Discussion on forum practices Re: Is there truth to this?

[D Fosse]

Who has silently, without any notice, removed a number of posts from this thread?

I had a post there that said basically the same as normfb's "correct answer" - and it's removed, just like that. Poof.

What's going on here? This is the second time. The first one I let pass without comment, but now it's beginning to look like censorship.

[Terri_Stevens]

Hi,

I was going to let this pass also. I had several entries here about an alternative way of doing this using Content Awareness-you may remember you commented it was a bit off topic, which was fine by me. I'd like to know who has taken upon themselves the role of self appointed CENSOR?. As I understand it anything can be posted unless it is illegal content,racist, obscene or rude to others and nothing here was. Mr Fosse also provided his answer first as he stated and didn't get acknowledged with the correct answer-why? Its not about the points , most of us here already have plenty, but its the principle of the thing. I've only been doing this 8 weeks and have noticed a big change in that short time. They don't like it stated but Staff and MVPs are given preference when marking questions. Worse the staff mark their wrong answers as correct. Just last week a question about cutting out hair was marked correct when the marquee and quick selection tool were put forward as the best tools for the job. We all know that's wrong-maybe if the refine edge was mentioned it might have been ok , but it wasn't. I don't know the underlying politics of what happens here, but one has to wonder if it is worth giving up ones time anymore.

Its a shame because something nobody mentioned here was the use of video instead of multiple images to do this. I would have added a piece about it as it possibly is even more impressive than the still image example above and everyone can do it not just good amateur and professional photographers, but if you are going to censor I'm not wasting my time and to hell with this thread.

Terri

[D Fosse]

My thoughts exactly.

Your "alternative" method is no big deal, we all do that from time to time. And if you're wrong, or there's a better way, someone comes along and flags you down. That's just the way this works, and it's happened to me more times than I care to remember.

But laundering threads so that it looks as if the MVPs/staff have all the right answers and us mere mortals are simply brushed off - then you might wonder if it's worth the trouble.

[D Fosse]

BTW, the last time it happened, I had the audacity to "correct" a staff poster. Just the facts, nothing more. But that didn't seem to go down well, and two hours later the whole thread had vanished without a trace.

[Terri_Stevens]

You were lucky, I am yet to receive an answer back from the staff when I try to talk to them in a thread. I realize that they are paid and need to look good here because of that, but they make a lot of mistakes and the constant references to YouTube drives me crazy . They clearly take a topic, plug it into Google and post YouTube results-some of the vids are so bad I can't believe they have watched them. I prefer contributors to post directly here at least that way they are available to answer questions.  But enough winging

[Trevor.Dennis]

D Fosse wrote:

BTW, the last time it happened, I had the audacity to "correct" a staff poster. Just the facts, nothing more. But that didn't seem to go down well, and two hours later the whole thread had vanished without a trace.

Good gracious.  I hope that didn't happen the way you think it happened.  We need Madison to see this thread, and get to the bottom of things.

[D Fosse]

Trevor.Dennis wrote:

Good gracious.  I hope that didn't happen the way you think it happened.  We need Madison to see this thread, and get to the bottom of things.

Well, I don't know what I'm supposed to think. But I know what it looked like.

I posted about this in Forum Comments, with a link to this thread. So let's see if anyone can clear this up.

[Norman Sanders]

I don't know whether this adds fuel to the fire, but both of my entries generated the note in my mail shown here.

Is someone filtering all entries? Is this new?

[D Fosse]

Huh. That's weird. Isn't that what you get if someone reported the post as offensive, but the mods decided to let it go? Nothing much offensive there...

IIRC there was a period with spambot attacks where everything automatically went into mod queue, but then we'd all get them.

[Terri_Stevens]

You get that also if you post two or more URLs, never understood why that is.

[Bo_LeBeau]

MissTake,

So that explains why I got one of those "held for moderation" messages last week.

I had postedmore than 2 URLs, but they were all Adobe.com URLs!

[Trevor.Dennis]

normfb wrote:

I don't know whether this adds fuel to the fire, but both of my entries generated the note in my mail shown here.

Is someone filtering all entries? Is this new?

That is strange Norman.  The trigger point for Mod approval appears to be a post containing two or more links, but there could be a parameter based on how many images a post contains.  The Mod queue is usually addressed so quickly, I don't even check it unless one of my own posts goes into the queue (in which case I quickly approve it )

[Bo_LeBeau]

I view several different forums every day and I have seen new staff posting incorrect information, which is rather unsettling since they are supposed to be well informed about the applications they are commending upon.

About 2 weeks ago, I suddenly received notifications that there were new postings to topics that I had contributed to in the past.

When I looked at the posts, I discovered that most were years old and the only new activity was a staff poster dredging up old posts to mark them as having the correct answer. A bit unusual I would think.

[Terri_Stevens]

This might really set the cat amongst the pigeons and make me unpopular, but its something that has puzzled me. How have the staff accumulated so many points in such a short time? Almost from day one when they first got here most had 500 points plus. Granted being full timers with the technical support database behind them they will build a healthy total fast, but some had them straight away and I don't recognize the names as volunteers from the past, when I just viewed rather than posted. Also isn't there something about Adobe employees not qualifying for merit points? What happened to that?

Having said that I'm glad I'm not them having to answer the same 5 repetitious questions each day-must be soul destroying. They must have nightmares about resetting the preference settings and disabling the graphics processor.

[MadisonLeupp]

Hi all,

I'm having Jive (our forum provider) look at this thread to see if posts were deleted and if so, who did it.

We have had some node issues, and have had other employees report having their threads "deleted" too, but it's actually a syncing issue between the nodes so a post appears to have been posted, but doesn't actually successfully get posted (to very generally summarize).

As for the moderation issues, this is happening to all users (employees, mods, admins, MVPs, ACPs, me, everyone). I've posted a new thread here explaining.

Thanks,

Madison

[Terri_Stevens]

Thank you for taking the trouble to reply Madison it is appreciated and your referenced post clears a few things up.

Terri S

[Trevor.Dennis]

MissTake wrote:

Thank you for taking the trouble to reply Madison it is appreciated and your referenced post clears a few things up.

Terri S

Terri there have been a number of issues with the forum software over time.  I think you have been posting long enough to remember the multiple posts from a few months back, and the more recent server sync problems.  Further back the forum issues caused top poster Noel Carboni to stop posting out of frustration.  That was IE related, but Noel is a huge Windows geek and IE is his browser of choice, so constantly having to sign back in, and sometimes not able to sign it at all, left him saying enough is enough.

I'm glad that the disappearing posts is server related.  It could have got out of hand if a particular person was removing posts without good reason.

[Terri_Stevens]

I'll happily endorse that view Trevor. Thanks for your measured approach, something I'm not always that good at

[Chris Cox]

Content aware does not do that same thing at all, is not even remotely involved in this technique, and does not belong among proposed answers to the user's question.

[Terri_Stevens]

I never said it operates in the same way, merely that it was an alternative to this technique for removing the people and gave a demonstration to that affect, as you would have seen if your bargain basement software hadn't removed the post  -if you think that is incorrect you should read your own manuals. You should apologize and stop being so pedantic.

I was prepared to believe that post was removed in error by a server malfunction. From what you have said it sounds distinctly as if you may have chosen to CENSOR it which is against your own rules and extremely annoying.

[D Fosse]

Chris Cox wrote:

does not belong among proposed answers

Now that we have confirmation that this was no error, and these posts were actively removed, here's the big question that I'd like a good answer to: why would I ever bother to post here again, knowing that anything I write may go "poof" at any moment?

And just out of curiosity - was File > Scripts > Statistics > Median also the "wrong" answer? Because that's what I wrote, and it was somewhere up there a little before normfb's post (the one that got the gold medal).

[Chris Cox]

Normfb's post was the first one I saw with the correct details.

And the OP already gave the "answer" but didn't have the extended version or subscription to use it.

[D Fosse]

Well, maybe next time you should look more closely before wholesale deleting posts.

Anyway, I'm out of here.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Dag, I don't think that it was Chris that deleted anything.  Yes it has been confirmed that someone did remove at least one post, and that person has been advised that it was not appropriate to do so.  But Chris has been here forever, and is a tolerant kind of a guy.   When Station got banned, Chris PM'd him to say it was not his doing, and Station found that the most positive aspect of leaving the forum.

This is going to sound like I am assuming it was one of the new Support Team guys, but I have absolutely no idea if that is the case.  Yes some of them are bit quick with not researched web links, but they are are getting better.  One of them put up a really good answer a couple of days ago — I was impressed, so I think they are not just relying on Expert Systems, and they will get better.  They certainly are not competing with long term forum regulars.

As to you leaving the forum, that would be a real pity.  You have knowledge around things like colour fidelity that is as good as anyone's, and the work you do is testament to your ability in that area.  If you leave, there will come a day when you open a museum catalogue and see an image like this, and think 'If only I'd been there to tell them how to get it right'.

[MadisonLeupp]

UPDATE: unlocked, branched, and moved discussion to Forum Comments.

I'm going to lock this thread- any other concerns, please post in Forum Comments or send me a private message. Thank you