[Suggestion] The Community I Moderate

[FreakensteinAG]

In the community I moderate, which has several times more traffic ranking than Narutobase, thus several times more users and thus several times more content to watch over, but oddly enough, fewer moderators on hand, we ALWAYS notify the community when posts are deleted, threads are locked, and when threads are deleted.

It's to encourage transparency, which, if I know the relationship between us and the normal users, fosters communication and trust between the administration and the users. But I guess some websites have not figured this basic website know-how yet. I've seen threads I don't own, or threads I don't participate in (but still spectate) get taken down for inexplicable and inconspicuous reasons. I've seen the replies posted. There wasn't even a single jar of salt tipped over. No trolls under the bridge. No flame hazards. What was the issue? It seemed civil. Users obviously get angry over the lack of information. The OP has to take time to ask why their thread was treated the way it was. If he/she is willing, the OP may share the reason to others who ask, because if they ask an official, they either get ignored (like what happened to me with an administrator), or they are told "it's not your thread, you don't need to know". Is it really their thread, because if so, they would have the ability to moderate their own threads. No, it's the community's thread, because it is shared among the users, and is dealt with by the moderators if the need arises. Since it is the community's thread, should they not all know what happened to the thread they participated in?

So here's an idea, NarutoBase. Your moderation policies need some serious reform in the way of transparency and communication. Your community will be happier and less angsty for it. Tell the users in the thread why the thread is receiving such-and-such judgment. It prevents threads like this, except the threads are usually in the wrong forum.

And yes, as a moderator four years running in a community with far more users to watch over, I am telling you to do your job correctly.

 

[Monxstaa]

In the community I moderate, which has several times more traffic ranking than Narutobase, thus several times more users and thus several times more content to watch over, but oddly enough, fewer moderators on hand, we ALWAYS notify the community when posts are deleted, threads are locked, and when threads are deleted.

It's to encourage transparency, which, if I know the relationship between us and the normal users, fosters communication and trust between the administration and the users. But I guess some websites have not figured this basic website know-how yet. I've seen threads I don't own, or threads I don't participate in (but still spectate) get taken down for inexplicable and inconspicuous reasons. I've seen the replies posted. There wasn't even a single jar of salt tipped over. No trolls under the bridge. No flame hazards. What was the issue? It seemed civil. Users obviously get angry over the lack of information. The OP has to take time to ask why their thread was treated the way it was. If he/she is willing, the OP may share the reason to others who ask, because if they ask an official, they either get ignored (like what happened to me with an administrator), or they are told "it's not your thread, you don't need to know". Is it really their thread, because if so, they would have the ability to moderate their own threads. No, it's the community's thread, because it is shared among the users, and is dealt with by the moderators if the need arises. Since it is the community's thread, should they not all know what happened to the thread they participated in?

So here's an idea, NarutoBase. Your moderation policies need some serious reform in the way of transparency and communication. Your community will be happier and less angsty for it. Tell the users in the thread why the thread is receiving such-and-such judgment. It prevents threads like this, except the threads are usually in the wrong forum.

And yes, as a moderator four years running in a community with far more users to watch over, I am telling you to do your job correctly.

whats this website?

 

[FreakensteinAG]

whats this website?

***************** , we are fantastic people. Our people love our administration.

 

[Klaus]

You can moderate anyway you like in YOUR community. Don't tell us how to do our jobs here. You don't set the terms or rules, the admins do. We follow them and enforce the rules, how we were chosen to do. The way we do things here is how the system is set up. Don't like? Go mod your site then if its so great. This is honestly tiresome and bothersome. We don't go to your community and tell you how to do things there. Don't do it here. NB is NB your site is your site. Simple. Telling us how to do our job is annoying and nonsensical especially if you have no idea whatsoever how things work here. As I said before and will say once again. If you don't have anything good to say, don't say it. Stop criticizing so much and help us run the site smoothly. I will forward this to an admin. Cause honestly this is plain ridiculous.

 

[Adam Driver]

Seems like a good idea I guess

 

[Monxstaa]

Its a game website tho course it will have more traffic than narutobase

 

[Urda]

I assume threads that provoke members are immediately deleted. Mods know by now and its obviously pointed out in the first post - 9/10 times its a "troll" post. If its does not show any signs of producing a "healthy" discussion based on the sub-forum it is posted in and/or the first post, then I say delete it.

As for the communication between Mods and members about removal of threads is handled properly. If you not seeing any comprising, go up through the channels and seek justice. When all fails expose them.

 

[Avani]

Mods try to post messages if they believe the user may not understand the reason but since it's not always possible - Here are the guidelines to find out why a thread was removed:

You must be registered for see links

Here is it again to make it more clear:

You must be registered for see links

If a user doesn't get a message and doesn't understand a reason either, then they should contact a section mod a gmod or admin and they will explain.

Or alternatively they can ask here if they find the response by the mod insufficient:

You must be registered for see links

I have myself messaged a lot of people voluntarily about why their threads were moved or deleted- dozens of messages one after another at times. But then I have moved them in hundreds at one go at times. Once I selected like 300 VS threads in NDS to move to Vs section only to find out that I didn't have the permission to move them all at once. 'Had to deselect and start all over again. So I don't really see why you should assume how we work and if it's possible every single time to message them all why the threads are being deleted. If I have only half an hour to give, I would rather clean the forum and leave instead of messaging them. There have been several occasions I didn't have enough time even, to reply all the messages I got, resulting in ignoring friendly messages and dealing with queries only as a mod.

A lot of these threads/posts get trashed simply for being poorly made or flame wars. Some are deliberately posted in wrong sections or despite a mod answering the question and the reasons against it already. It's mostly only a bunch of users repeatedly indulging in the same pattern and ignoring the mods and in some cases doing it exactly because they are specifically told not to. So your assumption that users are really unaware why it' deleted is misguided.

Being a mod yourself, you still did not consider that this is not always like what maybe suggested by some members. Some blatantly lie and will argue the matter to death- I even remember the cases where I messaged a member after moving his thread only to get idiotic argument back. One claimed he didn't post it in the wrong section in the first place and since his thread was in right section I was spamming his profile. A few times I have been reported for telling a member to not to double post in a VM. So, please, don't try to tell me that everyone wants messages from the mods when their threads or posts are deleted. 90% of them know exactly why it was.

You should also know that number of mods means little because it depends on the time zones and their availability. Another point which you completely missed. Then a lot of mods have dedicated tasks like RP or designing only. So yeah you shouldn't be coming here with " I run my community this way" argument.

On top of it, aren't you a mod at a gaming forum? A gaming site is not same as a discussion forum community like ours. As a mod for almost 4 years here, I don't even have time to go to your site and preach.

There are unlimited numbers of online communities and different admins have their own ideas what they want to do with their site and how they want to run it and what suits their personal requirements while running a particular set of members that's unique to them. It's simply not a nice gesture to come to another place and try to dictate your own working methods which obviously suits you personally. So yeah you shouldn't be coming here with " I run my community this way" argument.

I am saying this because your wording was kind of offensive and little more knowledgeable than the rest of the members despite you being a " mod at another place.

It's not the first time I am seeing this 'suggestion' from you. I remember reading similar post and probably replying to you at least one another time. So when you ignore our previous reply to this suggestion despite being an experienced mod what to say to known trolls...

Edit: From "your" site rules-

contact an Admin or Mod and explain the situation to them. Let them handle it and ultimately, respect their final ruling without complaining.

No complaining about being banned.

No bypassing of filters and/or censoring. Do not post any text which bypasses our profanity filters or censoring by purposely misspelling, using punctuation or spaces, using letter/symbol substitutions or any other means. You will only get one warning for this, then you will be banned.

SMH And we cannot do the same without expecting the same respect from you?

Honestly most of your visitors don't even seem to know that the site hosts a forum too. Naruto discussion alone has more discussion threads than your entire forum.

 

[Caliburn]

Do you know what annoys me the most about threads like these? It's not so much the contents an sich, but the fact that often the ones who say it completely piss on what they just said themselves. They want to 'advise', but they themselves ignore it, oblivious to the reality that their advise applies as much to them as they claim to the staff. But when we point that out, they are going act blind, deaf and dumb.

Apparently you are lucky that you seem to have a large group of mature, reasonable and rational people on your forum. If you have that, even an absolute inadequate admin can monitor a forum. Unfortunately we have several people like you who have no interest in being either reasonable, rational or mature. You are flinging around that you are an admin on a larger forum, but you couldn't even follow the rules properly in this thread. You would think that an admin of all people would understand to follow the rules of another forum. It's not allowed to advertise and what do you do? You're going to advertise your own forum in a thread where you are telling another staff how to do their jobs...that's a joke.

You would think that an admin would know that what your forum is based upon, has a huge influence on what kind of people you attract and how they behave and thus comparing two forums of different natures with each other is redundant. When the chapter and the latest Naruto episode were released on wednesday and thursday we had sometimes 100 000 guests visiting and tens of thousands members. Those produced hundreds of threads in a very short time frame, often the same threads. It's simply not possible to start contacting them all and explaining, even more so when there are people who do not care about any logical reasoning and will just complain. According to people like that I would be a Sasuke fanboy, Naruto fanboy, Itachi fanboy, Minato fanboy, Sakura fanboy etc. and at the same time I am having a witch hunt of Sasuke fanboays, Naruto fonboys, Itachi fanboys etc. while ignoring the Sasuke fanboys, Naruto fanboys etc. They are not even thinking straight, they are making things up as they go.

I have seen people complain about the most ridiculous stuff. I have seen people who even try to justify a post where 90% was censored due to using offensive language. A few days ago someone complained about a thread where he was bashing a country with unreasonable comments and after 5 minutes he was denying what he wrote himself. Not too long ago someone was faking a suicide, something that was pathetically obvious. When people started making threads Zise said to stop. No punishments. People did it anyway, I explained that it was a farce. No punishments. But people kept on making threads, "mods are deleting all the threads", "what is happening?" while they had read my explanation. Then I had to give punishments. A while after that someone decided to do it again and what happened a few days ago? The person that was supposed to have committed suicide complains about being harassed. The harassment? A comment of someone asking why she's not dead...

There are simply people who will always complain, no matter how obvious their irrationality is and it are nearly always these persons who make troll threads. But apparently that's too hard for you to apprehend.

You would think that an admin would now that running around with a screenshot of you own thread emphasizing the "closed", is plainly childish and immature. I suggest you really be grateful for your members, I would trade them any day for some of our own.

And then a person such as yourself is then telling us how to do our jobs? Let me give you a piece of advise, an advise that is far more efficient and far more simple then what you explained: follow the rules as you're supposed to. You are talking about transparency, I've said this before but if everyone would follow the rules, we would barely have anything to do. We would be so transparent we would be invisible. You would think that an admin would know that the attitude of a staff is nothing more than a reflection of the members. If the members change, the staff will automatically change. The staff changes, but you people will not change. That's something we have tested many times in practice. Essentially you are saying that you are the problem, but you are trying to push it on us. When we tell you the same thing you just told us, everyone loses their mind, massive dislikes, mod bashing fest in your chats, but when you do it, it's clap clap, like like.

You would think an admin would know about the correlation between members and staff. You luckily enough have apparently rational members, which will lead to the staff having nothing to do much that would displease members. We however have people like you, thus you get mods that will act like us. Just becoming a mod is already enough for some people to start trashing him. There have been mods who already were bashed even before they even did anything.

 

[Zise]

No wonder.. you complain about our rules and structure and moderator work here. When you don't even know your own sites rules. Which contains exact the things that you oppose..

And I quote from your sites rules;

Name-calling ("noob") comments are at Moderator or Admin discretion and can be removed without warning. In short: 'Be respectful of others at all times.'

Short messages that are links without text are highly discouraged and can be removed without notice

No complaining about post deletion. Do not complain about Moderators removing a message that you have posted. We trust our moderators, and if they've removed a message or forum post you made, they had a good reason to do so.

So much for transparency. Before giving criticism and advice to someone else, you should probably learn to read first, it's a good step in the right direction.