When to moderate and when not........?

[Quillan]

[quote]There seems to be whole chunk of correspondence missing between Iceni's post at 21.55 and Tresco's post this morning, this expressed surprise at some of Iceni's comments (Iceni a moderator????) agree...[/quote]

Oh dear Ron, nothing personal but this is what happens and then we get in to a debate about who took/deleted the posts. Fortunatly we not only have a preceedure which we have told forum members about on more than one occasion but we have a log that even we can't alter. It's a way of Archant keeping an eye on us moderators. Anyway here is the respective log entries

Log No   Author         Time

206523   Iceni           21:55

206563   Teamedup    00:01

206564   Tresco         00:10

206571   Timc17         07:28

206579   Deimos         08:09

Now we can't change the log and this ties in with what you see in the forum so no posts have been deleted or changed in the time frame you are talking about. Sorry to disapoint.

[Tresco]

 there was a post around 01.30 expressing surprise that a moderator, (I did not know that Iceni was a moderator) should criticise the moderation of the site and support the view that some got a better treatment on here than others, I was just curious to know if it was later self deleted or can i use the C word, no not that one!!! Censored!!!!

Hi Ron, there were no posts deleted as far as I know, but I did edit my own post (and acknowledged I had done so at the time). It was me who responded and was so very shocked at Di (iceni) saying what she had, because for some strange reason I had got it in my head that she was a moderator, when of course she is not.

Apart from that the tone of my post remained the same, though I did take the opportunity to quote Terry, as I hadmeant to do originally.

My mistake though and I aplogise for the confusion

[Le paria]

The tittle of this post is when to moderate and when not....?It`s obvious to anyone with half an ounce of the grey matter that the moderators on this site are like the second post on this topic said, hand in glove with some members,

    The latest postings by the moderators are just an attempt to hide the real facts like coco stated in saying that one of the mods asked her not to say anything on the site,

(personal comments about another forum member removed by moderator)

[Tresco]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

What a fool you are making of yourself

[Quillan]

[quote]The tittle of this post is when to moderate and when not....?It`s obvious to anyone with half an ounce of the grey matter that the moderators on this site are like the second post on this topic said, ...[/quote]

You seem to know a lot for somebody who only joined yesterday or are you just another who goes fishing to see what bites or are you afraid to use your real identity?

[Dick Smith]

The trolls! The trolls! They made me deaf, you know.

Outcast = pariah - Oh! I get it! The wit, the humour! Will they never start?

[Quillan]

[quote]The trolls! The trolls! They made me deaf, you know. Outcast = pariah - Oh! I get it! The wit, the humour! Will they never start?[/quote]

Dick, be careful this one almost punctuates correctly so it's difficult to tell. I left my troll in the draw, neglected it and it finally fell apart, my mum then threw it in the bin, nobody ever missed it least of all me.

[Deby]

Stop squabbling...

and in the words of the great Bob Geldof

***k 'em!

Deby

[Teamedup]

Highly inaccurate.

Now run along old thing and take your trolling tosh somewhere else.

(reference to previous edited post removed by moderators)

[mascamps.com]

As someone who used to do moderating type duties in his previous life, I'd like to point out that no matter what they do, the moderators will get absolutely no thanks for it. I at least had the benefit of a monthly paycheque for doing it.

It really is an impossible task to do 100% to everyone's satisfaction.

Take as a nice simple (hopefully non-controversial) example of the "no advertising" rule. Where does advertising stop on the B&B and gite owners forums? Almost all of us have, at the very least, our website address there. Have you looked at your stats on hits from the forum lately? I'm not nearly as active on the forum as many of you but even so the number of hits that I get is a significant proportion of my total hits and therefore I imagine that I've had at least some bookings from it as presumably have the rest of you.

So, if I were implementing the "no advert" rule as I used to implement similar rules in my previous life, I'd pull the whole lot of those web addresses. (I was a hard-ish nut) Now, I know that they don't as there was a concession made some time ago in respect of websites being used in signatures so that's not really a fair comment.

But then what do they do when potential guests start threads looking for a B&B/gite in Limousin or wherever? Being hard in my previous life, I'd have pulled all those threads right off as a) they are by definition off-topic since the owners threads aren't there for our guests and b) they are soliciting advertising. How many of you living in the areas being looked for can put your hand up and say that you would never reply to such a posting? Clearly if you do reply, you're breaking the forum rules so on the three strikes rule there must be a number of us who should already be banned.

For that matter, what about the thread started the other day "Directory of LF members B&Bs?". If I'd replied to that, it would have been advertising of ourinns.org and ourgites.org yet with Miki replying to it, it was OK which is slightly peculiar as Miki was one of the founding fathers of the sites.

Most of the "censorship" that I've seen in the forum has been related to the no advert policy, the implementation of which must be right up there in terms of difficulty of policing with the "reasonable and decent comments" end of things. Certainly in the last month there have been a fair number of threads started which seemed to be essentially soliciting advertising yet the moderators have given a considerable amount of leeway with them. On 'thother hand one a month or so back looking for website design assistance was trampled all over for what seemed to me to be no good reason or at least there seemed to be no reason to do it in comparison to how other similar threads had been treated.

Aside from the issue of LF losing a few bob if adverts are allowed to creep in, you only need to look at the thread on laymyhat where someone asked where they could list. Within a couple of days every man and his dog who had a listing site had weighed in and objective comment went out the window. So, I'm in agreement with the "no advert" policy in general but I think the consistency of implementation needs some work and "something" needs to be done to allow threads which are clearly looking for "advertising" in some form to operate more effectively. For instance, if I start one called "I'm looking for an electrician near Perpignan", would all the replies get pulled?

Anyway, all being well, we'll all be far too busy over the next couple of months to make any postings at all

 

Arnold

 

[JohnM]

[quote]As someone who used to do moderating type duties in his previous life, I'd like to point out that no matter what they do, the moderators will get absolutely no thanks for it. I at least had the benefi...[/quote]

In that case.....

Thanks mods, I think you are doing a good job and that generally, your decisions are right / fair. On the day when I get deleted I sincerely hope that I will be big enough to say "It was a fair cop".

 

[Russethouse]

I think consistency is very difficult to achieve - mods are humans and we all have a slightly different view on things - that's life.

Posts are also different, some are easy to moderate but there is always going to be a wide 'grey' area.

I will say though that I have absolutely no sympathy with people who take up time by consistently making 'edgy' posts, getting warnings and then re- inventing themselves in a new id. They take up time that could be better used.

Also I really dislike the overly personal battles some people seem happy to indulge in, I think its possible to have a robust discussion without resorting to personal comments.

I know we all do our best but if you see a problem, then alert a mod or forum admin .

PS Thanks John

[mascamps.com]

Let's try that again without the "white on white text" at the end...

For that matter, what about the thread started the other day "Directory of LF members B&Bs?". If I'd replied to that, it would have been advertising of ourinns.org and ourgites.org yet with Miki replying to it, it was OK which is slightly peculiar as Miki was one of the founding fathers of the sites.

Most of the "censorship" that I've seen in the forum has been related to the no advert policy, the implementation of which must be right up there in terms of difficulty of policing with the "reasonable and decent comments" end of things. Certainly in the last month there have been a fair number of threads started which seemed to be essentially soliciting advertising yet the moderators have given a considerable amount of leeway with them. On 'thother hand one a month or so back looking for website design assistance was trampled all over for what seemed to me to be no good reason or at least there seemed to be no reason to do it in comparison to how other similar threads had been treated.

Aside from the issue of LF losing a few bob if adverts are allowed to creep in, you only need to look at the thread on laymyhat where someone asked where they could list. Within a couple of days every man and his dog who had a listing site had weighed in and objective comment went out the window. So, I'm in agreement with the "no advert" policy in general but I think the consistency of implementation needs some work and "something" needs to be done to allow threads which are clearly looking for "advertising" in some form to operate more effectively. For instance, if I start one called "I'm looking for an electrician near Perpignan", would all the replies get pulled?

Anyway, all being well, we'll all be far too busy over the next couple of months to make any postings at all

 

Arnold

 

[Will]

There are always going to be grey areas, and the more rules there are then the more opportunities there will be to either interpret them differently or just bend them. French life itself is a good example of that.

We try to be flexible in policing the rules about about advertising, as we do with the other rules. All of the rules are made by Living France's publishers, for very good reasons, and implemented by us.

In the case of Arnold's example, if he wanted to ask for recommendations for an electrician near him, we have no problem with that. If somebody in the area has used, and been satisfied with, an electrician then we don't mind them passing on the name and contact details on the open forum - that's what is meant by a 'third party recommendation'. However, if you are an electrician and you want to offer your services then you should contact the questioner by e-mail or private message rather than by posting on the forum. Furthermore, starting a topic by saying 'I am an electrician in Perpignan and looking for work' is obviously self-advertising, and is liable to be removed.

It sounds a bit nit-picking put like that but it's quite simple really.

There are of course two obvious abuses of this concession. One is pretending to be a satisfied client and recommending your own, or a friend or relation's, business on the forum. That's difficult to guard against, unless we (or you) know the people concerned. A variation is starting a topic to say 'I have just used this most wonderful electrician'. Unless the person posting the message is a well-established forum member it is 99% certain to have been placed there for promotional purposes rather than to assist others, and will be dealt with accordingly by the moderators. The other abuse is by people looking for those who might be needing electrical (or any other) work and using the forum e-mail or private message system to tout for custom (rather than answering a specific need). Such unsolicited advertising is also outside the code of conduct, and if we hear of instances of this happening we will deal with them.

Above all the forum is for the benefit of its users, i.e. the readers of Living France, more than for Living France itself. Feedback from users - which includes notifying us of potential breaches of the rules - is always welcomed. We are all on the same side. It's your forum, so please help us keep it on track.

P.S. Congratulations to Arnold for working in direct references to two of his websites without, as far as we know, breaching any rules . Seriously, as the question about the directory was (as far as we can tell) a genuine query and not set up for self-promotional purposes there would have been no problem, in my opinion, with Arnold replying though others may see it as advertising oneself within the letter, rather than the spirit, of the rules. As we said, there will always be grey areas.

[mascamps.com]

Hmmm. That last paragraph has me a little confused now.

Taking the two most recent threads as our examples:

1. On the "Late opening" one where the poster was looking for marketing suggestions, are you saying that I could have replied quoting ourinns? What I actually did was post a reply quoting other sites but PM the thread originator re ourinns.

2. On the "B&B needed near Ceret in August!" and similar threads... my reading of your comments is that for me it's not OK to post "stay at mascamps" but is OK for me to PM/mail words to that effect. For other people it would be OK for them to post/PM/mail "why not stay at mascamps" and even for me presumably it would be OK to post "checkout ourinns/languedoc" (or perhaps not that last?).

Going by the recent growth in the number of similar threads, I suspect that it might be best to get slightly more detailed groundrules about these and similar threads as otherwise I can see you getting a lot of grief over the summer.

 

Arnold

 

[Will]

Arnold - that's precisely why it gets so complicated. As I said, the last paragraph in my message was only my personal interpretation and I can easily see how others might look at it differently. If anybody can think of a brief, clearly worded rule that cannot be bent and misinterpreted to cover this then please tell us (I don't count "no advertising links or web sites allowed" because we tried this before and the vast majority of users were strongly opposed to it).

[Will]

The rules are here for good reasons, and somebody's decision has to be final. Discussion of the rules and the way they are applied, and appeals against our decisions, are all very well but we would prefer them to be done discreetly, by e-mail and private message. Such discussions add little or nothing to the usefulness of this forum as a resource about buying property in, moving to, and living in France.

For that reason, after long discussion, the admin team has decided that it would be in the best interests of this forum to remove this thread (and probably the associated one about 'gite post deleted' too). If there is anything on these seven pages that anybody thinks we ought to keep, please let us know as soon as possible, otherwise the topic will be taken down in its entirety.

[Tresco]

 Discussion of the rules and the way they are applied, and appeals against our decisions, are all very well but we would prefer them to be done discreetly, by e-mail and private message. Such discussions add little or nothing to the usefulness of this forum as a resource about buying property in, moving to, and living in France.

You may want to consider putting a sticky thread up for a couple of days, titled 'deleted threads', and containing the above quote or something like it, otherwise it might all start up again

[mascamps.com]

I have to say that I very strongly advise you not to delete this thread.

In my previous life, we did operate "behind the scenes" as you do but found that it went down extremely well when we had similar discussions to this one. It helped people see that we were human, that the decisions weren't arbitrary and that there could be flexibility in the rules when that was obviously required.

In fact they came across so well that we went as far as to run seminars later on as to why we did things.

Yes, it's true that this thread on its own doesn't really have anything to do with living in France etc. However, it does have a lot to do with how well us on the LF forums get on together.

And, yes, we too had our debates as to whether or not it was a good idea to be open or just to operate behind the scenes.

I personally have found it one of the more instructive threads that I've come across as to how the forum operates. It's far from obvious for us relative newbies. I didn't know that it was even possible to report potential infringements direct to yourselves for instance.

Honestly, I wouldn't delete it.

 

Arnold

 

[mascamps.com]

Last, but far from least, it will come across as incredibly heavy handed of yourselves. It will most definitely look like you aren't open to discussion as to how you operate, in fact it will only go to show that there are "more priviliged" members on the forum which is far from being in the best interest of the forum.

 

Arnold

 

[Coco]

I very much agree with Arnold's comments as to why this thread should not be deleted.  I know that at the start of the thread I strongly disagreed with a couple of the Mods but I think the thread has developed, as has any normal conversation, and as Arnold says, gives good explanations as the workings "behind the scenes".  I think it would be much more inflammatory to delete it.  It would make it look as though the Mods and Forum Admin are not prepared to accept any kind of criticism.  As long as people are not being abusive I really don't see the problem with such things being discussed on open forum - it makes everything much more transparent.

And the fact that it has nothing to do with buying property in, moving to or  living in France is not reason alone to delete it surely.  Considering we have a thread on the London Attacks and in the past on UK football, the UK election and many other non-French but current affairs subjects that are clearly of interest to people, at least this thread is ABOUT the forum.

As an aside, as far as Arnold not "advertising" his own websites earlier in the thread.  Well they're not really HIS websites are they.  They are one of the excellent things that has evolved from this forum.  People wanted to know where to advertise their B&Bs and Arnold offered to set up a site for us all to contribute to.  He has not asked for any money, and like the Mods, I am sure he has put in a lot of time behind the scenes updating and improving the sites for the benefit of others.  Thanks Arnold!

[Tresco]

I agree with much if not all of what you said Arnold and Coco.

There is a certain delicious irony about two threads concerning moderation/deletion being deleted though

 

[Chrisb]

Couldn't you just 'lock' it and put it in the FAQ sections as 'How the forum works'

Regards

Chris

[Tresco]

I have been told it isn't possible to 'lock' a thread here.

The conversation is probably a bit unwieldy for a FAQ, and of course it doesn't really answer a 'question' as such, owing to the numerous shades of grey in play as mentioned by several mods previously.

[RobS]

Wouldn't it just be best to leave it to die a natural death? I don't think theres many more things that can be said about the moderation and /or lack of moderation on the forum that hasn't already been written. Just leave it as it is and please don't delete it, as this will give the trolls more powder for their guns (and i'm not referring to any reasonable poster here).