Forum Moderation, good or bad?

I hope nobody takes offense to this post, i consider it constructive criticism and only post it in an attempt to improve the asp.net message boards.

Is it me or would the forum section of this website be MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more valuable if posts didn't have to be approved by a moderator before being posted? I interact on a lot of different boards and this is the only one i interact on where a post must first be approved. It isn't uncommon on these other boards to create a post and have a conversation of 20+ posts within 30 minutes. However that would take about 24 hours+ on these forums due to posts taking an hour+ in being approved. On other boards resolutions and information is traveling in real time at a faster rate making the forum more valuable in my opinion.

This isn't to say that doing away with moderation is the way to go, but maybe allowing posts to be posted immediately where moderators can then moderate them after being posted. I realize that by doing this the posts on these forums would increase considerably and moderation may become an impossible task for the few dedicated people who currently moderate. So maybe making the forum so that everyone can take part in moderation and help maintain this site. If joe blow sees a post that is nothing but an advertisement he can flag the post for moderation by the admins of the site. By doing that the moderators do not have to look through all the posts, just the posts that the other members have flagged for them as being questionable.

Just suggestions, again i hope nobody is offended, just ideas to get the information moving quicker.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

Just an FYI:

Members of this site that consistently post good/clean posts will eventually become unmoderated.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

mbanavige

Just an FYI:

Members of this site that consistently post good/clean posts will eventually become unmoderated.

True, but i would imagine that a lot of people are discouraged from posting to the point of being considered for being unmoderated. As it stands I interact on this website when EVERYTHING else fails and I have nowhere else to look. At that rate I will probably hit 50 posts this time next year. For the most part the people who are really benefiting the most are those who can communicate with no retrictions, the rest of us have the ability to eavesdrop on their conversations but communicating with them is drastically hampered when looking at what the potential is.

I mean, this website is composed and administrated by technical professionals. Using some very basic technology to open the channels of communication seems fairly logical to me. The excuse that trolling and spammers etc...are the reason for moderation is absurd. Very basic technology has been around for years to curb unwanted disruptive forum posting and is used by most professional forums to take most the burded off of moderators.

When looking at the incredible technology that microsoft puts out and then looking at a site that is built on that technology one has to ask, what is the real reason for a message board that isn't real time?

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

This thread was moved to this forum as this is the appropriate place to post anything related to feedback on this site. Please see the following post that links to other threads where this topic has been discussed in great detail in the past.

http://forums.asp.net/post/1256238.aspx

Ryan

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

StrongTypes

This thread was moved to this forum as this is the appropriate place to post anything related to feedback on this site.

Thats cool, thanks for the reply!

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

jables2011

True, but i would imagine that a lot of people are discouraged from posting to the point of being considered for being unmoderated. As it stands I interact on this website when EVERYTHING else fails and I have nowhere else to look. At that rate I will probably hit 50 posts this time next year.

This seems to indicate that your participation in these forums is rather one-way. You come here to ask for advice/answers. How about offerring advice/answer to others? I find it to be a great mental excercise to seek out peoples questions to see if i can answer them. If i cant answer them, then i have identified something i still need to learn more about.

jables2011

For the most part the people who are really benefiting the most are those who can communicate with no retrictions, the rest of us have the ability to eavesdrop on their conversations but communicating with them is drastically hampered when looking at what the potential is.

I'd tend to disagree. when i was moderated, i too needed to wait for my posts to appear. the waiting period tended to be very short. I never waitedover an hour and usually saw my posts within 10-20 minutes. i never found that the small delay drastically hampered me or even mildly hampered me. i was looking for some free advice. my "fee" was a 15 minute wait in line.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

Let me rephrase that, when having a problem and needing some advice the last thing i will do is post the problem on the asp.net forums. I haven't posted but maybe 10 times on moderated sections and probably 4 of those have been attempting to help others out.

It seems as though all of the responses in support to moderation have something in common and that is waiting for your post to be approved isn't that bad. mbanavige, if one had your luck of having posts approved within an hour it wouldn't be that bad, however I would say that nearly all of my posts take at least an hour with an hour being best case scenario. Yesterday I posted around 1:30 and the post wasn't approved until sometime between 8:30pm and midnight, that is an awful lot of lag when using web based technology for communication. I would say my average wait time is around 3 hours for approval. Now you can argue that this is the "fee" to be paid for communicating but the point is we shouldn't have to wait. Its unnecessary when keeping in mind the tools we have before us. I do realize that if the owners of this site wanted to take 3 weeks to approve posts then that is their right and I completely support it. But if the overall goal is to please as many as possible and make communication and speed of communication a priority in keeping people happy that their are ways to do it. It isn't rocket science, heck it isn't even middle school algebra.

So the unmoderated users, who seem to be the only ones who support moderation, want to argue that waiting isn't so bad. I agree with you, maybe it isn't but why wait when waiting isn't necessary? Why wait in line to have your post approved when the work of moderation could be distributed to all the users in essence destroying the wait in line and turning this forum into a real time communication gateway where EVERYONE can help or get help within moments rather than days.

Again, I know that the moderators do their thing voluntarily and am in no way criticising them, i just think that a better model could be implemented to better leverage the technology and manpower available in this community rather than putting all the weight on a few people.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

In an attempt to improve the flow of communication here on the forums, we've just (as in ten minutes ago) instituted a rule that only posts creating a new thread will be moderated. In other words, we will not moderate any replies.

We have also put in place SPAM filters so posts deemed by the system to be SPAM will be moderated (regardless of whether or not it is a reply or thread starting post).

Thank you all for the feedback and we hope this is the start of a much more open and free flowing forum community.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

That is awesome. Thanks a bunch!

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

Well, we all gain space-time here, but we lose clear distinction between proven-unproven users. How will you know now? No system is perfect, but more quantity without more knowledge usually brings less quality. We now miss something new...

To discuss, maybe. Or maybe let's just see what happens?

-LV

P.S. I don't think the user's posts count is enough. That's quantity, not quality.

P.P.S. Sorry, not to mention the fact the a forum shouldn't become a chat, and discussing/learning is different than seeking solutions. The old system someway helped towards these "good practices". Now we are open market, so to say.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

LudovicoVan

jables2011> That is awesome.

Well, we all gain space-time here, but we lose clear distinction between proven-unproven users. How will you know now? No system is perfect, but more quantity without more knowledge usually brings less quality. We now miss something new...

To discuss, maybe. Or maybe let's just see what happens?

-LV

P.S. I don't think the user's posts count is enough. That's quantity, not quality.

P.P.S. Sorry, not to mention the fact the a forum shouldn't become a chat, and discussing/learning is different than seeking solutions. The old system someway helped towards these "good practices". Now we are open market, so to say.

The old system didn't really do that much in the way of "good practices". I mean, generally speaking replies were only scanned quickly for a few key things but were rarely moved or rejected.

Why do we need to know a distinction between proven/unproven users? Or perhaps, who loses the ability to make a distinction between proven/unproven users? Moderation status was not visible to general forum members so it didn't mean anything to anyone but moderators. Moderators use post count and quality of prior posts from a user to determine their contribution level on the forums. Nothing about the new policy prevents that from taking place in the future.

The future of determining a forum users participation level will ultimately be how many "answers" they provide. We already have some answer/not answered support in the forums now and it will get deeper and richer in future releases. At some point, the community will be able to see not only who posts frequently but who answeres frequently and that will be a more accurate picture.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

Well, let me first tell i'm quite happy with these forums and you have moved towards a more common policy, as asked from many users; so this is not criticism and i'm just trying to discuss something more in depth than usual, about forums and how to keep things "under control" while promoting activities.

> The old system didn't really do that much in the way of "good practices". I mean, generally speaking replies were only scanned quickly for a few key things but were rarely moved or rejected.

> Why do we need to know a distinction between proven/unproven users? Or perhaps, who loses the ability to make a distinction between proven/unproven users? Moderation status was not visible to general forum members so it didn't mean anything to anyone but moderators.

And i'm afraid i strongly desagree here. Any user around here very soon gets a feeling to this distinction and who is who.

Now, my starting point here basically is: waiting plus knowing who is who makes a topic get to its points cleaner, denser, and even faster than unmoderated forums, after all.

> Moderators use post count and quality of prior posts from a user to determine their contribution level on the forums. Nothing about the new policy prevents that from taking place in the future.

Telling that moderators unlock users based on post count i think forgets the real part of the story: moderators actually "evaluate" posts before unlocking, and that's quality in its most basic form: a QA!

> The future of determining a forum users participation level will ultimately be how many "answers" they provide.

This is still more quantity than quality, imho, and should be crafted a bit more. Anyway yes, this goes into the direction of quality indicators. And here lays my very intention with this post: introducing significant quality-knowledge contents-messages-signals is not that trivial; and it makes the difference between a controlled vs. uncontrolled community; and, after that, between a controlled vs. a self-controlled community. Not trivial, not automatic, usually counter-intuitive...

-LV

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

Sorry, i don't think you get my point. I was not talking about what the moderators do/do not. The "good practices" i talk about above do relate to "guiding" people, and were enforced by simply making them wait for the posts to be approved! That's automagic moderation of rookies. Not very sophisticated maybe, but now it's gone.

Not exactly sure why making someone wait for hours on end for their post to be approved is a "good practice" used for "guiding" the people.

----------------------------------------------------
And i'm afraid i strongly desagree here. Any user around here very soon gets a feeling to this distinction and who is who.

I think the easiest way to determine if someone is a moderator is to look through their posts. One will soon find that the "unmoderated" users have a tendency to make posts from time to time that are COMPLETELY off topic, a lot of times downright degrading to newer members. Posts like these wouldn't fly if posted by a user who was moderated. If I had the ability to flag a post that I thought was off topic and or abusive I would have reported some of these posts in a heartbeat notifying moderators of a potential post that could draw the members off of topic.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

jables2011
If I had the ability to flag a post that I thought was off topic and or abusive I would have reported some of these posts in a heartbeat notifying moderators of a potential post that could draw the members off of topic.

Hi,

Such an option does exist. Please use the Report abuse link that is located in the lower right hand corner of each post to report posts that appear to be totally off topic or in voilation of the Terms of Use.

Ryan

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

jables2011:

> Not exactly sure why making someone wait for hours on end for their post to be approved is a "good practice" used for "guiding" the people.

Actually i talked about guiding as a good practice, not the reverse.

> If I had the ability to flag a post that I thought was off topic and or abusive...

There's a Report abuse link down each post.

Please keep in mind i'm just trying a general discussion here...

-LV

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

LudovicoVan

Well, we all gain space-time here, but we lose clear distinction between proven-unproven users. How will you know now? No system is perfect, but more quantity without more knowledge usually brings less quality. We now miss something new...

I interact on a few different forums that are geared towards problem solving. I would say that within a week or two of interacting one quickly realizes who the proven/unproven users are by reading the posts they make and then the response from others that follow. Leaders can easily be identified by the way they act and the way others act towards them.

Re: Forum Moderation, good or bad?

Yes, you are right, but that happens in some "hosting" context, and the contexts can differ. In a crowded place, where everybody talks over everybody else, even if you know who is who, you don't go very far easily. A bit like control rods in a nuclear core. Space-time quantity and low noise levels are quite difficult to get both, unless you do set it as an explicit and high priority requirement.

How to approach it? I'll depict the two extremes for "guided" systems: Blue) etero-moderation, with moderators; Red) auto-moderation, by users. Now the point i'm trying to make is, if you weaken approach Blue, you should be renforcing approach Red, to keep the core in balance...

-LV

Btw, as a sample: do we need real-time to bring on this discussion? Imho, who needs real-time from a forum, either has mistaken a support channel, or should just be doing his/her own home work...