Reform of 'PDMA' Guidelines and Establishment of Public Appeal Thread/Forum

[peter grimes]

... even if you are banned you can still post under another username (i suppose some have done that anyway)...
.

No, that's very much against the rules. If you do that the double login is summarily permabanned and you will likely incur additional time on your temp ban.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Yeah, it was meant (as obvious) that it would be against the rules, but i suppose some who were perma-banned with their username have then used Dls and may still do, etc.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

No, you're the one continually pointing out that the staff here are volunteers, like that's a bad thing. Would you take an infraction better if the person issuing it were being paid?

STOP.

I only used the word "volunteer" once before you started making a fuss about it. You are the one who's relentlessly throwing a tantrum about it. It's not me making this an issue, it's you. Please be responsible over your actions.

Of course they're not god-like. I never said they were, and never considered myself so, during my time. Nor am I saying mistakes were never made. I reversed some infractions, downgraded some, and apologized to the members affected when I made mistakes.

If you have some objection to how a particular moderator is treating you, take it up with that person, or perhaps higher up if the first step doesn't work. There's nothing I can do about it.

In case you haven't been following, this thread was started because people like us no longer trust this mechanism.

As for your litany of disgraced/ful Canadian politicians, there is a process that lets them be held accountable. Are you suggesting we elect moderators and admins here, and vote or shame them out of office if they mess up?

Oh, that's not the point. Since you seem to be excusing bad behaviour with the "nobody is perfect" cliche, I merely wondered if you'd excuse the bad behaviour of this 'litany of disgraced/ful Canadian politicians" because of this same cliche.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

^Yeah, it was meant (as obvious) that it would be against the rules, but i suppose some who were perma-banned with their username have then used Dls and may still do, etc.

Not like it's hard to mask it too, since there are all sorts of proxies out there.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

STOP.

I only used the word "volunteer" once before you started making a fuss about it. You are the one who's relentlessly throwing a tantrum about it. It's not me making this an issue, it's you. Please be responsible over your actions.

In case you haven't been following, this thread was started because people like us no longer trust this mechanism.

Oh, that's not the point. Since you seem to be excusing bad behaviour with the "nobody is perfect" cliche, I merely wondered if you'd excuse the bad behaviour of this 'litany of disgraced/ful Canadian politicians" because of this same cliche.

It's not the word itself, it's the perceived meaning behind it, which to me is negative. You still haven't answered my question: Would you more readily accept an infraction from a moderator if that moderator was paid instead of being a volunteer?

There's no need to be snarky. The issue of PDMA is one that has concerned me for years. And for what it's worth, I always did find some aspects of it to be ridiculously strict.

You brought Canadian politicians into it. Would it reassure you to know that I have never supported any of the ones you named? My point is that politicians can be removed by being voted out of office. That's not how the forum is run. Regular members don't get any votes on that.

 

[Luckymoose]

Why are you arguing with one another? This isn't about volunteers or employees, this is about the strict application of a rule that never should be in place. A rule that consistently harms the community and protects the abuses of moderators on users, who should be their peers not their subjects.

 

[brennan]

Neither the PDMA rule nor the infractions system has affected my presence. Perhaps the rules are not the problem but the manner in which you post.

 

[Bootstoots]

As for your litany of disgraced/ful Canadian politicians, there is a process that lets them be held accountable. Are you suggesting we elect moderators and admins here, and vote or shame them out of office if they mess up?

In fairness to CFC, we'd probably have gotten rid of Rob Ford as a moderator by this point, if he'd ever been picked in the first place.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Thank goodness he's at the opposite end of the country, so I only know his reputation instead of his policies. Alison Redford is another matter, however, as she was the premier of my province until she resigned.

Not one of those three are people you'd want to moderate here.

 

[Luckymoose]

Neither the PDMA rule nor the infractions system has affected my presence. Perhaps the rules are not the problem but the manner in which you post.

Or you simply post where certain moderators do not lurk, or you don't question their actions when they delete posts in your community, or you don't actually post enough to be affected. To say, "It hasn't affected me in my corner of CFC" is ignoring the forums as a whole and the various subcommunities within it. If it were simply the manner in which I post, then the infraction statistics they posted wouldn't show the very problem moderators and the massive spikes in infractions they've given out. Of course, you're free to not believe any issue exists, but if that were the case there wouldn't be continuous outcry by both former and current moderators and longtime users.

 

[Bootstoots]

Thank goodness he's at the opposite end of the country, so I only know his reputation instead of his policies. Alison Redford is another matter, however, as she was the premier of my province until she resigned.

Not one of those three are people you'd want to moderate here.

I feel like Harper would eventually go nuts with politically biased moderating and not last either, at least in OT. His reign of terror could plausibly last longer than Ford's, but end less spectacularly.

I don't know anything about Redford, but I'll take your word about her. FWIW, four of the last seven governors of Illinois (not counting the current one) ended up in prison on corruption charges after their term ended/was ended for them, so I can commiserate.

 

[Kyriakos]

Or you simply post where certain moderators do not lurk, or you don't question their actions when they delete posts in your community, or you don't actually post enough to be affected. To say, "It hasn't affected me in my corner of CFC" is ignoring the forums as a whole and the various subcommunities within it. If it were simply the manner in which I post, then the infraction statistics they posted wouldn't show the very problem moderators and the massive spikes in infractions they've given out. Of course, you're free to not believe any issue exists, but if that were the case there wouldn't be continuous outcry by both former and current moderators and longtime users.

How many do you think those 'longtime users' with the 'continuous outcry' actually are?
Cause i have also been around for long and i doubt we are talking about significantly more than... 5 people?

At least no others take part in such threads from that POV. Granted, maybe below the relatively calm but misleading surface of the forum, legions of rebellious long-time posters are in constant verbal polemics with infamous oppressors, but nothing from such theorised catacombs seems to actually be presented in the visible realms of the forum itself.

 

[Luckymoose]

How many do you think those 'longtime users' with the 'continuous outcry' actually are?
Cause i have also been around for long and i doubt we are talking about significantly more than... 5 people?

At least no others take part in such threads from that POV. Granted, maybe below the relatively calm but misleading surface of the forum, legions of rebellious long-time posters are in constant verbal polemics with infamous oppressors, but nothing from such theorised catacombs seems to actually be presented in the visible realms of the forum itself.

I can count at least 60 from just the subcommunities I participate in alone.

 

[brennan]

Or you simply post where certain moderators do not lurk, or you don't question their actions when they delete posts in your community.

If you mean that I can post without breaking the rules and hence do not suffer from hefty moderation then I would agree. But I really don't see how that makes your experience somebody else's problem, let alone being indicative of a pending catastrophe for this community.

With regard to the spike in infractions, you must be referring to the spike around the introduction of Civ 5. I don't see what possible relevance that could have. A bunch of people came here, possibly attracted by the new release and they couldn't remain civil. Again that's not something I have the remotest concern about, they either learned from their mistakes or went to the sort of website I avoid - because they are infested with obnoxious, socially imbeciles with monosyllabic vocabularies, the absence of which makes this community what it is. Either that or the spam bot invasion, which again is an irrelevance.

 

[JollyRoger]

I need to adopt a posting style that puts the mods to sleep before they get around to determining infractability.

 

[Double A]

I need to adopt a posting style that puts the mods to sleep before they get around to determining infractability.

If I was a mod, most people in this thread would be safe from my wrath.

 

[Luckymoose]

If you mean that I can post without breaking the rules and hence do not suffer from hefty moderation then I would agree. But I really don't see how that makes your experience somebody else's problem, let alone being indicative of a pending catastrophe for this community.

When questioning why threads are being locked gets users who never break the rules banned, infracted, or their posts deleted instantly... the rules are worth breaking. That's why this thread is here. The rule is used to protect the moderators who abuse their powers, and it needs to end.

 

[Kyriakos]

I can only think of one mod (no longer mod anyway) who in my view was rather problematic to start with, but despite myself having been infracted a great many times i do not regard the overall mod-team to be systemically negative*. Some sense of mod-'unity' does exist, but i would not attribute that to any undercurrent of actual conscious/agreed-upon manner.

*I am on your side, made mod guys, don't infract again

 

[Bootstoots]

I need to adopt a posting style that puts the mods to sleep before they get around to determining infractability.

One way to do that is to ramble on, in a vaguely on topic but not at all interesting manner, in a single long paragraph. Stick your one-liner somewhere in the middle of the paragraph. Both mods and report-happy users alike will probably get bored and jump over the offending one-liner, but people who are reading your posts for the one-liners still know to look for it.

The downside is that heavily clothed one-liners, while harder to detect, aren't as funny as naked one-liners. This is due to the Simpson Postulate, "brevity is...wit", along with the humor inherent in linguistic nudity. It's a trade-off I suppose.

 

[Takhisis]

I need to adopt a posting style that puts the mods to sleep before they get around to determining infractability.

Switch from one-liners to one-hundred-liners in legalese. I… I want to be your apprentice!