Forum Moderation

[bd139]

Consider removing the Kremlin pro-denazification bot "mansaxel"s troll post (#433), too. That's one triggering further non-related AfD discussion.

Ok, done, but I'm not going through the rest of the thread. Hopefully people get the hint, no more nazi talk please, even if "Thunderf00t started it".

I think that's not the only moderation issue you need to consider here.

I don't spend a lot of time on the forum these days, firstly after the whole TEA bust up, secondly because I have better things to do with my time and thirdly because it's turned into a cesspit of fucking morons. But every time I stick my head back in it has got worse. Much much worse. I regularly get asked by friends and colleages where to go. I can't recommend anyone coming here. In fact I tell them to run the other way and find something else to do because the signal to noise ratio on here is so bad it's just not worth it.

Compared to 5 years ago we have now is endless tolerated troll threads and sick and disgusting behaviour by a lot of your forum members.

If you don't fix it, everyone leaves and you're left footing the bill with a corpus of assholes in an echo chamber.

When I say assholes, this is interchangeable with fascists in this particular thread.

I see "Be excellent to each other" as the tagline of the forum. I do not see people behaving that way.

[EEVblog]

Consider removing the Kremlin pro-denazification bot "mansaxel"s troll post (#433), too. That's one triggering further non-related AfD discussion.

Ok, done, but I'm not going through the rest of the thread. Hopefully people get the hint, no more nazi talk please, even if "Thunderf00t started it".

I think that's not the only moderation issue you need to consider here.

I don't spend a lot of time on the forum these days, firstly after the whole TEA bust up, secondly because I have better things to do with my time and thirdly because it's turned into a cesspit of fucking morons. But every time I stick my head back in it has got worse. Much much worse. I regularly get asked by friends and colleages where to go. I can't recommend anyone coming here. In fact I tell them to run the other way and find something else to do because the signal to noise ratio on here is so bad it's just not worth it.

Compared to 5 years ago we have now is endless tolerated troll threads and sick and disgusting behaviour by a lot of your forum members.

If you don't fix it, everyone leaves and you're left footing the bill with a corpus of assholes in an echo chamber.

When I say assholes, this is interchangeable with fascists in this particular thread.

I see "Be excellent to each other" as the tagline of the forum. I do not see people behaving that way.

Sorry you see it that way, I think the forum is just as awesome as it's always been.
Reports have not increased at all, and moderation is based mostly upon reports from users. Like when nobody reported the whole TEA thing to me directly, nobody, how was I supposed to know about it?
And when those involved in the TEA refused to take me up on the offer to allow them to have their own space with there own moderation, crickets, honestly, what am I supposed to do? 

Moderation is not as easy as you make out. It's a VERY fine line. And remember that the whole TEA thing started because of what was perceived to be over moderation. So be careful what you wish for.

[tom66]

I don't really see an issue with the troll threads. Engage, if you want. Don't, if you want.  It's not as if they are a significant proportion of discussion on the forum.

[PlainName]

I think the issue is that the 'troll threads'  get quite extreme and you end up with two sides having very bad feelings about each other. That upsets other, technical, threads because it then becomes two hardline opponents looking to diss the other rather than a couple of techies shooting the breeze.

[MK14]

Which are the Troll threads?

I assume, one of them, is the 'Thunderfoot' thread, which seems to have initiated this thread (from the first two posters).

[EEVblog]

I think the issue is that the 'troll threads'  get quite extreme and you end up with two sides having very bad feelings about each other. That upsets other, technical, threads because it then becomes two hardline opponents looking to diss the other rather than a couple of techies shooting the breeze.

The alternative is micro-moderating the forum. And I've seen forums absolutely killed by micro-moderation.
You should see some of the petty nothing-burger reports we get.

[PlainName]

Obviously got to be a sweet spot between the two extremes, so the alternative to one isn't necessarily 100% the other.

Generally seems to work OK on here within the error margin, has to be said 

[EEVblog]

Obviously got to be a sweet spot between the two extremes, so the alternative to one isn't necessarily 100% the other.
Generally seems to work OK on here within the error margin, has to be said 

I think so too. But there will always be people like the OP who don't see it that way. They either want perfect moderation to their taste, or zero moderation.
I'm not criticising that, wanting that is fine, I can see the merits in both extremes, but the problem is what works in practice in the long run.

Personally, I'm more of a free speech absolutist, but I know what destroys forums and what works in practice. And I've seen countless times over-moderation destroy forum, and I've seen under or zero moderation destroy forums.

[EEVblog]

Which are the Troll threads?
I assume, one of them, is the 'Thunderfoot' thread, which seems to have initiated this thread (from the first two posters).

I think there are very few deliberate "troll threads", and I wouldn't consider the TF thread one of them. I just see that as the OP being frustrated with a Youtuber he followed going down a path he didn't like, so he wanted to get it off his chest.
But of course some topics have enough fuel to turn into a dumpster fire.

[bd139]

I can see we still haven't learned a thing.

The TEA issue was utterly inconsistent moderation. As is the Thunderf00t thread.

You walk in, fuck stuff around, walk out again. Problem solved in your mind. Community confused and pissed off over selective moderation. No problems dealt with. Community not engaged with.

This kills communities. You did it once. I've seen it on other forums. Just pointing it out.

[MK14]

Which are the Troll threads?
I assume, one of them, is the 'Thunderfoot' thread, which seems to have initiated this thread (from the first two posters).

I think there are very few deliberate "troll threads", and I wouldn't consider the TF thread one of them. I just see that as the OP being frustrated with a Youtuber he followed going down a path he didn't like, so he wanted to get it off his chest.
But of course some topics have enough fuel to turn into a dumpster fire.

That makes sense.  I guess the thunderf00t thread, was in danger of causing disagreements, between parties (users), because of the nature of the subject area.  E.g. Elon Musk, use to be relatively a non-political subject area, but has now turned political because of him, essentially partly working/joining/etc political movements/presidents, in the US.

I agree, intentional trolling, seems to have reduced by a large amount.

EDIT: Removed more controversial section.

[MK14]

I can see we still haven't learned a thing.

The TEA issue was utterly inconsistent moderation. As is the Thunderf00t thread.

You walk in, fuck stuff around, walk out again. Problem solved in your mind. Community confused and pissed off over selective moderation. No problems dealt with. Community not engaged with.

This kills communities. You did it once. I've seen it on other forums. Just pointing it out.

But, the moderation team, can't be perfect, or keep EVERYONE, 100% happy, for everything they do.

If they did nothing, others could criticize them.

If they take action(s), others (not necessarily the same people), could also criticize them.

It is like designing a complicated electronics item.  You can't always be 100% perfect, in all aspects of a design.

[tggzzz]

I don't agree with bd that there is a significant increase in troll threads.

I do think there is a small decrease in overall quality, e.g. an increase in inane (by my definition, naturally) threads. But I can't be certain that isn't my perception nor that I have changed. Or worse, society in general. Either way, I have started to use the "ignore" forum mechanisms. I don't like doing that, but it feels necessary.

Dave is correct that moderation is exceedingly difficult, and that finding the right balance is thankless, never ending, an impossible to be "correct" in all cases.

The supposed issue of moderators swooping in and making a quick judgement is an interesting issue. That has, arguably, been a source of contention in the past and could easily become one in the future. It is, however difficult to see how the moderators could do otherwise, given their limited time to make their judgement. There is, however, one aspect of that which I think should be considered carefully...

I have the suspicion that some members have learned/decided to "weaponise" the mod's limited time and attention. The basic technique is to be sufficiently objectionable that other members become intemperate, then report a post to the mods. The mods look at that post and (understandably) don't have the time/effort/inclination to understand the entire thread, so delete that post.

I do not have any easy answers as to how to avoid that.

[EEVblog]

I can see we still haven't learned a thing.
The TEA issue was utterly inconsistent moderation. As is the Thunderf00t thread.
You walk in, fuck stuff around, walk out again. Problem solved in your mind. Community confused and pissed off over selective moderation. No problems dealt with. Community not engaged with.
This kills communities. You did it once. I've seen it on other forums. Just pointing it out.

You use the word "you", as in me. As I have explaiend countless times, I literally had no idea any of the TEA stuff was happening.
When I found out how bad it was getting I immediately opened up an entire new section for those concerned and offered for YOU to apoint your own moderator to do things the way YOU wanted, in YOUR own section, but I was still met with silence.
The offer is still open BTW, if you want your own forum section where you are the moderator and you can run it the way you see fit, I'm happy to oblidge.

Please try and understand that it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to have "consistent moderation" as you want. No two situations are the exact same, and you can't moderate them the same.

If a moderator gets a report of post and feels that it's just a storm in a tea cup and will boil over based on the "vibe" of the thread and the players, then the best thing is to do nothing.
But if they get a report for essentially the exact same thing in a thread that is obviously getting heated, or it's obvious a few players are never going to give up, then that's when we have do do or say something.
Some reports require a moderator to go back and read pages and pages of posts of a thread to get an idea of what's happening, and that's just not possible in most cases.

This can appear to be "inconsistent moderation", espeically to those involved, but in practice it's got to be done that way otherwise you end up destroyign the forum with under or over moderation.
I understand that perhaps you can see this because you feel personally smited by the moderation policy here. In that case I can't offer you anything except continued explaination of how it must work in practice to keep a balanced forum and hope you eventually understand the position we are in.

Again, moderation on this forum is mostly based upon reports. There can be hundreds of different topics a day being discussed here, the moderator can't possiblly read and follow them all, so a ton of stuff (most of it) happens on here without knowledge of the moderators.

[tggzzz]

Personally, I'm more of a free speech absolutist, but I know what destroys forums and what works in practice. And I've seen countless times over-moderation destroy forum, and I've seen under or zero moderation destroy forums.

Over moderation is indeed a good way to destroy a forum. Having to "watch one's step" to stay in tune with the gauleiters is not something I will ever do

I'm a free-speech absolutist in a society of fundamentally decent people. But that falls down badly when people cease to be fundamentally decent.

Obvious example is x/twatter, which has become a cesspit of deliberate lies, evasions, and worse.

Society is becoming more tolerant of "alternative facts", conspiracy theories, "don't trust the experts" nonsense, and the like. Unsurprisingly that is (slowly) spreading to this forum.

[bdunham7]

I'm a free-speech absolutist in a society of fundamentally decent people.

What does that actually mean?

[EEVblog]

Obvious example is x/twatter, which has become a cesspit of deliberate lies, evasions, and worse.

X is what you make of it.
Many people don't know how to use it. You can choose to follow and see only the people and posts you want to see.
It's like complaing that Youtube has a bunch of garbage channels you don't like, when you can simply choose to subscribe to the channels you like and only see that content if that's what you want.

[tggzzz]

Obvious example is x/twatter, which has become a cesspit of deliberate lies, evasions, and worse.

X is what you make of it.
Many people don't know how to use it. You can choose to follow and see only the people and posts you want to see.
It's like complaing that Youtube has a bunch of garbage channels you don't like, when you can simply choose to subscribe to the channels you like and only see that content if that's what you want.

Yes, the problem is that most people don't know how to use x/twatter, and do end up seeing and believing a lot of "alternative facts" (i.e. lies), conspiracy theories, etc. The ease of creating crap enables malefactors to promote their garbage, especially malefactors with commercial or state backing. Any good stuff is drowned out by the crap.

The problem with yootoob is that it takes excessive time to determine that a video (i.e. >99% of them) is crap and then to ignore it. Consequently I won't watch a yootoob vid unless I know in advance that it will be worth some of my remaining life. It is so easy to upload a vid that the good stuff is drowned out by the crap.

[hans]

I see "Be excellent to each other" as the tagline of the forum. I do not see people behaving that way.

I agree. But the internet is also the internet. I think many people here, if they are going to push a post button, have concluded for themselves that they add some contribution to a discussion in one form or another. That's not always be taken for granted everywhere IMO

Obviously, there are many common-sense statements would take things too far (things like discrimination).
On the other hand, I know myself as a very sensitive person when spoken to, while at the same time I can also be very blunt and inconsiderate. Also consider some people drawn into tech (a materialistic niche) may have less social skills than say your average psychologist that likes to practice and educate effective and tactful communication.
So maybe I can joke that my bluntness is because of the Dutch directness, but I doubt it..  probably also some neurodivergence.

Then throw in the different styles of story-telling and writing, language barriers, the difficulty of sarcasm/irony in written text, etc. Certainly lots of opportunities for 'lost in translation'.

I'm not surprised there are quite a few nothing-burger reports. I probably also posted a few some time ago when I thought some person was treated unfairly here. But oh well, it is what it is. Seeing Dave's point of view about micro moderation is also fair. I know of a large Dutch IT forum that is very strict on the rules and limits. And that place can be an absolutely toxic place (from moderation POV) with an overly formal vibe.

[brucehoult]

Obvious example is x/twatter, which has become a cesspit of deliberate lies, evasions, and worse.

X is what you make of it.
Many people don't know how to use it. You can choose to follow and see only the people and posts you want to see.
It's like complaing that Youtube has a bunch of garbage channels you don't like, when you can simply choose to subscribe to the channels you like and only see that content if that's what you want.

ABSOLUTELY 100% correct.

X is fabulous, the best resource on the planet, better than it's ever been. You don't have to love Elon Musk to think so -- I follow plenty of people who criticise him constantly, but stick on the site. Some of them have quietly or loudly disappeared to BlueSky or Mastodon or somewhere and then come back when they've found it's not all that.

I follow a select 379 people (at present ... but I pretty much remove someone for everyone new I add), read everything they post, and in some cases RT (if they don't overdo that), and read nothing else.

I often read "NZ Twitter is a cesspit". I literally have no idea what they're talking about.

I also have zero idea with this "TEA" thing is, and I check eevblog forum for new posts and comments probably 10x a day, every day. Has anyone got a pointer?

You should see some of the petty nothing-burger reports we get.

I believe it!

I've modded a Reddit sub for the last five years, which in that time has grown from 2500 to today 23491 members (plus drive-bys). I've not yet taken action based on a user report. I've not yet had more than one user report the same comment. I've almost always already seen whatever is reported before it is reported and decided it was ok -- the kind of people who report stuff also seem to be the kind of people who read the site once a day or less.

It's clearly not as busy as here. I can and do read every comment -- there's a special view that shows them all chronologically -- and from time to time delete something or ban someone. TBH it's not very often. But it's usually before the easily-offended see it anyway.

If 100 people -- or even 5 -- all reported the same comment that I'd already decided was ok then I might change my mind on it. It's never happened.

[fourfathom]

It is like designing a complicated electronics item.  You can't always be 100% perfect, in all aspects of a design.

It's much more difficult than that.  We are dealing with human beings here, and one thing these threads demonstrate is that even extremely intelligent people can still act like dumfux.

[MK14]

It is like designing a complicated electronics item.  You can't always be 100% perfect, in all aspects of a design.

It's much more difficult than that.  We are dealing with human beings here, and one thing these threads demonstrate is that even extremely intelligent people can still act like dumfux.

Also, at least some, talk about at least a minority of posters here, being at least slightly neuro-diverse/autistic/ADHD etc.  Which means, that it is much harder, for them to correctly read other peoples emotions.

Further compounded, by the fact, we (usually) can't see or hear, each other, which tends to mean, a lot of the body-language, and possibly other emotional cues, are much, much harder to read and notice.

There does seem to be more arguments, in threads (not necessarily in a pleasant or technically helpful way), compared to many years ago.

But on the other hand, it can help the technical discussion, follow its course, so not always a bad thing.

What amazes me about this forum.  Is how relatively few (in ratio, compared to how many responses/pages the thread can end up having), threads we have (relatively speaking, even though, it is a lot, compared to many things).  Verses, how many responses, it can receive, if popular.

Then when someone asks, something.  A huge number of posters, can (often helpfully), pile in with their views and answers, on the problem.  Even long after the original question/problem has been resolved.

I.e. It is a bit like we have a huge shortage of good/interesting, well described, thread starting questions/problems/challenges, relative to the number of people (users), who mostly just reply (often helpfully), to threads.

But (as a human), it could be as much my perception, rather than the reality, of what happens, on the forum.  E.g. I am noticing, the popular threads, that get a huge number of responses, on the list of recent posts, on the front page of the forum.

Rather than noticing the threads, which get little attention, and gradually fall out of view.

[tooki]

X is fabulous, the best resource on the planet, better than it's ever been.

Honest question: how is Twitter the “best resource on the planet”?!? I’ve never found it to be of any use at all. It’s always seemed to me that for everything it is used for, something better exists (or at least used to exist). I signed up for Twitter early on to reserve the username, but I’ve never posted to it once (other than tweeting at companies which inexplicably moved their customer service to Twitter-only), and I only follow some people to see their photos because they post there instead of on other platforms.

There are so many other things that to me have far higher value: Wikipedia. Topical forums like this. Reddit. YouTube. And many more.

What am I just not seeing in Twitter?

[John B]

X is fabulous, the best resource on the planet, better than it's ever been.

Honest question: how is Twitter the “best resource on the planet”?!? I’ve never found it to be of any use at all. It’s always seemed to me that for everything it is used for, something better exists (or at least used to exist). I signed up for Twitter early on to reserve the username, but I’ve never posted to it once (other than tweeting at companies which inexplicably moved their customer service to Twitter-only), and I only follow some people to see their photos because they post there instead of on other platforms.

There are so many other things that to me have far higher value: Wikipedia. Topical forums like this. Reddit. YouTube. And many more.

What am I just not seeing in Twitter?

Rapid dissemination of news, in the form of eyewitnesses or direct video evidence. It will always be a trade off between real news being spread before a corporate media entity can put a spin on something, and the risk of false news being spread.

There's a lot of rose tinted historical revisionism around twitter. Prior to Musk owning it, there were always abhorrent opinions on there, it's just that the people saying those things were in a socially privileged positions and never faced backlash for it.

[Monkeh]

There's a lot of rose tinted historical revisionism around twitter. Prior to Musk owning it, there were always abhorrent opinions on there, it's just that the people saying those things were in a socially privileged positions and never faced backlash for it.

I'm struggling to see how this has changed. Apart, of course, from the abhorrent positions shifting to the other side of the political spectrum in places.

Mind you, since ol' Musk took over I struggle to see anything. It's now an impossibility to actually view anything there without logging in, and as logging in actually offers no other functions I'm interested in, I don't offer myself up as the product.