Segue Brainstorming

About Site Feedback
1

Instead of whine about why whatever happened, let’s try to make things better. :smiley:

First read THIS. Really read it, it’s good. Now put your ideas here. They don’t just have to be about how to deal with a renagade poster either, even though most ideas (mine included) will probably be about that.

I really think there should be some thought and discussion about how things are done here. The thread about the ban (I think) has shown that enough community members are concerned about how it was handled.

My suggestion is simple. We have karma and the mods can issue warnings. Use them. So many warnings=suspend. Some things = automatic suspention. I don’t think bannings are something to be takin’ so lightly. I’m willing to help in anyway I can. I’m sure there are others who would to. I think the community moding thing would be a great idea if instituted properly.

I also think there needs to be another open forum. One that has users go through a warning screen first saying “If butterflies scare you don’t come in here”, or something like that. And guests can post. It doesn’t have to be some out of control obsenity fest, but at least rated R.

Anymore ideas.

2

Some ideas:

(1) The moderation thing? Some people object to the f-word, others revel in it? Try dividing the universe into “heaven”, “purgatory”, and “hell” like the community did at www.ship-of-fools.com (a UK Christian dissident / humor site). Heaven is goody-goody, purgatory is for heated intellectual discussion, and hell is for flaming. If somebody flames in heaven, he can politely be told to go to “hell,” which is of course unmoderated!

(2) A general design problem: Segue still has trouble distinguishing between what ought to be short-term posts, and what ought to be long-term posts. " Subjects like “how do I get married in Taiwan” should probably be made into permanent FAQ’s on one hand, and a message board on the other.

(3) Stacked messages work best. Have a look at these examples and you’ll see what I mean:

www.eslcafe.com/jd2/index.cgi

www.comicboards.com/jsa

(4) I think your first page should be the topics list, maybe with quotes from new posts (or whatever you’re doing on page one now–not the legalese, the right half) on the side (scrolling down automatically, like the news updates at www.taipeitimes.com ?)

(5) It should be easier to click on a topic and get the post list. Right now I’m finding that I have to click on the “featured post”, then go backwards. If I try to click directly on the topic name, I just get somebody’s personal stats file or something. That’s a design flaw.

You know, the permanent discussion fora ought to have little symbols, like the avatars you guys like so much…?

3

quote=“Lama Ding Dong” Stacked messages work best. Have a look at these examples and you’ll see what I mean:

www.eslcafe.com/jd2/index.cgi

www.comicboards.com/jsa
[/quote]

A mess. Never liked that format. The php flat format is much easier. Dave’s esl cafe reminds me of usenet in about 1980.

4

A mess? But with stacked messages, if I was interested in a thread about Superman but not after it spun off into a discusion of Batman, I could navigate among them rather conveniently. Under Segue’s system the whole mess would be clumped into several discrete pages, with Batman and Supeman posts mixed willy-nilly.

Headers and texts are all mixed together. In fact many of us don’t use headers, since they serve no real purpose under this system. We always get the full text anyway, no matter what the header says.

5

[quote=“hexuan”]quote=“Lama Ding Dong” Stacked messages work best. Have a look at these examples and you’ll see what I mean:

www.eslcafe.com/jd2/index.cgi

www.comicboards.com/jsa
[/quote]

A mess. Never liked that format. The php flat format is much easier.[/quote]

I like the current Segue format… don’t care at all for “stacked” messages. Afraid I might miss some of the jewels of wisdom that are frequently posted as asides or are OT in these threads.

6

I like the format just fine. I actually DON’T like stacked. Anytime I see a forum that uses it, I walk away.

I’d like to bring up the karma thing again. Right now it’s just a number with no meaning. If the level of karma a user had could restrict certain things and make other things available that normally wouldn’t be, that would be cool. Then I wouldn’t just frivolously give mine away. It would also mean more when a mod takes or gives some. Right now the karma thing feels like stars on the white board for a 3 year old.

All this disscusion about the banning should also be in the blue sneetch are. But guests can’t see that (maybe they shouldn’t).

7

I also hate stacked forums and prefer the Segue format. And I like the new front page.

But Miltownkid is right about the Karma and the sneetches thing. I guess there could be more meaning to it.

I also don’t quite get the “thread rating” thing. The other day, a thread turned up in the top-rated threads, but when I went into the thread, only one person had rated it. How come it turned up in the top-ratings? And how come the top-rated threads change so often?

All in all, I’ve never found a discussion board that seemed as interesting to me as Segue (I haven’t looked for many, though :wink: ).

I like it :slight_smile:

Iris

8

Yeah I checked out the thread rating thing and if you keep refreshing the page you get a different set each time. I think it should rate the top 20 threads, and give a higher position to threads with more votes: a thread rated 5 by three people being higher than a thread rated 5 by only one.

9

Stacked sucks, leave it as is.

10

Yep stacked is a horrible format for the web. Don’t think much of the new front page on Segue though, bit of a mess. Is the weather forcast bit hidden there somewhere, or has that been dropped, or am I thinking of a different website!?

11

I agree witht he majority in my dislike of the stacked format.

Some of us were talking about Segue yesterday and I really think the biggest ongoing problem is the constantly resurfacing debate about what is acceptable language and behaviour on the forums.

To me there is a case for both a wild unmoderated free for all stlye and a a controlled serious informative style. When the discussion about the old ‘Rants and Raves’ forum on Oriented was resolved, I thought the idea was for the new Open forum to be the place where you go if you want to have a fight. If you didn’t like that sort fo stuff you didn’t need to go there. But it seems that now people see the Open Forum as a ‘general’ forum.

My suggestion is that the ‘normal’ boards should have even stricter moderating than now, to keep them pretty clean and useful. There should be consistent and strict enforcement ofr the guidelines in these forums. Then the open forum should be unmoderated except to stop serious libel, pornography, spamming etc. Moderators should be able to instantly hit a button which will move posts tothe open forum with a ‘reply by xxxx moved to open forum’ link staying there. Perhaps posters could also have an otption of linking their own replies to the open forum.

Brian

12

We don’ need no steenkin’ stacked messages here!

Unmoderated open forum? What, so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of two or three posters whinging on that “You suck”, “No you suck,” “No you suck even more – big green loogie ones,” " No you’re the looser (sic)" ad nauseam?

Please, no. The open forum (usually) has a good number of useful and interesting threads going on, thanks to the benefits of judicious moderating.

And there’s the flame forum, so anyone who gets an intellectual buzz out of “you’re a big fat looser” posts can still be fulfilled.

I like to imagine Segue as a kind of pub situation. For example, if you had a customer like that number bloke, whose ONLY interest is to wind people up, of course there are plenty of punters who’d be only too happy to glass him in the face, but the bouncers or publican would hopefully punt him out on his arse before things got to that stage.

This is OUR community. Why should we put up with someone who demonstrates again and again that he has no interest in being friendly.

Of course, we could let these posts go on and on, checking our emails every day for the latest batch of irate complaints from other members, which of course then requires us to acknowledge these, send emails to the errant poster, which then requires us to respond to HIS emails, then pass on his explanations/apologies/fuck you’s to the other members, which would be fine if that was our job. Its not. And all that takes time, which is a valuable commodity for those of you who lives, or so I’ve heard.

And as for the poster who said Maoman shouldn’t have banned this guy just because of a personal message (which, BTW, I read, and if he’d said it face to face, would DEFINITELY have been grounds for a good glassing), well, Maoman is the frigging administrator, for christ’s sake, so he’s in charge.

If you’re in a pub or at someone’s house party and you respond to a polite request from the publican or host to tone things down with a tirade of expletive-laden abuse, what do expect will happen?

Number bloke could, if he’d wanted to simply flame, posted in the flame forum, where I guess he wouldn’t have been banned. He chose instead to post, with the express intent of stirring up trouble, in a forum where the rules prohibit his kind of ranting. His choice. His consequences.

13

Agreed, nuf said about that.

[quote=“sandman”]Unmoderated open forum? What, so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of two or three posters whinging on that “You suck”, “No you suck,” “No you suck even more – big green loogie ones,” " No you’re the looser (sic)" ad nauseam?

Please, no. The open forum (usually) has a good number of useful and interesting threads going on, thanks to the benefits of judicious moderating.[/quote]
I think there needs to be two “open” forums.

There’s a flaw in the flame forum idea. Post with useful info sometimes get moved there only to be deleted.

Let him get glassed in the face then.

Hmmmm… OUR community. Who exactly does that include?

Ahh, but it IS your job. It’s NOT my job. That’s what being a Mod is all about. Are you saying you can’t hang? That’s why I made this brainstorming thread. Maybe the community can come up with some ideas that will make the mods job easier.

That’s the beauty of the internet. Being able to say things that you wouldn’t face-to-face, “good” or “bad”.

This isn’t a house party or a pub. Totally different.

I think the rules need more thought too. What exactly are the rules? I also don’t think anybody read the link I posted (if you did I apologize). It starts off like this:

The Internet exists to improve communication. Communities can grow anywhere communication occurs.

HERE’S THE LINK AGAIN IN CASE YOU DIDN’T SEE IT THE FIRST TIME

Segue has been an endless source of information and help for me. I’d like to keep it that way the best way possible. sandman, if your saying that everything is hunky-dorry perfect right now and you see no reason for people to complain, I think your missing something. Don’t take offense to anything thing I say. It’s just constructive criticism.

Good job Mod’s :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

14

I like things the way they are.

End of story.

The moderation is good too.

15

[quote=“Mr He”]I like things the way they are.

End of story.

The moderation is good too.[/quote]

The moderation is very good here. This thread isn’t about the moderation or wheather it was right to ban anybody. This thread is about brainstorming to make segue better. But I guess you said in your post that you like the way things are now. Good.

I just think that there may be more phpbb moderation tools that could be implemented or maybe a better set of rules that could be used. I’m trying (note trying) to make this the last time a discussion about bannings and things ever arise on this board. I think the last situation could have been handled in a fashion that didn’t put everybody up in arms.

For instance, if Maoman said “I’ve suspended 090299084123089742 and my finger is itchin for a ban, he sent me this crazy email and I feel he has no place here”. We could have discussed it and agreed or disagreed for a ban. In the end it’s the moderators choice, but now I think the mods and Maoman are in a funny us vs. them situation.

With some simple steps we could have had the same outcome, without the useless banter (mine included).

16

Wrong. My job, the parameters of which were clearly laid out to me when I agreed to do it, and which I do strictly as a volunteer (as do all the other mods), is to try to make sure the restaurant forum remains as some kind of repository of information. My personal rules are that off-topic replies get deleted and I certainly don’t bother to inform the poster why it was done unless asked, to which I’d reply in two words – off topic.

No back and forth arguments, thanks, I have neither the time nor the inclination. If someone is what I consider to be offensive to the other people here, he gets warned. If he continues, he gets banned. If you don’t like it, you’re most welcome to instigate a campaign to have me removed as moderator and replaced with someone who better fits your idea of what a moderator should be.

I read some of the link you posted. It is interesting, but the thing is, it was all about some other person’s website, not Segue. Segue is owned by Gus and administered by Maoman and Richard Hartzell. If they want to adopt any or all the ideas in your article, fine, I’ll either go along with it or quit as a moderator.

And your crack about “the Internet” not being the same as someone’s house or a pub? Absolutely. Totally different, as you say. However, we’re not talking about the Internet, we’re talking about Segue, our own little corner where we are allowed to make the rules. If you really feel that you’d be happier frequenting sites where racism, hate and malicious offensiveness are tolerated, there are many, many alternatives out there for you.

Now THAT’S the beauty of the Internet.

17

No need for two Open Forums. Sociopaths can go to the Flame Forum. Online pub brawls are not welcome in the other forums. Anyone telling moderators to go and fuck themselves without a bloody good reason gets banned. Just my opinion.

18

All points well taken. Your right, this is your own little corner. But the way the banning took place threw off the flow of a few topics and brought rise to others. My point for this thread isn’t about why the poster was banned. It was for coming up with how to better handle a situation like that (and other situtions like the stacking thing).

So far I feel like the mods are tell everyone to [edit]go away[edit]. You don’t like my modding style go and make your own web page I don’t care. If that’s how it is let me know. I’ll stop trying so hard.

Guests can’t even vote in the Ban 90909? poll. I think the numbers thus far indicate that the community does indeed think that it could have been handled diffrently.

But in the end it’s “only” a website. This is YOUR own little corner. If you (whoever you is) want to keep this site purely informational good, say that. Then I’ll know to take my useless banter elsewhere and just come here when I want info on Taiwan and the such. Your right, there are many, many alternatives out there for you.

I guess the flame forum is a healthy alternitive. I still think the ban was to emotionally charged.

19

Give it a rest miltownkid. I’ve barked up this tree before over the JGeer incident, and there’s nothing up there except air purifiers, baby pearls and probably tupperware …

20

When I wrote “our” corner of cyberspace, I was talking about the Segue community as a whole, not the little clique of moderators (not that there is any such thing, in any case).

Is that really how you feel? If so, speaking personally, I’m disappointed. I didn’t realize I was failing so miserably.

Speaking on behalf of the other mods, (who all bow and grovel before me, and will sycophantically agree with everything I say), I would urge you not to “stop trying so hard.”

You might feel that your voice isn’t being heard, but believe me, it is. And changes are made as a result. Maybe not immediately and maybe not even in the way you’d like, but your voice is most certainly heard and note is taken.

Stramashes like this make me thankful that the restaurant forum is a nice, quiet, polite backwater!