Excessive moderation sucking the fun out of AH

Deank

Azalea wrote: »

You can't see what? The numerous times it has been pointed out that the issue is with the breach of Boards rules and mod/admin being fine with it in this instance when they usually enforce it?

I think you're missing the point RM was making, he is difficult to understand at the best of times
The whole reason AH has gone to shit is because it's full of lefty whingers, handwringers and the easily offended, it is now being moderated to cater for such.

Azalea

Deank wrote: »

The whole reason AH has gone to shit is because it's full of lefty whingers, handwringers and the easily offended, it is now being moderated to cater for such.

I would be more inclined to agree with RadiationKing - that it's gone to sh-t (if it has - I personally don't really think it has) because of people using AH as a platform to be as vitriolic as they possibly can be about different groups (and I don't mean people simply wanting to express negative views about e.g immigration or travellers - I think those views should be welcomed once they're expressed fairly).

There are the easily offended handwringers but only a tiny few from what I observe - they are easily outnumbered by the sh1t-stirrers. But most people are sensible and somewhere in between.

looksee

This is a feedback thread, and as such should maintain a level of non-ambiguity and civility.

I am finding it difficult to see how some of the posts are being allowed - Seamus's comment may have been some sort of convoluted inside joke, but feedback is not the place for that.

I am not sure whether Kersplat! has stomped off because he is annoyed by the support for Seamus's comment, or that people objected to it. 'ffsake grow up' is hardly a civil response either.

I would tend to agree that After Hours has become more controlled. Maybe it should be a bit more relaxed to give those of that inclination an opportunity to post ****e if they must. Bit like giving graffiti artists a wall to paint on rather than messing up the whole town. On the other hand I never used to go in there, much less post in it. Now I find an interesting thread, but many of the ones that could be termed interesting could be in other forums.

The main reason for this dispute is that the original boards contributors have now grown older, got kids and families and responsible jobs and have lost their taste for anarchy. The internet is also different, being on boards was once an edgy thing to do, now it is just one of many.

I like it the way it is, but I would be quite happy to not go into some forums if they did not appeal to me, whether because of subject matter or style or moderation. This was the basis of mods having independence over running their fiefdom - all that is necessary is that the very broad rules of boards are maintained over the whole site, and that locally it is understood where the boundaries are - and these are stuck to consistently.

tl:dr - lighten up on AH, be consistent within forums.

Deank

Azalea wrote: »

I would be more inclined to agree with RadiationKing - that it's gone to sh-t (if it has - I personally don't really think it has) because of people using AH as a platform to be as vitriolic as they possibly can be about different groups (and I don't mean people simply wanting to express negative views about e.g immigration or travellers - I think those views should be welcomed once they're expressed fairly).

There are the easily offended handwringers but only a tiny few from what I observe - they are easily outnumbered by the sh1t-stirrers. But most people are sensible and somewhere in between.

IMO there are far more of the easily offended and outraged than there are of the sh1t stirrers.

As for vitriol, sometimes it has a place when all other means of debate fail, there's nothing wrong with a bit if harsh criticism, if warranted

Azalea

Threads are constantly started about how such a thing is political correctness gone mad - often misrepresenting the subject.
You rarely see threads started expressing offence over trivial stuff.

Wibbs

Azalea wrote: »

You're talking about jokes - *jokes*.

This was not a joke, it was an insult and quite personal. Mild, but still an insult and quite personal. And more to the point: breaking Boards rules.

Just admit that seamus, even if he is here for years and a highly respected poster and a very good poster, was wrong and it was also wrong of a mod and admin to let it be known that they were fine with this breaching of Boards rules.

Ah yes the rules. TBH and for me there are too many bloody rules and pettiness and running to daddy/authoritay with said bloody rules around the place these days. Often when it suits of course. We really need to lighten the fcuk up more. It's gone too damned Sheldon Cooper pedantic of late IMH and I've seen that stuff smother debate often enough too.

Did I thank Seamus' post? Nope. Did I think it mildly dismissive? Yep. Did I think of it as personal abuse? The hell I did. Did I think he was pretty much on the ball with his observations? Yep.

Looksee wrote:

The main reason for this dispute is that the original boards contributors have now grown older, got kids and families and responsible jobs and have lost their taste for anarchy.

Some have L and yes the beige sweaters and slacks crept in, but that should be resisted IMH. Why? Because it's bloody boring and life is boring enough without wilfully importing boredom and middle aged pedantry. Then again I like a bit of anarchy with my chips.

Deank wrote:

IMO there are far more of the easily offended and outraged than there are of the sh1t stirrers.

In my humble I'd reckon it runs about equal in AH anyway. One feeds off the other. There's also another group, the easily offended shít stirrers and they get more leeway.

Wibbs

Azalea wrote: »

You are both acting as if personal abuse was once allowed when you know it was never allowed.

The difference being the definition of "personal abuse" was much laxer. Dig deep enough in this very forum and you will see founders, admins, members, mods current and former being significantly more robust in their GTFO responses(with cat pics).

Chorus_suck

This post has been deleted.

Azalea

If you've a problem with the rules Wibbs (and to echo what you said - when it suits) why are you a moderator? What was said was insulting, not just mildly dismissive - and what on earth prompted it? One post considered pedantic ffs - ironically despite your issue with the rules, the post in question from Eugene Norman was questioning a rule, yet you think seamus made a good point?

The point though is more the fact it was allowed despite breaking one of Boards' main rules, and even endorsed by those who enforce such rules.

I may not always agree with rules here too (the grammar nazi one on AH is ridiculous - fine, it's dickish to comment on small mistakes, but if something is actually unreadable it's hardly unfair to point that out) but what's clearcut for me is that breaking of those rules should not be overlooked just because a poster is well established/the mod or admin agrees with them.

People are utterly obsessed with going on about how sensitive people are getting, by the way - special snowflake yadda yadda over and over. I hear of it way more than seeing it. AH is no different than it ever was in this regard but the hate-mongers have definitely increased.

Something like what seamus said would never ever have been considered ok on Boards. "Attack the post, not the poster" - and it breached that. It wasn't abuse of course but it was an insult and that's included under Personal abuse on Boards.
Pretending it would have been OK years back is just too dishonest.

The Hill Billy

Let's get back on topic - ie, AH moderation.

Enough of the personal digs (proving a point/serious/jokey/whatever) & discussion of same.

tHB

K-9

A lot of the old AH posters would think the forum is stuffy and not as anarchic as it was so I'm not sure where that perception comes from.

riffmongous

K-9 wrote: »

A lot of the old AH posters would think the forum is stuffy and not as anarchic as it was so I'm not sure where that perception comes from.

It looks like Feedback is the new place for edgy, anything goes posting :pac:

But seriously, I think a lot of good points have been made, however, is it honestly fair to say AH is now a better forum compared to what it was years ago? It might seem strange but to me it's like comparing two very different forums..

Just to say I like the current AH, despite all it's issues it's a great place to post, lots of people, not too strict and still plenty of fun if you avoid the agenda threads, but, it's radically different to the old AH which was a place for that weird part of the internet, for people who would rather post memes than debate issues and where trolling was done for fun rather than to promote an agenda (I personally enjoy the anarchy)

.. and while I wouldn't want to lose the current AH, it's a pity that it seems to come at the expense of the old AH, which for all it's problems was a special place. I just looked up my old 2005 boards account from before that whole password thing (I still dont even know what exactly happened there, Boards deserves a proper wiki imo) and I never made a single post in AH then, but I used to lurk a lot and that was part of the fun, I used to enjoy reading the threads but I never posted there, whereas now I will post in threads but I wont read anything I don't think I will post in, they are just fundamentally different forums imo, for better and worse

just my almost-drunk ramblings at 3am

pickarooney

Let's just be honest. It was all grand until women appeared on the internet.

Pink Fairy

pickarooney wrote: »

Let's just be honest. It was all grand until women appeared on the internet.

And then ye made them mods!!
:mad:

RadiationKing

Azalea wrote: »

Who are the "yourselves"?

The people who (generally) start threads complaining about how restrictive AH apparently is.

Maybe it is but I can't say I'm surprised or confused. Everything is so heavily politicised nowadays that tempers quickly and easily flare so jokes don't tend to stay jokes for long and often enough they're just insults couched as jokes.

Was AH more fun in the past? Probably but again, (IMO, obviously) that's because it wasn't so heavily politicised. Like I said, there was someone making some comment about Muslim immigrants on a thread completely unrelated to that - people are taking every opportunity and even inventing them to ride their hobby horses. It's not really unique to AH, though. Over the last year or so, things have massively blown up across the internet.

So what can be done if people want a more lighthearted AH? You'll have to piss off a lot of people to do it because it'd involve completely driving out politicisation/agenda pushing. And as I've said, the kind of people complaining are the kind who love to push agendas. Because they don't want a more laid-back, fun AH, they want somewhere they're free to start **** and then hide behind "relax it's just a joke" when everyone and their dog knows it's anything but.

Azalea

Right now there's a thread moaning about very camp men (with digs at women too) and a thread about school toilets for trans kids, with the usual ignorance about trans people. As far as I can see, people are spewing away to their hearts' content so I'm not convinced by the over moderation argument (although there might be no mods around - and no harm imo letting the spewing carry on, within reason). As a constant thing I mean - I would agree with it being the case now and again for random instances.

RDM_83 again

My two cents on this (since I am a complaining rules lawerer).

This thread itself is a good example of a few of the issues relating to AH

1) Lack of consistency in terms of posters who are within the "in group" (and mods) and those that aren't. Its always been that way but there was a much larger group of the former so there was a driving force of activity within the forum from said group rather than it being boards royalty and everybody else.

2) Niceness kills funniness,

3) The internet/message boards has politicized/"activated" a lot in the last two years or more years this is generally framed as being driven by agenda posters, I would say that a lot of the time posters are reacting to politicized changes in the site* (or the internet in general) this is exemplified by the post by Dav linked to earlier in the thread

We didn't suddenly start banning Right Wing opinion, Right Wing opinion has become dangerously extremist because the rest of the world has become a more tolerant place. This is an inherently politicized statement (rest of said thread that was posted in has other examples of what I mean)

4) Everybody is older and there is more avenues, my first ever post on boards involved me on a thread with 4 people I knew personally,(wasn't AH because it was sh-te back then!but I am guessing for the posters there it was similar).

5) Posters like me, I mean this seriously I didn't post on AH much when I first had an account, Me and there is a fair amount of posters like me aren't very anarchic, particularly "social" or light hearted, realistically I should post mainly in Humanities or other forums which are better suited to debate.
AH is a pretty decent place for discussion now, I would use another forum on here but unfortunately they tend to be pretty quiet when I check them.

Should add that I do like the site and most of the time the moderation is of a level above other sites.

*Think about it, over the last 2/3 years Boards has been falling in active users (I think), these posters that are now complained about for killing the site/AH didn't suddenly find an internet connection and Boards.ie 2 years ago they were always here its just moderation was more tolerant (within some forums) and they just had torture fantasies about travelers

Cabaal

pickarooney wrote: »

Let's just be honest. It was all grand until women appeared on the internet.

nah, it was fine until the Eternal September, after that it only got worse!

seamus

K-9 wrote: »

Seamus's post was exactly like the old AH, so why people are getting offended by it on a thread bemoaning the fall of the old AH, is typical of the new AH.

I'm glad somebody got it.

Something like what seamus said would never ever have been considered ok on Boards. "Attack the post, not the poster" - and it breached that. It wasn't abuse of course but it was an insult and that's included under Personal abuse on Boards.
Pretending it would have been OK years back is just too dishonest.

Then clearly neither you nor your previous accounts have been around as long as you think.

What some people consider really harsh and offensive, some will see it as a harmless bit of slagging, others won't even blink at it.

This has been an issue since day dot, and boards has evolved. In the early days it was mostly gamers and internet-savvy kids between 15 and 25, talking absolute crap and giving eachother all sorts of dog's abuse, making insane defamatory statements and moderators doing basically whatever the hell they wanted, because it was funny.

Boards has continually evolved to fit the wants of those who get involved. The internet in general has become a place where your granny gets involved, and most of those people have no interest in watching people throwing abuse back and forth and being nasty to others - even if that is in a light-hearted way like, "your ma" or "blast her with piss", or slagging someone for being a pedant.

AH still has the chaotic, "talk about anything" feel to it, the fight in AH has always been keeping the signal:noise at a decent level, and the methods used to achieve that are always going to have to evolve. That doesn't mean of course AH has to become stricter and stricter over time - things come in and out of fashion, and you could probably ease up on "yore ma" at this stage, for example.

On the topic of rules lawyering though, as a former admin I can tell you that the majority of people who engage in it are just dicks trying to wriggle their way out of a ban on a technicality. Some people do honestly engage in it in the interests of fairness, and that's fair enough.

However the vast majority of posters recognise that the spirit of the rules are more important than the letter of them, and the fact that this is a privately-run website just trying to keep the content quality high, and not some quasi-legal jurisdiction.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Azalea

"You [insert insult here]" has never been considered ok on Boards, in over 10 years.

The charter is deemed important to abide by - hence the "please read charter" notifications, as enforced by moderators.

To decide "well it's not enforceable to the letter" when it suits, is iffy.

Why Do We Fall

Wibbs wrote: »

*reality check* There will always be "favouritism" and yes there will always be "cliques". And yes there are a couple of less than stellar mods who see a banhammer as an overcompensation for an internal lack. And there will always be trolls, high level and below the radar(the most odious of all). And there will always be a "them and us" vibe to the whole modding thing, the latter especially goes on Boards.ie.

However and it's a bloody big however, equally on the same Boards.ie there is more than an attempt to reduce that kinda stuff. I don't know of a single other forum of any size that has feedback to the degree that exists here. Never mind Help Desk and Dispute Resolution. You can complain all you like about the latter and how it works, but you can complain and that option exists where they don't exist anywhere else. That's pretty damn special.

Oh and that was part of Boards DNA from the get go and the DRP etc came about from a grassroots call for more accountability and transparency and it was spearheaded by mods on behalf of us all. "Hey admins we're clamouring for a system in place as a check and balance against ourselves". And Boards could have said bugger off, as they could have easily filled the mod positions with power trippers, but to the credit of the founder's ethos of this place they didn't. For all the sometime rancour coming out, both "sides" were fighting for the same thing, a better community. I see that much more now with hindsight.

Have things changed? Yes a little. With the good that DRP et al brought, the bad was a tendency for mods to become officious, less personal, more apart from the forum you mod and worst of all IMH less likely to keep posting, which goes quadruple for high traffic forums and a tendency to pick safe pairs of hands. And that has added to the mod/member divisions to some degree, which is not good IMH and a tendency that should be fought. I would also bet the farm that no way would a grassroots call from mods happen today en masse. There's a little more jadedness about. I personally don't like the newer trend of deleting troublesome posts(although I have done it), for me it smacks too much of lesser forums out there and IMHO we should be always aiming for greater.

Has AH changed? Massively. Click back even five years and read it. A very different forum. Far fewer "serious" threads. What really strikes you are how short the thread titles are compared to today. As the site has contracted/changed in numbers and demographics AH has become less the gateway forum and more the forum folks find and stay in. Has it changed for the better? I would personally say yes.

It ain't a wibbs insight piece without referring to someone's lack of a tackle.

Someone summed it earlier quite well: if you want a better AH then contribute new and better content.

People love to be outraged, and people love to cause it as well. Unfortunately for AH there's plenty who are only too happy to do both while contributing to the same old tired and recycled threads

RDM_83 again

Why Do We Fall wrote: »

It ain't a wibbs insight piece without referring to someone's lack of a tackle.

Someone summed it earlier quite well: if you want a better AH then contribute new and better content.

People love to be outraged, and people love to cause it as well. Unfortunately for AH there's plenty who are only too happy to do both while contributing to the same old tired and recycled threads

Has AH ever not had that problem, hasn't it always contained lots of tired and recycled threads, I occasionally lurked on it with my pre-hack account and it was funny but most of the time wasn't very interesting?

steddyeddy

Interpretation of the rules are definitely stifling my enjoyment of AH. I can certainly understand why some threads are closed but what’s AH for if not for frivolous discussion? What bothers me more is the moving of threads. AH is supposed to be about general discussion unless I have it wrong. There seems to be a large effort to move threads to other forums where they’re deemed more appropriate. Unless they’re ultra-specific I don’t see the need to constantly move threads. This has been happening to some of the more serious discussions lately.

pickarooney

Cabaal wrote: »

nah, it was fine until the Eternal September, after that it only got worse!

That was the month I first went on the internet. Could be something in that.

steddyeddy

Why Do We Fall wrote: »

It ain't a wibbs insight piece without referring to someone's lack of a tackle.

Someone summed it earlier quite well: if you want a better AH then contribute new and better content.

People love to be outraged, and people love to cause it as well. Unfortunately for AH there's plenty who are only too happy to do both while contributing to the same old tired and recycled threads

Half the serious threads are moved. The movement of threads seems to be quite arbitrary. Maybe a tagline of "this would be better suited to (insert forum here)" would be better.

oscarBravo

RDM_83 again wrote: »

...I would use another forum on here but unfortunately they tend to be pretty quiet when I check them.

You can see how that might be just a little bit self-fulfilling, right?

The Moldy Gowl

steddyeddy wrote: »

Half the serious threads are moved. The movement of threads seems to be quite arbitrary. Maybe a tagline of "this would be better suited to (insert forum here)" would be better.

All the serious threads can piss off In my opinion. They are a load of bollox in after hours, especially after the first or second page.

I couldn't give a flying **** what a politician does or says.

Wibbs

oscarBravo wrote: »

You can see how that might be just a little bit self-fulfilling, right?

True OB, but it seems a near given that once a forum dips below a certain point it's on life support and then pretty much flatlines. I can think of a few now that are kept alive by the efforts of a couple of people, sometimes one person. In latter years I was impressed and surprised with the success of say Politics Cafe(and I really thought that was on a hiding to nowhere TBH), but I can't recall a forum that hit that point of no return coming back, or did any? I used to post a lot in Humanities back in the day, but it tapered off and then went dead and a few times folks have tried to brig it back to life, but… AH for me is more Humanties Cafe these days.

I would think that Politics Cafe worked because it was basically After Hours Politics and there's a link to it within AH. So when a thread was moved there there wasn't the requirement for a new set of rules and general ethos and style change. If the same threads had been moved to the main Politics forums with their different rules and ethos they'd have died on the vine. Maybe the same thing could be tried with the aforementioned Humanities? Then as traffic increases and more people add it to their subbed threads the dialogue could be tightened up a little?

steddyeddy

Gowlasauras Rex wrote: »

All the serious threads can piss off In my opinion. They are a load of bollox in after hours, especially after the first or second page.

I couldn't give a flying **** what a politician does or says.

Well there's serious threads and political threads. Some of the more serious forums have less traffic and generate less discussion.