blocking moderators

[teejayevans]

Can you remove the restriction that prevents filtering out user's who
happen to be moderators?
TJ

 

[retire@40]

I asked for that option as well. I can't see why that can't be an option.

 

[teejayevans]

I asked for that option as well. I can't see why that can't be an option.

Yea, I saw that, but it was buried in another thread, hence the reason
I asked for it again, with it's own title.
TJ

 

[sgeeeee]

I've tried in the past to gain less paternalistic moderation on this board. Our moderators apparently really believe they know better. They can censor while you can't even edit your own posts after a few minutes. You can ignore posters, but not their posts. If you push too hard, you'll get a nasty-gram from one or more of them. They are probably talking about you right now on their special moderator's board that you can't participate in.

Good luck.

 

[HFWR]

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me...

 

[sgeeeee]

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me...

Now that should be censored.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Absolutely positively one of the lightest handed, least, most reasonably moderated boards I've ever participated in, with the exception of moderator-less boards.

Do we really all yearn for the unchecked return of hocomania, howard and the many mikes?

Dont you really just feel bad because a moderator asked you to provide some concrete background on an opinion you posed as a fact, maybe because 20-30 times you provided an opinion that wasnt based on anything particularly factual?

Or maybe you're just grumpy about a moderator doing exactly the same frickin thing you've done previously?

Theres no technologically reasonable way to prohibit display of a moderators posts, as software cant tell when they're steering a discussion, when they're being wise guys, or when they're doing something you dont like.

About the only solution would be to make a generic moderator account that mods use, and have them use their regular acct to do regular posting.

Hmm, lets see...take people doing a crap job for free and receiving very little appreciation for it, and ask them to log out and back in again 3-5 times a day. Good luck with that...

 

[sgeeeee]

Absolutely positively one of the lightest handed, least, most reasonably moderated boards I've ever participated in, with the exception of moderator-less boards.

Do we really all yearn for the unchecked return of hocomania, howard and the many mikes?

Dont you really just feel bad because a moderator asked you to provide some concrete background on an opinion you posed as a fact, maybe because 20-30 times you provided an opinion that wasnt based on anything particularly factual?

Or maybe you're just grumpy about a moderator doing exactly the same frickin thing you've done previously?

Theres no technologically reasonable way to prohibit display of a moderators posts, as software cant tell when they're steering a discussion, when they're being wise guys, or when they're doing something you dont like.

About the only solution would be to make a generic moderator account that mods use, and have them use their regular acct to do regular posting.

Hmm, lets see...take people doing a crap job for free and receiving very little appreciation for it, and ask them to log out and back in again 3-5 times a day. Good luck with that...

A very troll-worthy post CFB. You make up stories that are not true. You make implications without substance. You claim personal experience as global fact. Good job. Now all you have to do is comment in a few dozen 20 paragraph rants and you will have successfully displaced *****.



If I didn't know that you just try to annoy people because you get some sort of perverse pleasure from it, I might get annoyed. Instead, I am amused.

Keep trying though. We know that you will be right in the end -- even if it's only in your own mind.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Now are you just trying to get yourself moderated?

 

[Sam]

Absolutely positively one of the lightest handed, least, most reasonably moderated boards I've ever participated in, with the exception of moderator-less boards.

Agreed.

I have no idea what the complainers are talking about. I wish they give specific detailed incidents in which they were "unreasonably" censored.

It appears to me that most moderators are not as active today as they were a few months ago. I hope they are not fed up because of a few bad apples.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Dont agree with me.

It'll annoy SG.

Some people feel that any "censorship" is bad censorship.

My personal experience...nay...global fact (HAH HAH HAH)...says that if you ran a poll on this topic you'd have 95%+ of the board population feeling that the mods do a perfectly good job.

 

[Sam]

Dont agree with me.

It'll annoy SG.

And your point is?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Well taken.

 

[Andy R]

sgeeeee,

You do indeed have an absolute right to free speech. However this forum is privately owned and requires members to abide by the simple rules that Dory posted here and by the decisions of our staff.

Please note this sentance:

They don't take every opportunity to express their disagreement, incite argument, insult each other, and fan flames.

Based on your comments in post #4 of this thread it seems there are many things you do not like about ER.

If you are really so upset with the way things are managed here, the fact you can't edit your posts after 15 minutes or that you can't ignore the moderators, I encourage you to contact one of the many good web hosting companies out there and exercise your first amendment right to your heart's content.

There are very many wonderful members on this board and we really don't need for you to take every opportunity to express their disagreement with something. I KNOW you all want to be able to edit your old post but we are not going to turn that feature back on because it gets abused, you don't need to bring this up anymore.

As for the topic at hand, I will talk with the team about allowing you to be able to ignore moderators. I doubt we will allow you to block admins but we might consider it for moderators.

 

[teejayevans]

Agreed.
I have no idea what the complainers are talking about. I wish they give specific detailed incidents in which they were "unreasonably" censored.

I didn't say I was censored, I want to censor them. Hence the
ignore list, in my case, Martha posted stupid pictures of her dog,
I don't have a fast connection, so having to download her pictures of
her dog takes a long time, I don't think that's too much to ask for the
moderators not to be posting pictures of their dog in a health forum.
If it was a binaries forum, then go for it.
I got slammed for asking, I guess everybody has broadband and thinks
pictures of dog with lettuce on its head is funny. It was suppose to
be a slam against MKLD, yea whatever, I just prefer to block Martha
and anybody else that posts pictures to save me time.
If there is no way to do it, fine, but I'm guessing its just a configuration
flag somewhere in some INI file.
TJ

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Downloading big files like photos over a dialup connection stinks. You do however have a choice to make about your internet connection speed and you've chosen a slow connection at a low cost. Thats a tradeoff you've made.

The web is a multimedia place these days. There are pictures, sounds, along with good old text.

Its already been explained how to disable all the pictures from automatically downloading. That should suffice to solve the primary problem you're experiencing.

As far as the photos, I found them very funny and quite appropriate for the way the thread had turned. In fact, I'd like them to be displayed two times, and twice as large. With more lettuce please.

 

[Andy R]

Martha posted stupid pictures of her dog,
I don't have a fast connection, so having to download her pictures of
her dog takes a long time, I don't think that's too much to ask for the
moderators not to be posting pictures of their dog in a health forum.

I got slammed for asking, I guess everybody has broadband and thinks
pictures of dog with lettuce on its head is funny. It was suppose to
be a slam against MKLD, yea whatever, I just prefer to block Martha
and anybody else that posts pictures to save me time.
If there is no way to do it, fine, but I'm guessing its just a configuration
flag somewhere in some INI file.
TJ

Easy there, you are getting a little fired up. We can all have a reasonable and courteous conversation here.

Thanks for letting us know your reason, now we can offer you an explanation and a solution.

The reason you can't block moderators (at this point) is because they might post information about how the community is managed that you might need to read. If they were blocked then you would miss the message and that would not work. I will talk to them about allowing mods to be blocked and only having admins post important messages but I suspect things will remain the same.

As for your issue with your slow internet connection. I would recommend you disable the images feature of the forum software (see attachment). I would also recommend that you check to see if your browser has an option to turn images off (to leverage that across many sites). Lastly you might want to consider this tool from Google which speeds up your experience by caching images.
Google Web Accelerator Download

 

[haha]

I don't want to appear to be sucking up to the moderators, but I also think they do a good job. Obviously they get something out of it. Altruistic expression, dominance, whatever. Everybody needs to get some reward for doing whatever they do; and a reward should be given.

An interesting thing about the board is that over the past year or so it has morphed into a place where you have to be fairly clever if you want to get away with trolling. You will be allowed quite a bit of troll line, as long as you understand the form well.

It's a pleasure to observe.

ha

 

[retire@40]

...The reason you can't block moderators (at this point) is because they might post information about how the community is managed that you might need to read. If they were blocked then you would miss the message and that would not work...

Most of the time mods are just participating as civilians like everyone else, so I would hope their message won't be privileged by not allowing someone to block them like all the other civilians here.

In the case when they do need to use their blow horn, I see no problem in making those messages visible to all by allowing them to pierce through all blocks. I think most mods here do a great job, but I would like the option of blocking the non-mod type posts made by the mods if I find a mod is annoying in his everyday postings.

The few people I put on my ignore list already made coming to this site more of a pleasant experience in that I can avoid seeing the non-ER postings, like the political and religious rantings. Although I also wish any new topics started by these people would also be removed from my view, but one issue at a time.

 

[Nords]

Obviously they get something out of it. Altruistic expression, dominance, whatever. Everybody needs to get some reward for doing whatever they do; and a reward should be given.

My reward is that I can read this board without having to wade through the crap that's infected Yahoo!, TMF, most of M*, & Greaney's board. If I have to be a moderator to help make that happen then I'm happy to spend some time on it. I spent enough of my submarine time wading through crap with far less of a reward.

Of course the "responsibility" that goes along with those "privileges" is that we can't put any of you guys on our own ignore lists. There's only a few of us and thousands of you. If I stepped down from moderator to be able to add a few choice posters to my ignore list then I'd feel like I wasn't helping the rest of the mods do what's perceived by some to be an unpopular job. And CFB is right-- I'm not going to start up a second account and keep switching between the two.

Of course we moderators could choose to "share the burden" of our ignore lists by making sure that someone who's ignored by one moderator is paid extra attention by another. Even with that arrangement I'm sure that money would have to change hands to keep a few of you from being added to every moderator's ignore list.

IMO participation on this board carries an obligation to keep it a nice place by making a contribution. It can be a financial contribution to FIRECalc, a temporal contribution as a moderator, or an extra effort to greet newbies and to help answer questions. But using this board as a place to rant & raise a ruckus, whether it's something that people care about or just your personal jihad, is immature & irresponsible. If you want to throw spitballs then go start yourself a blog.

An interesting thing about the board is that over the past year or so it has morphed into a place where you have to be fairly clever if you want to get away with trolling. You will be allowed quite a bit of troll line, as long as you understand the form well.

Another way to say it is that you have to be so much of a blatant troll that even a moderator would be able to tell!

The moderator decisions are made largely on the basis of user feedback. User feedback is kept private so that users aren't intimidated into keeping quiet. If you have a problem with a poster, tell a moderator or an admin. Your feedback probably won't get them moderated or banned all by itself, but just like flagging Craigslist ads you could also be that critical xxth user's feedback that pushes them over the edge.

It's a pleasure to observe.

Hey, we're here to keep it that way...

 

[sgeeeee]

SG

I've tried in the past to gain less paternalistic moderation on this board. Our moderators apparently really believe they know better. They can censor while you can't even edit your own posts after a few minutes. You can ignore posters, but not their posts. If you push too hard, you'll get a nasty-gram from one or more of them. They are probably talking about you right now on their special moderator's board that you can't participate in.

Good luck.

I sure was able to get a huge defensive response with these 6 sentences. And I didn't even start the thread. Are some of you feeling guilty?

Well . . . as CT has said in the past, "Blow me".

 

[Andy R]

I sure was able to get a huge defensive response with these 6 sentences. And I didn't even start the thread. Are some of you feeling guilty?

Well . . . as CT has said in the past, "Blow me".

sgeeeee,

I can assure you that none of us are feeling the slightest bit of guilt. I am very proud to work with the team Dory put in place here. They are an exceptional group and very fair. We do our best to listen to both sides of the story and do a quality (and light) job of moderation.

Please read the post Dory made about participation here at E-R.org (link).

Friends don't always agree on everything or even on most things. They can agree to disagree. When that happens, they might keep their discussions logical and free of name calling and so forth, or more often they just spend their time on other topics. They don't take every opportunity to express their disagreement, incite argument, insult each other, and fan flames. When they are incapable of avoiding this sort of thing, they become much more disruptive than welcome.

Please consider this a warning, if you cannot comply with the simple rules, you will be asked to leave.

As I mentioned before, there are many web hosts out there and you are welcome to start your own forum with the moderation style you see fit.

 

[teejayevans]

Most of the time mods are just participating as civilians like everyone else, so I would hope their message won't be privileged by not allowing someone to block them like all the other civilians here.

The easy way is to have them register under 2 logins, 1 the normal login
they use when appending, the 2nd for the rare cases they actually do
some moderating.
TJ
p.s. thanks for hint on removing pix, avatars, that helps.

 

[sgeeeee]

I should clarify some things here, so posters don't get the wrong impression.

Until this particular thread, to my knowledge, there has never been a time on this board when one of my posts was censored. Apparently, the rules for posting have changed recently, so when I quoted a past moderator on this thread, it was deleted. I'll give you a hint: the comment started with "Bl**" and ended with "me". Long time posters will remember a past moderator who used this simple post to end his participation in a thread that had exhausted him. It was funny, but maybe you had to be there.

I don't know about anyone else's internet experiences. I participate on 3 other finance/retirement boards and occasionally in a few others. Although I seem to run across a post with a "deleted by moderator" note on almost a weekly basis on this board, I have never encountered such a post on any other board I participate in. Although I regularly see posts on this board where a moderator bludgeons themselves into a thread to remind someone that they are the moderator and will be forced to take action if one of our posters doesn't behave, or inform someone that they are the moderator and they know their IP address, etc., I have never seen such a message on any other board. I served as moderator on an internet board a few years ago. It has since morphed into a new board and I passed the torch. I never posted on that board to remind anyone that I was the moderator at any time. I have served as host of an internet discussion board where there was never a post from a moderator. Neither the moderator nor the host position ever required much effort on my part. Occassionally we would get a spammer selling Viagra or porn sites and I would delete those.

It dismays me a little that so many posters on this board have had such a miserable experience on other internet sites. I guess I've led a sheltered internet experience. I am always surprised when one of our moderators goes into a long, defensive account of how thankless the job of moderating this board really is. I honestly don't understand that. There seems to me to be a couple of obvious solutions to that problem.

Some of you seem convinced that the current level of moderation on this board is required or the heathen Canadians led by their US leader, *****, will invade us and destroy our board. I don't believe that myself. I think the discussion board experience is improved with less moderation.

Please don't bother to remind me that this is a free country and I can leave and not come back if I don't like it. That is such a sad and petty response. You can say that about any experience to rationalize why no one should ever complain about anything. If that was the way people worked, 90% of the threads on this board would be ended before they started.

Dismayed but not annoyed.

 

[JPatrick]

Please don't bother to remind me that this is a free country and I can leave and not come back if I don't like it. That is such a sad and petty response. You can say that about any experience to rationalize why no one should ever complain about anything. If that was the way people worked, 90% of the threads on this board would be ended before they started.

That child psychology won't work on me dude
Try this on for size

This is a free country and you can leave and not come back if you don't like it.