J Arcane
10-02-2008, 12:52 PM
I know the site is young yet, and by and large has so far been mostly trouble free, but it's best to hash out these things before hand, and technically my request regards an issue that has already come up once.
Don't delete threads. Don't delete posts. This was a serious pet peeve of mine regarding the way matters were handled on Evil Avatar. It smacks of censorship, and only leaves the rest of the userbase confused as to what happened.
Short of outright spam, just leave the threads in place, add a moderator note regarding the event if the thread is to be allowed to continue, or just lock the thread and let it fall.
In general, I am a big big fan of hands-off, prescriptive moderation. Don't focus on consequences, focus on encouraging the right sort of discussion. It's how theRPGsite is run, and it seems to work out quite well. The only people we've ever outright banned are spammers and sockpuppets. A few people were blocked from individual forums. Everything else is left to the community to handle. If someone talks bullshit, they get called on it, the mods don't need to be involved in any official action, short of serious, major site disruptions.
I found the way that Evil Avatar (the forum in general, not the person) handled such matters in general to be rather poor and inconsistent, and the easiest way to avoid such things is to simple "spare the rod" as it were, until absolutely necessary.
I'm definitely not requesting any kind of codified rules, that shit just leads to idiotic rules lawyering in every case I've ever seen and murders discussion as people play silly passive-aggressive games trying to skirt around them or use them as a bludgeon against their perceived "enemies".
This is just my personal take, obviously, but I hoped to get it out there and considered, as well as start a general discussion on the nature of such things going forward, so that some sense of how things will be handled will occur BEFORE something has to be done and the inevitable shitstorm occurs. Not saying it won't, but having some idea where things stand and how things should be handled before hand will defuse some of it.
Don't delete threads. Don't delete posts. This was a serious pet peeve of mine regarding the way matters were handled on Evil Avatar. It smacks of censorship, and only leaves the rest of the userbase confused as to what happened.
Short of outright spam, just leave the threads in place, add a moderator note regarding the event if the thread is to be allowed to continue, or just lock the thread and let it fall.
In general, I am a big big fan of hands-off, prescriptive moderation. Don't focus on consequences, focus on encouraging the right sort of discussion. It's how theRPGsite is run, and it seems to work out quite well. The only people we've ever outright banned are spammers and sockpuppets. A few people were blocked from individual forums. Everything else is left to the community to handle. If someone talks bullshit, they get called on it, the mods don't need to be involved in any official action, short of serious, major site disruptions.
I found the way that Evil Avatar (the forum in general, not the person) handled such matters in general to be rather poor and inconsistent, and the easiest way to avoid such things is to simple "spare the rod" as it were, until absolutely necessary.
I'm definitely not requesting any kind of codified rules, that shit just leads to idiotic rules lawyering in every case I've ever seen and murders discussion as people play silly passive-aggressive games trying to skirt around them or use them as a bludgeon against their perceived "enemies".
This is just my personal take, obviously, but I hoped to get it out there and considered, as well as start a general discussion on the nature of such things going forward, so that some sense of how things will be handled will occur BEFORE something has to be done and the inevitable shitstorm occurs. Not saying it won't, but having some idea where things stand and how things should be handled before hand will defuse some of it.