Forum Management: A Plea for Moderation

[popfor]

I love how I stopped playing this game over a month ago and maybe post once every week or so and these kids keep dragging my name up.....

Hurr durr dick in my mouth. Remember that one pain?

[cobaltjones]

Not even counting the fact that he's had OVER 200 posts in the week since posting that, in the week prior to posting that he had 8 posts and in the last month before that post he's had 42.

"Maybe once every week or so"

[ApocalypsePlease]

About potential updates to rules: I've got a suggestion to revise the current rules.

Two rules in place that are semi-relevant:
Under the section "Inappropriate content":
"Don't be a blatantly stupid/unfunny troll, derail otherwise interesting threads with your trolling, or troll/stir up drama on the forums with an alt."
Under the section "Spam":
"Please refrain from offtopic chatting in important threads like the server status thread."

Could there be a stronger rule against derailing in general than just derailing by trolling? As someone who has been actively reporting, I wish there was a better reason for reporting posts than just "offtopic", it really irritates me. Having a rule in place against all derails and any continuous off topic discussion could force the forums to shape up a little bit and hopefully even improve the overall quality of the forums.

Would be interested in your input, thanks.

[sabinati]

in general i'm in favor of such a thing. does anyone have anything to say against it?

[TeckXKnight]

Sounds good to me.

[Neon14]

Yeh, I agree if my word means anything.

[popfor]

Yeh, I agree if my word means anything.

It doesn't, but I would also agree.

[Potjeh]

I guess it's up to me to be the Devil's advocate then. Sometimes everything is said on the original topic that needs to be said, but the conversation naturally shifts to another topic, just like conversations do IRL. I don't see anything wrong with this kind of derail, so I'd rather not have a blanket rule against derailing.

[burgingham]

I personally find it hard to judge between derails that are annoying and such that are ok (I agree with Potjeh that such exist). It would mean a lot more work for the barely active mods if such a rule were to be carried out properly.

I only recently had a discussion via pm with Neon, who had been reporting quite a lot of posts. For me it was nitpicking, for him those little things like a simple "lol" post with no other content were disturbing. I get where he is coming from, but you cannot really expect us to moderate every post that has no perfect content and also who are we to judge that in the first place? People are going apeshit enough about what the mods are doing as is.

[TeckXKnight]

I personally find it hard to judge between derails that are annoying and such that are ok (I agree with Potjeh that such exist). It would mean a lot more work for the barely active mods if such a rule were to be carried out properly.

I only recently had a discussion via pm with Neon, who had been reporting quite a lot of posts. For me it was nitpicking, for him those little things like a simple "lol" post with no other content were disturbing. I get where he is coming from, but you cannot really expect us to moderate every post that has no perfect content and also who are we to judge that in the first place? People are going apeshit enough about what the mods are doing as is.

I'd be fine making the extra judgments just because it'd mostly involve a whole lot of nothing. For the most part posters are pretty good about staying on topic and it's generally the same handful of people who are incapable of this. In the event that it does come up a lot, I have no problem eating my words and just handling the job as it appears.

With anything, every incidence is going to be a judgment call on the mod that takes a look at it. If they feel like they made a bad call afterwards then they can rescind the punishment or lock and nothing changes. Nothing to be afraid of. Also, even small comments such as 'lol' can be off topic to varying degrees. While they're generally looked down upon they're not exactly something that warrants a ban unless other circumstances contribute to the scenario.