(Site is a graveyard - How can boards save itself?) Any update?

My thread was a drp about a warning that I disagreed with that an admin moved to feedback.

Firstly, I'll agree the appeals process is convoluted and confusing.

DRP is to dispute official warnings and forums bans etc. Only the OP and mods, cmods and admin are allowed post.

A threadban is not an official ban, you technically can still post on the thread but you've been instructed not to and these are usually appealed via PM with the mod or in Helpdesk. Anyone can post there.

I don't understand the distinction and think the process should be the same for all of these, and that it shouldn't be a free for all.

Feedback - streamline the appeals process, don't allow disputes from a thread that someone has been threadbanned from to continue in the appeal. It's likely done to rile up the OP and make them look unreasonable in some cases.

The ignore list has gone from 50 to 200. I’d suggest using that might be a good decision for some folks. I maintain a short list myself of posters whose inane and witless opinions I simply don’t want to read. Might cut down on reported posts and moderator workload?

Sidebar: why is nearly everyone in 2 groups of registered users now?

Vanilla randomness.

It warrants a lot of attention. I've myself been a mod until 2 days ago. I have found the modding of certain forums to be well below par having always tried to stick to the particular rules of the forum charter.

Now

The flaws of the vanilla platform opened up these problems to me. I started getting pinged in replies to reported posts or if I was reported. I presume all mods do. I presume, maybe wrongly that I'm not the only mod who has inadvertently clicked on the pop up messages when I got one as they appear like any other notification.

I had one poster report me, then me to accuse me of something that was patently untrue and proceed to make husiance reports against me I told them I knew he was reporting me. Me knowing that and telling the poster is considered a bigger problem, than the poster making false accusations though. Maybe I've broken trust, but it's something to know.

Now Im probably a rare case of someone commenting on a report that I shouldn't have, and that's fair enough. Several times, and I've argued with mods of other forums about their modding.

But someone has to argue with them if they can actually see and verify the inconsistencies in play.

I'm not talking about the judgement calls where one human might have a different view to another. As that will always throw up differences on moderation, I'm talking about the clear, straight up cases were for example one poster gets a warning for attacking the posters from a mod. The same mod then deletes another post that is attacking the posters, but doesn't issue a warning.

Someone posts clear and deliberate antisemitism, a warning and deletion issued. Proper order

Someone else posts clear islamophobia then, and the offensive post may or may not get deleted at all. There may be a warning. But sometimes deleting is seen as enough.

Bigotry is bigotry no matter what it's against, yet the approach is inconsistent. I could've chosen sexism, transphobia, homophobia(still waiting on a particular post there to be dealt with) , anti British rants, xenophobia, sinophobia, russophobia or just plain as day racism.

The same posters can post such stuff. Maybe get a warning, maybe not. Maybe get a threadban and then go and manage to turn the next thread they're involved into the same

And that's not even into the people who constantly want to bait posters into saying something so they can drag them down to a level that they can say, look what they said, they should be banned.

Rather than looking to fix those flaws, and sort of the issue with moderation which exists because of a cohort of repeat offenders not being held to the standard of the various forum charters , the anawer is to just sort of put it all on the long finger.

All that is required is consistency and that's not happening.

The Devs really ought to address inherent issues with the reported post pipeline, it all going to a single page in the backend is a clear issue, instead it seems to make sense that posts should go into pages separated by forum/permissions per moderator, with amalgamated page only visible for Cmods in the categories they oversee and the overall reports copied into a single feed only for the admins (which ideally, would not just be carbon copies in admin or cmod threads but instead hyperlink Cmods and admins to the direct report threads at the mod level so Mods, CMods and Admins all have the same ability to reply to those report threads and coordinate professional actions). It should never be the case that Vanilla sends a bell notification to a mod of forum X who was reported for a post they made in forum Y, mod of X is a regular user in forum Y, they should not have access to reports in forum Y, too much risk of abuse, and can have a chilling effect where users are hesitant to report posts from someone who is a mod of some other forum, knowing they can see the report. Vanilla Bell notifications probably shouldn't happen at all for the reported posts system, iirc mods at least under vBulletin were receiving email notifications when reports they had responsibility for happened.

I'm not entirely sure if the Dev accounts are even reading this though I hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears. Single page implementation for reported posts has been the case for forever seemingly and I would have hoped that was one of the things they would have implemented a change for with the changeover to Vanilla, but now it seems apparently not. In the interim, any or all mods could go an turn off bell notifications for that forum, when the site moved over to Vanilla I absolutely hated the notifications system, it is clunky as hell IMO so I purposefully went into all the forums I post in, and turned them off, this is what I see now when I click the bell, even when I have a couple ghostly notifications apparently pending:

These can be turned off in the corner of any forum:

The one in the warning earlier. It suggtest that warnings in this thread are carrying a greater weight and are more than just a 0 or 1 point warning.

I don't see other forums with that specifically. Yes threadbans, or forum bans(particularly soccer), but nothing for sure about autositeban outside of the already existing auto sitebans.

That's why it appears to be a bit on the fly

There are no dev accounts (to the best of my knowledge).

In Boards.ie's heyday, there were at least three full-time developers. This was on top of non-technical staff like the community managers, and whatever non-frontend facing staff there may have been (accounts? HR?).

Now, there is a total of one, single, non-technical employee (not counting the owner, who doesn't appear to be involved in the day-to-day running). Technical requests either go to Vanilla support (who definitely are not reading anything on Boards.ie, it's just one client among many), or are outsourced to freelancers (who also aren't reading anything on Boards.ie, and may only have the vaguest notion of what Boards.ie is). In the absence of substantial investment, talk of things like overhauling the reporting system are a complete pipe dream.

Things like reviewing charters and the DRP process, items that are under the purview of admins, cmods and mods are at least a little more practical, but again, the numbers of those users are substantially down on what they used to be. Those members are barely treading water as is, and it's more likely that those numbers continue to decrease than recover. Look at CA - there are 9 mods on the mod-list in Help Desk (which would be a not-reasonable number), but a quick look at all nine's post histories tells you that only 4 are actively modding. That's not near enough for the busiest category on the site.

And all of this is happening at a time when social media has become far more adversarial, meaning the workload has not decreased in line with the reduction in users.

You were very against personal abuse earlier in the thread and wanted anyone who thanked such a post to be sanctioned, in your opinion they're dicks. I can post the relevant posts if you like?

Should this not be applied consistently, or should posters that we feel are posting 'toxic content' be open to personal abuse? Who decides what exactly is or isn't toxic?

It's either a consistent rule or ad hoc moderation where some are allowed post personal but others aren't, both can't be applied simultaneously.

Ultimately though the posters must have crossed some lines, or the eventual end result wouldn't have been a site ban.
This is more like a driver with convictions for speeding, drink driving, etc appealing one of those convictions - and the judge took another look at what they had been previously charged with, and instead of overturning the conviction, banned them from driving.

Personal accountability won't make the roads safer, or boards less toxic, if there's a sizable active minority who don't practice it. They have to be held to account, and that can't be done by the userbase or we'd be accused of back seat modding and attacking the poster. That can only come from the application of site moderation, and I doubt I am speaking for myself only when I say strong mod action would have the support of a large number of the most enagaged and long standing users on the site.
I have total respect for the trojan work put in by the mods of CA for example, and the constraints they are under with tools - but that doesn't mean the moderation is as good \ efficient \ consistent as it could be.

Will boards still be here? Isn't that the point of the thread?

Many good posters, posters who contributed positively and rarely troubled the mods, frustrated at what they perceive as toxic content, have taken your advice "go do something else" to its ultimate conclusion… logged off and not come back.

I did see your DRP post. Could not understand it as was not in the original conversation but did see what was happening to you with responses clearly referring to issues somewhere else. It was not ok as I had thought that others were not allowed respond. The issue seemed to be that it was left open for a while so not sure if that is down to availability of mods?

I've given far too much time to this today.

Kudos. Certainly far more time than the owners have, and ultimately that is the problem IMHO, not the admins; the entire premise of the thread being that boards/the admins have to save the site by pulling up from the bootstraps because the owners have effectively left it maintenance mode is well, ah, missing the root problem I feel.

May I ask a question. Apologies, I'm obviously a much newer poster than pretty much everyone else on this thread, but I read boards for years before I joined. There was mention of tidying up alerts to mods, to prevent mods getting alerts not meant for them. Is it possible for that to be fixed or is that too challenging with Vanilla.

I know I keep mentioning more active moderation, and I know that's not a runner at the moment. In the meantime could alerts from reports from current affairs go to mods in other forums on a on call basis. e.g some mods volunteer to cover for Saturday night. They wouldn't have to act on judgement calls which require knowledge of the threads but obvious things like using slurs, being abusive to other posters that are not allowed on any fora which are reported by posters.

Thanks, sorry I must have up something wrong.

I think the days of Boards, or any online forum, being a community are over. The internet is no longer a niche space used by a minority of people. Everyone has access, there are scammers, doxxers, trolls, shills and people who would hold a grudge that they would carry over into real life.

How many here would be comfortable posting a photo? Attending a meet up where the details were posted publicly? I'd say very few compared to the past.

It's a discussion site. Yes, rules and charters should be updated and clarified and moderation applied accordingly. The problem is that some will only accept the application of these rules when other posters are sanctioned, but think they have been unfairly sanctioned when it applies to them. That has been demonstrated on this thread.

The owner has left the building, if the owner has no interest the writing is on the wall. All the exciting plans that were to be revealed remain as yet unrevealed, apart from the disastrous move to Vanilla and the crowd funding initiative that failed to reach a very modest target for the Boards.ie Ukraine Appeal. In fact, it was so poorly handled that it appeared that a portion of donations would go the owner, not 100% to the cause. It was clarified that all money raised would go directly to the Red Cross, but by that that stage it was too late and trust was eroded. Any further fundraising would have seen a percentage of donations used to fund Boards, but I don't think there was any other attempt made. I

I forgot catfishing, you'd have to be fairly sure the person was genuine. Some get a kick out of humiliating and deceiving others.

You can't really compare a community set up for chronic illnesses with Boards. Boards isn't niche, it's a catch-all forum for general discussion of any and all topics.

Moderators and admins can't be expected to just know who is and isn't genuine, all they can do it try to curtail trolling and disruptive posters.

The world and the Internet have changed, whether we like it or not. We're all here because we're used to the linear format of Boards where you have to post your opinion.

Remember the days of all the ridiculous threads on AH during the summer where lots of replies would be "When do the schools go back?" We don't have that now because those posters are now posting selfies and uploading videos on Instagram or Tiktok, or looking at the content uploaded by others. We're dinosaurs to them, and some dinosaurs are unpleasant. As nice as it would be we'll never return to the "good old days", and people complained as much then as now.

But we have a forum here, for chronic health conditions.

The group I'm on about was on Facebook. Not a niche website.

That was (and is still potential) the beauty of boards.

There was a community based on drama, another for playing football, another for cycling, another for photography etc, etc.

Boards has niche forums within the labyrinthine network of fora. I can only tell you the communities within are far less visible than they used to be, if they even exist anymore.