N395V
Well Known Member
This is a rather long and probably boring post prompted by Chads Test thread about a non RV topic. I think it important to discuss at length because the issue at hand can significantly affect the website and its value to us as experimental builders, owners, pilots, and someday wanabees.
Including Doug there are 31 moderators. The reasons Doug chose the other 30 are not entirely clear to us but it is his website so we serve at his pleasure. His only directive to us was keep it clean of spam, keep it civil and as much as possible keep subjects in the proper categories as well as consolidate duplicate threads. All of these are essential to clean operation of the search function except for keep it civil which is self explanatory.
None of us have been given any clear cut solid guidance as to appropriate content other than common sense. In this respect we are like FSDO?s ask 31 moderators and you will get 25 opinions.
You will note that very few posts are moderated in the overall scheme of things and most of the deleting we do is automated spam that sneaks through.
It should be clear that to post rules for moderators that cover all eventualities would yield a manual several inches thick and still not cover all eventualities. I tend to only address issues of civility, politics, and vendor bashing. On occasion if something sort of bothers me I ask for input from a few other moderators and follow consensus which is usually don?t delete.
I think on balance given there are 31 with a delete button we are doing very little moderation. This is mainly because there are very few posters who step over the boundaries that most of us on the forum agree upon.
As a comment on the suggestion that we have an anything goes off topic forum I have only an example to offer.
CPA (Cessna Pilots Association) is (was) the largest aircraft ?type? organization in the world. It had a large (I think 16,000 strong) community of frequent posters many of whom became good internet friends. It was a wonderful valuable forum for Cessna owners. They had only 2 or 3 moderators. You can imagine with that many posters there was a lot of less than desirable content that went un-moderated.
During the election of 2000 the political commentary started creeping in. Something along the lines of ?that won?t happen if A is elected?. You can imagine the responses going down hill from there. Things would get absolutely nasty before a moderator would intervene.
The solution should have been addition of more moderators and a no tolerance of politics policy.
But many of us (me included) thought the solution should be an off topic anything goes section. WE WERE WRONG. Within 6 months the vicious animosity and venom that this section engendered destroyed hundreds of friendships, reduced forum participation to a fraction of what it once was and spawned at least 2 breakaway organizations. All 3 organizations combined are nowhere near as valuable as the original was.
As we head into another contentious election cycle we need to leave well enough alone and not trod down this often followed and disastrous path.
I too have posts of mine deleted and do not like it. Most often in retrospect they were inappropriate sometimes however I see no justification and take offense. You cannot please everybody all of the time especially in a club of mostly alpha males.
There is no perfect solution to this problem but the system we currently have works pretty well. I have no doubt that, on a daily basis, Doug reviews the moderation that occurs and if any of us become consistently inappropriate in our moderation he will address the issue with the offending moderator.
It would be nice to see the views of the other moderators on these issues. That is if one of them does not delete this thread.
Including Doug there are 31 moderators. The reasons Doug chose the other 30 are not entirely clear to us but it is his website so we serve at his pleasure. His only directive to us was keep it clean of spam, keep it civil and as much as possible keep subjects in the proper categories as well as consolidate duplicate threads. All of these are essential to clean operation of the search function except for keep it civil which is self explanatory.
None of us have been given any clear cut solid guidance as to appropriate content other than common sense. In this respect we are like FSDO?s ask 31 moderators and you will get 25 opinions.
You will note that very few posts are moderated in the overall scheme of things and most of the deleting we do is automated spam that sneaks through.
It should be clear that to post rules for moderators that cover all eventualities would yield a manual several inches thick and still not cover all eventualities. I tend to only address issues of civility, politics, and vendor bashing. On occasion if something sort of bothers me I ask for input from a few other moderators and follow consensus which is usually don?t delete.
I think on balance given there are 31 with a delete button we are doing very little moderation. This is mainly because there are very few posters who step over the boundaries that most of us on the forum agree upon.
As a comment on the suggestion that we have an anything goes off topic forum I have only an example to offer.
CPA (Cessna Pilots Association) is (was) the largest aircraft ?type? organization in the world. It had a large (I think 16,000 strong) community of frequent posters many of whom became good internet friends. It was a wonderful valuable forum for Cessna owners. They had only 2 or 3 moderators. You can imagine with that many posters there was a lot of less than desirable content that went un-moderated.
During the election of 2000 the political commentary started creeping in. Something along the lines of ?that won?t happen if A is elected?. You can imagine the responses going down hill from there. Things would get absolutely nasty before a moderator would intervene.
The solution should have been addition of more moderators and a no tolerance of politics policy.
But many of us (me included) thought the solution should be an off topic anything goes section. WE WERE WRONG. Within 6 months the vicious animosity and venom that this section engendered destroyed hundreds of friendships, reduced forum participation to a fraction of what it once was and spawned at least 2 breakaway organizations. All 3 organizations combined are nowhere near as valuable as the original was.
As we head into another contentious election cycle we need to leave well enough alone and not trod down this often followed and disastrous path.
I too have posts of mine deleted and do not like it. Most often in retrospect they were inappropriate sometimes however I see no justification and take offense. You cannot please everybody all of the time especially in a club of mostly alpha males.
There is no perfect solution to this problem but the system we currently have works pretty well. I have no doubt that, on a daily basis, Doug reviews the moderation that occurs and if any of us become consistently inappropriate in our moderation he will address the issue with the offending moderator.
It would be nice to see the views of the other moderators on these issues. That is if one of them does not delete this thread.
