved to moderate one forum may not be a good fit to mod CA.

With this in mind, finding people to mod CA is hard. Finding people who we believe are capable of modding CA, but who also WANT to do it, is even harder. We added one new mod to CA this week, we're still looking for more.

On the question about check-in meetings, the admins are in regular contact with Mike. We aren't involved in strategic decisions about Boards or anything like that, but we do bring attention to things we think the office need to be aware of and vice-versa.

Dan Steely

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749208#Comment_122749208

Not saying it is the case but it does look like it's a case of the owner saying "have at it lads, as long as I get my €X pm."

Markus Antonius

Why not introduce some form of automation? I.e if a post gets reported 5x times then the post gets redacted and users will have to actively click on it to see the content. If it gets reported 10x times it gets removed for review or altogether and user gets automatic 1 day ban etc. The issue people have is getting ban-hammered when there isn't necessarily any clear infringement.

This would free up more time for the more crucial modding tasks.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749562#Comment_122749562

I don't know if this is possible but if it was and people knew about it, they'd abuse it.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749545#Comment_122749545

I sincerely doubt that this place makes a profit.

Arghus

I feel like we may have crossed the Rubicon - this is the first long running feedback thread that I have read where the main issue with moderation being the lack of it is finally to the fore.

Having said that, I don't know how you solve a problem like recruiting mods for CA: it sounds like a full time job, but without any pay and constant grief.

Something ancapailldorcha said in an above post, about how a decade ago they were happy to fly over and stay in a boardsies house after a night out, but now they'd be worried about letting people know where they live - that says a lot about where the Internet has gone in general in a decade and a half.

Flaneur OBrien

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749603#Comment_122749603

I'm part of a "fan club" of a musical artist on Facebook. This summer he played his first concert in a long time, and people from the group, met up, stayed in each others houses, hung out for the weekend, etc. and they had as a whole, not met each other previously.

Now, this Facebook group is quite heavily moderated, as much as boards once was.

So, I don't believe it's where the internet has gone in general, but it's about where people have allowed their own spaces to go.

ElitesTeam

Mods for CA are heavily biased Harris supporters and ban pro Trump at any chance they get. Evident from their posting history

Arghus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749615#Comment_122749615

It's probably a case of six of one and half dozen of the other.

I think the Internet has become angrier in the last decade, society has become angrier - it's not that surprising IMO that boards reflects that, I think you can't keep all the hate and anger out of the place when people are bombarded with it in the media and elsewhere all day long.

And also, it's probably easier to keep a lid on things in a closed group on Facebook where everyone shares the same central interest - not as easy in a catch all big tent, free to access forum like boards.

Of course, boards has made some bad decisions - the changeover is something the site hasn't recovered from and probably never will, but it was obviously made to spare money and resources and the site doesn't seem flush on either count there.

Big Bag of Chips

A small niche Facebook group using people's real names and photos is a far cry from a 30 year old discussion forum with hundreds of thousand's of anonymous posters and millions of posts.

The two can't be compared.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749637#Comment_122749637

Can you cite a favourable post about Kamala Harris by any CA mod? Just one?

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749637#Comment_122749637

Your claims don't stand up to any scrutiny.

Who are these CA mods? Because, firstly, I can't recall any actual posts from the CA mods in US politics thread, going back several years… so I don't know how you can make that out.

Secondly, there are multiple posts on this thread from those critical of Trump listing recent sanctions.

Thirdly, look at the ground rules for the Harris v Trump thread on CA. If anything, those rules are favourable to Trump.

So, not evident at all.

suvigirl

Am I the only one that thinks the new forum ban is a mistake? Anyone receiving a ban, should be thead banned, not forum banned. It will drive more posters away.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749649#Comment_122749649

I blame social media for most of this, particularly Twitter/X. Facebook is basically a relic for older people but Twitter/X has done arguably the most to foster a "own the libs (or whoever)" mentality with its tight character limit. The fact that it was purchased by a pro-apartheid techbro to promote fascism bodes poorly.

A decade ago or so, Facebook's feeds would show stuff from your friends and this place was a lot busier and nicer. There was plenty of rancor but much that was good to go with it. Now, Facebook just shows ads and CA is just full of angry people. A few weeks back, I started posting in the Harris/Trump thread for some reason and now wish I hadn't bothered.

It's hard to see a way out, particularly with an absentee owner.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749677#Comment_122749677

My understanding is that thread bans were getting difficult to manage as Vanilla does not provide a mechanism to enforce them. Then there was grey area of posters banned from a thread but then discussing similar topic on a different thread, which makes thread ban largely irrelevant.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122748599#Comment_122748599

our tools (my experience was pre vanilla) at least below the admin level never unmasked email addresses. We never saw doxxing information. The tools could still give us pretty good comparisons between accounts based on a confidence to see if two users eg. Posted from the same IP and relative times for instance (IPs were also masked and given labels eg IP#1 IP#2)

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749723#Comment_122749723

There was never a mechanism to enforce threadbans. Ever. You told the poster not to post in a specific thread and sanctioned them if they did. It relied heavily on reports and the mod's memory.

Arghus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749696#Comment_122749696

Sadly, I agree with you.

It's a pity because boards was once great, even now, despite all its failings, is pretty good and if it goes altogether it will be a big loss as there's no comparable Irish site and resource quite like it.

But there seems to be no real future plan in place, just a hope that'll keep ticking over for an indeterminate period before obselence.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749637#Comment_122749637

so in the tank for Harris they banned mentioning Trump’s an adjudicated rapist in the election thread. No wait a minute,

Big Bag of Chips

Posters are forum banned for a day, or two, or three. It's to give time to cool off and come back.

Threadbans were a mess. Posters banned from one thread popping up in another, and then another. With mods having to chase them around like whack-a-mole

A short forum ban works better than multiple thread bans. And is easier for the moderation team to manage.

GreeBo

Stupid busy threads/fora should have a user post limit per day/hour. It would stop certain posters spamming threads which usually results in back and forth bickering leading to mod intervention.

If people had to budget their posts they might think before posting nonsense.
Fewer posts means less mod intervention and, in all likelihood would improve the content on in the site which would encourage more people to post more.

drunkmonkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122749661#Comment_122749661

The warnings/bans do seem a little biased, not going into specifics as it's not the place, Rip somone on the right maybe get a 1 pointer, rip somone on the left a 3 pointer. You can only assume bias or different mods have different views when pulling out the spanky paddle. Some parts of Boards are definatley left leaning. Kamala thread posts 100% confirms that.

It surprised me earlier when a poster said they get grief from their trans friends for posting on boards, I would have assumed the opposite as it was a pretty safe space from some of the threads i've read in the past.