Topic: Anonymous Moderation is cowardly. - page 2. (Read 3458 times)

Well damm. This would explain a lot (LOL). Maybe it would be a good idea to give to the other moderators so they can help educate people on how to avoid breaking the rules......or better yet, give to theymos so a anon message can be sent with the same information to allow for anon moderation but with the benefits of educating people as to which rules they are breaking.

That's because I have a script so I can quickly compose canned messages. Don't expect me to always send those though, and certainly don't expect other staff to do the same.

While I see your point, the problem of rules being arbitrarily applied and ambiguous leads to more problems than it solves. It puts me, as a user, in a bad position because I never know what to expect. And I can be quite provocative when I want to. I try to do so in an honest and intellectual manner, but sometimes I just dash something off. While others have, in this thread, spoken of being selective, I have not other than NOT doing anything against obvious scams. I have instead pointed out that it is not nearly selective enough. Arbitrary enforcement of rules makes for revolutions IRL and bad policy on the 'net. Right now BCT is king in the Crypto world, but that can change, and it will change if/when somebody with a better schema for moderation and sufficient money for advertising comes along. There will indeed always be those who deliberately break the rules, but in this forum, you can not actively determine which rules apply until your post comes up deleted.
I would actually like to see that wall of text, mostly out of curiousity. I cannot think of a single reason NOT to moderate scams. As the husband of a lawyer, I would think that the very opposite would be your policy as failure to do so can be seen as accessory to the crime in most jurisdictions.

As for mprep, I have a serious problem with his attitude. As to whether it is he who has deleted the majority of the deletions I've had (some of which were indeed on topic, relevant, and in no way that I can see in violation), I have no idea. Simply because he and I have clashed in the past, I do think of him first. But with the complete opacity, there is frankly no way to tell. To my knowledge, you and I have never had an issue. You warned me to chill out once, a long while ago. And I was drunk at the time, so you were right I rarely drink. Moderation should be moderate.

EDIT: I made a mistake above, in that I did point out that with no hard and fast rules, moderators (I pointed it at mprep as we have had the argument before) are BY NECESSITY self selective in what they moderate by the very fact of their not being hard, clear rules. It reads like a lie. It was in fact an out of coffee error. Sorry

I appreciate that the staff would take the time to respond to complaints and lay down valid points and especially Theymos for even taking the time to respond directly.

I have not had a big problem with the moderation, I think an improvement could be made to the rules in the way deletion of posts are handled and don't consider posts that drift off topic a little once in a while as spam nor if it's an acknowledgement of a solved problem. I agree with Biomech in that the rules should be more clearly defined, there is always room for improvement.

I have also done a lot of moderation on forums, I can tell you that the best approach to moderation is as little as possible and tact goes a long way, often issues can be resolved through conflict resolution way before ever needing to ban or delete peoples posts. Tact is actually really huge when it comes to moderation, often people just want an explanation but if met with rudeness (as I was when I made a similar thread some months ago), it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. If you are polite and not judgmental towards people, openly discuss sensitive topics even if others are being rude to you but are friendly back, well you could even remove more posts if you can explain conclusively that large amounts of spam are expensive to host.

Example in what I mean about using tact.

^ "staff" ~ coming from a shill from a banned ( in U.S.A. ) website ?  = satoshi lols ! ! ! :-)

Alright. I'm pretty much done. This is the fourth or fifth time I've addressed this issue, both with you and the other mods, and, indeed Theymos. I don't like you, I find you smug and insulting. That in itself doesn't make you a bad moderator. The "I'm just following orders" while indeed being QUITE selective about what you "moderate" (remember, nothing REALLY goes away on the web), however, does. It's not so much that you deleted an offhand comment. That, it iself is a minor annoyance. In truth, in my time here I've maybe had a dozen posts deleted, one of which I agreed with. If Gmaxwell hadn't deleted it, I would have. My problem remains with the entire system. Yes, I do have an issue with you. But it's minor by comaprison to the REAL issue, which is that there are NO hard and fast rules, so you never know if something is going to be deleted out of hand. Relevance to the topic is only occasionally a criterion.

Further, on a website who's MAJOR FOCUS is an emerging monetary system, legitimate discussions of business and economics as pertaining to a particular coin are frequently "moderated" (read deleted) for absolutely no defensible reason. I chose the example I did simply because it was the most recent.

Theymos, I know you have followed this thread. You have three choices.

One, you can let things continue as they are, with the concommitant damage to your reputation and website.
Two, you can drop moderation altogether and let the chips fall where they may. With the concommitant damage to your reputation and website.
Three. You can lay down real rules and get your moderators to follow them exactly and precisely, rather than abritrarily and capriciously. This is the optimal solution in my opinion.

This isn't some ultimatum, it's just the only courses of action that I can see as available to you.

Oh, and yes, mprep, I have run BBS's off and on since the late 1970's. I am hyperbolic, and the comparison to a war crime is deliberately over the top, but illustrative. When there ARE NO concrete rules, you most assuredly DO choose what to enforce and what not to.

I feel the same way, the trick is to not care what anyone thinks and carry on. The people who complain the loudest are those that know nothing of what goes on. I'll address the OP first, and then move on to the additional things the thread has brought up.

As far as anonymous moderation. If you want any work done here at all, it is a necessity. For everyone person who wants to know why something was deleted, or just wants an answer from a moderator, there are 20 who just want to yell. I don't have anyone on my ignore list or pm ignore list, but that would surely change without anonymous moderation. As far as oversight, Admins have a log of who moderates what. If someone is out of line, Theymos/Badbear will clean house faster than someone can make a thread in meta. They have the greatest motivation to keep the forum staff honest. Why have a jerk representing their forum?

To the other issues. I'm not sure why whether english is mprep's first language or not is important, if the basis of your argument is a spelling/grammar/phrasing error it must not be that important. I've challenged those that speak the loudest to bring up a clear case of favoritism, nepotism, or selective enforcement. I have yet to have anyone get back to me. I'm not arguing that there isn't room for abuse, but I don't understand why people have an issue with something that hasn't been an issue yet. I extend that invitation out to anyone by the way, show me a single case. I do ask that you research it yourself first, don't just repeat someone else's words.

As far as scams go, you can't blame mprep for not moderating your scam reports. It is forum policy to not moderate scams, there are a lot of reasons behind this. If you want a wall of text I'd be happy to provide it, but this post is getting long as it is.

I like the fact that you are anon by critizing a mod, while you concurrently criticize the forum for allowing mods to be anon when they take action against you.

I think it should be fairly obvious who you are anyway

I don't hate him, not at all (although he definitely thinks otherwise). It's just the way he assumes that I have complete freedom of how I can moderate and the insults he throws at me is what I dislike.

Thank you for a well reasoned response as your first one came off as quite rude and trollish (from my experience around the forums). Couple that with the unfortunate timing of posts as well as the time of day here and you have my response. Sorry, for that. Thanks for the tip regarding my post though.


If you think I can just not follow the rules, you don't exactly grasp how forum moderation works. Also, don't over dramatize and compare this to a war crime - it isn't. I don't impede on your freedom of speech - you can always find another forum who will host posts that we don't allow.

That's something you should direct at theymos as he makes the rules. Also, there's way to many cases to examine and with usually shaky evidence and shady witnesses. Thus if you actually want to prove that some thing is a scam, seek it through legal means, tell the victims to sue them and acquire a court order for the thread to be removed as well.

You are barking up the wrong tree. You want change, talk with theymos as he decides forum policy. I'm but the janitor that was shown what to clean. And in all honesty, the post itself didn't add anything to the discussion especially considering the quality of the quoted post.

Take a REAL hard look in the mirror and ask why it makes your blood boil. You and I have gone rounds several times. I stopped bothering some time ago, because you will neither be persuaded nor bother with anything like logic, reason, or frankly, anything aside from snide remarks and the nuremburg defense. Never forget that the aforementioned "defense" mostly led to hangings. It's not considered valid. "Just following orders" never works as a long term defense.

You are a weasel. And the scams ARE REPORTED DAILY. I've done it, many, MANY others have done it. yet they stay. But a bit of humour in a thread that you have no interest in, well, now, that just has to go, doesn't it?

I'm assuming you're the author of the latest deletion. From here forward, I'm using the "just following orders" defense as well. I reported it. And I will continue to do so. I prefer discourse and debate, but what the hell. I can fight dirty.

I understand that English is not your first language -- unlikely that a native speaker would fuck it that badly.
Being a non-native speaker myself, I've offered you a friendly suggestion: Hold off on colloquialisms for now, you can always try again once you know what you're doing. Not now tho -- now is not the time.

To address potential cultural differences: In most English-speaking countries, it's customary to thank the person who helps you, as I have done. Too late now, but, nevertheless, you're welcome.

Regarding the essence of this thread? You haven't addressed it. You  offered a handful of excuses: you're busy, you delete a lot of shit (presumably without reading it), English is your second language, etc., etc.

You haven't addressed the fact that no clear rule set for this forum exists, making all moderation subjective, by definition.
You haven't addressed favoritism, nepotism and selective enforcement on this forum, another biggy.
And, of course, the "makes my blood boil" bit made me smile -- if that's how little it takes to enrage you, the job of moderating an internet forum is likely not for you.

Have I missed anything?

[sarcasm] Thanks random Grammar Nazi alt with a first post here, in this specific thread. I fixed it as I understand how your obsession kicks in when seeing non-stellar grammar. You must feel amazing criticizing a guy to whom English isn't the first language. That definitely supports your argument by 140% and invalidates mine. And yeah, I totally said that I'm too busy to read a 6 word post and that I totally didn't mean to delete it. I definitely didn't try to address his comment about the quality of moderation and I sure as hell didn't suggest him to use the report function for the posts he thought were selectively left out. [/sarcasm]

Now take that fake mustache and coat off; nobody likes a coward hiding behind an alt.

*treading. Treading a thin line. "Threading a thin line" is nonsense, making the writer look retarded.
In short, go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

And drop the 'I'm too busy to read your shit' act. If you're too busy to mod, you're unfit for the job.
You're welcome.

lol, you and Biomech should kiss and makeup, the great mortal enemies of the forums.

I bet if you guys had a few beers together you would be best of friends.

Yup, I deleted as I was looking over the newest posts in the newest threads on Announcements (Altcoins). I deleted a post that you quoted as well as it broke rule 1:

While we clearly disagree on method, I am actually making the assumption that I have bolded. I've been on fora with very heavy moderation and not found it offensive. Because it was open, consistent, and the rules were not ambiguous. This simply is not the case on BCT. I wish it were. Despite my bitching here, this is my favorite forum.

The problem I see here, and many others agree with me, is that there is NO consistency. Even the "official" rules are listed as "the official list of unofficial rules". See what I'm saying? You, Gmaxwell, and SaltySpitoon have always seemed very even handed to me. Mining Buddy and I have never had any direct interaction that I am aware of, so I have no opinion. The aforementioned mprep gets under my skin. but in ALL cases, even the mods I like, the application of "rules" (in quotes because they are NOT well defined) is arbitrary and capricious. I think in some cases malicious as well, but I can't prove it. I can prove, very easily, the arbitrary and capricious nature of it.

I personally would not have an issue with the moderators being VERY strict IF THEY WERE ON THE SAME PAGE AND CONSISTENT. It would change the nature of BCT for the better. It's not moderation I object to.

You can choose who the report goes to in the dropdown box. It goes to all admins and global mods by default (global mods were added because of the large amount of phishing pm's that were being sent out a long time ago).



You're making a false assumption that all people are reasonable, honest, and open minded. For the most part they are, but not all. And these people, when a moderator takes action against them, will take it personally, and they will make it their mission to make that persons life as miserable as possible. Believe me, I've been there. The most likely long term result of that will be that mods will be less likely to act against these people, and only act on the reasonable people, making moderation even less consistent (the opposite of what you want). You can't have your cake and eat it too.

No, its a joke.


For someone who continually cries about off topic posts, marking your own post off topic doesn't make it any less off topic.

OFF TOPIC:

Did you take an oath or something? Is it Dr. Dogie now?