[Discuss] time to scrap the moderated list

[psymann]

Main points:
1) Those on the unmoderated list must be able to see when a post has 
been rejected from the moderated list.
2) The wording on the joining page must be changed, to refrain from 
recommending the moderated list to people when it is often not suitable.

Robert Croson, Jr wrote:
> On 6 Dec 2007 at 11:10, John P. Murphy wrote:
>> I followed the advice on the site ("we very strongly suggest you choose  
>> the moderated list"), and subscribed to the moderated list.  As a  
>> result, I've only sporadically gotten messages
> 
> There are many reasons that a message may not make it to the modded list. 
> For example:
> 
> 1) It is HTML only.
> 2) It uses top-posting or (extremely excessive) over-quoting.
> 3) It is insulting or argumentative.
> 4) It is a FAQ.
> 5) It is a proposal for a frequently rejected idea. (Sea combat, non-human 
> races, messages between islands, etc.)
> 6) The sender's mail client does not produce a plain-text friendly version. 
> (Alex!)
> 7) The thread has devolved into people simply restating the same thing over 
> and over again.
> 8) The message adds nothing to the discussion. (Snarky comments (unless 
> they're really funny!) or "Me too" posts usually get dumped.)
> 9) The post is a response to any of the above. (No orphaned posts!)

Hmm, a number of issues with these:
1) It would help if you published this list somewhere, so that we knew 
what we had to avoid in order not to be moderated out.  You could also 
do with publishing the FAQ on the list.
2) A lot of these are very subjective - what constitues "excessive" 
over-quoting?  At what point are people saying the same thing over and 
over again, and when are they just trying to rephrase their point until 
the other party understands it?  What consitutes a "really funny" snarky 
comment?  This means it's very hard to tell whether you're going to have 
your post moderated-out or not.
3) I completely disagree with the policy of rejecting any idea 
considered as "frequently rejected".  This is partly because, for 
example at the mere mention of a non-human race, you moderate out the 
whole suggestion, regardless of whether it would have been possible to 
change the non-human race into a human race and keep the rest of the 
idea.  This is also because some ideas might have been bad four years 
ago, but might be good now with technology and game changes brought in. 
  And it is also because something may have been repeatedly rejected 
through some sort of group-think, and it takes a new person to question 
it before you realise you're all wrong - for example, it is common 
thought here that a discussion list has only advantages compared to a 
forum.  This is nonsense; a forum has many advantages that this 
discussion list doesn't.  But yet the common thought here is that forums 
are worthless, and it is good for that sort of thing to be challenged. 
Never say never...

4) And perhaps most significantly, the biggest problem is that you have 
no idea whether something had been moderated or not unless you subscribe 
to both lists.  I use the unmoderated list.  Some of my posts do not 
make it to the moderated list, but I have no way of knowing that, which 
is really very annoying.

> 
> Item 9 is very important to remember. If a post has been rejected for *any* 
> reason, any responses to that post will also be rejected, as will responses to 
> them, etc. Basically, a rejected post kills the thread.

And Item 9 is also a stupid rule, especially coupled with my points (1) 
and (4) just now.  We on the unmoderated list have no idea what's being 
moderated or not.  So we can't make sure to avoid replying to a 
moderated post because we have no idea which ones have been removed. 
And even if we did, by the time you've got round to moderating it, we've 
probably already replied to it.  And since we also don't even know this 
rule exists until now, it's even harder to comply with it.

There was an example only recently, when one single post, which was 
possibly a little off-topic and was the first reply to a thread, killed 
off the entire thread from the moderated list.  That thread went on to 
have a good discussion and come out with good new ideas.  But your Item 
9 meant the whole lot was scrapped - and my point (4) meant that no-one 
on the unmoderated list had any idea that the first post had been 
removed from the moderated list, and point (1) meant that even if we had 
done, we didn't know to have that discussion elsewhere in order to get 
it onto the list..


> But if the modded list doesn't contain the posts you want, then join the 
> unmodded list. The mere presence of a modded list doesn't hurt anyone.

I do agree with this.  It's not hurting anyone to have it.  But the 
major problem is with the wording on the page.  It says you are highly 
recommended to subscribe to the moderated list.

In fact, the unmoderated list has hardly any posts which I would 
consider require moderating.  You say that the moderation requirements 
are "fairly loose" but I would disagree with that.  I am a moderator on 
another game, and I have barely seen more than five posts on the 
battlemaster unmoderated list which I would consider require moderating. 
  Yet dozens of posts - hundreds, possibly - have been moderated in that 
time.  In fact, it was only recently I realised I was on the unmoderated 
list since I thought I was on the moderated one!

If the moderated list is helpful to Tom, and maybe some others, then 
fine, keep it; there's certainly no reason to get rid of something just 
because few people use it.  But what does need to change is that 
wording.  It should say that the moderated list is more like a Readers' 
Digest version, which contains the juciest bits from the unmoderated 
list, some time after they've been published.  But if you actually want 
to participate in the discussion and see all of the discussion, not just 
the edited highlights, you need to join the unmoderated list.  I would 
suggest that the unmoderated list is the better choice for the majority 
of people.

Then, if we all used the unmoderated list so we could actually have a 
discussion, and then we were all made better aware of the moderation 
rules, and then if posts removed from the moderated list were identified 
as such on the unmoderated list so we knew whether out discussions were 
getting through to Tom and others or not, we might have a system that 
worked a little better.

psymann


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