Moderation level

ez4u · **#41**

I would agree... for some definition of 'discussion'.

Boidhre · **#42**

ez4u wrote:

I would agree... for some definition of 'discussion'.

There's a tendency for things to deteriorate into a witch-hunt and for some people to use it as an opportunity to grind long held axes (look at any KGS thread and this is something I've seen on almost all forums I've been involved with). Still, it can be fairly useful once you take out the noise and no feedback being taken can lead to a wide gap between admin and user which is rarely healthy.

moyoaji · **#43**

Boidhre wrote:

Ok, I've seen at least a dozen people advertise go lessons on here without issue. So what's the exact problem with this one?

Perhaps the rule is that anyone who posts about teaching must be an established member? (If so that should be clearly stated in the TOS.) This was a post made in January where the same thing happened: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=9782

No one complained when it was just a random 4d player who got his thread shut down. So is this really about how the admin was enforcing the rule or is it about who the admin was shutting down?

I do, however, find it dishonest that the admin in both cases cut out the end of the TOS to make their case better. I hadn't noticed that before, but that does seem questionable. When tchan made note of my post he included the entire rule. Shouldn't that always be the policy?

All this said, I agree with Boidhre that it is good for the community to discuss moderation openly and we mustn't allow this to become "us vs. them" in any way. Just a couple of days ago there was a long string of spam posted all over the forum and a mod was nice enough to clean that up. They do a good job in general and I think we all need to remember that.

RobertJasiek · **#44**

Uberdude wrote:

if the advertisement is for your own product = TRUE
it is Go-related = TRUE
it's not intrusive to the forums = TRUE
threads only when appropriate = Creating thread in Teachers subforum seems appropriate to me

Precisely.

Now, TOS §8 "... if you disagree with something that a mod or an admin has done, please do not air your grievances on the forum..." prevents us from expressing our opinion on the mentioned moderation.

Therefore, it is impossible to discuss applied moderation level without violating the TOS.

Regardless, it is essential to know about existing teachers, books and other products and services. I have been under the impression that the Teachers/Club Leaders forum also is for advertisements / announcements by teachers, the Go Books forum also is for advertisement / announcements by retailers, publishers or authors, the Go Book Reviews forum also is for reviews by retailers, publishers or authors, the Computer Go forum also is for advertisements / announcements by publishers or programmers, the Gobans and other equipment forum also is for advertisements / announcements by manufacturers or retailers and the New Products/Upgrades/Sales forum also is for advertisements / announcements of products not falling into one of the other more specific categories.

If any of this is wrong, administrators and moderators should declare precisely which kind of advertisements / announcements shall be in which of these forums.

Another thing also is still unclarified: is proper citation considered proper or is it considered to be and confused with advertisement? May an author cite properly from his own texts? May a third person cite properly from some author's text? Regular law, good scientific practise etc. require proper citation. However, on L19, I still do not know if proper citations are allowed or prohibited.

In all of these cases, the problem is more fundamental than moderation level. The problem is ambiguity of how the TOS rules are expected to be interpreted. It is too difficult to comply with TOS rules that are ambiguous. Therefore, the TOS should be made as unambiguous as possible. Then administration, moderation and message posting are easier for everybody.

Boidhre · **#45**

I think a fundamental problem is that people are treating the TOS similar to a legal document rather than just a set of guidelines. Keep it general, leave the specifics to the situation at hand. Dialogue between user and admin is far, far preferable to quoting a line of text at them.

Uberdude · **#46**

moyoaji wrote:

Boidhre wrote:

Ok, I've seen at least a dozen people advertise go lessons on here without issue. So what's the exact problem with this one?

Perhaps the rule is that anyone who posts about teaching must be an established member? (If so that should be clearly stated in the TOS.) This was a post made in January where the same thing happened: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=9782

No one complained when it was just a random 4d player who got his thread shut down. So is this really about how the admin was enforcing the rule or is it about who the admin was shutting down?

I didn't complain about that instance because I didn't see it (I don't normally read the Teachers sub-forum, but redrose's username caught my eye) and it didn't have the catalyst of JF saying "speak up pros". I disagree with that too, but it doesn't make me as angry as redrose's treatement. Why? I suppose I consider redrose is a more legitimate teacher (she's stronger and more teaching experience, professional status also means she should be treated with more respect). That's not to say I don't want to stiffle competition in the teaching market, and weaker players can have strong teaching skills, but if every 10 kyu with no students started advertising their dubious teaching services that'd be a problem. But I doubt that will happen. A few threads from mid-dan players that you don't even have to read is fine IMO. I certainly think that if an established member of the L19 community, whatever strength, made a thread advertising their teaching it's fine. Always hijacking other people's threads with "Hey you suck at Go, why don't you let me teach you!" would not.

Bantari · **#47**

moyoaji wrote:

Boidhre wrote:

Ok, I've seen at least a dozen people advertise go lessons on here without issue. So what's the exact problem with this one?

Perhaps the rule is that anyone who posts about teaching must be an established member? (If so that should be clearly stated in the TOS.) This was a post made in January where the same thing happened: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=9782

No one complained when it was just a random 4d player who got his thread shut down. So is this really about how the admin was enforcing the rule or is it about who the admin was shutting down?

Well, I am not interested in Go teachers, so I did not read that thread. Nor this recent one. If not for a discussion in different threads which I read, like this one, I would have been totally unaware of the issue.

However - once I was aware, I am willing to speak up and voice my opinions.

I wonder how many readers are in the same position.

quantumf · **#48**

This has highlighted a technical flaw with the way moderation seems to happen. I saw all the posts before the mods saw them, as I use the "view new posts" feature. I did NOT see the subsequent banning, because the posts are edited in place, and hence do not show up again in "view new posts". So the bans are mostly invisible to me, which I think is a problem.

I imagine my usage is typical of many users of the forum, and I would thus like to request that banned posts somehow trigger the "view new posts" flag. I don't know if this can be achieved in any way apart from the mods replying to the post?

skydyr · **#49**

quantumf wrote:

This has highlighted a technical flaw with the way moderation seems to happen. I saw all the posts before the mods saw them, as I use the "view new posts" feature. I did NOT see the subsequent banning, because the posts are edited in place, and hence do not show up again in "view new posts". So the bans are mostly invisible to me, which I think is a problem.

I imagine my usage is typical of many users of the forum, and I would thus like to request that banned posts somehow trigger the "view new posts" flag. I don't know if this can be achieved in any way apart from the mods replying to the post?

Perhaps just a message from the admin in a new replying stating that post #XXX was edited for XYZ reason is good enough? If it happens relatively rarely, I see no reason for a technical fix when a process fix will do it.

tchan001 · **#50**

quantumf wrote:

This has highlighted a technical flaw with the way moderation seems to happen. I saw all the posts before the mods saw them, as I use the "view new posts" feature. I did NOT see the subsequent banning, because the posts are edited in place, and hence do not show up again in "view new posts". So the bans are mostly invisible to me, which I think is a problem.

I imagine my usage is typical of many users of the forum, and I would thus like to request that banned posts somehow trigger the "view new posts" flag. I don't know if this can be achieved in any way apart from the mods replying to the post?

So what you are asking for is that whenever the forum attracts a spammer who spams countless threads while nobody is monitoring, you would like to be notified of each change made by admins/mods to remove the spam and the person who was banned as a serial spammer.

Boidhre · **#51**

For things/warnings relevant to the community at large (so not spam removal and similar) I've seen on previous forums, the admins at a note to the thread title indicating that post no. X has a warning on it, and/or editing the warning into the first post.

I think this looks quite messy personally but if you're putting down a general warning it's not a bad idea (assuming everyone reads every post in a thread can be quite unreasonable if it's a long one).

daal · **#52**

tchan001 wrote:

quantumf wrote:

This has highlighted a technical flaw with the way moderation seems to happen. I saw all the posts before the mods saw them, as I use the "view new posts" feature. I did NOT see the subsequent banning, because the posts are edited in place, and hence do not show up again in "view new posts". So the bans are mostly invisible to me, which I think is a problem.

I imagine my usage is typical of many users of the forum, and I would thus like to request that banned posts somehow trigger the "view new posts" flag. I don't know if this can be achieved in any way apart from the mods replying to the post?

So what you are asking for is that whenever the forum attracts a spammer who spams countless threads while nobody is monitoring, you would like to be notified of each change made by admins/mods to remove the spam and the person who was banned as a serial spammer.

What he's asking for is to be kept informed about important events. If his suggestion is impractical, why not just say so? Perhaps another possibility would be if edits could be made trigger the "new posts" flag.

skydyr · **#53**

daal wrote:

tchan001 wrote:

quantumf wrote:

This has highlighted a technical flaw with the way moderation seems to happen. I saw all the posts before the mods saw them, as I use the "view new posts" feature. I did NOT see the subsequent banning, because the posts are edited in place, and hence do not show up again in "view new posts". So the bans are mostly invisible to me, which I think is a problem.

I imagine my usage is typical of many users of the forum, and I would thus like to request that banned posts somehow trigger the "view new posts" flag. I don't know if this can be achieved in any way apart from the mods replying to the post?

So what you are asking for is that whenever the forum attracts a spammer who spams countless threads while nobody is monitoring, you would like to be notified of each change made by admins/mods to remove the spam and the person who was banned as a serial spammer.

What he's asking for is to be kept informed about important events. If his suggestion is impractical, why not just say so? Perhaps another possibility would be if edits could be made trigger the "new posts" flag.

Something like a moderation log as a subforum or meta forum thread might work as well, to document this.

quantumf · **#54**

tchan001 wrote:

quantumf wrote:

This has highlighted a technical flaw with the way moderation seems to happen. I saw all the posts before the mods saw them, as I use the "view new posts" feature. I did NOT see the subsequent banning, because the posts are edited in place, and hence do not show up again in "view new posts". So the bans are mostly invisible to me, which I think is a problem.

I imagine my usage is typical of many users of the forum, and I would thus like to request that banned posts somehow trigger the "view new posts" flag. I don't know if this can be achieved in any way apart from the mods replying to the post?

So what you are asking for is that whenever the forum attracts a spammer who spams countless threads while nobody is monitoring, you would like to be notified of each change made by admins/mods to remove the spam and the person who was banned as a serial spammer.

I think there is a material difference between what most would regard as obvious spam posts and posts where mods have had to exercise some judgement in order to decide what to do about them. It may be a bit uncomfortable for mods to have their judgements so transparent, but presumably if they weren't comfortable with that then they wouldn't have accepted the role in the first place.

For what its worth, I am very sympathetic to the mods on any public system, for example, both here and on KGS. I think it's a tough job, and even when I disagree with the particular choices they make, I admire them for being willing to make them.

tchan001 · **#55**

daal wrote:

tchan001 wrote:

quantumf wrote:

This has highlighted a technical flaw with the way moderation seems to happen. I saw all the posts before the mods saw them, as I use the "view new posts" feature. I did NOT see the subsequent banning, because the posts are edited in place, and hence do not show up again in "view new posts". So the bans are mostly invisible to me, which I think is a problem.

I imagine my usage is typical of many users of the forum, and I would thus like to request that banned posts somehow trigger the "view new posts" flag. I don't know if this can be achieved in any way apart from the mods replying to the post?

So what you are asking for is that whenever the forum attracts a spammer who spams countless threads while nobody is monitoring, you would like to be notified of each change made by admins/mods to remove the spam and the person who was banned as a serial spammer.

What he's asking for is to be kept informed about important events. If his suggestion is impractical, why not just say so? Perhaps another possibility would be if edits could be made trigger the "new posts" flag.

And under your logic, cleaning spam would not be regarded as an "important event" so it should be prioritized lower in the list of things to do, since there seems to be such a belief that there is too much moderation here already?

Perhaps I should indeed take a more hands-off approach as many other mods/admins other than JB and myself seem to be doing and just let the self moderation ability of the forum manifest itself to the best of it's ability. Thank you all for your kind thoughts about how we should tone down moderation on the forum.

illluck · **#56**

tchan001 wrote:

And under your logic, cleaning spam would not be regarded as an "important event" so it should be prioritized lower in the list of things to do, since there seems to be such a belief that there is too much moderation here already?

Perhaps I should indeed take a more hands-off approach as many other mods/admins other than JB and myself seem to be doing and just let the self moderation ability of the forum manifest itself to the best of it's ability. Thank you all for your kind thoughts about how we should tone down moderation on the forum.

There are several good tones to take in responses to feedback and suggestions, the above is not one of them.

Uberdude · **#57**

tchan001 wrote:

And under your logic, cleaning spam would not be regarded as an "important event" so it should be prioritized lower in the list of things to do, since there seems to be such a belief that there is too much moderation here already?

Perhaps I should indeed take a more hands-off approach as many other mods/admins other than JB and myself seem to be doing and just let the self moderation ability of the forum manifest itself to the best of it's ability. Thank you all for your kind thoughts about how we should tone down moderation on the forum.

Actually I think clearing spam so we can talk about Go is the most important job of the mods (but I don't want to see a log of it) and I am grateful for your work. The forum cannot self-moderate spam as we lack the admin tools to delete it. If there are not enough active mods to delete the spam I am happy to help.

hyperpape · **#58**

I almost wrote a post saying "I assume you wouldn't want that notification for quick deletion of spam, just the posts that admins leave with warnings. But the. I thought "why bother?"

tchan001 · **#59**

Please do ask the other eagerly waiting mods and admins to delete the spam and handle other reported matters because I am currently on break from moderation duty and will resume only after I feel completed rested.

Bantari · **#60**

tchan001 wrote:

Please do ask the other eagerly waiting mods and admins to delete the spam and handle other reported matters because I am currently on break from moderation duty and will resume only after I feel completed rested.

And this is why it is so hard to find, and retain, good admins.
This goes for KGS as well as here and other places.

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