08-15-2007, 01:55 PM | #41 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
I think the unedited thread is more educational to
a newbie than the edited thread. Someone now reading that thread will see an example of transgressive behavior by a newbie, and know to avoid it. She will also see the community actually caring about the way it responds to newbies and attempting to establish norms. And she will also see that strong disagreement can be registered and competing opinions debated about interesting topics, even in the newbie area. Also she'll learn a bit about what's expected of her before she asks a question, and how she should ask it, and also some information about a particular mud. All in all, I think that restoring the posts leads to a thread that is of good value to a newbie. The thread may contain material that some folks consider irrelevant, but such people can start developing the filters they will need to navigate elsewhere here and on other forums and on the internet, where meta-discussion and digression is as normal in text communication as in spoken conversation. To believe that newcomers need meta material removed infantilizes them, and I don't think there's a lot of point to it. If they really really can't handle scanning past tangents (and really, if they asked a question, they should be expected to put in a little bit of effort in reading the result) then perhaps they're just not ready to handle the internet at all, and I don't see this forum's mission involving such fundamental education. I think I resent being lumped in as a "usual suspect" complaining about censorship because I don't believe that is a fair characterization of me or what I was doing. I believe I was defending the value of the thread which *benefited* from the digressions. Making me sound like a member of a group of anarchists agitating against oppression has the insidious implication that my argument is invalid because my position is fundamentally political. I reject this implication and point to the facts of my arguments, which have been reasonable and made in good faith. I'd got the feeling people wanted to avoid the sort of bitchslapping that matt/sarapis/thelogos/whatever seemed intent on engaging in. Taking it elsewhere seemed the polite thing to do. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with that sentence other than explicitly paint me as someone interested in anarchy. If that is what you were up to, I have to say I'm a little disappointed in the disregard you apparently have for the validity of my specific arguments, washing them away with the sort of "YOU want ANARCHY" dismissal of a Fox News commentator. "That said, I agree Steve was rude and deserved what he got " I think he got much better than he deserved, and I think Brody deserves kudos for that, not deletion of his posts. -Crat |
08-15-2007, 03:57 PM | #42 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
I disagree. Someone who is truly a newbie will more likely see the unedited thread as an example of hostility toward newcomers to mudding. First impressions are everything and if that thread had been mine, despite Steve being a jerk first, the massive off-topic bickering about it that came afterward would cause me to go elsewhere. That's where good moderators come in handy and should be allowed to step in.
I don't agree with this opinion of moderation. It implies that doing so is a negative activity with no value. I think it's more of a disservice to have a question asked, rudely bumped, and then have 5 million chattering posters debating why the newbie was a jerk, and why telling him so was mean spirited and wrong. It serves no purpose other than to inflate post counts and bloat up the database with useless crap. This kind of elitism and condecsention is exactly what drives people away and ends up breeding more and more of the same pile of troll postings and bitter flamewars to begin with. The kind of person it takes to overcome that type of treatment is often not going to then make a very good source of help for a newbie. If the goal of this site is to be informative, then one of two things needs to happen: 1. People need to shape up and behave themselves and stop bickering with each other at the drop of a hat. So far I don't see this happening on its own. or, 2. Moderators need to step in and enforce whatever policies they deem appropriate for their sections. All I see when this comes up is resistance and talk of censorship and oppression. Which is just plain silly. It wasn't terribly hard to understand. The tone of your challenge to Matt to take it to TMC came off like the "lets go where the evil liberal censor freaks won't be able to stop me" tone of a CNN commentator. It is when you appoint yourself as the enforcer of those standards and you aren't a staff member for the site. Granted, moderation policy here is inconsistent at best. But the solution is not to turn the masses loose for mob justice. The solution is to reign things in to where they should have been had the rules been enforced consistently from the start. |
08-15-2007, 04:54 PM | #43 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
Was there a golden age when no discord occurred
in mudland? There must have been, because if discord had been around when we were noobs, surely we all would have fled mudding. Newcomers are not infants. They can be expected to handle pointful topic drift just as well as anyone else. And if they can't, deleting posts by experienced folk who mean well isn't going to cure them of their feebleness. I'm sorry if it implied that. This was not my intention. I think it is patently obvious that there are cases of good moderation. This is so obvious I did not think it was necessary for me to state it. However, apparently that need exists, and I so do state. I do not believe that expecting newcomers to take some responsibility for their integration is elite or condescending. I think it is common sense. My experience when joining a community is that it is my job to make an effort to conform to their standards, and in return they can be expected to try making it easy. But it's a two way street. So then you *are* resorting to that dishonest rhetoric. I'm very surprised because you'd seemed like a good sport. This swift reach for the ad hominem bat, I'd hoped, was just a misunderstanding. Instead, to you I actually am one of these "usual suspects" you can just dismiss with a conflation of authority and justification. In all candor, rhetorical jousting aside, I'm genuinely disappointed in you for it. While siding with authority does seem in character for you, doing so reflexively and with me as your target makes me question the care with which you've considered this thread and the judgment you've used in the manner you joined it. Forgive me for holding out hope I've simply misunderstood your intent in some way. -Crat |
08-15-2007, 05:18 PM | #44 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
I'd just like to address this point.
Firstly, I have no idea what sort of moderation goes on in other parts of the forum. I rarely visit them these days because I got sick of the bickering, although I have been told once or twice that very little goes on. I think part of this might be down to the fact that moderators on here are drawn from the community, are often well known, and they don't want to have people accusing them of taking sides (even if they weren't). I, however, don't care what people accuse me of. None of you really know me, I don't really know more than one or two of you except by reputation, and I just come here to do my job if and when it's required because I offered to help Adam out if it was needed and he knew I've had a lot of experience moderating forums. I'd agree that if we're going to maintain civility on TMS then a more consistent moderation approach could be needed, but that's something down to Lasher to sort out I guess. My last real point in this thread is mainly directed at Brody and everyone who seems to think I was victimising him because I "think he's a jerkoff". Brody's initial post WAS NOT the reason the thread got moderated. If all posts after his first had stayed on topic, avoided insults, and just been information, then I'd have happily left it alone even if I personally think his first point could be misunderstood. The argument as a whole caused the moderation, and I felt it best to remove the whole thing. The information given out in the posts that were deleted was covered in other posts left behind, and if you ignored previous knowledge of what was there and those ugly stubs then it scanned perfectly fine. Random twit or long-standing community member, I don't care. If the thread goes off-topic and descends into a flamefest it's going to get moderated if it's in Newbie Help or Mud Humour. Some people will agree with my style of moderation, some won't. You can't please 100% of people 100% of the time, and I gave up trying long ago. |
08-15-2007, 05:20 PM | #45 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
This comes down to how badly you're interested in bringing new people into the MUD community. Given how difficult it is, I'm all for making it flat-out as easy as possible for newbies to come in and feel welcome. If that means we grin and smile even when someone has not immediately adjusted to the community standards, so be it. Text MUDs need them while they do not need text MUDs, which are just one entertainment option out of many for them. It behooves us to make this option the most attractive possible.
The last thing someone wants is to be treated with a condescending attitude "for their own good," as you put it. Telling someone this is "for your own good" is inherently patronizing, after all, as it assumes that you somehow know more about what is good for them than they do. That might be the case for your 3 year old child but that is not the case for newbies to MUDs. --matt |
08-15-2007, 07:59 PM | #46 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
You are exactly correct in this. Newcomers are not infants and we can expect that they make a certain amount of effort. I never said they were or that they shouldn't. I am objecting soley to the subsequent derailment of the post that drew the moderator action ( appropriately so ). Once Steve had asked his question, bumped his post, got some help, then rudely replied and got more help that should have ended it. There was no need for the mob style session that followed. It's not about newbies being infants. It's about us being adult enough to know when to let it go and stop responding, or ignore it entirely. Had that happened, the thread would have died. Xerihae would not have needed to delete posts. Everyone would have walked away happy. If Steve was a troll, he woudln't have gotten the rise out of everyone he was looking for. And other newcomers wouldn't have seen Flamewar #14,736 erupt.
You said that in response to something Matt said in response to you. How else was I supposed to interpret the meaning when it sounds pretty much like you wanted to goad Matt into heading over to TMC ( despite the veiled insult even there ). "and really duke it out" is a pretty clear attempt to say "where nobody will moderate me for being an ass to you". Given the previous statements, I'm not sure where you think I'm being dishonest. It seemed perfectly clear to me what you were after. In this particular case, yes. I lumped you in with the "usual suspects". If that makes me dishonest, so be it. I spoke my mind and I gave up caring what people think of me when I do a long time ago. I find it ironic that you would note I tend to favor authority over anarchy when you yourself got into quite the mess over on the I3 router because you wanted your channels to have some measure of civility when the refugees from gjs showed up. I seem to recall several people objected, raised a big stink, and ultimately you refused to budge. Frankly, I respected your position greatly for it and for not backing down. Even when it resulted in splitting off another router for the anarchists. Yet, here you are, agitating for the moderators of this forum who are attemtping to impose civility to back down and let the mob rule. Do you not see some element of hypocricy in that? I'm not trying to be a jackass here but you've got to admit it seems a bit odd. |
08-15-2007, 08:57 PM | #47 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
Then so it is. I know you are not foolish enough to actually confuse
the advocacy of admin restraint with the advocacy of anarchy, so what can I presume on your part other than bad faith? I was wondering if you'd bring this up. I think that the episode you refer to is a perfect example of the community being allowed to discuss and debate policy to its heart's content, let the chips fall where they may. Since you bring it up, let me enlighten folks with a url that explains what you're talking about: On the old router, newbies were victimized so violently they were actually talked into deleting their muds. Literally, this actually happened. I set up a router to avoid violence against newbies, and to enhance i3 availability. When people used channels to hassle newbies and spew racist language, I banned them from the channels they abused *until* they agreed to follow the rules of the router they connected to. This is a far, far cry from deleting posts for aesthetic reasons. You seemed to want to pretend that I was advocating anarchy. I was not. Now you want to pretend that my disagreement with the moderation in a thread means I'm a hypocrite because of that alleged anarchy. I can't stop you from using misleading rhetoric, but I will certainly call you on your dishonesty. For shame, sir. The reason I think that router incident supports my position is that it demonstrates my willingness, eagerness, and enthusiasm for soliciting and engaging the opinions of those opposed. I did not fear their open defiance, and I did not seek to suppress their ideas. I asked for input and votes: And I have posted logs of the vigorous debates that ensued: I didn't hide from a fight, I didn't try to silence debate (and in fact actively encouraged it), and I have stood firm in my belief that getting things in the open is healthy, and that protecting newbies is important and worthwhile. You can do both without resorting to deletion of non-violatory posts. Thank you for letting me prove my bona-fides as a champion of newbies. I'm telling you as someone who's fought tooth and nail to keep them alive and keep them coming, that their protection does not require the deletion of posts from veteran contributors you think are less-than-polite. I thought that Xerihae's moderation was excessive and I said so. That you've found the need to stomp on me and try distort my reputation as a result says a hell of a lot more about you than it does about me. -Crat |
08-15-2007, 09:25 PM | #48 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
You know as well as I do that vigorous debate that's on point is something I'm not opposed to. If I'm supposed to be dishonest for taking issue with your dislike for the moderation here, then I take issue with your attempt to make it out like I'm in favor of stifling debate when the issue gets heated.
You also missed one very critical detail in your attempt to paint me as the bad guy: The router dispute happened on your watch, in your territory. How you chose to handle it is entirely up to you. Allowing people to be rude and abusive while debating the issue is apparently fine to you. That's great and wonderful. Had you decided to permanently ban the offenders, delete their forum accounts on lpmuds.net and refuse to engage them in the matter further, it would have been your site, your rules. Regardless of how you decided it, it would have made you look weak to back away from the decision made and give in to the demands coming from the other side. My impression is that being rude and abusive wasn't acceptable to Xerihae and he made that clear. He took what action he deemed appropriate. Which I quite frankly think was pretty restrained. He could have simply deleted the entire topic forever. He might even have been able to ban the offenders from that forum, I don't know how much power vbulliten gives moderators. It's not hiding from a fight to choose to remove abusiveness. When you agitated for the moderation decision to be reversed, it sure looked to me like you were favoring mob anarchy over moderator authority. How else was it supposed to be taken? I think the fact that you ( and others ) successfully got Xerihae to back down makes moderation authority here look weak and ineffective. If all it takes is some loud shouting and a mob mentality to reverse a decision, then what does that truly tell newcomers ( and trolls ) about who is in control? The fact that Xerihae guided the discussion of this issue here rather than simply cutting it off suggests to me he's not "hiding from a fight" either. It just wasn't appropriate to carry this out in the newbie forum. The debate hasn't been silenced. It's simply been moved to an appropriate place. That's the only real issue here, isn't it? Why are you trying to make this into a lot more than it needs to be? I only raised the router issue as an example of authority in action. Not as a means to pick a fight with you over it. |
08-15-2007, 10:04 PM | #49 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
Ok. I was talking about suppressing adverse opinions
in general by deleting posts. I can see that it seems like I was accusing you of doing that. I was not being specific like that, and I agree you seem pleased enough to scrap on TMC. And here Exactly as I said. That the newcomer was not hassled, the moderation was excessive, and the meta-discussion constructive. If your position is that you misunderstood what I said as a call for anarchy, fine. We can just roll with that. But my argument was that the thread was in compliance with the rules of the site and intent of "helping newbies", not that the rules should be tossed. And questioning the judgment of figures of authority is not the same as advocating anarchy. I accept that it looked like the advocacy of anarchy to you at the time. I hope you see now that it in fact was not. We can roll with that, too. As I said before, I'm much happier interpreting your posts as a misunderstanding than intentional trolls with attached vendetta. For the record, I understand that Xerihae acts with the confidence of Lasher and as such represents the authority of this site. As I stated in my first post I also understand Xerihae's intent was good. -Crat |
08-15-2007, 10:04 PM | #50 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
50!
-Crat |
08-16-2007, 07:43 AM | #51 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
One more attempt to make things clear.
I did not remove posts for aesthetic reasons (although I did put them back because the stubs made the thread look messy). I did not remove posts because of Brodys initial response. I did not remove posts which did not continue the argument. If they contained information, said information was covered in the remaining replies. I had no interest in stifling debate. When I mentioned keeping the reason for moderation to PMs, I should also have mentioned starting a new topic elsewhere. I forgot. One of the forums I used to help moderate had a rule that moderation discussions were kept to PMs between the affected parties and moderators. Looks like I'm human too! Does not my continued participation here indicate my willingness to debate the issue? I have no idea if my moderation is to the satisfaction of Lasher. Please remember that he inherited the moderation staff from Synozeer, and the fact that I, and any other moderators, are still here does not necessarily mean it is with his blessing. You should not take my actions as an indicator that Lasher agrees with this sort of moderation unless he comes out and says so himself. If he does agree, fine. If not he can tell me so and I will either follow the guidelines he gives me or accept his decision to remove me as a moderator. And to cratylus, the newcomer was hassled (perhaps not underservedly). The meta-discussion may or may not have been constructive, but it did not belong in that thread. You may be used to/like forums where every thread ends up going off on a complete tangent, but I prefer threads in that particular forum to stick to the question at hand to make it easier for newcomers to read through and find what they might be after. You're certainly welcome to disagree and question my decision, after all no-one is infallible, but saying that it's "noob admin behaviour" because you happen to disagree with my style is perhaps a bit much. |
08-16-2007, 09:46 AM | #52 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
Correlation doesn't imply causation. Specifically, one could argue that text MUDs became popular despite the oft-crude Internet subculture and how it tends to treat newcomers (*), if large enough numbers of people were checking the games out. It's fairly common to see veteran MUDers trying to 'haze' new ones unless the atmosphere is actively coached to reduce it.
1) The major difference is that a newcomer to the site has a much lower barrier to simply leaving and not returning. They aren't invested (socially, not necessarily financially, though that may also be the case) in the hobby. 2) The low-effort solution is just to ignore posts from newcomers that you don't feel like answering politely. Xerihae (or anyone) isn't advocating that you must do something. People are advocating that you don't actively do something which may be negative. 3) Whether or not you mean well is irrelevant and subjective. How you are perceived matters. What is "feeble" to you may just be someone who doesn't understand the community standards. 4) I agree that Steve was likely trolling, though obviously only he really knows. The goal of the troll is negative attention, and ignoring them is much more effective than engaging them. (*): As an aside, I'd advocate this as the default term for new visitors to the site, and renaming the appropriate forum. Kudos to Parnassus and Brody for mentioning it. "Newbie" isn't necessarily derogatory, but it can have that connotation, and I can see how it would be alienating. We're guilty of this on CF as well, and upon reflection I'll see what I can do to change this. |
08-16-2007, 11:23 AM | #53 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
To be totally fair: I was being a little sarcastic about the idea of renaming the Newbie Help forum. Although I agree it can have a negative connotation, I think it might be a mistake to politically correctify everything just for the sake of preserving someone's overly thin skin.
If the general consensus on TMS is to rename it, of course, that's fine. But the concern I have is that just about everybody might have some little niggling thing that offends them and we'll end up playing PC ping-pong as we try to avoid anything offensive. Newbie doesn't have to be a bad thing. |
08-16-2007, 11:57 AM | #54 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
Well, like I said, you don't have to worry about that from me. Yes I thought your first post in that thread could be taken the wrong way, but as I said it was the argument as a whole that caused the deletion not your first reply. I've also said in this thread that I think it would be useful if people used a bit of common sense and courtesy when replying but as long as replies aren't outright rude or offensive I'm not about to start deleting/editing posts because I don't agree with the way you typed something!
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08-16-2007, 10:28 PM | #55 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
I'd have been much more concerned about it if this thread had not been opened to discuss the issue separately. That was a good move, rather than killing the conversation dead it was just moved to a more appropriate location.
Most people posting here are MUD admins or have been at some point. We are all too familiar with those controversial areas of "policy" where you can pretty much count on half your users being ticked off no matter which way you go, the only question being which half. In a forum it seems "level of moderation" is very high on that list if not #1. Even within the same thread we had people annoyed that any post was edited period, and others annoyed that there wasn't enough moderation. Most people don't like a stagnant MUD, they want change, until a change affects them in a way they don't like. Most people don't want a completely unmoderated forum, they want moderators to do their job, until it's them being moderated then the moderators must just be clueless and/or biased. As for me personally, I'm kind of new to this web forum thing so I'm just going to roll with it for a while .... but the previously mentioned idea of a moderator only forum to hash some of this out is a good one imho. |
08-17-2007, 12:30 AM | #56 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
True. So what you do then is look at the merits of the thing being discussed.
Assume half will be ticked with heavy moderation (for example, ALL personal attacks nixed), and assume half will be ticked if you do NOT moderate more heavily. At least if you go with moderation, on top of the half you didn't tick off, you have a forum where civility and common courtesy reign. All you gain from NOT moderating personal attacks is a trolling flamefest. Seems like that makes the decision an easy one. |
08-20-2007, 12:52 AM | #57 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
Much as I love getting Kudos, I have to admit: It was Molly who felt that "Newbie" was being used as a derogative term. I've never considered it so, since I often try different games and so am an eternal newbie myself. My point was simply that the phrase the OP used did not seem like the one that would automatically pop to the mind of a non-mudder. Even though, as the_logos mentioned later, newbie is not used exclusively by mudders, the phrase seemed a bit too....well, appropriate, to be used by someone at the level of knowledge he claimed to be. Even though he may have pulled the term from the forum name, the rest of my post still stands. I still don't understand how he ended up here, posting that particular note.
As to the term "newbie", I think I've more often heard it used as an explanation of someone than an insult. In my experience, the conversation goes more often like this: That person is such an idiot! No, he's just a newbie. Since I have no argument with the term, I redirect your kudos to Molly. |
08-20-2007, 01:14 PM | #58 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
I am confused. I am not seeing some posts in this thread
that were there earlier today. Were they "moderated"? -Crat |
08-20-2007, 01:53 PM | #59 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
Well if they were moderated it's not obvious to me that it happened. The last post I recall seeing was from Parnassus and it's the one right above yours right now. Moderation is not evil. If it was done I'd imagine the moderator had a good reason - and they don't need to tell us what it was.
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08-20-2007, 02:14 PM | #60 |
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Re: Posts undeleted
Yeah, it was a fairly painless cut. A bit of a snarky poke to try to get a reaction that had nothing to do with the topic at hand, followed by a post that noted the lack of usefulness in the snarky poke post. I'm cool with the moderation.
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