Admins/Moderators

[88V8]

I think one only has to look at BoB on the US TMF site to see what happens when f**n swearing is b**ing well allowed.
It seems one can call anyone a c**t or worse by lobbing in a few **.

One evening's browsing over there was sufficient to decide that their level of erudition and literary elegance is bloody well not for me.
Well, not to that extent, anyway.

V8

[Gengulphus]

Having more than one account may be entirely justifiable where you have posted lots of personal details that might identify you, and then want to post a message about a legal, personal or financial issue that involves publically posting information that you don't want associating with yourself. If it became necessary there could be a way of specifically allowing this sort of extra account. I don't think we need to worry about it now though.

I suspect that where we'll end up on the issue is that having more than one account is not allowed in general, but exceptions can be granted by the moderators if they're given a good reason. This incidentally is what the situation was on TMF - it was quite rare, but occasionally I would see a post that started e.g. along the lines of "I'm a Fool who will be known personally to many of you, posting under a different name because I don't want the subject of this post to be associated with me personally. The moderators have given me permission to do this."

There's only limited value to having a general 'no duplicate registrations' rule against deceptive behaviour such as arguing with yourself, agreeing with yourself, reccing yourself, etc, while making it appear that someone else is doing so. Such behaviour does need to be strongly discouraged, because the more it happens, the more likely it is that users will give up on a site that is deceiving them and wasting their time - especially users who are seriously trying to contribute quality content to the site rather than just chatting on a message board to pass the time. The basic problem there is the deceptive behaviour, though, so as long as there are adequate other rules against that, one could do without the 'no duplicate registrations' rule. (Having said that, though, I don't think the set of rules posted earlier in this topic has adequate other rules against it - the only one I can see that is even arguably against deceptive behaviour is number 14, about respect for other posters, and that focuses on openly-displayed disrespect.)

But I think there is some value to a 'no duplicate registrations' rule in various areas, largely to do with keeping demands on moderator time down. It's far easier to get a grasp of what is happening in a discussion one has been asked to moderate if the norm is "one name = one person", and it bypasses excuses along the lines of "sorry, my deceptive-looking agreement with myself wasn't intentional, I just lost track of which registration I was using". With the rule, the moderator doesn't need to agonise over whether it was an innocent mistake or a troll trying it on, they can just say "You're not allowed more than one registration. OK, I'll accept that it was an innocent mistake, but it needs sorting out. Tell me all the registrations you've got... OK, which one do you want to keep? ... OK, I'm cancelling the others... Right, now that that's been done, be warned: do not produce any more registrations, and if you remember any others that you've already got, don't use them - instead, tell us about them and we'll cancel them as well."

Which looks longer written out like that, but it is likely to involve a lot less moderator time than poring over exactly what was said and whether it indicates intentional deception.

Another bit of value to such a rule is that it discourages 'name-hogging'. If people are allowed duplicate registrations, someone who wants to be known as "Mike" on the boards could be tempted to also register "MikeSmith", "Michael", "MichaelSmith", "MJSmith", "MichaelJSmith", "MichaelJamesSmith", "MJS" and many other variants just to make it harder for someone else to appear to be him. If a site gets a lot of users, new users can have a problem finding a suitable not-already-taken name, as I believe quite a few TMF users have found; name-hogging can only make the problem worse, and a 'no duplicate registrations' rule will probably discourage it just by making 'one name only' the normal, expected standard.

Gengulphus

[Boing]

Just a thought from me, obviously biased...

I firmly believe that one of the key contributors to the TMF boards' success was our "Civil Discussion for Mutual Benefit" guidelines, described at...

http://www.fool.co.uk/help/community/po ... l-benefit/

It's obviously up to you folks running this place, but I would strongly suggest you adhere to something very similar. I expect you'll get people advocating against that and arguing for minimal moderation (and I see you're already getting that from some quarters), but I really do think that if you don't enforce something like Civil Discussion you will not recreate the atmosphere and ethos that made the TMF boards so good.

Foolish best,
Alan
Boing

[PinkDalek]

Just a thought from me, obviously biased...

I firmly believe that one of the key contributors to the TMF boards' success was our "Civil Discussion for Mutual Benefit" guidelines, described at...

http://www.fool.co.uk/help/community/po ... l-benefit/

It's obviously up to you folks running this place, but I would strongly suggest you adhere to something very similar. I expect you'll get people advocating against that and arguing for minimal moderation (and I see you're already getting that from some quarters), but I really do think that if you don't enforce something like Civil Discussion you will not recreate the atmosphere and ethos that made the TMF boards so good.

Foolish best,
Alan
Boing

Here it is at the WayBackMachine (in case your link no longer functions in the future):

https://web.archive.org/web/20140904133 ... l-benefit/

PD

[Slarti]

I agree 100% with the original no 11. There are myriad fora on the Internet to discuss politics and the monarchy, I think people should use those and not give the volunteer moderators a major headache with arguments about politics. Most fora with a specific purpose ban politics.

Mel

Problem is, there are also places to discuss football, betting odds, food, drink and anything else that is not directly related to finance. All of these subjects were regularly discussed in the parts of the old Fool that I frequented and when I got bored with them, I ignored them.

Hmm, I wonder, is ignoring/blanking a thread possible with this software?

Anyway, to my point, in places like Beerpig's Snug, banning anything that would be legal to discuss in a real world pub would seeem a bit off to me.

Cheers
Slarti

[malakoffee]

Hmm, I wonder, is ignoring/blanking a thread possible with this software?

Yes ! Friend & Foes
Click on your Username in the top right-hand corner - to show the dropdown list.

Click on User Control Panel . .. upon which you will see the Friend & Foes horizontal Tab.

[Gengulphus]

Hmm, I wonder, is ignoring/blanking a thread possible with this software?

Yes ! Friend & Foes
Click on your Username in the top right-hand corner - to show the dropdown list.

Click on User Control Panel . .. upon which you will see the Friend & Foes horizontal Tab.

That's for ignoring users, not threads!

But to answer Slarti's question, there is at least one way I've discovered to ignore threads (or "topics" in phpBB-speak). It's based on the ability to 'bookmark' topics, which you can do using the "spanner" button at the top or bottom of the list of the topic's posts, and the idea is that you 'bookmark' all the topics you don't want to ignore and ignore all the other topics. This involves a number of slightly tricky details:

* The first one is how you go about reading posts: you don't use the main "Board index" page, which pays no attention to which topics you've 'bookmarked'. Instead, go into the User Control Panel - you should be on the "Overview" tab. On the left-hand side, there's an item "Manage bookmarks". Click on it and you'll get a list of your 'bookmarked' topics: each of them has a circle to its left. The ones with red circles are the ones that have unread posts in them, and you can go directly to the unread posts by clicking on the red circle (not the topic title - that takes you to the start of the topic). Do your reading on from that list.

* A problem is that 'bookmarking' a topic is really designed to say "tell me with an email or a notification whenever there's a new post on this topic". Assuming you don't want to be bombarded with emails or notifications, you probably want to turn that off! You can do so by again going into the User Control Panel, this time selecting the "Board preferences" tab and then the "Edit notification options" item, and turning off both emails and notifications for "Someone replies to a topic you have bookmarked".

* A second problem is that new topics come into existence in an 'unbookmarked' state, i.e. ignored. To deal with that, turn on notifications for "Someone creates a topic in a forum to which you are subscribed" and make certain you are subscribed to the forums (phpBB-speak for its closest equivalent of boards) you're interested in - you can do that using the "Subscribe forum" link at the bottom of the forum's list of topics. As a result, you get a notification for each new topic in any of your chosen forums: respond to that notification by clicking on the topic in it, reading or skimming what's been said so far. If you're interested in continuing to read it, bookmark it; otherwise, do nothing and it will remain ignored.

It isn't perfect - needing to take that last action on each new topic is a bit of a pain - but I've found it workable so far.

Gengulphus

[Slarti]

Wow Gengulphus, that is impressive.

I'll have to [lay with it a bit and see how I get on.


Cheers
Slarti

[Lootman]

I suspect that where we'll end up on the issue is that having more than one account is not allowed in general, but exceptions can be granted by the moderators if they're given a good reason. This incidentally is what the situation was on TMF

Whether or not the ability to have more than one persona here is seen as beneficial or harmful, the existence of multiple handles for a user would not necessarily take a lot of moderator time, if only because it usually won't be obvious that someone has multiple accounts unless they all use the same email address.

So I think there are three possible scenarios here:

1) You have multiple accounts but do not misuse or abuse them in any way. That results in zero work for the moderator.

2) You have multiple accounts and misuse or abuse them. However the moderators have no idea it is multiple incarnations of you. That also results in zero work for the moderator. But also leads to a deterioration in the quality of discourse.

3) You have multiple accounts and misuse or abuse them. And the moderators do detect that. That does result in work for the moderator. But also leads to an improvement in the quality of discourse, as they deal with the problems caused by that abuse.

My conclusion is that the focus of any rules or moderation should be on the actual bad behaviour, where it happens, and not on the mere existence of more than one account which, in any event, would be difficult to detect or enforce.

A compromise might be a rule that says "You may have more than one account but you may only use one account at a time". That would cover the cases you mention, like reccing yourself, because you're using the same account on the same forum or topic at the same (more or less) time. But it still allows for people to switch account for the privacy and other reasons mentioned or that are reasonable.

[DiamondEcho]

Lootman: <i>A compromise might be a rule that says "You may have more than one account but you may only use one account at a time". That would cover the cases you mention, like reccing yourself, because you're using the same account on the same forum or topic at the same (more or less) time. But it still allows for people to switch account for the privacy and other reasons mentioned or that are reasonable.</i>

Perhaps it should be left like the right to have two passports? You automatically have a right to one, but [if a Brit] have to petition why you believe you should be entitled to a second? I can see a case where an identifiable Lemon might wish to fly under the radar on contentious topics, maybe divorce etc? But having a default capacity for multiple IDs invites 'doppels' ['doubles'], and sometimes weird behaviour, incl rec-seeding the other IDs posts. Like one time in the 90s of TMF a person had perhaps a dozen IDs at a time, and as each was identified and killed off he'd opened a few more. In that bizarre world he even helped by self-identifying them as each user-name was a play on words, IIRC HairyPotter and maaany others... most of his activity was either starting and/or sustaining a crap-storm between his own various IDs! Never underestimate the oddness of some people out there! Loonies like that find it simple enough to open multiple accounts, so I'm not sure if they need active encouragement....

[Lootman]

DiamondEcho,

Good points, As an aside the <i> and <b> prefixes and suffixes that worked on TMF don't work on this site. You have to use the square bracket and quote structures you see when you press " and get the box for the reply text.

There may be a better way to do quotes but I haven't discovered it yet.

[Gengulphus]

1) You have multiple accounts but do not misuse or abuse them in any way. That results in zero work for the moderator.

Zero work directly. But disentangling what it going on when lots of people have undeclared multiple registrations and some of them are misusing or abusing them and others aren't is likely to be quite a bit more work for the moderators than when it's only the abusers/misusers who have undeclared multiple registrations.

The word "undeclared" is important in that - I can certainly imagine a system working in which one is allowed multiple registrations as long as one declares them (to the administrators / moderators, not everyone else). If such a system were written well, the declared multiple registrations would be tracked automatically and displayed to the moderators in such a way that they could concentrate on finding abuse/misuse, and indeed could be used to avoid the simpler cases of inadvertent abuse/misuse - e.g. with an error message saying "you have already contributed to this thread using your alternative identity XXX; if you wish to contribute further, please use that identity" or "sorry, you are not allowed to rec your alternative identity XXX".

Having said that, I rather doubt that anyone hosting a discussion board would really consider that feature worth the cost when it can be done by moderator approval on a case-by-case basis. Other than the moderators themselves being given a moderator identity and a non-moderator identity (e.g. TMFTarantula and akaSpider IIRC), I've only seen a handful of cases of multiple identities being allowed on TMF since I joined in late 1999. I won't have seen them all, of course, but it's clear they're quite rare. The cost of those few moderator approvals is likely to be a lot less than that of putting a general 'allow multiple registrations as long as they're declared' system into place...

Gengulphus

[Lootman]

The word "undeclared" is important in that - I can certainly imagine a system working in which one is allowed multiple registrations as long as one declares them (to the administrators / moderators, not everyone else).

Yes, although it is my understanding that one idea being considered is the use of volunteer or "lay" moderators. Your idea of a special permission and registration would have to be to the overall system administrator rather than to a volunteer moderator. After all, if I am a volunteer moderator and receive your request, then there will be at least one other Lemon who knows it is really you posting your delicate question about debt, divorce, disease or whatever it is. And that might be one too many for you.

I've only seen a handful of cases of multiple identities being allowed on TMF since I joined in late 1999. I won't have seen them all, of course, but it's clear they're quite rare.

I suspect that you are correct although there is no way for an ordinary user like you or me to be certain. A TMF moderator would know that requesting a duplicate is rare, but even he won't know whether duplicates being set up without permission is rare. He might catch some of them but will never know how many he missed. It's easy to know how many crooks are caught but not always easy to know how many were not.

For the case we're discussing (a sensitive question that we want to ask truly anonymously), I imagine that some people would rather not even a moderator know it's them, and might be tempted to just go ahead and create an account for that question, maybe deleting it afterwards. No real harm in that, in my view anyway.

On the other hand, if you are winning a debate with me and suddenly half a dozen names show up agreeing with me who have never posted before, you're probably going to smell a rat anyway.

[staffordian]

There may be a better way to do quotes but I haven't discovered it yet.

Lootman,

Quotes are easy.

Top right of the post you want to reply to has a ! button (to report the post) and a " button.

Click the " button and a posting window will open with the entire post at the top of it surrounded by coding in square brackets.

Just add your reply below the already entered text.

You can delete text if you only want to quote some of it but ensure you leave both sets of square brackets.

Of the post you are replying to has embedded quotes already, you will see several sets of square brackets.

These can be deleted but only in sets, as long as you at least leave the first and last set.

It's easier to do than to explain, but a few posts on the test board will make it obvious.

Staffordian

[DiamondEcho]

Good points, As an aside the <i> and <b> prefixes and suffixes that worked on TMF don't work on this site.

Oh cripes I used to go through this but in reverse. Using TMF hash-tags < etc, and then more modern boards using [ etc. It's a bit like switching your daily functional language, takes a bit of getting used to [Apols, i'll do my best to 'code-switch' to the new lingua franca - ha almost ironic].

[wickham]

May I suggest that moderators edit simple typos where they are obvious and they just happen to notice them when reading posts. For instance, in a recent post I typed "than" instead of "that". There are some obvious typos in topic titles. Editing obvious typos would make the forum more readable and tidier.

Sometimes I think typos are because a spell-checker wrongly guesses the word before you have finished typing and you don't notice because you have moved on to type the next word.

[Gengulphus]

May I suggest that moderators edit simple typos where they are obvious and they just happen to notice them when reading posts. For instance, in a recent post I typed "than" instead of "that". There are some obvious typos in topic titles. Editing obvious typos would make the forum more readable and tidier.

Sometimes I think typos are because a spell-checker wrongly guesses the word before you have finished typing and you don't notice because you have moved on to type the next word.

Spell-checkers won't (or at least very definitely shouldn't) normally try to guess and correct the word you're typing until you've finished typing it - the problem is that you may have finished mistyping it and it guesses the wrong correction. For instance, you might have typed "thah" and it guessed you meant "than" when you actually meant "that", possibly on the basis that "h" is slightly closer to "n" on a standard keyboard than to "t"... In cases where you care a lot about avoiding typos, that means it's generally best to turn off auto-correction and just to get the spell-checker to highlight errors and let you decide how to correct them (and not to use tools that don't allow you to do that).

On the question of moderators editing simple typos, I half-agree. I certainly think moderators should be able to edit simple typos that they just happen to notice when the correction is obvious and the moderator thinks it worthwhile - it occasionally happens that a simple typo turns something perfectly reasonable into an insult, for example, and people can react to the insult without seeing that it's a typo, even when it's a pretty obvious typo.

But I don't think moderators should be expected to correct simple typos they happen to notice, even when the correction is obvious. Basically, we can't afford to be over-generous with volunteer time people make available - its use needs to be prioritised for the things that really matter to the functioning of the site. And although correcting an obvious simple typo should be a matter of seconds, there are actually quite a lot of them around: for someone with an 'eye' for them, such as me, such an expectation could add up to quite a significant use of time. It would definitely discourage me from volunteering...

I realise that you may well only intend the ability to correct simple typos, by the way - but as the word "duties" appears in this topic's subject, I think I should speak up before it quietly slips into a list of moderator duties!

Gengulphus

[tjh290633]

Should you go for automatic censoring in some form, it is important that words which form part of a larger word should not be affected. For example, a forum which I use blocks "Scunthorpe" on account of its letters 2 to 5.

TJH

[Slarti]

May I suggest that moderators edit simple typos where they are obvious and they just happen to notice them when reading posts. For instance, in a recent post I typed "than" instead of "that". There are some obvious typos in topic titles. Editing obvious typos would make the forum more readable and tidier.

Sometimes I think typos are because a spell-checker wrongly guesses the word before you have finished typing and you don't notice because you have moved on to type the next word.

I think that editing typos would be a bad idea as I have more than once misspelled a word for effect, plus I would never correct spelling in something I was quoting.