So simply asking the mod team to communicate more effectively and be more transparent in their actions, isn’t a ‘grown-up’ thing to do, eh?
Gotta beg to differ there fella, we may see lots of new people joining (I genuinely don’t know what the membership figures look like) but it’s the same old names posting, we certainly don’t see a whole host of new names contributing.[/quote]
If they don’t ever post, they won’t see what the mod style is will they. Sure they may see the same old names comps complaining that they’ve been modded and that could put them off a bit, but as a newbie I worked out who were the same offenders and it didn’t put me off at all. Why should it anyone else?
This isn’t about me\others ‘not liking being modded’ but more about the method of moderation employed by some of the team.
Judging by your comments, you appear to be someone who always accepts the status quo and never questions anything? Have you never done so in your hobby or your working life?
[quote=“Plt Off Prune” post=14276]
If they don’t ever post, they won’t see what the mod style is will they.[/quote]
Of course they can, by lurking!
If it’s so great, as you think, where are all these new members you speak of, and why aren’t they posting?
Bingo, with bells on! It enables them to be snidey with what is effectively an alt. If they can’t be even handed and mod under their normal usernames I’d question their suitability to mod at all![/quote]To be fair, I don’t think that the mods actually do for the most part any more; most just post with their mod account. Some have ‘come out’ with their details too (such as their previous username) and just use the ‘Op’ usernames because it’s what they’ve been known as for a while.
Some of them may be more anonymous, but then so can anybody.
Hello there!
I was trying to get on with my life, when I noticed the reports on my phone. I thought it would be best if I moved the topic out of the public eye, because the reports raised valid issues. I didn’t really have time to look into the fine details, but when author and subject of a photo labelled “What The Hell?! Part 2”, complains it is taken seriously.
The picture was of a cadet with a feather in his beret, taken indoors. The picture was not previously publicly available (as far as I can tell).
Relevant bits of the AUP (condensed):
[quote]10. Further to paragraph 9, by submitting your contribution to aircadetcentral.net, you:
10.1. warrant that your contribution:
10.1.1. is your own original work and that you have the right to make it available to ACC for all the purposes specified above;
10.4 Any photographs, images, or video submitted to ACC are to be posted with good intentions and aimed at constructive commentary, not with the aim of harassing, belittling, victimising or otherwise cyber-bullying the person(s) depicted. The moderation team will have the final say on whether a picture is acceptable or not. Any posts breaching these terms will be removed and the poster responsible may have sanctions applied against their account
10.5 where a photograph is copied from another source, that source shall be credited in accompanying text and, in the case of web based photographs, a link to the original location is to be provided.[/quote]
Additionally, a decision was made a few years ago, that ‘uniform fails’ threads targeting cadets were not acceptable.
A reasonable complaint, made to reasonable people will be acted upon. Interestingly The cadet didn’t actually use the report post button. SVS, among others reported it. For future reference, when you report topics, they are likely to be pulled.
The thread will not be restored, for reasons that should be clear. We will also try to reduce our notification time. No other action will be taken.
To conclude:
Please don’t post pictures of cadets and invite criticism.
Reports will always be taken seriously.
When a topic vanishes, give us a bit of time to let you all know why. We use that time to talk to each other and prevent double standards.
Air Cadets should not be attached to feathers and such deviations from the dress regs can make people uppity.
Gotta beg to differ there fella, we may see lots of new people joining (I genuinely don’t know what the membership figures look like) but it’s the same old names posting, we certainly don’t see a whole host of new names contributing.[/quote]
a noticeable new member is Racing Stick, quite an informed and open thread about his past as a “hi this is who i am” thread and has been posting regularly since…there maybe more but i notice his Avatar more than others given its unique nature
[quote=“SVS” post=14279]
Of course they can, by lurking!
If it’s so great, as you think, where are all these new members you speak of, and why aren’t they posting?[/quote]
i was lurking on here on and off for 4-6 months before i signed up and even then didnt post regularly.
some people may visit to see if the boards can answer a question, and of those some may sign up to see the full access (images and downloads are not available unless signed in)
[quote=“Operation Archway” post=14282]
A reasonable complaint, made to reasonable people will be acted upon[/quote]
It sounds very much like you are the site owner as you seem to speak with a higher degree of authority than other mods. So a reasonable complaint about the standards of moderation will be acted upon?
What ‘notification time’? Until this thread, there were NO notifications on why things had been pulled.
I take that to mean the standards of moderation and the actions of individual mods won’t be reviewed?
Not really working, that, is it?
Gotta beg to differ there fella, we may see lots of new people joining (I genuinely don’t know what the membership figures look like) but it’s the same old names posting, we certainly don’t see a whole host of new names contributing.[/quote]
a noticeable new member is Racing Stick, quite an informed and open thread about his past as a “hi this is who i am” thread and has been posting regularly since…there maybe more but i notice his Avatar more than others given its unique nature
[quote=“SVS” post=14279]
Of course they can, by lurking!
If it’s so great, as you think, where are all these new members you speak of, and why aren’t they posting?[/quote]
i was lurking on here on and off for 4-6 months before i signed up and even then didnt post regularly.
some people may visit to see if the boards can answer a question, and of those some may sign up to see the full access (images and downloads are not available unless signed in)[/quote]
Thats my point dude, 2 whole new posters. Something is stopping people joining in. For reference I’m not suggesting that the modding is the only reason either!
At the end of the day nobody likes their moderation being criticised. However these threads keep popping up so the “plebs” clearly aren’t all that happy with some of the moderation teams actions. They can either act on what keeps being said, or not. I don’t think any of what people are asking for is unreasonable and certainly happens on every other forum I visit, so I can’t see any reason for it not to on a smaller forum such as this. It might even encourage a little growth!
I’m not the site owner, it was more of a general statement. Complaints about moderation are listened to (perhaps I should have said considered instead of acted upon). People have made complaints about threads silently vanishing, so we are working on telling people why, when it happens. People have complained about mod anonymity, most active mods’s previous user names are now public.
Like other fourms, we usually send PMs to people involved in deleted threads/posts. I am just quite bad at doing it promptly.
When I said “No other action will be taken”, I was talking about the treads that were removed, and how I wasn’t going to sanction participants for accidentally breaking half the AUP. The standard of moderation is always being reviewed.
I disagree with your last point, but we are always trying to improve.
I can pull posts and sort thing out myself and get us criticised for not being consistent. I can pull posts and wait for consensus from other mods, and get criticised for not being open. I can leave posts up and wait for consensus and get criticised for not doing my job.
What you need is a better interim position. Pulling the thread altogether isn’t working. As there is no communication. i thought that what one of the mods did the other day, (I could check, but I’m on my phone) on the thread about side caps was a sensible interim position, he locked it, explained the issues, tidied it up by editing, not deleting posts, then reopened it with a warning post. That’s fine. Because the moderation actions are attributable to the moderator who edited them, the actions are transparent and the reasons fair.
Like I said, I agree with incubus in I think the moderation decisions are fair, they just need to be more transparent, don’t be afraid of scrutiny, because on the whole you guys come out well when you explain everything.
Could I possibly suggest that under most circumstances, instead of deleting a thread for whatever reason that locking it, deleting any posts that need to be removed (all of them if necessary) and then having a brief post explaining why?
It saves having to PM everyone in the thread, and means that those who were following it but not posting aren’t left wondering where it went.
Or, we could look at it in another way. If someone you didn’t know posted a photo of you anonymously on an internet forum for the express purpose of getting people to be rude to you, you would feel a little aggrieved no doubt.
We’re not stating in any way shape or form that what was pictured was right or wrong, what we’re saying is that posting someone’s photo without their permission (which may or may not have been in the public domain already - I don’t know) with the intent to ridicule them is wrong and everyone has the right to request that to stop.
These sorts of posts are exactly why this forum has such a bad name amongst staff. If you can identify the person, why not go and speak to his OC or WO or WWO or Wing Commander? If you can’t identify them then there’s no point posting it, as it’s just a chance for people to have a go.
Hmm, sorry that last post of mine was:
a) supposed to be a quote of Angus on page 1
b) sent without reading further through the thread.
In addition, we are reviewing what we’re doing right now. We are moving away from having operation usernames, we have created a moderation policy/code of conduct and we’re in the process of working out how we can be more transparent, as much as anything, within the limitations of the board.
phpBB was really good for modding - you got a notification similar to a PM, you got the report to refer back to, you could see a log of moderator actions and it was much easier to keep on top of things. This newer board poses us some problems - namely we get sent an email of the abuse report, and nothing appears when we log in here at all.
This means we can’t easily track who has done what, said what to whom and when and relies on us having the time to type it all up, when we might have just been checking new things in a break, spotted something bad and removed it for cleaning later.
Whether we lock the thread, remove it entirely from view or just edit the posts depends on what the problem is - in the case in question, it was clearly inappropriate to leave it in public view, and we needed time to discuss what we felt we should do about it. Bear in mind there are only a couple of us, working different hours with different abilities to access the site and realisitcally it could be a day or more before we can all see the boards, let alone act on them!
We nearly always seek guidance from each other on difficult decisions (other than things like swearing, baiting and trolling etc) and we go by consensus.
I hope that clears a bit up, but as ever anyone is welcome to PM me to ask about any decisions I’ve made.
If he didn’t want to be seen or identified, he shouldn’t have posted the image into the public domain in the first place. The cadet in questions needs to accept responsibility for his actions.
Also, thought I should say - I fully intended to step down as a moderator but DJRice asked me not to, so I’m still here but trying to limit how much time I spend here, until I remember why I wanted to use the site in the first place again!
[quote=“pEp” post=14301]Or, we could look at it in another way. If someone you didn’t know posted a photo of you anonymously on an internet forum for the express purpose of getting people to be rude to you, you would feel a little aggrieved no doubt.
We’re not stating in any way shape or form that what was pictured was right or wrong, what we’re saying is that posting someone’s photo without their permission (which may or may not have been in the public domain already - I don’t know) with the intent to ridicule them is wrong and everyone has the right to request that to stop.
These sorts of posts are exactly why this forum has such a bad name amongst staff. If you can identify the person, why not go and speak to his OC or WO or WWO or Wing Commander? If you can’t identify them then there’s no point posting it, as it’s just a chance for people to have a go.[/quote]
But the problem isn’t just related to that one picture/thread. It’s related to a wider range of actions, and I think you know that as you aren’t stupid. But if you want to home in on one point and ignore the wider issue…
Accepting responsibility for someone’s actions is VASTLY different to cyber bullying, which is what these threads ALWAYS descend into.
Let’s not forget, this is a cadet we’re talking about. Someone young, prone to making mistakes and someone who will generally do as they’re told. Indeed, the PM report we received mentioned the reasons for wearing and I doubt very much you could say it was his own initiative.
[quote=“SVS” post=14305][quote=“pEp” post=14301]Or, we could look at it in another way. If someone you didn’t know posted a photo of you anonymously on an internet forum for the express purpose of getting people to be rude to you, you would feel a little aggrieved no doubt.
We’re not stating in any way shape or form that what was pictured was right or wrong, what we’re saying is that posting someone’s photo without their permission (which may or may not have been in the public domain already - I don’t know) with the intent to ridicule them is wrong and everyone has the right to request that to stop.
These sorts of posts are exactly why this forum has such a bad name amongst staff. If you can identify the person, why not go and speak to his OC or WO or WWO or Wing Commander? If you can’t identify them then there’s no point posting it, as it’s just a chance for people to have a go.[/quote]
But the problem isn’t just related to that one picture/thread. It’s related to a wider range of actions, and I think you know that as you aren’t stupid. But if you want to home in on one point and ignore the wider issue…[/quote]
No, I know what you’re saying and where you’re coming from, and like I’ve said before we’re not all perfect. I know we’ve made mistakes and not always been as clear as we could, and the post above explains what we’re doing to try to rectify that.
However, this thread was created on the basis of that one post removal, so I thought I should focus on that too.