Ask us about SA forums moderation!

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

«‹›2 »

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Shbobdb posted:

Tell me more about the chargeback scam. How does that work?

IDK, he was just doing some weird poo poo with disputing charges or something. I am not a banker.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 17:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 03:44

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

prefect posted:

I've heard that sometimes they don't even ask a person; they just have mod buttons all of a sudden.

This used to happen, not anymore.

Mods generally talk to the other mods of their forum, then ask a relevant admin for the go-ahead. Sometimes admins make the choice, but it's often mods selecting a co-mod or replacement.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 00:32

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Skoll posted:

Can I mod the Star Citizen subforum? I think everyone who regularly posts in it has a very real and actual mental issue.

It doesn't need another mod right now, but I'll remember you want to do it.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 03:10

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

I think the SC forum has been a success. I closed the thread in Games because I thought it was terrible, but the SC forum (Lowtax's idea) has basically managed itself. It does not cause any issues for the rest of the forums. It's totally self-contained. Sure, it's dumb, but it's dumb in a way that's a lot less damaging to the forums than other mock threads etc. have been in the past.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 13:37

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

AdorableStar posted:

Whatever happened to all the catch phrase and typing improperly probations

Probations for spelling and grammar were stupid because they didn't encourage good posting or prevent bad posting. Catchphrases and similar are handled forum by forum. I think they're only a big problem in GBS, because a bunch of broke-brain GBS dudes can't do joke.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 18:09

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Totally TWISTED posted:

And yet Windows 98 was asked to be a mod by Ambien.

Keep in mind that his worst behavior was all long before she started moderating GBS. This got a lot of discussion behind the scenes, and it's easy to understand why there was a disagreement. LadyAmbien just had a very different perspective from some of the other mods. Also, at the time, someone who actually WANTED to mod GBS was tempting. Obviously Windows 98 revealed himself to be really crazy again, but I think it's a shame that LadyAmbien stepped away from doing a lot of forums stuff shortly after. I think she was doing good things for GBS.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2016 20:17

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Bill NYSE posted:

Do mods \ admins have the ability to see previous usernames? How do you track an idiot that tries to hide their tracks from being a continuing annoyance?

You mean if they change their username or if they re-reg? If they change their username, all their histories/post history/rap sheet etc. doesn't change.

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

How do the mods find reregs of permabanned goons? Some perma'd people are so crazy that they can't help but out themselves every time they post, but there have been several instances of people evading permabans for awhile before finally getting caught.

Like you said, most reregs don't hide it. A few permabanned people manage to hide for a while until they give themselves away or we get a tip. We usually match IPs, although IP checking can have some weirdness. ZDR could probably expand on some of the reasons why, I don't really get the technical side of SA at all.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2016 01:30

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

I'm not certain why ZDR closed it when he did, but moving or closing or majorly changing GBS has been discussed for a while. It had some good stuff, but it was also a haven for by far the worst posting on the site.

I'll be saving some of the good threads and moving them later today.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2016 15:25

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

LivesInGrey posted:

I see that the OSHA thread got moved to DIY, thank you. It's not the best place (PYF feels like that to me) but it'll work. PI would be better than Dorkroom for Critterquest, since it's more about the animals than the photography. The only thread I might miss is one that would've been better in E/N in the first place so I'll just take its loss and hope OP decides to bring it there now.

I'm going to move Critterquest after discussing it with LITERALLY A BIRD. I'd like to keep OSHA in DIY, since I think the kinds of people interested in the OSHA thread would be interested in DIY.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 11:36

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Grandmother of Five posted:

I don't know of all the instances that it has happened, or exactly what any of it has been about, but I know that a bunch of mods have been "doxxed" or otherwise harassed by creepy idiot people. I'm guessing that most mods & admins are people who were fairly heavily involved in the site before they became mods & admins, and probably knew about, at least, Something Sensitive, and about various stories of goons going way beyond the line, being super creepy about the personal lives of both mods & admins, other users, and targets of various mock threads.

What I'm wondering is, whether the possibility of doxxing, or other forms of stalking and harassment, is something that entered your decision-making process when you got asked to be a mod or admin?

I don't think most of the mods do when they agree to become a mod. We have a pretty standard best-practices approach to making sure SA accounts aren't linkable to real-world stuff as much as possible.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2016 12:37

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Vegetable posted:

Is Dare registering all these accounts under real or fake credit cards? Should we be thanking him for keeping SA afloat?

He's done some credit card fraud stuff before but IDK the current situation.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2016 12:36

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

thecluckmeme posted:

Moderators and admins:

Besides yourself, who is your favorite moderator and why

Also, who is your favorite admin and why

Obviously it's biased based on who I interact with, but FluffieDuckie has done an amazing job turning BYOB around, and she's handled CCCC and the influx of new BYOB posters well. All the mods of the Games subforums are also very good right now, and I'm really happy with our newest addition there, Palpek. But right now there's not a single moderator on the forums I think is doing a bad job, and that's fantastic, because in the past we've had some pretty noticeable problem mods. I work more closely with ZDR than any of the other admins.

I also think that Ralp, and a lot of the mods who were in place from 2013-2015 or so, deserve a lot of credit. Ralp, Kewpuh, blunt for century, I know there are tons of others I'm forgetting. SA in 2013 was in a really bad place, moderation-wise. A bunch of admins left because of the Aatrek thing, and SA had just gotten rid or was about to get rid of some terrible mods like BroJo or Senior Woodchuck. Then new GBS happened in November 2013. Ralp and a lot of the mods during that period did a good job of transitioning the forums to what I think is now the best mod team we've ever had. That isn't to say we never had good mods before, and the other 13 years of mods should also get their due. We had a number of very good mods and admins, and the problem mods were the exception, not the rule. They just tended to be really high-profile, because a bad mod can cause a lot of problem. SA has historically still had better moderators than anywhere else on the internet.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2016 11:21

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Pillowpants posted:

What is the point of FYAD and BYOB? What is the difference?

Did E/N disappear along with GBS?

FYAD is the non-NWS forum for gross pics and flame wars.

BYOB is the chill forum for making joke threads like "ITT we're the president of Honduras at a baby shower."

E/N was made a BYOB sub.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2016 12:15

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

stringball posted:

If Google adsense gets mad at nws images then why is nws stuff allowed in it?

The guy with the blue dinosaur eating two dicks was too much but others isn't?

I think it's because ads aren't served in FYAD, but I'm not positive. It does have something to do with how the forums are set up, but Lowtax would have to explain the details.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2016 18:52

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Ciaphas posted:

FAU why did Lowtax steal your title/av

This is an announcements problem that has existed as long announcements have. In short: Radium is a very good programmer.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 11:32

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

prefect posted:

Wasn't someone made Gas Chamber mod at least once? Fishmech, maybe?

Ralp

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 12:29

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

BattleMoose posted:

So I disagreed with some people on the internet and got a new avatar. \o/

Is there a line that can be crossed in terms of suggesting other forumites go and suicide themselves or is it really just an open season thing and anything goes?

Yes, but also there isn't anything we can do about someone buying you an angry av. We don't even see who bought them.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 11:08

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Instant Sunrise posted:

happyelf was a D&D poster who was primarily active around 2007 or so. He was a tightly compacted ball of rage, and used to get into arguments with people in D&D a lot. Plus he was pretty far to the left for D&D at the time, and was known for being fairly anti-Israel & pro-Palestine, to the point where the emoticon is named after him.

However, enough people got tired of his posting in D&D that there were several banner campaigns were launched to get people to add him to their ignore lists, which largely succeeded.

He's been permabanned banned since 2011 or so, however.

He came back and posted in Trad Games for a while as Catastropost, where he was a tightly compacted ball of rage that got into arguments with people a lot.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2016 11:40

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Sun Wu Kampf posted:

How often do people PM big whiny walls of text about 6 hour probations?

Not as often as they used to, but more often than for any other probation length.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 12:46

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

The Big Toxxing Scandal Rocks The Forums!

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 12:47

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

lmfao the Toxxing Scandal oh nooooooo can't believe the integrity of the toxxing system has been called into question

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 21:35

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

p. hosed up what happened with the toxxes lmao, very serious forums porbelm

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 21:36

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Blind Sally posted:

I still eagerly away FactsAreUseless's Pokemon Red puppet-ghost-themed Lavendar Town update.

August 12th, 2017!!

It's insane how many people remember that poo poo.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2016 12:56

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

I'm ZDR's contact at the NSA.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 13:18

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

CrazyLittle posted:

Admins? heck - not even the sql tables can see it. In fact we're not even sure if it actually exists. Our current theory is that Radium studied the placebo effect and managed to code the button in such a way that users just stop seeing the posts after clicking, regardless of any actual effect.

I love these loving forums.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2016 14:05

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

TTerrible posted:

A question for the moderators, why does SA attract people with such powerful mental disturbances? That post above reads like some of Schmorkys exs stuff when she was in peak flow.

SA built itself on a counter-counterculture designed in response to the rest of the internet. For most of its history, SA has defined itself by not being like [popular website]. This means we attract people who don't feel connected to those other sites, and some of them are extremely isolated mentally ill people like Dare.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 18:15

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

I think people should read/enjoy the front page more, and I still have some vague idea of wanting to increase poster participation with it, but also I think it's cool if people make fun of that President Baby guy, because I'm p. sure he sucks and I don't like his posts. That's right, the admins are corrupt, and we target people, and we're vindictive in all the ways you thought we were. That's just Something Is Awful Dot Com, baby!

# ¿ Dec 23, 2016 12:32

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

ToxicSlurpee posted:

How many moderators/admins here were, or are, moderators of other forums as well? I'm kind of curious because I've done it twice elsewhere and think back on it with a "yeah that was enough" kind of thing. The fact that moderators can last like a decade here kind of confuses me; the fact that Lowtax is still a marginally functional human being is just one of the mysteries of the universe. I think I spent three years as a moderator or administrator of a forum and find that it's frequently a thankless, dreadful job.

Trad Games mod Ettin also moderates, or used to, another trad gaming website, RPG.net.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2016 15:48

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

MANime in the sheets posted:

The tabletop version of Something Sensitive?

The trad gaming community online is entirely poo poo like this. It sucks.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2016 17:41

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Shbobdb posted:

But wait, can I get semi-legal research chemicals from a mod in a satanic cult to open my third eye, which I can use to doxx people for blackmail money? Because that one person keeps saying that is how I can get into this pay-for-play scheme.

You have to be a mod.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2016 17:42

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Look! A Horse! posted:

what is the hell circus all about?

It's the FYAD gas chamber. But FYAD also has the beecock option, which lets the IKs gas individual posts, which get sent to the big thread in the hell circus.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 12:31

FactsAreUseless: Feb 16, 2011

Ciaphas posted:

Could the beecock power conceivably be granted outside FYAD or is that a bit of stupefyingly obtuse radium-ware that cannot be touched without melting like the Indiana Jones Nazis?

I have no idea! It's not something I think I'd be in favor of.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 19:54