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Moderation requests & discussion thereof

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paranoidwriter waves hello

11:32 / 21.06.05

Possibly daft question:

I've just noticed that one of the moderators in Books & Literature is "Barbelith", and according to the profile ze has been here for a while but made few posts. Is "Barbelith" a real member, or am I missing something?

Just curious.

Cheers.

11:46 / 21.06.05

'Barbelith' is a suit Tom owns, precisely to stop anyone else using it and assuming the appearance of special status, IIRC. Not sure why it's listed as a mod in Books though.

paranoidwriter waves hello

11:48 / 21.06.05

Ahhh... that makes sense. I knew I was being dim.

Cheers Smoothly!

11:52 / 21.06.05

I wouldn't have said dim. Pretty observant really.

For the record, 'Barbelith's one post was in this thread, with Tom's explanation for it here

paranoidwriter waves hello

12:09 / 21.06.05

Shame really, I was hoping Barbelith had achieved sentience, like in 'Demon Seed', and I was listening out for the pitter patter of tiny feet.

Much obliged anyway.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:12 / 01.07.05

Could someone moderate the summary to this thread into something that isn't so unnecessarily offensive and stupid?

00:58 / 02.07.05

I'd love to, but I don't have any idea what the show's about and can't make it out from the thread itself - it's pretty light on details for those who haven't seen it.

If you want to suggest one, then be my guest. I think it arrived in FTV&T with that abstract already attached, by the way, as I never saw the request to add it.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:18 / 02.07.05

I didn't write it, but it doesn't seem offensive or stupid to me.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:59 / 02.07.05

I'm not really seeing the offensiveness either...

Tryphena Absent

13:21 / 02.07.05

Maybe someone already changed it?

13:51 / 02.07.05

It's designed purely as a further snark at the thread starter. Which may well be fair enough, given the circumstances, but doesn't make the board - or the moderators - come across very well.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:33 / 02.07.05

Exactly. In this current weekend of backslapping and 'aren't we great?' it left a bad taste in my mouth.

18:04 / 02.07.05

http://www.barbelith.com/topic/21612

This one really needs an edit. I think the summary and main text are reversed.

18:08 / 02.07.05

One of RobotManReformed has started a thread about calcium intake in The Laboratory and appears to have inadvertently mixed up summary and the initial post. Would be tidier the other way round, perhaps.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:18 / 02.07.05

Gordon Bennet. I thought we had a character limit in the summary field?

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:11 / 02.07.05

To catch up: I wrote the changed summary for "Globnal Frequency Pilot". It was a rhyming summary, which I thought was amusing, and followed the practice of rhyming summaries with humorous elements added to threads whose originators did not add summaries. Given louisemichel's offensive language and behaviour in that and previous threads, it seemed to me proportionate. Although I am perfectly happy with the decision to change it, I would like to suggest a) that moderator time could be better spent and b) that one of the people who changed it PM me the original, which they have presumably kept for just such a request, as I rather liked it and would like to have a copy.

Laboratory: We need more mods, I think. As far as I know, about half the Laboratory moderators are no longer posting on Barbelith, and we seem to get a lot of requests in here to moderate the Laboratory.

Games and Gameplay: Could whoever approached the deletion of Cube's post here think about whether the right of an individual to delete a post that they feel does not reflect well on them supersedes the right of subsequent posters to have their comments in reaction to it understood. I would suggest not. Best practice might be to moderate the post to include a gloss on the content of the original post.

00:16 / 03.07.05

Actually, I don't think cube's deleted post was the offending one - I'm pretty sure that Tom's comment was aimed at Duncan's opener. It still makes perfect sense, regardless.

00:39 / 03.07.05

While I think about it, could somebody from Convo put the Halo 2 thread up for moving into G&G, please? The multiplayer part of the game is due an update within the next few days and I can see me feeling the need to spout forth on the quality of the new maps, should I download them. It also seems like a good idea given that it's the one game that Barbelith people occasionally play together online.

00:48 / 03.07.05

I dunno know about other convo/other fora mods, but in the edit topic dropdown menu, I still don't have a gaming forum item. Thus, no moving. Sorry!

01:00 / 03.07.05

And I'm afraid I haven't kept a copy of the pre-changed rhyming abstract. Um... sorry Haus. I'm rummaging through my cache files to see if it's still someplace on my computer.

04:32 / 03.07.05

Yes, it is on your computer.

It's over there.

No. Over there: --------------->

07:09 / 03.07.05

That's jam.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:39 / 03.07.05

No, that's a mouse describing it's best laid plan to get cheese.

I've PMed Tom about the drop down menu thing. Hopefully it'll be easy to sort.

I'm sure it's not too difficult to find a thread summary where I've ripped the piss out of someone, but although I can remember louisemichel I can't remember why, so I'm not sure snarking them in the thread topic achieves anything, especially as the first bit of offense is Flyboy calling LM a 'simpleton'. Anyway, the topic's been changed now so alls well and good and I can go back to shouting at Babyshambles videos on telly.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:41 / 03.07.05

Actually, the first offence was Louisemichel getting aggressive in the "We3 to be made into a movie" thread. He then, in order to make a point, started the Global Frequency TV show thread in the Comics forum, meaning that moderators had to take the time to clean up his moral stance by moving it to the relevant forum. He also did this without bothering to provide a topic summary. QED. If you don't know what's going on in a particular Forum, Flowers, the option exists to ask a moderator and see if they can shed some light.

As it is, we have the replacement summary, and thus another moderator's actions, describedq as "offensive and stupid", with any evidence having been conveniently removed. Personally, I don't recall it being terrribly offensive or snarky at all, and nor do half the other moderators commenting in this thread. It's fortunate that this is not a terribly important issue, but I think those involved might wnat to think a little about how they behave in future. Do we need to discuss broader behaviours relating to the Rhyming Summary Project?

Apology accepted, Sally - it's best to take copies of anything you are deleting or modifying significantly for just this reason. Best practice is probably Seth, who used to send people original copies of whatever he was deleting of theirs by PM - do you still do that, Seth? Oh, and if anyone gets horny to change the We3 movie topic summary, could they send me a copy first? I rather like it.

Dupre: I was thinking more of, for example, posts like this, which are now responding to the tone and the content of a post that no longer exists.

Hmm. It's beginning to look like we may need a metaMod thread on best practice in moderation - especially if we are getting new moderators in Games & Gameplay and the Lab...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:06 / 03.07.05

So Haus, you remember you changed the summary, you remember it rhymed and you remember that a time ago LM was offensive in a different thread but you can't remember what you wrote in the former summary that concerned me? Wow, that's unfortunate...

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:24 / 03.07.05

Hang on - that concerned you in the sense of "that was about you" or "that concerned you" in the sense of "that caused your concern"? I don't believe that there was anything that concerned you in the first sense. The second I would rather think you would be able to tell me, rather than vice versa.

Since the "We3 to be made into a movie" thread still exists, it is hardly a feat of exacting memory to recall it. Since I have a good memory for moderator actions I take, I can recall adding a summary to "Global Frequency movie pilot". Since I recall rhyming "BitTorrent" with "abhorrent" in this case, it is no great stretch to recall that I provided a rhyming summary. I do not recall the entire topic summary that I wrote - I was not aware that I was going to need to memorise it, as I was not aware that it was going to be deleted without consultation by somebody who did not think to make a copy. My bad.

Since I have no idea what it was that you found "offensive and stupid" about the summary, you are asking me to remember something that I did not know to start with. I assume from your attempt to suggest that I am in some way lying by professing not to recall every word of a topic summary I was not expecting to have deleted that you do not remember either, and are now trying to drag this into insults and insinuations in order to obfuscate this failure of memory. This is not a mature action, and it is not one that is appropriate, I would suggest, to this thread, or in fact to the Policy forum generally. There are questions about best practice in moderation that come out of this which might usefully be discussed.

11:20 / 03.07.05

You used the abstract to pass comment on lm's strop about hir threads being moved. By putting that in the abstract, it felt to me that you were basically removing lm's right to reply. There are other problems that I can see with doing that. Firstly, it was simply encouraging others to continue to reference the off-topic bickering at the top of the page, whent he thread really should have moved on from that. Secondly, it meant that the bickering would never go away - there's no need for anybody who took part in the bickering to take a step back and think, "actually, maybe I was wrong. I'll put my part in the snarking up for deletion."

On that football thread - I hadn't even seen Fly's post, I must admit. That's why I think we need a football/sports-friendly moderator (Plums?) in the forum - I'm not massively interested in football, so I tend to skim-read the threads.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:47 / 03.07.05

You used the abstract to pass comment on lm's strop about hir threads being moved.

Really? I'm not sure that accurately reflects the content of the summary, Of course, since the summary has been deleted without a copy being kept, it's going to be quite difficult to substantiate that either way. As I say, this is not a particularly important case, but it does raise some interesting issues.

The Cube request is a separate issue, but I would suggest that if somebody is asking to delete or significantly modify a post, one should go to the thread, read it and make sure that that deletion does not harm the sense of the thread, whether or not one is interested in the content.

12:07 / 03.07.05

Did that. Always do. But, like I say, I tend to phase out during talk about football - can't guarantee I didn't do that there.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:48 / 03.07.05

Fair enough. Which, as you say, is why we need more moderators in Games and Gameplay - that way you could have skipped that request and not worried about noone else being around to vote on it. There are some suggestions already in the relevant thread... might be worth bumping it.

15:53 / 03.07.05

Best practice is probably Seth, who used to send people original copies of whatever he was deleting of theirs by PM - do you still do that, Seth?

I haven't had to. The only time I've deleted someone else' contentious posts from a thread was in the Barbelith: Personal and Global Workings thread. I PM'd the people involved with copies of the original text with a caustic "I believe these belong to you."

Although seeing the way that thread went all Harmelith two years after the fact makes me wonder whether I'd sidestepped that landmine or simply delayed the explosion, in the process leaving myself open to being targeted for abuses of my position. Even if you delete and preserve content you can still get it in the neck, it's not a perfect solution.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

20:18 / 03.07.05

Hurrah! Tom has indeed sorted out the problem with G&G in the drop down menus, so I've moved for the Halo thread to be moved forthwith. God I love you all, but that might just be the wine and hayfever tablets talking...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:18 / 03.07.05

Actually, wrt the GF summary, on a skimmed reading, in context of previous arguments and the one in-thread, it could have been taken to refer to this. After reading the mention in THIS thread I read it again, and, to paraphrase, it said something like "louisemichel has suffered a sort of grand mal / at the thought that Global Frequency by Warren Ellis / will not in the near future be gracing our tellies" or something like that, only with better scansion.
No reference to which forum it was supposed to be in at all.

But, y'know. It's done.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:43 / 03.07.05

It's done, but moderation as a process isn't. It worries me slightly that the people proposing on and voting on the moderation action did not take the time to understand what it actually said. Applied more generally to moderation actions, that's going to be a potential cause of sore points...

22:10 / 03.07.05

On the other hand, it could be argued that the summary wasn't clear enough.

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