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Originally posted by Harishankar Yes. Although I've not really seen too many of these turn nasty. Yes there is one incident that I recall recently, but then I guess we Linux brothers and sisters generally tend to stick together
And also, I don't think its that we need more moderators, we just need more members to report such threads when they get out of hand.. to help us out. We have over 1,000 new posts a day here.. sometimes it reaches 2,000.. even doubling or tripling our mods, things would get missed, that' why we created the report this post so members can help out as well..
Quote:
Originally posted by Harishankar You're right. It's not the genuine repeat questions that I'm targetting but the trolls. You know, the one who starts off all the rants and not asks a question. It's amazing to see how much members still continue to feed these oft-repeated, totally useless threads...
Then as a member, educate other members. Some just can't help themself and they take things on a personal level just because someone who wants to get a rise out of others doesn't like the OS they use..
All members who use this site should see themselves as citizens of LQ.org.. leave the confrontations to us but feel free to post in any thread that broke a rule to simply state our rules and that you've reported to post to a moderator to take action and that's all you have to do and then move on, don't get caught up in the flame or whatever it turns into, the mods will take care of it from there.
Yes. But asking people to report is like the same old story:
The other thread which discussed thread status and so on: open, closed, stalled, solved etc. which many say is a great idea but hard in practice.
Members will not be proactive in stopping trolls and flamers. The first temptation is to react (and I can say this based personal experience, now learnt my lessons) violently before thinking. I believe that the moderators should be proactive in this regard.
My firm belief is that in some situations, excessive moderation is a good thing rather than no moderation at all.
It's hard to control a flame war except when you're a moderator. And I am guessing that a lot of threads go unreported but flame wars continue. This is especially so I believe in really out-of-control threads. I can understand members reporting the advert spams etc. - that comes naturally. But I don't think too many members are proactive in reporting flaming and trolling.
As an aside, I used to think that excessive moderation is bad, but believe me personal experience on really strictly moderated boards tells me that I much rather prefer a moderator who is very strict about implementing the rules than a member who gets away with blatant trolling, flaming or spamming.
The forum experience is more pleasant that way. You know exactly where you stand as a member with regard to the rules of the site and that every rule breaker is dealt with in the same manner.
Originally posted by trickykid As a moderator and a member of this forum, I would love to see the "versus" type threads or "which is better" or "which one should I use" type threads all dissappear as well, but that's in a perfect world.
Even in this fallen imperfect less-than-ideal world, do we really need NEW threads of Win vs. Linux and Distro X vs. Distro Y threads every single day? Couldn't we have a sticky in each forum for those threads so the REAL threads don't get lost in the bickerfests that invariably keep getting bumped up for months on end?
Originally posted by Harishankar It's hard to control a flame war except when you're a moderator. And I am guessing that a lot of threads go unreported but flame wars continue. This is especially so I believe in really out-of-control threads. I can understand members reporting the advert spams etc. - that comes naturally. But I don't think too many members are proactive in reporting flaming and trolling.
If its a flamefest and troll a member doesn't want to get involved with or they think their own personal emotions are going to get involved to make it more of a personal matter, then just report it and move on and ignore the supposed troll.
At times a moderator might not respond as quickly, but you have to think, we all do this in our free spare time as do all other members come here to help others. Even if it does get out of hand for a few hours or so, its still harmless if its going to be a thread that gets closed. It's not like members are dying, etc..
If you see a member or thread getting out of hand with no responses or actions taken within a day or so, contact Jeremy in such cases. If its just a double post or a "versus" type thread, that's not an emergency situation.
But I like to say that I think all the other mods do an excellent job moderating, it's very rare that I've ever seen a troll or member go on a rampage for more than a few hours, it's usually a quick response from most of our moderators to jump on the ball..
Originally posted by KimVette Even in this fallen imperfect less-than-ideal world, do we really need NEW threads of Win vs. Linux and Distro X vs. Distro Y threads every single day? Couldn't we have a sticky in each forum for those threads so the REAL threads don't get lost in the bickerfests that invariably keep getting bumped up for months on end?
Stickies are worthless in my own opinion.. sure everyone reads them at first, but it seems most ignore them. I have a sticky in Linux - General that covers more indepth rules.. 90% of the time members still ignore it. I can't recall how many times someone's posted a link and started a thread to the www.mslinux.org site after I put my sticky up explaining the site is fake, its been posted a million times.. etc..
I also claim to not post Microsoft threads in Linux - General.. yesterday I moved 3 from Linux - General to General..
Originally posted by Harishankar (a) My philosophy is "proactive moderation" (trying to prevent rather than cure). The key word is trying.
(b) I guess trickykid is more an advocate of "reactive moderation" (based on member reports/feedback and waiting/watching)
Both types can be mixed and matched. I just think that we need a bit more of (a). And if this requires more moderators, then so be it.
I rest my case
How can you say I'm more of an advocate.. waiting for members to report posts. Just the other day I followed a new member from his very first post to noticing his posted 5 posts within minutes so he could post a URL and then on to double posting two different threads he started.. I kept warning him throughtout his posts and was ignored until he finally saw one of my posts.
This morning, I moved almost 5 posts and cleaned up our reported posts to reflect the correct posts that should be closed since members at times report a post to be closed in one forum but it should be closed in the other forum it resides in cause it might be more suitable in the forum the reported it in.
I sometimes work 60 hour weeks.. along with having a life with my wife and still find the time to come here, help people and moderate. I'm not superman and neither are the other mods who are probably in the same situations. I think we do a damn good job moderating this site where it rarely ever gets out of hand. We have less than 30 moderators and have over 174k members.. and at any given time, I always see 3 to 4 moderators browsing this forum, if you don't think that is proactive moderating, I'm not sure what you think should be.
I sometimes work 60 hour weeks.. along with having a life with my wife and still find the time to come here, help people and moderate. I'm not superman and neither are the other mods who are probably in the same situations. I think we do a damn good job moderating this site where it rarely ever gets out of hand. We have less than 30 moderators and have over 174k members.. and at any given time, I always see 3 to 4 moderators browsing this forum, if you don't think that is proactive moderating, I'm not sure what you think should be.
Precisely. I understand that. What I cannot understand is that you say you feel overworked and yet you say the number of moderators presently are enough. I see a contradiction there.
That's why, if one person cannot do it, then more people should do it. As I said before I'm not being critical of the current moderation. I think that you misread my idea.
All I said was that since moderators aren't Gods and everpresent, we need more moderators who can share the burden.
Sorry if my post came out as excessively critical. I never meant to criticize any moderators here at present. All my suggestions are targetting at discussing different moderation techniques and how the present site rules can be fine-tuned to be more specific against rule-breakers.
< 30 moderators for 170,000+ members is a very low ratio and no wonder you all feel burnt out. Why not allow others to share your burden.
Why not see my post as being more of a constructive thing rather than a critical examination of the current moderation?
Originally posted by Harishankar Precisely. I understand that.
That's why, if one person cannot do it, then more people should do it. As I said before I'm not being critical of the current moderation. I think that you misread my idea.
All I said was that since moderators aren't Gods and everpresent, we need more moderators who can share the burden.
Sorry if my post came out as excessively critical. I never meant to criticize any moderators here at present. All my suggestions are targetting at discussing different moderation techniques and how the present site rules can be fine-tuned to be more specific against rule-breakers.
< 30 moderators for 170,000+ members is a very low ratio and no wonder you all feel burnt out. Why not allow others to share your burden.
Why not see my post as being more of a constructive thing rather than a critical examination of the current moderation?
I don't think adding more moderators will be effective, but perhaps it always helps if a moderator has privileges in more than one forum.. adding existing moderators to other forums might help resolve some issues that come about. I do see your point, I just don't think adding actual more moderators is going to help. Spreading them about the forums to cover more will though with the current setup.
To me, moderators are rare. That's why Jeremy has to be choosy when picking them. You have to take into consideration of how long they've been around, are they going to stick around longer, their knowledge level and expertise, etc.
To me, just adding moderators isn't a simple task when you want to choose the right one for the job. It would be easier to me since we have mods from around the world to spread them throughout the forums, to have more coverage.. when its sleepy time here in the USA, the other mods on the other side of the world are browsing the forums.. and vice versa..
Quote:
Originally posted by Harishankar Precisely. I understand that. What I cannot understand is that you say you feel overworked and yet you say the number of moderators presently are enough. I see a contradiction there.
I don't ever say I'm overworked.. if I'm tired, its not because of LQ.org..
Honestly, moderating LQ.org is simple.. it only takes a second to reply or close a thread at times.. but 24/7 moderating even if we do have more mods, not all is going to be catched.
We can't all be around to watch LQ all day everyday.. LQ.org has even gone down to the point where Jeremy was notified via pager and or cell phone.. and it still took him a few hours to respond.. so what I'm trying to say is.. adding more moderators isn't going to solve the problems when things get out of hand. And currently, I don't know of one thread where its "getting out of hand".. and when they do, we do react in a timely manner to resolve the problem. It's not like all issues that come about have to be resolved within minutes.. its not going to hurt anything or people are dying cause some troll thinks Microsoft is the supreme OS..
Some sites organizes moderators into Teams which then take control of different areas of the site.
I think such an idea would help jeremy also appoint moderators without having to worry excessively about which area the moderator should be appointed to.
Just make moderation teams, choose team leaders for each team and allow the team leaders to choose moderators for their particular team.
Would lessen the admin's burden in choosing team members. Once the teams are set up and are the teams given moderation access to their own forums, then it's the team leaders who can control who are their team members.
Team leaders can be trusted moderators, chosen from the current set of moderators.
Originally posted by Harishankar Some sites organizes moderators into Teams which then take control of different areas of the site.
I think such an idea would help jeremy also appoint moderators without having to worry excessively about which area the moderator should be appointed to.
Just make moderation teams, choose team leaders for each team and allow the team leaders to choose moderators for their particular team.
Would lessen the admin's burden in choosing team members. Once the teams are set up and are the teams given moderation access to their own forums, then it's the team leaders who can control who are their team members.
Team leaders can be trusted moderators, chosen from the current set of moderators.
Would this be a feasible idea?
This would be up to Jeremy to implement but personally, I wouldn't want to have such a setup.
Admin > Leaders > Moderators > Members is just too many in the chain.. Having Jeremy as the admin and owner and then moderators under him is feasible. I'd rather just report to Jeremy for advice or solutions rather than having two or three in a chain of command.. gets ugly to me that way and just reminds me of my actual job that pays me..
And personally, the mods usually give Jeremy advice of who they think would make a good moderator when that times comes about, but I myself would not want that responsibility to appoint moderators.
In the end, this site belongs to Jeremy. Any say in anyone having any special privileges is his choice and I don't think giving a Leader that choice is currently something he'd want or even myself would want.
I would hate to think XavierP was a Leader with mods under him and then I was as well and he appointed a member I thought was not going to make a good moderator only to end up butting heads against each other, etc.. I like how we all agree on who's appointed currently in the setup Jeremy has done.
people usually do not like to enjoy the freedom of "voicing" their opposition towards something that irritates they , even if they are given that Rights in full , i think it got something to do with differences between Real World and the Virtual World , so i guess LQ is the place where people can feel that they are Free , eg. to voice whatever the hell they really feel they need to voice without any responsibilities attached ........ what i mean is it's someting social and too hectic to discuss in this thread .......
there was one musician ever said something like " .... if those people never comes to my concert , they will take on the street and go riot ..... " and that is no no good for everybody ........
infact they are harmless and more like acrobatics play , it really nice to see them happy after visiting LQ leaving whatever the hell they had left behind , and this is very very good for everybody ...........
as for that weird ingrained bureaucratic board game , try inviting Stallman for a bureaucratic "chess competition" and he will sing his equally weird Free Sofware Song for all of us ........something like this ------>
lastly i believe those mods are Superman and WonderWoman , really , they are just trying to be nice and humble to everybody , a personal style not everybody like us had learned ........
i love them .......
and i better get out of this thread fast !![ehr ... i can't find bsd-like smiley!!??]
maybe i will start a new thread in this forum , hmmm!!
Originally posted by trickykid I would hate to think XavierP was a Leader with mods under him and then I was as well and he appointed a member I thought was not going to make a good moderator only to end up butting heads against each other, etc.. I like how we all agree on who's appointed currently in the setup Jeremy has done.
Actually, Trickykid is just worried that I would take my squad of moderators on a rampage, annexing his forums.... bwahahahaha
But seriously folks, I don't think that having more moderators is the answer. All of us browse the boards regularly, reading the threads. Often a thread, especially in General, will be allowed to run - this isn't always because we haven't seen it but because we take a 'laid back' approach to see what develops. One of the greatest things, i my opinion, about LQ is that it is largely self-cleaning. I have seen a number of threads go from a discussion to an argument and back to a discussion within a single page or so. If we had leapt in and either closed the thread or moderated with extreme prejudice we could have killed a perfectly valid discussion.
Also, the moderator team does contact each other off line through email and other means and we do alert each other to threads that need to be watched. I am also happy that the number of reported posts has increased - it used to be someting that moderatprs did the most, now we see members doing it. I hate to keep repeating myself, but it has to be said again, it's all down to education - point out that a post has been reported (with an explanation as to why), report posts with a clear explanation as to the problem and just lead by example.
There will always be 'problem posters' but I think that we are pretty well on top of the situation.
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