No, not everyone will see things the same way. However, some people have the ability to enforce their way on others. It's a little disingenuous to use an argument of "everyone has their own opinion" in supporting forbidding those you dislike.

I'm presuming that you (eidolon) shut down the two interesting threads [RL] Chaos in the streets and [RL] the decay of modern morality. There was no comment from a moderator in there. Just a sudden locking of the thread.

At a rough count, I make it 12 posters in one and 15 posters participating in the other, and about 40-50 posts in each with not a single cross word that I recall. Most, if not all, of the posters are frequent posters who contribute a lot to this forum. And I would think that merits some respect. A number of people here have recently been declaring their intent to leave due to the increased moderation (which is primarily yours). I reject the notion that these are people who are abusive to other posters as well. If anything it seems to be some of the more thoughtful members.

So we had two very civilised threads containing a lot of interesting points of view, participated in by a significant number of people, probably read by a significant number more, suddenly locked and the discussion silenced. Why?

Certainly not because they were upsetting anyone, from my reading of those threads. Which presumably leaves the heresy of it being off-topic. That will inevitably happen in any community that is healthy. And we are a community. I haven't been here that long, but there are people that I enjoy talking to here and who interest me on a range of subjects. I've said this before. Primarily we all have an essential enjoyment of the Shadowrun game and setting, that is our common bond. It cuts nicely across nationality and sometimes religion and culture. But because we come to know each other, and partly perhaps because of our one definite shared interest, we want to talk amongst ourselves about other matters too. It would be a pretty soulless place if we're just faceless proponents of SR4 vs. SR3 or spent our time answering questions about healing drain and nothing more.

Active discussion is the lifeblood of a community and it's what most of us want at some point. If nothing else, the latter should count for a lot. Whether a moderator likes it or not, it is one of the things that draws people to this community and stamping it out removes part of the interest in the forum.

If the forum was drowning in random, inane babel, if newcomers couldn't find their Shadowrun related material, then we could see negative effects of threads like these two. I think you must allow that this is very far from the case.

So what we are left with is resentment amongst a lot of people that a minority has gagged them. As Tisoz posted elsewhere, there has been a furious amount of PM'ing about moderation going on recently, and a number of people are quite upset.

There are two responses I recieved before to this point of view, neither of which I feel is helpful so I'll address them in advance. The first is an appeal to Guidelines. This I find unhelpful because it presupposes some moral authority that they do not have. The guidelines could say that everyone who posts here must be a Christian, and that wouldn't suddenly make the requirement a good one for the community. The second response I have received before is that this is a privately owned forum and the owners (and their proxies the moderators), have the right to determine content. The falseness of this can be seen by anyone who's looked at the ownership of media in the United States, but regardless of the right or not to determine content, the response says nothing about whether a particular content decision is good for the community or not.

I have previously made several of these points via PM as requested, mainly to eidolon. I've yet to shake his conviction that he is in the right. I felt it appropriate, reading this topic, to put my point of view across more generally. I know it is shared by a number of other people here. Frequently some of the communities most prolific contributors who I personally would not like to see become disaffected and spend less time here.

It is not my intent to cause offense or to suggest that some moderators don't have the best interests of the community at heart as I know that they do. But I think moderation should only be used as a last resort and never without explanation, in order to counter something that is very clearly damaging the community. Creating resentment for anything less seems grossly counterproductive.

EDIT: Some half an hour later, I just want to emphasize that I don't want to come across as head-hunting. I like Dumpshock very much and I like the people here. Sometimes they even laugh at my jokes. And thats, you know, a rare quality in a person. I haven't slept for over 24 hours now. I had a long reply written to some questions that had been asked in those previous threads where I felt that I'd been able to provide some useful information to people. And I'd learnt some things too. And then I clicked back to the threads and found that they were suddenly closed. I hope you can appreciate that when you've invested a considerable amount of your time in something (and there were some very long and considered posts from people in there), it puts you out a bit to find someone has just rendered it a waste. I'm going to stop posting here now. No particular offense was meant, but this is how I was feeling when I posted.

And they could serve additional functions if you wished. The guidelines are whatever you have written them to be. And enforcement of them by the moderators is as rigid as they chose to be. A statement of what the guidelines are, in no way mitigates a criticism of how the board operates.

I have to say that nezumi has provided some interesting insights into the dynamics of Dumpshock. I haven't been here that long but I have a reasonably solid grasp of both the setting and the rules and I have played since 1st edition. I think I would usually fall into the oldies category. I certainly seem to recall that I have answered quite a lot of questions and offered many suggestions. However, like many people with a good level of intelligence and broad interests, I don't like being told what I can and cannot talk about. So I can at least partly answer nezumi's question about how many "oldie" posters the heavier moderation will drive away by saying that at least I will be spending less time here. I'm not going to extremes and will still come in to have a browse and make the odd joke. Because after all, I still play Shadowrun, think it's a great game and want to keep in touch with what's going on. But I don't really regard this place as a social place anymore. I'm soured to that aspect, from several incidents recently.

In case it's considered that I'm simply giving up on this, I would like to emphasize that I have made my arguments rationally and calmly very extensively via PM, in the past.

I'll be around on and off, but I invite anyone who wants to get in touch / stay in touch, to drop me an email. It has been a great pleasure talking to you all on a range of (mostly SR related) topics.

Thanks and peace be upon you,

-Khadim Nasser.

Your comment reminds me of my ignorance. I followed/played SR for about a decade before getting online and discovering Dumpshock. I was surprised how many rules I was ignoring or playing wrongly.

I am sad to hear you are distancing yourself from Dumpshock. Your contributions have been a welcome shot in the arm. I thought you were one of the 'better' new members, someone who posted frequently and usually had something to contribute to the discussion.

Gotta agree with Fortune's sentiment.

As far as people running roughshod the last couple of years, I remember far worse flame wars and uncivil behavior when I first joined. Then, it almost seemed like you had to have an attitude to post. Aside from the SR3 vs. SR4 wars, I think the place has become almost sedate. That is why the recent moderating activity seems out of place.

As far as the terms of service, when I joined, I read them and lol when I saw how they were pretty much totally ignored.

Right, and two other moderators in this thread said that I could PM them directly. (Which I did.) And Bull said I could PM him or you. (I PMed him.) So are you starting to get what I'm saying about inconsistency? How many hoops should I jump through?

What you have to understand is that I do not have to win some argument with you guys. I am a dissatisfied user, and it is currently easier to turn somewhere else for this service. It's your problem to deal with. And if telling every dissatisfied user that there really isn't a problem is how you deal with it, then so be it. No hard feelings, see you around.

I PMed Eidolon first because my issue was indeed with him. I PMed Bull because at the time, I took him to be an authority figure around here. I didn't CC to every moderator partly because I'm not sure how to do that, and partly because I assumed that Bull would share information with whomever he thought necessary. (I mean, the reason I started this thread is because I didn't know what else to do.)

I should point out that I did both of those PMs before starting this thread (not as a response to this thread.) And I didn't check back on the thread until quite some time later, when several replies had been made, including Adam's, Bull's and Eidolon's. I looked at them and thought "that's fine, I've already done two of the things that were suggested." I didn't see anything indicating that Adam's instructions overruled any other moderators.

And to point out yet further inconsistency: Adam asks why I didn't CC a PM to all the mods, yet no moderator, not even Adam, suggested that I do that back when I asked what to do. That really burns me.

But really, I don't see the point in telling me that I didn't report it properly, when: 1. The origin of the thread was me asking exactly how to do that, and 2. The group of moderators that responded did not give me correlating answers.
See, if I'm told that I have to satisfy all of the different moderators' instructions and interpretations, then it only supports the notion that what one moderator finds acceptable, another will not. It tells me that even if one moderator looks at something I posted and determines that it's okay, another can come along and nix it without even having to have the backing of other administrators.

I'm glad to know you're working on balance, but the current situation is to tumultuous for my comfort. Like I said, I hope that I can return here in the future and find things more settled. Of course I don't want unmoderated trolls harping on me or anyone, but I don't want moderators harping on dumpshockers because they don't know what's expected of them, either. I agree that there's something between anarchy and martial law that would be good for most everybody. But what I see right now ain't it.

From this perspective, you haven't eliminated bullying, you've just made sure you pick who the bullies are. And for those of us who are not in the "in" crowd, it really doesn't provide any comfort.

It would be nice to know what steps are being taken to improve things. Are you assigning more moderators? Is more better? By what criteria are you selecting moderators? With due regard for their diplomatic skills and sense of fairness? Computer skills? Availability? Voting? Buddies? What standards are they held to? What are the plans for responding to complaints?

I really am hoping to find something here that will convince me that things will change. I want you to talk me into returning.

It would be really sweet if you would stay.

We just did, recently, adding Graht, Caine Hazen, eidolon, and fistandantilus3.0 in late October.

Before that, the only moderators really active on the board were myself and Bull [there are, technically, others, and some of them still have active moderator accounts, but they haven't been around regularly for a long time], and neither of us had a lot of time, which made even enforcement of any rules tough, so enforcement was either nonexistant or generally only occured when stuff had already gotten really ugly [and in some cases, after it had gotten really ugly and had blown over.]

Since we added the new moderators, old moderator Aristotle has gotten slightly more active, too, which is cool.

For a forum this size, I think 7 is better than 2. I don't know if we necessarily need more than 7, and now isn't the right time to add even more, as the new ones are still getting used to the role.

All of these. Several months back, we threw out a whole bunch of names of people who were a) around regularly, b) generally helpful c) had demonstrated that they knowledge of how forums worked / had run other forums, and that sort of stuff.

Not public, no. We wittled down the list of people to a handful and asked them.

We did know a couple of them -- Graht has been an excellent helper over on the ShadowRN mailing list for years, and Caine Hazen attends Origins/GenCon so we know him socially [and he has previously offered to help with the forums], but eidolon and fistandantilus3.0 were absolutely not "buddies," although we're liking them just fine now.

If you take a look at the Does DS still need 2 Shadowrun forums? thread at http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=14727, you can see eidolon and I disagreeing on plenty of stuff, just weeks before we offered him a spot as a moderator.

They're expected to enforce the Terms of Service [which we are working ... slowly ... to update to be a bit more relevant -- they were written years ago by the original group of moderators] and, beyond that, spend time participating in the forums.

If a moderator takes an action that a user complains about, or if one of the other moderators brings up something that they don't think is kosher, we talk about it, try to find out why it happened, and try to make sure they don't do it in the future.

If one of the moderators was abusing their power on a regular basis, they would be removed.

This is true, but I don't think the main purpose of a forum is to create the desirable condition of productive discussion in a singular instance. It's to maintain that condition over time, and not only that, but to maximize the growth potential of that condition over time. While moderator action may be a detriment to productive discussion in a single thread, it may be that it's the exact opposite in the grand scheme of things. Por ejemplo, locking down a thread that's starting to make a turn for the nasty may stifle the possibly productive discussion going on in that thread, but continued enforcement of such a policy, if it's generally a favored one, will lead to a larger membership base, which means more minds will be contributing their ideas to the pool, which leads to, yay, productive discussion!

Oh yeah, I'm making an argument for moderation in general here. I don't have a stance on that issue as applied specifically to the 'shock because I honestly don't spend enough time in the main forums to have much of a stake in it.

FWIW, I don't agree. Moderator action has a chilling effect that reaches beyond the current thread. Could you explain your reasoning here (since I'm rejecting your example a bit further down)?

Wrong. Larger membership base means larger membership base—you're falling into the trap of enforcing something that you imagine will lead to more productive discussion. Having seen a number of actively moderated boards with very large membership base, I can safely reject that causation.

Yeah, I'm making arguments for universal "moderation theory", as it were.

~J

Not untrue, but it can also have positive benefits that also reach beyond the current thread. Whether one outweighs the other is the question, and one that can't be answered when speaking abstractly and in general terms. Whether or not one actually outweighs the other in a specific instance would be an illustration of good moderator action versus bad moderator action, but neither is the same as no moderator action.

You can always say that moderator action can never have any long term benefits, but I'm going to find that difficult to swallow.

The only way you can sustain a trend is to enforce what you called conditions you imagine to be conducive towards that trend. You can't just wave your magic wand and ban everybody who, over the long term, brings a net loss to the goal of productive discussion, because that's impossible to tell. And it just so happens that the course of action that brings about the optimal outcome in a single instance isn't always the course of action that brings the optimal outcome over the long haul. The scenario I illustrated was only an example, and while I disagree with your assessment, that's not really relevant to the matter at hand, which is the principle of the issue.

*smile*
I'm happy to be back.


CCing all of the moderators is just an option that you might think of, not a requirement by any means. The fact is even if you only send your complaint to the moderator in question, they will still most likely bring it to the attention of the administration and generally ask for clarification to determine if the right actions were taken or if more/less administration is required for the situation.

Since adding new, more present, moderators we've seen more moderation. That was the intent of adding new moderators. These guys will, over time, find an equilibrium to the way they apply their powers of moderation. That isn't to say they are in the wrong now. Aside from a few details (i.e. closing a thread without leaving a reason as to why) I think they have been doing pretty much what they were brought on to do.

If the actions of the moderator have been found to be correct by the administration, then there isn't much else that can be done. You can question why a certain forum rule is in place, but most of them are pretty much common sense or have been put into place after a great deal of consideration.

These forums exist for a specialized purpose. To discuss Shadowrun, participate in forum based Shadowrun gaming, and to a much lesser extent to discuss gaming in general. If you're posting topics to forums that they logically belong to, they won't be moved (or removed if no logical forum exists, such as is the case for "off topic" or many "real world" topics). If you don't post inflamatory content, you won't be censored or otherwise punished.

just two throw in my two ....

Generally, if a thread starts going off, it's not the thread it's self, it's usually a key contributer or two that are the issue. In which case we prefer to post a request to get it back in line, or for folks to cool down a bit. If that doesn't work, goes to PM.
It's pretty rare to lock down a thread just someone was being an ass. Usually a thread lock is because it's just a dead horse, such as the ressurection and continued bumping of the Master Shake thread a while back.

Ha! I got a message from Bull and was thinking "WTF? Why did Bull send me a PM? Did I do somethign wong?"

I'd like to point out the first point here, because genearlly if we're sending someone a PM about something, we've discussed it with another mod already, unless someone's just being way over the top. So if we're taking action on something being posted, it's probably already been discussed by a couple of mods. So forget the idea of some vigilante mod out there. Usually anything more than just moving a thread around or deleting spam is done by two or more of us.

You did what now?

Perhaps we should try building one.

I know there have been migrations in the past, but iirc, they were over things not about SR. A few more things have occure post Origins that are leaving a shitty taste in my mouth.

I saw a post from Bull actually adding to a thread the other day. It is the end of days.

<laugh> Man, if only I had the time and energy to just post for fun these days. Back in the ShadowRN Mailing List days, if I started replying to a thread, you were guaranteed to A) triple the list traffic for the day, and B) go off topic pretty quick

Sadly, life's caught up with me. Niggling things like "responsibility" and "a real job" pretty much mean I have a limited amount of free time. Plus, outside of a bit of demo-duty at the cons and an aborted campaign a buddy tried running earlier this year for a few weeks, I haven't GMed Shadowrun in over two years, and haven't played in close to 5.

I'm around, I do read, but... I just don;t usually feel the compulsion to jump in and add my 2 Nuyen's worth most of the time.

Bull