Helpdesk is a joke

eagle eye

Right I've been reading the helpdesk lately and imo its not fair to the complainant and all advantage lies with the moderators.

The reasons I believe this are as follows.

1. There is no way for anybody who supports the complainant to assist them in the thread.
2. More than one moderator can reply to his complaint.

It looks to me like a case of divide and conquer all complainants by seperating them.


How is this fair?

Or is fairness not part of Boards.ie?

Surely there must be a fairer way for someone to air their complaints regarding moderators. Maybe allowing access to two supporters of the complainents choosing for the duration of the thread would solve the problem. If that can't be done then surely there must be some other way to make it fair to the complainent.
Its worse than the old diplock court system.

Overheal

I agree. The OP of a Help Desk thread should be allowed to include involved parties - other registered users - into their thread, the same way Moderators are specially permitted to post in threads that concern them.

dr.bollocko

Generally only SMODS reply to Help desk threads. They have no biase to either side and only grant access to the moderator who is the subject of the thread. So really it is probably the best place to post an anti moderator compaint IMO. The weight of your argument should make your point for you, not the weight of your friends list.

Ponster

eagle eye wrote: »

1. There is no way for anybody who supports the complainant to assist them in the thread.

Jesus, that's the whole bloody point of Helpdesk! Mods can't reply in helpdesk unless invited to.

Either post links to examples or GTFO.

Dub13

Overheal wrote: »

The OP of a Help Desk thread should be allowed to include involved parties - other registered users - into their thread, t.

That would be way to messy.IMO help desk works fine.

eagle eye

Ponster wrote: »

Jesus, that's the whole bloody point of Helpdesk! Mods can't reply in helpdesk unless invited to.

Either post links to examples or GTFO.

What links are you talking about.

And if you came in here, helpdesk is right beside, don't be so lazy have a look yourself.:)

Ponster

I go there almost everyday and still have no idea about where these threads are where mods are ganging up on members who appear to have a valid complaint against a mod.

eagle eye

Ponster wrote: »

I go there almost everyday and still have no idea about where these threads are where mods are ganging up on members who appear to have a valid complaint against a mod.

Who said they are ganging up. I simply said that there are plenty of threads where there are posts from more than one moderator from the relevant forum.
I think that the advantage lies with the moderators as they are normally skilled debaters whereas poor Joe Soap is not so good with his words and gets hammered by good English to the delight and appreciation of other more powerful moderators.

I'm talking about fairness here. Let the complainant have one or two supporters like any good judicial system. This way the weak have a chance to make a skilled appeal against these decisions if they choose the right people of course. If they choose badly, tough luck to them.

Doctor DooM

eagle eye wrote: »

Who said they are ganging up. I simply said that there are plenty of threads where there are posts from more than one moderator from the relevant forum.
I think that the advantage lies with the moderators as they are normally skilled debaters whereas poor Joe Soap is not so good with his words and gets hammered by good English to the delight and appreciation of other more powerful moderators.

I'm talking about fairness here. Let the complainant have one or two supporters like any good judicial system. This way the weak have a chance to make a skilled appeal against these decisions if they choose the right people of course. If they choose badly, tough luck to them.

Dude, if you don't post a link to a thread in which this actually happened, there's a large chance no one will take you seriously.

Think about it logically. I could come here and claim Nerin shoots kittens and should be demodded because of it. Would you take that seriously unless some evidence of Nerin shooting kittens existed?

http://www.addictinggames.com/kittencannon.html

Now we can all be like Nerin

Edit: 1641FT

It wasn't me!

Deleted User wrote: »

http://www.addictinggames.com/kittencannon.html

Now we can all be like Nerin

Edit: 1641FT

Damn it! I'd forgotten about that game. And I was about to start a presentation...

Nerin

SDooM wrote: »

Dude, if you don't post a link to a thread in which this actually happened, there's a large chance no one will take you seriously.

Think about it logically. I could come here and claim Nerin shoots kittens and should be demodded because of it. Would you take that seriously unless some evidence of Nerin shooting kittens existed?

...

*deletes f_cking everything!*

Karl Hungus

Your damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

Helpdesk was set up because people constantly complained that mods 'ganged up' on them in Feedback. A complaintant can make their case to an SMod directly, without anyone else commenting on it. Now you're complaining that you can't get every Tom, Dick and Bertie to come in and "support" you?

Yeah, you're onto a freakin' winner here. :rolleyes:

godtabh

eagle eye wrote: »

I think that the advantage lies with the moderators as they are normally skilled debaters whereas poor Joe Soap is not so good with his words and gets hammered by good English to the delight and appreciation of other more powerful moderators.

Mods are average joe soaps. I think one of them is Joe Soap (I'm not allowed to tell who it is).

This is a new approach that mods are evil based on their grasp of the english language.


If it was based on that I'd be barley allowed near boards let alone become a mod

Tom Dunne

eagle eye wrote: »

I think that the advantage lies with the moderators as they are normally skilled debaters whereas poor Joe Soap is not so good with his words and gets hammered by good English to the delight and appreciation of other more powerful moderators.

I can see to an extent where you are coming from.

It does appear to be Mods vs. Joe Soap. But the alternative was Feedback. In Feedback, if somebody posts a complaint, everybody can, and does, get their spoke in and clouds the initial complaint. Those with a vendetta against a moderator tend to see these types of thread as an ideal opportunity to contribute nothing other than vitriol towards the moderator in question.

Any legitimate complaint gets drowned in a sea of bickering and, speaking from personal experience, it can get very nasty.

So, the alternative was to have a strongly moderated forum, where the person with the problem gets a chance to air their grievance without it being disrupted. And you have to accept the Smods are fair and unbiased, and will listen to reason and will overturn a moderator's decision if they think it was out of order.

I know which I think is better.

Jazzy

help desk gives all the appearance of being official and proper but in reality it is just a more controlled feedback forum. from wat ive read and experienced it is just a novelty. something that has to be there and some more donkey work for the mods to get through to give off the appearance that you can actually do something in the event of getting banned etc.

well thats ireland for ya. and irish forums in general actually. just tons and tons of red tape with a circle jerk going on higher up. kinda like the government in fact.

so if u get banned u go to help desk. when the help desk fails you go to feedback. if feedback fails u start pm'ing ppl. then there are the different ranks and flavours of the mods that are responding. i would honestly hate to be a mod on this site as it just seems like work. u come home from your job and you basically go into another one... which doesnt pay

Doctor DooM

Jazzy wrote: »

help desk gives all the appearance of being official and proper but in reality it is just a more controlled feedback forum. from wat ive read and experienced it is just a novelty. something that has to be there and some more donkey work for the mods to get through to give off the appearance that you can actually do something in the event of getting banned etc.

well thats ireland for ya. and irish forums in general actually. just tons and tons of red tape with a circle jerk going on higher up. kinda like the government in fact.

so if u get banned u go to help desk. when the help desk fails you go to feedback. if feedback fails u start pm'ing ppl. then there are the different ranks and flavours of the mods that are responding. i would honestly hate to be a mod on this site as it just seems like work. u come home from your job and you basically go into another one... which doesnt pay

You're not supposed to go to feedback at all with complaints about mods any more, you are supposed to go direct to helpdesk.

It's genuinely not just a more fancy feedback: the only people who have access is the SMODS, who are the top of the ladder when it comes to the day to day running of the site.

I can't post in helpdesk for example, and I won't be given access unless an smod has a specific reason for me to respond to a claim.

Secondly, I have seen a few threads with mods posting about mods in feedback. If it was really just a PR exercise the mods where in on, why does that happen?

Overheal

dr.bollocko wrote: »

The weight of your argument should make your point for you, not the weight of your friends list.

Touché

Daysha

I think the help desk should be a private forum imo. Posters can only see threads they create, and the posters that see all the threads are administrators.

If HD is the "official" way to go about making a complaint about the board or a moderation, it shouldn't be done in public.

Just my opinion.

Red Sleeping Beauty

I never found anything funny about Helpdesk

Doctor DooM

deise59 wrote: »

I think the help desk should be a private forum imo. Posters can only see threads they create, and the posters that see all the threads are administrators.

If HD is the "official" way to go about making a complaint about the board or a moderation, it shouldn't be done in public.

Just my opinion.

Not a bad idea at all, actually.

ShooterSF

Yes but then there are always the types who want to complain to the manager infront of other customers and think being brought into a quiet room is a trick to save face.

Don't think ya can win here eitherways...

Crash

Jazzy wrote:

help desk gives all the appearance of being official and proper but in reality it is just a more controlled feedback forum. from wat ive read and experienced it is just a novelty. something that has to be there and some more donkey work for the mods to get through to give off the appearance that you can actually do something in the event of getting banned etc.

well thats ireland for ya. and irish forums in general actually. just tons and tons of red tape with a circle jerk going on higher up. kinda like the government in fact.

so if u get banned u go to help desk. when the help desk fails you go to feedback. if feedback fails u start pm'ing ppl. then there are the different ranks and flavours of the mods that are responding. i would honestly hate to be a mod on this site as it just seems like work. u come home from your job and you basically go into another one... which doesnt pay

Jazz, dude, your vag is showing.

lk, srsly.

eagle eye

kearnsr wrote: »

Mods are average joe soaps. I think one of them is Joe Soap (I'm not allowed to tell who it is).

This is a new approach that mods are evil based on their grasp of the english language.


If it was based on that I'd be barley allowed near boards let alone become a mod

This is exactly the sort of nonsense I see in hd on a regular.

I never said anything close to this in either of my posts. How dare you quote me and accuse me of saying so.

The only thing I'm looking for is a bit of fairness towards the complainant. If moderators do not have access unless granted specifically for certain helpdesk threads, then surely its easy to do the same for the complainant's representative.

Its mentioned elsewhere why it was moved to helpdesk and thats very understandable as there were too many people sticking their noses into the thread. I'm not asking for the whole thing to revert to feedback. All I'm suggesting is that its only fair that the complainant is allowed some support. Granting access for two members to assist the appellant is not going to turn it into the circus that was feedback appeals.

Red Sleeping Beauty

eagle eye wrote: »

This is exactly the sort of nonsense I see in hd on a regular.

I never said anything close to this in either of my posts. How dare you quote me and accuse me of saying so.

The only thing I'm looking for is a bit of fairness towards the complainant. If moderators do not have access unless granted specifically for certain helpdesk threads, then surely its easy to do the same for the complainant's representative.

Its mentioned elsewhere why it was moved to helpdesk and thats very understandable as there were too many people sticking their noses into the thread. I'm not asking for the whole thing to revert to feedback. All I'm suggesting is that its only fair that the complainant is allowed some support. Granting access for two members to assist the appellant is not going to turn it into the circus that was feedback appeals.

About 6weeks I might've agreed with everything you've said
but
If you start a feedback thread and want a moderator (or even another user) to be able to post in it then you can request that. If you're not happy with the 1 Smod's opinion/judgement/ruling then there's a load of other Smods you could PM and ask to look at.
And
If after that you're still not happy you can PM one of the Admin if it's serious and you think you've been really hard done by.

minime1

I agree with the op. He does have a point. In this thread I've counted seven mods replying!!

LuckyLloyd

minime1 wrote: »

I agree with the op. He does have a point. In this thread I've counted seven mods replying!!

Do you believe that he was inhibited in anyway from complaining in full? And, if so, that the main source of his inability to complain in full was the amount of moderators replying to him? Finally, if you answer positively to the previous two questions, can you explain why you feel that way?

Daysha

ShooterSF wrote: »

Yes but then there are always the types who want to complain to the manager infront of other customers and think being brought into a quiet room is a trick to save face.

Yes but a manager is more likely going to admit his fault in the quiet room, rather than in front of an entire room full of customers.

LuckyLloyd

deise59 wrote: »

Yes but a manager is more likely going to admit his fault in the quiet room, rather than in front of an entire room full of customers.

If they have made an error, don't you want them to admit it? Having arguments aired infront of the mob makes for better drama I will admit - but if genuine resolutions are your goal, a discussion backdrop that discourages openness and makes the parties involved weary of 'losing face' is certainly not the best way to achieve it.

minime1

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Do you believe that he was inhibited in anyway from complaining in full? And, if so, that the main source of his inability to complain in full was the amount of moderators replying to him? Finally, if you answer positively to the previous two questions, can you explain why you feel that way?

In that case I don't, I just used it as an example of threads in the helpdesk where more than one moderator have given their 2c's worth, helping each other out, while the op didn't have the luxury of his peers helping out.

In the case I linked to, ShooterSF was able to stand his ground & get his complaint across.

My point is however, in that case another user might have felt intimidated by the amount of mods replying.

I think the point here is not whether the op of a helpdeask thread has a valid complaint or not but the fairness of the whole thing.

Btw I know not all mods have the ability to reply in the helpdesk forum but if they are giving access once is that access for ever?

K-9

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

but if genuine resolutions are your goal, a discussion backdrop that discourages openness and makes the parties involved weary of 'losing face' is certainly not the best way to achieve it.

If 5 mods are in a Helpdesk forum against 1 poster, surely the above applies?

The noise ratio is the same, except it's moderators posting?