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Message Moderation

Jack Fear

18:56 / 26.03.02

Messages can only be deleted or edited with the approval of a moderator?

I do not like the sound of that. Ethical questions aside, it will be an administrative nightmare...

Rev. Jesse

18:58 / 26.03.02

Yes, that needs to change

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

19:03 / 26.03.02

Aye.

Spatula Clarke

19:05 / 26.03.02

Still unsure about this. I can see how it could be a bad thing. However, it ensures that people have to either stick by what theyve said, justify contentious posts or at least think before posting, which can only be good.

Kit-Cat Club

07:23 / 27.03.02

Tom, when are the moderation powers going to come into force?

(I don't mean the ones which let you ask to moderate your own post, I mean for the overall forum moderators)

Fist Fun

07:26 / 27.03.02

Yeah, but I always have to correct typos...I suspect I am not the only one...

The Return Of Rothkoid

07:58 / 27.03.02

I think it'd help if everyone who moderates was also made a moderator of The Conversation - that's where a lot of the traffic seems to be, and so it'd make sure that things like typos or whatever don't bog the place down..

Tom Coates

08:09 / 27.03.02

That's an interesting thought...

We actually did discuss all this - re: having to get a moderator to approve your post edits - on the old board a while back. People were generally in favour - they thought it would stop people screwing up arguments or deleting their own more controversial posts - or at least delay it. Unfortunately part of that process is that it makes smaller changes harder to agree to...

Bear in mind though that while if a moderator suggests a change he or she has to get agreement from another moderator (out of alimited amount), with self-moderation, only one moderator needs to get involved. It should - in essence - be a faster process than standard moderation...

sleazenation

08:24 / 27.03.02

isuppose a lower tier of moderators (ie everyone) for simple tasks of self moderation would be a logistical nightmare?

Tom Coates

08:33 / 27.03.02

Probably not a nightmare as such - but certainly not a priority!

rizla mission

10:04 / 27.03.02

I must have missed the discussion of this too .. most of my edits are to correct typos / misunderstandings .. having to submit them and wait around for them to be approved sounds absurd..

Tom Coates

10:06 / 27.03.02

True - but then again they're not exactly life-threateningly crucial, are they! THat being the case, what's the issue on them taking an hour?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:17 / 27.03.02

I guess it just seems a bit wanky, I just wanted to clarify a post about what systems I was using to access Barbelith, I've got to wait for another moderator to okay the change. I'm not entirely sure how it's going to aid communication on here, it's not like we had anyone making a habit of changing their posts to make whoever replied to them look stupid.

It's just going to take a while to get used to...

Tom Coates

12:18 / 27.03.02

Actually we did! That's one of the precise reasons why this has been done - it's so that 1) people can't shut down threads completely by deleting first posts, 2) people can edit their own posts 3) people can't change their argument radically without someone checking.

It doesn't take a moment, and it's less to do with a moderator going 'this is allowed' but to do with another board member going - yeah, I think that too....

pointless and uncalled for

12:36 / 27.03.02

My only real contention with this format of moderation would be where a post is made that, by error, is significantly different from that which was intended.

A simple change could prevent some serious shitstorming as opposed to having to run a constant defence practice from the inevitable backlash. Waiting on an available moderator for that forum could cause a thread to take an unnessecary diversion from practical and constructive discussion.

I know that this mainly applies to myself as the biggest board idiot. But I'm sure that there are others who would prefer not to have their credibility tarred and feathered based on one error. Things being a matter of risk as they are.

Other than that I like the format and can see the value of the reasons and benefits previously outlined.

pointless and uncalled for

12:43 / 27.03.02

Just to add that people shouldn't be overly concerned about a handful of typos. To be honest your ass doen't look big in it.

Tom Coates

13:05 / 27.03.02

Also true. I mean it is also kind of my hope that people will be slightly more careful when it comes to typos in the first post, but I'm not sure that will happen... I guess we'll see!

Persephone

15:16 / 27.03.02

I think it was Anthony Trollope who prided himself on never having to recopy his letters. S'funny, we may be going back to pen-and-ink days...

What exactly is the moderation process, from start to finish?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

16:10 / 27.03.02

But Tom, deleting a message and editing a message are two different things...

Anyway, I'm not really that fussed, like I said, it'll just take a little getting used to...

Tom Coates

17:00 / 27.03.02

I still think you're all missing the point a bit. The point is NOT that anyone has any objections to posts being changed for typos or spelling, but that 1) people should be encouraged to take responsibility for what they say and 2) people should not be able to rewrite their posts in order to make other people look like idiots for disagreeing with them and 3) There must be a way to maintain people's sense of post integrity without displaying the 'edited by' message.

Think about it this way (because this is the right way) - you're not looking for someone's PERMISSION to edit your post, you're just getting someone else to stand up with you and say 'this SHOULD be changed' - while stopping the possibility of complete fuckups elsewhere.

Lionheart

18:45 / 27.03.02

Let's have a Barbe-poll.

Who's in favor of allowing users to edit their own messages?

Who's in favor of allowing users to edit their own messages with the approval of a moderator?

Wrecks City-Zen

18:51 / 27.03.02

<<< Raises hand...>>>

I agree.

PS- No italics? No bold? No image link??

Sigh.

Tom Coates

20:36 / 27.03.02

Let's have a Barbe-poll. Who's in favor of allowing users to edit their own messages? Who's in favor of allowing users to edit their own messages with the approval of a moderator?

Sorry about this one, but I'm putting my foot down on this one. No one on the board has tried it enough to know whether or not it's a good idea - so I'm not prepared to debate it. In a couple of weeks, perhaps... But part of this whole process is so that people like me don't have to get involved personally in disputes - that it's resolved BY THE BOARD. It may be slightly more irritiating to have the process done this way, but it's a suitable safeguard from abuse - and hence from someone having to come down from above and sort out unpleasant situations... So please... Can we just try it out for a few weeks and debate it again then?

grant

21:24 / 27.03.02

i will say, thus far and just for me, it's much easier than i could have imagined.

having the "moderation actions" tag appear up where the private messages go (which is on the screen all the time) is *so* easy, and so unobtrusive.

Lothar Tuppan

21:39 / 27.03.02

I've had to use it once for a stupid typo and I don't mind it as much as I thought.

My stupid typo was fixed pretty damn fast with no muss no fuss.

Now, if the lag time was, say, a day between edit requests and their authorization, I wouldn't like it as much. But I'm guessing that's one of the reasons why Tom wants so many additional moderators on board.

Persephone

22:51 / 27.03.02

Hello, I still have the same question: what's the process exactly? If you want to moderate your post, you click moderate, choose delete or moderate, and submit.

Then three moderators have to vote yes to the deletion/change?

Then does the board software automatically implement the deletion/change once the votes are in?

Fist Fun

03:57 / 28.03.02

Only one other moderator has to ok it, then it is changed straight away.

Seth

04:35 / 28.03.02

If people are that anally retentive about spelling, why don't you write your posts in a word processor, spellcheck and then cut'n'paste them over? I like this system - it'll mean less knee-jerking (I hope).

Mystery Gypt

04:51 / 28.03.02

nah, ill bet you it's the same amount of kneejerking, but with much less of an ability to quickly rectify said jerking. it's both a definitional and behavioral impossibility to claim that long term rational descion making and the weighing of outcomes will have an immediate effect on irrational / emotional responsiveness.

all it means is welll have to look at people kneejerk reponses for longer, so there will, in fact, be more of them.

Tom Coates

05:27 / 28.03.02

But how can you know that?! You can't! Surely it would be best to try out the new functionality and see what effect it has before dismissing it out of hand!

Kit-Cat Club

07:04 / 28.03.02

I agree with Tom. It's quick and easy and seems to work. I did have some doubts beforehand about the 'red-tape' aspect of it - I thought it might clog the board - but as far as I can tell it does nothing of the sort. And I can now see more of what he means about the community involvement - the board basically cleaning its own streets.

Fengs for the Memory

08:24 / 28.03.02

Why am i getting moderate post by all my posts

Tom Coates

08:24 / 28.03.02

It's very much the way I want to take the place - community running itself, moderating itself, looking after itself completely...

Tom Coates

08:27 / 28.03.02

You get moderate post by all of your posts so that you can edit or change your own posts to a greater or lesser extent. You can suggest a change to any of your own posts, and a moderator swiftly checks that you're not turning Neo-Facist rantings into 'The Hills are alive', clicks 'ok' and everything's done.

Moderators see those links by every thread in their forum. Administrators (me) see those links by every thread in EVERY forum...

Fengs for the Memory

08:35 / 28.03.02

Thankyou

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