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Hello all,
Since the guns appear to have gone silent, I thought I would stick my head above the parapet to open up a thread on how best to avoid future awfulness.
nota bene - this is not a thread to discuss Andrew, except in the broadest possible sense. There is a thread for that elsewhere on the Policy
So, anyway. In general, this boardseems to work very well as a mechanism for discussion and idea-exchange and whatever the Hell it is they do in the Magick. However, on occasion noise is generated, generally by one of two things:
1) A troll
2) People multiply posting in order to correct mistakes that they feel cannot wait for the next moderation swoop.
Oh, and 3) almighty bitchfests, fluff threads in serious areas, orgies of huggling and discussions of "gaming", but leave that aside for now.
One of the problems for 1 & 2 is a comparative scarcity of moderators, in part as a result of reasonably low numbers, and the infrequency of moderator attention - in the Conversation, for example, at least two of the moderators do not seem to have regular Internet access. Taking into account that there are four moderators in the Conversation and it takes three moderators to delete a thread...well, you see the problem.
Add to that that Tom has neither the time nor the moral certainty of a Warren Ellis, say, and you can understand the latter's description of the comparatively democratic Barbelith as an inferior system. Inferior, in part, specifically *because* freedom of expression is something of a fetish here, as is inclusivity. And in part because Tom has a real job.
A proposed solution? Widen the franchise. There are many people on Barbelith who, although trusted members of the collective, are not currently moderators. One could make of these "mini-mods", perhaps with the power of assent or demur over any moderation request in any forum (except thread deletion), but without the power to make moderation requests themselves. This should swell the ranks to the point where any request for modification of somebody's post by that person should get the nod very quickly, and likewise requests from moderators within their own areas to change HTML code that is screwing up threads, change topic titles, add abstracts, and so on.
So, only the currently appointed moderators (and any more appointed, which might not be a bad idea as e.g. the Creation is mod-light at present with the absence of Zoomy)have the power to make moderation requests (along, as now, with the poster hirself on a post-by-post basis), and then only in their particular areas of specialism (e.g. Tannhauser is a Head Shop moderator. He can therefore make moderation requests within the Head Shop. Tannhauser knows absolutely dick about science, and as such is still not able to make moderation requests in the Laboratory, where he would only knock stuff over and run with scissors).
However
Areas with "general" topics (the Conversation, The Policy and the Gathering) are subject to moderator requests from any of the broader community of mods (i.e the people who are currently moderators).
So, Flyboy (feat. Ashanti) makes a request to delete a thread in the Conversation. This could be voted on by any of the other Conversation moderators, or by a Policy moderator, or by a Laboratory moderator, or any other topic area moderator. If Flyboy had made a request to delete a *post* within that thread, it could also have been voted on by any of the mini-mods, for example Invisible Al (is he a mod yet?), who could likewise vote on a moderation request (other than thread deletion) in the Head Shop, or the Policy, or wherever.
The intention of this? To allow very quick processing of moderator requests, and to lighten the load on mods (which could also allow for Mods to go cross-Topic; for example, Ganesh is currently, IIRC, a Policy moderator, but could also be a Head Shop moderator and/or a conversation moderator if spreading the burden was judged acceptable - one of the advantages is that it will create breathing space while we work out more evolution-not-revolution tweaks).
OK, so what about the times and the people who stretch the current capacity of the board to clean and regulate itself, and create tears that we rely on Tom being around to suture? Well, hopefully this is a non-problem. But just in case, here's the controversial bit (tm).
Give the current moderators a "troll button". Which is to say, a moderator has the power unilaterally (i.e with no time lag while anyone else has to assent to it) to delete a thread and/or edit the password of a fictionsuit in order to lock the user out of it.
This is something I have thought hard about, and I think there are a lot of possible objections (a *lot* of possible objections). I would suggest that to make it work we would need:
1) Self-restraint - an understanding that these powers are used when and only when the board is being spammed maliciously, or trolled irremediably. To help that:
2) Accountability - Since this should happen infrequently at best, there must be a record (tho not necessarily a public one, as that would probably cause more problems than it solved) of who used it. Ultimately, this probasbly is a job for Tom, who as you see has been moved way upstream. So, if Tannhauser deleted all of a poster's threads and suspended his ficsuit becasue that person was, although not trolling, just really pissing him off, Tannhauser would as soon as possible thereafter be stripped of his moderating powers. And, one suspects, ejected from the board. On the other hand, if, say, Kit-Cat Club mistakenly deletes a thread believing it to be trolling when in fact it was a perfectly serious inquiry into who out there was into scat, there would then have to be
3) Reversibility. Which there is, as far as I can tell; ficsuits can be reactivated and an email containing the new password (or the old password) sent by email, and deleted threads are not in fact deleted, but just cease to show up on topic lists (as links to deleted threads still work), so they are in fact suspended rather than deleted, and can if necessary be reestablished.
So, the system has a broad base of minimods helping to expedite requests for corrections, the rapid deletion of hasty and quickly regretted vitriol before it kicks off a benny, and suchlike, and then a smaller number of moderators with their current powers but also the ability to moderate in the Conversation, Policy and Gathering, and finally a smaller number of those moderators (those who are currently active and have been moderators for a while and discharged their duties satisfactorily, probably selected by Tom) possessing those powers but also the power to suspend (or lock?) threads and lock users out of their ficsuits. Upstream of that, Tom's role is primarily administrative, being to examine uses of the "troll buttons". These should be infrequent a) because they are not to be used lightly, since to do so would result in its confiscation from that moderator and b) because a sustained campaign of spamming could be nipped in the bud near its genesis by suspending the suit(s) involved, thus limiting the number of necessary thread deletions (which, as long as they were not libellous or illegal - f'r example if somebody put in links to hardcore porn IMGs - could usually be done by the conventional procedures once the troll had been locked out).
Ultimately, this may also make the board openable again, as trolls could be obliterated as quickly as they appeared with comparatively little scarring to the surface of the board. At present the initiative is with them because it takes a decent proportion of the moderators to be online and reading simultaneously to make instant response a possibility, whereas when it becomes quicker to lock a troll out than for that troll to create a new email account and reregister, that balance shifts. But that is a question for another day.
I have to go and massage my RSI-crippled fingers, but what do people think? |
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