Weather Forum Zero Tolerance Policy

DOCARCH wrote: »

+1 to this.

Su, I too really hope you reconsider.

+1

A suggestion might be more mods to help deal with the trolls? For such a busy section of Boards I think 3 mods is too few.

Ideally, from experience, you need 2 different sorts of Mods. You need Mods that understand and have good knowledge of the subjects covered in the forum, and they are essential to make sure that there are no misleading or incorrect posts from a factual aspect.

Equally important are Mods that are in many respects "lurkers", in that they are not neccessarily highly active as core posters into the forum, but they have an interest and awareness of the subject, and their role is to act as the first line of defence against the trolls and timewasters that will turn up on a regular basis. Any forum that can get spikes in activity like this one needs quite a few, so that there is cover pretty much round the clock. These are also hopefully the Mods that can defuse "flame wars" between contributors before they get out of hand, and they can happen at any time, and depending on the participants, they can be very heated, and possibly damaging and can take a lot of work by the Mods to keep under control. Some of the software used to drive bulletin boards can be quite difficult to manage in the background, and time consuming, as not only do the "offenders" have to be dealt with, what's been done has to be documented to some degree so that everyone else knows what's been happening, and why, and what's been done about it, so that there's consistency across the board, it's by no means a case of just deleting an inappropriate post and that's the end of the matter.

Been there, done that, shredded the T shirt (Not on boards.ie) and when they happen, it's not fun, especially if there's an agenda in the background, a serious flame war can and has destroyed a forum, and that is not good for anyone.

What also has to be remembered is that a large forum such as boards.ie has a commercial operator who has a large bill to pick up for the hardware, software and related operating costs, and that has to be covered somehow, either by advertising in related areas, or by subscription costs, and there is no advantage or benefit gained by that operator if any of the fora on their service gets a bad reputation, for whatever reason, so there will be times when the "commercial imperative" has to be considered in relation to forum activity, which can have all sorts of implications for the day to day operation of the forum. The users may or may not have considered that, to many users, their only involvement is as casual participants in an area of interest, and the fact that their enjoyment has costs involved may not actually occur to them, so the balance between what is acceptable and what is not is sometimes not always quite a simple as it may first appear.

In that respect, I admire the boards.ie operation, the model appears to work very well, and there is a very high level of freedom on most fora that I have seen, and there does not appear to be any "severe" moderation, even in potentially risky areas like after hours.

So, to those that may not have ever given it any thought, be thankful for the facility we have here, from experience, and observation over a long period of time, Boards.ie is a well run and very receptive operation that we need to be very thankful for, not all forum operators are as open and accomodating as this one certainly appears to be.

Secondly, be thankful that we have had moderators that understand the subject of the forum, as they are the ones that keep it on track, and give it the "flavour" that it has, and remember, moderating is not a paid post.

Last, and this is possibly the most important aspect of what I'm getting at in this post, when you're posting to this or any other forum, before you press the Enter or send key, read what you've typed, and think about it.

Does it contribute to the thread?
Does it make any comment about another member that might be offensive?
If you received an E-mail containing any of the comments or thoughts you've expressed, would you be offended by it?

If the answer to any of the above is Yes, then you might be better not to press the Enter key to send the message, while messages can be edited, or deleted, a moment's thought can be better than a lot of time and effort trying to retract a comment, or undo the damage that it's caused.

Remember too that Moderators are also human, and may be doing their moderating work, (and it is work, even though it's voluntary) at the end of a long working day, with stresses and pressures that we may know nothing about.

I've seen and watched what's happened in here in recent weeks with sadness, in that I could see the beginnings of pressure on moderators, and that's never a good scenario.

What should be happening is that the regular posters here need to be expressing a loud vote of thanks to both the forum operators and the moderators of the various forums for the very high quality service that we are able to participate in at no cost. This service is every bit as good and as encompassing as the service that was provided years ago by services like Compuserve (yeah maybe I'm giving my age away here ) and that service was not free, far from it, and was moderated in a much stronger way, and with many more restrictions and rules that are in evidence here.

Where this goes from here, and the way it develops is down to all of us. It's down to the overall moderator to decide if the weather section is worth the time and aggravation that it's causing at the moment, which will in some respects be a cold hard commercial decision, and have very little to do with the actual content of the forum.

It's down to the board moderator, that person has to now make sure that there are enough moderators available that the workload does not become opressive on any of them.

It's down to the membership. If someone is trolling, or posting inappropriate content, or doing anything that causes you concern, first, consider reporting it. Second, if you don't report it, consider if it's even appropriate to respond to. As was said earlier in the thread, and it bears repeating DONT FEED THE TROLLS, all it does is encourage them to come back again, and the community doesn't need the problems that are caused by trolls

Sorry it was a long post, but it's important, this isn't just about the loss of a moderator, it's about the survival of the weather forum on boards, in that if it gets out of control, for whatever reason, and becomes more of an irritation above a certain level, then the overall boards.ie operator will make a decision that will not be popular with many people, but that decision will be a cold commercial decision that is based on the overall viability of boards.ie

As a clarification, just so that there's no misunderstanding, in that I may be sailing close to the wind with this post, I have no involvement with any aspect of boards.ie or the forums other than as a normal user of the service, my comments here are motivated by trying to prevent a possible direction that I have seen other forums go down, and in that case, I was heavily involved as a moderator for a number of years, and despite serious efforts by the moderating team, after one particular event, the forum operator pulled the plug on the section, and the work and time involved in setting up an alternative was very significant, time consuming and expensive.

What we have here is good, flexible, friendly (most of the time) and accomodating, and does not impose any major restrictions on us. It would be in all of our interests to keep it that way, and some of that is up to us collectively.