|
38spechul
|
Posted 9:36 pm, 04/24/2017
|
It is just too boring to see politics consuming every thread. Fighting, name calling etc, etc... etc!
|
|
GoWilkes
|
Posted 8:38 pm, 04/24/2017
|
This is actually a pretty good example, I think.
A few years ago, if someone like him had posted, there would have been a lot of replies telling him to quit being so negative, and would have instead tried to get him involved in more positive, constructive conversations. He would have been treated like the crazy, half-drunk uncle that you tolerate and just avoid if you can.
It's not like that now, though; instead, people are fighting with him and making his posts more and more negative. You're inadvertently encouraging him to be more and more open with his racism and sexism, until eventually I'll have to suspend him.
But by that time, the damage is done. People lurking in the forum have seen nothing but a lot of fighting (on both sides), some people will have gotten irritated and left, and then when I do suspend him they don't come back. But now, YOU are in a negative mood, too, and don't have anybody to fight with... so you don't post, either.
Believe me, I've seen this exact trend way too many times. And I know, for an absolute fact, that the better solution is for the regular users to handle people like him in a different way.
|
|
Hepsibah
|
Posted 8:25 pm, 04/24/2017
|
D_J_T does indeed believe what he is saying, including racism, vulgarity, discrimination, and lots of other things indicating a character disorder.
I don't think it's the other posters' responsibility to straighten him out and show him how stupid his ideas are.
That's not why people visit this site. He's not our child to raise and certainly not someone we should have to tolerate.
|
|
sparkling water
|
Posted 8:18 pm, 04/24/2017
|
It is really good that Hepsibah isn't in charge.
That's my honest opinion.
|
|
GoWilkes
|
Posted 8:10 pm, 04/24/2017
|
I'm not sure that I follow you. I'm not going to ban anyone over a Private Message, though; I never have, and as far as I'm concerned, a Private Message (even to me) is private. But I do generally ignore PMs that include profanity and vulgarity... to the point that I don't even read PMs from certain users anymore.
For the forums, though, there's a fine line between controlling free speech and saying something just to be rude. It's generally my job to determine whether a comment being made is expressing an honest opinion, and if so then I may allow it. A good example is the user "Donald_J_Trump"; he says a lot of racist things, and while I remove the slurs, I allow many of the comments because I believe that he believes what he is saying, and I'm hoping that others will reply and show him why he's wrong.
|
|
Hepsibah
|
Posted 7:57 pm, 04/24/2017
|
GoWilkes, really, is this site so desperate for traffic that insults, racism, vulgarity, threats, etc. don't matter....even when applied to you? I'm surprised. Really.
|
|
GoWilkes
|
Posted 7:53 pm, 04/24/2017
|
i am pretty sure that Jason would be very happy to not filter, ban, censor, or even moderate
Hahaha, truer words have never been spoken!!! I remember the good ol' days when I didn't moderate at all... ahh, the good ol' days!!! 
Believe me, the filters are a LOT more of a pain for me than they are for anyone else!! I created the system because, before, my only fallback was to just suspend someone and be done with them. I consider the filters to be a better alternative, letting me try to stop a problem before it happens but without suspending people.
#TBPE, I'm not sure that I understand your argument that my response proves your point. I will say this, though: in just about every case, I've PMed the worst offenders and asked them to simply give me their word that they'll stop violating the rules so that I could remove their filters. At least three of those people (including Thematic element) replied with profanity and insults and a flat refusal to comply. So for them to act shocked and innocent here is pretty funny to me.
There is only one filter on your account (#TBPE), that's almost a year old. That filter blocks you from using 2 phrases that are consistent with attacking 2 other users, 1 racist phrase, and 2 phrases that are vulgar. You've triggered that filter 7 times since it was created, and only 1 of the flagged posts was approved. I wouldn't consider that to be "over the top", at all.
|
|
Hepsibah
|
Posted 7:12 pm, 04/24/2017
|
It's all good......WITHOUT the racism, vulgarity, name-calling, and threats.
Those things are what makes this site less than it should be.
When those things are controlled, this site will see much more traffic.
|
|
Elmo Cleghorn
|
Posted 6:56 pm, 04/24/2017
|
i am pretty sure that Jason would be very happy to not filter, ban, censor, or even moderate
of course that would require posters to behave themselves
|
|
#TrumpBestPresidentEver
|
Posted 5:44 pm, 04/24/2017
|
Doesn't this prove my observation that moderation is over the top here?
The very laid back moderation here has discouraged many. Trolling almost always ruins what could be an interesting debate. Those who disagree, apparently don't know what trolling is.This is actually one of the more common complaints that I hear (that, and that the forum is all politics now). The problem is that there's just not enough time in the day to read every post, and so few people report anything! They wait until the trolling gets out of hand before reporting anything, and by that time people are already annoyed and logging off.
I just don't know the best solution to that one. Bringing in outside moderators is tricky because then there's just no consistency, and it's next to impossible to find moderators that aren't biased. But if people won't report things then I can't do it myself... keep in mind that I also have to sell ads and do all of the coding for the site, so it's just too much to expect me to read everything 24/7, too.
Which, of course, is why I now rely on automated filters quite a bit, which obviously can't be perfect and will sometimes catch "innocent" posts made by people that have had a pattern of trolling in the past. But I simply haven't come up with a better alternative.
Which leads me to...
J-BJ, the problem is how unevenly it is applied. And, other cases, totally random without rhyme or reason. I've explained this numerous times in the past, but I'll do it again.
The filters are evenly applied, obviously, because they're mostly automated (not all of them, but most of them). When I manually remove a post, I select a reason for why it was removed. Now, if I remove another post from that same user within a pre-specified period of time and mark it as the same reason, the system automatically begins looking for a pattern in the two posts. Then when I remove a third for the same reason, it narrows down that pattern.
Once a consistent pattern is found that doesn't match any other posts made within a pre-specified time (usually a year), an automated filter is generated to prevent posts that match that same pattern.
Just because YOU don't understand it doesn't mean that it's not working correctly. In your case, Thematic element, it means that you've had so many posts removed for one violation or another (usually, trying to get around filters) that you have a large number of potential pattern matches.
Obviously, you are one of those people that was previously suspended and recently allowed back, so of course you're being kept on a pretty tight leash. Once you've shown that you aren't trying to hurt the site, I'll manually remove most of those filters. But you haven't shown that yet.
|
|
MarieLaveau
|
Posted 5:24 pm, 04/24/2017
|
The absolute problem is TRUMP has put dementia problems on posters at an early onset. 
|
|
GoWilkes
|
Posted 5:06 pm, 04/24/2017
|
I will say this, though.
As far as I can tell, a lot of the "old users" that we all loved are still here and still reading, but they don't post as much. Whether it's because they have a new username that I haven't noticed, or because they're just lurking, I don't know.
But the problem is that people aren't necessarily posting the same way that they used to post. For awhile now, people seem a lot angrier, and they are a lot more argumentative just for the sake of being argumentative, which takes a lot of the fun out of the site (even for me). There's less respect, there's less appreciation for other opinions, and from what I can tell, there's less of a general desire to make GoWilkes a helpful and informative site. And it seems to have a snowballing effect, getting worse as it continues.
Long-time users used to be ambassadors for the site. They were proud of it, so they would go out and talk about it, encouraging their friends to post. Then when a new user did post, the regulars used to welcome them to the site, be friendly, and team up to protect them against the few general trolls in a friendly (and usually funny) way. We don't seem to do that anymore.
I know that when I go somewhere new, if I don't feel welcome then I leave pretty quickly. If I go to a bar and nobody talks to me, I get bored and leave, and usually don't go back. If I ask a question on a website, and instead of finding an answer all I get are insults and ridicule for asking, then I don't bother coming back to that site. I think most people are the same way... we just don't go where we don't feel wanted.
So if you want people to post more, then it's up to you to encourage people to post. Just log in to the Ad Manager and look at the traffic for the last month, and you'll see that the people are here; they're reading and they're wanting to say something. So it has to be up to you guys, the regulars, to encourage people to post and make them feel welcome. Otherwise, nothing is going to change.
Make funny threads, make friendly replies. Change the tone, and over time the anger and negativity will diminish. This is YOUR site, guys, I just manage it. The Community Voice is exactly what you guys make it. So I really hope you decide to make it something awesome, something we can all be proud of.
|
|
GoWilkes
|
Posted 4:50 pm, 04/24/2017
|
Unless I'm one of the 8, I call b.s. on this statement. I know that responses from my account are automatically flagged fairly regularly. It happened immediately prior to this posting when I tried to post something on another thread. There definitely seems to be a pattern by which the moderation takes place, such as who is on the thread and what the subject matter is, but it definitely happens. Many times the postings, like the one that was just flagged, are so innocuous that it is seems pretty likely that there is a specific filter in place.
Umpire is correct on this, the filter that triggered on you this morning is well over a year old, so I didn't count it when I said that 8 had been created in the last year.
Maybe this will be more accurate. I have a "code" that I apply to every filter so that I can quickly see why a post flags, and as of today 13 codes have been activated in the last year. This includes 8 filters that are either user-specific or generic for everyone (which is a different code for each filter), 1 filter for new users that use words or phrases common for regular trolls (to discourage trolls from creating new usernames for the purposes of getting around user-specific filters), 1 filter for spammers (usually robots), 1 for racial slurs, 1 for posting PMs, and 1 for posting classifieds.
Now, grayson, I'll admit that I'm always surprised by this particular filter, because you're not generally known for trolling. But every time someone asks about an accident, there are a few people that want to reply and tell them how bad they are for asking, which is obviously trolling. So, I prevent you (and those other few people) from replying to threads related to accidents.
The post you made this morning was along those same lines, telling the person that they were wrong to ask about an accident. Which, as I've explained in the past, is not right at all; it's perfectly acceptable (even preferable) to ask about an accident, and posts like yours do nothing but discourage people (especially new users) from posting.
The very laid back moderation here has discouraged many. Trolling almost always ruins what could be an interesting debate. Those who disagree, apparently don't know what trolling is.This is actually one of the more common complaints that I hear (that, and that the forum is all politics now). The problem is that there's just not enough time in the day to read every post, and so few people report anything! They wait until the trolling gets out of hand before reporting anything, and by that time people are already annoyed and logging off.
I just don't know the best solution to that one. Bringing in outside moderators is tricky because then there's just no consistency, and it's next to impossible to find moderators that aren't biased. But if people won't report things then I can't do it myself... keep in mind that I also have to sell ads and do all of the coding for the site, so it's just too much to expect me to read everything 24/7, too.
Which, of course, is why I now rely on automated filters quite a bit, which obviously can't be perfect and will sometimes catch "innocent" posts made by people that have had a pattern of trolling in the past. But I simply haven't come up with a better alternative.
Which leads me to...
J-BJ, the problem is how unevenly it is applied. And, other cases, totally random without rhyme or reason. I've explained this numerous times in the past, but I'll do it again.
The filters are evenly applied, obviously, because they're mostly automated (not all of them, but most of them). When I manually remove a post, I select a reason for why it was removed. Now, if I remove another post from that same user within a pre-specified period of time and mark it as the same reason, the system automatically begins looking for a pattern in the two posts. Then when I remove a third for the same reason, it narrows down that pattern.
Once a consistent pattern is found that doesn't match any other posts made within a pre-specified time (usually a year), an automated filter is generated to prevent posts that match that same pattern.
Just because YOU don't understand it doesn't mean that it's not working correctly. In your case, Thematic element, it means that you've had so many posts removed for one violation or another (usually, trying to get around filters) that you have a large number of potential pattern matches.
Obviously, you are one of those people that was previously suspended and recently allowed back, so of course you're being kept on a pretty tight leash. Once you've shown that you aren't trying to hurt the site, I'll manually remove most of those filters. But you haven't shown that yet.
|
|
BlackRose258
|
Posted 2:54 pm, 04/24/2017
|
The older you get, the finer your you'll taste.
I could compare us to cheese, but I'm afraid some of us are past our expiration date.
|
|
alone
|
Posted 2:21 pm, 04/24/2017
|
who you calling old????!? 
|
|
BlackRose258
|
Posted 12:41 pm, 04/24/2017
|
Chedo even I know your a guy lmfao 
|
|
chendo
|
Posted 12:27 pm, 04/24/2017
|
DJT has fixated on me, and is inboxing me incessantly. He is convinced I am a woman who once spurned him
|
|
#TrumpBestPresidentEver
|
Posted 12:11 pm, 04/24/2017
|
I smell a rat here. Four or five new usernames here this morning. And chatting it up too, when new users normally can't say much at all the first couple of days for getting flagged.
Strange indeed. 
|
|
Thematic element
|
Posted 12:08 pm, 04/24/2017
|
J-BJ, the problem is how unevenly it is applied. And, other cases, totally random without rhyme or reason.
|
|
Jimbojolly
|
Posted 11:10 am, 04/24/2017
|
The very laid back moderation here has discouraged many. Trolling almost always ruins what could be an interesting debate. Those who disagree, apparently don't know what trolling is.
|
|
|
