Effective as of now, we've implemented a change in moderation policies. Unedited, I'll include the details at the end of this message.
First though, I want to thank the moderators here for all their work. No one who isn't already behind the scenes can possibly appreciate the amount of work these folks have been doing with spammers, pornography, and other nuisances that afflict the forum. The stuff you've seen is just the tip of the iceberg.
My personal available time has dropped tremendously in the last few years. I'll say it again lest I be misunderstood, I won't shut this forum down until the last person stops using it, which I don't anticipate anytime soon. I've even made arrangements with my wife, should something happen to me, so that the forum will be taken care of. However, the amount of "me" I've been able to invest in the forum lately has been less than it used to be.
So the moderators have been picking up my slack, and doing a damned good job of it. Seriously, you have no idea how much work these guys put in. It's been years since I've gotten a moderation report (spammers, porn, etc) that wasn't already acted upon no matter how early in the day I look at it. I don't think some of these mods sleep.
There have been disagreements on content moderation though. Some of you have been "less than shy" about expressing your perspective on it. On one hand, there's an inclination to realize that some people just won't ever be happy. On the other hand, you guys *are* the forum, and so I do listen and care about your opinions, even when I don't always agree.
So, we're trying a change as noted below. My available time won't significantly increase though, so what this change is going to mean is that when something does need content based moderation, it's going to remain that way for a while until I can get to it. That's the tradeoff. If it gets ugly, I'm reserving the right to undo this moderation policy change, but we're going to try it. It also means some threads will probably get locked from time to time, until I have a chance to look at them. Hopefully that's just a matter of hours, but sometimes it'll be days.
Enough said - here's the info I posted to the moderation team.
==========================
I'd like to make a change in how we collectively moderate things around here.
First I really appreciate your efforts more than I've said and more than you can ever know. It's no secret that I've been pretty absentee for a while now, and you guys picked up the slack. It's very rare that there's a report of some kind of spam or trouble that isn't already dealt with before I get to it. You guys rock. Seriously I can't say it enough, you guys have done a thankless job without ... well... without thanks. So thank you.
But as you also know, there's been some grief about the moderation here for a while also. Some of it is just hater's gonna hate and there are some people on this forum who are suffering from cranial-rectal inversion who need a boot up their keester sideways.
On the other hand though, some of it is related to us having different styles of moderation and me not passing on very good guidelines for how I would like to do things, as well some of it is perceived conflicts of interest, either due to commercial efforts, or past conflicts.
Here's what I'd like to try for a while. I'm going to ask everyone not to moderate things for content -- don't edit or delete other people's posts. The exception to that being obvious spammers or pornography or approving newbie posts/topics, please jump on that when you see it. However, leave the rest for me to be the bad guy. If something's going really south, lock the thread and refer it to me to deal with. That means that moderating things is going to take longer, but I think it'll be easier on everyone all around. It will certainly be easier on my blood pressure
I hope everyone is OK with this and is willing to stick around and continue to help out, but I understand if this doesn't sit well with you and you don't want to do it anymore. If that's the case, again thank you, and I hope there aren't any hard feelings. I just don't know what else to do.
Thanks!
--- saint
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
Send this topic
Print
Topic: Moderation change (Read 5353 times)
