The Heavy-Handed Moderation Has to Stop

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

I think that the suggestion Jen made would go a long way toward helping cooling things down. Just offer a brief explanation of "why" -- something I think you usually do already.

I think the suggestion Jen made is very reasonable and I said as much.

I'm just not sure how that's going to work for moderators who have to heavily edit/delete many posts/threads every day, especially in the middle of the recruitment season. I think that'd be a tough place to moderate.

Perhaps there is some middle ground? I know that many of us have posted stickies at the top of their forums indicating what is and is not okay. If someone knowingly does something contra to what those stickies indicate is kosher, why does that person deserve an individualized explanation when there is already one in plain sight?

Sure, there are some posts/threads where no explanation is needed -- inappropriate discussion of ritual and offers of CHEAP NOKIA PHONES come to mind. But for the kind of things being talked about here, a simple explanation might have prevented a lot of heat. (Or, it might have made a mod think twice before overreacting to begin with.)

This language seems to indicate that the problem here is not with "heavy -handed moderation, but rather the moderation decision or decisions of maybe one person? Maybe two? There are 65ish moderators on Greekchat. If we only have a problem with a couple of them, are we just getting greedy now in demanding perfection?

[MysticCat]

GCers . . . greedy?!

I see your point on the threads where heavy editing/modding is required. I would agree that could get hairy. But maybe just one note in an edited thread would suffice: "I'm having to do some heavy editing. Please re-read [link]this sticky[/link] to remind yourself of the forum rules before posting. Thanks."

I guess my feeling is that providing some explanation is in the mod's best interest.

[pbear19]

vBulletin may not have this capacity, but it's worth checking in to: On the board where I moderated, any time a mod made an edit to a member's post, the member got an email. We had a little box where we could explain the reason for our edit as we were making the edit. Thus, if we had to delete someone's post for being a personal attack, we could say "Post deleted due to inflammatory personal attack - please PM me if you have questions".

It made for a lot less moderator legwork, and also made for much happier members who felt like they were part of the system.

And we also did exactly what MysticCat just suggested. If we made several deletes inside a thread, we would post a message to say that we had removed posts. It served both as a explanation of our actions, and a reminder to people to cool off. Generally it came with a warning that if there were future violations the thread would be locked. (Never deleted, as I said in an earlier post (which ironically may have been deleted) we never deleted threads that had heavy conversation, we simply locked them because deletion is what upset so many people.)

[33girl]

Originally Posted by pbear19

We had a little box where we could explain the reason for our edit as we were making the edit. Thus, if we had to delete someone's post for being a personal attack, we could say "Post deleted due to inflammatory personal attack - please PM me if you have questions".

It made for a lot less moderator legwork, and also made for much happier members who felt like they were part of the system.

We have that.

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ad.php?t=53424

Look at the 5th post down.

I believe if the member subscribes to the thread, they get notification when posts are added, edited or deleted.

[pbear19]

Originally Posted by 33girl

We have that.

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ad.php?t=53424

Look at the 5th post down.

I believe if the member subscribes to the thread, they get notification when posts are added, edited or deleted.

Sorry, I wasn't terribly clear. What I meant was more something that sent an automatic email when a post was deleted/moved to MC, so that the member knew their post was deleted and why (even if they are not subscribed). Specifically in the times that the post is no longer visible by the member because of the fact that it has been moved/deleted. If that too is already a feature, that's fantastic, because it really would cut down on the theoretical legwork that a mod has to do when deleting.

[AKA_Monet]

Hey, what's wrong with the "full brigade of legal personnel" LOL?

Naw, my issue is spill-over and sockpuppetry theater into other threads. Some folks would think "irrelevant", but I am telling the emails I get from my IHQ like wow...

Some folks have gotten slick by posting in other locations asking inappropriate questions. And maybe the Mods of the board are okey, whatever, but it is not cool from my Sorority's perspective.

Because GC can be searched with google, et. al. our participants are able to survey the boards and access the information without creating a Log-in name. That is find with me and I have no problem with that until a looney tune decides to sell me Nokia phones or tell me how bootirific XYZ's fraternity vs. a LMNOP's sorority is on the Events thread.