Forum Moderation

[floobydust]

I too have noticed threads with pages of mud slinging going on, increasingly so.
My feelings are the forum's rules are not being enforced well enough:

2) No personal attacks. This is the biggest rule on this forum. If you don't follow it, you are not welcome here."
... "The main rule is NO PERSONAL ATTACKS, they will not be tolerated here. If you can't follow that simple rule, you are not welcome here."

There's a shit-ton of personal attack occurring. If you complain, then the mods blame you for it, as if you can't throw mud back and are expected to sit here and just take it endlessly, as they do in a monastery.
So I'm seeing great people pull back or leave the forum entirely after they get shit on. It's a big loss.
Sometimes I wonder if they aren't paid agents sowing discord or shitposting here.
No other forums are this rough. I would welcome some change.

[thm_w]

There's a shit-ton of personal attack occurring. If you complain, then the mods blame you for it, as if you can't throw mud back and are expected to sit here and just take it endlessly, as they do in a monastery.

Complain where? Report the post if it is a personal attack and move on.
If its just an attitude thing, then it might be worth posting in the thread and the user will get the hint.

Anyone else notice a rise in normal typically intelligent and technically competent users going off the rails and getting into arguments that spiral into pages and pages of shit talking?  I feel like that's happening way more than it used to.  It's like a black hole of crap that pulls in other people until it collapses on itself.

Not sure if its any more than usual, but, I'm sure senility factors into it.
Lithium interestingly enough might help with that as well as improving mood https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09335-x

Agree with derailing, but as discussed before its a lot of mod work to go in and prune out posts, so not sure what you can do.

[tggzzz]

No other forums are this rough. I would welcome some change.

Ah. A youngster.

Try usenet, e.g. Sci.electronics.design which has some seriously heavyweight contributors including Win Hill of TAoE fame, John Larkin, Phil Hobbs and more. The insults there can be imaginative and entertaining and (arguably!) accurate  - much more so than here.

A mild example...

> Certainly you and [person X] can diddle one another endlessly. Don't bother your little heads with hard stuff like electronics.
>
> Flame on, gentlemen.

[Person Y] doesn't bother his little head with electronics either. He posts simulations of circuits that he has cobbled together from time to time, but he's remarkably unwilling to talk about why he put them together the way he did, and avoids components that are tricky to understand, like transformers designed and custom wound to do a specific job.

He's happy to pose as a circuit designer and attempt to flame other people by suggesting they should design his electronics for him, but designing stuff from scratch seems to be beyond him.

Or the justified (i.e.  Flyguy is in my "ignore subthreads" filter )

Clowns like Flyguy think that they are always potentially dangerous, which saves him from actually having to think about what is going on - not something he can actually manage.

...

> Again, you lie about lying - a KNOWN trait of a congenital liar.

Of course you aren't a congenital liar. You are just too pig-ignorant to realise that you are lying, and quite how obvious your lies are.

[EEVblog]

I too have noticed threads with pages of mud slinging going on, increasingly so.
My feelings are the forum's rules are not being enforced well enough:

2) No personal attacks. This is the biggest rule on this forum. If you don't follow it, you are not welcome here."
... "The main rule is NO PERSONAL ATTACKS, they will not be tolerated here. If you can't follow that simple rule, you are not welcome here."

There's a shit-ton of personal attack occurring. If you complain, then the mods blame you for it, as if you can't throw mud back and are expected to sit here and just take it endlessly, as they do in a monastery.
So I'm seeing great people pull back or leave the forum entirely after they get shit on. It's a big loss.
Sometimes I wonder if they aren't paid agents sowing discord or shitposting here.
No other forums are this rough. I would welcome some change.

We only have a few mods and we cannot read everything, it's impossible, so we rely on reports.
That being said, a majority of reports we get are "storms in a teacup" and someone just taking personal offense at something someone said.

I just had to lock a thread to calm things down, because I know the end result would have likely escalated to me having to ban a long standing and otherwise well respected member which would have pissed off the entire community. But sometimes we have to reluctantly do that.
Unfortunately we have limited tools to deal this kind of thing.
We can't ban someone from just one thread for example to prevent trouble in a certain topic, we can only ask them to calm down or leave the tread of their accord.
And if we start deleting posts then people get pissed off and leave, so have to use that sparingly.
We can temporarily ban people for a few day so they have time to calm down, but I'm not sure it achieves much.

[bdunham7]

We can't ban someone from just one thread for example to prevent trouble in a certain topic, we can only ask them to calm down or leave the tread of their accord.
And if we start deleting posts then people get pissed off and leave, so have to use that sparingly.
We can temporarily ban people for a few day so they have time to calm down, but I'm not sure it achieves much.

One variable that is sort of unknown but worth considering is how many people there might be who would be valuable contributors but choose not to because of the tone of some discussions.  I'm convinced EEVBlog is mostly grumpy old men and most flare-ups are just bickering, but there have been a few exchanges that were appalling and I'm sure that sort of thing drives people away. 

[abeyer]

I'm convinced EEVBlog is mostly grumpy old men

 

there have been a few exchanges that were appalling and I'm sure that sort of thing drives people away.

Don't disagree, and in fact I've heard several people express that they'd never even consider coming here in the first place because they've heard tell of such.

I get that moderation is hard, there are limited resources, and there are tradeoffs in any moderation actions taken... but I also wonder if this forum's standards are veering farther from the current "expected norms" of discourse by not exercising a bit more control, and as a result losing more potential members.

[EEVblog]

One variable that is sort of unknown but worth considering is how many people there might be who would be valuable contributors but choose not to because of the tone of some discussions.  I'm convinced EEVBlog is mostly grumpy old men and most flare-ups are just bickering, but there have been a few exchanges that were appalling and I'm sure that sort of thing drives people away.

I've seen far more forums destroyed by over moderation.
We had a hand full of top contributors leave here because of perceived over moderation on the TEA thread.
Even when offered their own forum section with their own moderator, they didn't want to come back.

[EEVblog]

I get that moderation is hard, there are limited resources, and there are tradeoffs in any moderation actions taken... but I also wonder if this forum's standards are veering farther from the current "expected norms" of discourse by not exercising a bit more control, and as a result losing more potential members.

We have had to ban some of the top contributors to the forum. Even at one point, the biggest poster on the forum. How far do you want us to take it?
It would be impossible to moderate a forum to a point where someone doesn't take a offense. And if just that one person has reach online, it can literally take just one person to spread the rumor that the forum sucks etc.
So it doesn't matter how we do it, there will always be people who think this forum is full of xxxxxxxx and you should stay away. And likewise there will always be people who think this forum is over-moderated to the point that it should be avoided because of that.

[Monkeh]

It would be impossible to moderate a forum to a point where someone doesn't take a offense.

Don't moderate so people don't take offence, moderate people who go out of their way to give it. You've just given one example of a member doing exactly that. I could name others, but it's better if moderation is done with an open mind. That and I can't claim total innocence.

[EEVblog]

Don't moderate so people don't take offence, moderate people who go out of their way to give it. You've just given one example of a member doing exactly that. I could name others, but it's better if moderation is done with an open mind. That and I can't claim total innocence.

We have three ways to moderate a post:
1) Edit it (sometimes done for dodgy links or something)
2) Delete it
3) Delete it leaving an automated message in it's place that the post has been removed for violating the forum rules.

In all cases the posted is unfortunately not notified. And we have had many complaints that post have "mysteriously vanished", and this is part of what caused the mass exodus in the TEA thread.

We could send a PM to the poster as to why a post was removed, and this sometimes happens, but that takes a lot of extra time and effort to do this. And then you often get into a private argument over it wasting even more time and effort.
If we use option 3 a lot then we end up with a forum filled with "Post deleted by moderator messages", which also isn't a good look for those who visit.

[EEVblog]

So I'm seeing great people pull back or leave the forum entirely after they get shit on. It's a big loss.
Sometimes I wonder if they aren't paid agents sowing discord or shitposting here.
No other forums are this rough. I would welcome some change.

A follow-on to this specific issue.
Who defines what "being shit on" is?

You should see some of the reports we get where someone has complained about what someone said to them, most of the time it's a complete nothing burger, a storm in teacup, them just taking offense when that was clearly not the intent.
Also remember the differences in language and social norms given the global nature of this forum.

So how do you suggest we handle this? Please be specific.
Should we instantly delete a post when someone reports it regardless of what the moderator thinks? What is the threshold?

Let's take today's example where I locked the thread to de-escalate things:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/do-i-misunderstand-esr-measurement-frequency-dependence-of-esr/250/

What should I have done in this case where someone was literally making fun at another posters (possibly terminal) illness?
Were they entitled to do that because they were "provoked" in some way?
Was locking the thread to de-escalate things the right approach?
Should I have deleted the offending reported posts? What about deleting the supposed "provoking" posts as well?
Should I have banned (temp or permanent?) the "provokee" or the one making fun of the terminal illness?
How long should I have spent reading the entire 10 page thread to see who said what to who first?

I looked at the reported (by more than one person) post and who made it, and told them to leave the thread, and they responded with "Feel free to ban me". Should I have banned this otherwise prolific and respected poster?, or was the right move to lock the thread to de-escalate the whole thing?

So please, tell me, what should I have done? I'd like to know what people think.

[Monkeh]

I looked at the reported (by more than one person) post and who made it, and told them to leave the thread, and they responded with "Feel free to ban me". Should I have banned this otherwise prolific and respected poster?, or was the right move to lock the thread to de-escalate the whole thing?

So please, tell me, what should I have done? I'd like to know what people think.

Sometimes you should give people exactly what they ask for.

You might also consider if the respect is as widespread as you believe - I would not describe his attitude in that thread as unusual.

[EEVblog]

Sometimes you should give people exactly what they ask for.
You might also consider if the respect is as widespread as you believe - I would not describe his attitude in that thread as unusual.

13,800 posts, 4333 Thanks
I'm 100% certain there would have been a huge uproar if I had just banned them.
Yes, that person can be what I would describe as a bit "gruff", but no more so than countless people on here really.
To my knowledge they have never made a ban worthy post before, and IIRC have rarely if ever been reported before.

[bdunham7]

So please, tell me, what should I have done? I'd like to know what people think.

I think locking the thread and letting the participants reflect (if they do) on their own statements is a good compromise and temporary fix, but it just seems somehow odd to be locking a thread about measuring ESR of capacitors.  I think banning any of the participants would be a loss to all of us, but I've seen more than one organization fire their "top performer" because they had to--sometimes a bit too late.  So there should be at least some rules (your rules, you literally own the place!) and nobody should be above them.  Essentially I am just saying do what you think is right and don't worry so much about the blowback.  There will be some that agree with you, some that disagree with you and probably more that don't really care.

I haven't read the whole thread so I wouldn't want to try to referee the conflict, but I would suggest strong guidance on how to deal with inflammatory posts and that would be the expectation that users report the post if needed and in all cases just ignore things that offend them.  That last part is tough for a lot of people, me included.  But I've learned to just block those that annoy me and be happy.

[wilfred]

Anyone else notice a rise in normal typically intelligent and technically competent users going off the rails and getting into arguments that spiral into pages and pages of shit talking?  I feel like that's happening way more than it used to.  It's like a black hole of crap that pulls in other people until it collapses on itself.

Sure there are the trolls you sort of expect to cause trouble, but I'm talking about users that are usually "upstanding citizens". 

Not sure what to do about it.  Just more of an observation.

If they were upstanding citizens they'd recognise what they post is read by many others that they are not engaged in an argument with. And moderate their own posts. It is the threads that descend into a private bun-fight between a few individuals that I'd like to sin-bin those involved for a few days to calm down.

[wilfred]

I looked at the reported (by more than one person) post and who made it, and told them to leave the thread, and they responded with "Feel free to ban me". Should I have banned this otherwise prolific and respected poster?, or was the right move to lock the thread to de-escalate the whole thing?

So please, tell me, what should I have done? I'd like to know what people think.

Yes. If they taunt you to your face about banning them then you should just go ahead and do it. No ifs, buts or explanations. I don't think you should take that sort of crap.

It'll for sure send a pretty clear message.

[negativ3]

Learning to behave properly online is not hard.
NOT responding to arseholes is also hard.

Defining a "problematic post" is the toughest moderation job, in the absence of context.

[PlainName]

Sometimes you should give people exactly what they ask for.
You might also consider if the respect is as widespread as you believe - I would not describe his attitude in that thread as unusual.

13,800 posts, 4333 Thanks

Being a prolific poster just means they have plenty of time and will to make a lot of posts. Sure, there's a few thanks there, but maybe he commented to treez a lot 

Thing is, if you back down with such egregious behaviour they'll just consider themselves untouchable, and their fans will see that if one just mouths off a lot, standing their ground will get you to back off.

Doesn't matter who started that - joe was being a malicious dick and enjoying it.

[ebastler]

So please, tell me, what should I have done? I'd like to know what people think.

Ban Joe for a few weeks to allow him to cool off and reconsider. Attacking someone over their potentially terminal illness,  and doubling down on it multiple times even after the affected user has stated that they were hurt by it, is not acceptable -- no matter how many posts and thanks someone has.

[EEVblog]

I think locking the thread and letting the participants reflect (if they do) on their own statements is a good compromise and temporary fix, but it just seems somehow odd to be locking a thread about measuring ESR of capacitors. 

It was essentially a temporary fix, I had other things to do and didn't want to have spend the time to deal with this at the time.

I think banning any of the participants would be a loss to all of us

And therein lies the rub, which comes up in moderation often. If this was a new user with 5 posts and did this, an instant ban is obvious. But a long standing member always gets cut way more slack, especially someone who otherwise doesn't get reported and their posts are well liked an interacted with. They could have just been having a really bad day.
Half the forum would be gone if we banned long standing members for one-off egregious outbursts.

[Picuino]

I don't think the number of posts should affect the decision so much. Otherwise, it should be included in the forum rules to be fair (if someone has posted a lot, they'll be treated more favorably). I understand the forum's interest in retaining frequent users, so would it be legitimate to include that clause to encourage everyone to write a lot?

It's a difficult dilemma, but applying current rules, no one should be allowed to joke like that about someone else's misfortune.

[tggzzz]

One variable that is sort of unknown but worth considering is how many people there might be who would be valuable contributors but choose not to because of the tone of some discussions.  I'm convinced EEVBlog is mostly grumpy old men and most flare-ups are just bickering, but there have been a few exchanges that were appalling and I'm sure that sort of thing drives people away.

I've seen far more forums destroyed by over moderation.
We had a hand full of top contributors leave here because of perceived over moderation on the TEA thread.
Even when offered their own forum section with their own moderator, they didn't want to come back.

Over moderation is definitely a potential problem, with some moderators enjoying selectively enforcing rules. "Real world" analogies are "for my friends everything, for my enemies the law" syndrome, and Home Owner Associations in the USA. Importantly that doesn't occur here.

Having said that, there will always be a turnover of members, and while being mindful of the TEA incident, I wouldn't obsess over it.

[tggzzz]

I get that moderation is hard, there are limited resources, and there are tradeoffs in any moderation actions taken... but I also wonder if this forum's standards are veering farther from the current "expected norms" of discourse by not exercising a bit more control, and as a result losing more potential members.

We have had to ban some of the top contributors to the forum. Even at one point, the biggest poster on the forum. How far do you want us to take it?
It would be impossible to moderate a forum to a point where someone doesn't take a offense. And if just that one person has reach online, it can literally take just one person to spread the rumor that the forum sucks etc.
So it doesn't matter how we do it, there will always be people who think this forum is full of xxxxxxxx and you should stay away. And likewise there will always be people who think this forum is over-moderated to the point that it should be avoided because of that.

Precisely.

If there are people who stay away because of rumours that they haven't bothered to check, then that is a gain not a loss. Any such easily-swayed people are unlikely to be able to provided useful technical input.

[tggzzz]

...
In all cases the posted is unfortunately not notified. And we have had many complaints that post have "mysteriously vanished", and this is part of what caused the mass exodus in the TEA thread.

Non-notification is unfortunate for several reasons. Firstly it annoys people, and secondly it doesn't inform people what they should avoid in the future.

Your point about it being time consuming is well taken.

If we use option 3 a lot then we end up with a forum filled with "Post deleted by moderator messages", which also isn't a good look for those who visit.

I'm unconvinced by that.

Silent deletion of spam and similar is right and proper.

Seeing an occasional "post deleted" message might give the appearance that this garden is well tended and anti-social behaviour won't be tolerated.

[tggzzz]

Sometimes you should give people exactly what they ask for.
You might also consider if the respect is as widespread as you believe - I would not describe his attitude in that thread as unusual.

13,800 posts, 4333 Thanks
I'm 100% certain there would have been a huge uproar if I had just banned them.
Yes, that person can be what I would describe as a bit "gruff", but no more so than countless people on here really.
To my knowledge they have never made a ban worthy post before, and IIRC have rarely if ever been reported before.

Agreed on all counts.

How many of those "thanks" were worthless because they were from treez/etc? No, don't bother waste time finding the answer.

Good judgement on your part