Tell Me What You Want

[ben]

The word-based blocking is less problematic in and of itself than the fact that there is no quick fix.

Human moderation can absolutely be a good thing, but it has to follow a consistent editorial line, and be transparent - otherwise it feels capricious and dictatorial. Which happens to be the accusation most often lobbed against you.

Transparent means just that. Let the poster know why you banned a post. Or why you closed a thread. (“Folks, we’ve heard enough about Scientology, we’re going to give it a rest now”). Give avenues for appeal. Let the members weigh in, at least from time to time. (“I just banned a post by ### for ... - do you guys want this to go up?”).

It can be you or one or more members. It doesn’t matter. It does matter that it be transparent, consistent, and ideally at least to some extent democratic.

Everyone or almost everyone can (and wants to) fall in line behind that.

 

[khairyexpat]

4.
If a miracle could be worked out to entice some of the Legendary Super Stars former members to come back. (Big shoes to fill)
They proactively and cleverly kept BAExpats ALIVE and ticking. They knew how to get members on diametrically opposite sides of each conflicting (even crazy) issue to participate together. It was happier times, pleasant, interesting and so much fun. They are sincerely missed.
(They never took the hostile approach to express an opposite point of view)

 

[admin]

The word-based blocking is less problematic in and of itself than the fact that there is no quick fix.

It has just been fixed.

Human moderation can absolutely be a good thing, but it has to follow a consistent editorial line, and be transparent - otherwise it feels capricious and dictatorial.

I think you missed a word "ideally" somewhere. Name me a single open organization that operates this way and survived longer than a year.

Transparent means just that. Let the poster know why you banned a post. Or why you closed a thread.

What you are suggesting would cause endless discussions of moderator actions (or missed actions) with a strong emphasis on a negative side.

Basically, it does not work this way. You are completely entitled to your opinion, though.

 

[nikad]

I think the forum works just fine as it is, I would remove what is not updated anymore and maybe create a FB group, where members can chit chat, but it would also help as ti is a more mobile friendly platform. I am old school and love forums and usually read from my PC ( yes, PC!!! ) but more and more people read on their cellphones and I think new expats might be turning their backs to the forum format.

 

[nikad]

The word-based blocking is less problematic in and of itself than the fact that there is no quick fix.

Human moderation can absolutely be a good thing, but it has to follow a consistent editorial line, and be transparent - otherwise it feels capricious and dictatorial. Which happens to be the accusation most often lobbed against you.

Transparent means just that. Let the poster know why you banned a post. Or why you closed a thread. (“Folks, we’ve heard enough about Scientology, we’re going to give it a rest now”). Give avenues for appeal. Let the members weigh in, at least from time to time. (“I just banned a post by ### for ... - do you guys want this to go up?”).

It can be you or one or more members. It doesn’t matter. It does matter that it be transparent, consistent, and ideally at least to some extent democratic.

Everyone or almost everyone can (and wants to) fall in line behind that.

Well, the other FB group is not really democratic. You are lectured and sometimes publicly embarrassed... Reasons are not given in the open, but the social media format made it attractive for many.

 

[nikad]

Almost forgot: I want 100 bitcoin

 

[Ries]

I just want to be able to post links to youtube videos of argentine music...

 

[EJLarson]

Tell me, guys, what is it that you want? Collective moderation? Anderson Cooper as a moderator? Professional writers who know how to engage the audience and always stay on topic?

Collective moderation is doable. The other two things - probably not . Basically, there are some drawbacks that are imposed by a forum format by itself. There will always be meaningless chatter to some extent. On the other hand, thanks to the people who participate in this forum, it has remained relevant and useful for more than a decade. And I think this is quite remarkable.

The forum is, to some extent, a victim of its own success. Almost 22,000 members? Of course only a tiny subset of that number is currently active, but still ...

I'll echo Ben and say that the puzzle of what (or who) is, or isn't, censored is the key issue that troubles me. You may not have a completely articulated set of rules yourself: maybe you act if something "feels" bad, without a documented rule - I just don't know.

What I don't want is heavy-handed moderation: I'm annoyed a lot here, but that's to be expected in a free-swinging environment - rule is, if you don't like it, don't read it. So if you wish to discuss how you set boundaries and in what situations you'll act, that would be helpful.

 

[Rich One]

The forum is, to some extent, a victim of its own success. Almost 22,000 members? Of course only a tiny subset of that number is currently active, but still ...

I'll echo Ben and say that the puzzle of what (or who) is, or isn't, censored is the key issue that troubles me. You may not have a completely articulated set of rules yourself: maybe you act if something "feels" bad, without a documented rule - I just don't know.

What I don't want is heavy-handed moderation: I'm annoyed a lot here, but that's to be expected in a free-swinging environment - rule is, if you don't like it, don't read it. So if you wish to discuss how you set boundaries and in what situations you'll act, that would be helpful.

at his moment Online ------ 5 members and 91 guests..... 12/3/17 .... 17.30 pm
Rich One, Pensador, kurasov1965s, Mitch, ben
So if there are 22.000 members registered, How many Users...100,000? more...?

 

[MorganF]

I second everything Ben says. Open and no filters is terrible. But no one knowing if their posts will go through or not is also bad and that has happened to me too much. Just list 5 rules (no vulgarity, no sales, no ad hominem attacks, etc) and remove all that violates those rules - and nothing else. But tell us what the rules are. And yes, we all accept and agree that you have the final determination if something violates one of the rules - and that’s fine, we don’t mind, it’s your community - but we just want to know the rules.

Another idea: choose 3 long-standing members whom you trust and give them the ability to remove posts and deep-dive with them on the rules and edge cases. We don’t need a fancy high-tech system - those fail at scale. But we’re a tiiiiiiny community. Choose a few moderate reasonable people and empower them. You choice of whom you select! The system doesn’t need to be perfect but we would love it to be slightly less arbitrary. And even if it isn’t arbitrary to you and if there is reason to everything you do - we don’t see that, so we don’t understand what is happening. I just know a lot of my humor posts never go through!

BTW, Mysterious admin: thank you for running this community for so many years for us - we appreciate it and you should appear here more often

Morgan