Forum Moderation

I would be curious to know how many thread are moderated/month.

I don’t think that many , maybe a couple a month not more.

“Jeez, have a thought for the poor guys workload Garry!”

Hey, I’m happy with the way things are now… you are the one that wants to complicate things. (Whose job do you think is on the line if he does deputise a few moderators from here and they stuff things up?)

Plus what extra workload? Typing out why he locked a thread and/or perhaps deleted a few posts is not that big a deal. One or two lines of text and then delete a few posts then lock the thread so no more can be added to it.
One of the most important aspects of communication is proper, clear feedback.

Jeez, have a thought for the poor guys workload Garry!

” I think the problem with reporting a thread to the webbie is that it seems heavy handed.”

So what you are saying is you want someone to say “That is not on… keep it up and I’ll remove it/ban you/whatever” instead of things just disappearing?

Well I think a better compromise would be to ask the WM to post a seperate locked thread detailing what was removed and why… without necessarily naming names. Perhaps also locking threads with interesting info if they get sidetracked and become a problem (ie flamie) so that the interesting info isn’t deleted with the BS.

Garry – I think the problem with reporting a thread to the webbie is that it seems heavy handed. It would spoil the “clubby” nature we have developed. I personally wouldn’t do that unless someone threatened to send the boys round or something.

Hence a morderator is someone who can step in to calm things down without making anything “official”. A short conciliatory post from someone who does have the theoretical ability to delete posts would 99.9% of the time be enough.

I guess this discussion is now over to the webmaster!

Since were making suggestions about the forum, Id just like to throw in the idea that the character limit for PMs should be raised substancially from its current 1000 limit. 1 character=1 byte, so thats a 1k limit, which I think is bit low, and makes writing PMs very fustrating, having to copy and paste messages onto multiple PMs.

Originally posted by KabirT
I think 1 moderator per forum with the Webmaster isint a bad idea…but only for AW, AFM and Flypast not GD. Althought Webbie will have the ultimate power of course but sometimes things happen on weekends when the Webmaster is not around and at that time the mods can take control. the Webmaster will choose his own mods. That could work.

Well said Kabir. Obviously the webmaster needs to retain the level of control he has now to protect the interests of Keymags but he should appoint sub-moderators to do the day to day work which currently doesn’t get done.

C’mon Comet/VLM, it’s time to get past this isn’t it. I keep trying to say that I have no problem with your viewpoint and that because someone complained that was enough reason for the avatar to go but this is starting to drag on a bit. I think it’s quite apparant we’re never going to be husband and wife material so why not put the daggers away and agree to disagree.

You are taking this a little bit too seriously VLM.

Originally posted by mongu
It’s a good idea, provided the right users are chosen.

That is, people who are regularly on here and seem well balanced and fair. Also of course, people who are willing to do it.

My votes would go to Kev35 , Ren Frew or Wysiwyg for the airliner world forum; I think the general discussion one should be left alone.

The idea I think, is that moderation is only a back-up and intervention should not really be necessary in the run of things.

With some material posted recently by wysisyg, I would hardly suggest he is an ideal candidate to moderate the forums.

yes:)

Interesting discussion.
I guess now we have to wait for Webbie’s opinion 🙂

I think 1 moderator per forum with the Webmaster isint a bad idea…but only for AW, AFM and Flypast not GD. Althought Webbie will have the ultimate power of course but sometimes things happen on weekends when the Webmaster is not around and at that time the mods can take control. the Webmaster will choose his own mods. That could work.

then again just an opinion.

You make a good argument Garry (holy crap, we agree… 😀 ). As far as I know there is only one webmaster running things around here, maybe that is part of the issue regarding policing of the forums. Personally I have no issues with about 99% of what goes on here. Free exchange of ideas and all that. US Agent for example does tend to be rather inflammatory, but he is, after all, just as entitled to his opinions as anyone else is, however misguided we may think them to be. Besides, you can’t really take a Super Hornet fan seriously anyway 😀 The only thing that I really get irritated by is when any random thread on the AFM board deteriorates into an Indo-Pak flame war. Perhaps rather than just banning a user name, an IP address could be banned…

All in all there really isn’t anything all that wrong with the state of the forums. There wil lalways be “that one guy” that likes to post just to get a rise out of someone, so we just have to deal with it I guess. This is probably just the “topic of the moment”. Next week we’ll have forgotten all about it 😎

We already have a way of self moderating here… it is the alert buttons on each thread.
Using these buttons you can alert the WM and explain what the problem is directly to him.

I haven’t used it so I don’t know what happens next but I would assume some feedback must come from the WM and then the WM makes the final decision.

As this is a commercial website I would assume that the WM has made up a fairly clear set of guidelines for himself to judge on different cases (though there will always be something new and unexpected I am sure). In such a case I really don’t see the difference having multiple deputised moderators would make any difference.

As a moderator myself (hypothetical of course) I wouldn’t delete things I disagreed with, of ban people I simply didn’t like, but I personally am not offended by pictures of nude people (of a consenting age of course) engaging in natural activities. Stereotyppically of course all women are in theory offended by such things and in a commercial website setting there are probably rules against such material, because stereotypically women are week and need to be protected from something as repulsive as the naked human form. (I presume such lawmakers assume all women get dressed with their eyes closed). I am sure other moderators might have similar feelings about legalising drugs or whatever, which Key Publishing Ltd might not want itself associated.

I must ask however what the problem is currently that requires a change? And also how do you expect making some posters into moderators will solve this problem.

If the problem is that the WM doesn’t seem to police often enough or strictly enough I would suggest you use the alert buttons provided more often.

Personally I am quite happy as it is.

You know, I volunteered for this a while back but never heard back from the Webmaster. My guess is that they aren’t looking for outside help.

Absolutely agree with Mongu except I think he himself would make an ideal moderator. In fact there are many AW members with a huge number of postings who would make very good moderators. I do also believe that one forum (either GD or a new forum) should remain unmoderated as it creates an area for the serial flamers to congregate and get off on their wierd pleasures!

Having recently been ‘moderated’ myself recently (a matter in which I fully agree with the webmaster) I do feel that more active moderation is required to maintain the very high standards that we enjoy in my main forum (AW). The classic situation that showed this was Hellaid. A little bit of webmaster ‘policing’ could have guided this chap into becoming a reasonable poster. Instead of this, through lack of knowledge about forum etiquette he became vilified and derided. One of the greatest things about aviation for me is sharing it with other people. People join these forums because they already have a love of aviation so if they don’t know how to fit in we should guide them rather than drive them away. A current situation that shows this is EAL King. EAL King struggles with his use of spelling and grammar, initially solely posting in text language but his basic desire is aviation. While he still occasionally reverts back to type on the odd occasion he is making a real effort to write messages that we can now understand. Even if he still only makes sense half the time he is really getting something out of the forum. There is a family element to the AW forum that I have never seen on any other.

Regards
wys

I think a good comprimise would be to have an ignore post list maintained by respected members on this forum, and give members the option to activate this list of flame posts if they so desire.

It’s a good idea, provided the right users are chosen.

That is, people who are regularly on here and seem well balanced and fair. Also of course, people who are willing to do it.

My votes would go to Kev35 , Ren Frew or Wysiwyg for the airliner world forum; I think the general discussion one should be left alone.

The idea I think, is that moderation is only a back-up and intervention should not really be necessary in the run of things.

I think we do a reasonable job of moderating ourselves anyway. Things can get a bit heated but it generally calms down in the end. I’ve seen situations a lot worse on other forums. It might be difficult for a forum member to retain their objectivity in certain situations.

Regards,

kev35