General discussion of moderation procedures

Re: Messages 224 and 225 of this topic.Rrhain suspended for yet to be determined amount of time.Adminnemooseus

See here.Adminnemooseus

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I appears that you are showing up and posting at under two different ID's.
EvC Forum: Information
http://EvC Forum: Information -->EvC Forum: Information

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The AlasdairJC ID was registered and did post first.

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Participating under multiple ID's is a forum rule 8 violation. Please explain the situation at the "General..." topic, link below. If indeed these two ID's are the same person, they can be merged into one ID.

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Adminnemooseus

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"AlasdairJC" is me. You can delete that one, sorry about that - I had forgotten that I had registered that name. I prefer this one though

The AlasdairJC ID has been deleted.It has also been added as an alias to your Alasdair ID, such that (I hope) all the messages created by both ID's will be connected to you.Admin/Percy - Please confirm that this process I just did is the way to handle such things.AdminnemooseusAdded by edit: OK, at the moment it seems I've just turned AlasdairJC into an unregistered member.This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-14-2005 04:28 AM

i do not believe the moderators are abusing their power or positions of authority. they have rather unbiased moderated these boards, and have been especially tolerant of various abuses from the less factually-inclined side of the debate. and besides, it's JUST a message board, right?but anyways. even if they were abusing their authority -- did you ever hear the expression "you don't tug on superman's cape?"i mean, that was ASKING to get kicked off for a while.

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אָרַח

Meh, don't worry about it, it's not as if much is being lost, a measly four posts.On another note, you never ever ever ever ever EVER use apostrophes to form plurals (IDs, not ID's) {Comment from Adminnemooseus: I don't want to turn the little point, albeit valid, into a string of messages, so I'll just comment here. While, I concede that you are correct, I'll justify it as "ID" being a variety of a contraction (ID=Identity). Thus the ' fills in for the omitted letters. That's my lame excuse, and I'm sticking to it. }This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-14-2005 04:54 AM

Sorry Admin but this is a rather weak equivocation. I wish to make 3 points on the matter.1. If there is a range of opinions on the acceptability of a certain action (eg. a poster calling another a liar and providing the grounds for such an assertion), the current arrangement allows any moderator who takes exception to implement censure, whether this is the majority view of the moderators or not. This effectively means that any post or statement by a board poster must be acceptable to all moderators or it may incur sanction on the author. This is a situation verging on the ridiculous. If, for example, Adminjar is hypersensitive about any poster calling another a liar and Adminmoose objects to any post without a reference to published and other moderator have their own pet peeves, peer reviewed material with references, then most posts on the board would fall foul of one of the moderators and be liable to censure.Surely a more reasonable and pragmatic approach is for censure to be meted out only if the majority of moderators agree that censure is appropriate. This is the basis on which democracies and their highest legal courts operate. Whilst this effectively means that censure of posters will be rarer and slower, I don't see this as a significant problem because it is only a discussion board, it's not dealing with life and limb.Secondly, I think the act of lying is much more damaging to the goals of this board than calling someone a liar and providing the evidence to support the accusation. "Knowledge and understanding through discussion" is more damaged by the use of known untruths than "ungentlemanly" language. We do all purport to have pretentions to adulthood, don't we? Surely adults can handle a little robustness rather than needing to be treated with kid gloves! We don't want a board just for the immature and delicate of psyche, do we? Thirdly, it is possible to mistake emotion for passion. I'm sure many of us here are passionate about our respective understandings of reality. Otherwise the "debate" would have resolved years ago.

The procedure you followed was correct, but somehow the AlasdiarJC alias didn't make it into the central member database. I added it manually.There are some minor member search bugs that are on the list for fixing someday. The member search faciitity available to members is sometimes a bit lackadaisical about finding and listing aliases. And while the administrative search facility finds them, it doesn't explicitly list them, listing only the primary alias, and it doesn't give any explicit indication of the aliases unless you visit the member's profile. I've classed these as minor deficiencies, so I won't be getting to them for a while.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

On the three points.

• This has been one matter on which there is near unanamity of the moderators, as far as I can tell. Repeated use of strong criticism against another person, even if valid, merely contributes to degrading of the forum. After a few cautions have been made, continued righteous indignation will not be looked upon kindly.
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  The use of majority votes is not feasible. The reason for having several moderators is to divide the workload, not multiply it. Now in fact, it's fairly common to solicit opinion from other moderators; and that did occur in this instance. but it is not required. This may mean censure of posters is not 100% consistent, but "I don't see this as a significant problem because it is only a discussion board, it's not dealing with life and limb."
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• There are various kinds of damaging behaviours, and there's no clear line making one kind always worse than another. With real determination, a suitably fixated poster may be able to make even a trivial matter into a major problem.
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• If someone's passion becomes emotional in a manner that inflames the forum, they may be provided with advice on how to express passion more constructively.

These comments are not intended to be directed at anyone in particular, nor at any one issue. I've not been much involved in recent battle royals.Cheers -- Sylas

If you insist on continuing these criticisms I may have no choice but to make you a moderator! Seriously, I think you raise some good points. I wouldn't insist that EvC Forum practices are ideal, but moderators participate in an informal continuous improvement process, moderating the board is always presenting new unanticipated challenges, and in general we seem to have worked out a system that places fairly reasonable demands on moderator time whiel not upsetting too many members.It might help to think of moderators in the same way that lawyers think of judges. When preparing to litigate a case, lawyers often lobby behind the scenes for certain judges to be considered. They know that some judges will be more sympathetic to their case than others, or they've found that they personally have received a better hearing before some judges than others. In a similar way, litigants preparing to sue often seek out the most sympathetic juridictions.While you can't shop for moderators here in the same way that lawyers and litigants shop for judges and jurisdictions, the analogy is still helpful. It isn't just at EvC Forum that the interpretation and application of the law varies according to who's doing the interpreting. This is pretty much the way things are everywhere.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

SylasThis is the position which I have questioned: Can you think of any other desirable situation in real life where this philosophy would apply? What is to be preferred on this board, accurate information or gentlemanly behavour? I don't think most of the members here want a polite, factually inaccurate discussion board - that can be had on many creationist websites.

Hi WjThe point isn't that you can't call someone a liar, it's that you can't do it in an inflammatory way that distracts attention away from the topic. In most circumstances actually coming straight out and saying, "You're a liar," and any of many variations and synonyms, falls within the inflammatory and distracting category.You're only alternative is to carefully describe the evidence that someone is knowingly engaging in misrepresentations. If other people want to conclude in their own minds, "That guy's a liar," that's their business.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Percy, you can't threaten me like that!I'm not criticising moderators in general or any of them in particular. I appreciate the value of volunteers in such an organisation. However I thought the comment in message #206 seemed to be inconsistent with what I expected from the board. As members are not privy to the communications between moderators and policies which might have been adopted between moderators on a particular issue what is left to members is to raise issues and ask questions until they think they understand the position and put in their 2 cents worth.BTW, does anyone see the irony in a thread titled "General discussion of moderation procedures" containing a statement "A decision has been made. There is nothing more to discuss" and having the thread temporarily suspended by a moderator because of a parallel exchange of messages on the thread? It leaves the avenues for members to discuss moderation and running of the board amongst themselves rather limited. {Added link - AM}This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-14-2005 01:20 PM

I think I've said it before, and I'll say it again - You input into considerations of moderation issues is outstanding. The question is, do you function as such best as an "outsider", or should you also be an admin? I guess it's your decision - But if you are interested and willing to be an admin, please send me an e-mail.Once again, I must applaud Sylas/AdminSylas for his message 234. He has expressed my position far better than I ever could. I would in particular like to repeat the following: If we have a topic that has turned into an "out of control mess", the reality is that something needs to be done as soon as possible (ASAP). While the various admins may and have had "Private Administration Forum" discussions on particular issues, it still comes down to being that an individual admin needs to do a summary judgement and do a summary action. This action may or may not prove out to be the best possible choice, but under the ASAP need constraint, an admin needs to "do something, even if it's wrong". I think such is an example of such a "summary judgement and action". I think the various admins do try to be open to the general membership, about what the individual and collective admin positions are, but just as much of everything else at this forum, good and important information tends to get lost in the clutter. Work is currently underway, in the "Private Administration Forum", to try to come up with a method to prevent this "lost in the clutter". Again, I think such is an example of a needed "summary judgement and action". Just as standard topics that are deemed "out of control messes" are sometimes given temporary "cooling off period" closures, such did I judge to be the case and need for this topic. The topic was closed for about 24 hours.Adminnemooseus

Perhaps there is a way, but am not aware of it. I would like to suggest some easy way of reporting abusive behavior by another poster.I know in the past I've felt forced into the position of "yelling for help" within a thread, and once writing to Percy. But the first only makes the situation worse, or look worse anyway, and the second is an unknown (am I writing to the mod responsible and what will happen?).Maybe there could be a simple "complaint" or "abuse notification" system, where if a person is having a serious problem they can click on something that will send the complaint to the correct person, have it non public so people don't have to see the dispute (which leaves a bad taste for everyone), and the person detail what issue they are having with the other poster. Obvious flippant use of this should get censured.I think that will relieve some tension for actual targets of problem behavior, and allow mods to take care of issues behind the scenes.Just a suggestion.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)