Mods need to step up in Politics Forum

Permabear

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Permabear

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later12

Permabear wrote: »

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That's true. Surely it's a rather basic proposition that a forum moderator ought to be regularly engaged with the forum, so as to be somewhat familiar with user and topic histories.

In a political context, from the top of my head, that would specifically apply to GuanYin, Black Swan and Sceptre. While I'm sure all might diligently read reported posts, I wonder how familiar they are with the user subjects of these posts.

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Anyway, not my intention to dilute this debate, but if anyone is interested in (or opposed to) to a private political forum there is a new request for a such a forum in Forum Requests.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056474522

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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It's not basic standards though, it's something much higher than that being asked for.

Permabear wrote: »

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The problem is everyone things their point is serious and legitimate.

Permabear wrote: »

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Those other sites aren't general purpose sites that naturally have a large population of political newbies waiting in the wings to give their opinions.

Permabear wrote: »

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I think a closed forum like Soccer is still the only way of doing this.

Permabear wrote: »

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We'll have to agree to disagree on the latter, I don't think either of us will convince the other of our point.

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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Just to address this: being a CMod doesn't take up much time. It's not a labour intensive role on this site most of the time.

swordofislam

nesf wrote: »

Once upon a time, as I'm sure you know, the Boards Politics mods prided themselves on running the highest-quality political discussion forum in Ireland.

This is still true. It is better than other political discussion fora that I am aware of.
It is better than politics.ie and better than the property pin.

nesf wrote: »

Over the past couple of years, it has become one of the lowest-quality, and the mods have adopted a fatalistic, defeatist attitude to the prospect of raising standards even slightly.

The quality is still relatively high but has fallen in the past 6 months!

Just make Permabear a politics mod.

nesf

swordofislam wrote: »

This is still true. It is better than other political discussion fora that I am aware of.
It is better than politics.ie and better than the property pin.

The quality is still relatively high but has fallen in the past 6 months!

Just make Permabear a politics mod.

You're quoting Permabear, not me there.

coffee_cake

swordofislam wrote: »

Just make Permabear a politics mod.

How much is he paying you?:pac:

Anyway I still don't like the idea of an elite forum but i suppose it's the "least bad" option
I think we could probably clamp down more

later12

bluewolf wrote: »

How much is he paying you?:pac:

Anyway I still don't like the idea of an elite forum but i suppose it's the "least bad" option
I think we could probably clamp down more

The thing is nobody is asking for 'elitism'. Nobody ever criticizes those who come onto the politics forum saying "I don't know much about political science but here's what I think about socialism".

Nobody's asking for academic parchments. All that is required to constructively engage with a political discussion is a basic capacity for rational thinking and the ability to read a newspaper.

That is not elitism.

coffee_cake

later10 wrote: »

The thing is nobody is asking for 'elitism'. Nobody ever criticizes those who come onto the politics forum saying "I don't know much about political science but here's what I think about socialism".

Nobody's asking for academic parchments. All that is required to constructively engage with a political discussion is a basic capacity for rational thinking and the ability to read a newspaper.

That is not elitism.

alright, s/elite/restricted/
but that's how it'll be viewed by a lot of people i should imagine

nesf

later10 wrote: »

The thing is nobody is asking for 'elitism'. Nobody ever criticizes those who come onto the politics forum saying "I don't know much about political science but here's what I think about socialism".

Nobody's asking for academic parchments. All that is required to constructively engage with a political discussion is a basic capacity for rational thinking and the ability to read a newspaper.

That is not elitism.

The perception is the issue. Whether it's real or not doesn't matter unfortunately.

Permabear

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K-9

nesf wrote: »

The perception is the issue. Whether it's real or not doesn't matter unfortunately.

That perception is there already. You see posters moaning about "dictators" and lack of free speech. It will always be there.

nesf

Permabear wrote: »

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It's not as simple as that with one of the biggest forums on this site. M

Permabear wrote: »

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Sure, but again the above.

later12

Permabear wrote: »

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K-9 wrote: »

That perception is there already. You see posters moaning about "dictators" and lack of free speech. It will always be there.

These posts require some emphasis in light of the fact, as is often pointed out on this feedback forum, boards.ie is not a democracy. Quite right too. More rigorous demands on users will never win a popular vote.

Moderators ought to be the puppet governments of an autocracy, not bureaucrats pandering to lowest common denominator arguments.

nesf

later10 wrote: »

These posts require some emphasis in light of the fact, as is often pointed out on this feedback forum, boards.ie is not a democracy. Quite right too. More rigorous demands on users will never win a popular vote.

Fair point.

Dav

OK, nesf has asked for my input on this. I'm going to have a chat with the other Admins and the Politics mods to see what it is we should do to address the issues people are raising.

I would echo what's been said countless times before though - people who never expressed an interest in politics are suddenly finding out that this is important, but they don't have the experience or wealth of political (not to mention economic or historical) knowledge that someone who's been interested in politics for years has and so, should we have to tell people to go and learn their history or economics before being allowed to talk politics?

southsiderosie

Dav wrote: »

OK, nesf has asked for my input on this. I'm going to have a chat with the other Admins and the Politics mods to see what it is we should do to address the issues people are raising.

I would echo what's been said countless times before though - people who never expressed an interest in politics are suddenly finding out that this is important, but they don't have the experience or wealth of political (not to mention economic or historical) knowledge that someone who's been interested in politics for years has and so, should we have to tell people to go and learn their history or economics before being allowed to talk politics?

I think it would be a shame if that were to happen. I specifically started reading this site two years ago because I wanted to learn more about Irish politics. As I mentioned before, I found that forum regulars were generally quite gracious about answering questions I posted about Irish political history and culture. And even though those threads often involved disagreements, I learned from those as well; certainly there is no uniform take on Irish history, parties, etc. (and Ireland is definitely one place where even the average person will be quite well-versed on national history!).

The problem isn’t that people ask questions or are new to politics. The bigger issues are that 1) many of these ‘questions’ are just attempts at ****-stirring (many of the recent threads on libertarianism being a case in point) and 2) people are using the politics forum not as a discussion board, but as a place to rage against the machine, so to speak. Politics is not – and should not be – ranting and raving, but unfortunately that is what it is turning into. To make matters worse, it seems like what we are getting right now are a bunch of one-liners or rants that would not be tolerated anywhere else on this website. The OP for this thread is a case in point: a cranky one-liner with no context that, if posted in Politics, would simply invite a stream of similar posts. The fact that this is not the case for this thread illustrates my point about forum norms: I don't think Feedback would tolerate a stream of "ARRGGH, FIRE THEM ALL!!!!!" type posts – the mods would not tolerate it - yet this is exactly what we are seeing in politics.

Ultimately, I don't think the problem is lack of knowledge, it is that there are (were?) ostensibly different norms of posting in this forum than in AH, yet it is unclear that this is the case anymore. I said this in the last feedback thread on politics, but it is not clear to me what the ethos of the Politics forum is at all these days: it is turning into AH for politics, but without the humor and pace, and sadly, without enforcement of the ‘Don’t be a dick” rule (NOTE: I think that AH is well moderated, but it is clearly a more freewheeling place than anywhere else on the site).

In the interest of being constructive, I would offer that OPs need to be locked or merged much more aggressively with mod instructions. Most threads that start with a crap OP (one-liner, extended rants, soapboxing) can only go in one direction – downward. Politics should be a place that is open to anyone – newbies, regulars, liberals, raging conservatives, cranks, whomever – but without clear norms of engagement, it will simply be a free for all – and a rather humorless and un-enjoyable one to boot.

gandalf

Dav wrote: »

should we have to tell people to go and learn their history or economics before being allowed to talk politics?

No Dav you are missing what the actual problem is. New users look at how others are posting in whatever forum they are interested in and they will then decide that this is how you normally interact in there.

If they see posts full of rants, one liners and in some cases moronic tripe then they will think this is the norm and it is understandable that they will post like this. If however they see that posts of this type are dealt with quickly and promptly and that there are standards expected of interaction in that forum then they will on the whole ensure that they post their contributions with the amount of thought a high quality forum expects.

High quality does not mean people have to pass an exam or prove they have a certain level of academic achievement before they post, what it means is that when posting the OP or the contributor to a thread has put enough thought into their post to respect those others who contribute to that forum as well. I certainly am not the most learned or could even be called an academic poster in any way but I do hope that I participate in a manner that is respectful of the others on the forum who read my contributions. I would endeavour to think that is what a lot of regulars would like.

Basically it comes down to the fact that if you do not deal with posts of low quality in a swift, visible, consistent and co-ordinated fashion then you can see why standards are slipping so dramatically in the forum. It seems that some of decisions are being made (or not made) to avoid any form of confrontation in the DRP forums which I believe is a failure and has hobbled moderators being able to moderate effectively.

dr.bollocko

It has been suggested in here that there is some crossover between AH and politics at the moment.
From my reading of the politics forum of late, there are a number of banned / permabanned AH users which are regulars in politics up to their same tricks.

If that crossover of troll poster were removed both communities would benefit.

nesf

dr.bollocko wrote: »

It has been suggested in here that there is some crossover between AH and politics at the moment.
From my reading of the politics forum of late, there are a number of banned / permabanned AH users which are regulars in politics up to their same tricks.

If that crossover of troll poster were removed both communities would benefit.

Please report such and they can be banned from Politics. I think a pact for permabanning people who troll political threads in either forum might be a decent idea.

nesf

gandalf wrote: »

It seems that some of decisions are being made (or not made) to avoid any form of confrontation in the DRP forums which I believe is a failure and has hobbled moderators being able to moderate effectively.

I can assure you this is absolutely not the case and despite having a few bans overturned in DRP bans continue to be handed out purely on moderator discretion.

K-9

dr.bollocko wrote: »

It has been suggested in here that there is some crossover between AH and politics at the moment.
From my reading of the politics forum of late, there are a number of banned / permabanned AH users which are regulars in politics up to their same tricks.

If that crossover of troll poster were removed both communities would benefit.

I pointed that out before and the mods explained they have to go through DRP and there has to be a certain benefit of the doubt given.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

I pointed that out before and the mods explained they have to go through DRP and there has to be a certain benefit of the doubt given.

Did we?

I've a memory like a sieve.

K-9

nesf wrote: »

Did we?

I've a memory like a sieve.

May have been Scofflaw, though I thought a couple of mods has posted about how difficult it was.

nesf

K-9 wrote: »

May have been Scofflaw, though I thought a couple of mods has posted about how difficult it was.

Difficult sure, but I'd argue that we can find common ground here same as when I moderated AH (I don't know if it's the same now) that people banned from Soccer were banned if they started using AH to discuss soccer topics.

If we agree on it at high level we can present it as policy in DRP.

gandalf

nesf wrote: »

I can assure you this is absolutely not the case and despite having a few bans overturned in DRP bans continue to be handed out purely on moderator discretion.

It was said in either a thread or a direct PM a while ago by one of your co-moderators that the DRP process was an influencer when dealing with the more verbose argumentative problem poster.

nesf

gandalf wrote: »

It was said in either a thread or a direct PM a while ago by one of your co-moderators that the DRP process was an influencer when dealing with the more verbose argumentative problem poster.

Ah, but there's a big difference between an individual case where we know a ban won't stand up and a general avoidance of bans because of a fear of DRP. The latter is a problem, the former is just a fact of life if you have an appeal system.

Dr Galen

Was it my post you are thinking of Gandalf? Below is what I said...

It is fine and well to talk about standards, but when you are faced with a post on the forum, and you may later have to stand over an action in the DRP forum, you really do have to stop and think.

fwiw, while it certainly is a factor in the decision making process, especially when dealing with the type of poster you describe, I wouldn't let it override my "gut feeling" as such. If someone is being enough of a nusisance to warrant a sanction, I wouldn't let the DRP prevent me from taking action, I'm happy to deal with fallout from such decisions tbh. I made that point more in relation to a any blanket infracting/banning that seemed to be something that people were calling for. I'm happy enough that doesn't seem to be what is being called for in the main.

I do think that the DRP has changed being a Mod on this site. It has added a layer of accountability to the role and process, that maybe didn't exist in the past. It has flaws no doubt, but it has also got a good side.

gandalf

No actually it wasn't you Dr. Galen, when I say a while ago it could be around a year ago and it may have been in a pm string (which I have since cleared out).

I have never experienced the DRP process as a mod but have as a user and tbh from that perspective I found it to be a very frustrating and fruitless process. I think the way it is fashioned at the moment fails in adding any meaningful layer of accountability and as admitted by yourself and one of colleagues previously it is an influence on how you mod and I would argue it is a negative factor in doing the job of moderating the forums that you are a custodian of.