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Preventing Deleted Threads


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5 hours ago, Omegaman 3.0 said:

Though I have quoted you above, Neighbor, this is not so much a response to you, as it is providing information to all, by addressing some of the points you raised.

Much of the time, threads start out fine, but if there is controversy in them, they draw in people who love the debate. That can get pretty active, very quickly. There can be several pages in a thread, before any moderator is even aware of the thread,, if indeed we are ever aware of it. The momentum builds, and some do not seem to understand the necessity of civility, at it begins to get person, becomes infighting and people lose sight of the fact, that there is even an actual topic sometimes. 

Now, consider that there are only a handful of moderators to oversee the 200 or so people who post on a given day, many of whom post multiple times a day. Many of these people apparently have a lot of time on there hands, and spend more time on Worthy that the moderators do. The moderators have real lives outside of Worthy, and cannot or choose not to spend every spare moment here. The moderators are volunteering their time as a service to the Lord, His church, and those who do not yet know the Lord. Simple put, we are just outnumbered.

This is where the report function fits in. When a post gets reported, we (moderators) are alerted to a possible problem, and when we get the time, one of us (sometimes more) will look into it, and see what is going on. In this way, the regular members assist the moderation team, by being our eyes and ears alerting us to issues that should be dealt with, and we are grateful for the help. By the way, if one reports a post, if is very helpful if the reported also informs us, of what they think the problem is. Sometimes there is a report, and there is nothing that identifies what the problem is. Sometimes, it totally eludes us, what the problem is. It seems at times, that there are some, who prowl the forum, looking for ways to report specific posters, they sort of stalk them and report people because, I don't know, they don't thing that person is right or nice or something.

Merely being wrong, is not something we police, unless it gets to be heretical doctrine or spreading lies, etc. We also do not consider ourselves the enforcers of niceness. We expect that most people who post, will be Christians, and that the default behavior of Christians, will be respectful and that they will adhere to the Terms of Service they agreed to follow, when they signed up, and keep up to date on what those terms of service are. That is the responsible thing to do, and to disregard the terms of service, can be a form of dishonesty and a breaking of the covenant that the member made with Worthy, that is the basis for the privilege of posting here.

Obedient Christians, want to love not only their brothers and sisters in Christ, but love their enemies as well. Certainly, people can disagree, without being vitriolic, or is that too much to expect?

So, what often happens is, a thread becomes long and ugly, and someone reports a post. We (moderators) then attempt to discover the problem, and use our best (an imperfect) judgement on how to deal with the problem. Not everyone will disagree with our decisions, why would they, the cannot even agree with each other. If there are contentions, we can either ignore them, and let the thread and the forums degrade into a "wild west" brawl, or we can step in and try to intervene. If we intervene, someone will be upset with what we decide. It is just something that we live with.

When we look into that large and contentious thread, sometimes it is so messed up, filled with anger and off topic content that it is impossible or us to recover, we just do not have the time. I know that I, and others, have literally spend hours going over single threads, trying to clean them up, because there is good content and a lot of effort put in by responsible posters. We hate to see that lost, but as I said, time is a limited resource. Sometimes a thread get deleted. Sometimes we lock it, shut it down to further comments because it has just run it's course and people are going round and round, repeating themselves and not adding anything new. Sometimes, threads are hidden, not deleted, in order to buy us some time to look them over, edited them if needed (removing offensive posts or ones not in compliance with the terms of service). It takes a lot of time. Consider, that there may be a post, that has to go. People often have responded to that post, and now, without the context of the post, their reply makes no sense, so, we have to fix that also. Sometimes people quote the bad post, and we need to find those quotes, otherwise the post is still there, preserved in someone's reply. Hopefully you can understand how time consuming it is for the moderation team.

Now, it happens, that sometimes, a person or persons, decided that they have not been heard enough yet, they are not through, perhaps they need to hear themselves talk, or be seen to feel validated. I do not know what is going on in the heads and hearts of some people, but I do see their action, and the fruit of their posts. If they have just gotten caught up in the contention, and want to stir more, they might get banned from the thread.

Sometimes (very often in fact), these same people will look for another, similar thread to infect with their ranting, or even start their own new thread. For those so inclined be careful, you might be on a path that will eventually lead to other actions that you may not like. A common recourse that we take, is putting such people on Moderator Review. What that means is that they are no longer allowed to post, without a moderator first looking at the post, and then approving it. If it is more trouble making, then the post will be deleted, not approved for publication.

We do not like to do this. It is not in the best interest for those on MR, because it means that IF their post is approved, it might be hours, or even days, before it is approved, again, because we do not have the time to deal with it. Nothing personal, it is just practical, and in the best interest of the forums and the well behaved members of the forums. We do not think that the responsible users, should pay the penalty for the irresponsible users, but sometimes that is what has to happen. Best if you all avoid moderator review.

Moderator review, does not last any particular time. Basically that is up to the moderators to determine, you can think of it as permanent or indefinite, until a moderator thinks the person may be ready to cooperated with the goal of MR, that of insuring a better environment on the forums. It would be nice, for those who just and peruse the forums, to see that the Church of Jesus, the Messiah, is not full of bickering and spiteful people.

When we suggest taking an issue up with a moderator privately, we do not mean using the report feature. There we mean that you should send us a private message. That is when you have an issue with the moderator personally, you think there is something to sort out, between you and they. You are aware, that that is the biblical model. Have in issue with a brother, go to them one on one. If you cannot sort that out between the two of you, then we bring a few others into the discussion. There is not reason to drag these things (typically) into the public arena.

As far as the watchmen, they are independent of the moderators, and help us to have some accountablilty, in case we moderators get so narrow-minded that we cannot see our own faults.

Watchmen, and moderators alike, participate as forum members themselves, with their own opinions and views. For example, when I express my theological opinions, they are MY opinions, I am not speaking on behalf of Worthy Ministries, I am only expressing my personal views.

I understand all that "O"    but I hope you can see how frustrating when someone else gets into a serious argument with someone else and causes a lot of your own work to disappear....   and over the years it really seems that some people do that on purpose....    Just once I'd like for someone to understand that some serious injustices happen here.   I certainly think it should be ok to discuss it and have everyone put in their own thoughts....   Without those of us who are here daily discussing things what would Worthy be....   without our constant posting we could not stay at the top of the internet food chain and new people would never be able to find us for we would drift into the nothingness of the internet.   Deleted threads are the arbitrary destruction of our hard work, and it should not happen unless we ourselves are the cause of it.    Only the removal of the problem people should happen...

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7 hours ago, Yowm said:

I'm a Watchman so I see what gets reported.

How often have I been reported .  OH yowm I  kid I kid .  you don't have to answer that .

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7 hours ago, Yowm said:

If a person confronts false doctrine, they often get accused of being unloving, then a third person will accuse the 2nd person for a personal attack. It has little to do with the one confronting the false doctrine.

You will see this more and more   .    You see if something is not so PC ,  if even the attack is on doctrine and not the person , STILL they will see it as an attack on the person .

This is big in society .       watch this .     and this proves it pc .    if I come on and claim  I am black , being a white man and someone says YOU aint black .

Soceity would be like who does that crazy white man think he is , thinking he black .  cause that is not acceptable .    Maybe a white woman claiming to be black is

but try and remember the most hated man over all in this world , IS the WHITE MAN .  we get blamed for every evil concept .  its a sin now to be a man and white .

NOW if me being the same white man says , HEY I am a girl.  WELL that is socially acceptable it wont be talked against and if one says hey you not no woman you a man

THAT gets seen as hate .  when really its just speech .   

same in religious circles in a sense .  WHEN we attack false doctrine , THAT is not socially liberally progressively acceptable the victim card gets pulled and to be honest

more and more folks are scared to death to offend anything that goes against that , so its just seen as okay an attack on the person , not the doctrine . BUT ONLY if the doctrine is not SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE .   keep that mind .

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51 minutes ago, Davida said:

Why don't you create your own page and link to it? or start your own thread. 

Starting your own thread would not help, but I'll give some consideration to the other....   not sure how to stop others from posting on some page I created though, but I'll look into it.

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1 hour ago, other one said:

I understand all that "O"    but I hope you can see how frustrating when someone else gets into a serious argument with someone else and causes a lot of your own work to disappear....   and over the years it really seems that some people do that on purpose....    Just once I'd like for someone to understand that some serious injustices happen here.   I certainly think it should be ok to discuss it and have everyone put in their own thoughts....   Without those of us who are here daily discussing things what would Worthy be....   without our constant posting we could not stay at the top of the internet food chain and new people would never be able to find us for we would drift into the nothingness of the internet.   Deleted threads are the arbitrary destruction of our hard work, and it should not happen unless we ourselves are the cause of it.    Only the removal of the problem people should happen...

The clear solution to this is more people reporting posts. Only a fraction of people report posts. If a thread gets to 15 or 20 pages over the course of a couple of days but the first report doesn't happen until then, and we look and the thread and the first actual attack is 5 or 10 pages earlier, now you have a ton of time required to clean the thread up, time we don't have. If we could clean every thread we would, but my suggestion to you is if you are in a thread and are spending a lot of time on posts and you see folks attacking each other, report them, all of them.

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2 hours ago, other one said:

Deleted threads are the arbitrary destruction of our hard work, and it should not happen unless we ourselves are the cause of it.   

Well, I would not call it arbitrary, but yeah, a persons hard work can be lost in the process. If you want to keep something, save it somewhere other than in the thread, to be safe. 

None of us have any right to have our work seen here, we are here as guests, on a private site, by revocable permission, and we even released what we write, into the public domain, when we joined up (re: Terms of Service).

There are problems with a lot of things on this site, and how we deal with problems are by necessity, changed from time to time. We have policies and rules in place, in order to maintain order on the site, trying to have a decent, family friendly environment, and also allowing some freedom of thought and expression. Free speech here is not a right, like some people would like to think.

Sometimes, people understand what we are attempting to do here, but want to do it their way, not wanting to be restricted by the restriction of rules and policies. There are always people who want to play the game of working around the rules, finding loopholes, instead of accepting the spirit of the rules. These letter of the law people are often what drives changes in our policies, and are the root of a lot of the problems that we all have to live with. If everyone here decided to act as a Christian should (the site is not limited to Christians) then I doubt we would even need to have moderators. The reality is though, that no one is totally free from their flesh, and so we all suffer some, because of that.

To be honest, I am even surprised that this thread has gone on as long as it has. We could just sum it up like this:

Play nice, follow the rules and the spirit that they are intended in, and no thread will be deleted, at least I think that is true.

That sentence did not take ten pages to express, but I imagine a lot of the dialogue here, is just venting in frustration.

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36 minutes ago, Sojourner414 said:

The problem with "staying on topic", while desirable for a discussion, is by necessity limiting what people can say and cannot say. I can understand that in, say, a Bible Study thread, but to require that in regular discussion threads I would consider to be starting to veer into the realm of censorship. I have seen in many threads important side points develop that while not part of the original topic, were nevertheless germane to the spirit of the discussion at hand.  I do agree that it can get too far out of hand when the subject becomes one that is no longer in relation in any way to the OP: in that case, a thread split or a new topic should be begun.

As for being respectful: I can agree with that basic premise, as often things can get quite heated and personalities begin to override the subject at hand. It is unfortunately human nature when folks disagree, and often it is not even so much the desire to be right in many cases as it is to perceive being heard that is the matter. But that respect needs to be observed on all sides, and much of the strife here begins when one party decides to voice their point in words that are less than charitable. The other party/ parties end up disliking this and then replies in kind( I'm certainly not innocent in this matter and I think most folks here at Worthy have at the very least gotten grumpy online at least a few times! ). The initial party becomes defensive in light of this, and soon, verbal conflict breaks out. This doesn't make it right, but it is true and until we are all before the Lord, an issue we will struggle with, sad to say.

(Hence the reason Scripture instructs us to do otherwise, but we humans usually manage to make a right royal mess of things! :emot-LOL: )

With all of that in mind: Biblically, we also have a responsibility to the truth and speaking that truth whenever we can. That truth is the Gospel, and the ways we have been taught to live in Scripture. An example is that yes, we should reach out to the Muslims and bring them the word of God when we can and in whatever ways possible. We have a Commission from the Lord directly to spread the Gospel to the World and "to make disciples of all nations". But that does not mean ignoring or "sugar-coating" the truth that the Qur'an contains verses (Surahs) in the later Medinan phase of its' writing that declare death to "infidels" and Jews and dominance of the rest of the world, and the technique of "abrogation" (later Surahs overriding/replacing earlier ones) is well known, as is taqiyya  (deception to hide a Muslim's true religion from "infidels"). This becomes an issue as even though many Muslims aren't actively observing the Qur'an, those commands and practices are still present in the book and in the cultural background of their religion. And this becomes something to keep firmly in mind when someone of that religion seeks a place of authority within our government or another sensitive position that entails the safety and well-being of our communities, society and nation as a whole.

Note: this is not to reignite the conflagration of the now-closed Sharing Christ with Muslims at Christmas Thread. It is only an example of how two sides need to be considered in an issue.

So with that said, any topic is going to consist of at least two points of view, and usually several. How that applies here is that while the first should not be ignored, the other cannot be ignored either. Many issues are multi-faceted, and present several issues that push and pull for the brunt of our attention, and it can be hard to keep all of them in mind. I think one major problem is when one point placed above the others without considering the ramifications it can bring as a result of interacting (or even exacerbating) the other that is also in play.

On a last note: with a great many of my replies, I have taken to copying them before posting them and the pasting my reply into Microsoft Word, so I have a ready library of work in case a similar issue comes up, or the computer "eats my work" on me! O.o

So, I hope what I wrote makes sense and wasn't a waste of 45 minutes of my early morning snooze time! ?

 

 

Veering off topic slightly is to be expected.  However, when the thread gets totally off topic and the arguing starts....that is the problem.

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Its not the veering off topic thats a problem. It is the attitude behind some folks posts whether its on topic or not. Sometimes I wish folks would read their posts before hitting that submit button. Perhaps then they would see how their words sound to others. I also wish folks would squash their pride. It seems like it is pride that takes over when the insults start to fly. 

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From my experience, being part of a handful of forums myself, there is always the same pattern no matter what the site is about. Often there is a certain amount of users that have made it their personal mission to start a small war with moderation and the admins. The reasons can vary from "I or others get deliberatly censored" to "some mods are corrupt" or even straight up deny the ToS and try to find loopholes. (Not saying this all happens on here, thats just including my experience from other sites)

There is always a certain percentage of users that are unhappy with how things are handled because they would like the moderation to be done in their favour. Almost all the time it has to do with pride and I can only agree with ayin 

50 minutes ago, ayin jade said:

I also wish folks would squash their pride. It seems like it is pride that takes over when the insults start to fly. 

Maybe it is good to remember and to remind others that we are guests on this site, and that we should behave like guests. I've seen this all before and to be honest it gets tiring over time. It is entitlement that leads to most of these problems.

I appreciate the work of the mods in keeping this forum as clean as possible and find it very inappropiate from some users to straight post about their problems with moderation in a public thread rather than to dm a mod.

 

And if some think that wont change anything, well there are still other sites they can go to if they arent satisfied with how things are handled.

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8 hours ago, Omegaman 3.0 said:

 

None of us have any right to have our work seen here, we are here as guests, on a private site, by revocable permission, and we even released what we write, into the public domain, when we joined up (re: Terms of Service).

I agree that it is a private site Omegaman,   but without us this place is nothing,   keep that in mind as you do your work.....    you are over worked because of those of us who come here every day and make this place great.

I will take your and Steves advice and start reporting people more...  all I ask is to keep in mind that some of us are here for a reason.  It's not just a game nor are we bored.

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