Unhappy with moderation

[quote=“iix23”]Hello Loretta,
Quote"I understand and agree with what you’re saying, but from the perspective of the people who have been here for a while, what do the newbies contribute? I’m not here to provide a public service for people who just wander in expecting to be taken care of. This is a community, not always a very nice one, and there is plenty of scope for improvement in the way we treat people, but the long-termers are the core of the community."Quote[/quote]

The quote function is your friend! Learn to use it. :doh:

And how does this benefit me? You want me to help more random strangers so that more random strangers will join forumosa?

None of the moderators have any financial stake in forumosa. Aside from free drinks (I don’t drink) at happy hours, we don’t get anything in return for our efforts. Every complaint is a slap in the face to someone who is just trying to help things along for the greater good, not for money.

These are valid points. No argument. It’s also valid to point out that eg there is a sticky thread about that very question at the top of the forum, or that a cursory search will turn up several short direct answers to the question.

With all respect to the many intelligent and interesting people that turn up here from time to time (many of whom stay around, thankfully), this site is afflicted with a never-ending stream of unintelligent and uninformed garbage from people with too much sense of their own entitlement, who expect amazing customer service from volunteers who have better things to do.

Having said that, the recent complaints have mostly been from intelligent, interesting folks with a long history here. They’re expressing perfectly normal frustration at the fact that this site is a work in progress which depends on the efforts of individuals who volunteer their time and brainpower, but are not in complete agreement about how things should be done.

The moderating is not consistent because nobody has found one hard and fast set of rules that we can all agree on and work to. It’s the internet, we’re making it up as we go along. Please be patient, and remember that our intentions are good, and we are only human. (Except for Maoman, who is actually a mutant cyborg.)

First, I agree anyone has a right to offer an opinion, critical or not. No dispute there. I’m sure people who complain about moderating feel they have a valid point.

Having said that, from a personal perspective, there’s no way in hell I’d ever want to be a moderator. You’d get more gratitude, and much less whining and complaining, if you volunteered to scrub toilets at the local high school. I don’t do well in thankless positions where any good I try to do is mostly ignored and many of the things I do are criticized.

I imagine being a moderator is a pretty thankless task … and deep down we are all grateful that someone is removing the real dross :wink:

however … I think the general theme of this (and similar) threads has been: don’t do so much of it then. If the rules are creating a lot of work for you, then perhaps the rules are wrong. We’re all (most of us) adults here, and I notice even the person at whom the original ‘insult’ was directed gave the moderation a thumbs-down. Sometimes an insult has no purpose except to be really hurtful - and sometimes it’s just bar-room talk with no malice in it. The participants themselves are probably best placed to make that judgement call.

So … you might find, if you just let things take their course, that people who are consistently rude and insulting are simply sidelined from future discussions … as in real life. They will then get bored and go away. Participants can flag up things that genuinely need sorting (trolls, people wasting bandwidth on pure vitriol, etc). The result should be a lot less work for the mods and a lot fewer threads like this one. Although then again, I haven’t seen the real nonsense that gets deleted and there may be a lot more of it than I imagine. It’s just a thought.

[quote=“finley”]I imagine being a moderator is a pretty thankless task … and deep down we are all grateful that someone is removing the real dross :wink:

however … I think the general theme of this (and similar) threads has been: don’t do so much of it then. If the rules are creating a lot of work for you, then perhaps the rules are wrong. We’re all (most of us) adults here, and I notice even the person at whom the original ‘insult’ was directed gave the moderation a thumbs-down. Sometimes an insult has no purpose except to be really hurtful - and sometimes it’s just bar-room talk with no malice in it. The participants themselves are probably best placed to make that judgement call.

So … you might find, if you just let things take their course, that people who are consistently rude and insulting are simply sidelined from future discussions … as in real life. They will then get bored and go away. Participants can flag up things that genuinely need sorting (trolls, people wasting bandwidth on pure vitriol, etc). The result should be a lot less work for the mods and a lot fewer threads like this one. Although then again, I haven’t seen the real nonsense that gets deleted and there may be a lot more of it than I imagine. It’s just a thought.[/quote]

Sure. I’m certain that the way things are moderated is a very important issue for some posters. I can understand that.

I was just expressing my personal perspective. I have a lot of respect for moderators, but I don’t really understand their motivation for taking on the role. What makes a person willing to spend some of his/her own time doing what must be an almost entirely thankless job? I couldn’t do it.

I’ve been with Forumosa for about 11 years now, and it’s been my experience that offensive people rile up other people and eventually chase them away, as well as the 900 others who might have been otherwise interested in a thread.

If you want to know how good Forumosa really is, check out the expat forums in other Asian cities - Bangkok, Singapore, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing. Forumosa is as good as it is precisely because of the moderators. This doesn’t mean we always get it right, and I appreciate it when we get suggestions and even hard criticism, but don’t think for a minute that less moderating would make a better forum. Better moderating makes a better forum, and that’s why we’re one of the best ones around - we’ve got the best moderators.

I quite like Mr. Gits posts. They are a hell of a lot better than some of the other mandalas of bullshit you can read in a day on forumosa, even if I don’t always agree with them.

You have no idea, mate. Thankfully, we get a lot of it fairly quickly.

I do it for the free beers, but the fine print says you have to make it up to a Taipei HH to claim them. So I have to buy my own beers. One day I’m really going to make it up for one of those and there’s going to be carnage!
Just kidding. But not really.
:wink:

I wasn’t invited to be a mod. I volunteered. I have spend a lot of time on this site and it has given me invaluable resources over the years. I just thought: “Why not give a little back?”

Sometimes I wish that I could say what I really think: I am a great admirer of posters like sandman and Deuce Dropper. And that is the beauty of this place. It’s diverse, eclectic. And it’s our home.

This is primarily a resource site. Secondarily, it is a place to vent. Sometimes the distinction gets blurred. That’s where the moderators (thankless slaves that they are) come in. We try to keep things clean. As maoman referred to earlier, just take a look at the other Asian forums that deal with similar issues. Utter garbage.

So…

The PM button to maoman is there. If you want to make a difference, you know where to find him.

I’ve had arguments with two or three posters since I joined but they were never compelling arguments. I either ignored them or made a point to play their game. This means doing my best to be abrasive and provocative. I’ve been warned for it. But that’s just play. With Guy, on the other hand, I feel I really need to think my posts through because I don’t doubt he’ll be back with more “civil” punishment. Arguing with Guy isn’t play, it’s like hard work. I can honestly say that Guy is the only poster that has really bothered me when I had an argument on this forum. He’s tenacious and very smart. I don’t like arguing with him because he’s a very tough opponent. :thumbsup:

Regarding moderation, I’ve had posts moved and some have also gone missing. I honestly don’t care. I have yet to see a moderator do something that made me suspicious. If they have good intentions, and I have no reasons to believe they don’t, that’s good enough for me. It’s silly to think that your own opinion can be catered to 100% of the time. People often disagree about stuff and it’s normal.

Posts that go “missing” are usually flamed, as we don’t delete posts. They’re there, and they still count towards your post count, but they’re archived somewhere safe, along with info on what really happened at Area 51 and who killed JFK.

I suspect that the experience of the vast majority of Forumosa users is very similar to mine: i have never received a rude message from a mod; i have on the odd occasion inadvertently violated a rule and, after being told about the problem, fixed it; i have on occasion sent a message to a mod to bring something to their attention that i thought they might want to know about and always received an acknowledgement; i am happy to be able to make use of this (for me) free resource “Forumosa” without having to jump through any hoops (except the initial registration :wink: ); i enjoy the diversity and multicultural colour of this BBS (part of which is also the tenacity with which some people argue for change of something that by most accounts works very well); and finally, i think that an overall low level of complaints toward, and strife with, the moderators reflects a general sense of satisfaction and appreciation.

Having said all that, i think there is one thing the operators and moderators of this BBS could perhaps do, along the lines of Stray Dog’s quotatation shown above, to reduce the need to moderate. I think it might help (to avoid misunderstandings) to have a permanent display (for example, on the top or side of each page) to the effect that this BBS works like the living room of someone to whose party we have been invited as guests. In real life, being a guest in someone else’s living room means something like this: we are welcome to enjoy ourselves; we are welcome to contribute to the ongoing interchanges - and we also accept that we are in said livingroom solely by permission of its owner and not under some enforceable legal statute, that is, if we are asked to leave we better leave quickly and without making a fuss. Therefore we (well, most of us) don’t deliberately or carelessly piss on the carpet; we don’t argue with the host about how the party should be run; we don’t whine or threaten if things are not going our way at the party but simply leave. Nowhere is this worn-out saying more true than in the living room of someone whom i am visiting: “if you don’t like it here, you can go elsewhere”. All this seems to me the most fitting description of this BBS, thus my concrete proposal to add a short comment to the effect that users of this BBS are expected to behave online like they would behave in the living room of its owners and moderators. (I am not suggesting there wouldn’t be any better analogy, but this one has worked well for me on many BBSs in many countries, and i suspect it works well for most people in most situations.)

I once adopted a stray dog, courtesy of a prominent forumosan, and when I took him to Maoman’s house… he pissed on the carpet. Actually, he pissed on the Christmas gifts under the tree, but was forgiven. He also whines occasionally, but even that is tolerated. I have a lot more patience with him than I do with some posters on forumosa. Of course, none of those posters ever creep under the desk and lick my balls while I’m sitting at the computer

All the same, I like your analogy.

Not even jimipresley? Frankly, I’m disappointed by that news.

Not even jimipresley? Frankly, I’m disappointed by that news.[/quote]Let me ease your disappointment. Loretta didn’t count jimi because he’s a moderator. :wink:

[quote]Of course, none of those posters ever creep under the desk and lick my balls while I’m sitting at the computer
[/quote]
I told you about this AGES ago. Simply don’t leave the door locked. I COULD unlock it if I had a penny and opposable thumbs, but sometimes you just don’t THINK THINGS THROUGH.

Erm, except we don’t ask friends to leave. F.com is a community not a moderated chat room. The seams of online and real life friendships are fluid here. The whole idea of moderation is not to ask peope to leave, rather temp, modify or warn posters so that they DO NOT HAVE TO BE ASKED TO LEAVE. They should feel welcome here. Hence even after being banned or suspended, posters keep coming back, and are welcomed into the fold.

.

Erm, except we don’t ask friends to leave.[/quote]
Actually, :slight_smile: sometimes we DO ask friends to leave - for example, to avoid them further embarrassment :slight_smile: (like, when they’ve had enough alcohol to lose control of their behaviour to the point that we won’t tolerate it any longer in our own living room). And friends understand that - afterwards! - and everybody has a good laugh and things return to normal - at least in most cases…

Well i’d say it’s both: for those passing through and coming in for the first time it’s the latter, and then, by and by, those who stay (visit more often) become regulars and part of the community…

I agree. I was and am not advocating leaving out the moderation - my analogy is meant as a general guideline, to steer people’s minds in a direction that (hopefully) would reduce the need for moderating… and, anyway, even at my parties i have on occasion moderated people’s behaviour - for exactly the same reason you give above!

See my above comment about asking a friend to leave my party.
Correct me if i’m wrong, but i think we basically agree… :slight_smile:

Thanks Fox and Robin.