First, all blame for this thread goes to this guy:

While discussing a prolific, if not controversial, poster in politics unchained 7.0, I mentioned to Mat that the inability of every poster to simultaneously ignore one problem poster was an example of how self regulation doesn't work.

In the politics forums, we've seen this hold true for a number of people who shall not be named because this thread isn't about them. I think.

Instead, let's have some input from various mods on how they prefer to handle problem posters, posters who, nearly any time they post, completely derail threads for whatever reason and also post at a high volume, thus ensuring most threads are unreadable. Also from posters in forums who have had such issues.

Personally, I don't mind putting people on ignore. But if 3/4ths of a thread's participants have a problem poster on ignore, it only requires a few people taking the obvious troll bait to run a thread off the rails quickly.

Thoughts?

confirmed i take the blame. curious about perspectives here.

It's almost as if setting up a forum with little to no moderation attracts the ****tiest posters on the planet.

do you think that applies to every topic?

Probably.

Hi there, I'm a new account. I've noticed there is quite a bit of discussion regarding moderating in the Politics 7.0 forum. Here's my perspective:

Perhaps the forum members should all make decisions about the forum in a horizontal manner, rather than a top down manner with one person or a small group of people making decisions, and instead of a no-holds barred approach where people are able to do things like spread Neo-Nazi propaganda or constantly derail discussions.

I think if you're having trouble organizing the forum, you should look to Occupy Wall Street, and the General Assembly (GA) they made use of, and adopt it to use in the forum. It would work like this:

There is an area of open discussion, where anyone discusses anything. Ideally this discussion would be used for hashing out and formulating proposals.

Someone can then make a proposal, and it will go to the General Assembly.

In the General Assembly, there is a facilitator who facilitates the process. The proposer will outline the details of their proposal, and it will go up to a vote of the users in this manner:

1. Proposal is made

2. A vote is cast to determine if the proposal shall be opened for amendments or not.

3. If voted yes, the proposal will be open for amendments for a period of time, and anyone can offer any amendment they like. As soon as an amendment is proposed, it is voted on and is either adopted or not.

4. As soon the amendment period ends, the entire proposal is voted on. If passed, the proposal is enacted. If failed, the proposer can feel free to refine their proposal, hash out in discussion why people didn't support it, etc. and other people can make other proposals. (Only one proposal can be active at a time)



While voting you can

a. Abstain (if Abstain, you are not counted in vote talley)

b. Vote yes

c. Vote no

And you can also perform four actions:

1. Point of Information (POI) - A POI is raised when a member feels like they have important information that was unaddressed, and they need to make everyone aware of it.

2. Point of Process (POP) - A POP is raised when what is occurring does not follow the established rules of procedure.

3. Question or Clarification (QOC) - A QOC is raised when a member is unsure about a detail in the proposal or amendment.

4. Block - A block is raised when what is happening in the GA might be very bad, or it might go against the safety of the users, or it might lead to some bad consequence like serious legal action taken against users or the owners of the site, or something like that. A block is not a no vote, and is not merely a disagreement, a block is a safety check on the integrity of the GA.

Whenever one of these four actions is taken, the vote is halted, reset, and a revote occurs.

The voting rules are as follows:

The normal voting rule in effect is simple majority, meaning you just need a majority to pass a proposal or amendment. But if a block action is taken, after the vote is reset, it goes into a one against all rule. In this rule, if there is more than one person voting no, the vote doesn't pass. It can only pass if it's everyone voting yes, versus a single no vote (the blocker).

Users don't have to participate, and can leave at any time. I think you would have to have them leave the forum however, as this is a method that can be used to organize the forum. It's Direct Democracy, and horizontal decision making, where everyone has equal say and input to the outcomes.

The facilitator would do things like outline which point in the process the GA is in, open the GA to a vote, manage the time, count the votes, things like that. They are sort of the Operating System of the GA. What's important to note is that the facilitator does not have more power in the GA than any other user, they are merely facilitating the process.

This approach does have a weakness however, and that is a user could do nothing but block every vote, or use one of the other four actions to continuously reset the vote. There can be an established rule prohibiting this, and if a user exhibits this behavior they would be subject to whatever punitive measures were established. This would be necessary to keep the GA functioning, which is important because with this approach, everyone that participates in a good-faith manner will have direct influence in the forum.

Just an idea to consider, and I think it would be a neat experiment!

I don't post in the thread in question, but what you are proposing seems a lot of work and as most people are here simply to have fun, your proposal would drive people away.

And yes, I read your whole post.

Obviously.

does it apply more to politics than everything else? that's what i think.

and there's a part of me that wants to forbid any political discussion on this site. i won't, but i really wish it wasn't being discussed, because i've determined it does need heavy moderation and that pretty much sucks imo.

A lot of people also have 5ive on ignore, so you know, whatever. My solution was micromodding where you choose your own mod for the thread that you start. So if you want a thread w/o xyz, you got it. You can even mod your own thread! And if it turns our you're a ****ty mod then you won't be asked to mod again, and if you mod your own threads that turn to **** then nobody reads it. Different mods can use different icons.

chez is in charge. and he's making a bunch of bizarre decisions, from my view, but you guys should take your ideas to him. it's all cool with me.

In LCP, we:
* First just delete problem posts, with no explanation or warning, and hope the poster gets the message. (Our stickied rules say that this will happen.)
* If problem persists, delete more messages and send a warning PM pointing the user at the forum rules
* If problem persists, give a temp, perma, or exile, as we decide is appropriate based on the poster's history

Depending on the severity of the issue, we may skip one or more of the initial steps.

LCP is a fairly heavily modded and rules laden forum, however. We aim to be nice to new posters, and don't allow most of the inane banter, memes, or user harassment that seems prevalent in other sections of 2+2.

I openly troll trolls from time to time. I think the non-troll aggression priciple is justified, though I admit this makes things worse.

From what I understand wil is banned from ATF which sucks because he can't reply so it's unsportsmanlike in some respects but no real way around so *meh*.

Zeno would give some insight. He's somewhat on the outside, great poster, well respected, and not a liberal.

zeno is a penis.

Warren G and Nate Dogg needed for regulation imo.

See, this is what I expect to be the norm in most sub forums on this site. I'm not entirely why when the word "politics" gets added to the discussion, these sets of norms and rule enforcement go right out the window.

To me, a disruptive poster is a disruptive poster, no matter the subject they're being disruptive about.

I heard rec.gambling.poker suffered from a lack of moderation.

I think trying to manage a forum with a lot of users would be a lot of work, no matter what approach you took to do it.

That said ...



The method I described would distribute the responsibility of moderating the forum among all the users, and they would also be actively engaging in a process of politics.

I'll mention it in the forum in question.

I am talking about it being too much work for the general members and causing general membership activity to decline.

And the level of posting has declined enough already.

I think if you start deleting posts from problem posters, then you nip it in the bud.

Some might call you a disruptive poster.

Yeah sometimes. Wil and 5ive are the ones most on ignore. If Zenos's a penis then Wookie is a butthole, rarely a two way street, LOL. When I feel like the mods don't do ****, I start trolling trolls, no apologies.

Sure, and I was booted from OOT because a disturbance always happened when I posted there. I don't begrudge the mods for that decision because it helps keep their forum running more smoothly.

LowKey is a lamo