Quit your bitching

What do you want to see here? Some more categories, forums, and mods? Hmm...
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Lucifer
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Quit your bitching

Post by Lucifer »

Seriously, quit bitching.

I've recently joined a forum that is far more heavily moderated than this. I woke up this morning to 10 PMs telling me my comments had been edited for various reasons (ranging from "You can't talk about guns" to "Don't quote the post immediately above yours"), threads deleted, threads re-instated, etc. It's wild.

You guys want to complain about your fascist, capricious moderators need to just shut yer yaps. You've got it soooo easy here it's unbelievable.

Over there, it's rule of law. Forum rules must be followed, even when a post arguably stands as an exception.

Over here, forum rules are somewhat arbitrary and generally don't last long, and we try to sort out conflicts and get to the bottom of things and get people to talk to each other.

I prefer here, to be honest. :)
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Light
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Light »

You dislike people quoting the person directly above them? It makes it easier to show you're talking to or about someone or something in particular, rather than just throwing things out there.
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Gazelle
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Gazelle »

Light wrote:You dislike people quoting the person directly above them? It makes it easier to show you're talking to or about someone or something in particular, rather than just throwing things out there.
Yeah i completely agree Light.
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Jonathan
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Jonathan »

I don't generally quote the person directly above me. Exceptions are if I respond something specific, or if I get to snatch a page break from Phytotron. You know, unlike email (sans threaded view), your context is right there. When I reply to a thread without quoting anyone, that means I believe I'll just flow into the thread, the context that should linger in your head when you arrive at my post. I might respond to the person above me, to a few people above me, or to the thread in general. Whatever it is, it should be readily apparent to the extent you need to know, given any reading comprehension. But maybe that's too much to ask, given that Lucifer did quote the person directly above him.

As for moderation, it should be done in moderation. Enforcing fairly draconian rules for the sake of it doesn't seem to help anything. That just turns it into even more of a mob thing.
Lucifer wrote:I prefer here, to be honest. :)
So stay. :) Just don't use your superpowers on me.

Why not? What's the point of being spiderman if you can't climb walls for fun?
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Mkay1
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Mkay1 »

Typical oppressor, telling us how bad others have it to try to make us not question their overbearing regime.
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Gazelle
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Gazelle »

Mkay1 wrote:Typical oppressor, telling us how bad others have it to try to make us not question their overbearing regime.
Lmfao, i love quoting the person right above me! :P
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by epsy »

You already made that joke.
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vov
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by vov »

May I make it too? Oh well, I did it wrong :(
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Lucifer
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Lucifer »

Jonathan wrote:I don't generally quote the person directly above me. Exceptions are if I respond something specific, or if I get to snatch a page break from Phytotron. You know, unlike email (sans threaded view), your context is right there. When I reply to a thread without quoting anyone, that means I believe I'll just flow into the thread, the context that should linger in your head when you arrive at my post. I might respond to the person above me, to a few people above me, or to the thread in general. Whatever it is, it should be readily apparent to the extent you need to know, given any reading comprehension. But maybe that's too much to ask, given that Lucifer did quote the person directly above him.
Well, several things. Those forums use vBulletin, and when you quote a post, there's a link embedded in the quote to the original post. I think when you have technology drawing the links like that that you should do it. It would be possible to write up a report that shows the flow of a particular thread, and when you can't quote the post above you, you lose important information.

Then, too, sometimes it's *not* obvious by context if you're responding to the thread in general or the post above yours specifically, so quoting the post you're answering is required to clear that up. Also, if you *don't* quote the post above yours, it can still be edited, and then what you wrote makes no sense at all.
Jonathan wrote:As for moderation, it should be done in moderation. Enforcing fairly draconian rules for the sake of it doesn't seem to help anything. That just turns it into even more of a mob thing.
To be fair, it's a crossdressing forum, so there are significant safety concerns as well as the risk that any member at any time could go suicidal, so some of the rules (like no talking about weapons) are there to keep the environment reasonably padded to accommodate any random person's emotional issues since the site is a magnet for people with such issues.
Jonathan wrote:
Lucifer wrote:I prefer here, to be honest. :)
So stay. :) Just don't use your superpowers on me.

Why not? What's the point of being spiderman if you can't climb walls for fun?
Obviously I'm not leaving. :)

The experience does remind me of the fencing forums I joined a few years back that were somewhat less moderated, almost as chaotic as here, and the mob ruled the whole thing. I brought up the idea that the perceived differences in male muscle development made absolutely no difference in a sport that revolved around quick thinking, and the quick movements needed were within easy reach of both sexes, and you should have seen the mob go nuts. I would have gotten a more positive reaction by saying "You're all gay, fencing is gay" than I did with that! And there were no moderators to speak of because they were involved in the flame war. Suffice it to say, I only hung out on those forums for like a week, then took off.
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Gazelle
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Gazelle »

epsy wrote:You already made that joke.
lold no, i just quoted the person above me, i didnt say how much i loved it.. unlike this time! :p
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Jonathan
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Jonathan »

Of course there can be reasons to quote the post above you. If I believe it's of benefit I'll do it. Maybe even the entire thing.
Lucifer wrote:Well, several things. Those forums use vBulletin, and when you quote a post, there's a link embedded in the quote to the original post. I think when you have technology drawing the links like that that you should do it. It would be possible to write up a report that shows the flow of a particular thread, and when you can't quote the post above you, you lose important information.
One of my reasons is that threads don't actually flow like a directed graph. Maybe they do, but you'd find posts consist overwhelmingly of a bunch of links to recent posts before them, all with roughly the same distribution. From an information-theoretic perspective it makes sense to omit such context when it fits the pattern. Either way, this "one or a few links" thing isn't entirely accurate; you didn't just forget about other posts in the vicinity, and quite likely your response was implicitly influenced by them. If you got to view the thread as a graph and destroyed its traditional temporal presentation, you'd have a harder time piecing everything together.
Lucifer wrote:
Jonathan wrote:So stay. :) Just don't use your superpowers on me.

Why not? What's the point of being spiderman if you can't climb walls for fun?
Obviously I'm not leaving. :)
Okay, that worked. Now I just need to find a way to influence you with more precision, and perhaps not just to get you to edit my posts.
Lucifer wrote:The experience does remind me of the fencing forums I joined a few years back that were somewhat less moderated, almost as chaotic as here, and the mob ruled the whole thing. I brought up the idea that the perceived differences in male muscle development made absolutely no difference in a sport that revolved around quick thinking, and the quick movements needed were within easy reach of both sexes, and you should have seen the mob go nuts. I would have gotten a more positive reaction by saying "You're all gay, fencing is gay" than I did with that! And there were no moderators to speak of because they were involved in the flame war. Suffice it to say, I only hung out on those forums for like a week, then took off.
That's pretty close to what I meant. It's moderators having no integrity, but (unlike in your example, it looks like) eager to enforce arbitrary rules.
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Ratchet
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Ratchet »

Frankly, I'm not quite sure what prompted this topic. Care to fill me in?
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Lucifer
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Lucifer »

Lucifer wrote:I've recently joined a forum that is far more heavily moderated than this. I woke up this morning to 10 PMs telling me my comments had been edited for various reasons (ranging from "You can't talk about guns" to "Don't quote the post immediately above yours"), threads deleted, threads re-instated, etc. It's wild.
It was in the first post, really.
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Hoax »

How comparable in size is the user base though
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Ratchet
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Re: Quit your bitching

Post by Ratchet »

Lucifer wrote:
Lucifer wrote:I've recently joined a forum that is far more heavily moderated than this. I woke up this morning to 10 PMs telling me my comments had been edited for various reasons (ranging from "You can't talk about guns" to "Don't quote the post immediately above yours"), threads deleted, threads re-instated, etc. It's wild.
It was in the first post, really.
It took me several times of re-reading to figure out the actual meaning of that. I was like "What does he even mean?! We can't edit his comments DAFUQ"

Then, it dawned on me. But, really. I don't think there is anything bad about our moderators (you guys). I long ago realized that you guys were very lenient around here and you only step in when it is seriously needed. Thanks for that :)
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