Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Judgy Fucker
Mar 24, 2006

Discendo Vox posted:

1. It is very frustrating to see someone violate the rules, and instead of applying them, the mods proceed to ask the user questions and give them control of the thread for several pages. Every single time this happens, the only effect is to draw out the harm to discussion that the rule is supposed to prevent, and the original violator either a) gets probated anyway or b) they don't, and all people looking to poo poo up discussion get an object lesson in forms of discussion-making GBS threads that the mods will facilitate. When you do this, you are making moderation harder for yourselves in the future, and making the subforum less useable for everyone else.

2. It is not helpful to have an enumerated set of rules if mod actions then don't align with those rules. When non-joke probes or other actions don't make clear what rules they're violating it provides justification for the users complaining that moderation is inconsistent.
2a. Similarly, when it arises that mod action is needed that doesn't fall under the enumerated rules, the reason should say that this is the case, and the mods should explicitly confer (not necessarily publicly) about whether and how the rules can be revised to address that situation.
2b. Moderation policies and their rationale should be stated publicly in one place, and should not be announced ad hoc in the middle of arguments with users, in D&D or elsewhere. This also contributes to both the perception and the reality of inconsistent moderation.

You should not use the number of reports as a metric of quality; Campbell's law applies. There are reasons for the report number to decline that don't have to do with things getting better. Users leaving, activity shrinking, and users being taught that reports will do nothing, will also cause the number of reports to drop. You need to start with what you believe the forum is supposed to be, and directly tie it to your evaluation of "quality," preferably with more explicit terms, and with prior identification of carveouts.

For example, if you believe that the subforum should be educational, then people asking more factual questions that get answered can be a sign of healthy discourse, and that standard can be explicitly exclusive of people asking rhetorical questions intended to derail discussion. I could give a big rant about functional form here, but unless you think that "quality of the subforum" is inherently a number, you should treat numeric measures with skepticism- you'll tend to overvalue them.

tl;dr

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Judgy Fucker
Mar 24, 2006

cinci zoo sniper posted:

Bluntly, the reason for giving a nod to non-American posters is that the average American needs a few minutes to find America on the globe,

This also applies to Euros, dipshit. God you're terrible

Judgy Fucker
Mar 24, 2006

Somaen posted:

I appreciate the mod teams efforts, the forums feel more comfortable for people knowledgeable on the subjects with info sharing and less having to reply to paragraphs written by an american basement guy with opinions on global politics

Lmao years long grudge about euros insulting AN AMERICAN and his awful takes

It's hilarious how much you hate America considering if it wasn't for the American MIC you'd be speaking Russian already

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply