I would be interested to know if it's ever made a difference. In my case it never has, seems more like it's a place to air your reverences but you're not changing anyone's mind. Decisions here are final, at least in my experience.
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Simply Put, Too Much
- Thread starter willmtaylor
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You brought up moderation. I just responded to what you asked.
I didn’t say anyone was.
It seems people just want to argue so much they are missing the point of posts and just moving goalposts.
"He" said there is a fact, call it Fact A. Fact A was cited in a thread incorrectly and repeated incorrectly multiple times. "He" made some observations that called posters who repeatedly "spouting" Fact A incorrect as trolls. So (1) that is his interpretation.
Then it was said, what if reporting standards change and Fact A is no longer really comparable between two points in time or Fact A is being discussed at a different point in time than the parties thought and we are told (2) we are moving the goalposts.
It's up the mods to decide what is going on and if it is straight out trolling by the users or mistakes in communicating on an online forum.
Yes, it does, and has had a difference. I’ve seen moderation reversed, even some of my own, by administrators.
The example you gave is exactly why the mods do not like moderating PRSI for the most part.
Most of the moderation outside PRSI is fairly straight forward. The report comes in someone called another member a moron... a couple clicks to issue the insult reminder or suspension and you are done.
These PRSI posts like you describe require reading back through sometimes very long threads to figure out what is going on and and decide what, if anything, should be done... and it can be a lot of work.
Good to know it does happen. If nothing else at least you all offer the means to challenge it, something that most places do not do.
It's worth noting that we do try to judge intent, but none of us can read minds. It can take an accumulation of posts to judge why a user is making certain comments. If we conclude that someone is trolling based on a single post, it has to be pretty obvious. Otherwise, we have to wait until the trolling pattern has become clear, which means that some of the earlier trolling posts weren't moderated at the time they were made.
Yeah well I was banned from PRSI for what mods thought my intent was. They were wrong and refused to listen.
I wouldn't feel too bad, my time is coming as well. For many of us here it's a rite of passage.
Disagreeing with our decision after your appeal is quite different than not being listened to.
Semantics. Wouldn't listen to reason, is that better? You guys judge people's intent and are wrong quite often, its that simple.
To me, The Moderators seem too take a lot of unnecessary scrutiny for being ‘Overly particular’ or ‘biased’ (The exaggerated list goes on) on this site, One thing I wanted to mention that I think others seemingly have not discussed, is I feel the moderators give more than enough ample opportunities for habitually banned members to come back after a temporary suspension to rejoin the ‘Community’, where I have read where other members have commented that on other ‘tech sites’, those moderators are far more strict and permanently ban members after one violation, and MacRumors seemingly wants those who violated the rules/received a temporary suspension, to join back, because they believe that member can still participate cordially. [Assuming they understood why they were banned in the first place.]
I won’t mention any members names, because that’s not really relevant, but there have been members who have been suspended at least a dozen times or more, and they still are part of the Macrumors community, which to me, is fairly lenient when comparing to other sites where members are only given one chance to not violate the rules.
I won’t mention any members names, because that’s not really relevant, but there have been members who have been suspended at least a dozen times or more, and they still are part of the Macrumors community, which to me, is fairly lenient when comparing to other sites where members are only given one chance to not violate the rules.
Uh, not always.
At least someone gets it.
I'll go back to my example. I had an argument with someone (not on this site) about unemployment numbers. They said Obama left office with a 9% rate, and Trump now had a sub-2% rate. There's no nuance or grey area here...it's just wrong. I corrected them, and provided the official numbers. Their response was, see, your own numbers prove you wrong! The correct numbers were right there. In the same argument, some guy brought up GDP, and how Obama never saw numbers even half of what Trump is posting now. I posted a graph of GDP increases for the past ten years, showing that Obama had some pretty decent quarters, some even higher than what Trump has posted so far. He responded that "that's the stupidest graph I've ever seen" and continued to spout off false information. To me, that is trolling, or stupidity. One of the two.
You mention all of the data and graphs that you posted to support your claim. Did the other person post graphs and data to support their claim? If they didn't, then why continue to engage in the discussion? Answer: It seems like you wanted to prove that you were right and they were wrong and wanted them to admit that they were wrong. That makes you ripe for being hooked in by a troll.
It is rare for people online to change their opinions based on the online discussion. The best one can do is to lay out the truth and make the case... not for the other person's benefit, but for others who are reading the conversation that might not have reached a conclusion yet.
If you believe someone is a troll, you (the person who has identified the troll) have the responsibility not to feed the troll by giving them a foil to spar with. It sounds like you did the proper thing by supporting your statement with facts. But once the other person rejected those facts and didn't provide their own, that would be the time to disengage.
I wouldn't report them as a troll but I would definitely ignore them. "Attention" is the oxygen that trolls live on. Without attention, they end up getting more aggressive and more outrageous and go on to attack others. THAT would be when it is time to report them. That over-the-top evidence makes it easier for mods and admins to address the situation. Over the years, on many different forums, that is how I deal with trolls.
An argument is simply two people trying to get the last word in first.
We agree. Not always is the same as sometimes.
Your example was clear. On the surface, it sounds like trolling, but could be stupidity or getting lost in the conversation on an online forum, which is what I was questioning.
Someone made a post in the MBP forum today and mentioned the keyboads were fixed due to the "condom" put on the keyboard.
I lightheartedly responded - being helpful to the OP who was asking for advice mind you - that a condom on the penis doesn't fix the broken penis.
Sure enough, right on cue, there was the post deletion, this time citing "vulgar/explicit" content, with an addendum that omg we have thirteen year old teenagers on this site! Dear God since when is an anatomically/medically correct word considered vulgar/explicit, and since when can a thirteen year old not handle the word penis? Afterall, they have one of their own and go through sex education before that age. But in the end the most important thing was of course for moderators to remove the relevant info for the OP, that being that the keyboards weren't fixed with gen 3, right?
And yes, I already raised the issue with the continuously petty overmoderation with the Contact Us form, so spare me the spiel to do so. I'm sure this post will get deleted though, again right on cue. Always the same moderator, every single time which means the moderator is the problem. When you have a 15 page thread about overmoderation, you need to do something about the overmoderation, and so far nothing has been done about it it seems because the pettiness continues. This place really is getting less enjoyable.
...and yes, consider this me waiving my right to privacy to discuss this moderation.
I lightheartedly responded - being helpful to the OP who was asking for advice mind you - that a condom on the penis doesn't fix the broken penis.
Sure enough, right on cue, there was the post deletion, this time citing "vulgar/explicit" content, with an addendum that omg we have thirteen year old teenagers on this site! Dear God since when is an anatomically/medically correct word considered vulgar/explicit, and since when can a thirteen year old not handle the word penis? Afterall, they have one of their own and go through sex education before that age. But in the end the most important thing was of course for moderators to remove the relevant info for the OP, that being that the keyboards weren't fixed with gen 3, right?
And yes, I already raised the issue with the continuously petty overmoderation with the Contact Us form, so spare me the spiel to do so. I'm sure this post will get deleted though, again right on cue. Always the same moderator, every single time which means the moderator is the problem. When you have a 15 page thread about overmoderation, you need to do something about the overmoderation, and so far nothing has been done about it it seems because the pettiness continues. This place really is getting less enjoyable.
...and yes, consider this me waiving my right to privacy to discuss this moderation.
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So, what happened there? The post just got deleted, or was there something more beyond that?
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That type of off-topic remark is one sure-fire way to have a thread derailed in quick order.
I don't see how that remark contributed in any meaningful way, shape or form to the discussion at hand. And the MBP forum is not PRSI, discussing issues of a more sensitive nature.
In my own opinion, this is not an example of petty overmoderation.
It's been this way for years. Unless there's some sort of change at the management level, posts will be micromanaged and every word scrutinized for something offensive in any way. Best advice is walk on eggshells, you see members who have been reprimanded doing it all over the place here.
You asked for a public response, so we're posting here in addition to replying to you privately.
The moderators follow our site guidelines, and apply them as consistently as they can. Blaming the moderators for doing what we've asked is misguided. Your complaint is with our guidelines, not with the moderators. If you're repeatedly moderated by the same moderator, it's because you match timezones, not because a moderator has singled you out or is out of step with the other moderators.
Some forum members are easily offended, while others find nothing offensive. We take a middle-of-the-road approach, reminding users if their post produces justified complaints or if we consider the post over the line. In this case, the same point could have been made without the anatomical reference, and at least one other user was offended enough to report the post.
We considered it to be only a minor problem, but with the post contributing little to the discussion. Your moderation history is extensive, with over 2 dozen reminders, warnings, or temporary forum suspensions for personal insults, trolling, and a variety of minor problems, and we take a user's history into account when applying new moderation. However, since we considered your post to be no more than a poor choice of analogy, we didn't escalate moderation or issue a warning. Instead, we removed the post and sent you a heads-up reminder. You are welcome to make your point again with another choice of words, if it's one that you think will help the original poster.
The thread is about USB ports and other tradeoffs among MacBook Pro models, and we understand the original reference to condoms (see Apple Confirms 2018 MacBook Pro Keyboard Has 'Membrane' to 'Prevent Debris From Entering the Butterfly Mechanism' news story), but to us it appeared that you were more interested in making a crude joke than in giving useful advice to the original poster. If the point of your comment was that the claimed keyboard improvement wasn't effective, and therefore didn't make the 2018 model suitable for the original poster, then you could certainly make that point more clearly.
Sometimes a post like this one goes by without incident. In other cases it generates post reports or complaints in the thread, or takes a thread off course unnecessarily. We'd like to avoid all of that.
It's clear that you want more lenient moderation. Others disagree, and we hear from them too. Your "sure enough, right on cue" comment tells us that that you already know that we moderate more strictly than some other forum sites and that you knew that your post might lead to moderation. Our moderation reminders and warnings have told you where we draw the line, so please keep them in mind.
Right, and if you look at that moderation history, it's generally for equally petty stuff. Circumventing the profanity filter because I put an asterisk in place of the vowel instead of just typing out **** or **** or bitch or ****ing?
Yes, the guidelines themselves are overly petty plenty of times and that's half the problem. But just because the guidelines are petty doesn't mean the moderation has to be blindly petty to the tee just for the sake of sticking to overly petty guidelines.
I mean look, the profanity filter doesn't even work that well and it's easy enough to tell what someone was saying anyway, so why that rule exists to begin with is beyond me. If a rule is stupid, get rid of the stupid rule. Either don't allow profanity period, allow it in its entirety as stated, or let people edit it as they see fit. But my god don't give someone an infraction because they voluntarily censored themselves, that's completely asinine. One way or the other there's clearly a better way to deal with profanity other than telling people to use the word and hope the filter censors it when you could instead just have a rule to not use it at all or let people censor themselves. Stupid stuff like this that is non-sensical drives me mad.
I think this is sort of disengenuous to say, because I have no idea how you can not understand that my point was that the claimed keyboard improvement wasn't effective (yes, I'm reposting what got removed, and yes, this was the entire post so it sure seems clear we are talking about the keyboard still being ineffective, especially considering I quoted a post and bolded the part where the keyboard (and condoms) were mentioned):
Ultimately, you guys are free to do as you see fit; you can listen to the grievances people have had over the last 15 pages and consider them and act on them, or you can explain away everyone's grievances and stand behind the way the site is operating 100%. Up to you, doesn't matter to me, but I don't seem to be the only one who is sort of tired of the way this site is run. Sure I can take a hike (I'm sure someone will tell me to please do), but so can everyone else until this site is nothing; this site is what it is because of its members, and that's usually not understood until its too late.
Yes, the guidelines themselves are overly petty plenty of times and that's half the problem. But just because the guidelines are petty doesn't mean the moderation has to be blindly petty to the tee just for the sake of sticking to overly petty guidelines.
I mean look, the profanity filter doesn't even work that well and it's easy enough to tell what someone was saying anyway, so why that rule exists to begin with is beyond me. If a rule is stupid, get rid of the stupid rule. Either don't allow profanity period, allow it in its entirety as stated, or let people edit it as they see fit. But my god don't give someone an infraction because they voluntarily censored themselves, that's completely asinine. One way or the other there's clearly a better way to deal with profanity other than telling people to use the word and hope the filter censors it when you could instead just have a rule to not use it at all or let people censor themselves. Stupid stuff like this that is non-sensical drives me mad.
Doctor Q said:
I think this is sort of disengenuous to say, because I have no idea how you can not understand that my point was that the claimed keyboard improvement wasn't effective (yes, I'm reposting what got removed, and yes, this was the entire post so it sure seems clear we are talking about the keyboard still being ineffective, especially considering I quoted a post and bolded the part where the keyboard (and condoms) were mentioned):
puma1552 said:
Ultimately, you guys are free to do as you see fit; you can listen to the grievances people have had over the last 15 pages and consider them and act on them, or you can explain away everyone's grievances and stand behind the way the site is operating 100%. Up to you, doesn't matter to me, but I don't seem to be the only one who is sort of tired of the way this site is run. Sure I can take a hike (I'm sure someone will tell me to please do), but so can everyone else until this site is nothing; this site is what it is because of its members, and that's usually not understood until its too late.
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But why feel the need to express yourself crudely when discussing computers?
To me, the bigger question is why he isn't allowed to. Outside of MR people express themselves in many ways, it's what makes us who we are. Sometimes we want to share things that make us happy and express joy, others we want to complain about things that upset us. The staff here just wants you free of passion when typing up your posts if they are at all negative. However, whether it's in the PRSI forum or somewhere else on this site people will show emotion and as a result we see that moderators are constantly struggling to manage it with their restrictive rules.
And my question is why should he be allowed to?
I cannot see that - or how - a computer forum is considered to be an appropriate place to use coarse and crude and vulgar language, irrespective of whether it is masquerading as "humour". Or not.
And if you cannot express yourself without recourse to the use of such language in everyday life, then either your vocabulary is lacking at a fundamental level, or you like to behave in a boorish and coarse and crude and vulgar manner.
There is a place - and there are places - where the use of such vocabulary may be considered appropriate - the battlefield, the football pitch, perhaps the pub, to name but a few - but I cannot envisage any context where the use of such language is appropriate on a forum to discuss computers and tech.
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