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To: inquest
"That part about being understanding can be made a lot easier if the mods would be more forthcoming as to why a particular corrective action was taken against a poster, rather than just deleting his comments and banning him out of the blue. That really is much more of a problem, IMHO, than flamers. Flamers for me have been mostly little more than a minor annoyance, but overactive moderators, or perceived overactive moderators, can really cast a pall over a thread at times"

As the software improves, you will see more and more reasons why an action was done. For example, the new reasons why a thread was pulled is great. But, when a disruptor is nuked, everything they posted is gone. Where we need everyone's help is if a thread is deleted, and there isn't a reason for the deletion, just hit abuse, copy the link and ask. We don't read every post, or every thread, it's impossible. If the thread wasn't a disruption thread, we can restore it. The key is, most of the time, we don't know everything that was lost unless you let us know.

94 posted on 08/03/2002 2:19:31 PM PDT by Admin Moderator
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To: Admin Moderator
As the software improves, you will see more and more reasons why an action was done.

New tools for communication are certainly a good thing, but there has to be a willingness to communicate to begin with. Awhile back, there was a crevo thread (I don't remember which one, partly because my comment file is only going back about three pages for some reason. Any idea what's up with that?) where a poster named Esoteric Lucidity was banned with every comment of his on the thread flushed along with him. This made several posters very angry and bitter, as he had apparently written a post which they considered a very well-written critique of the other side (Unfortunately, I didn't have the pleasure of seeing it by the time I got on the thread). At several points throughout the thread, the moderator was pinged asking for an explanation, which never appeared. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Any off-color remark he may have made to another poster would have long been forgotten about; but his removal, and the pulling of every single one of his posts, offensive or not, really left a bad taste in people's mouths for a long time to come, and in my opinion, created a major disincentive for any Lurkers who might have been contemplating signing up and sharing their insights.

147 posted on 08/03/2002 8:59:52 PM PDT by inquest
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To: Admin Moderator
There will always be disruptors, plants and those with a personal agenda her on FR, always have been. Attempting to track them all down, guess their intentions and removing them is a tedious long term strategy. I would suggest dealing stricly with the actions and not not the intent. Tighten up on the no personal abuse rule. If someone violates it, remove the post. If it occurs a second time on the same thread, put them in the cooler for a day. If they get 3 cooler days, each new infraction is a week in the cooler.

I think at times the mods have been too quick to ban on the first or second offense. Sometimes people get heated and post things they wish they hadn't and we may have lost some people who could have become active chapter members or leaders. At worst, they get mad and become antifreepers. Of course, with FR's easy registration process, reregistering under a new name is a problem.

Antie Mame had a good suggestion earlier that is similar to something I proposed to Jim at Fresno. Expand the mods to 25-30, rotate duties and institute internal controls and review by the group itself. I would suggest an internal "review board", made up of 3 or so rotating members, for bannings that allow a bannee a chance at appeal and have his situation looked at by others. Jim could still retain ultimate control and this may lessen some of the pressure and time committments of the existing mods. It will also allow for internal oversite of the members themselves.

I would even go farther and allow members of this mod board to be nominated and voted on by the Forum members themselves, once per year. Who wins could be kept confidential and assigned a mod #, much as you do know, to maintain anonymity...which I think is critical to the success of the program.

186 posted on 08/04/2002 9:55:32 AM PDT by Bob J
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