Locking and Banning.

[Dexion]

Ok I'm here now.


I totally agree with all the neffing with oneliners. However, in Off Topic, I believe that there should be MINIMAL amount of locking unless its totally breaking AT forum rules. Who is it to judge that a thread is "useless"? What makes a a gender poll more relevant than the locked "useless" thread? What makes the Car poll any different from the gender poll?

If it violates the forum rules, fine theres nothing I can say but I have noticed that Mods are using "personal" opinion when locking and banning members from the board. Ontop of that, if the user intimidates or gets on the mods nerves, the moderator instantly bans or locks the thread.

To me, thats like a police officer cuffing you up just because he hates your look on your face. And that definately doesn't make a good cop.

Mods, you guys are doing a great job controlling the content here in AT. However it seems as though you all have tightened up a bit and have been jumping the gun a lot more frequently(from my point of view). I'm not purposely trying to piss you off, I'm just a concerned loyal Anandtech forum junkie.

Dexion,

As you seem to be genuinely interested in making an intelligent discussion out of this issue, I will attempt to explain this to you.

Using cops as an analogy to moderators seems appropriate, but in all actuality, is not. We do not ban users for posting inappropriately once. We do, however, lock the threads; generally, most users can discern that if their thread was locked, it was locked for a reason. There is a certain amount of objectivity that is necessary with the job. However, absolute objectivity is impossible. In the near future, there will be rules posted, but the final call - to lock threads, etc. - is up to each individual moderator in the end.

We were asked to help moderate the board because of the discretion we had shown in our posts and actions on the board. This discretion is continued into the types of threads we lock now, and simply put, threads that are viewed as unnecessary will be locked.

We genuinely appreciate your input, especially in the constructive way you espoused it. If you have any other concerns/questions, please directly email them to us @ moderator@anandtech.com.

AnandTech Moderator

 

[Soybomb]

<< Who is it to judge that a thread is &quot;useless&quot;? >>


The mods are, of course they're using their personal opinions, what else are they supposed to use. While I do agree that sometimes a poor decision is made I think you're specifically posting in reference to millenium. To adress what constitutes a useless thread, I'd guess that would be a thread that has nothing to discuss. If I post a thread that says nothing more than cheese in the topic it serves no purpose other than to allow people to post nef replies. OT is a place to discuss offtopic matters, not the &quot;be a dumbass here&quot; forum.

 

[Isla]

Hmmmm....

Maybe it is time for a chat room?

I don't like chat rooms myself, but it seems that could be a solution.

?

 

[Soybomb]

Actually Isla there is already sort of an unofficial chatroom that many of us use. On the irc undernet network many of us chat in neotechman's #neochat

 

[Dexion]

<< The mods are, of course they're using their personal opinions, what else are they supposed to use. While I do agree that sometimes a poor decision is made I think you're specifically posting in reference to millenium. >>



Of course they have the right to to judge. This is a difficult debate, because there is a fine line between a good decision and a poor decision when using personal opinions. I'm not directly talking about what happened to Millenium, however its a concern when Mods make a poor decision. Despite them having full rights and access to this board they have to do it discretely and make decisions carefully.

*With power comes more responsibility* - Spiderman

 

[GT1999]

Just something to think about: I had a thread where people were harassing me and what I was saying.. this happened to be a thread where I was asking for help. Basically, I didn't like it too much, and I posted it in the thread. Thankfully almost right after I did that the thread was locked and sank like a tank, just like I wanted it to.

Sure, the mods aren't perfect, they're only human. I'm am NOT trying to brown nose here. We should all be happy there are here to keep everything in line. This place would be horrible without them - useless threads all over the damn place and it would be almost impossible to find anything worthwhile. So, with that, I am completely happy with all the locked threads. They're almost always useless or having something wrong with them and are just wasting bandwidth.

G|T

 

[mechBgon]

Really, I imagine the moderators would be pleased if moderating were as easy as funneling the questionable posts into some piece of software that gave impartial &quot;pass/fail&quot; rulings. As it is, they have to make judgement calls on questionable posts, and they have to do it quickly. Lately it seems like the Forum grows by another 100 logged-in people every two or three months.

Keep up the good work, mods. You'll never please everyone, but to judge by the enjoyable, orderly Forums we have, I'd say you're doing good work in the face of an ever-growing task. 🙂