CAMELOT FANTASIES

Quote from: Clay Death on October 02, 2016, 08:02:16 pm

ok I got it now. it was a personal message from MWW to me. here it is in its entirety:

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your thread

 
I regret to have to read a rather embarrassing exchange between yourself and Time Violation. He has seen a lot in his time on this board with some extremely stubborn and uncompromising posters who can make mods' life hell, and perhaps why his attitude towards you wasn't the greatest, though of course not excusable. Naturally as a moderator, he also has to defend the site moderation when it is being challenged (not necessary implying we are right all the time, of course).

 For me, as one of the youngest moderators on the site (and one of the lesser experienced, started in October last year after 9 months on the forum), I have tried to merge moderator and poster values together. You will see that it is hard to balance this well. We'll have some posters who think we are too overzealous in our moderation and banning, while others consider us too lenient and let too many trolls post etc. If you walk onto the next site, tennisforum, their posters will say very different things about how TF is run and moderated. I am the greatest moderator on this site to some, and also the worst moderator on this site to others and both stand to be correct!

 Thus I think it would be worthwhile to have a positive discussion on the issue. Your concerns have lead me to start a thread for mods to consider amending the 'moderator change edit' rule. The issue sometimes is with whether mods apply a liberal approach, or by the book. By the book is the 'easiest' approach but does have its difficulties at times and doesn't take into account poster motivation or intent. Originally the rule was set to prevent troll posters who would repost problematic posts after they had been deleted. I definitely think how the rule is applied these days has drifted from the original intent and we do have complaints about it. You won't be the first nor the last so I hope the mod team can sit and come up with suitable revision.

 The situation with your thread arose based on reports that your thread title 'directly quoted' off Stan and was considered misinformation. I would not have made any changes if it were up to myself because I did not see any intentional malice or attempt to confuse with the information. Only a few posters found objection to it and reported it. Legal aspects are probably the most difficult for moderators to really apply. I remember in another case, a poster who contributes interesting articles got reported for sending in a complete article, someone reported it and cited 'copyright' infringements. There is also a hidden rule that posters should avoid posting 'getty images' based on similar ownership and IP laws. So I regret that this situation has happened but it's something we can all learn from.

 There are some situations where seemingly strict rules have purpose. Slasher1985 introduced a policy that posters must use objective thread titles when reporting match result threads or WWW threads, and in polls. You will see this is a far cry from tennisforum where player nicknames are often used. The importance of the rule on our site is to avoid derogatory language and player bashing, as well as to make archival of results easier as the players' actual names and score are very clear to see.

 I hope you can contend with us. We are a small team and we don't always satisfy everyone's wishes. We can't and even more so because of our diversity in nationalities, gender, beliefs and age. But we hope to be open to suggestions to make the forum run smoother. In fact your return to the forum was only possible because of such suggestions regarding permaban policies.

Thanks for posting this General.  MWW is indeed reasonable and pretty middle of the road.


For what it's worth, I think it is tough moderating MTF with how can I say it, with so much history behind it.   
Many of the forum rules are from a bygone day. They have been taped and patched along the way, and it looks like some effort is made to preserve many things, and change others a bit here and there.  Users have come and gone.  Many of the old users are no longer there or rarely appear.

I think a serious attempt should be made to rewrite the rules from scratch, and consideration must be given to keeping the site interesting and informative for the current day where there is so much competition with other social media like twitter, Facebook, etc.   I for one prefer forum discussion to soundbite posting on twitter, for example.  But that's only me. 

Of course rules are needed to keep crazy people from totally abusing the forum and other posters.  Sure, most people have their favorites, and some of the most driven fanboys/fangirls think everyone else with any opinion that is other than a lovefest for their favorite, is a hater's opinion, while their hero can do no wrong.  Criticizing their player in any way is tantamount to the worst crime in their eyes, and they see everything as an attack.

But by and large, most posters are fairly reasonable given a chance.  However, when the reasonable people leave, a lot of the worst survives, which makes it difficult for the more reasonable posters to have the patience to stay.  Moderation tries to accommodate to what's being thrown at them.  Too much for some is too little for others, and vice-versa.   I generally think that not much moderation is needed except to control some of the more vicious abusers.  Some of the rules are really over the top.  Review and overhaul might be the best way.  I won't say it's easy in a huge site like that, but at some point something has to be done.  Maybe MWW will be a catalyst for change.

Here we have an advantage for now.  It's small, quiet, people are friendly, and we accept and adjust to each other.
It is a haven if you will, a Camelot of Forums.

Respectfully,
masterclass

that is a great post general. it really spells it all out.


I can add only one thing: it is a new world now. what we are learning from watching this new world is that people have a voice now. and they want to be able to have a voice.

they also have endless options in this new world. we talked about the massive array of new social innovations. in addition hardly a month goes by when a new social media innovation is not introduced.

For instance, Stephen Curry and his friend from Davidson founded Slice which is a social media outlet for the stars and the celebrities of the world. it just goes on and on.

Twitter and Facebook are the largest but there are so many other ones also in use.

finally people also want more dynamic and more real time interactions and exchanges. they want instant audiences. they can get that at social medial innovations.

so MTF really has to understand that. unremitting, nonstop meddling has to end. they are gaining a few new members but they are also losing people. it is just a shadow of what it used to be.

more later.