The slow death of forums *see OP for Admin warning and update 28/02/18*

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

Oh will you ever stop it!

I closed the thread because I judged it to be getting too far fro discussion into arguments. I dealt with the backlog of reported posts while I completed some paper work, fed the kids and had a bite to eat. Oh yeah, i also compleyed some time sensitive work as well but in future i shall point out to the appropriate authorities that your criteria vastly exceeds theirs.

Sorry if it doesn't fit into your criteria of life, I shall endeavour to do my utmost in future to conform to your idealised criteria of modding.

Perhaps you could set out the exact criteria and actions required in future to salve your discomfort and we can discuss them in a mature manner here before we adopt the entire lot as they obviously are the only criteria that matter in the Universe. It's not like anyone could have different criteria or objectives to yours.

I am sooooooo looking forward to hearing your obviously superlative contribution.

First of all I'd just like to point out the irony that if I had responded to another posted in this manner and in a different thread, I'd have been carded for sure. And I wouldn't have argued with the legitimacy of that.

All I'm suggesting is that the routine locking of discussions when mods judge them to be "getting out of hand" is rather unique to Boards and is very rare on other forums, where a certain amount of disorder during the gap between reporting and moderating is tolerated for the sake of allowing a more free-flowing conversational atmosphere, and I (and I suspect others) find that a far more enjoyable forum format. That's all. I wasn't personally attacking you as an individual mod, this is Boards' entire moderational culture and has been for years (essentially, erring on the side of caution rather than erring on the side of facilitating ongoing conversation). I only cited that thread as one example of this happening, because it was the most recent such example I could think of off the top of my head. On most other forums, temporary thread locks like these simply don't happen at all - if a thread is locked, it's locked permanently because it really has gone off the deep end. If it's in the process of going off the deep end, the mods moderate as they can but just accept in the meantime that sometimes, ongoing conversations fall below standards and that that's ok from time to time as long as it's properly dealt with by the mods when they get a chance. On Boards, threads are "temporarily locked for review" - sometimes for hours or several days - absolutely all the time, it's an extremely frequent occurrence.

Boards micromanages, in that there's a culture here of not even allowing the risk of a few minutes of potential disorder if the alternative is stifling debate. Most other forums seem to take the opposite view, at least most other forums that I've personally been part of over the years - that it's preferable to take the risk of occasional rule breaking not being moderated as quickly as it should, for the sake of not shutting down discussion altogether.

If I could offer an analogy, it's like the concept of "advantage" in rugby, wherein sometimes when a foul has been committed, it is temporarily let slide so that the game can continue flowing if the non-rule breaking team seem to be in a good position. The foul is then called in and dealt with subsequently without disrupting an ongoing moment of play.

You don't have to agree with me that this is the better way to run a forum, hell you can even dispute that this is the way most forums are run and that Boards is a total outlier when it comes to micromanagement, but it'd be nice if you could, to talk like a mod for a second, attack the post rather than the poster

Zoey Famous Aftershave wrote: »

Not at all. You have to read them all and are subject to a three month ban if you scroll past them.

Discodog wrote: »

Just read through pages & pages of pro & anti chat posts. I always thought that I could simply scroll down the page & ignore the threads that I am not interested in

I forget who said this, but someone once replied to a thread bashing a particular band with "Not being able to not listen to a band you don't like must be a genuine burden, for which you have my sympathies. I mean, right now, I'm literally not listening to thousands of bands I don't like. My evening would be quite ruined if, like you, I had to listen to all of them."

Adalynn Quaint Fossil wrote: »

That aside my personal experience of the higher ups was appalling. A few years ago a poster followed me around from thread to thread harrassing me and accusing me of cheating. The poster clearly was mentally unwell but although I followed protocol and reported the posts instead of retaliating on thread, I received a message from an admin telling both of us if he recieved one more reported post from either of us he would site ban the both of us.

What the actual f*ck? :eek::eek::eek:

Boom_Bap wrote: »

Can I ask that you not use the word 'snowflake' twice in the same sentence please. It offends me.

This wouldn't be a problem if not for the absolute scourge of comma overuse and full stop underuse. :mad:

_Dara_ wrote: »

There seems to be more posts hand-wringing about the "snowflake PC brigade" than people posting who fit that description.

That's always been the case.

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I would like to see a way of getting users to use a bit of common sense and avoid entering into discussions that may offend them if the discussion goes against their point of view.

If the discussion is contentious, then robust expressions will clearly be on display (I am not talking about personal abuse of course), if you're too easily offended, then you simply shouldn't be joining that particular discussion.

The eternally offended and particularly the eternally offended by the offended are tragically poor judges of their own levels of tolerance.

El Caballo wrote: »

When everything is political, nothing is objective

People are so quick to throw out political labels these days that they'd almost judge you by which urinal you piss in.

Middle pisser eh?