Moderation comments and reply

[JiriHrdina]

This was raised in the Vancouver NG thread but thought it warranted a response:

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

It's a shame about the personal attacks and I don't want to critique the moderation but the truth is they are more concerned with minor racial stuff and if scantily clad pictures of females may offend the 0.5% of posters here that make up females than actually making this place a more hospitable place for hockey talk. It's kind of a sign of the times where people are more worried about offending a race/gender than the general hostility to people that carry a minority opinion. Jiri or whomever can reprimand me for this comment but it doesn't change the fact that it's the truth and the site needs to look in the mirror.

I have a few comments here
- It isn't a choice between moderating against personal attacks v. moderating racial/sexist/homophobic stuff. We are doing both. Just because we cracked down on the latter doesn't mean that we are ignoring the former.
- I'm not sure what "minor racial stuff" is but any "racial stuff" won't be tolerated.
- We don't care about what % a group makes up. There is stuff that we simply won't tolerate any longer because it just isn't acceptable. The % that any one group makes up of our users just isn't a factor.
- I am often stunned at how our users talk to each other - but it isn't confined to CP - it is a problem Internet wide. We look at all reported posts and take action when we feel appropriate. But moderation won't change this - the real change will come from the community en masse deciding to become more mature in how they discuss topics. If you want material change - that's what brings it
- I don't think those that have dissenting opinions are victims any more than any other group. I think well defended opinions are respected here. Hyperbole, arrogance and poorly defended positions are not.

I'm not sure what is meant by 'sign of the times' but I'm proud of how we've chosen to alter our moderation in recent months. I'm proud of the mods we've added and the new standards we've been implementing.

Other mods can chime in as well.

[ken0042]

I also like looking at scantily clad women, however not when I'm trying to catch up on hockey news. (And especially not while at work, or when visiting my parents, etc.) The fact that the crackdown also makes this place welcoming for more people just makes it a win-win IMHO.

[Mango]

For myself, it comes down to respect. Treat people the way you'd like to be treated.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Mango

For myself, it comes down to respect. Treat people the way you'd like to be treated.

To expand on that....

I would like to think that my posts and how I respond to others here is a fair and accurate representation of who I am as a person in real life. Jiri makes a very vaild remark about how members here should try to be more mature in how we respond to one another.

I'm not a moderator but I do think we as a group could do many things to help ease their workload.

[Caged Great]

I like the changes to the website, it's a step in the right direction.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Dion

To expand on that....

I would like to think that my posts and how I respond to others here is a fair and accurate representation of who I am as a person in real life. Jiri makes a very vaild remark about how members here should try to be more mature in how we respond to one another.

I'm not a moderator but I do think we as a group could do many things to help ease their workload.

I struggle with that all the time. It's like road rage: answer comes easily when it's not a real person in front of you. I've sent a good few apologetic pm's.


Edit: lol! never sent any pj's, just pm's

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

I struggle with that all the time. It's like road rage: answer comes easily when it's not a real person in front of you. I've sent a good few apologetic pj's.

I've had to make some apologies myself.

[KevanGuy]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

It's a shame about the personal attacks

Pretty funny coming from a poster with 7 infractions for personal attacks/insulting other members.

[photon]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

I am often stunned at how our users talk to each other

It's continuously shocking IMO.

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

but the truth is they are more concerned with minor racial stuff and if scantily clad pictures of females may offend the 0.5% of posters here that make up females than actually making this place a more hospitable place for hockey talk.

Using the phrase "the truth is" means you've decided how reality is regardless of what anyone else says or does, so my response is more for others than EE since nothing I say will dissuade someone who's decided what the truth is.

Beside what Jiri said, the ability to do something factors into how visible a response is as well.

Driving a car always seems like a good analogy. Calgary is filled with drivers doing bad things. Some are bad drivers, some are great drivers just making that once in a while mistake that everyone makes. Some merge poorly, some speed, some don't pay enough attention, some tailgate, etc..

But what do the police focus on? Speeding, stop signs/red lights, etc. Partially because those things are simpler to assess. It's easy to measure a speed or see if someone blows through a red light. It's harder to monitor attention or other poor driving behaviours.

Same thing with moderating. It's easy if someone uses a slur or posts an inappropriate picture or has a meltdown. It's far harder when it's on the line, especially when you don't want to eliminate conflict.

Unless we want to have a zero tolerance policy for anything that looks like an insult. Would be far easier to moderate, but I don't know if anyone will enjoy that.

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

but it doesn't change the fact that it's the truth and the site needs to look in the mirror.

To continue with the analogy, this is like blaming the police for poor driving in Calgary because they aren't out there punishing every driver every time they tailgate or don't merge at speed or cut someone off.

If Calgary has a problem with bad drivers, it's primarily because the drivers are bad, not because the police aren't enforcing heavily enough.

The analogy isn't perfect, because we, unlike the police, can decide who drives on our roads, but I don't want to be a police state.

The only real way to make CP a better place to post (which I agree is always a goal) is to increase the ratio of "good" to "bad" posting (whatever those mean), which is something each person can do (don't respond to poor posts, ignore parts of posts which are inflammatory, etc).

[albertGQ]

Am I the only one that hasn't noticed any changes in the moderation style?

I know we got two new moderators right? mrcboi and someone else?

I haven't noticed any changes. I guess that's a good thing.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

Am I the only one that hasn't noticed any changes in the moderation style?

I know we got two new moderators right? mrcboi and someone else?

I haven't noticed any changes. I guess that's a good thing.

What's there to notice with mod changes, though? From what I understand a good majority of moderation is done out of the public eye with infractions and warnings, so it's not like we as users can fully quantify the changes.

Plus, it's not like the moderation here was poor and that's why they added two new mods, so therefore we should have seen a drastic change in moderation. They added them to represent more groups of CP posters, aka women and the LBGT community, but the whole moderation team was already trending in being more aware of and more punative towards posts/threads offensive to minority groups.

So mods can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the idea was for those two posters to integrate themselves into the mod team and mod just like the rest of the team, but just overall have more representation. Not to have mango go around going "Woman post, I'll handle that!" and MCRboicgy going "LGBT related post, I'm on it!!!".

[jayswin]

My personal, purely anecdotal view of the reception of the direction we took as a message board;

I think the loudest opposers of this new direction, aka BBQ, ErickEstrada etc, are vastly overstating what was "taken away" and how much of the board it had a negative affect on vs positive affect.

I've heard tons of posters comment on how much more inclusive CP is due to the changes, and the funny thing is; Those that mention they enjoy the changes tend understate it and simply say things like "As a woman, the changes have been great, I feel more respected"

Where as, the louder opposers tend to use hyperbole and act like the mods ruined the board for 98% of CP'ers to appease a few posters. But really, not including the thread and polls itself, how many posters are actually upset with the changes? Erick Estrada, BBQ, who else?

I'd almost be curious to see a new poll, now that we're a few months in asking whether the changes have been positive, negligible or negative. I'd imagine the negative results would be very small, with lots of positive and negligible votes. (The negligible would likely just be posters that admittedly don't pay enough attention to notice).

I say almost because I know a new poll would likely just lead to the same raging debate we already had, and part of me thinks "Yeah, the changes are done and we're not going back so let's not fuel the debate again".

[Antithesis]

Originally Posted by Mango

For myself, it comes down to respect. Treat people the way you'd like to be treated.

Agreed - and I try to post in such a manner that I would say the exact same thing to the person I am conversing with if they were right in front of me. Of course, as photon mentioned, we all stumble at times but I think it's important to try to continually raise the level of discourse around this place. For many people there seems to be an "assume the person you are talking to is a complete, drooling moron" strategy to posting when I can't imagine that situation is true for many people here.

[photon]

Originally Posted by flameswin

So mods can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the idea was for those two posters to integrate themselves into the mod team and mod just like the rest of the team, but just overall have more representation. Not to have mango go around going "Woman post, I'll handle that!" and MCRboicgy going "LGBT related post, I'm on it!!!".

Exactly.

And as far as any changes, there's only been maybe a dozen moderator actions taken specifically regarding the "change" in policy, mostly warnings or just editing posts to remove some content. The vast majority of the content was ok in terms of any new things and the vast majority of the content is still ok.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by photon

Exactly.

And as far as any changes, there's only been maybe a dozen moderator actions taken specifically regarding the "change" in policy, mostly warnings or just editing posts to remove some content. The vast majority of the content was ok in terms of any new things and the vast majority of the content is still ok.

Wow, that's not much, and yet it's had a huge affect on how women, LGBT and the majority of men view the message board in a new, positive way.

Seems like a win/win. It's almost as if ErickEstrada and BBQ were going to complain about the changes going forward, regardless of the results.

[MrMastodonFarm]

I tried PM'ing Jiri after he called me out for some "pissy" posts in the PGT but he has PM's turned off. I won't copy and paste the PM here but didn't enjoy that. None of my posts were pissy. Hell, the very low 4 post exchange was already done by the time KFF said to end it. Self policing and trying to curb poor posters has always been apart of the board.

I noticed 4x4 was put in the Sin Bin. Now I won't ask exactly why and I won't pretend to know if any private messages were exchanged but he was called out by a moderator after only two mean posts, towards a guy that was ruining more than one thread with his shtick. That's a banning for something that was generally always accepted.

If the rules have changed, fine, perfect.. but let someone know before you go calling them out. It's a little odd you can't have a back and forth between a couple posters without people getting upset. If it goes pages and multiple threads like Tinordi and I, totally get that.. but the situation in the PGT from tonight? Confusing and short sighted.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

A couple posts going back and forth I can live with. I understand when tempers run a bit high. But it kept going on, concluding with you calling one of VFF's comments 'douchy'.

The rules haven't changed. It's a PGT. I'd prefer we talk about the game. If people want to keep going back and forth take it to PM instead of mucking up the thread.

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

I tried PM'ing Jiri after he called me out for some "pissy" posts in the PGT but he has PM's turned off. I won't copy and paste the PM here but didn't enjoy that. None of my posts were pissy. Hell, the very low 4 post exchange was already done by the time KFF said to end it. Self policing and trying to curb poor posters has always been apart of the board. .

I don't have PMs turned off. For some reason they stopped working with my account. We don't know why and can't seem to fix it. It isn't intentional and is a pain in the butt to be honest.

We ask posters to report posts that they think are a problem. We have not designated you, nor anyone else, to be the official policemen of this board.

But let's be honest - self policing is of course part of any board and community. But when you get into an ongoing back and forth argument with posters, often the same posters in numerous threads, that isn't acceptable. Nor is bullying, harassment or baiting. Tonight you made your point to VFF. Then you made it again. And again. Including call it "douchy". You think that's OK? Let's be clear: it's not.

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

I noticed 4x4 was put in the Sin Bin. Now I won't ask exactly why and I won't pretend to know if any private messages were exchanged but he was called out by a moderator after only two mean posts, towards a guy that was ruining more than one thread with his shtick. That's a banning for something that was generally always accepted.

We don't comment on why posters are suspended. I will say he wasn't banned for those posts.

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

If the rules have changed, fine, perfect.. but let someone know before you go calling them out. It's a little odd you can't have a back and forth between a couple posters without people getting upset. If it goes pages and multiple threads like Tinordi and I, totally get that.. but the situation in the PGT from tonight? Confusing and short sighted.

How about when its the same members creating those arguments in countless threads? Tonight's post game sucked because you had a few different arguments happening at the same time between a number of posters. It was junk. Many members of our community don't want to read that stuff in a PGT. They want to read about the game. The rules haven't changed in this regard at all.

Cripes man you call people out all the time on this board. That's part of the problem. You are upset now because a mod said your posts were pissy? Rise above it man - and ask yourself if those posts where you are attacking another poster are adding anything at all that is positive to this site or community.

I strongly suspect you don't agree with my take on this. That's fine. You don't have to.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Not all that upset to be honest. Just surprised because it didn't seem like much of a pissing match if one at all. Though I get that if you're having multiple events between posters it can get muddy. I would say calling out a guy for calling a bunch of posters homers is adding to the forum than detracting. For something like this I've always found calling the guy out is better than hitting the report button. The only thing that might have been over the line (just saw your edit) was douchy. The rest was a-okay in my opinion.

Was more annoyed that the thing was over and two moderators felt the need to quote then mention me in a post. Obviously though neither of you knew that at the time. So no biggie.

We ask posters to report posts that they think are a problem. We have not designated you, nor anyone else, to be the official policemen of this board.

haha, well.. yeah I know that man.

But let's be honest - self policing is of course part of any board and community. But when you get into an ongoing back and forth argument with posters, often the same posters in numerous threads, that isn't acceptable. Nor is bullying, harassment or baiting.

Agreed on both points.

I strongly suspect you don't agree with my take on this. That's fine. You don't have to.

Where does that come from? Why would you strongly suspect that?

Maybe I should start using emoticons or throwing in lol or haha more often, I'm not nearly as serious or as much of a dick as I come across as here.

[jayswin]

I saw the MMF/VFF thing a little differently. It wasn't like VFF got it and MMF kept driving the point home. VFF has always had that thing where he shows up and cals out our whole fanbase for being a bunch of homers, it's been his thing for years.

To me, it's like when mods get pissed off when posters come on CP and say "CP is so stupid for this" "CP is always like this". You guys don't like it cause it generalizes the whole board and I completely agree, it's stupid.

But this is exactly what VFF does with us Flames fans. He's what a I call a peripheral fan. He like the Flames, but he's never identified with Flames fans and has had an axe to grind against us for years. He used to be very open about it until he was continually called out for it and eventually got tired of posting here.

When he does come back he tends to throw some sort of shot at our fanbase in like clockwork. If MMF pointed it out and he either a)didn't respond or b) at least acknowledged that he does it, then fine. But he kept staunchly stating that he doesn't do that, so MMF painstakingly broke it down for him until he admitted to doing it.