Site is a graveyard - How can boards save itself? [Threadbanned users in 1st post]

I think people eventually realise that no one ever changes their mind about anything as a result of a stranger’s opinion on a message board. I’ve never changed my mind on a single thing as a result of all my years here.

I did, wholly and irreversibly, around same sex adoption.

Said that I was unsure that it was in the best interest of the child, for societal issues that child would encounter.

I was, politely yet forcibly, given reams of fact checked research into why I was wrong and that led to me completely changing my viewpoint.

Edit: completely coincidentally this popped up as a "memory" post on Facebook

If moderation was heavy enough to be complained about back in 2006 when this was one of irelands biggest websites then it's not the cause of current receding numbers.

Nothing lasts forever. The world moves on. Boards will eventually just be another casualty like Digg, ask Jeeves and MySpace. I'm amazed it's lasted as long as it has.

I agree about Reddit, but even at its height of popularity I found the after hours forum on this site to be as bad a cesspit.

I never understood how people could get so invested in emotional arguing with strangers on the internet.

I get the whole point of ‘don’t be a dick’ - that is sage advice, but I would also say that there are some who should stop looking for ways to be offended on their own behalf and on behalf of others.

In some ways the site has gotten better. There used to be a forum where total dorks and jobsworth dweebs would go around measuring the length, width and image size of posters’ signatures and reporting them if they were a pixel too big. This really used to happen.

The basic rule of "Don't be a dick" still stands.

But does it also apply to mods? Because I've seen some mods behaving like absolute dicks and not just on the forums they moderate.

Surely mods should be expected to behave in a manner that upholds the standards they are supposed to enforce on the rest of us?

Aside from that, as already stated, my biggest issue with the moderation on boards is the hit and miss inconsistency of how it is done.

Some posts/posters warned or sanctioned on thread while others saying the same thing or behaving worse in the same thread, go completely ignored by the mods.

It's frustrating to the point of giving up on some forums completely.

I think he lost interest very soon after starting, if he ever had any interest that is.

People complaining about moderation are like opposing fans at a sports event, they all give out about the ref.

It's the same with complaining it's gone too right wing, the other side are complaining it's gone too left wing.

The two week outage for the move to the new platform was a killer.

Soccer used to be a great forum for the likes of myself who don't follow a team but are generally interested.

Now it's a dead zone, lost, with nothing but team super threads.

Other sports forums like GAA have dried up.

In GAA you used to have a match thread for every game from the quarter finals onwards, now a single championship thread is sufficient.

I suppose it's just the way social media is going.

The tech specific forums are still good though for getting questions answered.

But things like Current Affairs is just full of cranks.

Nothing brings the place back to life more than discussing its imminent death.

It would be great if there were enough mods to provide feedback but there's not enough, and they're volunteers.

Boards struggled for mods when I was a mod/cat mod 6 or 7 years ago, I can only imagine the difficulties now. Hard enough to get through the reports without having to justify the action either way.

I don't bother reporting posts anymore, but I did appreciate the time posters took to report genuine problem posts.

I can't even use most sub reddits as I can never get my karma high enough. I usually post about blackpill incel related topics so it is very easy to rack up the down votes. Reddit is the perfect example of an echo chamber as they only allow views that are popular.

this is an excellent post which really explains succinctly the problem with boards.

The charter in CA really needs to be updated really because most bans are at the whim of mods.

Anyone who is a regular and not biased can see the bias towards certain posters.

Probably the best one was when people on the less favorable side were warned about talking about Biden in a Biden thread while the more favorable side kept on talking about Trump.

" In at least 50% of the cases a moderator will decide no action is needed."

You see this is interesting and whilst it may only be a generalisation, it implies that in 50% of cases a moderator does intervene in some way. So the tactic by some of reporting posts is a valid one, you get a 1 in 2 'success' rate. Given that many posts are not reported and people just let them slide, it also implies that this is not a very efficient way of monitoring.

Obviously only certain people are privy as to who are serial reporters. It must be possible to generate reports of a posters reporting history.

FWIW, there are clearly forums where very little moderation is required. If I were to suggest an improvement, it would to assign a particular mod to contentious threads as they arise in AH/CA or elsewhere. Let them follow it but not participate in it and adjudge whatever actions are needed on the basis of the thread as a whole and the charter and with little or no input from reports. I'm fully aware and appreciate a lot of work is done on a voluntary basis. However the number of threads that are contentious and long running are not that great in number. This I think would be fairer in the round. As it is, it's impossible to express quite valid, every day and reasonable opinions on some threads without censure.