I believe that the current system of moderation is inadequate to optimize post quality and quantity on SEN. The system of severity and such is bad because it measures transgressions in absolute terms, not relative ones. For example, if someone had posted nine bad posts and no good ones, they'd still be here; a thousand good ones and ten bad posts, suspended. Basically. There are complications, but the general idea's still there.

So, what do I think needs to be done? Well, first of all, perhaps implement a karmalike system for judging average post quality, and promote it better to get people to use it. Second of all, moderation can be lightened on SEN. Back on SENv4, it was much nicer to have a discussion; I even remember getting into a flamewar with my brother on SEN, having Beer_Keg close it without giving me any warn, it was nice. Just because I wasn't warned doesn't mean I did it again. Anyway, the general idea of my lightened-moderation idea is that moderators can do more than hand out severity, and that they should start just removing the offensive parts without necessarily giving severity, using their own judgement to decide if they believe that the average post quality of the poster is low enough to give severity. Let me put it in a way that frames me as the protagonist: Because of seven arguably bad posts, I'm banned from SD. I'm sure that anyone can come to the conclusion that that generally slows down and hurts the discussion in SD; additionally, had the moderatorship had a simple policy of editing out (or in) what they wanted and not necessarily doing the whole severity dance, SEN would run smoother. I wouldn't PM the moderators contesting the moderation, there wouldn't be any staff forum discussions about how awesome I am, etc. Maybe five total minutes of moderation without severity would've gone a long way. And had my behavior gotten worse because of the lack of punishment, it could always have been instituted.

As another suggestion, I think there needs to be a rank to manage moderations. Moose eventually got annoyed that I was contesting my moderations and decided to ban me from SD; had there been a member specifically there to judge the fairness of the moderation, the esteemed administration wouldn't have to get its hands dirty (and there should either be two of these, or one who has no other job on SEN).

Anyway, that's pretty much it. I obviously used myself as the primary example, simply because I have no access to anyone elses logs and whatnot. Please discuss my ideas and do not discuss my reasons for supporting my ideas. God, I miss v4. Nostalgia hurts.

Makes sense. Although, the thing is, when someone hits 10 severity, they are then taken a look at by the staff (or are at last supposed to). Gaining 10 severity doesn't automatically mean you are suspended, it means you are considered for a suspension.

Also, if someone makes thousands of posts and 10 bad ones, the 10 bad ones are most likely going to be spaced out from one another far enough as to where the severity of that person would not accumulate higher than 1. Severity decreases over time.

As for judging the fairness of moderations: tough luck if you are moderated. As I already said, gaining 10 severity makes it so that you are reviewed. That does not mean any action will be taken. If you don't like how a moderator is moderating, in general, then I can understand seeking out higher authority. However, if you contest moderation on a case by case basis, someone is bound to get annoyed.

9 bad, 0 good = 9 posts. Now, they don't post anymore. That's kinda like a ban isn't it? If they don't post, we don't care.

Suspensions are there as a slap on the wrist to say "REMEMBER THERE ARE RULES". I think that it's pretty easy to follow the rules, and there's no need for such a system. The current system forgives via time. Your system would forgive via other people? That would mean you can do a whole bunch of good to "pay for" some bad, then get away with it. No, time heals all wounds, and I think it's the best way.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2010, 4:51 am by rockz.

That's a fairly odd thought, that unjust moderations should be uncontested if it happens too often. And, really, I only asked Moose twice, and the 2nd time he whined about spending hours on me and kicked me out. Most of the time spent contesting was exclusively with the source of the moderation.

What's wrong with doing a whole bunch of good to pay for some bad? Is not a member who posted bad ten times and good a thousand times more valuable and a better contributor than one who posted well once? The 'followability' of the rules isn't the issue here. It's about efficiency and maximization of post quality/quantity. Again, my own experience is the best example I have; my net contribution to SD is positive, yet I'm banned from it. Assuming that my premise is correct (that my net contribution is positive), that means that the system is broken. A more forgiving system, like that which SEN had in v4, though not better in measuring a persons net contribution to SEN, instead simply lowers the consequences by shifting some of the burden to the moderators. The moderators can still tell when someone becomes a burden on the system and punish him by giving severity when his percieved net contribution is low (or rapidly falling). And he can, if he disagrees, appeal to a higher authority who volunteered to the position.

No. Simply because you're suggesting it and you're doing it like a rules lawyer rather than someone who's concerned about SEN.

@Centreri, it sounds like you think you are a valuable contributor. You aren't.

All I can say is that every member with quite much severity gets under the scoop / get observed by staff inside of the saff forum. And additionally: there is a severity subtraction of -1 every 20 days, means that you cannot really gather severity from the beginning, it means you would have a bad time if you got 10 severity, therefore you might be suspended for at least a period of time.
By this I mean that you can have 1000 good and productive/constructive posts but when you post 10 very bad and/or flaming posts it's just obvious that you probably would be suspended. If you had done so like maybe once every three months, you probably would not have been suspended.

On a side-note: half of your severity logs are made in SD.

Yeah, I can vouch for the fact that we do discuss each member individually. We have a system set up that shows us who has a certain amount of severity over a certain threshold, and then discussion ensues regarding what to do with that member.

I strongly agree with this. In months of moderating Null, if I divided the number of severity points I have given into the number of moderation actions I have made, I would arrive at a number around 0.05 to 0.1. I feel like this is an order of magnitude at least smaller than many other current members of staff.

But it is a question of who moderates, and as certain great Staff are no longer among us, who knows what can be salvaged..

(edit) It's also sadly a little late to try to make reasonable discourse when so many members of the current Staff hate you personally, I'm afraid.

The simple fact that severity goes down with time defeats your argument. If you make 9 bad posts in a row, you get axed. If you make 9 bad posts out of a thousand, that 1009 posts would take you months and months to make (maybe even years), over which your severity will go down.

Mind you, we do not simply ban/suspend based on severity. We consider which sections the member caused trouble in. You're one such example.

We do use our own judgement. The book is there mostly as a possible weapon against rule lawyers. I don't think we should have any rules at all - just do whatever the fuck we deem right. Like things were done at ML.
I think you being banned from SD is a good thing for SD. If you can't make your post good in the first place, why should we waste our time correcting it? Sure, if it's one deistinctive statement that is a flame, I edit it out; but things like general attitude and respect, especially in SD, are conveyed through every word of your post. We don't want to and we won't rephrase your ideas, no matter how good they are.

Rule lawyers would contest moderation in such a case. Look at how you reacted to me moderating you in SD. Your arguments varied from philosophical to court room, devilesk-style "quote the rules that say my post was bad". Which is exactly why a member must see it coming. We don't want to give rule lawyers more ammo.
If someone has moderated you, it is very very very unlikely that we will agree that you were moderated unfairly. So why do we have to complicate things by adding another person to the layout?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2010, 11:57 am by JaFF.

You're right. I was wrong with my example, it doesn't accurately capture the point. Nevertheless, the general idea stands - punishment is independent from net contribution. Do you want to try an argue that if the various moderators had, instead of giving severity and eventually banning me, simply spent a few seconds removing the offending portions, more time would be wasted? That's what it boils down to. All your supposed reviews and discussions didn't do the job because you don't go through the alternatives and focused at eradicating the bad at any cost to the good.
Then your standards of 'average post quality' are skewed. In Maplantis and SENv4, there was greatly increased leniency, because in Maplantis there was no warning system (that I know of, at least) and thus no visual indicator to skew perceptions of the person, and in SENv4 because, well, the moderatorship was more lenient.
Now you're just exaggerating. Find me several examples of this endemic disrespect that's uneditable. In the post-Severity era, I have three non-severity SD posts (apart from those where I wrote 'Delete me') that got moderated. I'm very 'polite' until someone starts being idiotic yet continues to argue. And continues. And continues (see, because I'm also polite after the first two idiocisms).
You gave me one severity for quoting myself in SD. Excuse me for wanting you to actually moderate according to the rules.
My actual ban from SD wasn't based on my severity, but on Moose deciding that he doesn't want to bother with me contesting moderation. Another moderator taking his place would've solved the poor Moose's problem.

Eh. I'll float the idea of closing the thread early. The chances of convincing anyone when everyone is opposed to you are slim.

You don't moderate and you don't ban people, so you cannot see the full picture. Remember how LW posted a porn picture in the DLDB? He didn't get banned, just lost his mod powers. A more recent example is us banning a guy called SexyGodBuddah (or whatever his name was). He wasn't very active and then started to post bullshit. We (I, to be exact) banned him when he had 9 severity, even though our general idea is to suspend for a week or two when 10 severity is reached.

Severity just gives a general feel to both the moderator and the member how well he's doing. We consider each individual case. So please don't talk about it like you know how it works because you really don't.

You cannot compare the community of ML and current SEN because ML was much smaller, had different member base. Even if you could, you'd still be wrong because Yoshi/Tau baned people he found frustrating without messing about. In other words, less things had to be moderated because the community was better. As to your SENv4 point, if memory serves, we were always full of BS and back then, flame wars would go on in topics unmoderated.

See, the problem is that all such examples were deleted. On a more serious note, I've told you what to do via PM: don't argue for the sake of arguing, don't respond to stupid posts and don't lose your temper. ever. It's not my fault you fail to follow these guidelines.

You're looking at it from a wrong perspective. I gave you 2 severity for an overall bad post and your failure to stop arguing for the sake of arguing, not 1 severity for the stupid picture and 1 for quoting yourself. But why are you repeating this again? I thought I explained it to you via PM.

You just want a soft moderator that will lean over and say that you're right when you go complaining again.

The best I can tell you without being dragged into a brutal war of individual points that I don't have time to argue is this: The purpose of the system is not to do our thinking for us. The purpose of the system is to provide information to people who make judgments based on it. Severity serves that purpose.

Yeah. I get it. You do it holistically. I responded to that. Here it is: 'Do you want to try an argue that if the various moderators had, instead of giving severity and eventually banning me, simply spent a few seconds removing the offending portions, more time would be wasted? That's what it boils down to. All your supposed reviews and discussions didn't do the job because you don't go through the alternatives and focused at eradicating the bad at any cost to the good.'

Maplantis, even if there were half as much bad posts in it as SEN, had a system that dealt with it very well. And SENv4... I remember flame wars being more comman than now, but I attribute it to a... what, 4:1 community size ratio? The system worked. Even if it was a bit worse than what it is now, you can always find the middle ground instead of going over to the extremes of no moderation or strict moderation. This is a SC website for teenagers, not {insertsomethingworthbeingstrictabouthere}.

Deleted posts show up in the log. Additionally, your advice is as about as useful as if I told you to stop visiting SEN if you don't want to deal with me. A forum that permits stupidity shouldn't have harsh penalties for rudely (and not even flamingly, I get severity for posting pictures, quoting myself, employing mild sarcasm, and forgetting to put the name of the person I'm quoting...) responding to it. Also, I notice you dropped your point about my endemic disrespect. Again, even assuming I was justifiably fined (as in, I'd broken the rules), is that worth it? The two minutes total it takes to purify my bad posts is worth it, isn't it?

Giving two severity for an overall bad post is horrible, if you can't tell what, exactly, you're punishing me for. There's a reason there are rules - to allow you to subdivide bad posts and measure their... badness. If you refuse to do that, that's pretty arbitrary moderation.
I explained why I want a middleman. If you can't understand it, that's no longer my problem, as I hope others won't make your mistake.

Yeah, close this topic. Even if you want to get a last word in before doing it. It won't get anywhere - if the administration likes the idea, it always knows how to contact me to argue for it, and in hopefully a less... 'hostile' environment. I won't be convincing anyone with the entire moderation team arguing at once.

You know what, Cent. I think Moose should make you a moderator. I'll leave him to get the 'last word in'. Who knows - maybe he'll like my idea.

Dear god no. We had enough when Ex randomly became admin. (not intended to make ex feel QQ)

I think it may surprise you (and many others) to learn I probably fall into this category as well. Nevermind, I thought that said ".5 - 1"

Edit: Did some research, and without 2-3 specific members I'd say my average is around .2-.4. Add in those (who will remain unnamed) and it jumps to approximately 1. I've only found two instances when I've given a severity of 2, out of the approximately 20 or so admin logs I've checked. The point is, I don't really think I give an excess of severity for anything, and I doubt the rest of the staff does.

I'd just like to say, that we do.
There are two already, they're called moderators and global moderators. We're chosen because Moose believes we have the necessary judgement skills to handle this sort of thing. If this extra rank were created, who do you think would be chosen for it? Probably one of the existing staff. Basically, the extra position would be completely superfluous.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2010, 9:31 pm by Heather Graham.

This is the biggest problem at SEN. This is what most of the discussion in the staff forum is about. If you follow this one rule, and occasionally break most of the others (not porn, obviously bad ones), you will find that you won't get much severity, nor will you ever be in a case where you even MIGHT get suspended for longer than a month from an area. Don't EVER PM a moderator more than once contesting a moderation. It's just like submitting a complaint when a judge overrules a lawyer's objection. If you continue to object, you will be found in contempt, even if you are right, but you're allowed ONE complaint.

From what I see in this, Centreri wants something similar to the United States of SEN, where all are free to do as they want, must be tried by a jury of their peers (or something LIKE it, not to be taken literally).

But that's not how SEN rolls.

If you read the (it was either ToS [Yes i read it] or another document on SEN) SEN actually declares itself as a Dictatorship. Though this is good in point, I think it follows a sort of multi-communism with multiple leaders rather then a dictatorship (but i digress), except its a near-perfect communism, because no1 can actually extort any "money" or anything for themselves.

The administration states that they want the best for SEN, but one of the main problems I see is not the moderation actions themselves, but rather the words, attitude, and RESPECT level from the administration (and from the users). I could probably go through and count out hundreds of harsh sarcastic/rude comments from both sides of the fence. I don't particularly want to be pointing any fingers, but any time when you are trying to make a serious point to any of your "superiors" (administration), including sarcasm and obscenities NEVER EVER GETS YOU ANYWHERE because you end up pissing off the people you are trying to make a point to.

Ultimately we have to all gain a level of respect (and maybe even a friendship!) for eachother in order to get the BEST for SEN, otherwise we are just a bunch of flaming teenagers yelling at eachother. I might add more in a little

Edit1: Don't close this topic yet, there is still plenty of discussion to be had, especially regarding the points I have made.
Edit2: After some searching (And reading rockz' post again) I found that I am not the only one disliking the amount of respect here in SEN.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 22 2010, 4:19 am by TiKels.