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Moderation again

Formerly "Lemon Fool - Improve the Recipe" repurposed as Room 102 (see above).
melonfool
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Re: Moderation again

#147795

Postby melonfool » June 24th, 2018, 10:49 pm

I like to think we treat all reports on their merits, not treat any reporter as more deserving than another due to the number of reports.

Those who report regularly are helping the mods keep the place nice.

Mel

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Re: Moderation again

#147799

Postby Lootman » June 24th, 2018, 11:11 pm

chas49 wrote:
Lootman wrote:In my own case I very rarely report a post, so do expect it to be taken seriously on those rare cases when I do.
If a user of the site reports legitimate issues frequently, should moderators place less weight on one of those, than a report of something possibly borderline but from an infrequent (or even first time) reporter?

I don't know the house view on that, but often businesses and entities draw a distinction between clients who complain about everything and those who complain about nothing.

chas49 wrote:Moderators do not moderate all the boards, so we won't know if someone reports frequently on a board we don't mod.

Good point - I did not know that Mods do not know how much individuals here report posts.
melonfool wrote:I like to think we treat all reports on their merits, not treat any reporter as more deserving than another due to the number of reports. Those who report regularly are helping the mods keep the place nice.

I can see that. Although I often see posts that break the rules sticking around, presumably because nobody reports them. So if every one of us reported everything then the volume of reported posts would increase significantly, which would presumably increase the work load for the volunteers.

So isn't it a delicate balance? If 20% of reports remove 80% of the bad behaviour, then perhaps isn't that good enough?

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Re: Moderation again

#147801

Postby vrdiver » June 24th, 2018, 11:18 pm

melonfool wrote:
melonfool wrote:Like here, posts are generally in good English we decent grammar.
Mel

There's some law about that, isn't there? As soon as you talk about grammar or speeling, your own goes to pot!

*with* decent grammar. :)
Mel

One of my favourites: Muphry's Law.

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Re: Moderation again

#147810

Postby chas49 » June 25th, 2018, 12:48 am

Lootman wrote:So isn't it a delicate balance? If 20% of reports remove 80% of the bad behaviour, then perhaps isn't that good enough?


Absolutely.

Though it's probably also true that 20% of posts/posters take up 80% of moderator effort.

I blame Pareto. *

* (Apparently it should really be Juran's principle)

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Re: Moderation again

#147946

Postby Gengulphus » June 25th, 2018, 5:26 pm

Lootman wrote:
Gengulphus wrote: inferring a revenge motive isn't a reasonable thing for a moderator to do.

Mel appeared to state that such inferences do happen, because she said "moderators can see" when Lemons engage in revenge reporting. ...

Yes, I should have ended that with "for a moderator to attempt to do" rather than just "for a moderator to do". I think the sort of cases that she's describing are those where one can simply see the revenge motive in what the reporter says - cases where no analysis or investigation is needed, it's just obvious. I also think that what she says does have to be taken with at least a pinch of salt, because it is possible to hide one's motives by careful choice of language - and by definition, neither Mel nor any other moderator will see a revenge motive in a report if the reporter has succeeded in doing that!

Anyway, just seeing something in the language used like that is inferring it, but isn't the result of an attempt to infer it: it's something that just happens. And from what Mel has subsequently said, she would probably prefer it not to have happened: it's clearly far easier to be certain one's moderation of a post has been done purely on its compliance with the rules and without regard to the reporter's motive if one has never had any insight into that motive than if one has had such an insight and tried to ignore it.

Lootman wrote:
Gengulphus wrote:For example, I not infrequently encounter cases where someone has quoted me out of context by editing the quote down too much and as a result have replied to a point I didn't make, not the one I did.

If that happens to you not infrequently then I suspect that may be another one of those problems that are more likely to happen with a long post, and for two reasons.

Firstly I might likely re-quote your entire post if it is short, but take excerpts from it if it is longer, as I am doing here, thereby increasing the risk of taking something out of context.

Secondly, in a long post it is more likely the point you are making is qualified by another statement that is in a previous or later paragraph, and those are both harder to see and connect, and are harder to re-quote in one contiguous segment.

Well, you've just produced a beautiful example of out-of-context quoting with your quote of my "inferring a revenge motive isn't a reasonable thing for a moderator to do."! It doesn't matter in this particular case, as I did misstate my point a bit in the clause you quoted, but it was most definitely out of context - specifically, it was the last clause of my sentence:

"Even if the moderator were to do that and find that the two parties had been having a heated argument and one of them suddenly decided to report something they'd not reported earlier in the discussion, inferring a revenge motive isn't a reasonable thing for a moderator to do."

and that was a reply immediately following your comment:

"In such a case it is not sufficient to look at the reported post and the alleged technical infringement. A moderator would also have to look for motive by looking at the overall context to see if the two parties were having a fight and one party (probably the one who was losing the debate) suddenly decided to report something that they had previously let slide."

As far as your second reason goes, I don't think it's at all hard to see and connect a quote with the rest of the sentence it's from and the quote immediately preceding that sentence! I agree it can be harder when the important context is more distant, but that's by no means always the case.

And as far as your first reason is concerned, the purpose of using a quote at all is to indicate what the specific point is that you're replying to. Quoting the whole of a long post defeats that purpose unless you really are replying to the whole thing - it's particularly aggravating for readers when someone does that and then replies to one specific bit somewhere unspecified in the middle of it. But so does editing the quote down so much that the point you're replying to gets changed significantly in the process...

Anyway, my mention of out-of-context quoting wasn't intended to start an extended discussion of it - it was just an example of a case where I think I've behaved entirely reasonably in not reporting it the first few times someone's done it, just producing "I didn't say that" type replies, but have eventually (rightly or wrongly) come to the conclusion that a persistent out-of-context quoter has to be either deliberately trying to disrupt the discussion or showing a completely careless disregard for the fact that that's what they're doing, and at that point handed it over to the moderators (far better IMHO than saying that's what I think on the boards, which would really disrupt the discussion!). In short, the motive was not revenge, but running out of the ability to give the out-of-context quoter any further benefit of the doubt myself - they would have to hope to get it from the moderators instead!

And the main point of that example is that even if the moderators made the sort of investigation you said they "would also have to" do and found the pattern of behaviour you described, they still wouldn't be able to validly infer a revenge motive. So IMHO, not merely is that sort of investigation not something they would be obliged to do, but something that would be a completely pointless waste of their time.

By the way, I'm not going to get drawn any further about the advantages and disadvantages of long posts because this thread seems to me to be about how moderators go about moderating according to the existing rules. For that, long posts are essentially a non-issue because there are no existing rules about them unless one counts the 50k character limit in the phpBB software - and that's enforced by the software with no need for any assistance from the moderators. Whether there should be a rule about long posts, and what it should be if so, is a big enough subject that it really deserves a thread of its own if anyone seriously thinks there should be such a rule... Such a thread should be started by someone who seriously thinks that; in the absence of anyone starting such a thread, I will only be able to assume that everyone is just toying with the idea and there's therefore no real point in having such a discussion at all!

Gengulphus

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Re: Moderation again

#147973

Postby Gengulphus » June 25th, 2018, 7:27 pm

Lootman wrote:
melonfool wrote:I like to think we treat all reports on their merits, not treat any reporter as more deserving than another due to the number of reports. Those who report regularly are helping the mods keep the place nice.

I can see that. Although I often see posts that break the rules sticking around, presumably because nobody reports them. So if every one of us reported everything then the volume of reported posts would increase significantly, which would presumably increase the work load for the volunteers.

Possibly, but there's at least one other effect: if it were more certain that a rule-breaking post would get reported and it were sufficiently obvious when moderation had happened, people would take more care not to break the rules (including actually learning what the rules are in some cases!), and as a result the workload would decrease.

Lootman wrote:So isn't it a delicate balance?

Yes, but with the complication that there may be more than one balancing point. E.g. from Mel's descriptions of Mumsnet in this and other threads, I get the feeling that it gets a fairly low moderator workload essentially by everybody being expected to know the rules and stick to them, and generally actually doing so. When a rare exception occurs, it's quickly reported and the user concerned basically gets told pretty bluntly to pull their act together or go elsewhere (and presumably some do go elsewhere, given Mel's mention of Netmums!). I think it's pretty clear that that's a reasonably low-moderator-workload solution and that it's rather different from what you're suggesting. Which is not meant to say that it's better than what you're suggesting, nor the opposite, but just that there's more than one way to achieve low moderator workload.

Ultimately, what we'll get is of course controlled by what stooz and Clariman want as the site owners / administrators, so that's the criterion that will choose which balancing point we get. But that will be tempered by what moderators want, since the administrators are dependent on the moderators to keep the site running, and by what users want, since it's them that supply the content. With the complications that the administrators and moderators are users as well, and that there is doubtless quite a lot of variation in what users want...

Gengulphus

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Re: Moderation again

#147980

Postby Lootman » June 25th, 2018, 7:38 pm

Gengulphus wrote:By the way, I'm not going to get drawn any further about the advantages and disadvantages of long posts because this thread seems to me to be about how moderators go about moderating according to the existing rules. For that, long posts are essentially a non-issue because there are no existing rules about them

Just to be clear, I didn't say that there were or should be rules about the length of posts. In fact I said the opposite - there should not be.

My point was more that IF a Lemon engages in very long and complex posts THEN there is an increased risk of certain kinds of outcome because such posts are harder to read, understand and re-quote. I gave some examples, some which involved moderation and some which did not, including the one you have claimed to notice yourself i.e. remarks being taken out of context or misrepresented.

Not that I am condoning others who do that. I am merely estimating that it is more likely to happen with a long post than a short post.

To your other point, about moderators making inferences about motive, I suspect that happens to some extent simply because it is natural to try and understand, explain and categorise behaviours. If someone were to mindlessly gainsay my every post then both I and a moderator might conclude they are trolling me, and that may not be an unreasonable conclusion. What the moderators do about that is up to them, but I would be shocked if it hasn't happened. It's a very human reaction when a consistent and predictable pattern of behaviour manifests itself.

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Re: Moderation again

#158052

Postby Walrus » August 8th, 2018, 7:38 pm

I think moderation should be only for abusive comments. Because someone's opinion is different to their own driving them off the boards I feel is unwarranted.

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Re: Moderation again

#158054

Postby redsturgeon » August 8th, 2018, 7:43 pm

Walrus wrote:I think moderation should be only for abusive comments. Because someone's opinion is different to their own driving them off the boards I feel is unwarranted.



Moderator Message:
Redsturgeon: Moderation is here to uphold the rules of the site and covers abusive comments among other things. One of those other things involves trying to keep threads on topic and trying to keep posts on the appropriate boards. These things are done for the benefit of the Lemon Fool community as a whole. All users are welcome here and encouraged to post as long as they comply with the rules.

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Re: Moderation again

#158069

Postby Walrus » August 8th, 2018, 9:01 pm

redsturgeon wrote:
Walrus wrote:I think moderation should be only for abusive comments. Because someone's opinion is different to their own driving them off the boards I feel is unwarranted.



Moderator Message:
Redsturgeon: Moderation is here to uphold the rules of the site and covers abusive comments among other things. One of those other things involves trying to keep threads on topic and trying to keep posts on the appropriate boards. These things are done for the benefit of the Lemon Fool community as a whole. All users are welcome here and encouraged to post as long as they comply with the rules.


If a post is broadly on topic and not disparaging in nature I think the site would benefit from a more liberal perspective rather than the nanny state approach certain moderators prefer. Anyway I know my opinion is one and one only. On the whole you guys do a good job I just wish it wasn't so pedandic on occasion

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Re: Moderation again

#158071

Postby melonfool » August 8th, 2018, 9:03 pm

Why don't you have a go at rewriting the rules and making a full proposal to the board owners?

That would be the main rules and the special rules on each board as well.

I'll just add - this is not just the mods. People report the posts we act on, so other board users are also keen to uphold the rules.

Mel

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Re: Moderation again

#158072

Postby Walrus » August 8th, 2018, 9:08 pm

melonfool wrote:Why don't you have a go at rewriting the rules and making a full proposal to the board owners?

That would be the main rules and the special rules on each board as well.

I'll just add - this is not just the mods. People report the posts we act on, so other board users are also keen to uphold the rules.

Mel


The fact that we need rules beyond don't be abusive and don't advertise things saddens me. Anyway I've given my POV. Obviously I'm in a minority.

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Re: Moderation again

#158075

Postby Ashfordian » August 8th, 2018, 9:14 pm

Walrus wrote:The fact that we need rules beyond don't be abusive and don't advertise things saddens me. Anyway I've given my POV. Obviously I'm in a minority.


Whether you are in a majority we will never know as the threat of bans will mean many do not put their heads above the parapet.

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Re: Moderation again

#158081

Postby melonfool » August 8th, 2018, 9:41 pm

Ashfordian wrote:
Walrus wrote:The fact that we need rules beyond don't be abusive and don't advertise things saddens me. Anyway I've given my POV. Obviously I'm in a minority.


Whether you are in a majority we will never know as the threat of bans will mean many do not put their heads above the parapet.


No-one gets banned for politely giving their POV on the right board, without taking a thread off topic. In fact, no-one even gets moderated for that.


Mel

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Re: Moderation again

#158085

Postby Alaric » August 8th, 2018, 9:59 pm

melonfool wrote: without taking a thread off topic.


I think there's an unnecessary obsession with this. If you use the "New Posts" drop down as first port of call, you see posts listed by time rather than topic. You couldn't really use TMF in quite the same way, so where something was posted could be more important. It's simpler and less contentious for threads to be moved rather than deleted although perhaps doctrinaire city of the HYP boards is always going to be a problem.

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Re: Moderation again

#158088

Postby melonfool » August 8th, 2018, 10:05 pm

HYP *is* where the problem is - threads run a lot more on other boards.

I don't really understand what you mean about using the drop down but everyone uses the board differently and I rarely use that.

Yes, threads can be 'moved easily' but this is still mod intervention and we still get it in the neck. If you think things can be 'moved easily' why not just post them on an appropriate board in the first place? Also, in order for it to come to mod attention that usually means it has been reported, which means someone has been confused/irritated etc by it.

Mel

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Re: Moderation again

#158090

Postby Howard » August 8th, 2018, 10:08 pm

I’d like to show my appreciation to the moderators for keeping TLF very civilised. The rules seem fair to me. It is mildly amusing to see people pushing the boundaries. Most fall into the “I know this is the cycling thread but you bikers are all mad and should be driving cars - they are much faster” category. Allowing this type of argument to prevail would destroy the value of the investment part of the site.

Can I offer support to the long-suffering moderators in keeping to the very few rules which apply. You are keeping the standards high and enhancing the value of the site.

Thank you

Howard

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Re: Moderation again

#158092

Postby csearle » August 8th, 2018, 10:21 pm

Alaric wrote:It's simpler and less contentious for threads to be moved rather than deleted...
I agree with this. To delete a post that someone has invested time and effort to compose because it is off-topic is I think harsh (obviously if it is a brief post then this does not apply). Far better to choose somewhere where it is on-topic and move it there (possibly leaving a link). In that way the poster's effort isn't wasted and the grievance about an intervention is likely to be less.

This is more work for the moderator but maybe less than the aftermath following a deletion.

Clearly some posts just have to be deleted because they are genuinely abusive, infringe fair-usage, or could possibly get our site owners into some sort of trouble (with which they certainly cant be doing).

Regards,
Chris

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Re: Moderation again

#158099

Postby Ashfordian » August 8th, 2018, 11:00 pm

Howard wrote:I’d like to show my appreciation to the moderators for keeping TLF very civilised. The rules seem fair to me. It is mildly amusing to see people pushing the boundaries. Most fall into the “I know this is the cycling thread but you bikers are all mad and should be driving cars - they are much faster” category. Allowing this type of argument to prevail would destroy the value of the investment part of the site.

Can I offer support to the long-suffering moderators in keeping to the very few rules which apply. You are keeping the standards high and enhancing the value of the site.

Thank you

Howard


Just like there are good and bad shares, mods can be categorised into good and bad.

I agree with you that the good mods should be supported and appreciated but their reputation is being brought down by the poor mods.

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Re: Moderation again

#158102

Postby melonfool » August 8th, 2018, 11:18 pm

I suppose the 'good mods' are the ones who either don't moderate you, or don't moderate at all? (we have a few who don't seem to do anything, leaving a heavy burden on the rest of us).

Mel


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