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About moderator policy

Posted: 10 Feb 2015, 17:21
by Jools
I wonder what is the correct place and way to discuss moderator's actions? I mean, many of these actions are subjective and then there's usually no point in messaging the moderator in question directly, and some of them rarely respond anyway.

I'm not saying anything against any particular moderator, I just wonder about the way to handle this, because currently there is no policy (or obsolete policy) and this matter hasn't been discussed before as far as I know.

I also want to point out that sometimes it can be difficult to read the intentions of another person from just writing, and that I feel that recently many post where I feel the user has had a good intention have been dealt with emotionally instead of sleeping on the matter and seeing how it feels the next day. I'm talking about borderline cases, not obvious spam posts by bots or similar things.

Also just stating that I'm not referring to any actions where I have been personally in question. I just think that recently there have been too many locked threads/warned users and that this is not normal. Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean he is trolling. Or if it means that, then we have lost the meaning of trolling.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 10 Feb 2015, 17:54
by FLOZi
recently many post where I feel the user has had a good intention have been dealt with emotionally instead of sleeping on the matter and seeing how it feels the next day.
We have been criticised for not responding quickly enough.

We are damned if we do, damned if we don't - on this point as on many others.

Moving to General Discussion, Ingame COmmunity is about events in game. :wink:

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 10 Feb 2015, 23:04
by malric
From my point of view, the moderators could be even stricter. This is a written forum on the Internet. People should be careful of what they write/how it sounds (there is also a proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions").

I am sure (most of) the people have good indentions, but for me having a nice place for discussion with a productive community is more important than protecting the feelings of some people, especially if sometimes those people have a hard time expressing what they want.

So, as a conclusion on my opinion, maybe people should be more careful to "sound" polite when they express very divergent opinions (anybody is free to disagree and will not try to convince anyone that my opinion is the correct one :wink: )

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 18:39
by 8611
The active moderators {Flozi, gajop, Silentwings, Beherith} will never ban the offending posters {Forboding Angel, smoth} no matter what. *

I hesitated to write it so blunt but see no use in generalisations like "the moderation should do XY" because there simply is nobody except those mentioned. Yes, there are 20+ other "moderator accounts" but they are all inactive.
And it does not need more or new moderators because:
Similiar on other side there are some dozen of posters but except for those two nobody repeatedly causes so many problems by their landuage, not obeying basic interforum rules like "Think, then post." or "How to ask questions?"

Posters who belongs in neither group can either:
a) try to ignore it. (difficult because they post so much. basically it results in b)
b) go away.
c) Report posts, discussion in thread like these, pretend that after years anything would change.


*edit: what I meant to write: "...will never longtime ban.." or "will never do anything effectively", as should be clear from posts below.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 18:59
by Silentwings
The active moderators ... will never ban the offending posters {... , ...} no matter what.
I guess you are unaware that one of the above is currently banned, and for the second time in as many months.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 19:22
by 8611
If someone gets banned so often in so short times then there is no more hope that they will ever learn.
Imo there have also been postings where even one on its own was enough to show that someone is not willing to be part of the community. Also the lobbychat where everything just continues whenever someone is banned.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 19:44
by luckywaldo7
8611 wrote:If someone gets banned so often in so short times then there is no more hope that they will ever learn.
Imo there have also been postings where even one on its own was enough to show that someone is not willing to be part of the community.
What are you suggesting, exactly? Because this could be interpreted as a call for perma-bans.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 19:55
by 8611
Excactly.
It seems as the only sensible step left to take, it is what was done in the past with other (imo less worse) users, it is what the forum rules say for such cases.

However "one year ban" might also have been okay, because permanent is very permanent.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 22:05
by smoth
8611 wrote: Posters who belongs in neither group can either:
b) go away.
I am thrilled that you are no longer staff.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 22:13
by Super Mario
@8611
On what grounds, do you want to permanently ban Forboding Angel for?

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 23:23
by 8611
@Super Mario
on ground of forum rules:
https://springrts.com/wiki/Felony wrote: These offenses are looked upon by forum moderation with extreme seriousness. It will take very few of them to result in a temp ban, and only slightly more will result in long term or permanent bans.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 23:25
by luckywaldo7
@8611
What exactly is your goal? What are you hoping to achieve?

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 11 Feb 2015, 23:31
by 8611
luckywaldo7:
To become an astronaut? I do not understand what you mean?
I posted my opinion "about moderator policy", as is the topic.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 12 Feb 2015, 01:40
by gajop
Factually incorrect. I banned FA twice, and Silentwings did so once. I don't think smoth deserved any warnings he didn't receive, so he remains unbanned.
I think what you're doing is way worse with your direct attempts to get the two of them banned - what you've been trying for years, either by trolling/baiting them like you did in past two threads, and many others (e.g. argh thread and random threads where you bring up evo's steam release even though completely off topic), or by reporting nearly every second post they make, sometimes on the grounds that it is "wrong".
The zeal with which you're trying to push this would be commendable if it were for a more productive goal, but as it is, it's just a frustrating experience for everyone involved.
This agenda of yours really needs to stop.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 12 Feb 2015, 01:43
by gajop
@OP: If you want to discuss moderator actions, send a message to the moderator group and raise your concerns. Nearly every warning triggers it anyhow.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 12 Feb 2015, 02:28
by smoth
I wasn't aware I was in trouble? Am I in danger of being banned? I mean, I know I speak out from time to time inappropriately but truely, outside of that recent thread where I may have misunderstood knorke's mistake and subsequent replies as an attack, have I done much recently that has been worthy of a ban?

I really am happy he is no longer a moderator. His attitude that we should just go away would have been stressful. It is no big secret that I didn't like his attempts in the past to put much pressure but his current smurf account, to my knowledge has tried to exist clear of his past grudges outside of recently, when they came rocketing to the surface.

Where is my warning level, I had no idea I was in any danger of being temp banned?!?!?! *edit* found it under overview, I am at a warning level 1... I am pretty sure my negative 1 was removed years ago.


On the topic of perma/year/temp.

I have seen temp bans as a way of giving someone time to cool off. IIRC NO ONE is permabanned in this community, argh, caydr, yan, regret all IIRC can come back and IIRC regret and yan did with smurfs. So their ban as far as I know was merely symbolic.

Knorke, I am sorry I did not notify the staff of the recent banning of your account by a past moderator. He is an old friend of mine but I PROMISE YOU I had nothing to do with it. As SOON as I noticed you had stopped posting I notified the staff. Yes he did tell me he banned you, but honestly I figured he was joking until I noticed the knorke account had stopped posting. I have had no moderator tell me 8116 is you, I just began suspect it when common speaking and posting styles began to show. I asked the same moderator who took action in unbanning your primary account and he suspected 8116 was you as well. I did not out you out of malicious intent and really don't understand why you don't go back to posting as knorke. Please do no target me or single me out for any of the above. All of my actions with respect to the prank played on you were towards correcting the bad joke. My attempts to out you were because we are trying to get the donation system working and I needed to validate you as you. There are discussions with which many people have tried to include you and for some reason you choose to use this account.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 12 Feb 2015, 04:38
by gajop
What I think we're (not just the mods, but community also) sometimes too sensitive about is with regards to offtopic posts in threads. I think we're missing on a lot of useful ideas and discussions that wouldn't be initiated normally if it weren't for the original topic.
Mods can always split topics that are starting to derail threads in cases when the original topic is properly defined and is still being discussed. In other cases - with a poorly written original post/topic, I really don't think it's that important if it does get derailed.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 12 Feb 2015, 06:31
by 8611
On Forboding Angel there is only one thing to say:
Ignorance breeds fear, fear breeds hate.
He lacks understanding of basic spring scripting/modding stuff that nowadays can be taken for granted.
Refusal to address that plus flipping out over smallest thing = game over.


The problem of smoth is less obvious:
He has the tendency post a ton but say nothing useful.
Recent example:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=33030&start=0
smoth wrote:Why would the spring physics NOT be deterministic by your definition.
The answer ("floating point imprecisions") is mentioned in first post! It is what the whole thread is about.

A few such posts and on their own are just bit funny and it is hard to see anything problematic, sadly there is a trend.

Older thread, where someone nicely put it together and it shows what I mean: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=30920&start=0#p547514
Compare smoth's post there to other posters who actually tried to answer.

Or viewtopic.php?f=12&p=566245#p566245
"Why is the slowupdate thing a big deal?" :arrow: It says so in first post, it is what the thread is about.
Further idea-guying on things that are way out of the scope of original thread, only base being a Lua-economy gadget that someone else made years ago for his mod.


There have been far worse cases, to fully show that I would have to bomb the threads with tons of references, I see no use in that. It is of course a more subtle problem, not as dramatic as when either smoth or FA "flip out" but harmful none the less.
Sadly in such cases moderation does NEVER act and would be more likely to give out a warning for "backseat moderation" or "abusing warning function" but if you just reported the posts - nothing would happen.

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 12 Feb 2015, 07:36
by smoth
You can quote stuff from 2013 and before all you want. I personally am more bothered by your seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of my post history instead of being bothered by your rage at me. 2013, that is a long way back, do you keep a personal wiki to my glorious ignorance? Should I be bothered that you post a ton about me but seldom manage to find anything positive in my time here? I have a girlfriend, it isn't happening.

I am still not sure what that guy was on about in the determinism thread. It isn't a term I am familiar with. Then again my compsci background was the precursor to my university's information systems focus. Which is not a bad thing but say automata, I didn't have to take that, so that whole area is gone to me. there are many areas of pure compscience that I am lacking in, the guy seemed nice and I wanted to better understand what he was looking for. There is NOTHING wrong with that, he didn't mind. You can laugh at it if you want, that seems kinda petty though, why is someone seeking to resolve their ignorance funny to you? We are all ignorant of something.

I don't see why it is a big deal with respect to custom economies. With something like a lua based economy, you don't have access to slowupdate. so I asked Alcari what the big deal was, we talked in lobby and it isn't, if you go to a lua economy. So I was like cool, that is a neat idea. As to whether or not my only lua based economy is something someone made years ago? that is true, his name is proudly displayed above the code. I have fixed what bugs were there and look forward to continuing to work on his code expanding and furthering it. As per the spirit of open source. I share my improvements to the code in my repo readily. We all stand on the shoulders of giants knorke, even you. The work we are doing here is so high level it is almost laughable compared to the game programing books I read in the 90s.

I am sure you would love to bomb the thread with a litany of quotes and posts from my days gone by, such glory to be remembered. I will tell you the story told to me by my greek mythology professor, Hercules was presented with 3 women, all possessed of equal beauty. Each woman proceeded to detail the boons they could offer. The first, she promised him pleasure, the greatest physical pleasures life could offer. The second, she promised him riches beyond imagination. The third promised struggle, difficulty but when his life ended, he will be remembered.

Thanks for giving me a special place in your heart

Re: About moderator policy

Posted: 12 Feb 2015, 08:27
by 8611
I am sure you would love to bomb the thread with a litany of quotes and posts from my days gone by, such glory to be remembered
That anyone capable of using the search-function is in theory able to do such thing, should make you think.
Or at least everybody else.