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How would YOU improve the Randomness Forum?
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Post by
TheOnyx
That's true, but a small clic can't overturn the votes of the majority. In the comment rating system, they can attack specific comments, or even entire threads for no reason but to grief. Most comments wouldn't get voted on, so a group of people could go in and thrash around quite a bit, and still be following the rules. It would take a major group to elect in thier own mod, who would still be subject to the regular mods. Besides, if that happened, wouldn't that then be the majority, and not just a clic anymore?
My point is that the rating system is subject to small clics... while the vote mod system is subject to the majority.
Essentially, you seem to be arguing for a 'democracy' over a 'republic'.
I'm going to preface this next bit by saying that I am not expressing or inferring an action, decision, or opinion in any way that should be construed as 'Wowhead Gospel'. At this point, I'm engaging in personal discourse.
I acknowledge the issues you are indicating with a 'community-moderated form'. In close-knit communities, though, I've never seen it be a major issue. I'll refer to Slashdot again as it's the best example that comes to mind. Slashdot is a community of technical people who essentially moderate the heck out of the comments made to posts. Any time I've reviewed comments, the best of the best have been featured as viewable, and the trolling has been hidden. Given the ability for each person to set their own view thresholds, it's a great way to filter out the 'noise', as it were.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't spend my days in this forum, but I question whether there would be a real fear of a small group of people messing up threads. With a strong community, any attempt is crushed quickly.
That being said, I'll again indicate that, simply because I personally feel this way, it doesn't mean that we'd employ this solution (or any other) on Wowhead. We just got to a point in the conversation where I had some personal thoughts on the matter. :)
Post by
MyTie
we moderators must strive to uphold the values of the website without breaking that bond with its users....
I agreed with everything until this. How do you know what the values of randomness are? In fact, how does anyone, except the collective of its users?
Post by
Arideni
I dislike having locks sitting on a page. When I see several locks on the page, I have to question myself, "Does this really even deserve to be seen by our well-behaved users? Should they have to regret the next fifteen seconds being spend on Wowhead because of this troll/flamer/idiot?"
The bad thing is that if we remove these blemishes too quickly it causes issues. In some cases, we need the locks to remain in place as an example to either the creator of the post or to other would-be trolls. Catch 22?
Post by
Skyfire
I'm of the opinion that we should implement forum specific moderatorship (a new usergroup, maybe something like "delegate"). This allows the flexibility that's asked for, and we can go to each of the forum communities and ask "who?" if we want to, or cherrypick, or do whatever to come up with people who remain within one forum for the most part.
Essentially, you seem to be arguing for a 'democracy' over a 'republic'.
I think you've got those backwards. He's arguing for a republic, not a democracy. =x
Post by
Arideni
we moderators must strive to uphold the values of the website without breaking that bond with its users....
I agreed with everything until this. How do you know what the values of randomness are? In fact, how does anyone, except the collective of its users?
Randomness is a sub-forum of Wowhead website. It incurs the same as any other, though it may have different subject matter. I see no difference.
We don't want offensive material posted in Randomness anymore than we would in General or on the front page of the site.
Post by
kattib
I dislike having locks sitting on a page. When I see several locks on the page, I have to question myself, "Does this really even deserve to be seen by our well-behaved users? Should they have to regret the next fifteen seconds being spend on Wowhead because of this troll/flamer/idiot?"
The bad thing is that if we remove these blemishes too quickly it causes issues. In some cases, we need the locks to remain in place as an example to either the creator of the post or to other would-be trolls. Catch 22?
Yeah sometimes I feel like this, especially lately because I feel like that the wow-general page has been getting a lot of locks which makes me sad, for randomness though it might be better just to delete it since most dont head to randomness until they have been to the forums for a while.
Also possible way out of catch-22? Put a timer on the lock like after 1 hour the topic is deleted since all it is doing is taking up memory space
Post by
Kristopher
I'm of the opinion that we should implement forum specific moderatorship (a new usergroup, maybe something like "delegate"). This allows the flexibility that's asked for, and we can go to each of the forum communities and ask "who?" if we want to, or cherrypick, or do whatever to come up with people who remain within one forum for the most part.
This is just about what I'm talking about. I'm just not smart enough to find the words for it.
Post by
MyTie
Essentially, you seem to be arguing for a 'democracy' over a 'republic'.
A democracy is where the people vote for each change that is implemented. A 'pure democracy' doesn't exist. A democracy would be more where each user got to vote on each post. That wouldn't work because people wouldn't participate, and it would leave it open to trolling. What I am asking for is a republic, where we vote for mods that represent the public (republic). What we have now, is, well... for lack of a better word... dictatorship. There is no elected officials. The rules are dictated to us, however well meaning they are, and it causes problems. It provides a us versus you mentality. If we elected our own officals, we would have no one to blame but ourselves.
Edit: Look at Skyfire... uglybunnying my words
Post by
Arideni
On the contrary...
It's kind of like how a retail store is created to sell items to people. The people must obey the rules of the store, even though the store is made from the ground up to serve the people. Without rules, the store would eventually cave under.
I don't really see the point in delegating users to particular forums, either. I think if a moderator enjoys the Priest forums or the General forums that's great. It does leave openings for other forums such as Theorycrafting, etc. which may not have as much attention paid to it as it should...
but that's where we have a Report feature implemented. This really does help us out and bring things to our attention. I know I check it each morning when I wake up (if I get online). Still, majority of my time is spent in the: General forums, warrior forums, randomness forums, rogue forums (in that order). I do venture into all the other forums, but not on a regular basis. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
Post by
MyTie
On the contrary...
It's kind of like how a retail store is created to sell necessities to the people. The people must obey the rules of the store, even though the store is made from the ground up to serve the people. Without rules, the store would eventually cave under.
I never said I advocated not following the rules. I believe the mods and randomness should always be subject to the wowhead team. I just suggest a more 'hands off' approach, to allow it to explore, within bounds, of course.
Kind of like... a shoe store letting its customers look through the catalogs and tell it what shoes to order. We don't want to set fire to the place or anything, we just want more control over our forum.
Post by
Arideni
I just suggest a more 'hands off' approach
we just want more control over our forum
It sounds like you want certain things your way, but I don't quite understand.
The instinctual answer would have been that it quite simply isn't your forum. However, this isn't true because without the users we would have no site period. So yes, it is your forum...but we have to reserve boundaries as you acknowledged. I think the real issue is you disagree with the site definitions of what exactly those boundaries are. So maybe you can drop some more hints about what exactly you wish were done differently?
Also, on another note...I think a reputation system with decay could work. Obviously a cap would have to be used so users cannot inflate their fans up the charts...and it would decay on a regular basis.
I really do think that could work and the best implementation I've seen of that would probably have been on sites like
DevShed
.
Post by
Skyfire
I don't really see the point in delegating users to particular forums, either. I think if a moderator enjoys the Priest forums or the General forums that's great. It does leave openings for other forums such as Theorycrafting, etc. which may not have as much attention paid to it as it should...
but that's where we have a Report feature implemented. This really does help us out and bring things to our attention. I know I check it each morning when I wake up (if I get online). Still, majority of my time is spent in the: General forums, warrior forums, randomness forums, rogue forums (in that order). I do venture into all the other forums, but not on a regular basis. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
Context of a post, comment, whatever, matters. It's easy to see the context of a comment on the db side of the site: It's a reply, or topic, or whatnot.
The problem on the forums is that a community does develop. If you don't moderate an area frequently, or even read the threads there frequently, you lose out on the context that the community has developed. This is part of the misunderstandings with Corgan: He's got a way about him that you don't get if you haven't been on IRC. This is both harmful and beneficial to the IRC community: He brings a little of himself there, and helps to show that the chat there is, while family-friendly, slightly cooler to be in. But on the other hand, someone entering IRC the first time is just perplexed by the behavior of the person.
So, either a) we need to make more greens for the neglected areas, or b) we need to entrust users to moderate certain forums and only moderate those forums. They'll obviously still be allowed the privilege of posting outside, but they'll be able to do good work on those specific forums. It also better directly shows the community that we're thinking of each of the sub communities we call forums. Reporting doesn't cut it here. I've jumped in several times ready to shoot people without all the information I needed, and while it got the job done with minimal casualties, someone who frequents the forum will be able to pop on IRC or contact Mal or whatever and say "this user is being a problem".
I'm advocating a forum moderator position because it allows us three more flexibilities (and advantages) than currently. One, it allows us to add people to the crew without fearing that we're going to be swamped in a sea of green text, and two, it allows us to see if people can handle the responsibilities that they're handed. If we want to, we can make that an intermediary step to global moderatorship. I also advocate it because it means that the sub-mods themselves won't feel absolutely lambasted with "omg new tools and such that I need to be aware of": They have one forum they need to deal with, which saves both the big mods and the little mods time in the learning process.
Post by
84594
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
MyTie
It sounds like you want certain things your way, but I don't quite understand.
The instinctual answer would have been that it quite simply isn't your forum. However, this isn't true because without the users we would have no site period. So yes, it is your forum...but we have to reserve boundaries as you acknowledged. I think the real issue is you disagree with the site definitions of what exactly those boundaries are. So maybe you can drop some more hints about what exactly you wish were done differently?
Imagine a forum dedicated to mages. Then a bunch of shamans get to decide what is useful and what is not in the forum. Wouldn't make much sense. It takes a randomer to decide what should go and what should stay in randomness, and that randomer needs to be subject to the opinions of that community.Also, on another note...I think a reputation system with decay could work. Obviously a cap would have to be used so users cannot inflate their fans up the charts...and it would decay on a regular basisThis would be a great idea, and make the top 3 scorers 'random mods'.
Post by
Arideni
I fail to see how IRC is family-friendly, and have for a long time, but I digress.
I'm really, really starting to think more about that reputation with decay system. It not only provides users with a way to positively interact (and reward) one another, but also can be manipulated to prevent fraudulence or inaccuracies.
It would show users "This person who knows what they're talking about," or "Here's someone who is funny and clever," or "This user is very helpful, check out his or her latest posts."
If the culture accepted such a system, it could lead to self-promotion without any negatives. My main issue with a rating or ranking system is that if you go +1 then there is a -1, right? Not with reputation. You start at a normal baseline and the only way to go is up. There's a reward, but not a punishment (not in the reputation system, obviously staff can still intervene).
I am a very firm believer in rewards systems without punishments. Yes, there are consequences, but one will always obtain more through courtesy than brute force.
Post by
Skyfire
I fail to see how IRC is family-friendly, and have for a long time, but I digress.
It's a goal, as with all public fora.
Post by
MyTie
I love how this conversation is going! There is so much excitement and participation.
Post by
Arideni
It's getting late. I think we should let everyone digest what we have here and add their own comments later. We can't all steal the show, :-D
Post by
MyTie
It's getting late. I think we should let everyone digest what we have here and add their own comments later. We can't all steal the show, :-D
Thanks for your constructive input. I am now retireing as well. Good night everyone.
Post by
Slimda
Wowhead used to have a "reputation"-system, but it was discarded. I miss that. :(
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