Politics standards

K-9

We had a long drawn out thread on the standards expected in the politics forum a few months ago and there was supposed to be a harsher line taken on lower standard posts.

From reading the politics board in the the last few days, hadn't read it in a while, I can't see this enforced.

Maybe posts aren't being reported and mods just don't have the time to deal with it. Still, even given time, I don't see the stricter line that was agreed between the mods and users enacted on at the minute.

There is no difference between AH and politics threads on Norris and immigration threads at the moment, even when posters ask for a higher standard. I thought we'd gone through this.

Basically, there was a feedback thread and it doesn't seem to have been acted on.

Overheal

not sure what its like upstairs much but US Pol is better than it was. I havent seen anything worth reporting in a couple weeks.

If you arent reporting anything though you cant hold the mod's feet to the fire. If its about a poster, report them and in the report link to any of their other posts if you need to use them to draw a connection. For instance if the poster keeps stating fact without citation, putting the links inside a report to all the incidences helps a mod a whole bunch in identifying soapboxers and seagulls. Usually though you have to give leeway to challenge the claim and give them time to respond. I don't get too bothered about it unless they repeat the claim later. If they don't repeat it after it's been refuted on thread - whether they acknowledged it or not - I just assume they have no rebuttal and want to save face.

gandalf

To be honest bar the very occasional post I am steering clear of politics these days. The standard has slipped and I do not see it improving at all in the near future.

starbelgrade

gandalf wrote: »

I am steering clear of politics these days. The standard has slipped and I do not see it improving at all in the near future.

And as for the politics forum..

nesf

1) Posts aren't being reported then. What's being reported is being looked at and dealt with where appropriate.

2) It's not entirely clear to me what you mean by standards. People still get strung up by a mod about backing up their sources and similar when it's brought to our attention that this is an issue which is more than what goes on in AH.

3) Politics is "popular" now, which lowers the standard of debate but there's not a whole lot I can do about that without micromanaging peoples' arguments for them which would be very wrong for us to do. The Norris threads were and are fairly bad because a lot of people aren't making any effort at all to be logical or reasonable in them, I'm not exactly sure what you want me to do about that or what can be done outside of extremely draconian and potentially biased measures.


What exactly is the issue here that you'd like to see fixed? What are standards? Can you give me a few examples from a few different threads showing what you mean? I'm suspicious that what's changed isn't so much standards but the average person likely to stray onto a Politics forum and start arguing and that this evolution is what's making people uncomfortable rather than any lack of action by the mods, but I could be wrong about this.

K-9

The main issue is that after the last feedback thread on this a tougher line was taken on soap boxing and constant thread spoilers. The mods seem to have less man power the last couple of weeks and don't seem to have the time to deal with that.

I'd be very surprised if posts aren't being reported!

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

The main issue is that after the last feedback thread on this a tougher line was taken on soap boxing and constant thread spoilers. The mods seem to have less man power the last couple of weeks and don't seem to have the time to deal with that.

I'd be very surprised if posts aren't being reported!

I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw a person reported for soapboxing. Nearly all reported posts are abuse related, with a handful of trolling and not backing up their posts thrown in.

Thing is, if you're seeing this stuff, why aren't you reporting it?

K-9

nesf wrote: »

I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw a person reported for soapboxing. Nearly all reported posts are abuse related, with a handful of trolling and not backing up their posts thrown in.

Thing is, if you're seeing this stuff, why aren't you reporting it?

I've reported a couple of posts at least in the last couple of days, not for soap boxing though. I'd forget about the feedback thread on politics when I set this up, think you mentioned there that you've been under manned on politics so maybe it's just that posts aren't being acted on as quickly or visibly as usual.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I've reported a couple of posts at least in the last couple of days, not for soap boxing though. I'd forget about the feedback thread on politics when I set this up, think you mentioned there that you've been under manned on politics so maybe it's just that posts aren't being acted on as quickly or visibly as usual.

Posts are being acted on, where appropriate, but we're not online all the time so don't expect an immediate response.


Thing is, we crowd source this stuff, sure sometimes when I'm reading the forum I'll come across abuse, thread spoiling or whatever but I don't have time to read the entire set of sub fora carefully so it really comes down to the users reporting the posts. The good side of this is that only stuff that genuinely bothers the community gets acted on for the most part so there's less unnecessary mod intervention.

Overheal

Speaking of soapboxers if you see anybody promoting Singapore or Thailand, gimme a holler.

K-9

Thinking about it and I think I mentioned it in the previous feedback thread, busy times just bring out more posters. General Elections naturally and the Norris and Pamela threads seem to have aroused the interest of certain special interest groups.

Anyway, I'll bring any future issues up on the politics feedback thread.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

Thinking about it and I think I mentioned it in the previous feedback thread, busy times just bring out more posters. General Elections naturally and the Norris and Pamela threads seem to have aroused the interest of certain special interest groups.

Anyway, I'll bring any future issues up on the politics feedback thread.

Elections bring 'em out of the woodwork. It's always going to be a running battle with something like the Norris thread because muppets will be turning up faster than the mods can keep the peace for a while. We do sanction them though there's just a lag between them appearing and us getting everything back under control. Also the biggest problem is such threads bringing in new people who just don't know the forum and whose posts look out of place etc.

Scofflaw

nesf wrote: »

Elections bring 'em out of the woodwork. It's always going to be a running battle with something like the Norris thread because muppets will be turning up faster than the mods can keep the peace for a while. We do sanction them though there's just a lag between them appearing and us getting everything back under control. Also the biggest problem is such threads bringing in new people who just don't know the forum and whose posts look out of place etc.

There is a cyclical issue, which is that whenever a major event happens - and they have been happening pretty frequently over the last while - we have a deluge of posters new to the forum, and the regulars complain that standards have slipped, because it takes a while to deal with the deluge.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Overheal

Perhaps a dumb (or brilliant) question, but why not repurpose the General Election 2011 subforum for the Presidential Election? Hasn't the GE forum served and retired from it's purpose?

Better yet simply remake it as the Elections Forum, plain.

easychair

K-9 wrote: »

I've reported a couple of posts at least in the last couple of days, not for soap boxing though. I'd forget about the feedback thread on politics when I set this up, think you mentioned there that you've been under manned on politics so maybe it's just that posts aren't being acted on as quickly or visibly as usual.

If they are under-manned in politics, I have the ideal solution. Why not appoint djbarry as moderator there, and relieve him of his duties in SEI? That way its a win win situation!

later12

In the past 3 weeks there have been 162 reported posts in the politics section.

This breaks down to a mean of just under 8 reported posts per day.

113 reported posts (69.75%) were read.
49 reported posts (30.25%) were unread.


Of the past 30 posts, going back approximately 4 days,

14 reported posts were read
16 reported posts were unread.

There might be a good explanation for this when the forum appears to be working correctly, one could say that mods are already on top of things in the forum and don't need to read reported posts.

But when there are ongoing complaints about posts in the forum, and from my reading everybody seems to accept there's an issue, yet 1 in 3 reported posts are going unread, then that looks like it needs to be addressed.

My own interest in politics is tapering off lately, you can get the same quality of discussion in AH.

Overheal

the read mark on reported posts is misleading. when you get the email you see the reason and a direct link to the thread or post, yes?

XXXXXX ( http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/member.php?u=### ) has reported this post:


http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=######post######

This is part of this thread:
YYYYYYYYYYY
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=###

This is the reason that the user gave:

ZZZZZZZZZZ

A discussion thread has been created at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=######

This message has been sent to all moderators of this forum, or all administrators if there are no moderators.

Please respond to this post as applicable.

If a Pol Mod never clicks on the bottom link, the reported post never gets 'read'. Doesn't imply it was never acted upon.

later12

Perhaps. There is also a possibility that a moderator simply looks at the post in the reported posts section and doesn't open it, but knows immediately what it's about, and corrects the problem.

There are lots of possibilities There is also the possibility that of the reported posts that were read, they were not read by politics moderators

I've stopped reporting posts on politics a while ago now, because there seems to be an inaction towards problems on the forum, even where posts are reported. The real testament to this is on the forum itself, and through the fact that issue seems to be ongoing, and is being raised in feedback or on the forum by people like the OP who are not simply criticising for the sake of criticising.

Or are we imagining it, is this all just one big co-incidence?

Scofflaw

later10 wrote: »

Perhaps. There is also a possibility that a moderator simply looks at the post in the reported posts section and doesn't open it, but knows immediately what it's about, and corrects the problem.

There are lots of possibilities There is also the possibility that of the reported posts that were read, they were not read by politics moderators

I've stopped reporting posts on politics a while ago now, because there seems to be an inaction towards problems on the forum, even where posts are reported. The real testament to this is on the forum itself, and through the fact that issue seems to be ongoing, and is being raised in feedback or on the forum by people like the OP who are not simply criticising for the sake of criticising.

Or are we imagining it, is this all just one big co-incidence?

It's not unusual for a mod to open the 'reported post', and decide that no action is necessary. A third of cases wouldn't be out of line there - we don't agree with every report.

However, what I'm seeing on this thread is an issue being raised by posters whose judgement I respect, and it would accord with my own views. The problem is, though, that as already said, we do have a heavy influx, so it's not just a question of housekeeping, but of spring-cleaning. And we can't do that without the cooperation of the users through the reporting system. So, if you give up on reporting things, and don't even draw that to our attention, it would be a little unfair to expect us us to have read your minds and acted on your unexpressed issues.

What do people suggest we do with respect to the AH-style contributions, though? Penalise them? Ban the posters? Close any thread which has such contributions? Delete the posts in question? All of the above?

Answers will be taken on board - none of us want a situation where it's just not worth contributing to the forum. But bear in mind that the effort needs to be ongoing, and if people can't be bothered making it, there's no reason for the mods to supply that effort for you unless they happen to fancy doing so.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Black Swan

later10 wrote: »

In the past 3 weeks there have been 162 reported posts in the politics section.
This breaks down to a mean of just under 8 reported posts per day.
113 reported posts (69.75%) were read.
49 reported posts (30.25%) were unread.

...yet 1 in 3 reported posts are going unread, then that looks like it needs to be addressed.

I will only address this invalid and unreliable quantitative counting assessment performed by later10; i.e., quality of posts is subjective and not objective like counting, and because we are all unique individuals, there are probably as many opinions about quality as their are readers and posters of Politics.

Please be advised that what you have counted to make your point was uninformed and in error. I have read 100% of all reported posts in all of my forums since being appointed a mod 2 years ago (almost a year ago in Politics). I have a special email account that all reported posts are forwarded to, and when I am online daily (sometimes several times daily) and see them, I go immediately to the post reported, not the reported post thread. If it is obvious that a violation has occurred, or if one of my co-mods or Cmods have already taken action, then why bother visiting the reported post thread? If it is not obvious and no action has been taken, then I visit the reported post thread. Although I cannot speak for them, my co-mods and Cmods probably do something similar.

Furthermore, sometimes when a member is reporting a post, I am at the same time reviewing it, and may have already taken action, which eliminates the need to go beyond the email report that I later receive.

Consequently, there is a huge under count on the reported post threads, because in practice (with email redundancy) it would be 100% if I bothered to waste my time on the busy Politics forums to visit every reported post thread, so these above percentages and your “1 in 3 reported posts are going unread” are in error and meaningless in practice.

May I suggest that before you start counting things and making false assumptions based upon those counts, that you do more research, and perhaps show a bit of professional courtesy by either PMing the mods and ask them how they do things in practice; or if the forums you are inquiring about fall under Politics, then ask questions on the Politics “Discussion on the rules” thread about how we practice moderation as pertains to the reported post threads before falsely concluding "...yet 1 in 3 reported posts are going unread, then that looks like it needs to be addressed?"

Or you may want to ask Overheal, who understands how this works in practice:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=73685636&postcount=17

So in practice, 100% of reported posts are read, if not counted on the reported post threads, then 100% by forwarded email.

nesf

later10 wrote: »

In the past 3 weeks there have been 162 reported posts in the politics section.

This breaks down to a mean of just under 8 reported posts per day.

113 reported posts (69.75%) were read.
49 reported posts (30.25%) were unread.


Of the past 30 posts, going back approximately 4 days,

14 reported posts were read
16 reported posts were unread.

There might be a good explanation for this when the forum appears to be working correctly, one could say that mods are already on top of things in the forum and don't need to read reported posts.

But when there are ongoing complaints about posts in the forum, and from my reading everybody seems to accept there's an issue, yet 1 in 3 reported posts are going unread, then that looks like it needs to be addressed.

My own interest in politics is tapering off lately, you can get the same quality of discussion in AH.

I go straight from my emails to the reported post, I almost never go to the reported post thread itself. If I was the only mod on the forum, they would all appear unread but would all be checked.

K-9

Thought there'd be more reported posts tbh.

I'll try and report more posts and see if it makes a difference.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

Thought there'd be more reported posts tbh.

I'll try and report more posts and see if it makes a difference.

E.g. there's been exactly 3 reported posts in the past 20 hours, all three for abuse. All three dealt with and the users sanctioned. All three threads unread in the Reported Posts forum.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

E.g. there's been exactly 3 reported posts in the past 20 hours, all three for abuse. All three dealt with and the users sanctioned. All three threads unread in the Reported Posts forum.

I assume the reported posts come in bursts, quite days like today not much, busy times maybe 10-20 a day?

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I assume the reported posts come in bursts, quite days like today not much, busy times maybe 10-20 a day?

Yeah, very much so. Often multiple reported posts for the same post. The Norris thread in its heyday generated quite a lot. Irish Economy goes through extremely quiet patches and then really busy patches, generally when some group of new posters join and aren't used to the unwritten rules drawn up between the various camps (especially the pro- and anti-Public Service camps which seem to be able to disagree without coming to blows these days when it's just the regulars involved most of the time).

The forum's quite quiet when there isn't any major new out usually. Except when someone starts a very controversial/divisive thread.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

Yeah, very much so. Often multiple reported posts for the same post. The Norris thread in its heyday generated quite a lot. Irish Economy goes through extremely quiet patches and then really busy patches, generally when some group of new posters join and aren't used to the unwritten rules drawn up between the various camps (especially the pro- and anti-Public Service camps which seem to be able to disagree without coming to blows these days when it's just the regulars involved most of the time).

The forum's quite quiet when there isn't any major new out usually. Except when someone starts a very controversial/divisive thread.

The Norris and Pamela threads spring to mind for me. It's a tough one to call, it isn't quite soap boxing, it's not abusive or a clear abuse of the roles, more just taking over threads, IYKWIM?

Everybody loses the will to live trying to argue with posters trying to get the last word in?

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

The Norris and Pamela threads spring to mind for me. It's a tough one to call, it isn't quite soap boxing, it's not abusive or a clear abuse of the roles, more just taking over threads, IYKWIM?

Everybody loses the will to live trying to argue with posters trying to get the last word in?

Yeah the problem is that it's ok (if very annoying) for a poster to be a "last word" poster, we've quite a few of those, but it isn't ok for someone to be a soapboxer (we try to remove these). Can take quite a while before one can be sure that someone is soapboxing though and not just enthusiastic for their viewpoint. Sometimes it requires a bit of poking to see how they react, which can be a bit unethical as it can look like you're baiting the poster.


Anyway, report stuff and I guarantee we'll at least look at it. We might not agree that there's a problem that needs fixing or we might not agree there's enough evidence yet to act but it will be looked at.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

The Norris and Pamela threads spring to mind for me. It's a tough one to call, it isn't quite soap boxing, it's not abusive or a clear abuse of the roles, more just taking over threads, IYKWIM?

Actually one problem we get, especially on Pamela style threads, is people reporting posts that they just disagree with strongly. I can think of one or two users in particular who do this fairly regularly. But conversely both of them also report posts that need action, so it's not like we can/should ask them to stop reporting posts.

That said, we have had problems in the past with people only ever reporting stuff that really wasn't actionable and have had to ask them to stop because they're wasting every mod's time (since we all can't see if another mod has checked a reported post from our emails so we have to check it ourselves etc).


The core problem is a) what's the line between acceptable and unacceptable in terms of quality of post and can all the mods manage to agree on this and enforce it consistently over time and b) should be kowtowing to the wishes of a sub group of the posters on the forum (a minority I think) who have a major problem with how the forum is run at the moment? These are both tricky questions, the second especially because the people raising the problem tend to be some of our better posters.

nesf

Overheal wrote: »

Perhaps a dumb (or brilliant) question, but why not repurpose the General Election 2011 subforum for the Presidential Election? Hasn't the GE forum served and retired from it's purpose?

Better yet simply remake it as the Elections Forum, plain.

Already being discussed. On the cards I think as far as I know.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

Actually one problem we get, especially on Pamela style threads, is people reporting posts that they just disagree with strongly. I can think of one or two users in particular who do this fairly regularly. But conversely both of them also report posts that need action, so it's not like we can/should ask them to stop reporting posts.

That said, we have had problems in the past with people only ever reporting stuff that really wasn't actionable and have had to ask them to stop because they're wasting every mod's time (since we all can't see if another mod has checked a reported post from our emails so we have to check it ourselves etc).


The core problem is a) what's the line between acceptable and unacceptable in terms of quality of post and can all the mods manage to agree on this and enforce it consistently over time and b) should be kowtowing to the wishes of a sub group of the posters on the forum (a minority I think) who have a major problem with how the forum is run at the moment? These are both tricky questions, the second especially because the people raising the problem tend to be some of our better posters.

I've no doubt some posters are too precious, that isn't the issue, I trust mods on that aspect.

I think the problem is the lack of difference between AH and politics.

That's the problem.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I've no doubt some posters are too precious, that isn't the issue, I trust mods on that aspect.

I think the problem is the lack of difference between AH and politics.

That's the problem.

What's the line though between AH and Politics? Like, on Politics you'll not get away with AH style factual claims because you can be forced to back them up and reference them. It's the users own fault if they're not pushing for this in threads. If someone refuses the back up their points then the mods will step in and force the user to either put up or shut up and if the poster constantly does this they'll be removed from the forum.

I'm completely open to suggestions on practical ways we can improve the standard of debate without being overly harsh on people. Should we be warning people for having poorly informed opinions for instance? Because that's part of the problem as I see it (but I haven't any clue on a good and fair way to deal with it).