Moderation

This is just my opinion and I'm assuming most people won't agree but I don't care I'll still voice (or text lol) my opinion. I personally think the moderation department needs some sort of revamp, moderators seem to go looking for trouble which may be there job but i think that is a huge problem.

How I see it is moderators should just be lay back and act on posts which are reported or posts that are blatantly breaking rules like avoiding the filter or posting dirty images. I don't think the odd swear in a video or the odd pointless count would make a huge difference, obviously if people were blatantly abusing it, send them a pm. Everything in the rules doesn't need to be caught in the net all the time after all the rules are in place to mainly protect the members and if no-one is reporting the posts surely it really isn't offending anyone. If another member feels like they're being bullied they should report the post, if they don't it obviously doesn't faze them. I noticed when people insult me sometimes moderators contact me asking if I'm offended it's nice to know mods are trying to be protective but it really isn't needed it just causes unnecessary tension, even sometimes I just feel tempted to reply to the mod with yeah when it really isn't bugging me just to make the person annoyed.

That's just my opinion and it's fine to obviously get defensive because I guess it's naturally but I honestly think a more laid back approach like this would make a huge difference.

I don't think they should rely on reported posts as they should keep an eye out on rules being broken in general, reported or not. I sometimes find they act without really thinking sometimes, in a tongue in cheek - barely scratching the surface sort of way. Many times I have seen people post pictures, such as facepalm pictures, which are in context but they'll warn a member for doing it because it's somehow pointless. If people are making right idiots of themselves, sometimes the facepalm picture sums up in more ways than words could ever do :P

I also find that in some cases they rely too heavily on the filter avoidance rule but aren't quite sure why, so they just use that as a means to warn people. Avoiding the filter is only ever bad when a post is being inappropriate - if it's not, don't warn the member. It's why Garion got rid of the Avoiding the Filter rule a year or so ago, because you have to have a reason to break that rule, as the rule in itself isn't descriptive or useful. For some reason, it's been re-established.

I agree with every statment, I do't hink half of the things they act upon offend anyone like they predict it would.

First I'd just like to mention that not all moderators have access to reported posts. Infact, only Super Moderators can view reported posts, and they get in trouble if they solely rely on these for catching rulebreaks. Actually a number of some of this evening's controversial moderation decisions in the Feedback forum were acted upon after not one but several people reported particular posts.

If swear words are filtered then when avoiding the filter, especially when it's a severe case where the user has said the F or S word, then I'd say that's not acceptable and should be removed, and the user contacted. With regards to that three lettered word starting with an N which was used today I'd say Richard just ran into some bad luck using that word unintentionally aware that it was avoiding the filter. The reason I think we don't have to show more leniency when a situation like the one tonight arises is, because as everyone saw, Richard appealed that usernote (no, it wasn't a warning) and it was removed. It's very rare that users have to be contacted because they're unintentionally avoiding the filter with text posts. Naturally, when they're avoiding the filter with harsher words it's appropriate that they're contacted because usually this means:

A) They intended to express those harsher words (and by harsher I mean the typical F S B words)
B) Well - those words are commonly accepted as derogatory and it should be obvious to all users that they're not appropriate, especially if they're avoiding the filter to use them!

So to recap if a user unintentionally avoids the filter with a word that's not on our filtered list and that's not all that bad it's likely they'll see no trouble, but if a user avoids the filter using a harsher swear word or full word that is filtered, their post will be edited and they will be contacted.

The other and much more popular case where members are getting contacted for avoiding the filter is the infamous YouTube song scenario where the lyrics contain filtered content. I can see both sides to this. On ours, we want to keep the forum relatively clean, and give fair warning when a user might be subject to swearing or otherwise inappropriate content. On the user's side you're posting songs you enjoy and listen to all the time and probably don't even think about the fact that there's swearing in the song, you just want to share it. Since obviously we don't live in a Star Trek era where we can have audio filters implemented wherever we please, we make it the user's responsibility to cleanse songs of inappropriate content or to give fair warning before posting. It's probably reasonable to say that more often than not users posting filter avoiding videos don't realize they're filter avoiding until they're contacted about them so I'm not personally phased by that. I think Myke had the suggestion of the day here for a solution to this one, and management are all in agreement with it that when you post a video it would be nice if the forum automatically added a disclaimer indicating that the video might contain offensive content. So we're going to give adding that feature a shot, and I think that's going to make the avoiding the filter situation (with videos atleast) a lot more bearable.

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Originally Posted by GommeInc

I don't think they should rely on reported posts as they should keep an eye out on rules being broken in general, reported or not. I sometimes find they act without really thinking sometimes, in a tongue in cheek - barely scratching the surface sort of way. Many times I have seen people post pictures, such as facepalm pictures, which are in context but they'll warn a member for doing it because it's somehow pointless. If people are making right idiots of themselves, sometimes the facepalm picture sums up in more ways than words could ever do :P

I also find that in some cases they rely too heavily on the filter avoidance rule but aren't quite sure why, so they just use that as a means to warn people. Avoiding the filter is only ever bad when a post is being inappropriate - if it's not, don't warn the member. It's why Garion got rid of the Avoiding the Filter rule a year or so ago, because you have to have a reason to break that rule, as the rule in itself isn't descriptive or useful. For some reason, it's been re-established.

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Garion didn't get rid of the rule - he merged it with inappropriate after members said they were too long and it seemed to be confusing for some so it was made clearer. The 'avoid the filter' rule has never altered
and have never just been enforced when it was used inappropriately. If it had you would find an announcement saying that. The interpretation has never altered -the filter is the filter and those avoiding get warned. I think you could have reinvented history here a bit Gomme. The real question is the what words the filter contain and I know Oli before he left had virtually 100% made up his mind to remove 'k'n ob' 'n'ob' and 'd'ick' because he and I had quite a long discussion about it. As you know I have always been in agreement with this as I do not feel that mild words like this need to be in it and if ever used in an inappropriate way could be dealt with by Rule A2. Oli said he had 100% power to do this and didn't have to refer to Jin on it so it really might be worth considering. In any event those words are worth nothing more than a pm IMO.

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Originally Posted by Richie

This is just my opinion and I'm assuming most people won't agree but I don't care I'll still voice (or text lol) my opinion. I personally think the moderation department needs some sort of revamp, moderators seem to go looking for trouble which may be there job but i think that is a huge problem.

How I see it is moderators should just be lay back and act on posts which are reported or posts that are blatantly breaking rules like avoiding the filter or posting dirty images. I don't think the odd swear in a video or the odd pointless count would make a huge difference, obviously if people were blatantly abusing it, send them a pm. Everything in the rules doesn't need to be caught in the net all the time after all the rules are in place to mainly protect the members and if no-one is reporting the posts surely it really isn't offending anyone. If another member feels like they're being bullied they should report the post, if they don't it obviously doesn't faze them. I noticed when people insult me sometimes moderators contact me asking if I'm offended it's nice to know mods are trying to be protective but it really isn't needed it just causes unnecessary tension, even sometimes I just feel tempted to reply to the mod with yeah when it really isn't bugging me just to make the person annoyed.

That's just my opinion and it's fine to obviously get defensive because I guess it's naturally but I honestly think a more laid back approach like this would make a huge difference.

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There's one extremely simple problem here with an extremely difficult solution... where do you draw the line?

I know for a fact that not all posts are reported, I moderated a thread the other day where only one post was reported yet 3+ users were involved in 5+ posts. You cannot rely on post reports, people would rather take matters into their own hands and blow everything out of proportion, making things worse. I know from being a user before Moderating that I would do this quite often myself!

The current Moderation system is working just fine IMO.

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Originally Posted by Catz

Garion didn't get rid of the rule - he merged it with inappropriate after members said they were too long and it seemed to be confusing for some so it was made clearer. The 'avoid the filter' rule has never altered and have never just been enforced when it was used inappropriately. If it had you would find an announcement saying that. The interpretation has never altered -the filter is the filter and those avoiding get warned. I think you could have reinvented history here a bit Gomme. The real question is the what words the filter contain and I know Oli before he left had virtually 100% made up his mind to remove 'k'n ob' 'n'ob' and 'd'ick' because he and I had quite a long discussion about it. As you know I have always been in agreement with this as I do not feel that mild words like this need to be in it and if ever used in an inappropriate way could be dealt with by Rule A2. Oli said he had 100% power to do this and didn't have to refer to Jin on it so it really might be worth considering. In any event those words are worth nothing more than a pm IMO.

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It was altered, it was moved to "Inappropriate Posts" because "Avoiding the Filter" as a rule lacks substance - I talked to Garion about the rules and that's why they were changed because it was a boring wall of text and many of the rules rely upon core rules to actually work - especially "avoiding the filter" - Garion was in agreement with this. I'm amazed you're acting as if I made up the discussion, when I could give you the chat logs to back up my evidence :P

Avoiding the filter can only be inappropriate, it's the core meaning of the rule - but sometimes it is isn't as some words live double lives and have double meanings. But this is where, for some unknown reason, management lose all common sense and reason, and fail to give responses. The current moderator responses are:

Member: "Why is avoiding the filter bad?"
Moderator: "Because it is."

That's not a reason. If you've poorly re-written the rules, then don't cry when you have to interpret and give reasons like any moderator job has in the description. Heck, the bit in bold is such a daft thing to say - why do you religiously follow the filter when the filter does contain harmless words when used in appropriate contexts? I don't want a religious, robotic response from you Rosie, you know I lost respect for you when you began talking like one.

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Originally Posted by GommeInc

It was altered, it was moved to "Inappropriate Posts" because "Avoiding the Filter" as a rule lacks substance - I talked to Garion about the rules and that's why they were changed because it was a boring wall of text and many of the rules rely upon core rules to actually work - especially "avoiding the filter" - Garion was in agreement with this. I'm amazed you're acting as if I made up the discussion, when I could give you the chat logs to back up my evidence :P



Avoiding the filter can only be inappropriate, it's the core meaning of the rule - but sometimes it is isn't as some words live double lives and have double meanings. But this is where, for some unknown reason, management lose all common sense and reason, and fail to give responses. The current moderator responses are:

Member: "Why is avoiding the filter bad?"
Moderator: "Because it is."

That's not a reason. If you've poorly re-written the rules, then don't cry when you have to interpret and give reasons like any moderator job has in the description. Heck, the bit in bold is such a daft thing to say - why do you religiously follow the filter when the filter does contain harmless words when used in appropriate contexts? I don't want a religious, robotic response from you Rosie, you know I lost respect for you when you began talking like one.

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He may have talked to you about it on msn but nothing was ever changed officially, Gomme otherwise we and the whole forum would have been informed. I know Oli talked to you about some words from the filter being removed but then nothing has ever been changed. The fact that you have 'lost respect for me because I have become a robot' doesn't come into it as this is not personal just a statement of fact. You may see I have supported your view in another thread. Not bad for a robot, eh?

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Originally Posted by Catz

He may have talked to you about it on msn but nothing was ever changed officially, Gomme otherwise we and the whole forum would have been informed. I know Oli talked to you about some words from the filter being removed but then nothing has ever been changed. The fact that you have 'lost respect for me because I have become a robot' doesn't come into it as this is not personal just a statement of fact. You may see I have supported your view in another thread. Not bad for a robot, eh?

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It was common sense that avoiding the filter can only be inappropriate, it was the conclusion out of all the discussions we had about the filter and the rule in the last few weeks. Especially when there was no other reason for the rule being broken other than "it broke the filter" which isn't a reason, if anything it's the start of a lengthy response - "It broke the filter because...."

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Originally Posted by GommeInc

It was common sense that avoiding the filter can only be inappropriate, it was the conclusion out of all the discussions we had about the filter and the rule in the last few weeks. Especially when there was no other reason for the rule being broken other than "it broke the filter" which isn't a reason, if anything it's the start of a lengthy response - "It broke the filter because...."

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But your view was not upheld on that occasion, Gomme. What may seem common sense to you doesn't mean it is common sense to everybody else. I actually agree with you on a few of the words but not all you would like to see out of the filter and only sanctioned under rule A2.