17 replies to this topic

[Dauth]

After the information gathered in the review thread we have made several changes to the political area in an effort to open it up and encourage discussion. The updated rules have been posted in the original rules thread here. They are also shown below for your convenience. In addition to this all members with PA access will now be able to post topics. Entry to the PA requires that you ask one of the PA leaders, there is no application form.

Quote

• There will be no insulting, making fun, bashing, flaming, attacks or jokes at the expense of any member, group, party, religion, cult, belief, lifestyle or ideology.
  
• If a moderator posts instructions follow them, no exceptions
  
• Disagreement with someone else can be expressed without resorting to insults or bashing, to do so will earn a warning.
  
• If you are going to discuss (argue) a point you must actually do so. Raising a question on someone else's post is not a discussion.
  
• Moderators decisions are final. By posting in this area you accept that and thread may be locked without warning or recourse.

Anyone can enter, they just have to ask, there is no application form, merely contacting one of the PA leaders will suffice. (The PA leaders reserve the right to refuse entry to members they deem unsuitable). Anyone may post a topic but the PA leaders reserve the right to lock a topic if they deem it unsuitable. If you repost a locked topic you will be warned, if you are unsure why your topic was locked, PM the moderator and ask for an explanation (if one was not given in the thread).

Dauth, On behalf of the Political Area Leaders

[BeefJeRKy]

Seems like this will help make things more interesting in the PA. I stopped posting because often I check the forum while working on homework etc.. And to make sure I could make a decent contribution to many topics I knew I would have to research some things as well as take some time to write a proper post. Maybe now I'll try to be more active? I usually am better at discussing politics in real time anyway.

[Hobbesy]

I probably won't visit it either way myself. I was never really good with politics.

Edited by Høbbesy, 30 January 2009 - 00:39.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Would anybody care to post the original rules for comparison?

[Dauth]

They are still available on the wiki (and will remain so in the history of the PA page) I haven't changed them yet. They are also found in several other threads relating to the PA.

[Whitey]

Still opposed. This is bloody ridiculous.

-Rorschach

Edit: Please, allow me to respond here.

Quote

 Rorschach, on 30 Jan 2009, 0:49, said:

Still opposed. This is bloody ridiculous.

-Rorschach

Mind giving us some feedback? Cos that post was useless, and the sort of shit I'd expect from a 12 y/old fanboy and not someone who claims to be a veteran member.

Dauth

Well, to be quite honest, I figured I made it pretty clear despite the lack of actual detail in my post. The simple act of humiliation in asking permission to post in such a forum section is entirely unnecessary. The application process at least showed the possibility of a level of discrimination out of behavior. But just having to ask? The former system was terrible in that it was bureaucratic. What is now in place is far worse, in my view. It is in place simply for the appearance of domination and control, as opposed to protection from conflict. Why not just open the forum up to everyone and ban the wrongdoers? Why on earth else might you put in such a system but out of complete arrogance?

If you wish to make a case for this new system, by all means, proceed, but from what I read, and while I may have misinterpreted it, that which is being done here is despicable.

-Rorschach

Edited by Rorschach, 30 January 2009 - 01:25.

[Nem]

 Rorschach, on 29 Jan 2009, 19:49, said:

Why not just open the forum up to everyone and ban the wrongdoers?

Exactly, Maybe if people did not have to jump through hoops they would be interested. Get rid of the over complicated shenanigans and open it up. There is no reason not to.

[CommanderJB]

I was under the impression that the Deep End was the reason not to.

[Nem]

I was not around for that. If someone could point out what went wrong there that would be great.

[Ion Cannon!]

To lazy to detail what happened so - http://wiki.cncrenec...m/wiki/Deep_End

[Whitey]

Things got way out of hand due to a lack of proper rule enforcement and foresight. But with a more competent moderating staff as I'm sure we have now...

-Rorschach

Edited by Rorschach, 30 January 2009 - 02:45.

[Dauth]

To allow everyone in and kick out the wrongdoers while an obvious solution is not viable form our end. It requires the creation and implementation of a new permission mask to every one of out 4500+ members, then the removal or it for people deemed unsuitable. This is too large a workload for the team to do. As for doing this in the database while indeed possible I prefer to have as little reason for any admin to enter the database as possible. So the best viable solution is you ask, by sending 1 message either in MSN or on the PM system to one of the PA leaders and then they'll sort out if you get in.

[Alias]

Glad to see you've implemented my suggestion to an extent, but not as far as I would've liked.

 Dauth, on 30 Jan 2009, 20:53, said:

To allow everyone in and kick out the wrongdoers while an obvious solution is not viable form our end. It requires the creation and implementation of a new permission mask to every one of out 4500+ members, then the removal or it for people deemed unsuitable. This is too large a workload for the team to do. As for doing this in the database while indeed possible I prefer to have as little reason for any admin to enter the database as possible. So the best viable solution is you ask, by sending 1 message either in MSN or on the PM system to one of the PA leaders and then they'll sort out if you get in.

I quickly flicked through the IPB manual and it appears that you can do it with very little effort (minor mask modification), it would not take more than 5 minutes.

Edited by Alias, 30 January 2009 - 10:40.

[Dauth]

 Alias, on 30 Jan 2009, 10:39, said:

Glad to see you've implemented my suggestion to an extent, but not as far as I would've liked.

 Dauth, on 30 Jan 2009, 20:53, said:

To allow everyone in and kick out the wrongdoers while an obvious solution is not viable form our end. It requires the creation and implementation of a new permission mask to every one of out 4500+ members, then the removal or it for people deemed unsuitable. This is too large a workload for the team to do. As for doing this in the database while indeed possible I prefer to have as little reason for any admin to enter the database as possible. So the best viable solution is you ask, by sending 1 message either in MSN or on the PM system to one of the PA leaders and then they'll sort out if you get in.

I quickly flicked through the IPB manual and it appears that you can do it with very little effort (minor mask modification), it would not take more than 5 minutes.

That as may be (and its hugely dependent on how permission masks are set up and that's not the topic for discussion here), we are not going to, we are doing it this way so we can vet who goes in. Now almost everyone will be granted access we will only prevent access for members who we deem a serious source of problems.

I will say once and for all, the Deep End failed for more than one reason, people blame under moderation, frankly I'd rather not need to moderate our discussions about politics. Anyone who met me in RL knows that nothing it out of bounds as a topic or retort. The simple fact is politics is on this forum on a knife edge and it only requires a couple of Stadmins to change their mind for it to be off again, and if that is the case I will leave my role before anyone sees it back. There simply are people who cannot be trusted to behave properly, I saw in one thread where 90% of members were going on about humanitarian problems 10% of people were either hugely xenophobic or in one case promoting a nuclear strike to a dozen large civilian centres.

[Whitey]

Quote

I'd rather not need to moderate our discussions about politics

So as an administrator and former staffer, you don't want to need to moderate discussions? Isn't that an integral part of having power over a forum? Keeping things in check? I mean any forum, not just political forums, can get out of hand. But you're willing to moderate those and not the political one? That seems relatively odd.

Furthermore, I must now ask: What purpose does requesting permission serve if anyone can get in barring a select few? Why not just commit those five minutes to adjusting permissions and ban the few that you would say "no" to? In the long run, that sounds more time-efficient and more reasonable, no?

Quote

we are doing it this way so we can vet who goes in. Now almost everyone will be granted access we will only prevent access for members who we deem a serious source of problems

Almost everyone. So what is so bad about warning the would-be wrongdoers to stay out and ban them from the forum as a whole if they do? That also sounds quite reasonable from my perspective anyway.

Currently, I see the system as a form of either laziness or arrogance, and of the latter, not the leader-type, but the childish type you might expect from the senior class in a U.S. high school (which, of course, is a generalization, but I think you get the point).

-Rorschach

[NergiZed]

I personally like this bit of glasnost. I can think of a few nice topics to post.

I'm not sure I'm totally into the idea of opening the forum up completely... yet.

I think that we should give this new policy some time to stew and see what comes of it; if it seems that everything it still fairly civil, than sure, open it up.

BUT I think it should be only open to people who've been here a while. Not semi-vets with more than 1000 posts or something, as a limit that high would be rather extreme. I think seasoned noobs, with more than 250 post (and if possible, no warns) should be let it. They've had enough time to familiarize themselves with the forum rules, both de facto and de jure. Worst comes to worst, we can ban them.

I'm completely opposed to opening up the PA completely, because I know (and so do you) that there's going to be some noob who's just joined the forum 20 min ago, created a new topic saying "I love this mod!" or "When's the release date?", and then ignoring all the rules, goes straight to the PA into the 'Gaza Conflict' thread and posts "I hate Jews". Noob gets banned, post gets deleted; doesn't do much harm. However, it's most likely going to be annoying to do this every week or so. Though not many people would see that post, for those who do, it tarnishes the image of this forum, and may offend some people.

That's my standpoint; I would love to see more people join and more discussion taking place, and I think this policy will aid in that process, but I would rather not deal with the 2-day-old noob in the PA.

[Whitey]

Every week? May I inquire as to where you obtain such statistics? And the image of this forum is diminished by the insane bureaucracy of it, not the noob problem faced by every forum ever to exist over the internet or otherwise.

-Rorschach

[NergiZed]

 Rorschach, on 31 Jan 2009, 6:13, said:

Every week? May I inquire as to where you obtain such statistics? And the image of this forum is diminished by the insane bureaucracy of it, not the noob problem faced by every forum ever to exist over the internet or otherwise.

-Rorschach

I obtained those statistics from my vivid imagination.

It's obviously exaggerated, much like my example. (I highly doubt someone would be dense enough to post something that bigoted and stupid). But I have seen many people migrate from commenting on Moddb, to here. (May I remind you that Moddb's rules are considerably more lax than here.)

I don't think the 'bureauracy' of this forum is insane, I do consider it more strict than others. While I don't like some of the rules themselves, much like any other bloke on this forum, I like what has resulted from it. Things are well organized and varied here; people can easily find what they want to talk about and where. The mods are fairly active, and I've never really seen that much rage, or many trolls.

Now, I may be a little biased, since out of the past 5 forums that I've regularly visited, one went up in flames, two fizzled out and died to to lack of activity, and another I simply lost interest because the forums were very specific, and didn't have broader topics. (The last 'forum' I visit often is 4chan btw, the complete opposite end of the spectrum. =P)

Edited by NergiZed, 31 January 2009 - 06:26.