Free for all? Understanding FF

looksee

I am reading threads in Feedforward. I can post in a thread about categories, though its not entirely clear why there is a random thread about categories, what about them, what is supposed to be happening to them?

So I find another thread about categories which seems to be techy stuff that I only vaguely understand, though it does seem to answer some of the questions in the other thread. But even though it says it is free for all, i can't post in it. Why? There seems to be all sorts of other random people, mod and non-mod posting?

The I find another thread which actually says why we are discussing categories in the other two threads, and right enough things are getting a bit clearer. It is also free for all, but I am not all. So who is it free for?

I am sure there are lots of people to whom this is all crystal clear, but not to me. I started hunting through stickies tryng to understand how FF and all its variations work, and who can post, without any great success.

To people who have 'grown up' with Boards and have gradually understood all its levels and rules and variation it may be difficult to understand that there are bits of it (especially mod stuff) that can be confusing. I mod two very quiet and well behaved forums that don't need much sorting, but when something comes up I have to start over with researching the penalties/ infringements/ telling offs because I don't use them often enough to become familiar. I don't think I have really annoyed anyone yet, but it will happen. There does not seem to be enough linkage between what response a mod should have in any circumstance, and how (technically) they should do it.

Some of mod issues could perhaps be eased if 'ordinary mods' were only listed as mods in their own forums, then they could do their own thing on the rest of the site. Don't really think it would be too popular with a lot of mods though

Yes, sorry, I'm a bit irritated by it all.

Overheal

The irritation is understandable.

I've tried to categorize this a few times and one of these days I'll throw it in there somewhere in lieu of an actual charter.

Feedforward came about roughly 2 years ago as a mechanism in-infancy. Previously the site suffered from a lot of internal drama, both on and off the website, feedback threads were chaotic and hard to navigate, and in general arguments between users and mods just got out of hand. There was Help Desk, but no concrete, definitive way that situations like banning and infraction appeals were really handled. That was one of the biggest problems. But ultimately the problem was boards was starting to grow very rapidly (I blame Cloud for upgrading the servers) and the old ways of handling most things on a more personal level really were starting to fall by the wayside. Frequently, the act of banning someone sparked debates in feedback that went on for tens of pages and lasted the bulk of a week. Cat pictures were aplenty. Ultimately this degenerated into people growing increasingly frustrated that boards was not consistent enough in how it handled these situations and it itself sparked its own breed of drama.

This all lead I believe it was DeVore to brainstorm the idea of Feedforward with 2 general ideas in mind: the aim was for Feedforward to one day help the site run a lot more autonomously without too much HQ micromanagement, and the other was for Feedforward to handle big problems in a methodical manner that once decided upon would basically amount to Policy. The best example is the Dispute Resolution process which is a direct product of FFW.

The only big rule in FFW is it's not the place for episodic drama: Feedback back in the days (aaaand, even now) is somewhat bogged down because threads revolve around live disputes, disagreements, etc. so it's hard to take the discussions at face value. FFW Discussions are by design meant to be something with far reaching forward thought, that once decided upon could be referred to later, for a long time to come. As such it's less about "This mod is terrible!" and more about "Hey here are some things mods can do better".

Feedforward Public is set up as a full access forum, open to any registered user. Feedforward is open to a list of trustees, originally vetted from HQ, Admins, Moderators, and other users, and consists of HQ, Admins, Mods, and a large chunk of Registered Users, the main criterion being that they have unique and varying viewpoints from eachother as to promote discussion. The list of trustees is in there somewhere, and I'll make a note of revising it for closed accounts, etc.

That is the forum you were trying to access, and were unable to. Feedforward Public is as far as I'm concerned where the bulk of the machine works anyway. Feedforward itself was coined as an 'open chamber' where any user could see the discussions happen but it was not open to too much noise.

Feedforward has Facilitators, not really mods in the traditional sense (though functionally it's really just a title: vBulletin still requires the duties to be done under the mod class) the purpose of which is really just to keep the discussions on topic and do housekeeping. Myself and Ropedrink, and Dav, are facilitators.

As for general feedback on Feedforward itself this wouldn't be a bad place to air it. Understandably it's a little bit dusty in there. For my own part I will try to clean up a little bit in the next few weeks (I do have 50+ hours a week between work and college to attend to) and try to consolidate existing decisions and all that other stuff, to make it easier for someone who stumbles across it later (as you have) to understand what happened.

It's important to remember that FFW ever really was a prototype concept, and is probably open for revision or streamlining. It's main concern is that it requires the effort of someone from HQ, currently, to decide upon something, which the Admins then act upon that as policy. And unfortunately HQ has very finite amounts of time in it's regular activities, so it's been evidently rare that the time has been available to invest in it.

Spear

Free for All also allows for open debate, i.e. back and forth, counter points etc, as opposed to the later One post Per Person where each user can give just a single post with their position/view.

Overheal

Yep forgot to go over that. OPPP was intended as a prefix for a closing arguments thread. After a week or two of discussion it would narrow down the arguments into something a little easier to digest for DeV and others to consider when making final decisions. Again though, I've wondered whether that part of the process was over-engineered or not.

Cardinal Richelieu

Overheal wrote: »

Feedforward Public is set up as a full access forum, open to any registered user. Feedforward is open to a list of trustees, originally vetted from HQ, Admins, Moderators, and other users, and consists of HQ, Admins, Mods, and a large chunk of Registered Users, the main criterion being that they have unique and varying viewpoints from eachother as to promote discussion. The list of trustees is in there somewhere, and I'll make a note of revising it for closed accounts, etc.

I asked about that list in the Helpdesk last year and mentioned it wasn't up to date even then. Quite a few like Donegalfella have had names changes at the time or left like Thaedydal. Sometimes putting things on the back burner can come to bite you back when your extremely busy.;) Will new trustees be added to replace the dearly departed?

List of trustees last update 14/5/10

Overheal

I doubt its a priority right this minute. Most of the setup can run smoothly IMO in feed forward public. They spent weeks vetting the original list and at that the concept itself bred resentment.

I'll update the list so its current but adding to it will just drag things out right now when things are just about to pick back up.