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I think Ouze was citing the carnivorous bias of our Falango-Maoist Agenda, a.k.a., the Alt-Center movement. It’s super secret but all the cleverest users figure it out (usually after their first warning).

If you read the original thread about this, mostly every one agrees he appeared to be making alot of "spam" threads, i noticed it and said the obvious to him that i don't think what he is saying is worth a thread basically, so i don't know why theirs so much talk desputing this, and its unfortunate that you did not just pm the mods in the first place instead of creating threads with the persons name on it.

 Manchu wrote:
Alpharius (who has retired from being a moderator) did not lock that thread, I did. There’s no reasonable discussion to be had on binge reading, as opposed to discussing what people are reading or about reading a certain book or genre, etc. That thread is a great example of spamming the forum, which is against the rules.

I appreciate that you are sticking up for another user but we’re not going to give you the detailed run down on how we moderated someone who isn’t you. I can absolutely confirm, however, that this user was not permanently banned nor was he “censured” or even mildly scolded for opening all these threads. And generally, starting a lot of threads all at once — although a little gauche in terms of etiquette — is not normally an issue. Rather, starting a lot of threads all at once that are about either very similar things or perhaps nothing at all ... well, yeah that’s spamming.

As for accusations of personal grudges, I am the one who locked most of the threads. But you can go back and look at them and see that I participated actively in many of them. This isn’t about being mean or uppity or what have you. I think Techpriestsupport posted some good ideas and on more than one occasion, I told him so. So please rethink the idea that moderation = personal animus.

So you lock the thread but do not remove the post by Alpharius even though it is clearly breaking Rule #1? This is generally the kind of moderation where people start to wonder if the mods understand what they are supposed to be doing or if they are actually showing bias towards one of their own/ex-mod.

It seems the argument boils down to that he wasn't causing a problem, but people still didn't like what he was doing. So they were locked.

Did it cause forum issues? No.
Did it knock popular posts off the front page? No.
Was he being rude to other posters in those threads? No.
Was he making topics about banned subjects? No.
Was he making spam threads about the same topic over and over? No.

What is the problem then? It seems that people just don't like seeing one person post too much, for whatever reason. Not sure why that ruffles peoples feathers, but it seems to do so. Even when the posting itself is in no way doing any harm.

What rule did he break?

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Alpharius (who has retired from being a moderator) did not lock that thread, I did. There’s no reasonable discussion to be had on binge reading, as opposed to discussing what people are reading or about reading a certain book or genre, etc. That thread is a great example of spamming the forum, which is against the rules.

I appreciate that you are sticking up for another user but we’re not going to give you the detailed run down on how we moderated someone who isn’t you. I can absolutely confirm, however, that this user was not permanently banned nor was he “censured” or even mildly scolded for opening all these threads. And generally, starting a lot of threads all at once — although a little gauche in terms of etiquette — is not normally an issue. Rather, starting a lot of threads all at once that are about either very similar things or perhaps nothing at all ... well, yeah that’s spamming.

As for accusations of personal grudges, I am the one who locked most of the threads. But you can go back and look at them and see that I participated actively in many of them. This isn’t about being mean or uppity or what have you. I think Techpriestsupport posted some good ideas and on more than one occasion, I told him so. So please rethink the idea that moderation = personal animus.

So you lock the thread but do not remove the post by Alpharius even though it is clearly breaking Rule #1? This is generally the kind of moderation where people start to wonder if the mods understand what they are supposed to be doing or if they are actually showing bias towards one of their own/ex-mod.

It seems the argument boils down to that he wasn't causing a problem, but people still didn't like what he was doing. So they were locked.

Did it cause forum issues? No.
Did it knock popular posts off the front page? No.
Was he being rude to other posters in those threads? No.
Was he making topics about banned subjects? No.
Was he making spam threads about the same topic over and over? No.

What is the problem then? It seems that people just don't like seeing one person post too much, for whatever reason. Not sure why that ruffles peoples feathers, but it seems to do so. Even when the posting itself is in no way doing any harm.

What rule did he break?

"Was he making spam threads about the same topic over and over? No" - Yes but he was making spam threads.

The rule of cool. Was broken. Through uncoolness.

Or, the rule against spamming threads. Which is kind of what people are getting at. You seem to want some kind of validation. So here it is.

This place isn’t perfectly fair. You can deal with it. The people that run the show can deal with it. I can deal with it. Everyone that sticks around can deal with it. If you stick around you’ll get your license to be a bit gakky sometimes. It helps if you’re funny about it, for what it’s worth.

We have a culture. It’s not just rules. Someone ITT brought up the ratio of post count to topics started. Why do users think that’s relevant? I don’t exactly know. But it’s hardly a surprising sentiment, at least to most people.

I mean, not everyone is going to fit in here. That’s a good insight from greatbigtree. Peregrine also brings up a good insight — OP should not think of a thread he starts as “his” such that locking it means he is being persecuted. That’s a cultural norm rather than a rule. And when people run into a norm they either acculturate to it, and become part of the communitty, or they don’t and eventually hang out with other people somewhere else.

Making an account here isn’t the same thing as being part of the community here, is another way to put it.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

So you lock the thread but do not remove the post by Alpharius even though it is clearly breaking Rule #1?

There was nothing rude about Alpharius' response in that thread. It was a little unnecessary and spammy, but nothing that warranted removal when the thread was being locked anyway.

It seems the argument boils down to that he wasn't causing a problem, but people still didn't like what he was doing. So they were locked.

No, the 'argument' boils down to that he was causing a problem, by spamming threads in multiple sections of the forums and through his interactions with other users in those threads and others. This was discussed with him directly, as is generally the case with moderation on this forum.

The end result of those discussions was that he was asked to consolidate similar topics and go easy on the starting multiple threads in a short space of time.

And that's really all there is to it. It's nowhere near the gigantic issue that you seem to be trying to turn it into.

 Manchu wrote:
Making an account here isn’t the same thing as being part of the community here, is another way to put it.

Your moderation team, ladies and gentleman.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Making an account here isn’t the same thing as being part of the community here, is another way to put it.

Your moderation team, ladies and gentleman.

Lol, so if ( insert awful evil person here ) creates account on dakka he should be considered apart of the community?

For example, we revently permabanned a guy who just joined up to post white supremacist stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
recently*

 Stormatious wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Making an account here isn’t the same thing as being part of the community here, is another way to put it.

Your moderation team, ladies and gentleman.

Lol, so if ( insert awful evil person here ) creates account on dakka he should be considered apart of the community?

There are people who have created accounts on Dakka, stirred up a ruckus, and subsequently left because they didn't conform to community norms. Just like any other community, be it a bar, a church, a reading club or whatever. Walking into the door doesn't guarantee you belong there.

Whatever helps you rationalize it.

How is one wrong about this? you say its being rationalized with out explaining at all why one is incorrect

 Stormatious wrote:
How is one wrong about this? you say its being rationalized with out explaining at all why one is incorrect

You're talking to somebody who opened his Dakka life with this memorable quote

 Excommunicatus wrote:

I alleged that the mods at the B&C acted like fascists, so to prove me wrong they permabanned me.

So the odds were always against any reasonable discussion on the subject of moderation on this site from the get go.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Whatever helps you rationalize it.

Dafug? I'm not rationalizing anything. I'm just telling it like it is. But if we're getting into that sort of thing, I am happy to diagnose your problem for you:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Making an account here isn’t the same thing as being part of the community here, is another way to put it.

Your moderation team, ladies and gentleman.

Lol, so if ( insert awful evil person here ) creates account on dakka he should be considered apart of the community?

There are people who have created accounts on Dakka, stirred up a ruckus, and subsequently left because they didn't conform to community norms. Just like any other community, be it a bar, a church, a reading club or whatever. Walking into the door doesn't guarantee you belong there.

Or, to be even more obvious, spambots have accounts but are clearly not part of the community.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
Someone ITT brought up the ratio of post count to topics started. Why do users think that’s relevant? I don’t exactly know.

As the person who brought it up, it's relevant because a high topics to post ratio is often a sign of one of two non-constructive patterns of behavior:

1) Drive-by spambots that see the community as little more than a source for getting more clicks on their blog and spam new threads directing people to their content elsewhere without ever interacting with anyone.

and

2) People who are looking for attention instead of community and discussion. It isn't enough to participate in discussions, they want to have their name on the front page as the "owner" of the Official Forum Music Thread or whatever. Making new threads means more visibility than posting in them, so they tend to start lots of low-value threads for every random idea that crosses their mind instead of first asking whether the forum really needs a separate thread for that idea. And it comes across as "LOOK AT ME" instead of genuine community interaction. This is the problem with the subject of this thread, most of the many threads they posted either had minimal potential for discussion and/or were minor thoughts that could easily have gone in one of the existing threads. So it was really starting to feel like the front page was getting cluttered up with threads that had little purpose besides getting the OP's name out there.

Now, this ratio obviously isn't an absolute rule, and you could have genuinely productive members who rarely post except when they have a major idea that deserves its own thread. But they'd almost certainly have a much lower ratio of threads started per week, mostly lurking until it's time to post the next amazing idea. For the more typical poster if they're genuinely participating in the community they're going to have a low ratio of new threads to posts, simply because participating in active discussion adds post count quickly and legitimate new thread ideas are relatively rare. For comparison, the OP has more than double my total of new threads started, with about 4% of the total posts. And that's including some less than amazing threads in my total, arguably even with that low a ratio I've posted too many new threads!

 insaniak wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

So you lock the thread but do not remove the post by Alpharius even though it is clearly breaking Rule #1?

There was nothing rude about Alpharius' response in that thread. It was a little unnecessary and spammy, but nothing that warranted removal when the thread was being locked anyway.

I don't know how you look at the immediate dismissal of a topic and then the "Ugh." at the end as not rude, but that is pretty special.

 insaniak wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
It seems the argument boils down to that he wasn't causing a problem, but people still didn't like what he was doing. So they were locked.

No, the 'argument' boils down to that he was causing a problem, by spamming threads in multiple sections of the forums and through his interactions with other users in those threads and others. This was discussed with him directly, as is generally the case with moderation on this forum.

The end result of those discussions was that he was asked to consolidate similar topics and go easy on the starting multiple threads in a short space of time.

And that's really all there is to it. It's nowhere near the gigantic issue that you seem to be trying to turn it into.

"I can absolutely confirm, however, that this user was not permanently banned nor was he “censured” or even mildly scolded for opening all these threads." - Manchu

You guys are going to have to get on the same page when discussing stuff. You cannot even agree on if a rule was broken or if it is a culture, if he was scolded or not.

You probably don't want it to be an issue, that is pretty clear. But it really is when you are on the other side watching the moderators spin in circles and lock things with generally no repercussions to themselves.

Dreadwinter, I think you're just nitpicking at this point. What we've been trying to express is that we did talk to Techpriestsupport, but only to ask him to consolidate threads. I'd personally love to have him continue to contribute on this site, and I've enjoyed his threads quite a bit.

But the fact remains that we don't want any one user to dominate a section with half of the created threads, and that's been the case as long as I've been on Dakka. It rarely comes up, because people tend to deal with it themselves (i.e. asking another user not to make more threads).

I wish we'd been clearer about this (and maybe caught it earlier before things snowballed). But even from this thread, you can see that many users Did think he was creating too many threads. I understand that you don't, but the issue should be pretty clear now.

In the end, like I said before any user can create basically geekt any thread in Geek Media. I wish we'd avoided this snafu, but that's still the case, whether you think we bungled this or not

 RiTides wrote:


I wish we'd been clearer about this

You really didn't need to be though. As has been stated earlier in this thread, moderation is a private affair between the mod team and the poster in question. It's frankly no one else's business. I have no idea why Dreadwinter is banging this drum as hard as he is, it's pretty clear that quite a few people took issue with Techpriestsupport's endless stream of consciousness posts even if Dreadwinter himself didn't see it as a problem. Now he's basically airing someone else's dirty laundry in Nuts and Bolts, which seems wildly inappropriate and frankly I think it's incredible the mods have humored him this much.

I’m telling you. Masochistic tendencies. The lot of them. Possible PTSD. Suggestions of Stockholm syndrome. Mods retire and become part of the posters / terrorist group. They’re sick, I tell you.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

 RiTides wrote:


I wish we'd been clearer about this

You really didn't need to be though. As has been stated earlier in this thread, moderation is a private affair between the mod team and the poster in question. It's frankly no one else's business. I have no idea why Dreadwinter is banging this drum as hard as he is, it's pretty clear that quite a few people took issue with Techpriestsupport's endless stream of consciousness posts even if Dreadwinter himself didn't see it as a problem. Now he's basically airing someone else's dirty laundry in Nuts and Bolts, which seems wildly inappropriate and frankly I think it's incredible the mods have humored him this much.

Thats patently false, its treated as a private affair but all moderation effects the climate of the board, for instance this incident shows the mods would rather listen to some of the usual gatekeepers who don't like people acting different (They dont post like i do) than have discussion going on in a subforum that was before and is back to being low traffic.

I still dont get how having multiple threads on different movies is worse than having the significantly reduced discussion we have now.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
I don't know how you look at the immediate dismissal of a topic and then the "Ugh." at the end as not rude, but that is pretty special.

Agreed. If anyone else had posted it insaniak would come down on them like a ton of bricks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
"I can absolutely confirm, however, that this user was not permanently banned nor was he “censured” or even mildly scolded for opening all these threads." - Manchu

You guys are going to have to get on the same page when discussing stuff. You cannot even agree on if a rule was broken or if it is a culture, if he was scolded or not.

You probably don't want it to be an issue, that is pretty clear. But it really is when you are on the other side watching the moderators spin in circles and lock things with generally no repercussions to themselves.

Again, "rules for thee and not for me". My issue with it is the dishonesty, just be honest and admit that it's biased and we can all leave happy.

No, this isn’t a “snafu” that “snowballed,” and this isn’t about “bias” and “dishonesty.”

Some users started complaining about a guy posting a bunch of very similar threads. Agreeing that this is spammy, I locked three of four of those threads and posted instructions to continue all of the discussions in the fourth thread which remained unlocked. I also sent the guy a PM saying, I enjoy your threads but consider making your topics a bit broader and posting less of them/PM me with any questions. I got no response.

It’s really as simple as that.

Jerram wrote:
I still dont get how having multiple threads on different movies is worse than having the significantly reduced discussion we have now.

Because the same discussion is still happening, just consolidated into single threads. It might not have been bad with just one person spamming those threads, but imagine if everyone started making a new thread for every movie they happen to think about for a moment. You'd have a front page full of a ton of movie threads, most of them minimal-content spam, pushing out everything that isn't movie threads and effectively silencing that discussion. The only fair way to handle it is a uniform policy where that kind of thing is banned even if nobody else is currently doing it, you can't give special spam-posting privileges for one person.

It surprises me that so many people feel they should be able to dictate the way in which their free-to-access service is provided.

Hell, I voluntarily give money to DakkaDakka, and even I don't think I get to dictate such things.

I am shocked that this nonsense thread is not yet locked. Dreadwinter got his answer on the very first page. The mods owe him no further explanation whatsoever. If he can't be man enough to accept it, then he should leave.

How come the spam rules don't apply to the 25,527 times Peregrine has posted the exact same value-less whinging?

How come they don't apply to Pancakey? Delvarius Centurion?

How come Queen Anne's Revenge can go around freely questioning the mental health of other posters?

Why can Peregrine flatly state that another poster is a liar?

Rules for thee... now you’re getting it!

Have you ever visited someone else’s house, and been a rude, belligerent turd? Did you feel welcome after that?

Just because the doors aren’t locked, people aren’t welcome to come in and treat the place like it’s theirs. Because it isn’t. This place belongs to the person that owns it. That person has appointed some people to look after it, on their own terms. Not all appointees do things the same way. They don’t all have the same priorities, and that’s ok because the rules here aren’t *LAWS*. It’s not a Democracy. It is an Authoritarian government. The leaders are not (directly) accountable to the people that walk through the doors. People can be barred entry, that’s true. But no one is imprisoned here. The accountability lies in the Authorities’ desire to have people come to visit them. So long as the people that the rulers like to have show up keep showing up, their system works for them.

Some people like order for Order’s sake...

but I don’t. I like the frontier, bit of the Wild West vibe this place has. If you’ve got a bit of grit and a big pair of brass balls/ovaries, this place is great. You can let your big-ass personality out. It’s freeing. Think of the rules as strong guidelines. Sometimes it’s ok to put a toe over the line if there’s good reason to do so. So take the slap on the wrist. Get a temp ban if that’s what you need to do... then get back in the game!

I hope you like it here, but if you don’t, try someplace else. Sometimes you need to experience other cultures to appreciate where you’re at.

 Peregrine wrote:

Jerram wrote:
I still dont get how having multiple threads on different movies is worse than having the significantly reduced discussion we have now.

Because the same discussion is still happening, just consolidated into single threads. It might not have been bad with just one person spamming those threads, but imagine if everyone started making a new thread for every movie they happen to think about for a moment. You'd have a front page full of a ton of movie threads, most of them minimal-content spam, pushing out everything that isn't movie threads and effectively silencing that discussion. The only fair way to handle it is a uniform policy where that kind of thing is banned even if nobody else is currently doing it, you can't give special spam-posting privileges for one person.

Factually objectively untrue, there is less discussion than there was with those threads. And in your hypothetical, the movies people wanted to talk about (as well as other topics) would keep getting bumped and items without discussion wouldn't. Conversation would flow organically instead of being smothered. Subjectively, I would rather have an active forum with multiple discussion to follows than the current state of thread s on the front page that are weeks old.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
How come the spam rules don't apply to the 25,527 times Peregrine has posted the exact same value-less whinging?

10 threads per year and 10 posts per day hardly constitutes spamming. 10 posts is a lot, by my standards, but hardly denying other people the opportunity to speak.

How come they don't apply to Pancakey? Delvarius Centurion?

Pancakey's "is it dead?" threads are spread out over months. Delvarus Centurion is frustrating, in my opinion, but has not monopolised a section of the forum to the same extent. It would not surprise me if mods had spoken to him anyway.

How come Queen Anne's Revenge can go around freely questioning the mental health of other posters? Why can Peregrine flatly state that another poster is a liar?

First, please quote so people can judge for themselves, and secondly, how do you know nothing has been done about it behind the scenes?