Ask us about SA forums moderation!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask us about SA forums moderation!

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

We had one of these a few years ago and it went great for a while, so here's another one! Ask us - meaning me and any of the other mods/admins who are willing to come answer questions - anything you want to know about moderating the Something Awful forums!

If you have questions about a specific probation or thread issue or similar, you'd be better served to go to QCS. This is for more general forums questions.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 01:18

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:17

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Ciaphas posted:

How much time do you and the other mads/admins spend doing work for the forums rather than just posting?

edit you know what i'm leaving that typo in

Also when'd you become an Admin, FAU? Thought you were just mod for Games.

These two questions are roughly related, so I'll answer them together. For a few months, our only admins were Cowcaster, Zen Death Robot, and Shine. Most of the minute-to-minute decisions in terms of probating people, thread gassing, etc. is done by the mods. But everything they do except for gassing threads and giving out 6-hour probations goes into the modqueue. The modqueue gets looked over and approved by admins - they don't turn things down often, but it can happen - and that's when mod-given avatars, longer probations, bans, and so forth go through. Admins also make a lot of decisions and help mods out in a bunch of other ways, like with thread tag changes. But Cowcaster wasn't always around, and ZDR does a ton of behind-the-scenes coding and development stuff to stop the forums from making GBS threads themselves and dying of severe radium poisoning. This combined with work stuff, changing schedules, etc. left Shine doing a huge amount of the admin work. This was a problem for a couple reasons: it created a bottleneck that made a lot of modding happen way more slowly, since so many things were waiting on admin action, and it led to Shine choosing to step down as admin. When that happened, ZDR named several new admins, in order to spread the workload around more. So the new admins as of a couple days ago are:

FAU
Smythe
NYC_Tattoo
and Exclamation Marx
with ZDR and Cowcaster still on

Smythe, Ex-Marx and I are all focused on areas of the forums that are busy and have a lot of mods. Smythe is handling GBS, YOSPOS, and SH/SC, I'm handling Games and its subforums, and ExMarx is on D&D. These are just rough divisions of labor - that way mods of those forums always know there's an admin to go to for help.

As mod of Games, I'd guess I spent a few minutes doing specifically Moderator Things, like handling reports. But any forums time is moderator time, too: it's expected that mods read and interact with their forum, know who their posters are, find problem areas, etc. That's why VideoGames stepped up to post more in MMO HMO - which was excellent, since I don't play any MMOs. You just can't mod a forum you don't read - one reason you stopped see things like the Games mods also handling Trad Games, for instance. So there's not really a clear divison of what time is modding and what time isn't. You're always a mod when you're on the forums.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 02:41

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Saint Isaias Boner posted:

hey gene I've heard somewhere before (probably from something you posted somewhere) that you don't really go poking around in threads looking for trouble and you mostly respond to reports. do you ever just gas horrible threads because you've noticed them being terrible or do you wait for a critical mass of reports to come your way before stepping in?

e: same question for any mod I guess. I know fluffie actively checks around BYOB and gasses stale or bad threads but it's not as fast moving as say GBS or Games

Reports are nice, but they only give you part of a situation. If you're getting a ton of reports from one particular poster or thread, that person or thread gets more attention. I generally gas threads if I think that probating people won't save it. Sometimes a bad thread makes good posters post badly, and I'd rather gas it than probate a bunch of people I know post well elsewhere. For me in Games, probations tend to be cumulative. You'll notice most of my probations are longer ones for posting badly a lot. I focus on posters rather than individual posts.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 13:26

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

N. Senada posted:

How did you become a mod? Like, is it just someone messages you and asks if you're up for it?

Yep! Back in the day you would just get made a mod without being asked first, but that didn't work great. Ralp initially asked me to mod GBS, but I said no since I don't really read GBS much. Later on, ZDR asked if I wanted to mod something and I said I'd do Games.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 13:26

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Fedule posted:

I imagine it's different for most other forums but it's really really not easy to just casually browse LP because... well LPs can be huge, and we have a lot of them. We have a couple of general discussion threads that I keep tabs on but following every LP thread would be insanity. Even when we had three mods it was out of the question. Obviously if I do see people being obviously terrible I can act on it but for the most part reports and PMs are the only indicator we have of where the trouble is. Of course once we have that we can then go digging for context and etc. There have been cases where I have discovered LPs I like after someone in the thread being reported.

LP is also a case of it actually being true that the thread is "owned" by the OP, so a couple of posters are able to keep an iron fist over their own terrible followers with judicious use of the close/open button without even having to involve the moderators. It's not a tactic for everyone but it can be effective.

How much offsite drama does LP generate? It seems like that would be one of the biggest forums for that sort of thing - the single largest of course being Trad Games.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 13:44

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Noun Verber posted:

Have any of you ever raped a child? This is important.

None of the current mods have raped a child.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 16:47

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Triggered posted:

Are you seeing traffic increasing to SA or is it still in a decline? I know the admins are doing work in the background, is it just to keep SA running or are there new features being created?

If there are new features in the works, ZDR hasn't told anyone yet. I also don't have traffic numbers, but I'll ask in the admin forum and see if someone who has those can tell me.

Jeza posted:

Not sure if this is just confirmation bias, but it seems like I see far fewer probations for low-content posts and other technically rule breaking posts than I used to. Are mods just more laissez-faire about that sort of thing now, or do people just report those things less nowadays? I've personally almost never bothered to report anyone for anything, but I guess there are people out there who do.

Things are more focused on users than posts now, at least from my perspective. Some rules are just gone - strict punctuation rules, derailing, low content for the most part - in favor of targeting posts and posters that are disruptive rather than just low-effort. For the most part, this means funny posters don't get probated because they want a no-caps posting style, but it depends a lot on the forum. Reports are useful, but I encourage people to PM me if they're seeing, say, an entire thread that needs more mod attention. Reports aren't always great for that sort of thing. But even though a lot of reports aren't actionable, it still helps to get a sense for who gets reported a lot, and why, and spikes in reporting can tell mods a lot about what's up in a thread they might not read.

Edit: Moderation ideas and styles change over time, too. The goal is to further discussion and funny posts, and some of the old rules ended up stifling discussion, so they started getting enforced less and less until they went away. A lot of forums don't have posted rules threads now, for instance. At the same time, you can see good discussion drowned out by bad posts, so it's not like there are no standards for posting, it's just more subjective now - hence why I want to further communication between mods and non-mods. A lot of forums have just gradually changed how they function, others have switched more suddenly, for instance BYOB added stricter rules successfully, GBS dropped all its rules less successfully.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 17:55

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

blackguy32 posted:

How serious do you take racism as a mod? I often see ironic racism on the forums and I often just roll my eyes and don't bother reporting because at times I felt that was just the culture of SA

Depends on the mod and the forum, I think. Games is pretty apolitical (deliberately, we discourage it), so a lot of the usual racism of whining about welfare queens or immigration or whatever you just don't see. Outright slurs and stuff seem pretty confined to GBS. You can usually tell when a poster is being ironic just by knowing who's who on the forums, although depending on the poster they might get hit for trolling or similar.

Edit: I disagree strongly that it's the culture of SA, though. Most forums don't see any kind of racism, ironic or otherwise. Sometimes you see ironic racism in FYAD, but that's FYAD being self-referential about ironic racism in FYAD. It's gotten really bad in GBS, which is why the mods there have been cracking down. I think sometimes people think of SA as the place for anything-goes trolling arts, but it really hasn't been that way in a long time. You don't see the "This is Something Awful, not Something Sensitive!" people much anymore.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 11:26

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Saint Isaias Boner posted:

Did you have any trouble with the Gamergate crowd when that all broke out?

I wasn't a mod at the time, Kewpuh's not around much but he'd be the person to ask. One of the first things I did as Games mod was to ban Gamergate discussion. It wasn't that frequent by that point, but it's so completely toxic to any gaming forum that I wanted to make sure.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 11:46

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

N. Senada posted:

I saw your post in the USPOL thread FactsAreUseless and now I want a livestream of you coming into a reported thread and reacting to it.

That wasn't in response to a report.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 20:01

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

N. Senada posted:

How do you decide what the little symbol by your name is going to be? A bird for LAB makes sense, yours is like the old stars; does everybody just pick their own, does somebody in particular make them?

People mostly picked their own. I want to color mine red but it's not like a normal image it's some sort of weird CSS thing or something. I'd like to credit the mod who was making them but I forget who it was, so hopefully they come take credit.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 20:29

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Ciaphas posted:

Is there anyone else between the administrator level and Lowtax? Do the admins (or hell, the mods) even interact with him even on occasion?

We talk to Lowtax pretty often, especially ZDR, but he doesn't really do much with the forums anymore in terms of administration or posting. It's not a big focus for him, although I know he reads some stuff.

He also might do more with the front page. I have no idea how any of that happens.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 22:15

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

GonSmithe posted:

It was CrazyLittle who made all the custom mod stars.

Then they should get tons of credit for making awesome mod stars!

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 23:39

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Eh! Frank posted:

What happened to XyloJW? I noticed a while back that he's not a admin or mod any more, and hasn't posted in a while. Which is a bit disappointing, he was one of my favorites, mainly because I remember him from the politoons threads in D&D a couple years ago.

He just sort of stopped posting and doing stuff, I think? I don't recall for sure, but I don't think there was a definite time when he was just like "I'm stepping down," I think he just sort of faded away. If I'm mis-remembering, someone tell me.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 00:46

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Textured Bitchtable Protein

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 12:27

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Hogge Wild posted:

Which forums have IKs, and are you mods happy with your IKs? Do they help your work, or are they around just for fun? I think that GBS could be improved by IKs. What do admins and GBS mod think about it?

Obviously it's up to Smythe and the GBS mods, but I'm not sure IKs would do much. IKs can only give out six-hour probations, and sixers are more useful in smaller, slower-moving forums where you can more easily say "this individual post is bad." In faster-moving forums like GBS or Games, most of the probations are longer ones that are usually because a poster is a problem rather than an individual post. But other mods/admins might have a different perspective.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 20:46

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Hogge Wild posted:

Can't the IKs request for longer ones? What are all the differences between mods and Iks?

IKs won't get anything longer than a 6hr approved, they can't see the mod forum but can see the modqueue. There might be other stuff but I think that's it. IKs also usually rotate on a schedule (FYAD) or aren't IKs for very long.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 20:59

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Ciaphas posted:

Do you find yourselves seeing more, less, or roughly similar amounts of reports and other crap from FYAD and the FYAD-lites than other forums? For the most part their posting culture completely baffles me so I have no real idea what flies and what doesn't.

FYAD-lites get way fewer reports (basically zero outside C-SPAM, but C-SPAM's not really a FYAD lite), but this makes sense for a couple reasons. First, it's cultural: people are discouraged from using the Report button. Second, they're just way smaller - if you have an issue with a poster you're more likely to just call them out or PM a mod/IK directly. Also usually poo poo just gets taken care of before reporting becomes necessary.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 21:03

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

blackguy32 posted:

How do you feel about some posters that have rap sheets that are about 2 pages long. I can think of one that posts in games, and I often find it hilarious to just look at their rap sheet.

What's punishable changes, how frequently some posters get probated changes. I don't worry about someone's rap sheet over the years, just their recent stuff when making decisions. I want to know if someone is a problem now, not whether they were or the mods disliked them in the past. Lots of good posters have long rap sheets just because they've been around a long time and used to get probated a lot.

Hogge Wild posted:

How much time do you mods spend on the mod forums just shooting poo poo compared to the amount you spend posting on the rest of the forums?

Not a lot. There just aren't enough mods and things don't move quickly enough in the mod forum. There's a couple threads that get a handful of posts in a day but it's not super active.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 08:08

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Sodomy Non Sapiens posted:

Also this isn't a question but FAU/VideoGames the work you guys put into Games has really paid off and the culture as a whole in that subforum is way better than it used to be.

Kewpuh deserves a lot of credit for this. Games had the same rules as new-GBS for years with Kewpuh as mod, but without all of GBS' problems. Kewpuh helped establish a successful rules-light gaming forum, which is difficult to do anywhere. VideoGames and I have refined and built on that - the biggest thing we've done is move a couple problem threads out of Games.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 08:14

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

So that's a big change. The mod forum used to be pretty chatty.

I mean there's talk, but it's still confined to two threads. I think people talk a lot more on Steam or Discord or by PMs and stuff now.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 17:47

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

I like reports for individual bad posts, and PMs when a thread or poster is being a problem. Sometimes context beyond what's available in a report is nice, and there are lots of times a thread just needs a mod to step in and tell people to stop being morons.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 11:09

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Control Volume posted:

What's the time investment like and how do you guys deal with it? Do most of you just have desk jobs and browse the forums while working, or are you only on during certain hours, etc?

It helps it mods are accessible a fair portion of the day but the workload is small. Every forum has multiple mods in case an issue needs solving immediately.

I am always on because I am a crazy person.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 00:11

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Shine posted:

Why would anybody make a chart like that?

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 18:34

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Hogge Wild posted:

Have you ever met another mod?

All the mods sleep in a single large bed.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2016 16:35

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Shine posted:

It made threads look stupid and was more a punishment for everybody else than for the cancer recipient.

This. It was supposed to encourage you to put that poster on ignore, but instead it just made everyone a little irritated randomly while browsing the forums.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2016 18:29

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Avshalom posted:

hello, friends. have any of you ever known love?

I've been with the same woman for three years now, but I'm probably going to have to switch hands.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2016 13:11

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

SneakyFrog posted:

What happened to Mod Challenges? havent seen one in a bit at least in GBS anyways... GBS mods too busy for shenanigans?

They just rewarded terrible posters with more attention.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2016 13:53

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Not a typo lmao

# ¿ Sep 2, 2016 14:12

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Vegetable posted:

How often do admins not approve mod requests for bans? And why?

The only mod I routinely don't approve stuff for is D. Smart. And he's not a real mod anyway.

Other admins might do it more though. I don't think it's common. If a mod's unsure about a ban they'll usually ask first.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2016 22:29

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Saint Isaias Boner posted:

how many people has D.Smart requested bans for, ballpark figure?

He likes to put in month probations for people who make fun of him.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2016 02:13

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

H.H posted:

Except ZDR and Garbage Day, do admins get paid?

Nope!

# ¿ Sep 5, 2016 11:38

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Woolie Wool posted:

Will you ever consider bringing back No Probation Day/Blood Purge?

As fun as it is to ban a bunch of people we don't like, it doesn't actually do much for the forums.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2016 11:42

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Skoll posted:

Why did you guys accept being mods/admins, and are there any inherent perks of being a mod / former mod or admin besides the forum cop powers?

I really like these forums a lot. Mods also get free plat, can give out free titles, etc., but I just did it because I like SA. The biggest benefit to being an admin isn't the admin powers, it's being able to help direct stuff and guide things on the forums by talking to mods and posters and etc. Hence why I made this thread and have taken on QCS stuff.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 12:22

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Saint Isaias Boner posted:

free plat? well no wonder everyone's clamoring to be made a mod

I don't think anyone's been made a mod without plat though.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 12:32

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Bill NYSE posted:

Could we possibly have another Hot Dog Day?

I don't remember this.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 16:14

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

Lowtax got an angry email from Google about inappropriate content in the Imp Zone Doom thread because someone posted a sprite of a sexy Cacodemon or something

lmao. Plus I hear they weren't happy about some stuff Bowser was saying.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2016 18:32

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Ralp posted:

He was IK of some closed subforum so his completely informal powers were to roam the forums and hand out the occasional 6h probation to anyone he saw make an especially bad or dumb post. I adored this idea but someone complained about it right on the heels of, iirc, the old ads guy going insane and probating a bunch of people in the soccer forum for no reason, and an FYAD IK using the same trick to probate someone in another forum. So it was probably hard to justify in light of that.

Now we have six admins to do this same thing.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 17:26

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

stringball posted:

Looking at the leper's colony brings dozens of "Dare", who the gently caress is he, why was he permaed originally and possibly beats Jon Pop in rereg dollars?

He's a completely insane Canadian who is convinced that FYAD are actually all a group of Canadian Tribes players he knows in person (or claims to know) who he has personal issues with. So he shows up sometimes to air a bunch of schizophrenic grievances and then gets banned. For a while he was doing some sort of chargeback scam, so it's hard to say how much he's actually spent.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2016 11:44

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 05:17

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

RNG posted:

Did anything ever pass the reverse gas chamber challenge?

Why did everyone hate Abe so much towards the end? Not disputing it I just don't know what he did.

I have no idea, I don't think anyone ever tried it. Also Abe got into a Twitter fight with a child.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2016 13:42

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