Why the new filter?

[Phlizz]

I personally love this filter (I genuinely did LOL in a minor moment of glee when I saw this thread yesterday, before it'd turned into a big dispute). There have been a few cases lately where people have been using the term rather, um, over-liberally. Maybe only one or two newbies here and there, but the fact that it was noticeable enough for even me (who's not around that much any more) to pick up on it and it to grate on my nerves, is in itself to my mind confirmation that it was becoming a problem.

I don't see it as something worth kicking up a fuss about, mainly since - as has already been pointed out - it's not as though it's been changed so that OMG, nobody can lol again evar!!1! - that would have been out of line if it were the case - it just takes an infinitesimal extra effort now to actually do so. Also because I generally quickly skim over what I've written for glaring errors after posting (easier than doing it before posting when it's muckied up with whatever code I've used for italics etc) and would therefore be able to spot any significant alterations, and change them back if it's important enough. (Okay, maybe that's just me; not everyone will have the time for this, I suppose. Which is why...)

Yes, some notification would have been nice. For fullest democratic effect, something along the lines of, "Hey, we've changed this. If anyone has a really huge problem with it, put up a vote about it and if enough people agree we'll change it back". But that's hindsight... I think in a mod's place I would made the same mistake they apparently did, and assumed that the majority of the forum members wouldn't have a problem with this change - which (as stated at the start of this post) I, for one, don't.

(And speaking of hindsight - I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I'd just said "I agree with Ooga".)

[Wingsrising]

I'm actually totally clueless how people are managing to post LOLs without getting filtered.

[dandelions]

While I'm more than familiar with the decision process that oogabooga describes, I'm not a big fan of having a small group of "important" posters making decisions for everyone else. I'm not sure what the solution is.

Why on earth do we have elected mods and admins if they aren't meant to make decisions? This is not a "clique" or decisions being taken through MSN, this is the moderating usergroup. (Joey said nothing at the time, and Figment had removed herself from it before this discussion began.)

Your solution is to demote all the mods and me and leave the forum be. This is possible if you think it's a good idea. We all know how well that works, if you remember back to September-November 2003 when we had no moderators and no available admin.

You can post LOL by creating and closing a tag in the middle of it. I have the option to disable that, and have specifically chosen not to. Like I have said all along, if you want to say it, you can.

[Wingsrising]

Your solution is to demote all the mods and me and leave the forum be. This is possible if you think it's a good idea. We all know how well that works, if you remember back to September-November 2003 when we had no moderators and no available admin.

I'm saying no such thing. At the time we originally elected mods we wanted people who could move, delete, and if necessary lock threads and ban users. IIRC, the idea was that major decisions (such as banning people) were not to be made unilaterally by the mods without asking the group. We elected mods and an admin so the administrative ability to do this could exist, and so that threads could be moved, pruned, deleted, etc., not to take the power to make major decisions away from the rest of the group.

In my opinion (and apparently I'm not the only one) deciding to install filters that change what people say is not a minor issue like moving a thread to a place it better fits or splitting off a 3-page conversation that's gotten wildly off-topic: important tasks but one which I think we all agree don't need input from anyone else. I personally consider it a major decision that should have had group input, certainly as important as the question of what kinds of news should be put on the front page that's being discussed now. I understand you guys have been busy lately, but it's not like the forum was going to implode if people kept posting "No offense, but" for a few more weeks. It could have been put off until things calmed down.

And really, though decisions often take the course that oggabooga describes, there's no reason they have to. Putting up a poll, leaving it up for a week so people can see it, then making a decision seems perfectly sufficient. There's no actual reason it has to go on until it's been talked to death, it's just the way things have often been done in the past.

[dandelions]

Actually, that filter is months old- a search confirms it was already in place in November, possibly earlier- so it's not as if I'm playing around with little things like that when I have better things to do, which I do right now. It was actually more of a joke to prove to people that you could filter on more than just a word. That's why I even included "but" in the phrase, to narrow the possible blockable posts down as far as possible.

This was not, in my opinion, a major decision. Since when has a circumventable filter been as big an issue as the front page of the website? Why has the filter been around for longer than the front page has been down, yet the front page was the first one to get its own topic? It can't even be shyness on the part of people who might bring it up, because in both cases rebelheart did.

[TCD]

*frowns* There was a filter?

*taps chin in thought* What I love about this forum is that the mods communicate when and why they're doing something. Even if it's just a quick message of "Hey, splitting this off" or "Hey, you double posted! Please, don't do it again." Then they go about their business as forumites and not mods It makes me personally feel like the mods are...yanno, still part of the forum and still caring. They aren't coming down from on high to wield the Mighty Mod Stick Of Power (tm), nor are they in constant 'mod mode'....which, I do get on at least a couple of other forums I frequent. Okay, one other forum I frequent. The moderation in that forum bothers me because a lot of the stuff is done in secret, without the majority of the forum knowing. Granted, that particular forum really hasn't demonstrated the ability to self-police, but I think if we were given that modicum of trust, we would eventually.

This forum is different. We can, more or less, self-police and having decisions like this (which I don't think was a minor one, personally) made behind closed doors as it were bothers me. (On another note, there are a lot more idioms in the English language that could potentially confuse nonnative speakers other than "LOL"...) This certainly isn't turning into the SA forums where you could potentially get permabanned for the tiniest infraction....but the shift is there and I really don't like it one iota.

[Huggles]

So we disagree in the significance of the decision. Fine. So what do we do now? Will adding it to the FAQ along with what is filtered and why be enough? Or, do we need to have a separate long drawn out discussion, with or without a poll, instead?

[dandelions]

We can, more or less, self-police

Which really makes us feel good about all the time we've spent modding this place. No, self-policing does not do wonders for this forum's spam problem (ever wonder how the spam users and their posts we get every day are deleted?), and nor does it update the phpBB, deal with members' problems (though perhaps if we didn't exist there wouldn't be any) or send out countless PMs about avatars, signatures, post problems, etc.

And another thing- unless you were there then, please don't try and tell us why we first wanted moderators.

[Joey]

(Joey said nothing at the time, and Figment had removed herself from it before this discussion began.)

Actually, Joey was at work during the entire duration of the discussion. And I apologize for accidentally editing instead of quoting, I fixed it.

[Cheese]

unless you were there then, please don't try and tell us why we first wanted moderators.

Wasn't it just Sam wanting to extend the reach of his tyranny beyond his own waking hours, so he drafted his loosely oraganised sqadron of opressors, to impose the hundreds freedom infringing rules laid down originally by the renegade fallen angels he was brought up to worship by an evil old man who beat him regularly to form him into the twisted, BRUTAl dictator that he would one day become?

Or did I make that up and in reality there are very few rules here?

[Huggles]

I'm pretty sure it was the first one, Cheese. At least, that's the reason I became a mod. To oppress and hammer down upon the populace and smite any and all who dare oppose me. Yes. Which is why I demand my previous post be addressed.

[dandelions]

I think Sam did it because he...well, wasn't modding. He modded for a bit at the beginning, but then disappeared (September - November 2003) and the forum went nuts. The most annoying thing was that people could go through and bump literally every thread on a forum and no-one could do anything about it; we also had the hrobi impersonator and an absolute ton of people who were only posting to do things like swear. Occasionally you'd see people yelling "for god's sake, just let this thread die!!". This wasn't a case of "we want to move some threads because it offends us that they're in New Colours and maybe edit a few things at the same time", it was "we've got anarchy here and we want to stop that". And the most important point: we only got mods at all because Sam decided we should at that point. It'd been brought up and dismissed in something like April of that year.

Though I'm beginning to wonder if we're the oppressive tyrants myself. Especially Huggles.

[Wingsrising]

And another thing- unless you were there then, please don't try and tell us why we first wanted moderators.

Do you mean me? Yes, I was there then. My recollection that was the ability to remove spam posts, lock bumped posts, and the question of banning were the biggest concerns at the time. However, I also recall that making sure that decisions weren't going to be taken from the group was another big concern.

To answer Huggles: Yes, I think that a discussion of what should or should not be filtered, or whether we should have filters for content at all, would be in order. There's no need for it to run ad nausem.

[AngharadTy]

Mods don't ban, an admin does. We had that whole extra drama with trying to get Sam to make Jazzy an admin so we could ban... meh, don't remember who it was for. Doesn't matter.

One of us will post a new thread with a poll.

[dandelions]

Chris. For plagiarism and impersonation and all of that- that would have been in November 2004, and then I held a mod election again. The offenses around the time Sam disappeared weren't bannable ones even if we could have banned anyone, especially considering most of the people spammed everything once, laughed, and disappeared.

The poll's now up.