Should Forum Moderators Close Polls Arbitrarily?

Yet another poll.

Arbitrarily? No.

Should there be guidelines for posting polls appropriately and should moderators enforce those guidelines? Unquestionably, yes.

Harder moderation would do this forum good. Arbitrary moderation probably wouldn't.

henrik wrote:

Harder moderation would do this forum good. Arbitrary moderation probably wouldn't.

I really don't think it would.

Heavy handed moderation leads to incredibly stifled discussion. We are all grown ups here. We can navigate discussion amongst ourselves without moderators deciding what is or is not appropriate to talk about.

bakija wrote:

henrik wrote:

Harder moderation would do this forum good. Arbitrary moderation probably wouldn't.

I really don't think it would.

Heavy handed moderation leads to incredibly stifled discussion. We are all grown ups here. We can navigate discussion amongst ourselves without moderators deciding what is or is not appropriate to talk about.

Hard moderation actually does wonders for good, fruitful discussions. Of course, that type of discussion can happen in unmoderated forums as well but there's a lot of noise which makes it less likely to both happen and be noticed. I've seen hard moderation work, and I've seen no moderation work. There's a big difference between them even when both works, and I know which one I prefer. Especially the rules forum, which is a place where people come for correct rulings, should in my opinion be very heavy moderated.

The moderation still needs to be good though. www.elitistjerks.com is an excellent example of hard moderation working great. It might not say too much for people who doesn't play or haven't played World of Warcraft, but it's very hard moderated (with infractions for bad grammar, repeating stuff already stated, bad attitude etc) and by many considered to be the one place where you can actually discuss the game in question. And yeah, the VtES community has a bit higher standard than the WoW community in large, so unmoderated VtES forums can still be decent for discussions. Not much more though, which is a shame.

This poll, along with Jeff's earlier Parity Shift poll are good examples of low/easy moderation. Sure, it can be fun to do things like that. I've done lots of similar things before and could've done any of those polls myself, to be honest. That said though, I know my respect for a forum goes away when those kinds of posts appear and are left unlocked instead of deleted (yes, I know the first one was locked and I think that was good). Even more so when they're started by moderators.

henrik wrote:

Harder moderation would do this forum good. Arbitrary moderation probably wouldn't.

I agree.

bakija wrote:

Heavy handed moderation leads to incredibly stifled discussion.

For better or worse. 'Stifled' can be interpreted as 'on-topic'.

We are all grown ups here. We can navigate discussion amongst ourselves [...]

No. Not always.