Ask the Mods Thread

Discussion in 'Member Casual Chat' started by Nightmare515, Jan 14, 2016.

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  1. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    So the Mods got together and discussed this and thought it would be beneficial to the forum as a whole to create a thread allowing members to talk to us.

    So here we have it. We're asking members to let us know what's on your mind. The good, the bad, the ugly, etc. Ask us what questions you may have about how we actually moderate the site, when we give out warnings vs infractions, how people are banned, why we have certain rules, what exactly we do when we log on here, etc. Whatever questions you have or comments, concerns, suggestions, etc let us know.

    We do have a Feedback forum for this sort of thing but few members tend to use it for various reasons so instead of asking members to reach out to us we would like to reach out to you.

    All we ask is that we keep this thread civil. Please keep it civil. We've done this a few times in the past and we always end up having to close the thread down because it spirals out of control. This isn't open season on a particular staff member you might not like or anything like that. But if you have concerns then please by all means voice your opinion.

    Fire away! What's on your mind?
     
  2. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Have you considered the possibility you have too many forums/subforums? Seems like if you could merge several of the below the fold ones, you would get more activity in them. I have started to post a few threads where I had no idea where they properly belong. Maybe even compact the political forums and create some more general hobbies interest forms. Just ideas.
     
  3. MMC

    MMC Well-Known Member

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    Why do you hide the membership that is on site? Do you think those guests that look within window are looking for a site with some membership? IMO sites that show their membership and members attract more hits to the site than those that hide the membership. Which this comes with experience from Building sites from the ground up.

    If people want to hide they can do so themselves. V Bulletin has that. Moreover, seeing that there is staff on site. Then the trolls and spammers are less apt to start (*)(*)(*)(*) in threads.

    The question is.....do we want more membership and activity taking place on the site or not?
     
  4. btthegreat

    btthegreat Well-Known Member

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    This is an odd question. Do you moderators get 'burn-out'? What are the 'pluses' or perks to doing the job?
     
  5. MMC

    MMC Well-Known Member

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    I agree.....its like everybody just throws up threads in the first top part of the site. I have also been posting up threads in the lower forums trying to get some activity going there.
     
  6. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    I'm personally not too sure why we have so many subforums, I can only speculate because I came aboard after all of them were already in place. At one point a few years ago we did try to spread threads out between the various forums by moving a lot of threads out of Current Events and Political Opinions into the smaller sub forums. All that did was anger a lot of people because as we all know those two forums get the most traffic and members wanted their threads where they would be seen the most. So we nixed that idea.

    But I think the reason we have so many is to not overload a small number of forums with too many threads. We get roughly 4000 posts here per day and if everybody was creating threads and posting in a limited number of forums then less people would actually get a chance to see threads. Most people tend to log on and browse the first page of a forum to see if they want to discuss anything then move on. Unless a thread is active, if it's older than like 2 days then people tend to just ignore it because it has been pushed to the second page already.

    Thats why I THINK we try to have so many sub forums, I'm sure the more veteran Staff members could probably answer that better.
     
  7. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Not exactly too sure why we hide membership here. But I do agree with your belief that seeing members online would be beneficial and also seeing what staff members are online would be beneficial as well. An "online user" list at the bottom of the page like I've seen on many forums would be a great addition.

    I don't think it's intentional to hide anything I think it has to do with whatever format this particular forum uses. Our "tech" Mod is gone at the moment, he'd probably be the best person to ask about that.

    But we certainly want more membership and activity here!
     
  8. MMC

    MMC Well-Known Member

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    I think it will get us more hits to the site.....more membership. It will bring the Mods and Admins more activity as people having problems know they can get to staff Right away.

    Also, it allows visitors that look within daily, to see the membership that are the regulars
     
  9. Hummingbird

    Hummingbird Well-Known Member

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    Good idea, Nightmare.......it's always a good idea to let others ask and get honest answers. I've had questions several times, but let it go.....

    One is I've noticed that a thread is started and immediately closed, labeling it 'flamebait'.....what I couldn't understand about it being labeled 'flamebait' is it was an event on the news - yet, we, adults, weren't allowed to discuss it. I don't remember the topics, but do remember a couple times I was disappointed b/c it was interesting.
     
  10. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Absolutely, at least I know I do sometimes. This is the largest political forum on the internet and it takes quite a bit of work to keep this place running relatively smoothly. All of the Staff members are volunteers and all of us have real lives and jobs and whatnot outside of PF. Sometimes it becomes difficult to delegate enough time to log on here and do our jobs as moderators in the midst of our real lives.

    I like to participate in the forum and debate things with other members but often times we are simply too busy doing "Mod stuff" do post in threads. Due to our real lives our time spent online is limited and whenever we log on there is usually enough work for us to do to take up whatever time we allotted ourselves for being online that day. And often times there is literally more work to do than all of us combined can accomplish.

    It sounds sort of bad but I always love it when I log on and see that another Mod has already taken care of most of the issues we've had so far that day. That gives me a chance to go into the forums and debate things. But more often than not there is simply too much to be done around here for us to have a chance to venture into the forums and debate like normal members. I'll admit that sometimes I'll log on hoping that our Reported Posts Cue is empty only to go in there and see it extremely full and let out an expletive or two lol. So it can get tiresome sometimes but I still enjoy it.

    I for one have a job with a crazy schedule. I work all sorts of shifts and I am often extremely busy and unable to help out very much around here. Then sometimes my real life job is slow and I have more time to dedicate to PF. It's a balancing act.

    As far as pluses go I personally get satisfaction in the fact that I am part of the Staff to help keep my favorite forum running. Like all other Mods I was a member here long before I was asked to join the Staff. I really enjoyed the forum back then and when they asked if I'd like to help with managing the forum as a Staff member I was thrilled. If I can help keep the forum going then by all means sign me up.

    There aren't really any perks to being a Mod per say. We don't get paid or anything lol. We have full access to everyone's posts and threads in order to edit things and whatnot and we have access to Staff only forums but that's about it.
     
  11. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Whenever we close a thread due to flamebait we always look at the entire context of it. We look at the link from which the article was taken and read it to see if this is actual legitimate news or some sort of "spin" on actual news. We can get the same information multiple websites and news sources presented in multiple ways. So even though something came from a "news" site we look to see what type of news site it came from and if the article itself is deemed inappropriate we will close the thread.

    A lot of people try to pass off articles from sites like The Onion and whatnot. We give a bit of leeway in regards to our rules here when quoting articles but they aren't free game either. If we get a thread saying something like "Recent Study Shows that 75% of Trump Supporters have an IQ of 60 or less" and it's from a news site then we probably won't allow it even if it came from a news site. Reason is because that's flamebait, that's basically saying if you support Trump then you are more than likely borderline dumb.

    When we look at threads we try to envision what the purpose of the OP was. Was it to spark actual legitimate debate or was it posted to intentionally push peoples buttons?
     
  12. Hummingbird

    Hummingbird Well-Known Member

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    Lol~ good answer......ok, I see your point.
     
  13. MrNick

    MrNick Banned

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    If I donate 100 bucks can I be a mod? LOL...
     
  14. MrNick

    MrNick Banned

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    No I'm not being serious btw.

    The Trump answer would be awesome tho...
     
  15. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    lol no you can't pay to become a Mod

    But you are more than welcome to donate to the site if you like ;)
     
  16. Cubed

    Cubed Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Uh...Suuuuuure. Just send me the money and I'll hook you up ;)
     
  17. democrack

    democrack Banned

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    Why is it acceptable or within the rules to post WTF , ( ****ing) , f-ing and the like BUT an infraction to post horsesh$t ? How in the world is Sh$t profanity ?
    Why is it OK to say Republicans.are........ , but Democrats are ....... not so much ? I get we are implying to "all " when we post that BUT it go's both ways .
    Why are some posts that appear to be on the left OK and similar post on the right , not so much ? I do understand it has to be overwhelming to handle all the rules and read all the posts .
     
  18. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    The reason saying "WTF" isn't a Rule 9 violation is because it's not bypassing our profanity filter. If you type "(*)(*)(*)(*)" then our profanity filter will censor it out as it's supposed to, but if you type f@ck then our profanity filter won't censor it because it doesn't recognize that word.

    It has more to do with bypassing the profanity filter. Just let the filter do it's job. Horse(*)(*)(*)(*) and Horse$hit mean the same thing and people know what you said either way so just use the first one and let the filter kick in.

    It's not ok to say "All Republicans are stupid" or anything like that. It is a Rule 2 violation, same with replacing Republicans with Democrats. It does go both ways. In order to clarify this I will copy and paste a response to a thread a few weeks ago that I believe will answer this question more thoroughly.

    Hopefully that can clarify this for you.
     
  19. democrack

    democrack Banned

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    Ok , I think I get , it the filter portion . Thank you
     
  20. AlphaOmega

    AlphaOmega Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    As I discussed privately, I think the report post system needs to be modified. For example when you report a post, you should be able to get a read receipt that it was indeed received by the moderators and secondly whether or not the moderators did anything about the reported post. The reports go off into a black hole never to be seen again. This leaves members like myself who report a post, then see it days later still intact to assume the reported post was deemed acceptable since it wasn't removed or it simply wasn't yet seen. You then lose track of it because you cant search your older posts past 1 page. This would also solve the previously posted "all democrats are" or "all republicans are" problem where one side may appear to be getting a favorable hand. If one is reported and it is deemed ok to say, then you have that as a guide to show the moderator that it was deemed acceptable if you are called on that same potential violation. It would also act as a catalyst for self moderation, as the moderators could cite previous judgments. For example if I said something and tried to claim you guys allow this all the time, you could cite the prior judgment that I was made aware of. Since I would not want to endure the embarrassment of that, I would most likely not try to make the comment in the first place, and if I did, I would be far less likely to try and argue about it if called on it. Likewise if one moderator agrees and another disagrees, then at least you guys would be more likely to discuss the policy privately and come to a general consensus on that type of comment.
    Nightmare you said earlier you checked my reports and didn't see any recent, that's because I stopped using it. It appeared to not be working so I stopped. A read receipt and yay or nay would do wonders to improve the forum IMO.

    Secondly.......I am still unable to search my recent posts past 1 page. This is really irritating if you are trying to catch up on past threads or simply see if your reported posts have been removed. Is this by design or is it just something that cant be fixed?

    Thirdly, thanks for putting up with guys like me. Even after some pretty heated arguments here with the mods, all in all I think you guys keep the forum moderated very fairly and I do in fact buy the argument that there is a lot of us and only a few of you so sometimes things get missed. And I also understand some mods may have different views on the same post and I have had some decisions over-turned. So I think it speaks volumes for you guys that that actually happens here at PF. It doesn't happen on other forums...ever.
     
  21. MrNick

    MrNick Banned

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    I'm just messing around.... I don't want to be a mod...

    Been there done that, and I'm one presently on a sports site/board...
     
  22. MrNick

    MrNick Banned

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    Yeaaa....

    I actually do have a serious question about this board, can a mod give another mod an infraction or even ban?

    Where I'm a mod we can....

    I don't but I have seen some pretty interesting disputes...
     
  23. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    We really do appreciate the support, we do the best that we can here being volunteers and often having a limited amount of time.

    Our "Report Posts Cue" is basically a huge thread that your reports go in to as posts. When we receive a reported post it gets shown to us as "AlphaOmega has reported a post" as the title and we click on it and we the specific post that you reported but we only get THAT post. So it's up to us to go to the actual thread and read through it to see whats going on. The problem is that our Reported Posts Cue is usually very busy and we don't have the time to go back and read through these threads so we simply deal with the post that was reported to us and move on.

    One of our biggest problems that we have here are members trying to defend themselves because the mods aren't defending them. Nearly every day we get asked a question a long the lines of "How come I got in trouble for calling him that but he didn't get in trouble when he called me one first?" The reason is because we flat out just didn't see it. We rarely read threads, we don't have time to do that so if somebody doesn't report something to us then 9 times out of 10 we won't see it. It could be the post directly above the post that got a rule violation and we still probably don't see it due to the way our reports work as mentioned earlier.

    We do the best we can to read all of the posts reported to us but every once and awhile one might slip by us unnoticed. Not because we purposefully skipped it but because in a haste to deal with the 50+ reports we have we may have accidentally overlooked it. I've logged on here before and seen our reported post cue 3 pages long. So I cleaned up what I could with the time I had then had to go back to my real world life. Another mod will then sign on to start where I left off and so on and so forth. Due to all of that chaos we might miss a few posts. Reports come flooding to us especially on the weekends.

    We also must note that not everything a user reports to us is actually a rule violation. That is why we have mods here to judge whether or not something may actually be a violation or not. Usually it is, members are very good at only reporting actual violations but we do occasionally get posts that we see no issue with as mods. So that might be why a member would report something and nothing was done about it as well.

    But to directly answer your question we do see pretty much everything that is reported to us. The reported cue is the first place that we all look whenever we log on here, and it usually takes us all of our time to work that section which is why we don't post in the open forum very often.

    Another reason why it may seem like nothing has been done is because we don't publicly display who just received a warning/ infraction or ban. So members have no real idea if "the other guy" got in trouble too. Almost every single day I get a PM from a member saying something along the lines of "Did so and so member get a warning too? They broke the rules as well". More often than not the answer is yes they did, we just simply can't tell you that because as mods we aren't at liberty to disclose who gets warnings or infractions for things.

    Members can sort of tell if someone got a violation for something because we usually tend to either delete or edit a post that contained a rule violation. But we don't always do that. So even if a post is still up containing a rule violation it doesn't mean we ignored it, it just means that we didn't edit or delete it (probably because we were too busy) and the members here can't see when we send a warning to that guy saying "Knock it off".

    I hope this helps shed some light in to how we operate behind the scenes.
     
  24. MrNick

    MrNick Banned

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    You should really get rid of that filter...

    I think anyone that is old enough to show interest in this political nonsense is old enough to take in language...

    I can understand if this was a site that has children posting, but we're all adults here.

    I find it difficult to believe a kid any younger than 16 would have any interest in our talk...
     
    monkrules likes this.
  25. AlphaOmega

    AlphaOmega Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This is an excellent explanation and explains a lot. Just knowing the process on the other end is helpful. I think a lot of members will find the above very useful. It may help with the, "the other guy did it too" issue on your end. Thanks.
     
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