Discussion for new forum policies

It is not a democracy, you own the site and the site is not owned by the community.

Technically true.  But ‘community members’ ought to feel like they have an ownership interest in the site.  If people feel they are ‘co-owners’ they most likely will have more incentive to take care of ‘the property’ and nurture it to ensure it’s continue upwards trajectory.

I think stating to fans that since they have no real ownership equity they are just like everyone else is counterproductive.

I think we all can agree we need moderators and value their passion and time.  I for one would not want to be relied upon to do the job, but the powah would be kinda cool mind you.  However, I think the action if any they take should be guided by the thumbs up/down.

A suggestion: Perhaps there ought to be a sticky-noted thread where users can post a link to something they feel should be voted on by the community.  This would serve the dual purpose of bringing it to the attention of the moderators while at the same time having the ‘community’ provide it’s input.

@djensen:

the longer somebody is a moderator, the more it affects their ability to moderate and/or stay sane. Maybe long time active moderators need a yearly vacation? Maybe we rotate moderators more often?

Agreed. Perhaps term limits. The more people that get to participate, even as moderators, the better. It would allow other participants to feel a bit more invested, the greater number of positive, helping hands you have in the forums the better. Teaching, coaching & participating, in a positive manner, s/b, IMO, the primary goal of any mod.

You can create a placard for past MODS, so the veterans can wear their medals proudly. As stated earlier, IMO, a MODS place in the treads should be minimized as much as possible and by adopting some of the changes it appears you are considering it would make it easier for more people to agree to get involved.

Another option would to have a tiered level of MOD status. Perhaps the thought of having all new mods makes your head spin? Perhaps you keep a certain core or Senior MODS (who agree to their new lesser roles) and who don’t actively do anything but manage a group of junior mods? W/respect to the gaming area I still consult DarthM on nearly everything. I always PM/copy him on any issues that arise. IMO, he is the Sr MOD and I am just assisting him. I can’t speak for him but I feel this type of working relationship has benefitted the gaming area.

Term Limits is a good idea.

What about ELECTED moderators?

Basically, every January 1st or July 1st, or whatever,  the community picks 5(?) moderators to govern the forum.

Moderators with good judgement, who are respected, and treat others with respect, will certainly be retained.  New ones that people are ready for will be given oppurtunities, and the ability to replace moderators who go inactive, or are pursuing other interests becomes a possibile.

Candidates can simply post that they are interested, and barring Djensen’s Veto vote, ask the community for the spot.

Votes would be done publically in a thread. (If someone REALLY wanted to vote in private, they could PM it).

For Example:

I Gargantua Pick these 5 moderators

-Joe
-Sue
-Bill
-Jane
-Daniel

• Term Limits
• Rotating Seats
• Tiers for Moderating Power
• Elected (Campaign platforms?)

All excellent ideas……

@Gargantua:

What about ELECTED moderators?

If we learned anything from World War II, it is that democracy is better than authority.  It is entirely correct that A&A.org should be a democracy.

Good to see the enthusiasm!  But let’s be careful with the wording here lol…

Moderation at AA.org should be by elected members. :)

IE the community granted the authority…  And obviously, the site is DJensen’s to do what he wants with! :P

And obviously, the site is DJensen’s to do what he wants with!

Which means it’s not a Democracy. It can be more open, but in the end the decisions are from the ownership.

If you walk into say some store and tell them how to run their business they don’t oblige do they?

A successful store owner would listen to customers.

On principle, any arrangement that is more democratic should always be preferable to a system that is less democratic (whether or not you call it “a democracy”).  That works in government, in business, and just about anytime you have a bunch of people engaged in some activity in need of leadership.  When a leadership has the legitimacy of having been elected, their exercise of power is more open to scrutiny and less likely to stray beyond what the electors want.  In this case, Moderators serve as a form of leadership, acting on behalf of the community’s need to police itself when necessary.  Why shouldn’t there be a vote once a year, if only to re-elect the good Moderators and let the community thank them for their good work?

A successful store owner would listen to customers.

yes when it pertains to products. You can’t tell the store owner which software to use for his accounting or how to hire new people, or who even to hire.

It’s up to him.

Do you regularly tell WOTC how to run their website and do they even respond to your opinions regarding how or whom they manage their business?

How bout Harris Game Design?

How bout Facebook?

Sorry, but I don’t share your faith that the practices of Facebook or any other business is evidence that unelected leadership is superior to elected representation in any context, business or otherwise.  I guess that reflects a difference of ideology, but that’s OK; it’s a free country and we are entitled to our different philosophies.  I apologize if I accidentally moved this discussion in a direction too political.

is evidence that unelected leadership is superior to elected representation in any context, business or otherwise.

Who claimed that? Just saying that a website can’t be a Democracy because it’s owned by one person and he makes the decisions, not us.

Of course if somehow a website was owned equally by it’s visitors, perhaps it could be run by everyone and every aspect could be scrutinized.

The bottom line is that it appears that membership is calling for, and to a certain extent ownership is listening, and actively considering real changes in the policies and practices of moderation.

This certainly isn’t a bad thing as everything evolves. If membership is asking ownership to consider  small procedural changes or practices that does not negatively impact the day to day business then we should all climb on board and support these changes.

If we, ownership and the community, discover that the implementation of these new policies and practices didn’t achieve the results we had hoped for then we try again, until we get it right.

I for one, trust where DJ has led us and will support whatever future decision he makes on the matters discussed.

@JWW:

The bottom line is that it appears that membership is calling for, and to a certain extent ownership is listening, and actively considering real changes in the policies and practices of moderation.

This certainly isn’t a bad thing as everything evolves. If membership is asking ownership to consider  small procedural changes or practices that does not negatively impact the day to day business then we should all climb on board and support these changes.

If we, ownership and the community, discover that the implementation of these new policies and practices didn’t achieve the results we had hoped for then we try again, until we get it right.

I for one, trust where DJ has led us and will support whatever future decision he makes on the matters discussed.   Â

Hear! Hear!

Ownership and Governing are two similar but differnt things.

The reason we have moderators in the first place, per DJs comments and Actions, is because the site needed some governing more than he was interested/willing/able to provide.  This is a wise course on his part.

Thus how the site is Governed, is not a direct reflection of who owns it, other that what he says goes, when he says it.

Hence, Elected moderators, and community representation, to promote interest, growth, expansion, and enjoyment, are all key positive elements of a future-better AA.org.

@Vance:

On principle, any arrangement that is more democratic should always be preferable to a system that is less democratic.

Even in the case of running an army or a navy?

You can’t tell the store owner which software to use for his accounting or how to hire new people, or who even to hire.

I’m pretty sure nobody is telling David what software to use for his accounting.  Customers don’t tell stores what people to hire.  But they sure as hell can tell ownership when an employee is not doing the job the way the customer sees fit.  A wise owner will know that even the best employee will get a complaint every so often, in fact, a certain cases, a few complaints shows the job is being done well.  However, smart management will recognize when one employee is getting statistically too many complaints and take corrective action.

IL, I am not sure why you seem to have latched onto the mantra that “This site is NOT a democracy”.  If I hear you correctly, you are pretty much are saying the concerns of the citizens of this site should not be listened to.  At the least you are against people voting on issues, or seem to be.  I look forward to you edifying your position on ‘democracy’.

Yeah, we all know who owns it.  We all know ultimately he has final say, I mean really, you think that needs to be reiterated in case somebody doesn’t know a single person owns the site?

The bottom line is that the citizens of this community want their input to be heard.  Some of the people here like the site so much they donate money and/or time to better the place.  There obviously is an issue here that cannot be ignored or dictated away.

On the topic of moderators, I would suggest two levels of moderators.

1. Forum guides, who assist members, direct queries and start discussions but have no edit buttons. There would be at least 1-2 per section and could possibly be elected. I’m a little apprehensive about the election thing as it might turn out like the Karma debuckle from earlier in the week.

2. The second level would report directly to Dave be less plentiful and have powers to edit and quarantine inappropriate posts. These members would be clear on Dave’s vision and be able to act with certainty. These members would be appointed by Dave.

This has been a constructive thread, and I’d like to thank everyone who’s put time and effort into providing constructive feedback. I’d also like to thank djensen for his willingness to listen to that feedback, and to think deeply about list moderation issues.

There are several points I’d like to make.

1. People use positive or negative votes to express agreement or disagreement with a post’s content. And, perhaps less often, a positive or negative feeling about the person who wrote it. A post with a positive rating may still be in violation of one or more list policies; just as a post with a negative rating may be in compliance with those policies.

2. This list is not a democracy. A democracy is when a group of people votes on which ice cream place at which to eat. In this forum, djensen chooses the ice cream place. If he puts sufficient time and effort into researching ice cream places, there is no reason why he can’t choose a better place than the group would have chosen.

3. In the past, there has been too much tolerance for personal attacks. Not only are those attacks a violation of the terms of service, they negatively affect the quality of the forum. To give a specific example: in a different forum (unrelated to WWII history) an online bully decided to repeatedly attack me. I attempted to use reason and logic with him. That didn’t work. It didn’t improve his behavior, and it didn’t cause the crowd he’d attracted to abandon his side. I then switched tactics. Every time he attacked me, I attacked back. And I was more vicious than he. That approach worked: first, others stopped joining in his attacks on me. Shortly thereafter, his attacks on me stopped. I was then able to enjoy intelligent discussions with other members, without that particular online bully causing further problems. The lesson here is that human nature is not what it ought to be. People put too much faith in personal attacks and character assassination, and too little faith in logic and reason. More generally, people act as if a question of truth and error can be reduced to a question of social status. Whichever person asserts higher social status must necessarily be correct. At least, that is the prevailing assumption.

4. Gresham’s Law is applicable to online fora. If personal attacks are permitted, these attacks will tend to replace and drive out worthwhile content. If you know you’re more likely to win a debate with personal attacks and character assassination than you are with logic, reason, and research, and if it’s quicker to write a personal attack than a well thought-out post, a lot of people will respond by using personal attacks and character assassination.

5. In an environment in which personal attacks are never permitted, people can talk about controversial issues like responsible adults. It’s a wonderful thing to watch people of sharply divergent ideologies take time to actually listen to each other, rather than call each other names.

6. Discussions about controversial subjects tend to generate interest. I, personally, am far more interested in discussing the root causes of WWII than I am in hearing about the discovery of the wreck of some destroyer lost during WWII.

7. I agree with djensen that people are not (and should not be) okay with having their posts edited. I like the approach he suggested in post #77.

8. I have not yet formed an opinion on whether moderators should or should not be democratically elected. But at very least I would suggest using online polls as a tool with which to allow the membership to provide information about moderators. Each moderator would have his or her own poll. The poll questions are as follows, with possible answers being yes, no, undecided, not applicable.

a) Is this moderator fair and impartial?
b) Can you rely on this moderator to enforce provisions against personal attacks?
c) Is this moderator restrained in his or her use of power?
d) Does the moderator take the time to adequately explain the basis for his or her decisions?
e) Do you feel this person should be a moderator?

People’s responses to these poll questions should be hidden from everyone except djensen. This is to prevent a moderator from retaliating against those who voted against him or her.

9. Moderator discretion should be kept to a minimum. List policies should be clearly defined, written down, and accessible to everyone. Moderators should act only when someone has violated one or more of those policies. If someone uses a “report to moderator” button to report a post which does not violate any list policy, it becomes the moderator’s job to send a copy of those list policies to the person who complained. The moderator would then ask, “Which of the above policies do you feel the post in question violated?” Over time, this would increase awareness of list policies, and discourage frivolous complaints.

IL, I am not sure why you seem to have latched onto the mantra that “This site is NOT a democracy”.  If I hear you correctly, you are pretty much are saying the concerns of the citizens of this site should not be listened to.

This is what we were told by Administration:

1. “This is not a democracy”- Djensen
2. “Be Draconian in your approach”- Yanny
3. The posted rules are the only formal ideas we got for moderation. Yes it would help if we got precise examples of what to do based on each infraction. Frequently, it turns out the rules change without notice ( no more edits on posts, just remove/move the post)

With item #1 i tend to agree. You can vote up all the ideas you want, but only one person makes the decisions. I don’t understand why that is difficult or how the meaning can be twisted.

The forum can be more democratic, but the foundation is not built on a real democracy. It is not a question of which system is better anyway. Obviously, each system works best depending on the circumstances. (consider the military example produced earlier)

The forum rules just need to be tweaked for both members and moderation.