Discussion for new forum policies

Having spent 11 years of my life in the military, I fully understand the sensitivities that exist surrounding ANY war. That being said, Dave is absolutely correct in saying we need to be able to speak our minds, and at the same time, not run roughshod over anyone who disagrees with us. These forums have allowed all of us to “meet” new players from around the world to play a game we all love. We need to remember it is a game we are playing and there is room for harmless smack talk. BUT, when that talk turns ugly and starts on someone’s nationality or any racial slurs, you have crossed the line. As far as I am concerned, people who feel like they can say whatever they want at whatever the cost can just go away. While everyone is entitled to have an opinion, that does not mean they are entitled to share it.

@djensen:

There are those who think that the current forum policies are out of date and I believe this to be true.

Could you indicate where (if anywhere) the policies are located?  I don’t recall seeing them in a stickied thread anywhere, but I may simply have missed them.  It would be easier to comment on them if I could read what they say.

At any rate, here are a few initial thoughts on the subject.  The twin goals you mention about being able to speak freely while avoiding hate speech express nicely the balancing act that I think we should all aim for.  A principle which is helpful to follow is that, when one person wishes to dispute something which somebody else has said, they should focus their criticism on the other person’s argument rather than on the person who made the remark.  Hurling insults is not a constructive way to debate an issue, especially a sensitive issue.  A debate can be vigourous – even heated – without descending into personal attacks, even when it involves (for example) strongly held views about the merits and faults of various political ideologies.

One tricky aspect of this, however, is that even when someting is phrased politely and expressed as a nicely structured argument, it can still constitute (or be perceived as) hate speech if the point that is being made is a highly controversial one.  In the context of our forums, this sort of thing has usually involved disputes over the alleged or actual distortion of historical events, with revisionists on the one hand claiming that mainstream historians suppress evidence that does not support mainstream interpretations of WWII, and with mainstream historians on the other hand claiming that revisionists use manufactured or invalid or improperly quoted sources in order to trivialize or justify or deny various atrocities associated with WWII.  I personally have found it very annoying when thread topics having nothing to do with such matters have degenerated into slugfests about who’s to blame for WWII or what nations commited which war crimes.  One suggestion for managing such incidents would be for posts that “hijack” threads in this way to be moved by the moderators to one or more threads dedicated to these controversies, where people who like to argue about these topics can do so to their heart’s content without bothering the rest of us.

I think the concerns that have floated around basically boil down to a few points:

1. Posts should never be edited by moderators unless the postor requests it for some reason.

2. There should be a clear standard of what constitutes a post becoming deleted or removed, and that policy should be written somewhere.

3. Moderators should be held to the same standard as regular users.

4. The job of Moderators should be quite minimal.  Apart from shock posts (i.e. offensive crap about the holocaust etc.) and flaming, everything else should be fair game.

@djensen:

What if we just don’t talk about history unless it relates directly to the game?

I think this would be hard to manage, in the sense that it would simultaneously be too open-ended and too restrictive.  A&A is a WWII-themed game, so it can be argued that any subject related to WWII is related to the game – in which case the “unless it relates directly to the game” principle would leave things too open.  At the same time, the “we just don’t talk about history” approach would exclude lots of valid military history-themed discussions which are interesting and enjoyable and which are conducted in a perfectly cordial way, so this would restrict discussion too much.

I think the central issue is whether a discussion is taking place in a civil manner, not what it’s about.  The first level of responsibility for making sure discussions remain civil should rest with the people who are posting.  If they remain civil, no interference is needed.  If borderline cases of uncivil discourse develop, a gentle reminder from a moderator to tone things down may be all that’s needed.  But if things degenerate too far, the moderators should have the latitude to issue a warning that things are getting out of hand.  And if at that point the people who are posting continue abusing each other, then the moderators should have the latitude to take further action as appropriate.  In my humble opinion, of course.

@CWO:

Could you indicate where (if anywhere) the policies are located?  I don’t recall seeing them in a stickied thread anywhere, but I may simply have missed them.  It would be easier to comment on them if I could read what they say.

To follow up on this part of my first post, someone has just sent me a link to the General Discussion Guidelines.  They’re in the “Axis and Allies.org Boards > Other Forums > General Discussion” section of the board, at this location:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=6047.0

About new forum policies, i’ve read the ones in place from the link posted by CWO Marc.
If you want my opinion about those policies : they are pretty standard. About every forum i know have something similar.
You can work on the definitions of key terms as : flaming, baiting and so on…that will make it more clear, but that will not fundamentally change the policies as they are now.

Now, if those policies are out of date, does someone have any idea of what improvment could be done ?
I’ve read this whole thread and haven’t found any proposition about some new policies that should be added, nor did i see any mention of a policy in place that should be removed…

All those policies, and the ones you could add or remove rely on one extremely important point : **the quality of the moderators.**Since the HOW and the WHEN to apply those policies is left to moderators judgement, you can have the best policies in the world, the result will be crap if the moderators are not good enough.

So, you can deliberate as much as you want about policies, in the end, your policies are only going to be as good as your moderators will be.

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Now, i have a strong feeling that there is more to this thread than just the policies…
I believe that you, David Jensen, have a problem right now.
That problem would be call : the IL-Gargantua “couple” (after all, you specifically exclude them from that thread, there must be a reason !).

I will send you tomorrow my 2 cents about those dudes by pm.

As a moderator on 2 other forums (triplea development forum, triplea war club), as well as a moderator on the triplea lobby, I totally sympathize with DJ.

In the lobby, we follow this format that “everything” (except hate speech and extreme bullying) is allowed in any hosted game, but in the “main lobby” we are actually quite strict.  The rational being that anyone can leave a game if they don’t like the talk in it, but the main lobby is for everyone and therefore should be kept “PG”.  If people want to swear and cuss, or start flame wars or talk politics, then they can and should make a private game to continue their little discussion, and leave it out of the lobby.

If a similar thing was done here, it would mean that everything except for the “Play Boardgames Section” was kept PG or PG13 or whatever you like, and the Play Boardgames Section would never be moderated except for extreme things like racial slurs, hate speech, etc.

Obviously, no matter what happens it will be in the hands of your moderators.  Sometimes they will not be strict enough, sometimes they will be too strict.  So, you will need a way for users to contact you to dispute both situations.

@djensen:

the problem is, how does a moderator decide what is and is not a shock post? What is and is not a flame?

In my humble opinion……not to say this is occurring, a Mod should never be looking for a reason to get involved in any post or thread, unless obvious real harm is being done to the site or community. (perhaps these are in some rules somewhere? I rarely leave the gaming threads… :-D)

If a request is made to the Mods to review or intervene in a thread, a mods job, again in my opinion, is to help the antagonists work things out themselves, utilising private messages so as to leave as small a mod footprint as possible and if this just can’t happen then again, imo, 2 mods should review and make a decision on what should be done. I am not certain how often mod intervention is required and perhaps the extent is so large, as hard to believe as that is, that the above process isn’t realistic? But this is a gaming site, no? Perhaps DJ should review how often similar sites require mod intervention? Perhaps some type of standard for mod action/intervention should be drafted?

Anyways…the above dual mod review and intervention proposal would then eliminate the too often seen (Jenn vs Switch) (EM vs was this switch too?) (IL v Garg) I hope I am not stepping out of bounds by naming names?? participant v Mod angst, verbal sparring, and community division, that I have witness in my time spent here. Lastly, the above proposal would also help “overly” active mods by creating a “buddy” style system. Think of it as putting two cops in a cruiser versus just one.

I am not privy to all of the issues and I only offer this commentary because I really enjoy the site (and I noticed this thread in the Tourney section  :-D) I enjoy participating here and I hope that in some small fashion I can make it as enjoyable for others as I have found it to be.

@JWW:

I am not certain how often mod intervention is required and perhaps the extent is so large, as hard to believe as that is,

then again, I could really be naive about how large of a problem this is?!?

The real crux of the issue appears to be not what to do when regular member have a conflict or dislike each and need the Moderator to act as the referee, but rather what happens in situations when a moderator and a regular member may get into a conflict or dislike one another (e.g. Gargantua and Imperious Leader).  In those cases, there is at least the possibility or appearance that one side may use his or her position of power unfairly.  In my line of work we call that a “conflict of interest” and the normal solution is to have a third party, such as another moderator, act as the referee.  The best solution for anyone in a conflict of interest situation, whether that be a moderator of an internet forum or a university professor or whatever role is to recuse yourself and have someone else act in your place in any situation that has the appearance or possibility of bias, whether or not that possibility is actually realized.

I stand with Garg on this issue.  Some of these Moderators need to grow up and stop playing God.  Most are great, but there are a couple in particular that need to knock off the attitude.  We all want to see the site and the community grow.  Censorship and needless editing and interfering with members puts a damper on that.  If they can’t act somewhat judiciously and unbiased, and can’t refrain from acting arbitrarily or capriciously, they need to have their Moderatorship yanked.

Moderators should set the standard for behavior, while giving a lot of rope to others to freely express themselves.  Censorship and editing of posts should be used only in the most extreme circumstances and only after collaborating with other Moderators whom concur.

@DutchmanD:

Moderators should set the standard for behavior, while giving a lot of rope to others to freely express themselves.  Censorship and editing of posts should be used only in the most extreme circumstances and only after collaborating with other Moderators whom concur.

Not understanding all the particulars, to what should be consider in this instance, I would agree, for whatever it is worth, 100% with this argument.

Moderators should not be able to delete posts/replies in the pbf forum. Maybe make that forum moderable only by a super admin.

Moderators should not be able to delete posts/replies in the pbf forum. Maybe make that forum moderable only by a super admin.

Why am I thinking of Jen when you say that. LOL.

Imperious and garg have been around forever, I hate to see either of them go.

One suggestion for managing such incidents would be for posts that “hijack” threads in this way to be moved by the moderators to one or more threads dedicated to these controversies, where people who like to argue about these topics can do so to their heart’s content without bothering the rest of us.

I like the idea of a quarantine section.  Ideally, all the posts would be auto-deleted after a week or three.

I only read a fraction of the posts here.  From my limited sampling, the only posts I ever had a real issue with was the “Food scarcity in WWII Germany” threads Kurt kept inserting into nearly every thread that was remotely connected.  I felt it was an excuse for what the nazis did, maybe not his intention but….

In my line of work we call that a “conflict of interest” and the normal solution is to have a third party, such as another moderator, act as the referee.  The best solution for anyone in a conflict of interest situation, whether that be a moderator of an internet forum or a university professor or whatever role is to recuse yourself and have someone else act in your place in any situation that has the appearance or possibility of bias, whether or not that possibility is actually realized.

Well stated……

The BBC website has the option of other readers rating comments with a thumbs up or down.  We are limited to what this software can do obviously.  However, it would be grand to be able to press a button to rate a comment, perhaps if comments were overwhelmingly rated negatively then that post could automatically be brought to the attention of a MOD.

@ Cromwell,
There is a place for everything.  If someone wants to talk about that kind of stuff, they can take it to a website dedicated to that kind of stuff, not here. 
As to your regard that certain topics in WWII are seen as being more off-limits than topics in other wars, I would agree and say it is justified.  There is a lot more “baggage” in WWII due to the racism, ethnicism, systematic genocide, holocaust, etc, and so it is quite rightfully policed a bit more. 
Whenever someone starts talking this stuff in my lobby, I tell them to take it somewhere else, like a private game room, or a website dedicated to that kind of stuff.  If they don’t, they get muted.  Ever since doing this, we’ve cut back significantly on the number of flame wars that happen in the lobby.

Lets get back on topic. We are a game forum here with people from all the age groups, religious and political backgrounds. Serious discussion of the finer points of WWII belongs anywhere but on a game forum. If I want to read clap-trap from people who have axes to grind I will go to ACG, not A&A.org. Having said that, accurate info on WWII topics is necessary to create good scenarios and simulations. Deal with infractions on a case by case basis by contacting the individual member and laying down the law. Knee jerk reactions generally just create more problems in the long run because they are hastily thought out. The more rules we have, the more uptight we appear and this will eventually lead to fewer posts. We should always be aware that young people play these games and read these forums and a parent could be reviewing what is being seen. To complicate things A&A.org has a “Patron Program” which make members part owners of the forum for a financial investment. I know if I invest in something I absolutely want my say! On the up side trouble we posts usually leads back to certain members most of the time anyway and can be easily dealt with.

I find in general that folks here are very courteous and helpful.