The Glade 4.0

I don't know, "don't be an ***" is pretty clear to me. Peeps like to know how far they can go before getting their hand slapped, but that behavior is pretty childish.

And your line for "don't be an ***" is different than mine. Subjectivity in a ruleset defeats the purpose of a ruleset.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

If you would like to propose something different for Hellfire and PM one of the mods or even post it in the thread, that would be constructive.

As it is, you're simply criticizing without any suggestions. This is supposed to be a discussion, but you are not providing alternatives.

That said, I am of the opinion that tight and legalistic rules are far less effective than general rules. There is subjectivity, but with an open discussion regarding moderation and a diverse group of moderators, its effect is minimized.

"Don't be an ***" is a pretty clear statement, and it is my experience that most people will know when they have crossed that line, whether they want to admit it or not.

That said, this is where personal responsibility comes in. If you aren't sure whether posting something crosses a line or not, you have two options: either tone it down so that you are sure it's acceptable, or post it as is and accept the consequences like a responsible adult.

I think the internet in general fosters bitterness when people get their wrists slapped because they constantly want to toe the line. If you want to toe the line, that's not a problem, but act like a grownup when you get reprimanded for the times you cross it. And an angry tirade at the person that reprimanded you is rarely productive.

Just my 2cp.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Which is why we don't have a ruleset, we have guidelines and moderators. The intro to the posting guidelines explains why they are not rules quite clearly.

It's always possible to take the extra few minutes to PM a mod and get permission if you aren't sure you should post something that might be cross the line....

But then if you think something might cross that line, why not just tone it back? Either that, or post it and be prepared for the possibility of a warning.

Moderation is subjective. That point is directly acknowledged in the guidelines. But then lets be honest... Pretty much everything in life is subjective.

We try to reduce the effects of subjectivity through diversity and checks and balances, and I think that works better than trying to pretend it doesn't exist. That's why it's routine for mod's to ask for someone else to review each of their decisions.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I made those recommendations. Dash essentially ignored them and did what he wanted, including over-reacting to various circumstances. So I resigned as a mod.

Therefore, I see no reason to believe recommendations would be of any use at this point.



I disagree that subjective rules are in any way optimal. After all, does "Thou shalt not kill" mean I can't defend myself?



Again, my opinion of someone being an *** is different than yours, and yours different from other people's. Quite reasonably so. This variation prevents uniformity of enforcement and creates an environment where the mods are disliked or mistrusted, in the long run.




And I disagree. I participate in a number of severely moderated forums and I see very little "bitterness." Instead, I see civil conversations because of 1) actual enforcement of the rules and 2) a ruleset that clearly outlines expectations for behavior in ALL forum areas, or specifically listing those areas to which the rules do not apply.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yes, I want to wait perhaps days to get an answer whether I can post something or not. Unacceptable as a standard.



See my post above.



My opinion differs strongly from yours on this matter, and that's all I guess I have to say on that, for now.



I understand that, but you've undermined the effort entirely (and the relation to many posters, in my opinion) by creating a standard that isn't a real standard.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I think the longest I've waited to respond to a PM is 20-30 minutes.

But your choice is clear: Either use your best judgment of acceptability and take the consequences that might occur, or postpone and insure that there will be no consequences.

Would you care to explain why the standard isn't a real standard, perhaps with some specific examples?

I would prefer if we stayed away from discussing the Hellfire rules, as that isn't the point of the thread. I can create another thread to discuss Hellfire rules, and we can continue in there. This is to discuss the guidelines for the rest of the forums.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

We got back up to four mods and now we're going to pretend to have rules again? That's cute. I presume we're still doing the unmoderated Hellfire thing again, along with the warmer, fuzzier, and still unmoderated Hellfire?

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Currently, nothing has changed about Hellfire. Heckfire is moderated to the same degree as the rest of the forums.

We have re-posted the guidelines for posting behavior on the boards, something that's been overdue for a while.

Again, if you have specific suggestions about what can be done to improve either case, don't hesitate to post it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Na, my choice is now, as it was before, to frequent the forum less frequently. Perhaps, as I check back in, if the forums move away from the current method (as happened previously), I'll be back posting frequently. Thanks for the being willing to discuss the issue.



I already have, as near as I'm going to. Furthermore, considering this is just a rehash of a year+ old conversation, I don't feel like repeating myself.



Clearly, there is no discussion to take place, so don't worry about it. Again, this is just a rehash of the same absurd policies that came down over a year ago. As Corolinth said, in different words: it's pointless.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Well, if your feelings change, please feel free to bring the topic back up.

But people change over things change over the course of time. You're not necessarily repeating yourself to the same audience now as you were then.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Mookhow and Dash still control the forum, do they not?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That kind of depends on what you mean by "control". Since the migration a few months ago, Mook is now providing the hosting. He also has admin access. Dash still has admin access as well, but I don't think he's really using it.

Edit: to clarify, the Glade is served up on one of Mook's VPS hosts. So Dash and Mook both have PHPBB admin access, but Mook also has root access to the underlying box. Also, I forgot that I do have a shell account on gladerebooted.org, but it's just a plan non-sudoer account. I never use it.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

He wasn't really using it before, except to prevent the mods from actually moderating, and to give us this useless piece of crap subforum to justify the lack of moderation. That's fine if everyone wants an unmoderated forum, but pretending to have rules and moderators gets sort of old. With the loose and general rules, you all end up more worried about being accused of favoritism than actually moderating the board.

To put DFK's position a little more bluntly, he's not offering recommendations because he doesn't believe you're actually going to moderate a damn thing. I don't believe you, either. That's really all the more there is to it.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Just because you don't see reports or warnings doesn't mean they aren't happening.

This is very true.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I can assure you that we're moderating. That doesn't mean we think every report needs to have action taken, but I can assure you there is consistent moderation action happening.

Even though the split between Hellfre and Heckfire was not something I was initially in support of, I think there are now people on the board who like both (as LK said she liked Heckfire earlier.

Personally, I don't mind being accused of favoritism. Feel free. If I think you're right, I'll gladly admit it and rescind my actions. That said, I work very hard to look at reported infractions and such as objectively and impartially as possible, and have requested other people to look over my decisions when I'm not sure of myself.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

You can say there's mod action happening all you want, but the fact remains that we have Heckfire specifically to avoid having to moderate Hellfire. The subforum that gets moderated is also the one that sits primarily unused.

In other words: Bullshit.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Yes, Heckfire does exist so people can have a single heated, unmoderated forum available in Hellfire. Another option is to not be an unmoderated dickhead and give your opinions in Heckfire. I'm not sure why that bothers you. I'm also not sure why you seem to think that Heckfire is the only moderated forum.

There are also 10 other forums that get moderated.

Just because we have one forum set to be moderation free does not mean there is no mod action happening.

And we don't have Heckfire to avoid having to moderate Hellfire. We have heckfire as a place where people can post when they want an absolute minimum of moderation.

And as you've shown, the fact that people don't post here more directly implies that people must not want moderation an awfully large part of the time.

That said, there are also a number of posters that don't use Hellfire almost at all, and we do moderate the 11 forums that they do make use of.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Could you give a brief summary of the moderation actions requested vs. taken for the past 180 days?

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Can't find any easy way to export the information, but moderator log shows 21 reports closed since May with none in September or October.

The job can be a little slow at times.

Eh...at the risk of speaking for someone else...

My read on it from what's been said in the Mod forum is that Mook doesn't particularly care for the Hellfire/Heckfire split, either (unless he's changed his mind from the last time he brought it up).

I'm not trying to dredge up old history here, but the way this went down (as I see it) is that Midgen, NephyrS, and myself were recruited shortly before the (in)famous Monte ban, at a time when things were getting pretty out-of-hand, even for Hellfire. I believe the original intention was for Hellfire and Heckfire to be merged and for the resulting forum to become moderated once again (hence the need for more moderators to handle the anticipated load). But then Ban Happened(TM) and things settled down substantially. At which point, honestly, the original plan kind of fell by the wayside since the immediate "crisis" had passed.

Lately, we've been reevaluating that, and the question is, what do you want?

Things to consider:

• we could leave it as it is
• hellfire and heckfire could be merged
• either/both could be given a more formal/detailed ruleset
• alternately, we could run with the loose rule we have now, and you just take your chances with pissing off the mods too much. Within that context, we could agree that the mods should either be more or less trigger-happy.
• If a more formal ruleset is adopted (again) then the mods can either take a more proactive role or a more a reactive role (i.e. complaint-driven like the FCC -- we have rules, but they'll be enforced if someone actually complains)
• Also, if you want more detailed rules, what they should look like? What sorts of things piss you off the most?
• In addition to or in lieu of all of the above, we could have a blood purge

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

I'll add, that it was right around the time when I was recruited that Mook wanted to go back to more active moderation overall, and we began working on the guidelines. It's probably taken longer than it should have, but as Stathol pointed out, there was no immediate crisis, and we were all kind of busy.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

My personal preference would be to get nuke both Hellfire and Heckfire and create a new forum called Politics. This forum would be moderated at the same level as the other forums and receive no special treatment from the moderators. My original plan was to reintroduce moderation to Hellfire around the 1 year anniversary (was end of August), but I ended up moving servers instead. After that, the forum has been fairly well behaved, so I haven't had any need or opportunity to shake things up. I've also been really swamped with work and my mid-October vacation.

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