Sorry if it's not what you wanted as an answer. For an example of why I don't like them: there's a tv thread in SE right now. It's mostly talking about Westworld, but because it exists there's no Westworld thread. People looking at the forum don't go "oh cool I like Westworld, I'm going to talk about Westworld in that thread". The conversation isn't as good as it would be in a thread about Westworld. It ends up being a super generalist thread that is convenient but has no real positive traits apart from that.
Tube, do you think there is a difference in conversational quality when it's a thread for a weekly television show versus one that has all of its episodes dumped at once?
For example, I can follow and participate in D&D's Agents of Shield thread because finding the time to watch one episode a week is doable for me and the weekly nature makes sure that everyone is on the same playing field. I get a similar feel in the SE++ comics threads.
I also think that the shows with a weekly release schedule tend to have longer running, slow-burning threads, where the Netflix-style shows experience a bright burst in conversation from those that can watch all the episodes but then that's it. Your thoughts?
Aside from the need for spoilers I haven't noticed a big difference.
There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the most ethical choice?
Also, if I am one of the people on the tracks does that influence your decision in which option you opt for?
I wait for the train to hit the five people, then break the switch and use it as a club to beat the man to death
Tube, you've stated that the @ function for you specifically should be used for the most severe and urgent of matters (and not like, "hey Tube check out this cute hedgehog picture or Hitman meme") because it like alerts your phone and sends you running to the forums. What's the general guideline on bat-signalling (hedgehog-signalling?) you specifically versus using the report function? I swear you've gone over this before but I tried looking for an answer on it and couldn't find one. Like what's a good ballpark on the kind of thing we should be hitting you with an @ for versus stuff that we should just be reporting to the mods?
@ is "someone is bleeding out". Things that are both serious or time sensitive, or things that I have a clear and direct interest in. So not like, the funny morrissey joke you think you made or a picture of a hedgehog.
Tube, do you have any thoughts on the weird cult of personality that, at times, develops around certain forumers? I know you mentioned not caring for use of real names in conversation on here, which got me thinking about that.
I think it teaches you interesting things about fame. Those cults either create a monster or a recluse.
Tube, I've noticed that even in threads you are just hanging out in you almost never use reaction buttons. Is there some kind of rule against forum staff using them? Do you not want to have us think you are conferring favor upon a specific user? Is it something you just don't do and haven't really thought about? Is this just something I've made up in my mind because of confirmation bias?
I don't really use them, I just never got into the habit
A moderation philosophy I've seen on other forums is "praise publicly, criticize privately" where posts that break forum rules are deleted and any moderation action with specific users is done via email or PM. Is this a moderation strategy you have any experience with, and if so do you have any conclusions on its long-term effectiveness in fostering a positive community?
I've enjoyed reading your blog entries and posts on moderation strategies. Aside from the old vanilla blogs is there any where else that has good insights on moderation strategy and techniques?
I think it's pretty bad as strategies go. Deleting posts is bad, moderating only in private is bad. It's good for the community manager, because things never get awkward and any mistakes they make are private. It mollifies higher ups who say "we don't want anything that looks negative in our community". For the community itself? I don't see a benefit. I guess it keeps drama down?
For blogs and insights, I don't have much to recommend I'm afraid. I think the quality of discourse on community management is generally pretty bad, and is increasingly focused on highly corporate environments. I'd include my later blogs in that, and the push towards that client base is why I lost interest in doing it.
A moderation philosophy I've seen on other forums is "praise publicly, criticize privately" where posts that break forum rules are deleted and any moderation action with specific users is done via email or PM. Is this a moderation strategy you have any experience with, and if so do you have any conclusions on its long-term effectiveness in fostering a positive community?
I've enjoyed reading your blog entries and posts on moderation strategies. Aside from the old vanilla blogs is there any where else that has good insights on moderation strategy and techniques?
I think it's pretty bad as strategies go. Deleting posts is bad, moderating only in private is bad. It's good for the community manager, because things never get awkward and any mistakes they make are private. It mollifies higher ups who say "we don't want anything that looks negative in our community". For the community itself? I don't see a benefit. I guess it keeps drama down?
For blogs and insights, I don't have much to recommend I'm afraid. I think the quality of discourse on community management is generally pretty bad, and is increasingly focused on highly corporate environments. I'd include my later blogs in that, and the push towards that client base is why I lost interest in doing it.
In regard to the "public praise, private criticism" strategy, the general effect that I have seen is users treat moderation as a type of profanity filter. If the worst that appears to happen is a bunch of posts might get deleted or a thread locked then people just do whatever they want without fear of consequences. Or worse, they game the system to get threads closed that they don't want others discussing. The other big blind spot in the practice is that if a post gets deleted by the poster is not informed in any way (unless they visit the thread again or dig through previous pages on the thread), drive-by posters may be completely unaware that they did anything worthy of moderation. In the long run it seems to generate more drama, and work for the moderators because the community never gets trained on what is acceptable behaviour. They don't need to because the moderators are acting as a pseudo profanity/behaviour filter as far as most users can tell through their interactions with the moderators.
On the second point, it's a shame that so many community management resources are focused on corporate environments. It makes sense, since that is likely where the money is, but it seems to miss the forest for the trees when community is treated only as a wing of marketing or entirely subservient to marketing. It reminds me of some of the early posts by Sanya Weathers (former community lead at Mythic for Dark Age of Camelot and author of the blog eatingbees) where the focus on corporate removes any sense of sincerity and genuineness that is key to a long-term healthy community.
Regardless, thanks for the response and keep up the good work.
A moderation philosophy I've seen on other forums is "praise publicly, criticize privately" where posts that break forum rules are deleted and any moderation action with specific users is done via email or PM. Is this a moderation strategy you have any experience with, and if so do you have any conclusions on its long-term effectiveness in fostering a positive community?
I've enjoyed reading your blog entries and posts on moderation strategies. Aside from the old vanilla blogs is there any where else that has good insights on moderation strategy and techniques?
I think it's pretty bad as strategies go. Deleting posts is bad, moderating only in private is bad. It's good for the community manager, because things never get awkward and any mistakes they make are private. It mollifies higher ups who say "we don't want anything that looks negative in our community". For the community itself? I don't see a benefit. I guess it keeps drama down?
For blogs and insights, I don't have much to recommend I'm afraid. I think the quality of discourse on community management is generally pretty bad, and is increasingly focused on highly corporate environments. I'd include my later blogs in that, and the push towards that client base is why I lost interest in doing it.
My experience with it is that it's really fucking confusing for the community and tends to cause almost more drama. Because posts and whole topics just suddenly disappear in the middle of the night as the forum stazi come by and spirit them away as if they never even existed. Shit just disappears without explanation and so no one knows what happened or what was said or what is even going on beyond strange cryptic remarks from the mods to "behave". So there's speculation and confusion and often repetition because people forget what was posted cause they can't look it up anymore.
A moderation philosophy I've seen on other forums is "praise publicly, criticize privately" where posts that break forum rules are deleted and any moderation action with specific users is done via email or PM. Is this a moderation strategy you have any experience with, and if so do you have any conclusions on its long-term effectiveness in fostering a positive community?
I've enjoyed reading your blog entries and posts on moderation strategies. Aside from the old vanilla blogs is there any where else that has good insights on moderation strategy and techniques?
I think it's pretty bad as strategies go. Deleting posts is bad, moderating only in private is bad. It's good for the community manager, because things never get awkward and any mistakes they make are private. It mollifies higher ups who say "we don't want anything that looks negative in our community". For the community itself? I don't see a benefit. I guess it keeps drama down?
For blogs and insights, I don't have much to recommend I'm afraid. I think the quality of discourse on community management is generally pretty bad, and is increasingly focused on highly corporate environments. I'd include my later blogs in that, and the push towards that client base is why I lost interest in doing it.
My experience with it is that it's really fucking confusing for the community and tends to cause almost more drama. Because posts and whole topics just suddenly disappear in the middle of the night as the forum stazi come by and spirit them away as if they never even existed. Shit just disappears without explanation and so no one knows what happened or what was said or what is even going on beyond strange cryptic remarks from the mods to "behave". So there's speculation and confusion and often repetition because people forget what was posted cause they can't look it up anymore.
This is why I'd be a bad mod, because I'd totally delete this post as a joke.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
A moderation philosophy I've seen on other forums is "praise publicly, criticize privately" where posts that break forum rules are deleted and any moderation action with specific users is done via email or PM. Is this a moderation strategy you have any experience with, and if so do you have any conclusions on its long-term effectiveness in fostering a positive community?
On the forum I moderated, we tried to do something like this and it honestly didn't work whatsoever. While deleting posts did happen, the fact was that deleting offensive posts and reprimanding the user in question through PM/infraction systems usually didn't help. Derails and similar will just come right back again, usually with the exact same individuals carrying on the problem. It also became clear that keeping posts that broke the rules, unless it was really bad - like a certain fellow who spent an entire day getting his jollies from making us delete extremely explicit porn - was far better than silently deleting and reprimanding in PM etc. Once people got a sense that doing things like calling someone a fanboy/troll constantly would lead to immediate infractions and eventually being tossed off, behavior markedly improved in general.
So basically, this was not a good idea and only made people more confused or angry than keeping things around.
A moderation philosophy I've seen on other forums is "praise publicly, criticize privately" where posts that break forum rules are deleted and any moderation action with specific users is done via email or PM. Is this a moderation strategy you have any experience with, and if so do you have any conclusions on its long-term effectiveness in fostering a positive community?
I've enjoyed reading your blog entries and posts on moderation strategies. Aside from the old vanilla blogs is there any where else that has good insights on moderation strategy and techniques?
I think it's pretty bad as strategies go. Deleting posts is bad, moderating only in private is bad. It's good for the community manager, because things never get awkward and any mistakes they make are private. It mollifies higher ups who say "we don't want anything that looks negative in our community". For the community itself? I don't see a benefit. I guess it keeps drama down?
For blogs and insights, I don't have much to recommend I'm afraid. I think the quality of discourse on community management is generally pretty bad, and is increasingly focused on highly corporate environments. I'd include my later blogs in that, and the push towards that client base is why I lost interest in doing it.
My experience with it is that it's really fucking confusing for the community and tends to cause almost more drama. Because posts and whole topics just suddenly disappear in the middle of the night as the forum stazi come by and spirit them away as if they never even existed. Shit just disappears without explanation and so no one knows what happened or what was said or what is even going on beyond strange cryptic remarks from the mods to "behave". So there's speculation and confusion and often repetition because people forget what was posted cause they can't look it up anymore.
This is why I'd be a bad mod, because I'd totally delete this post as a joke.
ditto.
and just generally encourage a chaotic environment that isn't particularly welcoming to new folk.
and argue constantly for anime threads.
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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ChanusHarbinger of the Spicy Rooster ApocalypseThe Flames of a Thousand Collapsed StarsRegistered Userregular
A moderation philosophy I've seen on other forums is "praise publicly, criticize privately" where posts that break forum rules are deleted and any moderation action with specific users is done via email or PM. Is this a moderation strategy you have any experience with, and if so do you have any conclusions on its long-term effectiveness in fostering a positive community?
On the forum I moderated, we tried to do something like this and it honestly didn't work whatsoever. While deleting posts did happen, the fact was that deleting offensive posts and reprimanding the user in question through PM/infraction systems usually didn't help. Derails and similar will just come right back again, usually with the exact same individuals carrying on the problem. It also became clear that keeping posts that broke the rules, unless it was really bad - like a certain fellow who spent an entire day getting his jollies from making us delete extremely explicit porn - was far better than silently deleting and reprimanding in PM etc. Once people got a sense that doing things like calling someone a fanboy/troll constantly would lead to immediate infractions and eventually being tossed off, behavior markedly improved in general.
So basically, this was not a good idea and only made people more confused or angry than keeping things around.
i was a mod on a forum once, only literally the only abilities they gave the mods were deleting posts and reporting posts to the community manager
The old forum posts going back to 2003 exist in the Internet Archive.
YOUHAVEBEENWARNED!
Also the chatlog Acumulated Forum Knowledge has an amusing 2003-era PC troubleshooting thread from H/A. IRQs and shit. (Not quite that old, upon review).
1) What can D&D regulars do better (if anything) to make the subforum more welcoming to newcomers?
2) I know several forumers contributed to the Thornwatch campaign just as a demonstration of solidarity for the forums. Are there other ways that we can promote the long-term existence of the forums? (Not just with financial donations, though that's not out of the question.)
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Where there specific situations where people created fake Child's Play Charity events on the forums that necessitated the rules for posting about them?
A moderation philosophy I've seen on other forums is "praise publicly, criticize privately" where posts that break forum rules are deleted and any moderation action with specific users is done via email or PM. Is this a moderation strategy you have any experience with, and if so do you have any conclusions on its long-term effectiveness in fostering a positive community?
I've enjoyed reading your blog entries and posts on moderation strategies. Aside from the old vanilla blogs is there any where else that has good insights on moderation strategy and techniques?
I think it's pretty bad as strategies go. Deleting posts is bad, moderating only in private is bad. It's good for the community manager, because things never get awkward and any mistakes they make are private. It mollifies higher ups who say "we don't want anything that looks negative in our community". For the community itself? I don't see a benefit. I guess it keeps drama down?
For blogs and insights, I don't have much to recommend I'm afraid. I think the quality of discourse on community management is generally pretty bad, and is increasingly focused on highly corporate environments. I'd include my later blogs in that, and the push towards that client base is why I lost interest in doing it.
My experience with it is that it's really fucking confusing for the community and tends to cause almost more drama. Because posts and whole topics just suddenly disappear in the middle of the night as the forum stazi come by and spirit them away as if they never even existed. Shit just disappears without explanation and so no one knows what happened or what was said or what is even going on beyond strange cryptic remarks from the mods to "behave". So there's speculation and confusion and often repetition because people forget what was posted cause they can't look it up anymore.
This is why I'd be a bad mod, because I'd totally delete this post as a joke.
ditto.
and just generally encourage a chaotic environment that isn't particularly welcoming to new folk.
and argue constantly for anime threads.
I would start a daily "Word of the Day" thread where you guess what the word of the day is. Anyone who posts the word that day anywhere eats a 1-day ban until someone figures it out.
If you are the one that figures it out in that days thread you win a 1-day ban too, because rules have to be consistent.
I would also probably start editing people's older posts to make them say hilarious stuff and then just see what happens when someone reads a few pages back.
My only moderation experience was being a SysOp on a middle-eastern IRC server that hosted a channel for a star wars RPG game. English-only ops were given a block of text to paste when contacted for help by the overwhelmingly predominant Arabic (Farsi? Hebrew? Honestly no idea) speaking user base.
I suspect it said something denigrating based on the responses I got.
It was through that community that I discovered this one; though I thought it was a collection of shitty web browser games before I finally clicked through.
Tube, how did you stumble across this community slash webcomic?
ArbitraryDescriptor on
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
edited October 2016
I used to mod for FlashFlashRevolution in their literature/writing forum, and while we didn't have a points system in place, I could warn users and lock threads. I could also delete and edit posts and threads, but that was strongly, strongly discouraged. The admin at the time thought that even though some people were real jerkasses, having that sort of living history of the forums was good for the community.
I also used to mod for LivingWithStyle, also in their creative writing subforum, but that subforum was pretty dead. Then the owner of the site really got into yoga and sold it to the developer and the entire forum changed and it became kind of crappy and then it got shut down.
LWS was interesting, in that it had an upvote/downvote system where each upvote contributed one 'style point' which could be spent on items on a subforum game called Anarchy, or you could save up and buy a premium membership and get access to a subforum hidden and specific for people who had 'gold' accounts. It was a weird setup, and any proof of vote tampering would end up in either a temporary or permanent ban, so it encouraged cautious posting because it was FOR KEEPS.
MalReynolds on
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I used to mod for FlashFlashRevolution in their literature/writing forum, and while we didn't have a points system in place, I could warn users and lock threads. I could also delete and edit posts and threads, but that was strongly, strongly discouraged. The admin at the time thought that even though some people were real jerkasses, having that sort of living history of the forums was good for the community.
I also used to mod for LivingWithStyle, also in their creative writing subforum, but that subforum was pretty dead. Then the owner of the site really got into yoga and sold it to the developer and the entire forum changed and it became kind of crappy and then it got shut down.
LWS was interesting, in that it had an upvote/downvote system where each upvote contributed one 'style point' which could be spent on items on a subforum game called Anarchy, or you could save up and buy a premium membership and get access to a subforum hidden and specific for people who had 'gold' accounts. It was a weird setup, and any proof of vote tampering would end up in either a temporary or permanent ban, so it encouraged cautious posting because it was FOR KEEPS.
Where there specific situations where people created fake Child's Play Charity events on the forums that necessitated the rules for posting about them?
I am pretty sure this had to do with Mass Effect 3 and the backlash against the ending of the game. During the kerfuffle, a large number of disenfranchised fans raised an enormous amount of money to send a message to Bioware. This money was donated to Child's Play, which prompted this post from Jerry/Mike on the front page.
I actually support this cause, but I am a pessimist, and I’m thinking about the next time something like this happens - when someone attaches Child’s Play to something we can’t get behind, or leverages your history of generosity and fellow feeling for their own weird bullshit. So, we need to have something like a policy on this. This is the best way I can think to say it:
Child’s Play cannot be a tool to draw attention to a cause. Child’s Play must be the Cause.
This largely came about because numerous people thought that Child's Play supported an effort to get an ending to a video game changed (seriously), were wanting to know how much needed to be raised to produce the ending, were upset that Child's Play was involved (for those supportive of Bioware's original ending) and those charging back the charity for donations (various reasons). It was, to put it lightly, a gigantic mess of a situation.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
tube who is waifu#1
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
No question, I just wanted to formally apologize for my semi-recent behavior and recognize the effort all of the mods and Tube put forth that make this one of the few communities on the web that are an oasis from the Reddit wasteland.
1) What can D&D regulars do better (if anything) to make the subforum more welcoming to newcomers?
2) I know several forumers contributed to the Thornwatch campaign just as a demonstration of solidarity for the forums. Are there other ways that we can promote the long-term existence of the forums? (Not just with financial donations, though that's not out of the question.)
1. Just be nice to new people. That's literally it. Even if they don't have views that conform to the current dominant culture. Someone is super conservative, but is following all the rules? They're allowed to be that. All the community really needs is a commitment to "I will be cool to people". Treat them like you would in a social environment like a bar. If you meet a guy and he's kind of Republican, you're not going to say "cool I agree with you to be polite" but you're also not going to start screaming at him because who does that?
2. I honestly don't provide a lot of opportunity to do that, but I'm looking into ways to offer more avenues for supporting the main page.
Mainly it's just "support Penny Arcade". Buy some stuff (our merch is really good). Support our Kickstarters (we have a great track record). Read the comic. Share the comic. Watch the videos. Share the videos. Etc etc. Right now, there's no way to track that back to the forum, but I'm working on it. We will at some point have banner ads with PA projects and maybe other ads on there, but there's some serious fucking yak shaving involved with getting that running. Those can then have tracking that tells us "hey these guys bought this from the forums".
There are some people who take great pride in telling the world "ho ho ho, I post on the forums all the time and I don't read the comic or contribute in any way" and it's an incredibly rude and shitty way to behave.
Where there specific situations where people created fake Child's Play Charity events on the forums that necessitated the rules for posting about them?
No, nothing major ever happened. It's just a good administrative policy and cuts down on a lot of work. If they tell you first, I can check it out at a relatively leisurely pace and make sure everything works out. If they just post it, I have to hustle
Where there specific situations where people created fake Child's Play Charity events on the forums that necessitated the rules for posting about them?
I am pretty sure this had to do with Mass Effect 3 and the backlash against the ending of the game.
Not to single you out, but this is an example of why I can't stand people answering questions for me. It has nothing to do with this, nothing at all, but I can now guarantee that I'll spend the next three years reading some version of this being repeated as fact by people on the forums.
See also: The persistent myth that "the n word rule is because we showed up as the top google result for the n word"
Have you considered combing through the previous threads and creating a Penny Arcade Forum FAQ?
I haven't. Mostly because it would be a ballache, but also because the Ask Tube threads are mostly full of "interesting to know" questions rather than things that you'd put in a FAQ. "Why is this how this is?" generally isn't something you put in an FAQ, because it doesn't really matter outside of curiosity. Also, our rules thread is already a fucking brick.
1. I was offline the first couple years I drove over the road and missed a bunch of stuff. Is Ramius still around? If not, where did he go?
2. Is there a story or reason behind "silly goose," or did you choose the term on the spur of the moment?
He's doing well! He didn't really have time for the forums any more and our change of software to Vanilla meant that we didn't need him "keeping the lights on" so to speak. Vanilla is also, unfortunately, much less customisable at the user end so most of the things that he would find interesting and rewarding to do for their own sake were no longer practical. He's still technically an admin and helps out every now and then in an advisory capacity. He and I are very close "in real life".
2. It's what my (then) 2 year old cousin used to call me when I angered him. I have used it as a standby for "shithead" for many years.
It's also impossible to put any stink on it. People try, constantly. It never works, and makes you sound even lamer than if you just said "silly goose"
I mean, $10 for 6 months (assuming one doesn't care about the pin or merch discount coupon) is something I'm happy to keep up on these days. Just over $1.50 a month to support the site that has given me so much over the years? Totally worth it.
I should see if my "I Roll 20's" and "Aggro" shirts are still around. It seems they discontinued the Baby vs Rhino one though. Not that many people got that reference.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I still have my Baby vs Rhino shirt. I have several PA shirts, actually, some of them close to ten years old. They are all in great shape and I love them. PA sells quality stuff.
Buy PA, I guess.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
It's like Amazon Fire TV, but as a workaround for low internet bandwidth in the late 90s they had to distribute the movies on these plastic coasters. If anything, Circuit City was a decade ahead of their time.
See also: The persistent myth that "the n word rule is because we showed up as the top google result for the n word"
Ha, I can't believe anyone who has spent any amount of time on the internet could possibly believe that's true
i mean reddit and 4chan alone...
Pretty sure that rule predated Reddit (or, if not, than Reddit's explosion into what it's become today), and as far as I recall 4chan used to be much more about quietly sharing appalling pornography than trumpeting appalling political views.
Also, we used to be a pretty appalling board here, pre Glorious Edict.
Just saying, that myth was a lot easier to believe back in the day.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Tube have you watched Person of Interest? If you have I've got a second question for you.
If you haven't I've got a suggestion for you regarding TV shows you should definitely watch.
Posts
Aside from the need for spoilers I haven't noticed a big difference.
I wait for the train to hit the five people, then break the switch and use it as a club to beat the man to death
No, it isn't. Until the weekend it wasn't appreciably slower than the G&T one.
I normally just have cheese. Cheese is nice.
Haunter at the moment
@ is "someone is bleeding out". Things that are both serious or time sensitive, or things that I have a clear and direct interest in. So not like, the funny morrissey joke you think you made or a picture of a hedgehog.
That was community run, so it's dependent on someone stepping up to the plate
I think it teaches you interesting things about fame. Those cults either create a monster or a recluse.
Brosnan was the best Bond in the worst movies
They are pretty ok
I don't really use them, I just never got into the habit
I think it's pretty bad as strategies go. Deleting posts is bad, moderating only in private is bad. It's good for the community manager, because things never get awkward and any mistakes they make are private. It mollifies higher ups who say "we don't want anything that looks negative in our community". For the community itself? I don't see a benefit. I guess it keeps drama down?
For blogs and insights, I don't have much to recommend I'm afraid. I think the quality of discourse on community management is generally pretty bad, and is increasingly focused on highly corporate environments. I'd include my later blogs in that, and the push towards that client base is why I lost interest in doing it.
In regard to the "public praise, private criticism" strategy, the general effect that I have seen is users treat moderation as a type of profanity filter. If the worst that appears to happen is a bunch of posts might get deleted or a thread locked then people just do whatever they want without fear of consequences. Or worse, they game the system to get threads closed that they don't want others discussing. The other big blind spot in the practice is that if a post gets deleted by the poster is not informed in any way (unless they visit the thread again or dig through previous pages on the thread), drive-by posters may be completely unaware that they did anything worthy of moderation. In the long run it seems to generate more drama, and work for the moderators because the community never gets trained on what is acceptable behaviour. They don't need to because the moderators are acting as a pseudo profanity/behaviour filter as far as most users can tell through their interactions with the moderators.
On the second point, it's a shame that so many community management resources are focused on corporate environments. It makes sense, since that is likely where the money is, but it seems to miss the forest for the trees when community is treated only as a wing of marketing or entirely subservient to marketing. It reminds me of some of the early posts by Sanya Weathers (former community lead at Mythic for Dark Age of Camelot and author of the blog eatingbees) where the focus on corporate removes any sense of sincerity and genuineness that is key to a long-term healthy community.
Regardless, thanks for the response and keep up the good work.
My experience with it is that it's really fucking confusing for the community and tends to cause almost more drama. Because posts and whole topics just suddenly disappear in the middle of the night as the forum stazi come by and spirit them away as if they never even existed. Shit just disappears without explanation and so no one knows what happened or what was said or what is even going on beyond strange cryptic remarks from the mods to "behave". So there's speculation and confusion and often repetition because people forget what was posted cause they can't look it up anymore.
This is why I'd be a bad mod, because I'd totally delete this post as a joke.
pleasepaypreacher.net
On the forum I moderated, we tried to do something like this and it honestly didn't work whatsoever. While deleting posts did happen, the fact was that deleting offensive posts and reprimanding the user in question through PM/infraction systems usually didn't help. Derails and similar will just come right back again, usually with the exact same individuals carrying on the problem. It also became clear that keeping posts that broke the rules, unless it was really bad - like a certain fellow who spent an entire day getting his jollies from making us delete extremely explicit porn - was far better than silently deleting and reprimanding in PM etc. Once people got a sense that doing things like calling someone a fanboy/troll constantly would lead to immediate infractions and eventually being tossed off, behavior markedly improved in general.
So basically, this was not a good idea and only made people more confused or angry than keeping things around.
ditto.
and just generally encourage a chaotic environment that isn't particularly welcoming to new folk.
and argue constantly for anime threads.
i was a mod on a forum once, only literally the only abilities they gave the mods were deleting posts and reporting posts to the community manager
it was not very effective
Also the chatlog Acumulated Forum Knowledge has an amusing 2003-era PC troubleshooting thread from H/A. IRQs and shit. (Not quite that old, upon review).
He doesn't use our plebian reaction buttons. He makes his own.
1) What can D&D regulars do better (if anything) to make the subforum more welcoming to newcomers?
2) I know several forumers contributed to the Thornwatch campaign just as a demonstration of solidarity for the forums. Are there other ways that we can promote the long-term existence of the forums? (Not just with financial donations, though that's not out of the question.)
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I would start a daily "Word of the Day" thread where you guess what the word of the day is. Anyone who posts the word that day anywhere eats a 1-day ban until someone figures it out.
If you are the one that figures it out in that days thread you win a 1-day ban too, because rules have to be consistent.
I would also probably start editing people's older posts to make them say hilarious stuff and then just see what happens when someone reads a few pages back.
I suspect it said something denigrating based on the responses I got.
It was through that community that I discovered this one; though I thought it was a collection of shitty web browser games before I finally clicked through.
Tube, how did you stumble across this community slash webcomic?
I also used to mod for LivingWithStyle, also in their creative writing subforum, but that subforum was pretty dead. Then the owner of the site really got into yoga and sold it to the developer and the entire forum changed and it became kind of crappy and then it got shut down.
LWS was interesting, in that it had an upvote/downvote system where each upvote contributed one 'style point' which could be spent on items on a subforum game called Anarchy, or you could save up and buy a premium membership and get access to a subforum hidden and specific for people who had 'gold' accounts. It was a weird setup, and any proof of vote tampering would end up in either a temporary or permanent ban, so it encouraged cautious posting because it was FOR KEEPS.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Wall-to-wall cat pics.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I am pretty sure this had to do with Mass Effect 3 and the backlash against the ending of the game. During the kerfuffle, a large number of disenfranchised fans raised an enormous amount of money to send a message to Bioware. This money was donated to Child's Play, which prompted this post from Jerry/Mike on the front page.
This largely came about because numerous people thought that Child's Play supported an effort to get an ending to a video game changed (seriously), were wanting to know how much needed to be raised to produce the ending, were upset that Child's Play was involved (for those supportive of Bioware's original ending) and those charging back the charity for donations (various reasons). It was, to put it lightly, a gigantic mess of a situation.
2. Is there a story or reason behind "silly goose," or did you choose the term on the spur of the moment?
- John Stuart Mill
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
1. Just be nice to new people. That's literally it. Even if they don't have views that conform to the current dominant culture. Someone is super conservative, but is following all the rules? They're allowed to be that. All the community really needs is a commitment to "I will be cool to people". Treat them like you would in a social environment like a bar. If you meet a guy and he's kind of Republican, you're not going to say "cool I agree with you to be polite" but you're also not going to start screaming at him because who does that?
2. I honestly don't provide a lot of opportunity to do that, but I'm looking into ways to offer more avenues for supporting the main page.
Mainly it's just "support Penny Arcade". Buy some stuff (our merch is really good). Support our Kickstarters (we have a great track record). Read the comic. Share the comic. Watch the videos. Share the videos. Etc etc. Right now, there's no way to track that back to the forum, but I'm working on it. We will at some point have banner ads with PA projects and maybe other ads on there, but there's some serious fucking yak shaving involved with getting that running. Those can then have tracking that tells us "hey these guys bought this from the forums".
There are some people who take great pride in telling the world "ho ho ho, I post on the forums all the time and I don't read the comic or contribute in any way" and it's an incredibly rude and shitty way to behave.
No, nothing major ever happened. It's just a good administrative policy and cuts down on a lot of work. If they tell you first, I can check it out at a relatively leisurely pace and make sure everything works out. If they just post it, I have to hustle
Not to single you out, but this is an example of why I can't stand people answering questions for me. It has nothing to do with this, nothing at all, but I can now guarantee that I'll spend the next three years reading some version of this being repeated as fact by people on the forums.
See also: The persistent myth that "the n word rule is because we showed up as the top google result for the n word"
I haven't. Mostly because it would be a ballache, but also because the Ask Tube threads are mostly full of "interesting to know" questions rather than things that you'd put in a FAQ. "Why is this how this is?" generally isn't something you put in an FAQ, because it doesn't really matter outside of curiosity. Also, our rules thread is already a fucking brick.
He's doing well! He didn't really have time for the forums any more and our change of software to Vanilla meant that we didn't need him "keeping the lights on" so to speak. Vanilla is also, unfortunately, much less customisable at the user end so most of the things that he would find interesting and rewarding to do for their own sake were no longer practical. He's still technically an admin and helps out every now and then in an advisory capacity. He and I are very close "in real life".
2. It's what my (then) 2 year old cousin used to call me when I angered him. I have used it as a standby for "shithead" for many years.
It's also impossible to put any stink on it. People try, constantly. It never works, and makes you sound even lamer than if you just said "silly goose"
Lager. I'm not a big beer drinker and don't have the spoons to dedicate to the acquired taste of bitter.
Bonus point: Club PA is awesome
I should see if my "I Roll 20's" and "Aggro" shirts are still around. It seems they discontinued the Baby vs Rhino one though. Not that many people got that reference.
It is the only article of clothing that I own that I regularly had to explain to strangers.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Buy PA, I guess.
An attempt to do rentals where you own the physical medium.
A ball of hatred, spite and malice.
But I repeat Hedgie.
i haven't heard that in years
and with good reason
it is also confusing, and well manufactured
It's like Amazon Fire TV, but as a workaround for low internet bandwidth in the late 90s they had to distribute the movies on these plastic coasters. If anything, Circuit City was a decade ahead of their time.
It's also the subject of two of my favorite comics from early PA.
1
2
- John Stuart Mill
If yes, can we get pictures?
If no, when are you getting one?
No, wait:
In the X Universe, which ship(s) do you prefer to fly yourself?
Which race, if any, do you prefer to befriend or screw over?
Rhetorical edit: Why am I getting myself all excited about old X games when I know they will not support my shiny new VR investment?
Ha, I can't believe anyone who has spent any amount of time on the internet could possibly believe that's true
i mean reddit and 4chan alone...
Pretty sure that rule predated Reddit (or, if not, than Reddit's explosion into what it's become today), and as far as I recall 4chan used to be much more about quietly sharing appalling pornography than trumpeting appalling political views.
Also, we used to be a pretty appalling board here, pre Glorious Edict.
Just saying, that myth was a lot easier to believe back in the day.
If you haven't I've got a suggestion for you regarding TV shows you should definitely watch.