Should Forum Moderators Close Polls Arbitrarily?

Only if they have less pool than the poll.

henrik wrote:

There are also other ways of moderating than just locking threads. It's possible to delete single posts. If the topic is good and the discussion is going forward, posts containing nothing but repetition of already posted arguments would be good candidates for deletion.

Yeah, see, I don't think that this is a good plan at all. 'Cause what is to say what is "nothing but repetition of already posted argument" or not? And it is very easy to start just erasing discussion wholesale and justifying it by saying "Oh. That argument was already made some pages over. Deleted."

Discussion goes the way discussion goes. Often, things get restated and restated again. Which is just how these things go. And generally the result of new people showing up, questioning something 'cause they didn't read the first 3 pages of the discussion, so it gets explained again. Which is not at all an unreasonable way to go about things.

Given the generally low amount of traffic that this place has already (if there is, like, a new thread a day in each sub forum, that is crazy town), it isn't like there is an insane amount of thread proliferation. It doesn't really need aggressive moderation to keep things manageable. And after that, aggressive moderation just exists to make things look the way a small number of people think it should look. Which tends to work badly for the other, large number of people.

This place is generally civil and orderly already. I can't imagine that it needs any amount of active moderation at this point, other than spambot patrol and the occasional reminder that Thread X should probably be in Sub Forum X.

I like to report bakija's posts to give the moderators something to do.

bakija wrote:

Yeah, see, I don't think that this is a good plan at all. 'Cause what is to say what is "nothing but repetition of already posted argument" or not? And it is very easy to start just erasing discussion wholesale and justifying it by saying "Oh. That argument was already made some pages over. Deleted."

Discussion goes the way discussion goes. Often, things get restated and restated again. Which is just how these things go. And generally the result of new people showing up, questioning something 'cause they didn't read the first 3 pages of the discussion, so it gets explained again. Which is not at all an unreasonable way to go about things.

Given the generally low amount of traffic that this place has already (if there is, like, a new thread a day in each sub forum, that is crazy town), it isn't like there is an insane amount of thread proliferation. It doesn't really need aggressive moderation to keep things manageable. And after that, aggressive moderation just exists to make things look the way a small number of people think it should look. Which tends to work badly for the other, large number of people.

This place is generally civil and orderly already. I can't imagine that it needs any amount of active moderation at this point, other than spambot patrol and the occasional reminder that Thread X should probably be in Sub Forum X.

I pretty much agree with you on this. +1 Vote

bakija wrote:

Yeah, see, I don't think that this is a good plan at all. 'Cause what is to say what is "nothing but repetition of already posted argument" or not? And it is very easy to start just erasing discussion wholesale and justifying it by saying "Oh. That argument was already made some pages over. Deleted."

Discussion goes the way discussion goes. Often, things get restated and restated again. Which is just how these things go. And generally the result of new people showing up, questioning something 'cause they didn't read the first 3 pages of the discussion, so it gets explained again. Which is not at all an unreasonable way to go about things.

Using the words "erasing discussion" is quite interesting since that's not what I talk about, and I've told you that already. Unless by "discussion" you mean 2-3 people telling each other the exact same thing over the course of 2-3 thread pages, or some people throwing in "funny" oneliners in the middle of other people trying do actually talk about something. I wouldn't call that discussion. If you want an example, compare yours, mine and KevinM's posts with Haze and Boris the Blade's just above. For me it's quite clear that some are trying to discuss something and some are doing something entirely different. And while it's not the end of the world (the entire thread started as some kind of joke) I think it shows the point.

On forums where I've been, that has had somewhat harder moderation it has been done in a subforum with arguments. Like "Post X got deleted, here's what it contained and why I deleted it". That way anyone can see who did what and complain if it was bad/unfair. In the end I think it leads to a better forum.

And of course it's a judgement call when to delete posts (just like it is when people are trolling, using too harsh language or more or less anything else that moderators do). I don't mean that any single words, or even single sentences that are copies from a couple of pages back should be deleted without thinking more about it. I don't want stupid asshat moderation, no matter if it's based on the moderator's daily mood or hard rules. If however, a discussion starts going in circles I think it would be good that the one's doing it got infracted and the posts deleted. It doesn't need to be a full on police state forum where noone dares to post, but maybe enough get people to read what they post a bit more than some currently do.

bakija wrote:

Given the generally low amount of traffic that this place has already (if there is, like, a new thread a day in each sub forum, that is crazy town), it isn't like there is an insane amount of thread proliferation. It doesn't really need aggressive moderation to keep things manageable. And after that, aggressive moderation just exists to make things look the way a small number of people think it should look. Which tends to work badly for the other, large number of people.

This place is generally civil and orderly already. I can't imagine that it needs any amount of active moderation at this point, other than spambot patrol and the occasional reminder that Thread X should probably be in Sub Forum X.

Again, in my opinion the best use of moderation is not to "keep things managable" but rather to create an enviroment where serious discussion instead of "funnies" are rewarded. As I said before, it's mostly about what kind of place and what type of discussions one wants to have.

Edit: And yes, I agree that this forum is far from out of control in any way. That's still not what I'm trying to say.