Forum Moderators & Moderation

[Vaughan_Rarius]

This topic originated in   "upcoming-updates-discussion"  around P30.

 

http://3dxforum.com/index.php?/topic/8235-upcoming-updates-discussion/page-30

 

Forum Moderatron has become a large discussion between members  and deserved its own topic so all views, ideas and thoughts can be found easy on the subject.  All views and ideas welcome.

 

 

Is it a good idea for Forum members to moderate their own topics or should 3DXChat appoint their own Moderators.

 

Of course another option is leave things as is..  (added as suggested by Kaitlin. TY Kait)  

[chloe]

I post this here again... I would like to see in parts of the forum the possibility for us members to moderate our own threads.

 

 

means: PRO User Moderation

[Vaughan_Rarius]

(Posted Yesterday, 09:07 PM   in the Topic "Upcoming Updates Discussion")

I personally do not think moderating our own topics is a good idea. This would suggest that we own topics just because we start them. I don't think we do.  I think the topic belongs to forum and if you post in public, you invite people to comment or post.

 

I also think being able to delete posts could be misused for censoring free speech and peoples opinion... for example "I don't like you disagreeing with me so I will delete your post."  "I don't like the way you said that so.. I'll delete your post"  "I think you are disrespecting me... so I'll delete your post"

 

Whether that person intended to or not could be open to interpretation but if the deleted person felt wrongly accused, another topic is born where "he said, she said," and drama is across two topics trying to out do each other.

 

Another example could be a person opens a topic and making accusations about another.. named or not.. maybe for room stealing... but the accused person is innocent and feels they have a right to respond, explain and defend themselves.  What then when the OP deletes that persons redress?

A one sided point of view, where any opposition is quickly quashed, but people reading may believe the view they are reading.

 

What if someone starts a campaign to remove someone from Forum for a personal dislike? They start a topic and any opposition to the campaign, no matter how sensible and reasoned.... is removed?

 

What about topics that are started by someone, say a pics topic, that are highly successful and the OP leaves for whatever reason and decides to not only delete their account but also all their topics and as a consequence,  other members lose all their favourite pics?

 

There has been nastiness here and its a disgrace, but I think own topic moderating will be handing an extra tool to the offenders.

 

Moderating should be done by 3DXChat or people they choose to be Moderators.

Those Moderators should be respected, rules made by 3DXChat abided by and those that don't should be banned temporary or permanently depending on the "offence"

 

We can report offenders of the law and rules and 3DXChat  should then hopefully respond in a timely manner.

They just happen to be lacking Moderators right now but when new ones are installed, I'm sure things wont be as bad as the last few weeks.

[MeiLing]

First tool of moderation; disallow non-game member to post on certain topics.

On the internet, you must have nerves. 

then self moderation has never worked, maybe in very small community.

Large forums have moderators (F95 Zone or others)

[Kaitlyn1989]

Hi ya V… *hugs* keeping the Mrs  ?  

 

What no poll to go with this discussion?   

 

Mods just don’t work… asking too much of us mere mortals to police our peers without prejudice or favor. Didn’t work in Achat’s forum and doesn’t look like it worked here.

 

Self-moderation seems the most logical solution… let the creator determine the fate of their own thread. Ability to LOCK thread, DELETE posts or BAN Poster… of course, this then leads to other problems… as it usually does with us humans.

 

 

Addendum…

@ Meiling  agrees… WE ALL need NERVES in any world. WE are responsible for our own lives… decision and actions.

 

@ Vaughan  agrees… Self-Moderation is probably a ‘bad” idea and doomed too. But you didn’t give me an option 3…. NO moderation , do nothing. Allow the forum to be “what it is” and let each member decide what to do.   

[DetoxDave]

This thread is quite a good idea but might be best used as a summary thread.

 

As I see it the consensus from the previous thread seemed to be that in the absence of any moderation of the forum the moderation by the thread owner/starter is a compromise worth trying. In any case Gizmo has indicated that is an option he would like to implement, Ash has indicated that it is a practical possibility and Rockster has indicated how it could work.

 

In short this aspect has largely run its course apart from keeping the idea live enough to encourage Gizmo to do the deed.

[Xandisweet]

Self moderation could also include but is not limited to: accepting responsibility for ones actions, not letting petty fights ruin your character, letting go of situations you have no control over, understanding that not everyone has the same opinion as you.... as adults we are able to pick our battles and if someone wants to walk away you shouldn't continue to pursue said person.

[TashaTight]

I don't see how forum members moderating their own threads are such a good idea, some would use it to run smear campaigns on other forum members and delete any comments that put their smear campaign in a bad light. We already seen the level of drama both on here and on world chat from time to time, giving that level of power to thread posters I think will only serve to fuel more animosity between users. You just need to take a look at social media to know that the individuals would abuse this, with levels of blocking, thread comment deletion and false flagging you see other places on social media to know this wont work well.

[Mar Mohan]

According to Ash this is the forum software that is used.  https://invisioncommunity.com/

I went ahead and looked at the Moderation to which it offers the following that allows the Owners to do things to make it easier for them.  It seems that maybe not all of the functions are being used on the forum to allow better moderation of the posts.
https://invisioncommunity.com/features/moderation/
 

[DetoxDave]

If someone starts a smear thread, Kimmy, then i’m sure it will get reported, directly to Gizmo in the absence of any moderators. Gizmo has shown that he will act effectively when believes he should.

 

If the trolls invade someone’s thread then, if they are given the tools, the offending posts can be removed.

 

If a troll thread is opened people have the choice of viewing it or not, responding or not and so on. When the trolls invade other threads, at present the thread is ruined until Gizmo is able to do something, the person interested in that thread has no choice but to wade through the trolling to find the key points they are looking for. If people do ignore the troll thread then it removes the trolls’ influence, if they don’t it contains the nastiness in one place making it easy for Gizmo to intervene and act effectively.

 

There is a post in the other thread which says that giving thread openers the tools to moderate their own threads will give them ownership, a reason to moderate well. Most people, I believe, will moderate their threads well. If they stifle the debate people will make a new thread elsewhere and ignore the original.

 

The idea of thread opener moderation has all the checks and balances needed for an effective solution to support any intervention Gizmo decides to make.

[DetoxDave]

Here’s the post Twiggy made showing her PM’s with Gizmo.

 

Thanks Ash, it's good to know that the current forum software can accommodate this.

I take it that it would only be a matter of changing settings which wouldn't involve a lot of work for him to do.

If so wouldn't it be a good idea to at least try it and see if it does make a difference.

 

Also I had sent a message to Gizmo about this exact thing and he did reply.

I was a little reluctant to post this as I am not sure if he would like his replies posted, but I will do for 2 reasons.

The 1st being it shows a positive look at how he is viewing the idea and also I would like to let people know that Gizmo does often respond to peoples messages.

 

[SusanLouisa]

Hi ya V… *hugs* keeping the Mrs  ?  

 

Grins at Kait....Yeppers

[SusanLouisa]

I do prefer moderators over self-mod for all the reasons provided before but with one exception.

 

Trolls who attack topics for the only purpose of harassment.  Currently, those posts need to stay because even if reported the only way for it to be resolved is for the entire topic to be removed.  This is not fair.

 

So if moderators are able to remove such posts, when reported by the owner of the topic, without removing the entire topic, I'd be in favor of leaving it to the moderators.

 

Recently I had a situation where someone followed me around the entire forum and where ever I made a post they had a negative post immediately behind it.  This type of behavior needs to be stopped.  It's childish and destructive and their posts remain as, understandably, none of the owners of the topics wish to see their topics removed.

 

So if the moderator could actually make a difference I'd support that option.  We, as adults, should be able to moderate our own individual behavior.

[Bridget_Cleary]

I thought i’d quote this here as it picks up on Louisa’s point better than I could.

 

You make a very good point, Vaughan, and in a forum with active moderation your view would carry the day. The key thing, to my mind, here is that there is no moderation so Gizmo has to intervene to deal with any problems. This isn’t the best use of his time so it happens sporadically and for a short time.

The issue, therefore, becomes one of what can we do to reduce trolling, bullying and abuse. I like the idea of thread opener having control over what happens to their thread. My reasons - very much as has been said before. Offending or seriously off topic posts would be deleted.

I think, Vaughan, that you overstate the risk that a thread opener would delete posts disagreeing with their point of view. Most people, in my experience, enjoy debate and find civil argument interesting, informative and stimulating. I think the first posts to be deleted would be offensive or abusive posts, thereby making it more difficult for the trolls to derail a thread and start their insults and abuse.

At the end of the day it is Gizmo’s decision and he has indicated that it is on the cards for the next forum software update. The sooner the better as far as i’m concerned. As Twiggy says, if it’s just a setting in the software then if it doesn’t work out it can easily be switched back.

[MeiLing]

When one who advocates self-moderation breaks all the rules of any forum 'disclosing a private message', do you think that it helps?

And enough for me on this topic. I have said all.

[Desirea]

I think moderation of our own Diaries is worth a try, as a trial run. I also want to say thank you to everyone for taking a step back and trying to keep the forum civil. Have fun all.

[Xizi]

disallow non-game member to post on certain topics.

I would actually go further and disallow forum accounts that's not linked (ofc this link should be seen only by admins) to game account to post anywhere on forum except some special forum section made for newbies, who just want to ask about game before deciding to pay for it or not. People would be a lot more self-moderating and respectful, knowing that if they will take a ban to their only account, which is connected to game one, they will not be able to make a second forum account without actually paying for second game account. 

[Mar Mohan]

I would actually go further and disallow forum accounts that's not linked (ofc this link should be seen only by admins) to game account to post anywhere on forum except some special forum section made for newbies, who just want to ask about game before deciding to pay for it or not. People would be a lot more self-moderating and respectful, knowing that if they will take a ban to their only account, which is connected to game one, they will not be able to make a second forum account without actually paying for second game account. 

I said the same thing, shut down the forum, clean it up, link the forum account to the in game account like most other games do because if they get into trouble on the forum it follows through to the game and vice versa.  New users have to pass through Moderators/Devs to post to ensure that it's not an alt account.

[TashaTight]

If someone starts a smear thread, Kimmy, then i’m sure it will get reported, directly to Gizmo in the absence of any moderators. Gizmo has shown that he will act effectively when believes he should.

 

If the trolls invade someone’s thread then, if they are given the tools, the offending posts can be removed.

 

If a troll thread is opened people have the choice of viewing it or not, responding or not and so on. When the trolls invade other threads, at present the thread is ruined until Gizmo is able to do something, the person interested in that thread has no choice but to wade through the trolling to find the key points they are looking for. If people do ignore the troll thread then it removes the trolls’ influence, if they don’t it contains the nastiness in one place making it easy for Gizmo to intervene and act effectively.

 

There is a post in the other thread which says that giving thread openers the tools to moderate their own threads will give them ownership, a reason to moderate well. Most people, I believe, will moderate their threads well. If they stifle the debate people will make a new thread elsewhere and ignore the original.

 

The idea of thread opener moderation has all the checks and balances needed for an effective solution to support any intervention Gizmo decides to make.

 

True they could probably report people who smear them, but if that require moderating actions how will it be any different from how it is now and require less moderator work in the future. I think this option will turn into even more mud fights than before when you include options to self censor threads.

 

That is true that thread owner can delete comments to keep a good tone or remove possible troll comments, but how will this stop things like thread spamming. So if someone make a post then someone disagree with it and post about it, owner decide to remove the comment from thread. Then said person goes on to make another thread about same topic but voicing the difference opinions that were removed from the other previous thread. Not sure I see how this is going to do the forum any favors sure if everyone acted like responsible adults, but we all know that some are not doing that was partly the cause of these problems in first place.

 

Edited February 15, 2019 by KimmyFox

[TashaTight]

I said the same thing, shut down the forum, clean it up, link the forum account to the in game account like most other games do because if they get into trouble on the forum it follows through to the game and vice versa.  New users have to pass through Moderators/Devs to post to ensure that it's not an alt account.

 

Honestly no interest in having any forced links between ingame accounts and forums until they make this forum/account encrypted and secure. Then preferably with cloudfire dos attack protection on top, no interest in my ingame account being hacked due to weak security on this forum.

 

(Didn't wanna start a new line but apparently the qoutation on edited post seems to have really bad faulty copy and paste functions, so you will have to excuse the extra post)

[Doc]

Need an official forum mod or two or three. 

[Xandisweet]

I think we all deserve a puppy.

[Twiggy]

This forum has always either been moderated the devs or players from the game given moderator rights, it has never had professional paid moderators who are not involved in the game in some way.

When the devs are doing the moderating things can go for days before addressed, and the way I feel is they should not have to spend to much time looking after this forum, their time should be spent working on new features for the game.

 

The forum has been a mess for a long time with pretty well every thread opened being trashed, and this was going on long before the latest moderator quit.

There were always posts that had broken the TOS being left, and not just posts that only minorly broke the rules.

Having a decent discussion was impossible, even in the threads the devs had started.

People couldn't even post "Merry Xmas everybody" without having people reply with things like "so what did you ask for from Santa, a real vagina".

Most posts got derailed when someone would reply to a poster trying to discredit the poster themselves to discourage others from listening to what they had to say.

Often that would happen without even making any effort to get involved in the topic.

The poster would then reply either trying to defend themselves or would attack back at the person by trying to discredit them.

Others then join in, the topic becomes irrelevant and the thread is turned to trash with post after post of mud slinging and schoolyard type slurs.

 

The forum is going well right at this moment, but it will only take one person to say the wrong thing and off it will go again.

It won't just stay in the thread it starts in, it will spread to every thread like it has always done.

No one will be able to start a new thread without it going in there and things will be back to the way it was.

And the way things are now is we will have to wait for Gzimo to come in and clean things up again.

 

The perfect solution to this is professional paid moderation but I think we all know that is very unlikely to happen.

Likely Gizmo will give another player or more moderation rights.

This has proven not to do the job, it came close once when we had 4 moderators where things were addressed fairly quickly, but was still far from perfect.

The biggest problem with moderators from inside the game is the pressure put on them.

It is time consuming with not much reward.

Although they themselves mostly have not taken advantage of the power given to them often their friends have.

Which also would put pressure on the moderator as they are then put in a position where to do the right thing by the forum they risk upsetting their friend.

Moderators from the player base seem to not last very long I think for these reasons.

 

If something different is not done we will end up with the forum going back to being a mess and people being reluctant to try discuss anything or open new threads.

If you think it won't I think you are being very naïve.

 

Gizmo has expressed he wants to try something new and can you blame him.

Ash has posted different options that are available in the forum software.

I think this discussion should be more about what we can try than if something needs to be done or not.

 

Allowing us to self moderate threads we start should reduce a lot of the work any moderator will need to do and require far less time to do their job.

But it needs to be set up properly to reduce the problems that people have mentioned may happen with self moderating.

We need to look at where the forum moderator would come into things and how much work would be required to do so.

We need to look at ways to prevent people from using their self moderation incorrectly.

Ash has said it is all just settings that need to be applied to switch things on or off.

He suggested that self moderation rights can be taken away individually if people use them incorrectly.

He also suggested that self moderating maybe should be given after members qualify by reaching a certain level in these forums, I think to prevent players making alt accounts and doing the wrong thing.

 

With all of this I think we need to remember there will still be forum moderating.

Reports can still be submitted where members have broken the TOS.

So I feel a lot of problems people have said may happen with self moderating will still be addressed with reports.

It has been suggested that if members abuse their self moderating privileges then it is taken away from them either temporarily or permanently.

I think if people know they can lose those rights they will be careful with what they post and how they use the moderating of their own threads.

If they don't, it will just be a matter of reporting them and they will soon lose those rights.

 

I do not think that people will go nuts deleting posts just because they do not agree with what has been said.

I think most people are open for good discussion on subjects and want to hear any arguments against proposals.

There will be people that will abuse it yes, but if things are done correctly they will be dealt with.

A lot of the concerns about this are where people are saying someone gets named in a thread where a response is really needed, that when they respond people will just delete the response.

Mostly where this has happened in these forums people have been named for supposably doing the wrong thing.

What I think what we all have to remember is that naming people in this manner goes against the TOS and is reportable.

So if this does happen then the person doing this in their self moderated thread stands to lose the moderating rights.

 

Yes it may not work, the trolls may find ways around it, but what alternative is there, leave things the way they are ?

We can all speculate as to what will happen if these features are added to the forum, but none of us really know.

The big thing is it seems to be simple to set up and turn back off again.

So we can give it a try and see how it goes and if it doesn't do the job can easily be set back to how it was.

If it works it should greatly reduce the amount of time and work the forum moderator needs to do.

My opinion is it will at least stop the pages of fights that has been going on in very much every thread opened and that alone makes giving it a try well worth while.

Hopefully it would also make it so people are not feeling so reluctant to get involved in the forums and start new threads.

 

So lets have a go at working out how this should be set up and give it a try.

[Mar Mohan]

There have already been a few posts over several threads to bait me but instead of me responding I reported it.  I've also seen the jabs and have reported them as well.  Now that it's on the OP thread I do not believe that they would remove it even when it's also a friend saying it but instead remove the comment I make or someone else asking to remove it.  So while Gizmo may have come on and did a few things this forum has a very long way to go before it's cleaned up and looks like an actual forum that users post responsibly.

[Twiggy]

A couple of interesting points I thought worth mentioning in here.

There has been close to 340 people register to this forum since 15th of Jan, that's over 10 per day.

So how many people are waiting to be able to post, and how many have tried to register and could not.

 

Also I noticed that there appear to be around 100 guests on average or just under on average viewing this forum at any given time.

So lets say each views the forum for around 1 hour, that would suggest that there are over 2000 guests each day view this forum.

 

So I would suggest this forum is worth a lot more than recent discussions about it closing and such seem to suggest.

 

Edited to correct the date from Feb to Jan