"Your Comments Needed"
- Thread starter Rajiv S. Khanna
- Start date
leroythelion
Registered Users (C)
-Moderators need to keep some sort of consistency across the whole site
-I think the deletion of all non-immigration material, especially personal attacks on others, is justified.
-I am in favor of closing threads that go nowhere, rather than deleting them. You never know who might find the subject matter useful.
Brian
It will be difficult to come up with universal guidelines for all situations. But there are two issues I see in this circumstance:
1. Right to speak out / express opinion by any member
2. Volunteer Moderator's responsibility and "reach" of power.
Taking these into account I suggest the following:
1. Volunteer moderators should not be given the rights to delete any thread. If I find a thread in the wrong place I move it, leaving the moved pointer in the original forum.
2. FAQ should be made as read only for general members. And moderators copying threads to FAQ section should give credit to whoever posted it first.
3. Volunteer moderators should only escalate flame posts and the like to -regular moderator or operations. After a few warnings operations may choose to ban that user or report to whoever authority such kind of complaints go.
4. I also favor closing of threads which go nowhere. But when a thread is closed, seems like it disappears from the forum(maybe it is my setting?). Maybe we can let the thread live its short life.
5. Arguments are distressing to everybody. I have been involved in some, but have always stopped responding to provocative statements or personalized comments. Those users who make incensed posts eventually stop posting. This is my observation.
My opinion is based on my belief that right to express ones opinion is far more important than a moderator's concept(opinion?) of relevance.
1. Right to speak out / express opinion by any member
2. Volunteer Moderator's responsibility and "reach" of power.
Taking these into account I suggest the following:
1. Volunteer moderators should not be given the rights to delete any thread. If I find a thread in the wrong place I move it, leaving the moved pointer in the original forum.
2. FAQ should be made as read only for general members. And moderators copying threads to FAQ section should give credit to whoever posted it first.
3. Volunteer moderators should only escalate flame posts and the like to -regular moderator or operations. After a few warnings operations may choose to ban that user or report to whoever authority such kind of complaints go.
4. I also favor closing of threads which go nowhere. But when a thread is closed, seems like it disappears from the forum(maybe it is my setting?). Maybe we can let the thread live its short life.
5. Arguments are distressing to everybody. I have been involved in some, but have always stopped responding to provocative statements or personalized comments. Those users who make incensed posts eventually stop posting. This is my observation.
My opinion is based on my belief that right to express ones opinion is far more important than a moderator's concept(opinion?) of relevance.
Silly Man
Volunteer moderator
I feel banning users or muffling them is not going to help. A rogue user will easily re-register and this time have more reason to create havoc.
Rather we should have an atmosphere where even every rogue feels like an equal member of the community and eventually tries to contribute to it. Every rogue is a lot of unfocussed energy.
Also, There will always be some dissatisfied people everywhere with any solution we come up with here. But to make the job easier, either we,
a) Trust the moderator's judgement, and let him follow his vision rather than pulling his leg every single time .. or ..
b) Have a senior moderator (one of us?) with delete rights.
.... And the rest of the moderators with the ability to move a thread to a "review" section .. which is readonly for other users, put a cap on a thread, mark it readonly, or edit a thread's heading marking it as "Off topic" or something standard like that.
.. The senior moderator would have the ability to decide to delete or not delete, and the rest should just listen and co-operate with his/her judgement, unless it is an extreme case and requires the president to be impeached.
Incidentally, Please check out this poll in CSC. http://boards.immigration.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84190. .
At the time of writing this message,
28 people felt a single user's discretion was acceptable (Therefore they felt that only posts deleted were which deserved to be deleted).
28 felt that the thread should die out of lack of interest (Which reinforces the passive role a moderator should play).
2 felt People should be allowed to comment on the thread .. I didn't understand this option, it wasn't my designed poll .. but hey it didn't get any votes so who cares.
and 16 felt that a quorum should demand it's deletion.
The quorum is impractical IMHO, we cannot have a vote for every deletion candidate, and we cannot reach a solid conclusion without a vote.
The public opinion seems to favor passive moderation and when need be going by the moderator's judgement.
BTW, marking the faq thread as readonly for others .. you got my vote for it.
PS: As much fun it is to be able to pass comments without responsibility, I agree .. that as a moderator I shouldn't do that .. DAMN IT !!
Rather we should have an atmosphere where even every rogue feels like an equal member of the community and eventually tries to contribute to it. Every rogue is a lot of unfocussed energy.
Also, There will always be some dissatisfied people everywhere with any solution we come up with here. But to make the job easier, either we,
a) Trust the moderator's judgement, and let him follow his vision rather than pulling his leg every single time .. or ..
b) Have a senior moderator (one of us?) with delete rights.
.... And the rest of the moderators with the ability to move a thread to a "review" section .. which is readonly for other users, put a cap on a thread, mark it readonly, or edit a thread's heading marking it as "Off topic" or something standard like that.
.. The senior moderator would have the ability to decide to delete or not delete, and the rest should just listen and co-operate with his/her judgement, unless it is an extreme case and requires the president to be impeached.
Incidentally, Please check out this poll in CSC. http://boards.immigration.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84190. .
At the time of writing this message,
28 people felt a single user's discretion was acceptable (Therefore they felt that only posts deleted were which deserved to be deleted).
28 felt that the thread should die out of lack of interest (Which reinforces the passive role a moderator should play).
2 felt People should be allowed to comment on the thread .. I didn't understand this option, it wasn't my designed poll .. but hey it didn't get any votes so who cares.
and 16 felt that a quorum should demand it's deletion.
The quorum is impractical IMHO, we cannot have a vote for every deletion candidate, and we cannot reach a solid conclusion without a vote.
The public opinion seems to favor passive moderation and when need be going by the moderator's judgement.
BTW, marking the faq thread as readonly for others .. you got my vote for it.
PS: As much fun it is to be able to pass comments without responsibility, I agree .. that as a moderator I shouldn't do that .. DAMN IT !!
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks
I will make two ar three recommendations after giving this matter some thought. The most important thing is for us all to enjoy this experience as we help our community, the community of immigrants. I do not believe we have a cisis by any means. So, we can take a couple of weeks to form a cohesive strategy.
I will make two ar three recommendations after giving this matter some thought. The most important thing is for us all to enjoy this experience as we help our community, the community of immigrants. I do not believe we have a cisis by any means. So, we can take a couple of weeks to form a cohesive strategy.
The following are Rajiv's suggestions, when he created this role of 'Moderator'.
///ROLE OF MODERATORS:
Assign threads to FAQ subforum
_
Move threads to appropriate discussion areas, if needed.
_Contact us if a FAQ arises that seems to concern a lot of people and you would like us to answer it for everyone._ We will of course continue participating in the forums as usual.
_Move off topic threads to the general area.
Make any suggestions they feel are pertinent to making things work better.///
My understanding is 'Moderator' is a mediator. The following are my opinions.
- Should not get involved in any kind of heated discussions, unless they are related to Immigration issues and are absolutely necessary.
- Should be able to delete ONLY those posts/threads, which contain offensive language (suggested by Rajiv in one of his emails) after a proper warning. This should not include deleting any other posts/threads just because they are not related to immigration, we can always advise them not to post such things.
- Should always be passive.
Any thoughts?
///ROLE OF MODERATORS:
Assign threads to FAQ subforum
_
Move threads to appropriate discussion areas, if needed.
_Contact us if a FAQ arises that seems to concern a lot of people and you would like us to answer it for everyone._ We will of course continue participating in the forums as usual.
_Move off topic threads to the general area.
Make any suggestions they feel are pertinent to making things work better.///
My understanding is 'Moderator' is a mediator. The following are my opinions.
- Should not get involved in any kind of heated discussions, unless they are related to Immigration issues and are absolutely necessary.
- Should be able to delete ONLY those posts/threads, which contain offensive language (suggested by Rajiv in one of his emails) after a proper warning. This should not include deleting any other posts/threads just because they are not related to immigration, we can always advise them not to post such things.
- Should always be passive.
Any thoughts?
if it is the same person
i don't. i also make sure that there is absolutely no benefit from that thread, whether the subject pertains to immigration/not. In other words, sometime people do post stuff other than immigration, which is fine. As long as the language remains within limits, i don't recommend deleting the thread.
i don't. i also make sure that there is absolutely no benefit from that thread, whether the subject pertains to immigration/not. In other words, sometime people do post stuff other than immigration, which is fine. As long as the language remains within limits, i don't recommend deleting the thread.
Silly Man
Volunteer moderator
Poll is closed, please see the final results at,
http://www.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84190
Also see another pertinent thread at http://www.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84219.
http://www.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84190
Also see another pertinent thread at http://www.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84219.
Silly Man
Volunteer moderator
Copy paste
Now that the poll is finally closed, I wanted to bring out an inherent flaw in the poll.
I wanted to bring out a point about the twisted poll 140 posted. The options he has given, the wordings are skewed.
Here are his options,
Do you support arbitrary deletion of threads based upon a single users discretion? 33 37.50%
Do you feel that threads should be allowed a natural death based upon, lack of interest? 34 38.64%
Do you feel people should be allowed to comment on the thread? 2 2.38%
Do you feel a thread should be deleted after a quorum demands its deletion? 19 22.62%
How about if we change the options to,
Do you believe in letting the moderator do his job and trust his decisions?
Do you feel that threads should be allowed a natural death based on lack of interest along with moderator intervention in offensive threads.
Do you feel that we should have an impractical vote for every single deletion candidate thread, so all we see on this board are votes telling the moderator what to do?
It's all in the words, I don't think that poll is fair .. but I LOVE to see that inspite of that .. the common opinion is more or less expressing faith in trusting the moderators judgement.
(I pasted the above from another message I had posted).
Now that the poll is finally closed, I wanted to bring out an inherent flaw in the poll.
I wanted to bring out a point about the twisted poll 140 posted. The options he has given, the wordings are skewed.
Here are his options,
Do you support arbitrary deletion of threads based upon a single users discretion? 33 37.50%
Do you feel that threads should be allowed a natural death based upon, lack of interest? 34 38.64%
Do you feel people should be allowed to comment on the thread? 2 2.38%
Do you feel a thread should be deleted after a quorum demands its deletion? 19 22.62%
How about if we change the options to,
Do you believe in letting the moderator do his job and trust his decisions?
Do you feel that threads should be allowed a natural death based on lack of interest along with moderator intervention in offensive threads.
Do you feel that we should have an impractical vote for every single deletion candidate thread, so all we see on this board are votes telling the moderator what to do?
It's all in the words, I don't think that poll is fair .. but I LOVE to see that inspite of that .. the common opinion is more or less expressing faith in trusting the moderators judgement.
(I pasted the above from another message I had posted).
Originally posted by Ray S.
My 2 cents
When it comes to immigration related postings am not in favor of
deleting posts nor stopping anyone from expressing their
frustration, ther' are very few avenues for venting immigration
related frustrations, immigration.com should remain as one.
1 > Instead we should have a mechanism of marking a thread
"NOISE", such threads can be hidden by default
you can find an example here:
http://www.theserverside.com/home/thread.jsp?thread_id=19407&article_count=41
Rajiv/Monica, is this feature possible?
As much as I hate to get sucked into cyber squabbles,
it feels good to see immigration alive 'n kicking 'n fortunately
for Rajiv, immigration.com is at the receiving end
all's good as long as everything here stays constructive!
Mark as "Noise" is not available but we can just move such hreads to another group called "Noise" with pointers from the old group. That would preserve content but move it to where it belongs.
I agree mostly.
We are all mediators and facilitators.
Last edited by a moderator:
We can just move such posts to a "Noise" forum.
Response to sillyman's post...
Ok I see that there are 600+ members averaging this board and barely 100 responded to the poll (I did not vote, because you are diverting attention from immigration issues, towards non essential moderator privileges- that can be nulled at any time by the owner!)
So you think people have spoken ?
By the fact that you have your own version of the poll shows that you are taking your role too seriously, to the extent that you are ready to create the so called NOISE.
I understand operations' default support to volunteer moderators but I think this issue of moderator role has to be laid to rest. Since operations has indicated what kind of time frame is required to take a decision, people raising other issues should create new threads and not try to convert this as a noise thread.
Silence is golden, and I am shutting up on this issue for the last time, because as a moderator I need to show some semblance of maturity...
Ok I see that there are 600+ members averaging this board and barely 100 responded to the poll (I did not vote, because you are diverting attention from immigration issues, towards non essential moderator privileges- that can be nulled at any time by the owner!)
So you think people have spoken ?
By the fact that you have your own version of the poll shows that you are taking your role too seriously, to the extent that you are ready to create the so called NOISE.
I understand operations' default support to volunteer moderators but I think this issue of moderator role has to be laid to rest. Since operations has indicated what kind of time frame is required to take a decision, people raising other issues should create new threads and not try to convert this as a noise thread.
Silence is golden, and I am shutting up on this issue for the last time, because as a moderator I need to show some semblance of maturity...
Listening
Monica, discuss all this with me. Bring me a print out of all threads. Let us discuss this in tomorrow's meeting.
Monica, discuss all this with me. Bring me a print out of all threads. Let us discuss this in tomorrow's meeting.