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2007-09-25 09:11

Laxity

Registered: Aug 2005
Posts: 459

Evaluating the moderation of CSDb

I think it's time to evaluate how the moderation of CSDb is going. Good/bad?.. Anyone?

Something just struct my eye. I just saw the "moderation rules" thread (started by Oswald) being closed for no obvious reason (Ok, Steppe said - "close thread?" or something). I disagree in such an approach to moderation. The moderator should not close a thread unless it's going really bad, and warnings have been issued; furthermore I think moderators who personally participate in a discussion should be rendered powerless over moderating that particular discussion. Furthermore, when closing a thread, I think a reason for doing so should be given..

Oh, and this is not supposed to be another "bitching" topic. I'd like to call and everybody interested to state their thoughts. Good AND bad. Not just bad, please!..

... 150 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2007-09-25 16:34

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11136

i think the point he wants to make is, that noone will ever be 100% satisfied with the rules, the moderation, the site as a whole, etc blabla.

if you'd make a poll on any website about the moderation, i can guarantee you the result will be : it sucks. thats the way it is. moderation sucks. ideally, we wouldnt have any moderation, and everyone would agree on whatever rules have been established, never complain, and never post a stupid comment. but that doesnt work. and that's why moderation, and all its subjective flaws are there. (but ofcourse, you knew all that already).

what i'm trying to say anyway? =)

well, i don't think discussion about moderation is useless (afterall, we do that internally a lot. and even if it sometimes may look like it, most things that happen are not personal decisions by a single moderator). i do however think that discussing certain things over and over in the forum is counterproductive and doesnt help anyone. like i said before, if you have a problem, discuss it with a moderator in PM. (some ppl really manage to do that infact, cheers, XP+10 :=P)

that said, it would be totally awesome if *everyone* would take his time to cool down a bit, _not_ come up with whatever ideas for a while, and let us catch up with, _and clean up_ the mess that happened in the last week.

2007-09-25 18:35

Laxity

Registered: Aug 2005
Posts: 459

Oh come on. There's always room for improvement, and since this is a community forum for all of us (including the moderators), I think it'll be best to discuss this in public. So no PMs. I just don't think that refering to the history of moderating, is very productive in discussing how moderating should or could work. Boiling it all down, I think what you moderators do is a really ungreatfull job, and I'd like to believe (actually I do) that you do it in our best interest.

Supermod?.. no thanks.. :)

Ok, here's an idea for better moderation: Moderate, close threads, act on the community ONLY when there's no way to avoid it.

2007-09-25 20:09

Steppe

Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 1510

Ah what can I say, I think so far you're doing an ok job. There haven't been too many incidents where I noticed your actions so far. But it feels good to know there are some people with balls enough to kickban future trolls to avoid larger damage.
And hey, just because you're mods now doesn't mean to me that you have to be neutral towards every topic and every poster! Keep on discussing, stay layed back and keep the moderating down to the lowest necessary level. I'm confident this will be for the better of this place in the long run.

2007-09-25 20:33

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11136

Quote:

I just don't think that refering to the history of moderating, is very productive in discussing how moderating should or could work.

thats exactly why i think it should be done in PM. discussing it in public has an enormous potential of attracting those who only want to stir some shit.

then again, maybe we should just regulary start such a thread and whoever starts stirring the shit gets kicked....or something =P

Quote:

And hey, just because you're mods now doesn't mean to me that you have to be neutral towards every topic and every poster!

that's impossible anyway :) for moderation to be effective, sometimes decisions have to be made quickly (especially when it comes to deleting posts/comments/whatever to prevent further mess) and that means not so objective actions sometimes. and political correctness is for sissies anyway =P

2007-09-25 20:35

Conrad

Registered: Nov 2006
Posts: 833

At the moment the moderators are doing quite a fine job (but not perfect as nothing EVER is perfect in life.) For example, rough has started threads discussing incorrections and requested information of a large bunch of added entries, which i believe is a very nice idea - it would improve the database's detail at a colossal rate.

One thing that IS lacking though (and that I would personally like to see in action), is a selection of moderators using up their spare time to manage and sort out older threads which include nothing but pure rubbish. There are quite a lot of these ranged from around 3 years ago, up to the year of the nata saga (this year), which no one is EVER going to read again - leaving those threads lying about on CSDb's webspace, wasting up valuable storage for other intersting stuff that could replace them (you notice a lot of those Wanderer posts contain more bytes than a FULL .D64 image ? sheesh!).

Anyway, overall - moderators can of course improve their skill of work for this site, it's only if they have the bottle to do it, which I'm sure they do.

For the answer to Laxity's question, at a scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (excellent), I'd say 3.9582

2007-09-25 20:46

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11136

Quote:

For the answer to Laxity's question, at a scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (excellent), I'd say 3.9582

lol :=)

as for cleaning up 3 year old threads.... i dare to say that this wont be a very popular idea among the mods =)

2007-09-25 21:14

cadaver

Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1153

I feel those are good warning examples archived at the forum, why not leave them there, maybe it will prevent someone down the road going over to the darkside :)

2007-09-25 23:26

Hein

Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 933

So far, so good.

Allthough, moderation should be evaluated, yes. Things like, why do moderators have the liberty to delete a post, wheras other people don't have the same liberty to make a crap post? I'm not a fan of the 'hush, hush' culture. If you delete a post or whatever (kickban someone in the ass), give a good reason. And 'it's pointless' is not a good reason to me.

Who selected the moderators? Who made the rules? Most rules I agree with, others I don't. This is the place to discuss it, over and over and over again. Seems pointless, but it isn't, even if there's no outcome (a change of plan).

We can ofcourse always make an anti-demo.

2007-09-25 23:41

chancer

Registered: Apr 2003
Posts: 343

tricky .. u can't please all of the people all of the time.

u can really f... up a vibe if its too moderated and strict.. or it can turn into mayhem if there no buffers (as in trains ;-) ) or whatever.

the majority of the people who post are well 20-30+ 's ? due to when we started doing things on the machine. Also things can be written , and have more than one context.

only thing i dislike to be honest, is people acting up without a decent argument atleast or just posting something just to post something that isn't helpful.

not been here long , but sometimes things stray from the topic, thats not bad all of the time, it's just funny when people are overbearing in making their point about sticking to the subject.

2007-09-26 01:01

chatGPZ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11136

Quote:

Who made the rules?

most of the actual text was written by me, based on the old rules, and last not least based on what was discussed in the forum, over and over, for the last year(s). (and that said, i don't agree with all rules either, thats just the way it is, and will always be.)

and as for discussing things over and over....oh well. one thing we discussed was removing comments and forum all together, making the site more like http://demozoo.org/ .... it would be a lot easier to maintain atleast =P