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Simply Put, Too Much
- Thread starter willmtaylor
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This is handled by the admins and I have alerted them to your request.
Please be patient as it takes them a bit to pull the information together for you.
Oh, yeah, don't me started on that weaselly little fre—
…he's right above me, isn't he?
I just don't like the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law way things are handled. Do I have permission to share a note I got from a moderator? It is something very unimportant, not a big deal, kind of silly but speaks to what I mean by "letter of the law".
Only if you specifically waive your right to moderation privacy so that admins can respond. Otherwise the conversation ends up being one sided.
Yes, Its not a big deal so I totally waive my right. It was just a warning over something silly.
Things change over time and the traffic to this site has gone up exponentially compared to when we joined. The site has nowhere near the moderators needed to respond to all queries and complaints. They rely on posters to flag possible inappropriate post and overworked moderators to respond to the flagged post.
These moderators can be capricious, heavy handed, and not consistent but they are people doing an impossible job.
As far as them responding to post, for every response they make, they receive a bunch of replies which they then have to answer. I would rather have them spending most of their time moderating the site rather than posting in the forum. That being said, thanks to the moderators that do respond.
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I believe most of us take all of this into account. But when posts disappear, sometimes days old posts, for no apparent reason, and you are told point blank when you ask why that the reasons will not be discussed, then this naturally leads a person to wonder what is really going on. Then when you report a post that clearly goes over the line and it is not deleted, your wonder doubles down. None of this helps produce an atmosphere conducive to friendly discussion, which it seems to me, is the entire point of moderating a board like this. I don't see where it makes the moderator's thankless task any easier, either.
Are you referring to a post of your own? If you are, just send a note to the admins using the contact us link and you will always get an explanation why it was removed.
Same thing... if you report a post you think we wrongfully rejected, send in a contact us for an explanation and you will receive one.
If there are cases where you sent in a contact and did not get an answer, please send in a new contact us request today telling us what you can remember as far as the subject and date, and the admins can try and run it down for you.
Yes, my own experience. I don't know the specifics of anyone else's experience, only the generalities described here, that happen to essentially match my own.
My point was though I have asked for explanations on occasion and been told by the moderator in no uncertain terms that it will not be provided (beyond quoting the rules, when my question is about whether they should apply to the supposedly offending post). Some of the specific incidents go back a couple or a few years, so I don't know if I can chase down the paper trail. I am not imagining it though, I can assure you, and these are the incidents that have led to me walking away from this site in disgust for long periods of time. I am hoping this wasn't the aim, but I will tell you that possibility certainly has occurred to me.
It sounds like where you went wrong is asking the moderator about it. The process is to use that contact us link if you have issues with moderation and have the admins look it over. We have actually been instructed not to argue over PM with members over moderation.
If someone sends me a polite note explaining they don't understand the moderation, I'll usually try and explain. But otherwise, we'll usually refer you to that contact us link.
Ok but remember, I did say it was a silly example of a larger problem. Anyway, I posted “freakin’ Obama” in a thread about delays in the shipping of the new phones. It was deleted because political posts aren’t allowed outside PRSI. Now, AFAISI, the spirit of the rule is that you don’t want to derail threads outside of PRSI with political discussions. Good rule. But this wasn’t that. It was a silly joke. But since Obama is a political figure, the letter of the rule was seemly broken. That’s the kind of stuff I mean. You have moderators letting the worst kinds of posts stay up because they technically don’t break the rules or maybe because the moderator doesn’t want to seem biased since the post can be in a grey area of the rules but they literally suspend or ban people for breaking a rule for a post, that within context of the thread, should be allowed.
For what's it worth, my take is that this was correctly handled. The main forum threads can get derailed fairly quickly and usually are the most tightly moderated.
A seemingly innocuous side-remark, especially a political one, can generate a ton of threaded replies and quotes that can take a thread way off track, provoke others and also take a long time to clean up later, leaving holes and wreckage all over the place, with even more people then asking why their posts were removed. It's a pre-emptive action and since the comment didn't add anything useful to the topic, that's probably why it was pruned without feedback or comment. If it just was 'a silly joke', then it shouldn't be a problem to just let it go.
Yeah but it didn’t derail the thread. Everyone moved on. There were many posts after that.
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And I did let it go and it wasn’t a problem. I said it was a silly example of a larger problem.
I've given the admins a heads up so they can reply to you.
You are right, I probably failed to escalate the complaints, which I suppose I might have done if it seemed to be worth doing at the time and if I really liked fighting over such things. I wonder what percentage of the people who think they were moderated harshly go to that much trouble, and how many more just throw up their hands and walk away in frustration. I suspect the ones who raise the biggest stinks are the more combative types who are far more likely to be pushing the limits.
One rule you or the other mods who are reading this thread might explain is how you define "frivolous" posts. Honestly, if you were to delete every post that added little to a discussion, half the posts in many threads would have to go, and that seldom happens. Vague rules such as these are begging to be applied arbitrarily, and they are (and not just in my experience, it appears).
Even *very specific* rules are applied arbitrarily, citing “common sense” or “moderator judgment” as reasons a post didn’t run afoul of a rule.
I would rather the rule be written vaguely if it is then going to not be moderated by the wording of the rule itself. Of course, it would be best if the rule was written well and specifically, and then moderated that way.
I’ve come to the conclusion that MR just doesn’t want to excel at this at all.
You raise a valid point, and what is considered a frivolous post is a constantly changing definition based largely on member feedback. I'll give you an example... right after Phil Schiller made the "courage" remark about removing the headphone jack, members started posting "that takes courage" (or variations) a lot, particularly in news threads. Not long after that we started getting a good number of complaints in reports from members that the "that takes courage" comments were getting annoying. So we discussed internally, and there was moderator consensus the remark had just become a meme of sorts and was not adding to the discussion... so should be moderated. So now if you make a post that consists only of "that takes courage", the post will be moderated if we see it. The same process has occurred with other phrases like this over time.
It is just not practical to change the frivolous post rule every time a new meme or phrase like this comes along. The rules are very long as it is.
So it is possible you could post something say in June that is okay, and now all of a sudden in September (made up examples) that exact same post would not be allowed, and that is a valid complaint. The only thing I can offer is we would never suspend or ban anybody over a frivolous post like this. You would just get a reminder about the rules so you know not to post that any longer.
Thank you for this explanation, it is appreciated. As you say, the rules are (too) long already. So perhaps is it worth considering the purpose of the rules, and which ones are genuinely useful. The vast majority of boards on which I've participated explain their posting rules in a sentence or two. Much beyond that and they turn into Terms of Service, a rather different animal. It seems to me the highest order purpose of the rules is to tamp down flame wars. They are easy to spot and generally devolve quickly into exchanges of personal insults, bullying, and other forms of aggressive behavior. This can cause real harm to the experience of reading the boards.
So what harm is done by the "frivolous" post? That someone might be annoyed? I've never been into the meme thing, and sure I find triviality to be annoying sometimes, but that just reflects on the poster. My scroll finger still works, and so long as the discussion hasn't slipped off the rails towards some dark place on that account, I don't see them doing any damage.
Now this was many years ago, but I remember an exchange of puns with a previously mentioned poster (almost certainly in the PRSI forum). Some of us at least were having a good laugh, surely to nobody's detriment, but apparently somebody wasn't amused, complained, and the entire string was deleted. Major face palm moment. So the problem as I see it is vague rules can turn into weapons.
If I was to suggest only one thing it would be try a clean sheet of paper approach to the rules, if only as an exercise. The point would be to see if the most important issues can't be addressed in a sentence or two. I bet 90% of the problems could be handled that way. And then, maybe, who really cares about the remaining 10% that probably requires as much moderation effort as the other 90%?
I've seen forums like that also where the rules consist of a sticky post that essentially says "Don't be a jerk" and that seems to do the trick. I think what has happened is over the years this site has grown very large and along the way, problems cropped up that resulted in a new rule to address the problem... and here we are. If you have any specific suggestions for a particular rule that could be edited down, please send it in.
If it was just the occasional LOL post, I don't think most members would get too upset about it. But often it is the follow on to the frivolous post that stirs up problems. Next thing you know six of the 25 posts on a thread page are people arguing about a "courage" comment and that is annoying.
Not sure how pretty much anything like that can be explained in something like a sentence or two. Short of it not really being an explanation but just a hopeful and very generic "Be respectful."
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Probably analogous to the type of damage that someone throwing a wrapper on the ground does. Sure plenty of others would just ignore it or not even notice it and move on. Yet others will see that as something that's OK and add on their litter to it (as harmless as it might be). Ultimately we get to walk around in a place that is littered with trash here and there, and while it might not be a big deal (until it gets out of hand) or not really something that some care about, it doesn't change that the litter is still there and it would be better if it wasn't.
I might have a look at that but my suggestion is all about starting clean, with the idea of less being more, such as:
We do not allow the posting of personal attacks, insults, harassment, inappropriate language, or spam. We reserve the right to remove any post that does not contribute to friendly discussion.
Combine a simple and easy to understand moderation policy with more appearances of moderators in threads saying "please cut that out" if trivial debates get out of hand, and I think you've addressed the vast majority of the real issues we see on every comment board. It might well be that the pursuit of a perfect policy is the enemy of the good.