A thread about Moderation of the Forum

N395V · #1 08-13-2008, 12:41 PM

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.

DeltaRomeo · #2 08-13-2008, 12:55 PM

Thanks Milt.

When I was setting this board up I initially wanted to use a semi-mold of the iPod Lounge forum for rules, which uses the same software (140,000 registered as I write this). The rules are very detail....and about 30 pages long. Go see for yourself.

I ended up going another route...be civil and try to keep it RV. It's amazing how good this setup works. It's a testiment to the RV community, I might add.

b,
d

ps: I doubt I'll ever agree to a dedicated 'off topic' section. Just delutes the knowledge base too much, imho.

rv8ch · #3 08-13-2008, 01:11 PM

I agree that we need to keep things on topic. For me the big taboos are sex, politics, and religion. I have a lot to say about all three, but to be quite honest, I can't imagine anyone here would be interested in my opinions. I'm also not sure I want to read others opinions about them on this forum - I prefer to continue under the illusion that you all have exactly the same opinion as I do.

rv9aviator · #4 08-13-2008, 01:12 PM

I for one, have no problem with keeping the content closely related to RV's and the RV family of friends. I enjoy seeing the posts about new family members and important news about members of this group. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of the folks that come here for information and friendship feel the same way. If I want to discuss politics and religion I have plenty of in-laws to start a fight with.

Thanks to all of you that keep this a great place to visit.

jferraro17 · #5 08-13-2008, 01:46 PM

Just a heads up...

The other thread on this topic was locked down at the request of the original poster.

Just trying to beat the conspiracy theorists to the punch

Joe

LettersFromFlyoverCountry · #6 08-13-2008, 01:53 PM

This is like RV Whack-a-mole. There was a thread in another part of the forum -- the test area, a place to put OT posts ... a place that's cleaned out every 30 days. That forum topic is closed... and so now it pops up here... a place that is permanent, even though it has nothing to do with building RVs.

Lucy, Ricky?

RV7Guy · #7 08-13-2008, 01:53 PM

I agree with Milt on virtually everything. This is a fairly sane Forum. If you want to see one where they eat their young, check out justhelicopters.com. OMG.

Here I would love to see a MANDATORY signature box that is required before the registration is accepted. And, anyone that doesn't have one has to re-register. We are all friends here and it is nice to see the posters name, city and state and aircraft building or flying.

I would also like to see a "garage sale" section. In other words a section where RVer's can post things for sale that aren't airplane related. I know many that have liquidated items to help feed the RV project. I know there was a poll a long time ago and it didn't pass. I think it should be revisited. If will benefit a fellow RVer then why not. I think it would benefit many.

RV7Factory · #8 08-13-2008, 01:56 PM

Well said Milt, well said.

I too am against an "off topic" area for many of the reasons you have cited. I was once an active member of a non-flying/RV forum which started one (an OT area) at the request of many members. It began inoccently enough, with the first round of threads being just somewhat or slightly off-topic, but over time grew to the point of anything goes, and I mean anything. Eventually it became the forum, consuming and overshadowing the forum's original purpose. I would rue the day VAF became that way, and I think the easiest solution is just not to start one in the first place (but DR already said that).

Rivethead · #9 08-13-2008, 02:22 PM

Of all the things that could be moderated out of here, politics, religion and sex I would like to see added to this list (just a wish list) one more item. Off topic non RV related incidence reports. I don't feel that there is any reason to report any kind of wrecked aircraft anywhere on this site. Also I feel that we do way to much armchair speculating as a group without having the facts in front of us. While I'm thinking of it there's a whole bunch of thread drift could be moderated out of here.

BrentHumphreys · #10 08-13-2008, 02:27 PM

I agree. There are many outlets for non RV posts like the one that started the debate. I even thought to myself that that post should be deleted.

I use the RSS feed to see new topics, and at times the number of new/dupicate/slightly different threads can create a lot of noise. After my recent trip to Oshkosh for 3 days, I came back to over 200 new threads waiting in my feed reader. I wound up reading maybe 20.

There is lots of good content on this site, let's not dilute it.