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[Cheese]

I think the happy/sad threads allow us to discuss small matters that otherwise would not normally be worthy of a thread but make for good discussion in a single thread. It is annoying when people start copying the idea like an internet meme though.

[Retro]

Apologies for being away; I just returned from class. I’m quite glad to see that things have cooled down and that more balanced discussions are underway.

As a heads up, now that the thread’s had some time to breathe, I’ll be alerting Toady/Threetoe it and see what they think.

The faux cuteness thing annoys me as much as anyone, but I don't see why it should lead to banning.

I'm not trying to encourage banning in any way. I'm actually posting this in the hopes that there will be less bans handed out. I'm not looking for hardass drill sergeants to whip everyone's asses into line. I want moderators so there will actually be someone the community can go to if they have a problem, and not just to tell them who to ban.
...
Top of the first post. Plus both Adams brothers have gotten a lot more aggressive in their moderation lately, likely due to their frustration, as I also talked about.

More restrictive, aggressive moderation only leads to worse behavior among forum users. It leads to a higher user turnover, alienation of most levelheaded users, and a general lack of existing standards to learn from and adhere to, just as much as a complete lack of moderation does. See: almost every other forum ever. Adding third party moderators just creates factionalism and abuse. See: almost every other forum ever.

Yes, people who make spam and get in fights need to be whacked with a mute to straighten them out, and some threads are blatant trolls and should be locked. But saying "no silliness ever because serious business!" is even sillier than a thread about goddamn cartoon ponies.

It could lead to those things, on a small level. But if the forums were better moderated, perhaps more drop-ins would stay as well. Nothing is certain. I also don't believe that factionalism and abuse is automatic. I've seen plenty of fair and unbiased mods, even with friends on wherever they're moderating. I also have plenty of faith in the Adams brothers to, if they decide to implement moderators at all, choose people who will uphold their standards rather than be irresponsible pricks. I also don't mean to say 'no silliness' - but, to use the happy/sad threads as examples yet again, if I want to talk about something that made me happy today and start a discussion about it but the rest of the page is full of posts of idle nonsense, it's unlikely a conversation would start up. So in this case I would want a moderator to tone down (but not ban, or dispermit) the silliness in the happy thread in order to facilitate its actual purpose, while other threads like the pony thread could continue to be silly stuff about ponies.

Since the silly users get all the attention, I'm worried that more aggressive moderation will shut them down, while leaving the malicious users standing.  And then the forum character goes waaaaay in the wrong direction.

I should emphasize again that I don't want aggressive moderation. Just people to guide things occasionally to make sure we don't need aggressive mod response as often. I also don't believe that said malicious users will be left unnoticed following the addition of moderators.

The problem with mods (and I say this as both a former forum mod and IRC mod) is that you then require a set-in-stone code of conduct to back your actions, else you will invariably be accused of favoritism and bias. What may seem like harmless silliness to me may be an offensive waste of time and resources to someone else. And what may seem like an exercise of free speech to someone else may just come off as being a total asshat to me.

This leads to the mods devloping "tribes" of supporters, and just kind of factionalizes the whole community. And gods help you when you have two mods who strongly disagree over whether something is an infraction.

Mod ‘tribe’ backings are possible, but in relation to this forum, I don’t think Tarn would appoint anyone likely to care about whether or not people suck up to them. Nobody’s completely impartial, no, but good mods can do their job impartially regardless of how they feel.

Having moderated a (much smaller) forum before, I can tell you that if we had citizen moderators, the rules would have to be extremely well set. People get mad when they feel they've been kicked out for no reason. Occasionally mad enough to come back under various IPs and troll everyone they see. Not only that, you can't have rules like 'no swearing'; rather you have to make it clear that major offenses (posting porn pictures, spamming, etc) are what gets you banned. Mutes and such would likely be the highest level of punishment a moderator other than Toady/ThreeToe should be able to give.

I agree that the rules would be well set. On top of our very minimalistic rules right now, we have a spirit about the forum for what’s acceptable and what’s not. The more detailed ruleset wouldn’t suddenly make new things unacceptable; it’d simply be a written version of this spirit. Ideally, nothing (or acceptably few things) would change for the worse.

So if there's one good thing in having moderators, its to enact the same kind of calming effect that Toady and Three Toe have just by making a post, without even actually acting.  They possess a unilateral power to say - Guys, what you're doing is probably annoying quite a few people, and you probably understand that.   So c'mon, lay off. - without it turning into arguments and factions.  Much.  Having a few more people who can do that, since Tarn and Zach don't have all the free time in the world to read threads themselves, would cut down on the blowups.  I really don't think it's necessary, but it would work.

This is a very nice phrasing of how I had perceived moderator action – calming posts to cool threads down and keep things relatively on-topic, not a sudden influx of arbitrary mutes and bans.

You would also have to state that mods are not to use their powers for entertainment. I remember IRC chans where the ops would kick and deop each other as a joke. Got really annoying to everyone else.

This is a given, yes. Nobody wants joke mods. I don’t want people to harass and annoy the community, I want people who will benefit it.

I would like to add to that the fact that these forums are basically the official community of DF and Bay12, and as such represent it in some way.
Taking a look at the GD room, I have difficulty imagining that Toady feels it to be a positive representation.

Yes. I read a post of Toady’s this summer saying that thread locks were for something irreversibly out of hand, and deletions were for if he was embarrassed by the thread’s content enough as a reflection of the B12 and DF community at large. But as he’s been deleting threads left and right lately, I can only imagine his frustration with the increasing inanity is growing.

Okay, there's room to prefer a lax attitude, but you can't really believe that.  I think I've only clicked the Report button less than a half-dozen times, but I like it being there and doing something.  Rather than, well, an absolute lack of mod-tools.  Which why I'm pretty sure you're being facetious.

No, I'm quite serious. I've been on lots and lots and lots of forums, a lot of them in the days before one-click report buttons were common. It's just that reporting is made more difficult; someone needs to manually compose a message to the moderator instead of just click-and-type. Perhaps a simple renaming to "Clutch Pearls" or "I have my panties in a bunch" would lessen his workload.

This is a community that endorses respect towards others, you realize.

I think the happy/sad threads allow us to discuss small matters that otherwise would not normally be worthy of a thread but make for good discussion in a single thread. It is annoying when people start copying the idea like an internet meme though.

Yes, I agree on both counts.

Thank you all for being mature individuals. It's good to see a nice spectrum of opinions. I'll be dropping a line to Toady now.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

It could lead to those things, on a small level. But if the forums were better moderated, perhaps more drop-ins would stay as well. Nothing is certain. I also don't believe that factionalism and abuse is automatic. I've seen plenty of fair and unbiased mods, even with friends on wherever they're moderating. I also have plenty of faith in the Tarn brothers to, if they decide to implement moderators at all, choose people who will uphold their standards rather than be irresponsible pricks.

I don't believe they could possible know anyone here well enough to be able to make an informed judgment call. I also doubt anyone just passing by the forums would go to the "yeah, this section has absolutely nothing to with Dwarf Fortress, it's just for the benefit of the community" section. I know I sure as hell didn't even so much as glance at them for a while. Now I don't read the upper forums, and haven't so much as glanced at them since the last big release.

[G-Flex]

I've been a little on-edge lately, as anybody could judge by my recent posts. I get like this when I feel like there's a problem that isn't being taken care of, not that it's necessarily a smart thing for me to do, and I should probably tone it down.


That being said: "Various Nonsense" was nuked and the boards reorganized so that each board here could have an actual purpose.

First off, I don't think Forum Games & Roleplaying should even exist. I understand why it does, but I think it's far too segregated from the overall purpose(s) of the forums to lead to anything good. It's like having a Taco Bell in a church: Sure, some people might find it convenient, but it has nothing to do with the establishment except in an incidental "some people who go Here might also like This" sense, but it might not necessarily fit the mood, shouldn't be taken for granted whatsoever, and should probably be closed down and moved across the street once the Taco Bell starts attracting riff-raff who are just there for the chalupas or whatever it is the kids eat these days. My point is that a roleplaying/games forum isn't bad, but it has almost nothing to do with what the boards are for, and will attract (and has attracted) a different crowd and atmosphere than this forum probably needs. In my opinion, this is doubly true when you consider that this forum is for a specific game (developer), leading to my next point.

These forums are for bay12games. As a game developer, I'm pretty sure Toady knows that community and a strong fanbase are important and should be fostered, and that presenting the right atmosphere/image for that is therefore also important. In an indirect sense, this forum plays an important role in his livelihood and well-being, and that purpose is well ahead of any others. If this were just a personal forum for his friends to goof off (and such forums certainly have a place in the world), things would be different and could certainly be more lax than what I think would be appropriate here, but the fact is that these forums exist for the purpose of discussing bay12games and its games, and providing a place for their surrounding community and fanbase to talk. This is just something important to keep in mind, not a statement about anything that should be done in particular; that's my next point.


In my opinion, this is what I think the forums need:

• No more Forum Games & Roleplaying. I went over this, but the short of it is: It isn't necessary, there are other and more sufficient places for it, and it attracts a crowd rather distinct from the purpose of the board. Nobody should expect bay12games to allow that stuff here, as it wouldn't even be strange of Toady to disallow it, statistically speaking.
• A better statement of purpose/rules for each board, and perhaps the boards in general. Right now, a lot of people seem unclear of what is/should be allowed/disallowed on each board here or on the forums in general. If there's a problem here, one necessary part of the solution is for each board to have enough of a given statement of purpose (clearly visible) and, if necessary, specific rules, that both moderation and self-regulation on part of the people posting would be easier and simpler. In a lot of places, this might not be necessary, but for these forums, I'm not so sure.
• A new moderator or two. I have no idea who I'd trust, but I don't think anybody here wants to see Toady and ThreeToe having to babysit their fanbase. It's not something they should have to put undue time or effort into doing, and dealing with a fan community can be frustrating enough, never mind when you sometimes have to play the Bad Cop sometimes, which can also be tense because then you have to worry about your own reputation amongst your own fans. Toady certainly doesn't deserve the frustration, especially when it makes him frustrated with his own fans and he has more important things to do. Of course, this kind of decision couldn't be made on a whim; lots of forums go down the tubes because the owners decide to appoint moderators blindly or based on first looks/personal acquaintanceship.

I'm not saying these boards need to turn into some kind of super-strict hellhole, as that wouldn't be good either, but some nuts and bolts definitely need to be tightened, I think.

Speaking on behalf of myself and a fair number of other DF fans I know, these forums are alienating to us. We go into General Discussion and see weird memespeak and twitterfacebookblogthreads and generally... well, cliquey trash. We see lots of circle-jerking (forgive the expression) and content-free posts by a fairly large segment of the forum population who have co-opted those boards essentially for their own ends. What we'd presumably like to see are posts about people actually discussing well-defined topics without the word "mew" in them, or without the OP consisting of silly images somebody found. Life Advice has some problems with troll/joke posts sometimes, but I'm not sure how often, and the DF boards themselves have some annoying meme trends (burn all the elves with !!magma!!!!!), but that's not really something you solve with moderation for the most part.

tldr version: Some of the forums here are full of this odd forum-culture that has damn near no similarity to the intended one and drives away people the boards are actually intended to attract.


I was going to send an email like this to Toady at some point, since I feel that would be more productive than us yakking it out in the forums about it, but someone already made a thread, so here we are.



[edit]

As an addendum to my "this alienates people" paragraph: More people are bugged by this than you  might think. The fact is that, on a forum, people avoid stuff they don't like. This includes things which have serious problems; a lot of people just don't bother, and most of the people I know who are bothered by it don't really voice their opinions. Basically, you can't look at something like GD (or the forums in general, or any forum) and think you can tell how many people like or dislike what's going on there, because the ones who dislike it the most and have the most complaints will be the ones who don't stick around.

[Phmcw]

I maintain that if you don't want meme or useless post, it should be in the rules : some forum have dedicated thread for mindless spam, and given that it amuse some poeple, they could think that it is allowed here.

[RedKing]

I guess I'm just here for the chalupas then. 

[G-Flex]

I maintain that if you don't want meme or useless post, it should be in the rules : some forum have dedicated thread for mindless spam, and given that it amuse some poeple, they could think that it is allowed here.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=27009.0

Do not disrupt a thread with spam, giant images or intentionally garbled language.

Closest thing in the guidelines is this. I personally feel it could be a little more clear, and that something specific to General Discussion would be nice for that board, since it has more of an "anything goes" connotation to it.

[Mindmaker]

Many good points have been made in the OP.
Would love to see something done about it.

[Footkerchief]

The one thing I personally do agree with is some sort of central "Moderation Log", probably appended to the Announcements section.  Certainly Tarn and Zach already write explanations for when someone is banned or an argument starts over such, and some comments on deleted posts when the entire thread isn't deleted.  And nothing more than that need be logged; certainly not every warning and mute, and spambots and their droppings don't deserve the time of day.  But it would useful to have a log of bannings and deletions, especially of whole threads, to be collected in one place for easy future reference, and to minimize confusion.

This I agree with, but a usable implementation would probably require modifying the forum software.  That's probably the reason that they aren't doing this already.

It goes back to Retro's report-button explanation.  You have exactly one real, official avenue of dealing with problems, an avenue that everyone knows is supposed to be reserved only for genuine grievance, not just stuff that annoys you.  And most people don't want to feel like crybabies and busybodies by reporting stuff that doesn't actually break the "rules", such as they are.

The report button also has the feeling of a Snitch Button – if you use it you may feel like you’re just silently calling people out. This as well discourages people from using it. I’ve seen forumites, even active long-timers, say they don’t bother with the button at all. It is simply not something that people want to use – and at the same time is the only venue they can use.

[...] the dreaded Button Which Should Not Be Named.

No offense, but y'all need to get over it.  The report button is great.  It's the way to bring the moderators' attention to a potential problem.  It enables the moderators to do their job.  Toady has repeatedly asked everyone (that means YOU) to use it more often.  How much more encouragement do you need?

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=38415.msg645760#msg645760

We received quite a few moderator reports, but not nearly so many that we can't attend to them.  If people reported more often the things that they've been put off by, this might no longer be true, but we won't know until that happens.  I encourage more moderator reports, to the extent that there are legitimate reasons to make them in the first place.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54186.msg1192672#msg1192672

Please report problems to the moderators instead of calling people idiots and arguing for pages and then reporting them.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=30910.msg433915#msg433915

Be polite when you reply or click report to moderator if you don't feel you can do that and I'll handle it.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=27009.0

If you find a post that violates one of these guidelines, please report it with the "report to moderator" button located to the lower right of the post.  It's one of the only ways we can enforce the guidelines and keep the forum healthy, safe and enjoyable.  If you don't report the post, chances are we won't notice it.

Again, if there's actually a problem, don't just call each other assholes and stuff.  Report it with the moderator button.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34047.msg527026#msg527026

Please try not to moderate the boards yourselves.  If you think there is a spambot or something, just let me know in a moderator report.

If you have a problem with somebody's post, click the "Report to moderator" text below the message in question and let me know what's up.

[...] if you've got a problem, report it with the moderator button.

[...] if you have a problem with a post that's flaming/spamming a thread, click the report button instead of firing at people.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53243.msg1143269#msg1143269

Please treat people with respect here even if you don't think they deserve it.  If you can't do that, and you think there's a problem, just report the post and leave it alone.  When threads get out of control, it takes longer to handle them.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=34112.msg513750#msg513750

Although, if you do find yourself getting tired and even just a little frustrated, please report instead of replying, and I'll take care of it, hopefully without causing a problem (not saying a problem was caused here).

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=35546.msg682119#msg682119

If there's an issue with somebody, report it and then ignore future posts from that person.

Things like this tend to spiral into degeneracy once they've descended into personal attacks, almost without exception, so I lock them, especially when the fight is all people are talking about, or when the OP is involved.  It's better to report things early so they don't reach that point, rather than letting it fester.

It's not like we just drop in and take the reporter's side.

[RedKing]

But the main issue that seems to have provoked the latest round of collective navel-gazing isn't flamewars or abusive behavior, it's this perception that too much of GD is silly, insular, and a waste of time.

I haven't seen that the forum has much of a problem with dealing with spambots and trolls. Report is made, thread is locked, people move on. Bit more trouble with the occasional flamewars, but even then they're usually restricted to a few thread topics and a handful of posters.

But the GD community has a number of people who like to post somewhat random stuff and/or use a forum thread as an ongoing conversation when they're bored. I'm probably included in that number. If that's serious enough to warrant using the Report button, then we have a fundamental problem.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

First off, I don't think Forum Games & Roleplaying should even exist.

So you want to remove an entire board, which you quite obviously have no interest in ever reading, because you have no interest in ever reading it? Doesn't that strike you as a bit anti-social? You realize you can just not open that forum, right? I don't believe I ever have, come to think of it.

Part of fostering a strong community is, you know, having the sort of things that encourage a strong community more than "hey everyone let's talk about this one narrow topic only because that's what this large set of boards is solely devoted to and stuff not about anything else that might be relevant or interesting to you only this ok?" You think that if the lower forums were missing or ruled with an iron fist by cabal of moderators the community would be nearly as strong, and that interest in DF would remain fairly strong even during the long gaps between releases (and hence would be weaker when releases were made, too)?

[Retro]

@ Foot- I use the report button when I see something that bothers me myself, but if the problem you're having is small, reporting it seems like an overblown reaction. The fact that forumites have stated at various occasions they aren't comfortable with reporting people even when justified emphasizes my point. Sometimes in my reports I add "hey could you please just post asking people to cool it a bit" and I check back and the thread in question's been deleted, when I wouldn't have thought it needed to be more than locked at the very worst. Thus was my rationale for including that point.

[Footkerchief]

@ Foot- I use the report button when I see something that bothers me myself, but if the problem you're having is small, reporting it seems like an overblown reaction. The fact that forumites have stated at various occasions they aren't comfortable with reporting people even when justified emphasizes my point.

Yes, I understand that you and others feel that way about the report button, but you are wrong.  Like Toady has said a billion times, it's good to report even small or potential problems.  Do you understand that your attitude is making it harder for the Adamses to moderate the forums?

First off, I don't think Forum Games & Roleplaying should even exist.

So you want to remove an entire board, which you quite obviously have no interest in ever reading, because you have no interest in ever reading it?

That's not the reason he gave:

My point is that a roleplaying/games forum isn't bad, but it has almost nothing to do with what the boards are for, and will attract (and has attracted) a different crowd and atmosphere than this forum probably needs.

[Retro]

@ Foot- I use the report button when I see something that bothers me myself, but if the problem you're having is small, reporting it seems like an overblown reaction. The fact that forumites have stated at various occasions they aren't comfortable with reporting people even when justified emphasizes my point.

Yes, I understand that you and others feel that way about the report button, but you are wrong.  Like Toady has said a billion times, it's good to report even small or potential problems.  Do you understand that your attitude is making it harder for the Adamses to moderate the forums?

Again, I do use the report button myself, and I am aware that not using it makes things more difficult for them. The point is that most people are uncomfortable with it save for direct insults and spambots, and I feel that's very unlikely to change regardless of how much Tarn and Zach want us to use it more.

[Phmcw]

Let's at least not get out of our way to denounce board we don't even goes in. I don't like forum games, I don't frequent that board.
Keeping GD tidy is another can of worm.

Now, for calling the "wrong crowd"... it's just weird. What do you mean?