Feedback thread for PI, RI & Bereavement

I think the thanks function has its (limited) benefits in here, it can indicate what most posters think the "best" advice is, even if they don't post. But I do see your point.

Generally I don't put a lot of stock in thanks, for me I like to think I can stand over my advice even if no one else agrees with it, but it can give you pause for thought.

It's a double edged sword cos I do think there are posters who post whatever they think is popular, "funny" or witty in order to gather thanks, even if it's not nice. And as Neyite says that can set the tone for the rest of the thread. But I think that it's more for the mods to worry about and weed that out as it happens (which we genuinely try to do).

I'm not mad about tough love either. There is a difference between giving advice that the OP needs to hear but might not like, and being mean and dismissive for the sake of it.

Dial Hard wrote: »

Just a thought - should all new threads have to be approved by a mod? It would remove a lot of the "Is this a PI?" "Is this a troll?" stuff.

Also, there was a thread recently that was open for a few days, got deleted for the guts of a week and then suddenly reappeared again with absolutely no comment whatsoever on anything. I know we're not entitled to be privy to *why* mod decisions are made but an acknowledgement that action/intervention has taken place is good practice, no???

Which thread was that? I was modding solo for a bit over the last couple of weeks until recently, so it's possible that it was something Butterfingers16 here did accidentally, or was trying to do or undo :rolleyes: Could you send me a link to it if possible?
Generally, if we have had to interfere with a thread significantly, like deleting multiple posts or something, we will put on a mod note to explain what's been done. Obviously it isn't feasible to do that with more minor actions or the forum would be unreadable, but with things like merging threads etc we will generally put a note.

I can't speak for the other moderators, but I have thought about pre-moderated threads myself and my thinking on it is that we don't really get enough "not for PI" threads to warrant it. Usually a thread that doesn't belong in PI will get moved along elsewhere or closed fairly quickly. I don't know if we would get enough of a benefit from pre-moderation at the expense of posters being able to start threads freely.

If a thread has been started by a troll they don't tend to last that long, but that depends how obvious it is. We try to err on the side of presuming honesty from posters, and typically a troll will give themselves away after a couple of replies or less even if their opening post was plausible.

I'm defo open to other ideas on that but myself I think the current system is what works best long term, even for its drawbacks.

Dial Hard wrote: »

I really think some temp mods need to be tagged in for periods such as the last week or so. I realise it's Christmas and mods have lives outside Boards but the place has gone to the dogs over the Christmas period with the standard of posting.

You do sterling work and I'm genuinely not having a personal pop at anyone but it just seems mad to me that the most sensitive place on Boards essentially gets left unattended for the duration of the holidays. It's incredibly frustrating reporting post after post of risible troll nonsense knowing you're just shouting into the void.

There has been much discussion lately over the influx of questionable posters in recent months and they're essentially running riot at the moment while the cats are away. If it goes on much longer you're going to start losing genuine posters and OPs.

Sorry if all that comes across as an anti-mod rant, it's not, it's frustration at a system which clearly relies too much on too few people. Can admins not step in if they see a particular forum is generating a load of reports and that none of the mods are around?

I can only speak from my perspective, of course, and I do agree with what you’re saying. But I’ve been trying to cover for the local mods and it’s really tricky as PI is modded in a very specific way and it takes a while to get into the swing of it. It’s not quite as easy as, say, the Food forum! Each decision takes a lot longer and that limits how much one person can do.

In terms of temporary mods, it’s simply not possible right now because of the bureaucracy that goes into adding moderators. There are several steps that need to be gone through when giving someone mod powers, and it requires input from local mods, CMods, and admins.

To put things in perspective, perhaps, I’ve only seen one admin be consistently online over the past few weeks. I’m not sure where the others are, but I’m sure they have good reasons for being less visible right now. Unfortunately, that does leave a gap though, and often the things that take people offline can’t be planned for.

In the Soc category, we’re down two CMods right now. I’m the only active CMod left who’s not already a mod of PI, so that only leaves me to step in when needed.

I agree, this past week has been messy in PI and that ideally shouldn’t happen. But it’s more of a systemic issue, and there’s a real limit to what can be done by unpaid volunteers. We are actively looking to add more moderators to PI and hopefully we can learn from this year to try to make sure similar doesn’t happen next year.

Same here. I was sick for the last couple of weeks and through christmas and had a lot going on otherwise, though in hindsight I should have made it clear I wasn't in the headspace for Boards and would be absent. Apologies all. Thanks as well Faith for stepping in of late

I'll come back to this thread later as theres a couple of points I want to reply to properly as well.

I'm sorry for coming back to this so late.

Caranica wrote: »

I've been meaning to post this for ages but having seen a comment posted 5 hours ago that called the op a prostitute while not using that word, it's pushed me over the edge.

The open and veiled misogyny on these supposedly supportive forums of late is mind blowing. Women are automatically cheating, and accused of all sorts if a guy has any doubts. While some of the doubts might be well founded, the language, tone and assumptions have been downright horrible. These fora are supposed to be safe place. They don't feel that way lately.

I realise woodchuck has already addressed this but I just wanted to say I agree with you both. While it appears to be site wide, there has been an increase in the amount of misogynistic drivel bleeding into PI over the last while. Needless to say, no, it's not acceptable.

Sexist language and generalisations about women (or either sex, for that matter) are not on in PI - I like to think that we catch most of these but it can be hard to keep up and there will be posts we miss. The trouble arises where you have an "are they cheating on me?" thread where the OP is male and the "antagonist" in their issue is female. These threads can attract a certain kind of poster, as we have seen.

The trouble I have is this: posters who use sexist language can be modded quite easily. Posters who generalise can be addressed also. But posts which skirt the line by going medieval on the individual lady specifically are harder to tackle - it can be difficult to tell if the poster is genuinely indignant at the individual's behaviour, or if the tone of their post is motivated by their own attitude to women, ie, would they be posting at all if the offender were male. And sometimes it isn't hard to tell, but impossible to use as grounds for a mod action.

If it were a matter of one or two posts like that in a thread, it would be one thing. But where a lot of posters skirt the line in the above way, or you get multiple variations of "Wake up dude, she's definitely cheating on you, and she's probably been at it with multiple lads since day one fapfapfapfap" the thread will take on that tone and it's very difficult to turn it back around - and that kind of wording only hints at the actual slur the poster is trying to imply. As woodchuck says, they strictly speaking haven't broken any rules even though it's clearly not okay.

I'm not offering any of the above as an excuse, to be clear, but to illustrate why it is so hard to tackle on the whole. The problem is one of scale, and of the difficulty of implicitness versus inference in the case of veiled misogyny.

Notwithstanding all the above, I'm going to try to take a tougher line with it and see if there's anything else we can do to deal with it.

HildaOgdenx wrote: »

I know what you mean about being hesitant about being a nuisance. I felt, under my previous usernames that I was in danger of that, so I don't report much anymore apart from what I have mentioned above.

As above, no, you would definitely not be considered a nuisance - so don't be worrying about that. If it happens that there is nothing wrong with a particular reported post, it's fine, it's not seen as wasting time or anything like that

I understand what you mean, genuinely, and this is/was a perennial suggestion in the main feedback thread on Boards, for good reason, and there were (in my view) also good reasons why it's never been adopted.

I'm not against it in principle by any means - if it were workable, I think it would be a good system to have, because of the reasons you mentioned. The main problem is ensuring consistency.

If I respond to some reported posts, it sets up an expectation that others will also get a response. I don't think it would be fair for the mod team to set up that expectation, because we're not in a position to answer all reported posts. Some days we get one or two reported posts, or sometimes none at all. Other days there can be multiple fires to put out and for practical reasons it's just not possible to set aside the time to come up with an acknowledgement, even if it's a one liner, because I suppose in the majority of cases a one-liner wouldn't cover the reason why a post was/wasn't actioned, and it would become a box-ticking exercise, which would be just as frustrating both for the mods and the posters.

Another reason is that mods and posters may have different ideas of what "actionable" means. Yourself or Dial Hard for example may think a post warrants deletion etc, and I might not, and vice versa. If you report a post, and I write back and say "nope, not a problem", I'm setting a guideline that isn't necessarily appropriate to every post of that type and may cause you not to report similar posts in future which do require action. Whereas Neyite or woodchuck may well have disagreed with me and said "Thanks, that's been deleted and the poster has been nuked from orbit". I could have been wrong.

That might sound counter-intuitive but I genuinely think your own judgement is a better metric by which to decide what you report, rather than mine.

The last reason is that a post may warrant action, and it looks like we do nothing about it, whereas we have left it there for "operational reasons", to misuse a term :cool: I don't want to give too much away, but it can sometimes be necessary for us to leave an objectionable post in place for a while in order to establish a if the poster has a pattern which may indicate we are dealing with a sock-puppet, re-reg etc. Now it's very seldom we do that, but there may be a reason we've left a post untouched, which we need to keep a lid on.

I'm really sorry if it seems like I'm shooting that suggestion down, because it's not something I'm against in principle. It's that I don't think it would work as we couldn't ensure consistency with it and that would be just as frustrating and cause its own problems. I do understand why posters would like to see it implemented though, genuinely.

Sometimes, you dont know what to call a thread. If people are having difficulty expressing an issue sometimes its hard to label it.

Can I just say, I thought discussing other people's advice was a faux pas here. Am I wrong in that?

So many threads are descending into posters projecting their own issues into the situation of the thread starter. I get that all advice comes from the personal experience of those giving it but people are drawing conclusions and telling the OP what their situation is to the point that the OP and their issue seems to get drowned out.

No one can know the exact situation the OP is in, but if they're troubled enough to start a thread in personal issues about something, surely the the assumptions and scrutiny shouldnt be so harsh?

Hannibal_Smith wrote: »

So many threads are descending into posters projecting their own issues into the situation of the thread starter. I get that all advice comes from the personal experience of those giving it but people are drawing conclusions and telling the OP what their situation is to the point that the OP and their issue seems to get drowned out.

No one can know the exact situation the OP is in, but if they're troubled enough to start a thread in personal issues about something, surely the the assumptions and scrutiny shouldnt be so harsh?

This is a major, major problem I have with PI in general and it's very difficult to find a middle way. I'm sure I've been guilty of it at times, but I'm not a fan of harshness in advice or the "tough love" approach - however it can be very difficult to moderate, because we don't want to push a certain point of view either, or seem like that's what we're doing. The same goes for projecting your own issues into the thread. I don't want to seem like I'm passing the book, but to a certain extent it has to be up to the OP to take what they need from the thread and try to ignore any negativity that makes its way in, and in every case I hope they do. If I see advice that is unnecessarily unkind I will step in, but I am wary of pushing my own point of view as well.

It's hard to strike a balance - we don't want a thread to boil over into a píssing contest about such-and-such an aspect of the OP's issue, but if every second post is a mod warning that's no good to the OP either, as it has a chilling effect on the thread.

As you've rightly said, anyone posting in PI needs to remember that there is a real person at the start of every thread who has a problem that they're finding hard to figure out on their own, and in many cases may feel that they have no one else to talk to, and so it's not right to come down on them like a tonne of bricks. If there is a kinder way for advice to be put, it should be put like that.