Candid Dialogue About Moderation

This is a great topic. I think most people agree moderation of some sort is required. How much and how it gets decided will always be an issue. I don't think it's realistic for the moderators to specify everything that is not allowed on this site in the terms of service or rules of trading. How you present something is not always how others will interpret it. If you make a comment/post and it gets deleted, contacting one of the moderators is pretty simple, and it sounds like they have a direct feedback system in place now that gives the person a reason for the deletion.

There are plenty of other non-moderated beer sites, but after you spend a little time there, you soon appreciate a little moderation (this coming from someone that has opened other sites at home or at work to have an inappropriate picture pop up on the screen). One of the arguments people have of moderation is "it takes the fun out of it". I don't agree. Most of my trades and communications are done behind the scenes with people that I've met in the forums. The forums are a place to have relatively open conversations, but keeping in mind your comments should serve to benefit the thread as well as the beer community as well. If you have something a bit more specific to add, it's just as easy to send a BM as it is to respond to the thread.

After you've been on BA for awhile it's pretty easy to know what's acceptable and whats not. Sometimes it really falls in the gray area, but I'm sure the moderators have had plenty of people claim their thread/post/comment was not intended to be trolling, when it really is.

In the end, most of us are adults , this is just beer and were all here to have a little fun.

 

I had my fair share of comments deleted and even had a warning earlier on for violating a rule. At the risk of being accused of brown-nosing the mods, I must say I like the way moderation is done on BA, based on the rules that established, and the discretions of the moderators which I found to be reasonable. I've said the same thing on the Facebook ISO:FT group and got quite a bit of criticism for it, but I always intend on being honest with how I see things.

Being myself a mod for other groups/sites, and having been members of many other sites for other hobbies, I have never seen a site where everyone is happy with moderation. You simply can't please everyone. And no matter how much you want to believe it, free speech, which guaranteed only against Federal government abuse, does not apply on any forum. It's up to the site owners to establish the rules, change them as they see fit, based on inputs (including this thread), and entrust those rules to a subset of people to enforce and hope/trust they do a fair job.

My person rules for posting any comment are simple:
1. If I said this to a stranger's face would he still want to sit and share a beer with me?
2. If someone said that to me, would I find it to be helpful?

If the answer is neither, I won't post. I have many comments typed up and ended up never posting.

I try to leave as much emotional phrases and statements out of my post as possible. I don't do sarcasm and I don't mock. I do sometimes gett in trouble for being honest and could phrase things better, sure. Sticking with facts and being rational, best that I can, tend to get the point across better.

I've made a lot of friends on here in just over a year so I believe I'm doing it right. I won't criticize and do find other beer sites and FB groups quite entertaining. But in the end, I prefer a more moderated environment, get my info without having to wade through useless posts, "funny" memes, inside jokes, snarky comments, and get my trades done with the safest way possible...even all at the expense of all that "entertainment" found elsewhere.

 

At some point, I was a very frequent user on AR15.com. If you think trading on BA is active, buying/selling/trading gun and gun parts is on another plane of activeness. To prevent bumping, threads cannot be deleted (also for reference later) or edited to remove content. Bumping is allowed every 72 hours and there is actually a "bump" button that appears when the 72 hours has past. Duplicate post will result in a temporary ban (I think it's 48 hours). Repeated violations result in permanent ban.

Perhaps something similar to that solution, but I'd think 48 hours is long enough for bumping and banning/suspension could be less severe.

 

Thanks, Michael. I think this really hits the nail on the head.

Oh, except the fun thing. Beer is srs business. Most of the people who complain about moderation are the same ones who perpetuate the negative elitist attitudes that plague the trade community. And most of them are so close to the problem that they are oblivious to that reality. That's where a step back is so important.

 

Not meant to be directed at you at all...and I'm sorry if it came across that way. My bad.

You've been entirely respectful and made your points well. There are plenty of others who are, shall we say, a bit less delicate.

 

you're way over-thinking it, JR.

the rules are simple and not hard to follow. srs. if you can't see the elitist attitude, it's because you choose not to see it.

my comments were general and not directed specifically at you individually. that said, if you feel they were, perhaps they struck an unexpected chord.

one thing i will say: you can fly the "respectful" flag all day long. mentioning that over and over tinges the "respect" with a snide undercurrent which belies the base claim. it wears thin after a time and i don't much care for it.

i've said my piece here.

if you want things to change, be part of the solution.

 

This is a very interesting and healthy discussion and I have what may be a relevant observation from someone who has been known to report a thread or post (a perspective which has had little representation in this thread so far).

One of the concerns being expressed here is moderation of humor/fun and where to draw the line. While I'm not on the Trading Forum except a quick look out of occasional casual curiosity (Trading is simply not my thing), I think at least one generic observation based on general experience with the entire site (and other sites) fits in here.

As someone with several years experience making what could be (and sometimes are :-) ) boring public presentations to both professional and novice audiences I've learned the hard way that in a public forum, humor must fit the audience to be perceived as humor. This is where humor creates a particularly sticky case for moniors/moderators and jokesters alike.

The fundamental problem with humor directed at a small subset of the audience is that insider jokes are by their very nature and definition exclusionary and elitist. While they may be good-will hilarious to those in the know, they can have a radically different effect on those not privy to the insider information or experience that makes it funny. Even if not their intended purpose, the effect of insider humor to the rest of the audience can be a lot like someone thumbing their nose at the larger audience and saying in a sing-song, 12 year old, boys locker room voice, "Nyaah, Nyaah, we know something you don't know and we're not going to tell you." And even if that is not the effect of insider joking around, sometimes it can lead the outsiders to erroneous conclusions about how to conduct their own activities, etc..

The moderators are faced with the complaints of those who feel they are being excluded or nose-thumbed at and need to strike a balance. So they must make a judgment as to the worth of those complaints and either choose not to act or to follow through on them. (And I will confess that occasionally I have indeed started to file a report out of petty anger, but do think I've deleted most, if not all, of them before sending them on to the mods.) Now I really doubt they have the time to explain every inside joke to the person making a complaint, but if the judgment of the moderators does not lead to any action/feedback that is also visible to the person raising the complaint, then to some degree they might as well not be there at all. Thus regular appropriate use of a feedback mechanism and follow through procedures for both parties being impacted by the decision are absolutely critical to reducing or eliminating ambiguity, erroneous conclusions, etc. (This is perhaps even more critical in dealing with humor than in dealing with other more clear cut cases e.g., homophobic comments, racist slurs, etc.) Thus the relatively recent ability to provide such feedback to both parties is good and the importance of its use is perhaps even greater in dealing with humor.

Have a nice day all.

 

I don't have time to read all these, but thanks to @joromiller for getting this conversation going and the BA staff who responded, it was very kind of you. It's about keeping the community classy, but having fun and being generous beer advocates.

I love you all, even you @F2brewers
-Jimmie

 

Since it was requested to cite examples, this small one today is a tipping point for me to finally take the effort and jump in on this discussion thread:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/ft-o7-dextra-iso-bomb-multiples.219520/

The scenario: Someone called out the OP for the interpreted auction. OP responded that he truly didn't know a value ratio. There was a back and forth regarding whether or not the guy replying to the thread should have just sent a message with his offer, the guy stated he considered that to be a waste of time, then OP posted it was closed. I posted asking if he minded providing what the value ended up being, and I come back later to an alert stating my "post has been deleted. Reason: threadshitting and responses." SERIOUSLY?

So now, not only has every reply in the thread been removed, including the one where OP stated it was closed , but also the dialogue leading to a potential determination of a current value on the uncommon '07 Raison is gone too. I suppose I could have messaged directly, but I was looking at it as a helpful public q&a that could have been referred back to in the future on any potential trades involving the beer in question, as so many of us in that forum do: "x-beer has gone at y-ratio for z-beers so this (is/isn't) off".

I'd be surprised to learn that it was the OP who was the one to report the simple question considering he engaged the initial reply. So along the lines of the aforementioned 'revenge reports', perhaps would you take a look at the incident and determine if any user specifically reported my post and has a history of doing such? I'll fully admit that I've stepped on a toe or two in my time and I'm genuinely curious about why a lot of my content gets removed here and there.

If it wasn't a report on my specific post, why was I alerted that it had been removed this time when I haven't been on so many other occasions that all content is removed from a thread?

Thanks
Mike

 

Great to see this thread and just wanted to say I'm a big fan of the notes. One of my biggest complaints was some, uh, random BA being put in time out, having a thread removed, etc and not knowing why. It made it very difficult for that BA to not be a repeat offender if they didn't know what they did wrong.

Today was the first time I was the recipient of the note feature @blue-dream I had no idea it existed until I saw it and thought "huh, thats pretty cool" because I knew immediately why my post was deleted and there were no hard feelings.

 

JR. regardless of your intent, you're doing it right now. It's over the top.

As the king of BVDL, you make a poor victim here.

If I were mean, I'd suggest that some users reading this might be enjoying a touch of guilty schadenfreude.

This thread started with your criticism of the moderation here. You wanted to make that a public discussion. That's a wholly fair request.

Contrary to the whispers murmured in the dark places of the beer world, we've not only allowed it, but actively engaged the conversation and explained our position. We don't expect everyone to agree with our POV. That's fine...reasonable adults can agree to disagree. Note too that ther has been zero moderation of this thread.

Now, with the tables turned and some constructive criticism thrown back at you (did you really think that we wouldn't have some ideas to voice ourselves?) you want to take it back out of the public view. Again, that's fine albeit slightly self serving.

Sometimes you should be careful what you ask for...because sometimes you get it...only to find it's not *quite* what you expected.

This is one of those times.

 

Ha.

I specifically told JR that it wasn't personally directed at him and yet he persists in the matter.

If you want to debate the merits of what's going on, do it in the light. Action in the shadows helps noone. That's what's going on here.

People who are part of the problem should expect to get called out on it.

If that's too much for you to handle, so be it. Duly noted.

 

This conversation went really downhill after this response. JR was backing off willing to accept criticism on his behalf, and you continue to berate him. I don't remember him ever calling himself the King of BVDL; that was anointed to him by his peers. Elitist; maybe, maybe not. Personally, I feel like all of the elitists aholes have left for the other site. In fact, I am pretty sure of that. Very reasonable people are still here hoping for a better forum to participate in. Just about everyone that JR tagged in this post freely send "elitist" beer for free to new people on this site because we want them to be excited to be apart of this community. That is us trying to make this place welcoming and inviting for new users to stay on this site. I feel like this community is still a great place to talk, trade and meet new people. I have met a ton of new friends locally through bottle shares. Something that is hard to pay back to beeradvocate.

As for going forward, I am excited to hear that we will get feedback on why our posts were taken down. As stated above, I had different ISO:FT posts taken down around the release of KBBS because it seemed like it was too much for the mods at that time. Perhaps too many users were making ridiculous remarks on some new users attempts to get a bottle that is really hard to trade for; perhaps there was an all out assault on the forum from the mods. I am not sure, because I grew frustrated on how my posts were deleted; different Cantillon trades for a BA Dark Lord. I don't really go on the ISO:FT forum that much anymore. I really only engage in the beer mail now with my friends which is unfortunate considering how great I saw this website months ago outside of the beer mail.

Going forward, I hope everyone can be more reasonable in their actions. Pointing fingers may not be the cure, just do what is right to make this site a better place. This website has been on here for around 20 years, and I hope it lasts for at least 20 more. Positivity on both sides will make that happen. I joined in January of 2013, a time when most people think greed of good beer took over this site. I try to be a philanthropist as much as I can to reverse this, and so does JR. He sends out free beer to new users on this site. I see that as admirable on his part.

Elitists can act in two ways in this country; be greedy aholes, or give back to the community to make it a better place.

I love you all @jimmieall ,

Elitist Tim Carson