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1. How exactly does the moderation process work?
You see, to the left of a post you have made, the "moderate post" option? well, moderators see one of those next to every post in threads in the fora they are moderating, and can propose changes to any post just as you can to your own. They also have a "moderate topic" option, which allows them to change thread titles, add or modify topic abstracts, and move or delete threads.
A moderator mod request functins exactly as a normal person's request to modertae their own post works: to moderate or delete a post, the agreement of one other moderator is required. The more significant the change, the more votes are needed to do it. Thus, to move a topic or delete it, three moderators have to agree that this is the right thing to do.
The moderators for each forum are posted above the topic list in the main forum page. There are also two aministrators, who can act as if they were moderators in every forum, introduced to speed up moderation actions, and Tom Coates himself, who can act as moderator in every forum and also take extraordinary actions such as deleting suits or blocking IP addresses. Although the approval system for these actions is not in place, they have never been done without lengthy and open discussion.
The mod system exists as it does in order i) to make people think about what they are posting before they post it, since they cannot immediately alter the contents of their posts, ii) to prevent people abusing the right to mod their own posts automatically, as they used to, by indulging in orgies of selfdeletion or changing their posts after the fact to say something different (a problem of the previous model), while not giving moderators too much power. A mod cannot do anything on their own, and as such all decisions need to pass through at least two sets of eyes and minds before being approved. the aim here is to create a balabce of consensus and consideration, while still allowing routine maintenance to go on fairly easily.
It also reflects a deep ambivalence about power on Barbelith - this level of authority, far more dilute than most moderated boards - makes many people on both siodes of the divide uncomfortable, but appears to have been necessitated by a small number of members who weren't willing or able to use the board in its previous form.
2. What does it signify when the thread topic is colored gold vs. blue?
Theoretically, this identifies threads which have been posted to since you last posted to them. In fact, this system is erratic to such an extent that it can only act as a guide rather than a certainty.
3. Can you PM more than one person at a time, like regular email?
No. This is something people are requesting for the next change, for group invitations and
discussions, and also to verify responses to abusive mail. See Expressionless' "moderator mailing list" thread in the Policy. At present, the copy and paste buttons have to do duty.
4. The threads in a forum are organized by the most recent post, right?
Right.
5. What's the HTML code for bold, italic, link, and image?
<b> bold </b>
<i> italic </i>
<a href="http://www.yourlinkhere.com"> link </a>
<img src="http://www.yoursitehere.com/imagename.jpg"links to a picture.
I think those are pretty much the only HTML commands currently understood by Barbelith. there have been campaigns for a commnand equivalent to the [BLOCKQUOTE] command in UBBscript, but Tom believes it would lead to big, undigested chunks of thought being reprocessed in posts without actually being read closely, which is certainly what happened a lot of the time on the previous iteration of Barbelith. |
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