Moderation Policy Discussion • Page 2

hey all, thanks for having me. I've already spoken with Jason about this stuff, but I'll share for everyone's benefit. basically if we want a more positive community, we have to ditch the "anything goes" approach of AP, which is what it sounds like you're already doing. the code of conduct looks great.

a few things that I think might be worth adopting here from a somewhat large forum that I help run:

- no tolerance for one word posts. simply posting "lol" never contributes to the discussion, and the more that a given thread is littered with these posts, the more the actual discussion gets lost, which makes threads annoying to read through and less welcoming for new posters.

- rewarding positive users rather than simply punishing negative ones. I think the 3-day suspension is great and it's something we use as well, but I think it's just as important to recognize good posting too. rather than warning points going from 1-10, we have a -5 to +5 scale, where -1 to -5 pushes you closer to a permanent ban, but +1 to +5 is an indicator of a great community member. in addition to the point scale, we have a "senior member" rank which isn't based on post count or join date, but instead based on being a valued member (generally someone with a +2 or +3 rating. doing this does two things: 1) lets good users know their contributions are being noticed, which makes them feel good and encourages them to stick around, and 2) creates role models for other users -- senior members act as a bridge between mods/admins and normal members in many ways.

- in addition to global admins/mods, having moderators for a single section of a forum. someone who is well-equipped to lead/moderate the Sports forum may be not at all qualified to lead the Politics forum, for example. if it turns out a particular moderator is doing fantastic, they can then be "promoted" to a global moderator.

anyway, I think the site looks great and it sounds like you all have the right goals in mind. no doubt that the forum will succeed. thanks again for the invite!

 

The senior member thing is something I really need to think more about, because I think it'd work well as a bridge between moderator and a regular/prestigious user. A way of saying and recognizing a great contributor to the site with something special -- a badge, maybe the cover photo perk? -- that's different than having just been around here for a long time. Not everyone that's "prestigious" is a "senior member" -- it's more of a select group that can help watch over things and set examples, right? I think that's a really good idea.

I definitely think that moderators in separate forums is a great idea -- the hard part is finding the right ones and making sure we can communicate from staff, to moderators, to single-forum moderators the right plan of action for different things and making sure we all stay on the same page and try and be consistent within each forum. How things are handled in the politics forum is maybe a little more strict versus the sports forum, but then politics moderators need to know and defer to moderators in the sports forum -- for example.

Lots to think about here. I've got some other work to do first, then I'm gonna sit and think more about the senior member idea.

 

As far as moderators for separate sections go, I do agree with Scott that some people would be better suited to moderate specific areas than others. With that being said, there still needs to be a uniform concept of what's okay and what's not. I know on AP there's been a lot of talk about the use of the c-word in the sports forum and the issue's been raised that in other countries it's not considered to be awful in the way it is in the US. I have no answer as to how to go about dealing with those sorts of issues, but I guess that's the point of this group of beta testers and having an open discussion about all of this

 

@iplaydrums: I censored it on this site.

My thoughts are twofold on that:

1) I created a policy about language that I think is a fair way to go about it: "We are aware that there are different cultural norms in regard to language around the globe, but most of the members of this forum are from the United States and as such the language rules are based upon these norms. That means specific words have been censored on the website. If you feel the need to use specific words when you are conversing with others — maybe this isn’t the forum for you."

2) If you're the kind of person that is going to complain or be upset about not being able to use a specific curse word in a public forum, then you're probably not the kind of person I want posting every day anyway. I'm ok with that.

 

@Jason Tate agree with all of that completely. Seems like anything I can come up with has already been addressed and figured out for the most part. Which is good.

I think the toughest issue is that there are going to be some longtime members of AP that are going to want this to be exactly the same website but with a different look. There's definitely going to be a transition period (that will hopefully see the phasing out of certain users and certain types of users) but I think overall everything that we all want this new community to be is completely achievable

 

I've been thinking about a lot of these things for a while, at least, the more obvious issues. I think it's the smaller ones that are going to be the most difficult to figure out. Two+ years of notebooks and long walks and I've been tackling these ideas in my head for a long time now, haha, not sure what that says about me.

Completely agree. That's something I directly want to be able to address and make clear - I don't want this to be AP.net 2.0. Not from a content/website side, not from a forum/community side. I think some of that can be achieved from technical perspective -- warnings (public/private), a time out like banning for just a couple days, thread bans that can also expire after a couple days if we need to separate heated discussions for a while, and trying to have a clear and transparent moderation policy about what is and is not ok.

I keep coming back to the idea that disagreements are good, and can be healthy, but they need to attack ideas and not people. So many times I see a discussion about an album or movie (and I'm totally guilty of this too) and the way the conversation goes it is as though the person is bad for liking said movie vs a discussion about why one person like something and one person does not. And the moment that crosses over, and someone feels like they are being attacked, or their identity is being attacked, because they like a band, or movie, or one album over another, I feel like the conversation is already lost -- like there's probably no coming back from that with the two people. I've had it happen before as well, I'll be reading a thread about something I like, and then there's a string of "this is shit and terrible and awful and the worst movie ever made" posts and I just click out to something else instead. I mean, I'm secure enough now to be ok with what I like and I think I can at least explain why, and be ok with someone disagreeing, but there's a level where it goes to a plain that I know there's no reason to even engage.

And with that, there needs to be an understanding that never ending arguments also suck (also guilty), like if someone doesn't like the new Star Wars movie, for example, I think that's fine -- and there's some good talks to be had about that -- but at some point there's also an argument to be made that 50 people wanna talk about what they like, love, and speculate about the movie and aren't really interested in another argument/defending something that makes them happy. And if the thread gets bogged down with only that, it defeats the very escapism, enjoyment, appreciation, etc., that the movie (and the forums) are trying to create. I think that with a new threaded and group PM system maybe some of those longer debates can move into that kind of environment.

Woah, typed way longer than I expected.

 

@Jason Tate Completely agreed. And I know exactly what you're talking about in terms of the TFA thread. It's huge deterrent when someone keeps acting like they're better than everyone else for an opinion, whether it be that of the majority or minority.

It's going to be really interesting to me to see who stays and who goes. Because there are a lot of people on AP currently that don't like the "I like this"/"I dislike this" vibe of AP but that I also don't see being willing to come here and adapt to the standards of respect that we're looking to establish. Which is actually a really sad thought. But there are certain people that want those long discussions but also want to be able to attack people and I'm really curious to see which of those desires end up winning out. At the very least, this switch is going to make for some great people watching

 

Hello everyone, thanks for the invite Jason. Looking forward to seeing how this develops. Purely visually, these forums are a lot nicer to look at than AP, nice job with that!

Regarding ideas for moderation, maybe some sort of community upvote/downvote system? If somebody posts just a "lol" or calls someone an idiot, it might be helpful for the community to be able to recognise that these posts are not contributing anything and are marked as such. Maybe after a certain number of thumbs down, the post gets automatically hidden.

I also like Scott's idea of rewarding positive users/posts, so similarly, if a post gets a certain number of thumbs up, it gets a little star next to it or something.

I don't really have any other ideas, but AP was ruined by negativity and hostility, so keeping that out should be the main aim of moderation.

 

That's actually another thing we have in place on my other forum, only because it's built into certain versions of IPB, which is the software it's built on. It works pretty much exactly as you described -- each post has a +/- in the corner. Posts that receive +10 or higher have a little star icon in the corner, and then in each user's preferences, they can specify that they don't want to see posts that are below a certain threshold (e.g. hide posts below -5, below -10, or show all posts regardless of rating). It helps eliminate posts that are just "I agree" or "I disagree."

That said, I think in newer versions of IPB they actually switched over to the "like" system that we have here now, so maybe that's a better route. That way you don't have to deal with people trolling and downvoting everyone they don't like.

 

That would also help with moderation in the sense that comments that don't directly violate the policies/code of conduct but are still in poor taste would be down voted and the community would take care of problematic behavior

 

I thought about a plus/minus system but decided to put it on hold for now because I was worried about trolling. Specifically a group of people gaming it to downvote other people. After the forum is up for a while I'll be able to do other things with the system to automatically find and filter certain users based on warnings / likes (or lack of) to post counts and things like that. For the moment I think that moderators helping with public warnings is more the route I want to go instead of group downvoting. At least for now.

 

@Jason Tate I'm with you on that. Based on how people abuse the report function on AP, an upvote/downvote system would definitely be something that certain users/groups would use to piss off mods and gang up on users they don't like.

 

so Jason, i don't know your feelings on torrenting and piracy, but the way the forums on what.cd are organized are really cool and i feel like they're something you'd be interested in

basically, there are several different forums intended for different categories of discussion (along with the usual music, technology, etc. threads) - the lounge and the lounge +1 are intended for fast-paced small talk, the library is intended for more serious discussions (including politics, but also stuff not necessarily related to politics, such as ethical questions / philosophy / science and math discussion / etc.) and posts are moderated heavily, and only substantial and serious posts that contribute to the discussion are allowed. outside the library, things are more lax and small talk / chit chat / "drive by farts" (lol) are allowed

not rly suggesting chorus should implement any of those things, but just wanted to bring up that perspective based on some of the things you've been talking about w/r/t fostering positive discussion. it might make sense to have like a "srs business" forum that kind of includes politics but also other types of discussions (such as Boycott PN-type stuff) that's moderated strictly, and then less strict rules elsewhere?

was gonna post this in features but thought this thread was a better fit

as an aside, honestly not trying to butt in or start anything but i just wanna say that SS is one of the few posters who actively went out of their way to promote musical diversity on AP (not in terms of genres, but in terms of marginalized groups being included in discussions more) and i know he was often blunt about it but his presence made me feel safer and more included in a pool of seemingly indifferent (mostly) older white posters. i also appreciate his contributions when BPN happened but even outside of that he was an important presence imo. i get the impression that he did some shitty things personally to users and staff and i don't know anything about that so it's not my place to weigh in buuuuut seeing a staff member say "no SS, ever" in the context of him pointing out potential racism really turned me off from this thread / site when i first looked at it and for several weeks made me very hesitant to join and start posting. again just expressing my feelings, not trying to say that certain choices were wrong or w/e. really hope these spoiler tags work lol

 

Interesting. The idea of two separate places for more serious vs lax discussion is clever. Something I need to think about. I haven't visited what.cd in years at this point, I should look at that again.

And I wanna call it "srs business."

 

these are the library rules if you're interested

 

There is a prestigious forum. It's empty.

The private message system here is wayyyyyyyy better too.

 

This is also what the Penny Arcade forums do, if you scroll about halfway down the board index you'll see the Social Entropy forum (called Singularity Engine on the index for whatever reason), which has its own section "Chat Forums." Here's the board description: "Although still moderated, SE definitely represents the Wild Wild West segment of the PA Forums. Make sure to lurk a bit and to read the rules!"

https://forums.penny-arcade.com/
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/categories/social-entropy-

 

Love the timeout idea. Sometimes people are just heated, not a menace. A cool off period from a thread or the site when things get out of hand should be great.

The idea of a "like" button is really appealing to me. Sometimes I just want to let a user know I agree or make them feel validated for a long or thoughtful or personal post, but don't have anything substantial to say, which leads to some filler posts.

Do you worry that the group-message option (assuming that's still a thing, haven't fully explored but read about it in this thread) will lead to a lot of the discussion happening there in a cliquey way, rather than on the forum?

 

Maybe, but if there's going to be a "cliquey" discussion, which I don't think is inherently bad, maybe it being done in a more private manner is exactly what's needed.

 

I think that's a brilliant idea, especially for a forum the size of AP.net and this. The users who set a "good example" don't need to be only mods or staff.

 

Oh yeah keeping the clique stuff off the forum is great. Hopefully all the music discussion doesn't go there too.

I'd also like to say I LOVE Scott's thing about role model members. With a system like that maybe we can keep guys like Craig (El Jeffe) for example around to make positive and substantive posts, instead of him just being ignored in the wilderness like he was on ap.

 

Yeah, I think I need to create one more usergroup that's not a prestigious user, not a moderator, but is kind of a community leader of some kind. A "role model" like user that gets there not through a lot of posts, but by being well respected. Probably needs to be staff/moderator picked.

 

Yeah. Having a lot of liked posts might be a decent indicator, assuming the site is what we all hope it will be. If that makes it just a popularity contest than that would suck

 

Yeah, I was thinking of maybe some kind of ratio between number of posts and likes and days active.

 

Yeah the ratio thing would have been great, but it would also necessitate an easy-to-abuse dislike option.

Your blend there seems ideal. Maybe incorporate threads created as a possible positive. Or like how many different threads people post in. Create incentive for diversifying discussion rather than, say, camping out in a football thread or a chat thread