Staredit Network

Again, I don't want to see other people flame eachother. Also, flaming is not ok. It is against the rules. You cant just pick what rules you think you have to follow or which ones are important.

How about doing that on SEN ? Nobody reads the rules ... I think.


We have such conservative staff members ? They must try new things in order to stop flame.

New things, huh? How specific!

I think he's talking about being stricter, and/or hiring new moderators..

I think a new idea would be if the adminstrator didn't make sarcastic comments to everything suggested when obviously he doesn't have anything better.

Well then, where are we going with this?

Should I start advocating heavy censorship and taking out even the most subtle flames and bad mannered posts?
Should I redraw the line so that flaming someone's signature or map is like flaming the person?
Should I stop giving verbal warnings and dish out heavy punishments?
Should I start dishing out even more punishment to people who complain about how they were moderated?

To edit a quote of your own:

You can say how things certain things won't work. Or ask for details, but as I've learned numerous times Sarcastic comments don't help anyone.

I would suggest a new mod or two, not that that's an easy task. But I think certain mods have too much on their plates.

My last post wasn't intended to be sarcastic.

I have suggested 3 things :

More sectional mods.
and/or
Stricter punishments
and/or
low tolorence


I like the first one the most. Since the other two are kind of too dramatic.

Heh..

And Moose, I think you can be a bit more strict without doing these..


But I still think there really isn't a problem. We don't really need any more moderators. Althought, some of our moderators are temporarilly unactive, I guess.

I don't really see what we need besides reporting posts then. I'm already telling you we aren't going to read every post, so...

I sort of think with all the staff SEN has, that every post should be read by at least one of them...

Too bad there's no system that tells us "Don't bother reading this if you don't want to, DT_Batlekruser has already read it!".

Well, if you're a moderator for say, light discussion, it's sort of your job to read the posts in that forum, isn't it?

But yeah, I agree with you, people do need to start reporting more

The problem with this is, is that SEN is not Newton. There's no Crime Watch here. Mods jobs are to get rid of flammers, not to look where people point and then click a few buttons. If you think that reading all the new posts in your fourm is "hard" well duh? That's what a mod's job is. It's not like it's a free job where you get to screw around with stuff. Reports shouldn't be the main way of you guys finding out who's flamming.

I do agree that moderators arent the freaking Military Police. Moderators just have different benefits then other members.

If you are being bothered, then yes you report it. If a moderator comes upon a post that is flame they remove it or warn the person. And if you report it, the same thing happens.

Moderators have a life too and don't have the time to look through every single post. And SEN has a very large community and there may be over a couple hundred posts within a hour or two, and I know they won't be looking through them while more and more pile on top of them.

Just like the police, the police don't walk around looking to find a troublemaker, they wait to be called upon. Unless the officer finds something worth the trouble, then they deal with it. Just like a moderator, they stumble upon a flame post, they take care of it.

If there's (let's say) one mod per active fourm and maybe another mod gets two unactive fourms, then it's not so hard to moderate all the posts is it? And it's just a skim, it's not like you have to analyze the sentance "Nice job buddy" over and over again to detect whether it was an act of kindness or a secret flame that deserves a ban.


That's a very different scale. There aren't 100 people looking after 10,000 there's 10 or something looking over 50 or so.

If there was one mod per forum, that is like a officer for every block. I doubt they even skim the posts, they go about like every other member going through topics and reading them. If they find a flame, fine. Remove the post and warn them. And I'm pretty sure you're not that stupid to know what a flame is. And i'm pretty sure you can tell the difference.

Well, I was talking about this with CheeZe yesterday and got some new ideas.
Moderators relying on reports is not very proactive. As with most things in life, active is better than reactive... waiting for reports is not very active. Another concept I might go with is the idea of "sectional" mods... mods that specialize in one or two forums rather than being spread out.
Anyway, I might make some changes in mod spots and policies.

I think we have to look not only the posts of people who flame, but also those posts that prompt them to flame. I think these posts are often the ones which fall "just short" of what would be commonly considered 'flaming'. But the problem is, whether such posts are reported or not, normally they are weak enough not to warrant any moderating behaviour, or at most a verbal warning - but they are still moderately offensive or insulting to another member, normally because they attack people rather than posts/opinions, or because they make sweeping generalizations or stereotype people. I think if nothing is done about these posts, the level of flaming may not go down very much, regardless of the strength or sensitivity of punishment.

I think this is a fairly common problem to varying degrees, but I will demonstrate it with one post:

This suggests that some people deserve to be flamed - what a silly thing to say. Some people make some very silly claims or posts - but if anything is to be attacked, it is always the opinion or the posts, not the person themselves.

This is an example of a generalization which is probably a little unfair to "most new members". Most people would probably say that a person responding badly to these comments was over-reacting, but little annoyances build up quickly, and can erupt as a seeming 'overreaction' in a retaliating flame.

I do realise that it's very hard for moderators to do much about problems like this, because even a verbal warning may be seen as overreacting (and would probably feel like it too). But rather than any kind of "warning" as such, a gentle reminder by a moderator in the topic to keep discussion to the topic and not to attack members or to make generalizations could be a helpful way of both reminding people of good discussion practice and of letting anyone who is offended know that the mods are noticing and keeping tabs on discussions, and won't let them get out of hand.

On another note, however, Kellimus made a very interesting comment when he said,

I wonder if the moderators do indeed 'moderate' each other? Do they ever feel as though another member of staff is going about things the wrong way (as is possible to happen), and talk to them privately or in the staff forum about it? I certainly think that it's great if moderators do discuss their moderation techniques and principles with each other, and provide feedback for each other.

Concerning moderators, I agree with Golden-Fist when he comments on Moose's post as being inappropriately sarcastic:

In this particular case, I think that although Jammed's post itself wasn't very specific and made a generalization about staff being conservative, the response wasn't very helpful, and wasn't really indicative of being open to new, specific, suggestions.

The moderators, being some of the most active members in the forums, ought to also consider it their responsibility to model good behaviour for the other members of SEN, both new and old. That said, I think they largely do an excellent job. I imagine it takes a lot of work and time to manage and moderate so many forums and posts, and the amount of 'mis-moderation' is probably very small compared to how much is done well.

I'd like to make one more suggestion. With many people suggesting that more reporting on the members' part would be helpful for any problems with actual or perceived flaming, I think it'd be useful for reporting forms to come with an option to request a "return receipt" - simply an automated note back to the reporting member's email or PM when a moderator reads the report, even if no action is taken. It'd help to reassure members that mods are reading their reports, and would also provide them with an idea of how quickly their report is read. It wouldn't require the moderator putting any response of their own in, nor even say whether any action was taken or not. It'd just be a way for members to know that their message was successfully recieved on the other end - and it is for the members' benefit, not for the admins, who probably know that all reports are read very quickly without the need for such a system.

I've been waiting a long time for someone to say this.

As for those little annoyance posts, I do try to moderate them if they're somewhat provacative under "incite to flame".


If I feel a moderator is doing a bad job, I usually tell them about it. There's no real tracking system or anything, but if something is obvious it has to be discussed. As for "moderating" each other... yeah, I've deleted a few posts by staff and mods over the years. But, these things don't happen to often because odds are someone doing this wouldn't have been hired. Sharing moderation techniques and principles is also very important... notice my last post started with how I was talking to CheeZe.


Seems like a waste of PM inbox to me. I can tell you right now that I already read every report I recieve.

That's basically the idea I had. Moose you moderate like 10 fourms, and there's almost a many Global Mods as there are actual mods, that's too much. I'm not saying to demote them, but you should focus there attention to certain places.

And finally someone listens to my idea(s)!! Thanks for thinking about it ^_^



I've been saying it since here