On the one hand you ask for topics to be kept separate and split, on the other hand you complain when they split apart. :thinking: I'm sure you meant different things, but I'm not seeing them at the moment. Could you elaborate a bit?


It's interesting that different people looking back on recent interaction can yield very different perspectives of what and how much went wrong and where. I'm not sure that it's 100% accurate to say that 100% of administrative acts have been 100% responsible and mature. (That's a high percent usage of 100%, too. Whee.)


That's a fairly thinly veiled reference so I might as well reply to it. As I pointed out in a previous post, different people want different levels of depth. It seems unfair that because persons X, Y and Z want casual conversation, persons R, S and T must restrict their conversation to the lowest common denominator in terms of depth. How should the two groups be kept separate? Obviously, different issues will be of interest to different people, at different levels of depth. How about this solution: if a thread bores you, don't read it. What is the problem with such an approach? Are people worried about missing every last little bit of information? If that is so, then it seems like a wonderful catch-22 situation: wanting all information, but not wanting to go through the process of getting it. :wink:


If the argument is truly made that it's supposed to help the user, then it would be best to actually let the user decide what it means to be "helped". A post-per-page count would make this issue much better, for example. If the argument is that it takes time to implement and you don't feel like spending that time, that's perfectly fine too (as you say it is open source), it just shouldn't be window-dressed as being for the user's benefit. :wink:

Without getting back into that whole can of worms, I think it's fair to say your interpretation of this is either ignorant or completely wrong, or both. You need only look to TMC for a perfect example. An almost daily "no, keep your nazi hands off my forums" attitude is pervasive there. Any time Icculus actually does act, even when its in accordance with his stated policies, the "usual suspects" come out and argue the point with him, sometimes for days and weeks on end.

The same thing happened here when things got terribly out of control and we finally acted to reign them in a bit. The result if you'll recall was two people getting "trolled" and one administrator resigning for a period of time because of it. Plenty of people still badger this point over and over and over again about how if you "disagree" with the admins here you'll just get banned and left for dead. The same thing happened when Cratylus pushed his luck with the admins at TMS and they got fed up with him there and banned him entirely.

And to make it clear - we're not getting back into this discussion again, so please, don't belabor the point any further. It's a waste of everyone's time and only leads to more "incidents".



You already have this option. It's in your control panel preferences. I don't remember exactly how far that will let you take it, but you're not stuck with the default 15 replies per page if you don't want to be.

Nothing. Nothing at all. It's the solution I prefer personally. If something either bores you, or isn't what you wanted to know, ignore it and move on. Why complain to me or the other admins about it? But alas, everyone is not of the same mind as you and I are on this.

What you're saying is true, but I'm still pretty sure that even what would be considered acceptable / positive moderation in most cases would get flamed to high f*cking hell on MudBytes/TMC/TMS/etc. Granted, I was being somewhat sarcastic (I know, it's hard to tell when I'm doing that), but nonetheless, without naming names, I know of a few people who simply refuse to accept that ANY moderation is okay.

Likewise, in a community the size of this one, and especially on a website as small as MudBytes, it's almost impossible to moderate topics without having had any input. Luckily we have Kiasyn around here somewhere, lurking the shadows, ready to save us.

EDIT: Fixing my BBCode

I suppose I should mention that since we were talking about MudBytes, I was referring to the MudBytes community, not the TMC community or any other narrower, broader or orthogonal community.

But since you brought it up…

Perhaps the problem is that he simply should not entertain these discussions publicly beyond an initial post or two. I have no idea what these discussions look like: I don't follow TMC. But having these discussions for days and weeks seems like a pretty bad idea. It doesn't really help good-faith participants, and it only encourages trolling.

I don't think that is exactly what happened here, though. But as you requested I won't elaborate further.


Sorry, I wasn't meaning to imply that it wasn't there. I was referring to the idea of site designers dictating to users what makes the user's experience "better".


I think it has to do with site culture. People expect a certain kind of depth and topic. If they don't see what they want, they're unhappy. It could degenerate into a dictatorship of one group over another if one group gets to "win" the debate by shutting out the other form. MudBytes should be neither shallow nor in-depth, exclusively. ("Shallow" is not meant to be a bad thing, here.) There should be a place for both kinds of discussion. Well, in my opinion at least. It is insulting for one group to call the other stupid, self-serving, etc. when they simply have different topic interests.

The only hard part IMO is deciding how to keep them separate, which is why I brought up the threaded topic. With threads it is easy to filter out the "in-depth" track of a discussion while keeping context for everybody. With a flat view, everything gets jumbled into the same, well, flat list of posts. Splitting into separate threads means more work for everybody, and it severs posts from their context. There is no link between the original thread and the split thread. A threaded mode solves that problem.

Slashdot is an interesting example of this. If a whole thread of comments bores you, you can just close it. Problem solved. The community scoring is helpful because if some post is particularly valuable deep in a thread, it'll be highlighted due to its score.

It just doesn't sound like it makes sense for somebody to complain about posts that are actually on-topic, just not interesting to that person. :thinking:


I guess so. As I said to Samson, I'm not really talking about TMC/TMS because (a) I know nothing about them and (b) they're not really relevant to how MudBytes is or should be run. (But perhaps they are, given how much overlap there is in terms of posters…) Anyhow, if this is truly the case, then I think it comes down to a culture issue, and the only way for a community culture to change is for there to be a collective effort in doing so, with peer pressure to bring about those who do not work on it.

This is the core of the whole issue right here. It's a cultural issue. The problem is, that culture is not site-exclusive. For some reason MUD community members have grown used to sniping at each other, posting flamebait, trolling, antagonizing the site admins when something gets decided that they don't like, and in general, just being asses to each other. Smaller sites do better. Like Nick Gammon's site. It's more of a small, tight knit group of people. Even with the overlap from some of the posters from other sites things don't tend to get out of hand. There's rarely a hostile argument, and I've not once seen Nick have to deal with someone dickwaving about nazis, fascists, George W Bush, or censorship complaints at all.

So how is it his community avoided the problems most of the others have? Was the whip cracked early on to put a stop to it? Did posts get deleted before they were seen? Are posts critical of the administration simply silenced? Or is the population there just respectful and nice to each other so that moderation is essentially unnecessary? I'll submit to you that whatever it is had nothing at all to do with the forum layout. :)

Moderation is only evil to the person being moderated. To the rest of us, it's the right thing to do. Want to change the culture of the site? You have to start with the culture of the participants. I guarantee you it would bleed over on to other sites and manifest in a much less hostile atmosphere for everyone. Threaded or flat.

As a disclaimer, all of the below is (of course) "in my opinion".

Nick's site isn't terribly small. Nick alone has made more posts than this entire site; I have made slightly under half and Zeno about a quarter. So in terms of volume, the site is certainly not small. I do agree however that there are different users here and there except for a few who overlap to various degrees.

The difference is in focus. Nick's site has very clear points of focus. MudBytes does not. Nick's site has some rather general sections, but for example there is no "general chatter" section. You aren't expected to post just to ramble. That doesn't happen much here either, but it does happen. Nick's site is more of a question-answer format: you start a thread asking a question, and the thread is an attempt to answer that question. There are relatively few open-ended questions, meaning that there are relatively few threads that last for longer than a page. When there are open-ended questions, they still have fairly specific scope, and tend to remain polite and productive.

Speaking of focus, Nick has not had to deal with political issues, unlike MudBytes, because political issues are not relevant topics on his forum. It's really as simple as that. He and other regulars don't bring up the issues, and discourage them if they ever start coming up. That is not how MudBytes works with regards to politics. Politics are always a sure-fire way to brew up all kinds of irrelevant trouble on a MUD site. It is my belief that they should be avoided at all costs unless the site is aware of and willing to pay the price. We all know (although some may have forgotten) what the price was the last time politics came up here.

Nick doesn't deal with moderation issues because, for whatever reason, he doesn't have to moderate. I believe that the forums are self-policing in that respect: the atmosphere is quite different from here. There are no posts critical of the administration because there is no reason to be. Nick certainly has not "cracked the whip". But he does set the example, which is perhaps the most important point of all. The administrators of a site set the tone of the entire site, whether they do it on purpose or not, and whether they like it or not. There is no such thing as an administrator who gets to act like a normal user. As soon as somebody wields power, they lose their ability to act like anybody else. In an ideal world where everybody always acted maturely and responsibly, this would not be an issue, but unfortunately we do not live in such a world.



Obviously, the thread layout has nothing to do with this question. :wink: But I will take advantage of this moment to point out just how easy it is for conversations to wander, and how a threaded view would make it easier to tell that we're off talking about a separate issue above than the threaded vs. flat forum view.

He doesn't really. He makes a post about X or moderates in X way according to the ToS, and if someone mouths up about he, he usually responds once or maybe twice and thats it.

TMC by and large isn't quite the demagogue of lawless slime that appears to be painted above.

What really boils my blood is 'active moderation' the likes of which are 'new thread on topic X with Y different angle… MOD: Thread locked, go back to previous thread.' 'thread related to topic X with Y perspective MOD: Thread locked, we dont need another kind of X thread!'

Thats asinine. MODs that determine when something runs its course, or locks a thread because 'they' feel nothing left can be said is something that raises my ire to no end.

Thats my opinion anyway.



I really really really think you are off base here.

Visit any MMORPG forum, at all, ever. It is so much worse then TMC/TMS/Et Al.

Are some people trolls? Sure, who gives a shit. If you dont like it. Dont respond. It really *is* that simple. People hardly antagonize Icculus even remotely as much as you mention above.
Normally his praises are sung. The last time that he was (due to the linking of porn) crat brought up a point in a logical and concise manner. there was a final response from Icculus, and it
cleared it all up. That was the end of it.

-Syn

I just noticed this bit, and totally disagree unless the moderation is for something that goes against all common decency. I can't stress how much I disagree with this.

-Syn

–Totally unrelated, but its real nifty having virtually every resteraunt deliver (from California Pizza Kitchen and local Philippine food to McDonalds and Burger King..). Just thought I'd share. :)

I wasn't meaning to imply Icculus was the one who gets antagonized. No, I was referring to the mess Cratylus made right here.

But you should stop to examine why Icculus is praised. It's not for the things you might think. You'll find that his praises are usually sung precisely because he doesn't often moderate, even when it should clearly be done. The usual suspects rave on and on about it, often using him as an example of "not the nazi" when attacking other site admins for daring to moderate their own forums.

I also stand by my opinion that moderation is only reviled as evil by those who are moderated. I've yet to see anyone complain who hasn't been. And so far every complaint about it I've fielded in one way or another has been from the "victim" bitching about how I'm so evil and horrible for squelching disagreement by banning people for "daring to question my authority". If you've been here for any length of time you've seen it yourself. It's all part of the same problem.

So I don't think I'm off base at all. In fact, I think part of the reason people tend to dislike me and how I handle being an authority figure is because I'm pointing out their behavior.

*You* may think he should moderate something, and you use the *usual* suspects for people that disagree with you.

TMC is hardly the raving pit of despair and evil lawless revilers that you portray.

I never reall alluded to you at all, nor was I referencing you specifically. People don't like you because you take stances in threads, and then moderate. This is seen as backwater favortism. To yourself and whatever stance you support.

I am not saying that is my opinion, thats how it is viewed. TMC is doing quite fine, Icculus maintains such an air of praise because he has no interest in posting on the discussions and can let himself simply be an admin and moderate what is in the ToS. Nothing more, nothing less.

I fail to see what is bad about that. I wouldnt send you a complaint unless you did something that was blatantly stupid, that does not however mean that I or others agree with the style of moderation, even remotely.

-Syn

My main gripe with the way TMC is run, and a reason I prefer heavier moderation, is public perception.

When someone hits MudBytes from Google or whatever, and otherwise doesn't know who/what we are, I'd like them to arrive and have a positive view about the site. I'm not saying that I think we should fake it or censor / moderate discussions to the point where you can only say nice things. What I am saying is that when a "newbie" lands on MudBytes, I'd prefer they be presented with people discussing MUD related topics in a civil fashion. A newbie should wind up feeling as if this is a place they can ask questions and find answers, not a place where some "mean people" will ridicule them for being a n00b or because they're a republican/democrat/whatever.

For example: If a newbie lands on TMC and posts a question about some aspect of MUD admining, there's a very good chance that, unless his post is worded perfectly, some idiot is going to flame the hell out of him just for having been born. And even if that doesn't happen, there's also a good chance a couple people will hijack his thread and use it for some stupid personal bitch fest. (I haven't browsed TMC on a daily basis for a while, but when I do browse, there seems to be plenty of this. A regular is more than welcome to tell me I'm wrong, but that's been my limited observation.)

The only difference I see between TMC and MudBytes is that on TMC, the sh!t has to spin around on the fan for a LOT longer before someone turns the fan off.

I'm not saying that I necessarily approve of altering the content of discussions until one personally likes the way it reads, but I certainly sigh a little and feel disappointed when I login to see one, two, or even three personal attacks going back and forth and nothing at all that could be considered a worthwhile contribution to the community or the website. It's certainly one of the reasons I lost a lot of interest in MudBytes quite some time ago.

A few people pointed out that part of this is just the community. It doesn't matter which website or forum is in question, there are still a handful of folks who like to stir up trouble wherever they go. Some of the people in the MUD community just refuse to play nice, get along, be incorrect, or have the second-to-last word. That's fine, but until it changes, NO amount of moderation is going to fix what I see as a very negative perception of the entire MUD community.

And yes, I realize I'm at least partially a hypocrite for posting this under a thread about forum code design. I suck a forum necromancy, so until Kiasyn gets here, we're sharing a bunk.

>_> <_< Kiasyn is always watching…

This is pretty much all I'm saying too, and it's exactly what people don't get as a first impression from TMC because it very well is a "raving pit of despair and evil lawless revilers" as Syn described my perception of it. Newbies poking around on Google will see TMC and come away with the false impression that the entire community is the same way, when in reality it's a fairly small group of regulars who are guilty of it.

The same sort of thing was happening just as much at TMS, and when Lasher took over he decided it was time to clean up the mess. So he did. Aggressively. Posts got edited, people began getting warned. Off topic troll bait was deleted. Certain anarchist types decided that was intolerable, Lasher was a nazi, a fascist, a communist, a censoring pig, you name it. But in the end, he stuck to it. Banned those who refused to obey the new rules. Six months or so later? The result is night and day. TMS is no longer anywhere close to the hostile cesspool it once was under Synozeer. Now, personally I do think they might have gone too far. There's a balance to be struck somewhere. You just need to find it. Once you do, you need to stick to it and cast out those who only seek to cause trouble.

Being an uninvolved admin is something I never quite understood. Why is it that admins shouldn't be allowed to participate in their own site? Aren't the admins also members of the same community? I fail to see why active participation necessarily means admins should be forced to accept total anarchy just to avoid those few people who think it's a conflict of interest when those same admins finally realize it's time to cool things off when they get out of hand.

There's a difference between being an active admin, and being an active admin at the center of controversial topics. The admins set the example and tone of the entire site, intentionally or not. So it's not that an admin must never participate: it's that s/he should do so very carefully, realizing that every action holds weight. To a lesser extent this is true of the frequent-posting regulars as well.


At the risk of being repetitive, threaded forum design would make the present digression easier to follow/separate. :tongue:

Indeed! Unfortunately, the way the QSF database is structured, implementing a threaded format is pretty much impossible to do retroactively. That said, I still like threaded layouts.

Wouldn't it just be adding a post_parentpost field to the database with a reference to the post its a reply to, and building the tree (array?) when we load the page?

Without knowing anything about QSF internals, it seems that a parent post field is all you'd need to implement it basically. There would be more work to do on the browser-side of things: for it to work properly you'd probably want things like Javascript to show/hide threads etc. Like Slashdot, but without the AJAX.

Yep, unfortunately QSF doesn't record a parent post id.

QSF could record a parent post id if someone felt like writing up the patch for the code to make that possible… *innocent*

The problem is, if this is going to require evil amounts of javascript or look anything like Slashdot, I'd be rather dead set against implementing that. I can't stand how that place is set up. Chaotic disorganization would be a compliment. The same for sites like Digg etc too. That method of handling things just irks me to no end. There's got to be a better way to do that kind of thing.