Poll: A Proposal for Better Moderation

[Colour Scientist]

I just browsed your list of "passionate and interesting posters."

Of those I recognize, I miss exactly one.

(Not counting people who requested bans or those who came back from the dead.)

Yeah, I'd say the current system is working just fine. And that's coming from someone who was once a single infraction away from a perma-ban.

You were?

You're so well-behaved though!

You're joking, right?

Please tell me you're joking.

I try to keep my inner scathing arsehole in check, but I am not always successful. The times when I was mod-wrath'd were often well deserved.

I've never personally seen you venture into rule-breaking territory.

You can be scathing and an arsehole but that's sometimes necessary on these forums.

Hehe. I am sorely tempted to prove my arseholish tendencies by trying to get you an infraction for calling me an arsehole just now.

Yeah, that would show you, you... you... craven harlot, you!

I just realised that what I said could be misconstrued as a legitimate insult.

Whatever, I'm a rebel!

 

[Loonyyy]

Oh no, we lost such great users as Scrumpmonkey and Ultratwinkie. However will we cope?

Seriously, the system is fine as is. If people haven't learned the rules after 8 infractions - in a relatively short space of time - they deserve their ban.

Sorry, wasn't that "Bolo the Great".

Oh lordy that one was a laugh. If they hadn't done so much damage before being banned it'd be funnier though.

 

[Loonyyy]

Nope. I'm an asshole. Every warning I've got I've deserved, and every one of them I knew, or should have known, that I was being rude, or insulting to someone and did it anyway, because I wanted to. The rules aren't onerous or hard to follow, it's actually bothering to learn them and post accordingly that is.

You have 8 infractions. More if you can actually read the rules and use Amnesty. Those infractions ARE misdemeanor points. You do something really fucked up, and you'll get a suspension or permaban on the spot. Why would you need a second health bar? The system is not designed to teach you through punishment. You're meant to read the CoC when you join. The system is designed to enforce the rules. Quite simply, if you can't figure it out after 8 infractions, including suspensions from posting, then they don't want you here. You've shown you're unwilling to read or follow the rules, and that you're unwilling to communicate for the site, and want it to better suit you.

Personally, I'd prefer that the moderation was stricter. The low content relaxation has been rather bothersome. And it might be easier for arguments to break out less if some things had just been nipped in the bud. For instance, there have been numerous antagonistic posters who've been headed for a ban from day one, who've managed to earn a few others a warning too.

I'd second a motion for "Why this person was banned". I've seen a mod edit attached to some posts explaining it, and I really think it improves the transparency, and entertains and educates the rubber-neckers, of which I count myself a member. It is often apparent though, and often just a case of warnings running out.

If I'm ever banned, I'm fairly sure I'd deserve it, even if I'm not happy about it.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Honestly, at this point I read "the moderation is too overbearing" as "I should be allowed to do whatever I want". Things were quite a bit more strict around here in the past, and I've seen enough obvious trolls just barely skirting the edge of acceptability to start to feel nostalgic.

Found a nice trick for avoiding moderator wrath though. ...Then I delete the post.

My "posts not made" count is at least three times as high as my actual post count.

 

[BeerTent]

[...]

I'm sorry, but this charade is a bit foolish, isn't it?

The current system is insanely lax. 8 warnings? In six months? Are you kidding me? How could that possibly be strict in any way? Not to mention the names that were listed in the other thread. Some of them were some rather rotten individuals. Speaking as someone who has moderated in other areas, every proposition you've made would accomplish the creation of more loopholes, stricter rules on the moderation staff on how they can do their job, and ultimately, significantly more work for the moderation staff.

Consequences need to exist. Rules need to be enforced. Otherwise, Zeel would still be around. Every single person on that list had 7 chances to stop being foolish. 7. That's a lot. These people have seen 7 messages stating "Don't be stupid." And continued to be stupid. Every single person on that list had 7 chances to say, "Well, Maybe I should just back away from this" and chose not to. Look how long I've been here. I come here because I'm sick and tired of putting on a mask in real life. Here, I can be brutally honest on my thoughts. I can be sassy, I can be ridiculous, and sometimes, I get to banter about games. If I've been here for this long, there's probably an issue with moderation bein' too lax.

I'm sorry, but every proposition you've made has been insane. Most people in this thread has expressed similar thoughts to me. You want a forum where there's positively zero consequences? 4han is down the hall and three doors to your left.

Actually, don't go to 4chan. There's a bunch of Cape-Bretoners there and it's just not a pretty place.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

To be honest with general posting you shouldn't be getting any infractions and you have 8 chances to ignore the rules you don't like. Thats if the mods catch it every time, and if you don't reheal in the meantime.

As for those interesting posters we lost, I didn't like too many of them to be honest. But I'm a rather sour person when it comes to this forum for some reason.

For the thread you linked:
Other than Hubilub, Furburt and Smash I either don't recognize them or more commonly was glad to see them go.
Vault and Demented in particular seemed to make it their duty to disagree with me on everything in a really condescending way. I would have sworn they were following me if I wasn't so unknown.

 

[144_v1legacy]

I disagree. People here have eight chances to change how they act when they receive a warning, probation, and/or a suspension. If someone can't or won't clean up their act after eight chances they don't deserve to be here.

Every new member is given a link to read the sites Code of Conduct.

You say that, but twice now I've had warning that were given to me removed. I'm in the process of attempting a third time. I typically consider myself pretty reasonable in my conversation, but it's annoying to be reprimanded when using softer language here than I would with my friends. If my best friend says something stupid, I might say "are you an idiot?" but that same comment is warning-able here. The worst part of it is that it happens because a post might be read out of context, and inconsistently. And getting these warnings removed is a pain in the patience. The knowledge that a warning would never lead to a permaban would at least make me stop wasting my time asking mods to read posts in context.

Here's an example of one of my own posts, which had a warning, then didn't after I complained (and a several week waiting period):
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.859687-Was-it-prudent-of-Jennifer-Lawrence-to-take-pictures-of-herself-nude-in-the-first-place-Y-N?page=9#21351101

 

[Guffe]

I don't think the moderation needs changing.

I have been warned once for a low content post, that was 5 years ago, after that nothing, not one single warning or green blip in my health bar. It isn't that difficult to choose the wording in ones posts, to not be insulting and have proper arguments.

So no, no second health bar needed, just a little more thought behind the posts a user makes. For example, don't post while full of feelings if that is a mistake that usually makes you rage out on someone and givs you warnings.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I have a strike against my record because the Escapist IS HORRIBLE in my country. I have lost count of the times I wrote a huge ass rant and then when I tried to post, "Connection Lost". Am I the only one who has to go through a "Captcha Error" page every time I want to start a new thread, even when there definitely wasnt a captcha window when I write the post. The mark on my record is due to my posting an empty reply because of a case like this, I refreshed the page and it wouldnt work, so I gave up. When I signed in the next day, I was given a warning notification. This is one thing I think that the mods are a bit too harsh about. There was this one guy who got banned for posting "why?" I realize that its against the rules, but a small infraction like that getting someone banned is ridiculous.

 

[Loonyyy]

I just browsed your list of "passionate and interesting posters."

Of those I recognize, I miss exactly one.

(Not counting people who requested bans or those who came back from the dead.)

Yeah, I'd say the current system is working just fine. And that's coming from someone who was once a single infraction away from a perma-ban.

You were?

You're so well-behaved though!

Not the bees lady? I just realised the other day that a prolific poster was suddenly not posting.

I think she bailed at some point during the GG fallout because people were arseholes.

There were users accusing her of distributing CP, the same attack that was directed at Dan Olsen, for posting his article. Amongst other things. I think they recieved some harrassment and threats. Her website is up and running though now, and has some interesting stuff, including an interview with Jim-"Fucking"-Sterling-"Son" (How does I nickname?), previously of the escapist.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

My god, not another forum rules change. The forum health bar already makes it considerably easier to survive moderation and still be a bother for people. But I've worn my old man hat about moderation before; I'll just say I miss when it was harsher.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Has anyone actually managed to get hold of a real person on the end of that thing? I'm genuinely wondering.

Yep. I've gotten two or three warnings overturned, as well (and just as many maintained).

You really do need to have a cogent argument as to why something needs overturning though. A simple "I don't think this is fair" won't get you very far.

 

[Naraku578]

I don't think this is necessary, from my perspective the Escapist is not that big/popular of a games forum, these rules seem to only add a bit more complexity and arbitrariness to the system. I rarely see any real banworthy posts slipping through and the concept of "Jerk" seems too nonstandard to really be effective.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Go to Something Awful, Nexus Forums, GameFAQs, or NeoGAF and break one of their rules 7 times over, and see what happens to you.
Then come back here and tell me the Escapist moderation is "strict". Please do, I need a good laugh.

SA has always operated on their own logic, as I understand it. I can't speak from personal experience and have never actually had an account on SomethingAwful, since I was warned away from SA by others loooong ago and haven't really considered joining at any point.
I do read the LP archive and occasionally I will see/recognize some of its LPers elsewhere on the net.

But GameFAQs...I was uncomfortably familiar with. I left GFAQs for The Escapist because the moderation here was actually functional; Gamefaqs never really had that good of moderation to begin with, but it degraded to beyond useless following the merger with Gamespot.

Worse, Gamefaqs' "culture" was trending *heavily* towards trolls even before then.
(I remember when LUE users launched invasions on other websites; to the point where it nearly got GFAQs itself into legal trouble). Within a month of Cjay's sellout, many of the boards degenerated into a cesspit of trolling gibberish, extremely tired unfunny memes, and elitist guffawing.

I had been lurking here back in 2008 - 09', and the place seemed much friendlier than GFAQs (among other old haunts), largely due to its moderation, and at least then, the difference of how people behaved and what was discussed was night-and-day.

Today, the biggest problem I can mention as it relates to rules and moderation, (and I'm totally being original here. Yup. Mmmhmm.) is that passive-aggressive business (something I admit I'm guilty of, but have been trying to avoid lately).

Apart from that, well, it's not hard to avoid mod wrath here; just don't be an asshole and 95% of potential infractions disappear.

 

[prowll]

So posting "You can screw up 8 times? What happened to 3 strikes and you're out?" wouldn't help matters? Cause frankly, if you can't stop being a jerk, you need to stop posting.

 

[TakerFoxx]

What is stopping banned users from creating another account? I'm sure it's not an hard thing to do.

IP addresses, I think.