(Poll) Should there be a Formal Process for Assigning Forum Moderators?

[mangou007]

As for the forum moderator, I can give you another exemple, in the french part of the forum, the moderator is minerswing ( a very nice guy btw) but he was there in the early stages and is almost never connected now... I would rather see someone active to be the moderator here, to make this section move a little bit more than nowadays...
I think we can do better than that...

[NewMine]

hope fav take a ton of BTS for working in forum , and his blog.

i stop doing blog and forum and spread the word since @Bitmaster decide all i do is worth 10k brownies. yeah the fisrt motherfucker come to make marketing earn 30 milions BTS for do nothing, all the rest doing real things take shitty brownies. jajajaja okok all for you.


Good luck finding slaves to spread the word and mantain forum and comunities.

Well said, kind of. Had me laughing. I never got any brownies if that makes you feel better.

- snip -

Fuck it. You win. I'm out.

Damn, pushed another away.

hope fav take a ton of BTS for working in forum , and his blog.

i stop doing blog and forum and spread the word since @Bitmaster decide all i do is worth 10k brownies. yeah the fisrt motherfucker come to make marketing earn 30 milions BTS for do nothing, all the rest doing real things take shitty brownies. jajajaja okok all for you.


Good luck finding slaves to spread the word and mantain forum and comunities.

Maybe you should have asked for a job or position where CNX or I3 at the time would pay you for your efforts as it seems you were working and expecting something in return in the first place.
You can't expect everyone doing blog posts and spreading the word to be paid. It's already in your best interest to do so.

Who's best interest? They can't even get the garbage referal program working.

[Akado]

hope fav take a ton of BTS for working in forum , and his blog.

i stop doing blog and forum and spread the word since @Bitmaster decide all i do is worth 10k brownies. yeah the fisrt motherfucker come to make marketing earn 30 milions BTS for do nothing, all the rest doing real things take shitty brownies. jajajaja okok all for you.


Good luck finding slaves to spread the word and mantain forum and comunities.

Maybe you should have asked for a job or position where CNX or I3 at the time would pay you for your efforts as it seems you were working and expecting something in return in the first place.
You can't expect everyone doing blog posts and spreading the word to be paid. It's already in your best interest to do so.

[infovortice2013]

hope fav take a ton of BTS for working in forum , and his blog.

i stop doing blog and forum and spread the word since @Bitmaster decide all i do is worth 10k brownies. yeah the fisrt motherfucker come to make marketing earn 30 milions BTS for do nothing, all the rest doing real things take shitty brownies. jajajaja okok all for you.


Good luck finding slaves to spread the word and mantain forum and comunities.

[Akado]

I see. Well, you already have the warning system though. There's those points on the side.

[fav]

We should have a forum UIA and whomever earns the most tips in that UIA can become a moderator.

Once again luckybit...these brilliant ideas are why I am addicted to your brain.  You think and daydream like I do about this.  Give people the ability to spread their wings!

and @Akado, the problem here is that one person gets to make the decision.  Instead we should have a means by which to disintermediate that power out of one person's hands.  Also, being a forum moderator is a hard job---so mods should enjoy anything that can get the community behind helping them do their jobs to the best of their ability (imho).

I like the idea of colors to mark people (and show them that they are getting close to a ban).  But the big thing for me is the deleting of comments that are "not valuable".  I'll tell you right now as much as I hate tonyk's consistent intent to stomp his boot on faces that I am not (and neither is anyone else) qualified to judge whether his posts may or may not have value in our community.  Restriction of speech is restriction of speech...no real gray lines here imho. :/

I do like some of your ideas though on how to make it easier and better than the current process.  The other cool thing is that just by asking this in the community is that I have someone else who has served as a moderator before (though admittedly 15,000 people is a bit more than I was needing to worry about) who has the experience to give some unique insight based on that experience.  The beauty of bringing the community's valuable members' brains together is stunning...and honestly one of the few things that keeps me going sometimes.

It was not 15,000 people, it was 150,000 btw 

And we didn't have the names of people coloured (although that's an option). Each member would have a history of warnings and bans with their dates and who was the mod who sent the warning/ban and the motive on their profiles as well as the link to the thread of the infraction. That way a mod would know if member X has a past of warnings and bans.

You would see something like this;
Latest Infractions Received (0 point(s) total)
A yellow warning would get you one point and those points would expire after X time
A red warning would get you 2 points and those points would expire after X time

If you reached 3 or 5 points, cant remember, you would be banned temporarily. ie. 1 week.
Then if you did it again you would get 2 weeks, then 1 month, then permabanned.

According to the user's history, mods would decide if they should issue a red or yellow warning. If it's the user's first time he would get a yellow one, except for flame. If the user already had multiple warnings he would get a red one.

And all the mods could see the user's profiles with the warning's list.

Regarding tonyk, using him as an example, although that applies to everyone else, it's not about censoring his posts or judge what he said is valuable or not. It's about politeness/rudeness of some posts. You don't censor the post and ban him. You remove the words that are rude if he or someone else insults other people and then issue a warning. and I'm not saying he swears. It was an example. lzr for example, would have been long gone because all he does is spam and flame. It's not about censoring someone who talks the truth and has the courage to step up and say things are not working, because that's not what he does. He flames. His comments are useless. That's an example.

You can give the most constructive and useful comment, but if you flame all throughout your post and insult others, it's obvious the swearing should be removed and the user warned/banned accordingly.

Newmine on the other hand, yeah, did a lot of posts that could be considered flame or trollish by some... but at least he didn't swear so there's nothing wrong with it and his posts can be tolerated imo. He is just someone voicing his opinion, even though not in the best way but still.. He has made some good posts.

And like fav said, which most people don't seem to grasp is that being a mod is not a popularity contest. In fact, in most cases if a mod does his job right he won't be liked by the trolls.

We don't even have word censorship to avoid swearing around here. Of course we are all adults, should speak what we want, but there's definitely no need for insults, they don't contribute for a better discussion, on the contrary.

You think bumping old posts sharing whatever kind of coins, even if they don't have the best name, is not spamming/trolling? Please. Of course that should be considered spam. It doesn't contribute for anything and definitely doesn't give a better image of the forums.

just scrolling through (don't have time atm) but lzr was banned for the 3rd warning > https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,20535.msg264985.html#msg264985

we have a warning system, but it's only visible for mods. and honestly, we usually don't need one as this community is rather mature.

[lovejoy]

The bottom line is (presumably) we're all in this together.

I hear cries of "conflict of interest".
I see generous amounts of room for the alignment of interests.

Time is precious, and there's not much room for infighting.

Bearing grudges, and standing divided against each other is one of the surest poisons we could swallow.

To define the elusive forms of self aware, self interested, mutually beneficial, and organized lines of development, on a common platform.  This is our task.

We've made it really far with just the barebones structure necessary to fire up a Graphene class smartchain and hit crypto-space, however the human element has not been fully accounted for, with all its mysterious slings and arrows.

Capital is not what binds us together, it's just one of the markers by which that bond is visible.  Remember, invest in people?
This project would be in the Dark Ages were it not for people like Dan, and Fuzzy, and the many other courageous and generous souls who have really put themselves out there to explore, articulate, and weave the ties which bind this community together.

Oh you thought this was the Dark Ages?

We're 63 days from the launch of 2.0
Things are just getting interesting.

Don't forget to breathe.

[Akado]

We should have a forum UIA and whomever earns the most tips in that UIA can become a moderator.

Once again luckybit...these brilliant ideas are why I am addicted to your brain.  You think and daydream like I do about this.  Give people the ability to spread their wings!

and @Akado, the problem here is that one person gets to make the decision.  Instead we should have a means by which to disintermediate that power out of one person's hands.  Also, being a forum moderator is a hard job---so mods should enjoy anything that can get the community behind helping them do their jobs to the best of their ability (imho).

I like the idea of colors to mark people (and show them that they are getting close to a ban).  But the big thing for me is the deleting of comments that are "not valuable".  I'll tell you right now as much as I hate tonyk's consistent intent to stomp his boot on faces that I am not (and neither is anyone else) qualified to judge whether his posts may or may not have value in our community.  Restriction of speech is restriction of speech...no real gray lines here imho. :/

I do like some of your ideas though on how to make it easier and better than the current process.  The other cool thing is that just by asking this in the community is that I have someone else who has served as a moderator before (though admittedly 15,000 people is a bit more than I was needing to worry about) who has the experience to give some unique insight based on that experience.  The beauty of bringing the community's valuable members' brains together is stunning...and honestly one of the few things that keeps me going sometimes.

It was not 15,000 people, it was 150,000 btw 

And we didn't have the names of people coloured (although that's an option). Each member would have a history of warnings and bans with their dates and who was the mod who sent the warning/ban and the motive on their profiles as well as the link to the thread of the infraction. That way a mod would know if member X has a past of warnings and bans.

You would see something like this;
Latest Infractions Received (0 point(s) total)
A yellow warning would get you one point and those points would expire after X time
A red warning would get you 2 points and those points would expire after X time

If you reached 3 or 5 points, cant remember, you would be banned temporarily. ie. 1 week.
Then if you did it again you would get 2 weeks, then 1 month, then permabanned.

According to the user's history, mods would decide if they should issue a red or yellow warning. If it's the user's first time he would get a yellow one, except for flame. If the user already had multiple warnings he would get a red one.

And all the mods could see the user's profiles with the warning's list.

Regarding tonyk, using him as an example, although that applies to everyone else, it's not about censoring his posts or judge what he said is valuable or not. It's about politeness/rudeness of some posts. You don't censor the post and ban him. You remove the words that are rude if he or someone else insults other people and then issue a warning. and I'm not saying he swears. It was an example. lzr for example, would have been long gone because all he does is spam and flame. It's not about censoring someone who talks the truth and has the courage to step up and say things are not working, because that's not what he does. He flames. His comments are useless. That's an example.

You can give the most constructive and useful comment, but if you flame all throughout your post and insult others, it's obvious the swearing should be removed and the user warned/banned accordingly.

Newmine on the other hand, yeah, did a lot of posts that could be considered flame or trollish by some... but at least he didn't swear or insult (assuming  i remember correctly?) so there's nothing wrong with it and his posts can be tolerated imo. He is just someone voicing his opinion, even though not in the best way but still.. He has made some good posts.

And like fav said, which most people don't seem to grasp is that being a mod is not a popularity contest. In fact, in most cases if a mod does his job right he won't be liked by the trolls.

We don't even have word censorship to avoid swearing around here. Of course we are all adults, should speak what we want, but there's definitely no need for insults, they don't contribute for a better discussion, on the contrary.

You think bumping old posts sharing whatever kind of coins, even if they don't have the best name, is not spamming/trolling? Please. Of course that should be considered spam. It doesn't contribute for anything and definitely doesn't give a better image of the forums.

[fav]

I see no need to make changes. Fav is doing an excellent job.

 


Some people are complaining about censorship,  Tuck is against sensorship 10/10  I'm 9/10. Is it possible to have moderated(by default) and unmoderated(by request) threads? e.g When we create a thread, by default it should be a moderated one, but the creator of any thread should have the option to check the "unmoderated thread" checkbox,  moderators will NOT touch those threads because it will be considered censorship(if software can enforce that moderators have no power in those threads thats even better)

Unmoderated threads should have some kind of warning, e.g "BTS Price Speculation Unmoderated Thread" so that some visitor or new member who expects this to be a normal forum like all the others out there isn't surprised and insulted by responses like "Fr@ck you, you are an ahole etc".

If you think moderators can't be trusted you will create and participate in unmoderated threads, on the other hand if you don't have a "thick skin" you will stay away from "Unmoderated Threads"

unfortunately, we can't have non moderated threads. you know, this forum is hosted in the US, so we have to make sure that there is no illegal content.

and I just don't want new people come in and see a thread full of hate and personal attacks, we are a business after all.

[chryspano]

I see no need to make changes. Fav is doing an excellent job.

 


Some people are complaining about censorship,  Tuck is against sensorship 10/10  I'm 9/10. Is it possible to have moderated(by default) and unmoderated(by request) threads? e.g When we create a thread, by default it should be a moderated one, but the creator of any thread should have the option to check the "unmoderated thread" checkbox,  moderators will NOT touch those threads because it will be considered censorship(if software can enforce that moderators have no power in those threads thats even better)

Unmoderated threads should have some kind of warning, e.g "BTS Price Speculation Unmoderated Thread" so that some visitor or new member who expects this to be a normal forum like all the others out there isn't surprised and insulted by responses like "Fr@ck you, you are an ahole etc".

If you think moderators can't be trusted you will create and participate in unmoderated threads, on the other hand if you don't have a "thick skin" you will stay away from "Unmoderated Threads"





 

[donkeypong]

I see no need to make changes. Fav is doing an excellent job.

[fav]

you guys act like mod position is something everyone desires.

wrong. literally every time we asked for new mods, no one raised their hand. and if you check for our current mods' activities, it's not a job you want to make for long since many are inactive.

good luck with making a popularity contest out of mod voting, I'm sure that will work in your own forums, let me know.

[lovejoy]

Forum moderators should be accountable to the community.

They should probably be paid something for their troubles as well.

You get what you pay for, and a paid moderator is less likely to have their own agenda, or feel they must 'get something' in exchange for working for free.

What does that look like?  I don't know, worker proposal?  Luckybit's forum UIA idea?  Subcommittee?

Fav has done a pretty good job overall, imo, but everyone has their weaknesses, and people don't usually come to the discussion except with daggers when someone is attacking them with sarcastic straw-man character assassination, ahem... tuck.  I've been on the receiving end of that kind of campaign on the forums here, and I don't feel it's remotely helpful.  You harm your own cause, and you contribute to greater conflict, when you refuse to communicate in a non-hostile manner.  By the sound of it, fav could be communicating better as well.  Tuck and Fav, you two are like fire and ice.

I hope everyone here realizes we're not competing against each other, except in a friendly way. We're all on the same team, or supposed to be.  It's not as if the space isn't large enough for all of us, plus a small army.

Everyone go out for a walk.  Breathe some fresh air.

[Tuck Fheman]

- snip -

Fuck it. You win. I'm out.

[Thom]

I was given moderator status to manage a "Policies and Procedures" section under BitShares 2.0, a former subforum under general discussion that was created prior to the June 8th launch. It was discussed briefly by a very small group of people, it was suggested I be given the ability to moderate that section then suddenly, poof! I was a moderator.

I have no idea where that has been (re)moved to and it doesn't matter.

But or the record I have felt @fav has done a marvelous job of moving content around and tidying up the forum, helping to keep things organized. It is an unpaid, thankless job and I have been grateful for his efforts. I actually have my doubts that anyone else would be willing to step up and seriously take on moderator responsibilities at the level fav has.

I see over reactions all around. However the present controversy does raise some red flags and I find that quite disturbing.

I'm not very happy about the way bitsaphire team "maintains" the forum, but at least it is extremely rare to be out of service so I'll give them that much.  Puppies is right though, this is not owned by the community (Isn't it the bitsaphire team who pays for the forum hosting and isn't it CNX that pays bitsaphire to maintain the forum?). Perhaps it should be but it's not.

[puppies]

Very good points Akado.

Something else that is missed is that this is not public property.

If I go to the movies, and I decide I want to practice my singing during a movie, then I will be shushed.  If I continue to sing I will be removed.  This is neither censorship nor an arbitrary abuse of power.

If I owned a community hall, and I allowed people to gather and discuss things.  It would not be censorship to limit the conversation to what I had specifically laid out. 

If I went to your house, and we're hanging out with your kids and your wife, and I use profanity, or talk about drugs, or my sexual escapades, it would not be censorship to ask me to stop.  If I then started talking about disintermediating the power structure, or voting on acceptable conversation in your house, you would think I was mad. 

The decision on who is to be a moderator should be made by the owner of the resource.  You can ask for an explanation, but you are not owed one. 

I am not trying to stifle discussion, but lets not be those people that get things for free, and then complain about them. 

[fuzzy]

None of this matters.

The forum doesn't belong to the community to decide.

What you see is what you get.

Is that the case?  And SHOULD it be the case?  The only problem I personally have is that someone with moderating experience can get into a position of power and get to decide whose speech and actions are "acceptable".  We are currently in a war in the outside world for free speech to be protected...so we can consider this little microcosm a great place to practice fighting for it. 

I personally think the community should own it in some way...and have some level of control over how things are done.  I really actually enjoy the "karma" that is on PPC forums...

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

None of this matters.

The forum doesn't belong to the community to decide.

What you see is what you get.

[Akado]

get more mods and better tools like the warning system I mentioned above them. I honestly don't know what bitsaphire is doing by managing this forum.

Search tool, already mentioned countless times, is also completely useless

I can't say it's completely useless...I've used it on more than a few occasions.  Still there are likely better ways.

It is when for example I want to search for my thread "Exchange Issues Log" or whatever it's called and it returns every single thread that mentions even one of those words. You can't search by post or thread tittle. You can't search in a single section

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

get more mods and better tools like the warning system I mentioned above them. I honestly don't know what bitsaphire is doing by managing this forum.

Search tool, already mentioned countless times, is also completely useless

Search is pathetic in the forum.. the only way to find anything here is to use google to search the forum for what you are looking for.

[fuzzy]

get more mods and better tools like the warning system I mentioned above them. I honestly don't know what bitsaphire is doing by managing this forum.

Search tool, already mentioned countless times, is also completely useless

I can't say it's completely useless...I've used it on more than a few occasions.  Still there are likely better ways. 

[Akado]

get more mods and better tools like the warning system I mentioned above them. I honestly don't know what bitsaphire is doing by managing this forum.

Search tool, already mentioned countless times, is also completely useless

[fuzzy]

We should have a forum UIA and whomever earns the most tips in that UIA can become a moderator.

Once again luckybit...these brilliant ideas are why I am addicted to your brain.  You think and daydream like I do about this.  Give people the ability to spread their wings!

and @Akado, the problem here is that one person gets to make the decision.  Instead we should have a means by which to disintermediate that power out of one person's hands.  Also, being a forum moderator is a hard job---so mods should enjoy anything that can get the community behind helping them do their jobs to the best of their ability (imho).

I like the idea of colors to mark people (and show them that they are getting close to a ban).  But the big thing for me is the deleting of comments that are "not valuable".  I'll tell you right now as much as I hate tonyk's consistent intent to stomp his boot on faces that I am not (and neither is anyone else) qualified to judge whether his posts may or may not have value in our community.  Restriction of speech is restriction of speech...no real gray lines here imho. :/

I do like some of your ideas though on how to make it easier and better than the current process.  The other cool thing is that just by asking this in the community is that I have someone else who has served as a moderator before (though admittedly 15,000 people is a bit more than I was needing to worry about) who has the experience to give some unique insight based on that experience.  The beauty of bringing the community's valuable members' brains together is stunning...and honestly one of the few things that keeps me going sometimes.
 

[luckybit]

We should have a forum UIA and whomever earns the most tips in that UIA can become a moderator.

[38PTSWarrior]

I am so busy, hardly find time for this stuff. Leave it to the people who like to do these things.
13 Dec, 6 hours, 20 people

[38PTSWarrior]

I 'just don't think about it'

[Akado]

I think people are overreacting... One thing is Theymos banning XT related talk when that matters for Bitcoin, another is deleting spam.

I was a mod on a manga/anime related website with +150000 members and managed on of the sections with the most activity. The crowd was different, meaning content couldn't be +18, but still, if something didn't contribute to a conversation, was just to raise post count, etc, it was considered as spam. Members who talked trash and weren't polite, meaning if someone said a "fuck you", etc, it was considered rude and people would get warnings.

You had yellow and red warnings. Once you reached X red/yellow warnings you would be banned.

It was done and is still being done since 2008.

Why do people keep insisting on the fact that if a useless post is deleted, that is considered censorship? Why is trying to keep the forum clean weed related businesses (attention this is different from a discussion) considered censorship? I don't get it, I just don't get it.

Tbh the forum tools suck around here. Pretty bad. We don't even have that basic system (that i'm aware of) so moderating kind of becomes a binary option. You either ban or you don't. You either delete or you don't. With a warning system implemented you would see the history of this or that member and according to the warnings he already had or if they were recent, he would be punished accordingly.

Problem is mod tasking is not done right in these communities. Half the threads in bitcointalk should be deleted and same thing for members who pump coins and constantly bash others. However I'm mostly certain if someone did that, that person would be considered a cryptoHitler or something. It's not about censorship or not, it's about keeping the place clean and civilized for discussion. That's why most crypto forum suck and you can't have a proper discussion. Because mod duties are not performed correctly and becasue everything is perceived as censorship.

tldr;
on one side, forum tools are useless and can't be used for proper mod duties (that i'm aware of)
on the other side, people complain a lot and can't separate censorship from keeping a place clean and where you can have a proper discussion
That is the reason why bitcointalk is the horrible thing it is now.

Spam: stands for Stupid Pointless Annoying Material/Message.
There's just a tremendous amount of Spam and Flame on all crypto forums and mods do nothing about it. When they do they are accused of censorship LOL. Censorship is an attempt of blocking a possible discussion. Blocking spam and flame is not censorship. I bet you would see a migration from all more "intelligent" so to speak kind of people to a forum where that doesn't happen. Maybe that's what's happening on the new bitcoin forum where all AMAs are hosted now.

Bitcointalk is already hated and known for it's childish threads and members. Eventually if you do nothing you might end up like that.

Now it's your choice to make your forum a place to have a proper discussion or a place to have fun. Of course it can be both but you can have fun without spam, flame, or discussions that are not appropriate. Bitcointalk is known for trolls. Now, do you want your forum to be the same? Sure we're pretty far away from that, but I'm just giving food for thought. It's about creating a "brand" if you want to call it that way. To be known as a civilized community where you can have all kinds of awesome discussions without trolls, flame and spam. That is NOT censorship.

It's also about learning how to distinguish friends and fun from "work". In what I deem a fair mod duty (again, this is my opinion) Tuck would already have potential warnings for Spam. TonyK would have many for not being that polite. NewMine would have been banned many times temporarily, etc. That doesn't make those people useless. Tuck and Tony post interesting and useful stuff, however they can still do it without the rudeness or spam like type of posts. You get me?

Lots of times on the forum I mentioned, people I actually liked and was friend of would be banned. I would set warnings for them, etc. Because they weren't following the rules. It's not because I like this or that person or even if that person is the most intelligent and visionary with great ideas... everyone is subject to the same type of rules.

Now it's up to you to find this tyrannical or prefer everyone to do what they please and turn a place you like into something like Bitcointalk. If BitShares is ever known for that you will never be taken seriously. Look at NxT. The amount of trolls there gave that community a bit of a fame.. even though they still have all kind of smart people there.

[fuzzy]

It would be better, in my opinion, to make more explicit a set of Terms of Service in the Registration Agreement. These could be voted on by the Community. And then strictly enforced.

The function of a Moderator would be to enforce those Terms of Service in a straightforward way. The moderator should not have the option to make up his own rules, but simply enforce those voted on by the Community.

Also, the function of Moderator could be time limited, 6 months or a year (or maybe only one month, so the position is less onerous and could be undertaken by many trusted Community members in rotation).

Thank you for your constructive feedback!  Do we have something similar to this at present?  I know, for instance, that I was given an area for beyond bitcoin on the forums but there was no community vote for it.  I am pretty certain the community would have voted yes, but my "certainty" should have no role in this. 

[onceuponatime]

It would be better, in my opinion, to make more explicit a set of Terms of Service in the Registration Agreement. These could be voted on by the Community. And then strictly enforced.

The function of a Moderator would be to enforce those Terms of Service in a straightforward way. The moderator should not have the option to make up his own rules, but simply enforce those voted on by the Community.

Also, the function of Moderator could be time limited, 6 months or a year (or maybe only one month, so the position is less onerous and could be undertaken by many trusted Community members in rotation).

[fuzzy]

I am curious if we have a process for putting people into positions of power to shut down speech on our forums.  Moderators are very powerful positions and I am interested in the community's input on how we can ensure moderators are working in the best interests of BitShares. 

For this reason I am posing a few questions:
1) Do we have a formal process for assigning community members to moderator positions? 
   1a) If so, where is it? 
   1b) If not, should we?  <-------This is the question about which I am polling.