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Of moderation and moderators... some definitions for this forum

New Here ,
Sep 28, 2009 Sep 28, 2009

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moderation – noun

1.  the quality of being moderate; restraint; avoidance of extremes or excesses; temperance.

2.  the act of moderating.

moderator – noun

1.  a person or thing that moderates. (see above)

2.  a person who presides over a panel discussion on radio or television, etc.

dictator – noun

1.  a person exercising absolute power, esp. a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary succession.

2.  a person who authoritatively prescribes conduct, usage, etc.

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LEGEND ,
Sep 28, 2009 Sep 28, 2009

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I know that moderators in these forums are entitled to delete messages, and even threads, to their hearts content, and I accept this. I do, however, object, and most strongly, to the deletion of posts trying at the same time to hide the fact, to the extent of changing the contents and the order of messages. To my antiquated mind, such a behaviour is simply dishonest.

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LEGEND ,
Sep 29, 2009 Sep 29, 2009

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Claudio González wrote:

I know that moderators in these forums are entitled to delete messages, and even threads, to their hearts content, and I accept this. I do, however, object, and most strongly, to the deletion of posts trying at the same time to hide the fact, to the extent of changing the contents and the order of messages. To my antiquated mind, such a behaviour is simply dishonest.

My comment above, about changing the contents and order of messages, was due to a wrong interpretation of the consequences of the deletion of several  messages in a thread in which I was participating, and I apologize for my mistake. However, the entire unpleasant incident could have been avoided if a very brief explanatory note had been left for each deleted message, something that is a norm in other forums in which I participate.

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Guest
Sep 29, 2009 Sep 29, 2009

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But Claudio,

I still stand by the notion that if one were to have COMMUNICATED that posts had been deleted, at least then we would have known why the order gets renumbered.  I still question the deletion of those particular posts in the first place.

Key word:  communication

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LEGEND ,
Sep 29, 2009 Sep 29, 2009

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Hi all

Based on my own observation, it would seem there is no mechanism in place within the Jive software that allows a moderator to insert a comment such as what you are referring to.

My guess is that perhaps a policy might be considered whereby instead of wholesale deleting a post, you clear the content of the post and just report that the content had been removed. Then again, that in and of itself would likely spawn a whole raft of other complaints.

However, looking at a thread as a user might, I would also have to say that personally I pay no attention to how many replies are present. I view a thread and could care less if a number actually matches. I'm only interested in whatever content is there. But, this just applies to me personally. It's just the way I operate and I am aware that others likely operate in a different manner.

Happy Tuesday all! Rick

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LEGEND ,
Sep 29, 2009 Sep 29, 2009

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If you think I live obsessed comparing the number of reported messages and the number of actual messages in a thread, you cannot be more wrong, although it's obvious that there should not be any discrepancy bewteen them. A bug is a bug, and should be corrected, which doesn't seem to be happening with the many bugs that have and are been reported in this forum.


There have been recently several unpleasant incidents, caused by messages and even whole threads that misteriouly vanish completely or reappear in other places. All of them would have been avoided if the person deleting or moving messages/threads have left a few words saying what s/he had done. This is the norm in other forums I frequent; here is an example of how it's done in the list of topics of one of them for deleted threads, with similar warnings for other alterations introduced by moderators:

1.jpg

As you can see, the moderator who deleted this thread identifies him/herself and writes the reason for his/her action (which I did not include in my screenshot). For me, this is a minimum of good manners, and I find it sad that some of the new moderators fail to understand that it is lack of manners what we users are complaining about. Just in case: the moderators in that forum are as voluntary (unpaid) as the ones here.


If the Jive software cannot provide elegant ways for the moderators to show that they do care about the users, I think it it is not all that difficult to find simpler, manual ways of warning users of moderator changes. The label [Locked] at the beginning of the name of a thread (that some moderators add here when locking one), is a good example, for it saves many users the unpleasantness of waiting for the thread to open (not a speedy process in the new forums) to find that it is no longer possible to post comments in that discussion.

The simple replacement of the text of a message by something like "OT message deleted by John Doe", or a [Deleted] label at the beginning of thread plus a one line message from the moderator would suffice. Moderators are or should be intelligent people, and I am sure they would easily find easier and better ways than these to notify users oftheir acts. If they so wished.

In my message #2 above, I had the courtesy of publicly ackowngledging a mistake of mine. I don't remember having seen many messages from the new moderators acknowledging their errors.

Message was edited by: Claudio González. Reason: adding the last paragraph.

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LEGEND ,
Sep 29, 2009 Sep 29, 2009

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LOL, I'm reading a reply made to a post by Hopper and I see that Claudio feels my reply was directed to him/her personally instead?

Truth be known, it was more of a general musing than anything else.

Never have I claimed something is not a bug and should be simply overlooked. I quite heartily agree that all bugs should be addressed. It really bothers me to no end for Adobe or *ANY* software company to ignore bugs and focus on adding new features instead of addressing niggling issues. But as they say, the sizzle sells the steak I suppose. As users we have to be a bit realistic and simply accept that everything can't be addressed as it's a priorities and a numbers game, pure and simple.

Claudio, I do agree it would be great if the forum software were able to do what you suggested happens in other forums. My guess is that they are using software other than what we have here. So it's probably a painless process for whomever deleted a post. Likely the forum software knows who is logged in and automagickally adds the statement.

We should all also acknowledge that a moderator does not have the forums as a paid and totally focused job by Adobe. All of us that volunteer also have our own jobs or businesses to run in addition to whatever duties are involved with moderation. So we are frequently strapped for time and attention. I might suggest that shortcuts and brevity could be percieved by some as an uncaring attitude. I'm also well aware that actions and words can often be perceived as totally rude by one culture while they wouldn't be worthy of a mention by others. Such is the conglomerated worldwide internet culture we have today.

I think the fact someone voluntarily answers posts as well as assists with management of fora speaks to a personality that wants to be helpful overall, not spiteful as seems to be the suggestion many have made.

It seems to me that in far too many situations we see the tree of monkeys effect. You know the one I'm talking about. Imagine any organization as a tree full of monkeys. From the top monkey down, they look down and see nothing but smiling faces. From the monkeys on the bottom up, they look up and all they see are bottom sides.

Cheers all... Rick

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LEGEND ,
Sep 29, 2009 Sep 29, 2009

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Sorry, I didn't notice you were responding to Hopper and not to me; in any case, my message was also of a general nature and not addressed specifically to you.

We all understand that there are priorities, but... First, as far as I can see, none of the major bugs, many of them reported in the trial period, have been corrected in the five months since the new forums were officially implemented. And second, we have been told things such as "that bug has been corrected in version X.X.X of Clearspace", but we are still stuck in version 2.5.7. So, from the point of view of users, it would seem that the priorities are most decidedly not in improving these forums.

In my previous message I stated very clearly that the moderators in that other forum are "as voluntary (unpaid) as the ones here", so having one's own jobs or business is not an excuse for not being considerate. Deleted messages are handled in that forum as I described: a moderator replaces by hand the text of the offending message by a couple of very brief sentences explaining the reason(s) for deleting it and giving the name of the moderator. The elegant notice on deleted threads may perhaps be added semi automatically by the much better software used over there, but I would say that the reasons are almost invariably written manually by the moderators. So I would think that it's just a matter of general attitude and goodwill.

As to how one looks at things, in my opinion the trouble here is that many user monkeys do look downwards every now and then, and even try to imagine the look from the top, while the moderator monkeys always seem to look downwards only, and don't seem to care or try to imagine what it means looking from the bottom, where there are no faces to look at.

Finally, and as you have no way of knowing this, I am one of those strange people who are used to face the consequences of what they do, and I therefore post here using my own true name, just as the photo in my profile is a very recent real photo of mine, that I will replace when I have a newer one. And Claudio is a masculine, not a feminine name.

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