A discussion on the rules.

'The Café' has had the unintended effect of sheltering and perpetuating rubbish imo.

Threads that should be in the main are posted there and posted on there because there's that lower level of moderation, more tolerance of noise.

The conversation appears to fall to the level of the lowest quality available.

'The Greece situation' as an example, is surely 'main forum' worthy, however some of the nonsense posted wouldn't be tolerated in the main forum, and so we can either have the situation where we have duplicate topics discussed across both, or the current setup where the discussion must take place in the 'lower tier'.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Black Menorca

Its a shame to see the main politics section becoming less and less used.

Phoebas

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

There may be poor quality posts in both places, but many of the threads in the Café have turned into not much more than bad tempered slanging matches (the SF one, the DO'B and the IW ones in particular).

The Irish Water issue, for example, is deserving of a well moderated discussion, where you can post without being accused of being a shill, or a blueshirt, or a shinnerbot etc.

K-9

Well we wouldn't welcome the bot accusations here. If people want to discuss those topics here by all means start some threads. The cafe is for a looser style of discussion so we can divert posters there if there's any bother.

K-9

K-9 wrote: »

Well we wouldn't welcome the bot accusations here. If people want to discuss those topics here by all means start some threads. The cafe is for a looser style of discussion so we can divert posters there if there's any bother.

Each and every thread eventually becomes a looser discussion though.

Are we supposed to have duplicate threads?

K-9

Deleted User wrote: »

Each and every thread eventually becomes a looser discussion though.

Are we supposed to have duplicate threads?

The cafe is separate, has its own mods and standards.

We do allow a certain amount if leeway but things like calling others bots are specifically covered in our charter.

conorh91

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Maybe on the quieter threads in Politics Cafe… and many of them could probably have survived in this forum.

The busy threads on that section are car crash: the Shinner megathread, Irish Water, and Greece? I can't read them. I can scarcely solve the bumbling syntax. And I'm a fan of AH.

If a poster has an interesting fact to share, or a coherent point, he's wasting his time in there. The cafe is a cauldron of emotion and lampoonery without any need for evidence. This sort of exchange is a popular pursuit in a pub. It can be fun, it can be tedious. But one thing's for sure: a serious forum will always be sedate in comparison.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

alaimacerc

K-9 wrote: »

Well we wouldn't welcome the bot accusations here. If people want to discuss those topics here by all means start some threads. The cafe is for a looser style of discussion so we can divert posters there if there's any bother.

What about a "divers matters pertaining to water policy" thread? There's stuff to be said in that area, and if it could be said without the endless "you're a bot/fascist/liar/shill/he-said-you-said/ah yes but/HSE!" merry-go-round, it could be said in a couple of orders of magnitude fewer posts.

FreudianSlippers

The Cafe is a filed experiment which, unfortunately, needs to remain open forever - if it were to shut, we'd end up with the trolls and bots coming into Politics (proper).

I suggest people vote with their feet and ignore it for attempts at serious discussions and focus on this forum. In that regard, I'd agree that a proper adult water charges thread should be kept in Politics.

johnnyskeleton

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

The Cafe is a filed experiment which, unfortunately, needs to remain open forever - if it were to shut, we'd end up with the trolls and bots coming into Politics (proper).

I suggest people vote with their feet and ignore it for attempts at serious discussions and focus on this forum. In that regard, I'd agree that a proper adult water charges thread should be kept in Politics.

Want to start one off?

FreudianSlippers

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Want to start one off?

A few of us have been discussing it - I'm not sure if there was an impression that all these threads were being moved to the Cafe - if we have a go-ahead then I'm sure someone will.

Dan_Solo

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

The Cafe is a filed experiment which, unfortunately, needs to remain open forever - if it were to shut, we'd end up with the trolls and bots coming into Politics (proper).

K-9 wrote: »

We do allow a certain amount if leeway but things like calling others bots are specifically covered in our charter.

Time for some secret "moderation" again?

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Dan_Solo

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

He also thinks there is a conspiracy in this regard.

Yes, certain posters are regularly excused from moderation or they get the "secret" moderation which amounts to the same thing. But I guess it's OK to say that as I'm not naming anybody. ;-)

K-9

Mod:

This isn't the Politics Café forum, so I'm not comfortable with it being used to call posters there trolls, bots or whatever, that's unfair on regulars there. The cafe has its own style, if that isn't for you fine, as suggested start threads here and us mods will moderate as per the rules here.

Obviously the cafe will be mentioned for comparison purposes and stuff like that but it's totally unfair on users and cafe mods to discuss it here, they don't really have a right to reply here.

Basically, What happens in the cafe, stays in the cafe.

K-9

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Yes, certain posters are regularly excused from moderation or they get the "secret" moderation which amounts to the same thing. But I guess it's OK to say that as I'm not naming anybody. ;-)

That was dealt with at length in the site Feedback thread, not to your satisfaction, but then we don't always get what we want in life. This site has maybe 500 or 600 mods and it is a non runner. Most people get on with it and stop going on and on about it.

Mod: I'm closing this for 24 hours for people to calm down and have a think about what they are posting. Very few forums on here have open continuous feedback threads. It's here to facilitate people to voice their opinions on moderation constructively, like permabear above.

K-9

Ok, back open again to discuss the rules of the politics (general) forum ie. not the cafe or sitewide noderation.

Streamlining the forum has been raised again and it's back on the agenda. I'll try and get a push on it again.

I would say as regards stricter moderation pre crash days, a big criticism of politics was that it a bit scary for the non political anoraks to post in or air opinions. I'd hope we could be a less stuffy place in that regard but still have a good standard. Sometimes an op might not be of the standard expected but would have potential to develop. I'd prefer to see the regulars here contribute to the thread rather than move it to the cafe if possible.

Point taken about closer liaising with the cafe mods.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I would say as regards stricter moderation pre crash days, a big criticism of politics was that it a bit scary for the non political anoraks to post in or air opinions. I'd hope we could be a less stuffy place in that regard but still have a good standard.

It worked on a few principles in the old days. 1) No political discussion anywhere else, just in the main forum. 2) Very tight moderation of posts and topics. 3) Low posting volume meant that 1) and 2) could actually work and things didn't spiral out of control in 20 minutes when the mods weren't around.

As posting volume increased the above stopped working well. The big problem I saw over the years was that it was really, really hard to bring a thread back on course if it got derailed badly into some idiotic nonsense and threads could get derailed far quicker and to a much greater extent than in the old days before a mod got to it. The second issue was a very large uptick of not bad enough to sanction but still very inane contributions from people. It made reading threads on here a case of wading through dozens of ****e posts to find a handful of interesting ones buried in there somewhere.

If you raise the standard very high you might get serious threads but you'll drive out a lot of your traffic and I don't know if enough serious minded posters are around these days to generate enough different points of view. You're also creating a ton of work for yourself unless you do something like an access system.

K-9

With a lower volume of posts these days I think it could be done, though I don't know if we'll ever get back to 6/7 years ago. I do think there's a gap there outside of AH, the cafe, politics.ie and the facebook/twitter generation.

Hopefully we can get the streamlining completed and us mods can work on refining the charter a bit. I do think the cafe can be used to our advantage as we can point people not interested, or not capable of posting here, towards there.

Hopefully we can add another body or two to the mod team to help out.

The guide to posting chart posted by nesf all those years ago might need some dusting down and sprucing up a bit!

nesf

I'd take a cleaver to the charter and get rid of almost all of it, especially the specific rules. Right now the thing is unreadable with a fair amount of effort even to someone who wrote a good deal of it (or what it was reworded from) and you're better off with a few simple rules and moderate "local situations" as individual cases and not try and make them fit into some grand framework that starts to resemble a beginning to a book of law.

I think you should be able to boil it down to 5-7 simple, broad bullet points and leave any specifics to the threads/situations themselves. I'd also ditch the banned terms list and just moderate off the aim/tone/intention of the post, if the term was being used to troll just moderate on that basis not the use of the word. I've come around to the view that if I can't in a couple of sentences explain how to behave in a forum (or similar) to you then my rule system is too complicated to work well.

/2c

Nodin

nesf wrote: »

I'd take a cleaver to the charter and get rid of almost all of it, especially the specific rules. Right now the thing is unreadable with a fair amount of effort even to someone who wrote a good deal of it (or what it was reworded from) and you're better off with a few simple rules and moderate "local situations" as individual cases and not try and make them fit into some grand framework that starts to resemble a beginning to a book of law.

I think you should be able to boil it down to 5-7 simple, broad bullet points and leave any specifics to the threads/situations themselves. I'd also ditch the banned terms list and just moderate off the aim/tone/intention of the post, if the term was being used to troll just moderate on that basis not the use of the word. I've come around to the view that if I can't in a couple of sentences explain how to behave in a forum (or similar) to you then my rule system is too complicated to work well.

/2c

I'd leave in the Dublin Regulation thing. It's a never ending torment otherwise.

nesf

Nodin wrote: »

I'd leave in the Dublin Regulation thing. It's a never ending torment otherwise.

Warn once, link to Dublin Regs. If they repeat the argument ban and forget about them.

Godge

Nodin wrote: »

I'd leave in the Dublin Regulation thing. It's a never ending torment otherwise.

I don't think the Dublin Regulation is as much of a problem as the repeated misleading claims that the Irish and Greek bailouts were primarily to bail out German and French banks.

It is infuriating to see the same mistruths repeated time and again (often by the same posters) despite the numerous times it has been explained and clarified.

Nodin

Godge wrote: »

I don't think the Dublin Regulation is as much of a problem as the repeated misleading claims that the Irish and Greek bailouts were primarily to bail out German and French banks.
..........

That's because its covered under the rules.

Godge

Nodin wrote: »

That's because its covered under the rules.

Well yes, the Dublin Regulation is covered by the rules.

However, other persistent lies get told. Apart from the "German banks getting the bailout money" lie, there has been the "there were no public service pay cuts" lie, which persisted here for a couple of years.

A serious politics discussion board that allows such persistent mistruths lacks credibility.

K-9

I can remember giving a very strong warning about no pay cuts at one stage. Continuously ignoring facts posted is covered in the charter, there's a specific rule, plus soapboxing would cover it.

The German and French banks dun it is a bit harder to act on, especially as it's so widely accepted in the media, in public and online, and rarely challenged.

The Dublin Regulation part of the charter isn't really aimed at something like that, it's there to stop the "how come the Africans don't stop in a neighbouring country, France, London, where ever stuff.

Tbh I'm not sure if we need the Dublin Regulation part any more, soapboxing despite contrary evidence would cover it.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I can remember giving a very strong warning about no pay cuts at one stage. Continuously ignoring facts posted is covered in the charter, there's a specific rule, plus soapboxing would cover it.

The German and French banks dun it is a bit harder to act on, especially as it's so widely accepted in the media, in public and online, and rarely challenged.

The Dublin Regulation part of the charter isn't really aimed at something like that, it's there to stop the "how come the Africans don't stop in a neighbouring country, France, London, where ever stuff.

Tbh I'm not sure if we need the Dublin Regulation part any more, soapboxing despite contrary evidence would cover it.

This is one of those things that's easier if you are taking a hard line on things. If someone refuses to stop uttering demonstrably and absolutely false claims then you just ban them, end of story. Instead of dozens of yellow and red cards you just cut it off at the beginning.

Where it isn't a simple case of clear facts (e.g. not like the Dublin Regs) you just let the posters debate it amongst themselves. Your job is to cut out the clearly false stuff in that kind of situation, nothing more.