What is going on with the Current Affairs

I have no specific input on the thread in question above but am interested in the overarching question of what is going on in CA.

Since the changeover, moderation has been an issue there. Some understandable (though barely acceptable) as part of the changeover process to the new platform and the impact of that and specifically the disappearance of mods themselves, modding tools and modding transparency.

We are now 8 months on from that changeover and more than enough time has passed to resolve at least some of these issues and yet it doesn't seem that this has been the case.

Recent observation of moderation in the CA forum is that it is entirely subjective, ad hoc, and frequently invisible in terms of transparency. This is even more so the case over the last few days/weeks it seems with posts being removed from threads without warnings or communication to the poster and without evidence on the specific post as would have been done in the past, or on the thread itself that mods are actively having to engage.

There always has been, and always will be arguments from various sides in debates that mods are biased and that is just the nature of debate on contentious topics that can cross the line in terms of being reasonable but previously, there was more transparency in this respect with more visible content from mods as to their thought process and actions.

The removing of posts without transparency and without communication to the poster unless it is for very obvious reasons such as trolling or shilling or similar is completely unacceptable in my view no matter the persuasion of a mod with respect to any given topic . In at least two instances over the last few days I have had such posts removed, one of which was highly thanked which I am only mentioning in terms of its validity and acceptance within the thread and yet it was removed without action (warning) or comment (note on thread or DM). I flagged the post that mine had responded to and asked why mine had been removed and have received no explanation or response. Posters from the 'other side' of the debate have had similar experience I gather going by their comments but that doesn't make it any more acceptable.

Moderation across the entire site is an issue with respect to transparency which I've mentioned and to compound this, the fact that it simply does not exist any longer in some areas while in others we have mods making subjective decisions outside of charter direction is unacceptable in my view.

I am aware of the skeleton nature of Boards, and of the lack of tools that existed but this is no longer an excuse for what we are now seeing and having to deal with. It seems to be that some mods are more comfortable with the room for subjectivity and the absence of transparency as to their actions and that is a dangerous environment longer term.

CA is an environment in which contentious topics are discussed and people on all sides of the debate can be quite passionate, I'm not suggesting that there shouldn't be moderation, it is critical, but that it should be reflect the instruction in the Charter and it should be visible. It is frequently neither of these things at the moment.

I have seen no movement from Boards to attract new moderators to replace those that left and while I know that that isn't straightforward either, something has to be done to overcome these issues or else it isn't really a discussion Board in the truest sense.

So, all you posted was that ‘we already send ministers’, and not ‘We do send ministers to despotic authoritarian regimes Mark, Saudi and Russia to name two.’

You realise you don't have to reply to the thread? You could very easily open a new discussion to compare and contrast the current government, or any other party with SF. The problem seems to be that you want to be able to post how you like in any thread you like, despite the specific instructions on that thread.

This is a confusing post.

I can't tell are you arguing here that the Mods should ignore reported posts and just mod however they like? Or that users reporting posts are somehow coping out, not like you who didn't report posts? This would be weird since I've first hand experience of you reporting what i consider to be innocuous posts yourself. You seem angry that someone "got away with something" yet proud that you didn't report it?

Look the reality is, as much as people like fighting on the internet, and the CA board is the main arena here, mods have limited time, limited tools and only human - they can't manage here perfectly. Everyone needs to just grow up and stop complaining about how this free resource is run.

I suspect there is some truth to what you say that some non-mod posters are effectively modding because they have a fair degree of confidence what the outcome will be.

I'm not sure if it's lazy modding given their scarcity now and all modding seems to be left to just a couple of them but I do think it is a situation they are happy with where they can just focus on reported posts and then use their own subjectivity from there. Reported posts no longer seem to be considered in the context in which they were made which is a definite change from previously.

I have to agree.

In many ways, I feel sorry for the Mods and Admins. They are clearly under-resourced and don't have the tooling available to them to manage the site as well as before and snuff out repeat offenders, sockpuppet accounts, trolls and bots.

Now, that is not to say they get everything correct, or are indeed infallible, but personally, I think they are very fair to posters, too fair in fact given the history of some posters, but anyway, just want to voice my support to them in general as the job is hard and neigh on impossible.

As to the OP, no leg to stand on IMO.

Do other threads about specific parties have warnings in the OP about mentioning other parties? I don't think they do. You know that warning was there and decided to ignore it. You can't complain about the moderation that follows.

Is this just another help desk thread that is allowed to devolve into a Franciebrady pile on? May as well unsubscribe now.

To the point though, I have always felt that you can judge a message board by its mods approach to deleting posts. Unfortunately Boards approach is for mods to delete whatever the **** they want whenever they want, so its best to set expectations accordingly.

Nah, looks like it’s another thread used to “attack” one mod, who does Trojan work keeping this site going, because certain users don’t like getting reprimanded for not staying within the site rules.

There were 4 threads on the go at one point, a small number of cantankerous, malcontent, users ganging up and trying to get “one over” on this mod for having the audacity to call them out on their nonsense.

I am actually in awe of his hard work, patience and leeway sometimes...