I think it’s time we look at updating our Forum Rules and guidelines for moderation. Seriously, when was the last time these were updated?
I think all of you will know where this started, so I’ll keep this short.
The rules are antiquated and vague, leaving all the power in the people that have been given the gift of being a moderator. There is no public guideline on what constitutes a removal of a post other than “moderators discretion”, which, if I’m being honest, is entirely inconsistent.
If we want to ban gifs, ban them.
What exactly is “off-topic”?
I have many more concerns, but I’d like to open this up for discussion first.
Moderators preform the integral (and at some times nearly futile) task of keeping a web forum on-task so that it can serve as a useful resource and knowledge repository for FIRST. We should be thanking them for their service to the community rather than attacking and belittling them.
Edit:
I think it is fairly self-evident what is on-topic when dealing with 90+ percent of threads here (exception being chit-chat and joke threads).
And please remember, everything you say reflects not only on you, but also on the teams you represent.
I never said moderators were unneccessary, i just think the vast inconsistency across the moderation team is baffling, and I think it’s because they have all the power because of the vagueness in our rules.
I think a little bit more specifics in the rules could go a long way in making this a better community with good leadership in the moderation team.
I’m not commenting on the issues you’re referencing, but I would appreciate some transparency on CD governance and how modship is granted in the first place.
While your sentiment is appreciated, I’m not feeling attacked or belittled here (I won’t speak for any of the other moderators). I think a discussion about the rules on these forums and what’s considered acceptable can be a healthy exercise for the community. This website has been around in one form or another since 1998. Discourse on the internet has changed dramatically in just the past 8 years. It doesn’t hurt to take a look at these rules and see if they need updating. Ultimately any changes will be made by leadership of this website, but they’ve never been shy at looking at community feedback.
Do you have a suggestion for specific improvements to the rules? I’m sure there are some small improvements that could be made, but I struggle to see how a majority of issues can be handled other than on a case-by-case basis.
Edit: So far, all I’ve seen is complaints; I would be happy to see constructive suggestions.
I was more referring to the “discussion” that took place in the FullCircle thread that brought about this thread, much of which has been deleted. Some of the OP’s posts there were definitely provocative and belittling in nature.
I can see value in keeping chit chat out of technical subforums, certainly so that it is easy to get to the answers. In general forums, my expectation is just that the moderators intervene for heated topics or personal attacks. Online discourse was different 10 years ago and introducing strong moderation, outside of some exceptions, won’t go over well.
Ignoring site structure and technical challenges, it is helpful to have moderating rules be visible and minimal. And also nice to have visual cues that you are in a subforum that might be moderated more for content.
Honestly, does anyone really care about sub-forum intricacies besides the mods? I feel like the overwhelming majority of users navigate the site using new posts or the recent activity portal.
That’s mostly how I’ve navigated CD since creating my account here. But I do sometimes (especially in season) browse specific subforums to make sure I didn’t miss interesting things. It’s an annoyance to open a thread on encoders and find 3 pages of chit-chat, so I appreciate that level of moderation to make the site a useful archive. Most of the general stuff isn’t such a problem to skip through threads because I’m not looking back at those thread as often, and when I do it usually comes from some search results and then I’m brought to the post directly.
I definitely agree with the OP and many here that a fresh look at moderation is needed. However, be careful what you ask for. If we are going to get into this moderation analysis, then the change I propose is stricter moderation.
The looseness of moderation is one of the reasons why CD has become less productive for the FIRST community. I am as guilty as anyone for letting things slide.
Most (all?) of the moderators here have been active CD users for at least 10 years. Many of us have grown weary of trolls and fools who persist to muck things up, while others have stayed persistent and diligently cleaned things up here and there. Those of us who have let down our guard and not worked to moderate diligently really need to be set out to pasture (regarding moderation) and new moderators should be added.
At the same time, I don’t think that we need ultra-clear definitions regarding what gets censored or banned. I think that we put moderators in place, discuss the moderation cases, and work through the issues bit by bit.
GP is an overarching theme that should guide the CD community. From what I see, people sometimes forget this. They believe that their own wit and humor somehow is more important than making their post productive, and they fire away*. We see this sometimes in students, but it’s most troubling when mentors stoop to this level. This sets examples that we don’t want followed.
So, yeah, we could use some more moderators. We don’t need a litany of rules and regulations that people need to abide by.
I’ve done this. It was a long time ago, but I think that we all can cite a case when we made a mistake while posting on CD.
And i thought some the complaints the frc discord got were petty…
Thanks mods for volunteering your time for this. The site would be a mess of spam links otherwise.
I like using the search and the “jump to new post”, when it works properly…
On that note, can I prod this by bringing up the site overhaul that was talked about in 2016? Whats happened since then? ill be the first to admit im not that open to a visual overhaul, but it seems like its needed from the backend.
I honestly agree that stricter moderation would greatly benefit the forum. Too many things slide, and then things like this morning happen and it makes the mods look even worse IMHO. The only reason the trolling and intense humor has taken over the site is because it almost became the norm with posts and threads. AFAIK, moderators really have taken no action on these types of posts until now.
I really just want some better consistency from your team. I’ll concede to keeping the rules very much the same if the moderators and their processes work to become more transparent. Deleting a post that asked why another was deleted, without providing really any explanation is not a productive method of moderation. I would be very concerned if the moderators disagree with me.
I’ll be the first to admit that I cross lines sometimes. If you’ve ever met me, it’s generally just my personality to bring humor into a lot of things. I never mean harm. I think many people on the site are the same, and i think it would unfortunate to remove the humor and fun from the site entirely. I think there is still a place for it. At the end of the day, we’re still a Forum/message board.
Flarum is a side project of a small number of developers.
Why not something a little heftier, like Discourse? There’s even tools to port vBulletin directly into Discourse to make it a (hopefully) seamless transition.
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Back on topic, I’ve noticed a direct correlation in quality of content and strictness of moderation. Communities that have strict rules tend to have a more cohesive conversation schema, which in turn enables and encourages high quality posts.
The downside of strict rules is that their very nature is to step on the toes of those who don’t know, or don’t yield to those strict rules.
First off, Andy Baker does not make mistakes. Ever. Full Stop.
Second - my big problem is when GP is used as a weapon to shut down discussion. I’ve had posts edited by a mod presumably cuz of GPness, but since the 24 hour edit window closed I had no recourse, the mod had effectively put words in my mouth that I may not agree with. In the name of GP…
I’ve also repeatedly had “thats not GP” hurled as an insult at me, heck, the most recent one was when I asked a manufacturer to back up their claims that didn’t seem to be accurate.
GP isn’t a weapon, yet I’ve seen it used as such. To hear that our moderators should unilaterally “apply GP” is scary to me. And I know most of the mods, have for well north of a decade (or even longer for some of them).
I like policies, I like rules that I know when I cross a line (sometimes I’ll still cross it, I have some strongly held beliefs). I don’t like vague policies that can be applied without recourse. If this means that Brandon and crew decide memes are banned, so be it… but “well, we don’t like THIS meme but that one is ok” ain’t a good path to go down.
PS. Before anyone takes this as an attack on Andy/mods… just don’t.
I don’t mind the mod actions here for the most part, it’s a pretty well run forum.
The one thing I dislike is there is no public record of mod actions, though. If a post is deleted, it just vanishes. If a moderator rearranges or combines different threads, there is no hint that any action was performed (I really dislike this one…). People trust mods more when it doesn’t appear that they are hiding behind curtains.
And this would begin the never ending spiral. There is a large group of people… We will call them rules lawyers… Who live only to find that fine line and then push it until it breaks. No amount of rule revising will stop that.
And it always starts with a seemingly innocent question like this one.
In my all my time on chief Delphi I have never dealt with a Moderator. I haven’t found it challenging. In fact I’d have no problem changing the rule the other way. If a mod has to intervine then you get banned for a couple days unless they decide otherwise. More than twice then your gone for good.
Don’t paste gifts. Don’t copy memes. Present useful information, have useful interactions, take the rest to the dumpster fire that is reddit.
