--Emphasis added--
I'll grant you that I find the policy of locking threads following on topic posts merely for the 'latency' of the former to be ill advised on a number of levels (including those outlined in your post) --- That said, I can see no positive corollary to compounding said (comparatively) petty annoyance with the atrocity of deleting/failing to maintain an archive!

Best regards
HP

Oh!
I thought he said get rid of the anchovies. I was all for it.

 

Well here we go. Our friendly moderators have been working to establish a solution to @GopherT 's thread on locking old posts.
Using your input from the poll here is an outline of the plan:

Restarting An Old Post:
An old post may be restarted if the subject matter is the same and if, in the judgement of the staff, further posts contribute to the original topic.

Posts will no longer be locked as a matter of course. Many older posts can be reanimated without problem if the new content is directly related to and/or draws on the original content even if the discussion is restarted by another user.

Who gets to restart an old thread:
The original TS or an established member may restart a thread at any time.
To mitigate newbie errors, if a new member attempts to restart an old thread, his post will automatically be placed into the moderation queue before appearing on the forum. The new post may be appended to the old thread or a new thread will be started at the moderator's discretion.

The old thread warning:
Members will be warned that a thread is old by the same warning box/check with updated text.
Post / thread dates greater than XXX months old will show in RED.

Remedies:
To avoid a rash of hard-coded rules, the moderators have some discretion in gray areas. If a member disagrees with how a particular situation is handled, the first remedy is to click REPORT, stating your thoughts. All mods get all reports. Individual mods can be reached via PM. All inquiries will be handled as promptly as possible.

Software Changes:
Some of the warnings, auto moderation changes etc require a change to the forum software and will be introduced as they become available.

 

I can see no positive corollary to compounding said (comparatively) petty annoyance with the atrocity of deleting/failing to maintain an archive!

Makes as much sense as the policy in effect now.

 

Makes as much sense as the policy in effect now.

SB, What do you think about the new proposal?

^^^

 

SB, What do you think about the new proposal?

^^^

You posted as I was typing. The new proposal makes sense. But I bet one of the mods won't go for it.

 

Makes as much sense as the policy in effect now.

Perhaps, but the consequences would be much worse! --- 'Round here we call that sort of thing 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'

Best regards
HP

 

@ronv

I concur with the points of your proposal but with one major exception -- Let's not relegate newcomers to 'second class citizenship'! --- 'Early days' on this site does not equate to 'childhood'! -- As a newcomer, I would have found said policy all of presumptive, condescending and straight up offensive! --- Moreover, it smacks of 'clubism' -- the 'pledges' deserve better than that!

Again, it 'sounds like a plan' otherwise!

Best regards
HP

 

I concur with the points of your proposal but with one major exception -- Let's not relegate newcomers to 'second class citizenship'!

Back when I joined up, new members were put in a queue for, if I remember right, for 10 posts.

 

@ronv

I concur with the points of your proposal but with one major exception -- Let's not relegate newcomers to 'second class citizenship'! --- 'Early days' on this site does not equate to 'childhood'! -- As a newcomer, I would have found said policy all of presumptive, condescending and straight up offensive! --- Moreover, it smacks of 'clubism' -- the 'pledges' deserve better than that!

Again, it 'sounds like a plan' otherwise!

Best regards
HP

I don't see how the proposal smacks of 'clubism', as a newcomer is still allowed to post. Just where is determined by the moderators (as a whole). In fact, I can see situations where established members might be subject to the same decision! At the moderators discretion.

Overall, I see the plan as an improvement in both process and serving the site's membership.

 

Looks good. Now we need the mods to put a germane title on those help, urgent, and other nonsensical titles.

 

I don't see how the proposal smacks of 'clubism', as a newcomer is still allowed to post. Just where is determined by the moderators (as a whole). In fact, I can see situations where established members might be subject to the same decision! At the moderators discretion.

Overall, I see the plan as an improvement in both process and serving the site's membership.

I will go as far as saying the proposal is a vast improvement! - No question about that!!! -- That said, I view the level of overt pride in, and deference to, one's 'position' within the 'site hierarchy' (occasionally seen on these fora) as lacking in perspective, and, frankly, a bit puerile (yes! I've been guilty of said attitude myself Re: 'nubes') -- In any event, I suggest that enforcement makes more sense than arbitrary preemption...

Note: my critical remarks above are general in scope - and, as such, non specific to any participant...

Sincerely
HP

 

Prefer Red for locking threads.

 

You posted as I was typing. The new proposal makes sense. But I bet one of the mods won't go for it.

You called? I go with the consensus of the staff. Always have. But I don't change the rules that were when members start getting upset with them.

But I've decided I will not let being unpopular stop me from doing what needs done. Call it a New Year's Resolution. I was becoming very unhappy with a lot of the behavior that was becoming common place here.

The moderating staff do discuss things a lot off line. Always have. Sometimes reaching a consensus, as with a troll, takes a while. If we do not agree someone is a troll we are the arbitrators, not the membership. If we have rules that are interpreted a specific way it is our call.

If the majority of the moderators feel a rule change is needed, especially with the admins on board, it will be changed.

 

No one is asking any moderator to stop doing what is necessary. The membership only want to know the boundaries and the recourse procedure.

When I wrote what became a portion of the homework help rules, I didn't think people would use help, urgent, etc, as titles, but it seems the language barrier may have accidentally encouraged it.

Useless fluff decreases the SEO position on that thread. We don't know what metrics jrap reviews, if any. Frequent changes in content increase the SEO position, so there is a big push to have "fresh" content. Fresh content is good as long as it's not so fresh that it's coming right out of the anus. There is a decent review process here for such fresh content and I feel it catches a number of errors across the spectrum of possible errors.

I would recommend forumdr to any budding forum owner and their staff, which includes the moderation team. This isn't a field of dreams, you can build it, it doesn't mean the members will come.

@jrap

Now that the site is "commercial" in nature, I think EETech Media should compensate their hard working moderator staff at Christmas time and Anniversary time with a box of steaks shipped to their abode. Of course, the choice for the vegans in the group could be different. EETech could put up a comparable list and let the moderator choose their compensation.

 

Looks good. Now we need the mods to put a germane title on those help, urgent, and other nonsensical titles.

There are measures in place to reduce the non-descriptive titles. They help, but there will always be some members that ignore these suggestions unfortunately (whether it's a language barrier or not). Every new member receives a PM outlining forum guidelines, which includes the encouragement to be descriptive in thread titles (and not use 'Help me!' etc).

I've recently updated the placeholder text when creating a new thread as well:



I suppose I could code up an add-on that detects short titles containing the likes of 'help me','urgent', etc, and encourages the user to come up with a better title before the thread goes live.

 

@jrap

Yes, coding should reduce the majority, but, I would try to get a list to you and let the members comment before you do a lot of coding. Give me a couple of days, I have a wedding to go to tonight and pool tomorrow. I'll start a thread and hopefully some others will join the quest.

Is there a way to move those type titles to an auto review section and notifying the poster why it was sent there?

 

Is there a way to move those type titles to an auto review section and notifying the poster why it was sent there?

To that, I would add the suggestion that the poster be given the option of re-titling his/her post as an alternative to awaiting review...

Best regards
HP

 

You called? I go with the consensus of the staff. Always have. But I don't change the rules that were when members start getting upset with them.

When was that rule made/put in effect? It seems to be a "new" rule to close a thread and delete posts with out a notice of who and why. And you have to admit there's been a lot of that done lately. The, "my way or the highway" is no way to run a business, and since the orange take over that's pretty much the new rule.

How does protecting a member like RK or billymayo help that member? Some times peer pressure works better than protectionism.

 

You wish everything to be documented in exactness? It won't happen, it can't happen. We try to keep things flexible.

The rule about hijacking was there before I became a moderator, but no one saw fit to push it (as in violate it). The concept of thread ownership has always been here while I have been here, and all else derived from that. Thread ownership, the TS is the ultimate determiner of the thread, will still be there. We are redefining some changes to allow more flexibility towards how it is handled when the TS walks away from it and a thread becomes old. This forum was 6 years old when I joined. It is now 14 years old, and I have been a moderator for 5 years of the 8 I have been here. Some of the problems are a function of age and success. Culture can be a rule set too, and the culture is still as it was under Dave, minus the automotive restrictions. He set much of it up, along with BeenThere.

Lately folks have wanted to set up a new rule sets to suit themselves, or do as they wanted here even though it was spelled out as not being allowed. This got involved in that push.

If the TS wished to lock his thread it will happen, for example. If a TS wishes to take a thread back over that they started they can. A thread still belongs to the TS. They, and the senior members, will be allowed to post in it (even if the TS are still a new member). New members will not be allowed to post in old threads by automation. In a few circumstances we will not allow the TS to go off topic from his own thread, but this has almost never happened (RK comes to mind).

We do not delete threads unless they are spam, duplicates, or ToS violations. The assertion this has happened is false. We do delete posts that are ToS violations or have an Ad Hominem attack in them.

We will allow continued discussion in a thread after the TS is gone, but it must pertain to that thread and not wander off topic from the original question / discussion.

So turn this around, why is it such a big issue? Are we preventing anyone from starting their own threads?

Most people agree hijacking a thread is bad, we are disagreeing on what hijacking looks like.

As for the rest, is there some push back on requiring civility and not allowing snipping? If someone wants to use Ad Hominem attacks on other people it will not be ignored any longer. I won't accept that the subject was trolling or any other excuse as in the past. The staff handle trolls. In some cases I may be oversensitive, because I have been sensitized to the issue. It bothered me a lot.

I track the majority of the threads in Off Topic. I don't worry about shots at me, unless they go over the line. I don't nurse or hold grudges, even though folks have accused me of doing so elsewhere. I just do what I think has to be done. I want it to be pleasant here, for everyone. When the moderating staff has to get involved, it is most defiantly not pleasant for us.

For the record, none of the staff considered RK a troll, that was a membership consensus, and was out of line. Period.

Billy Mayo took a little longer, but the decision was he was trolling. He was dealt with by the staff.

Being mentally different does not a troll make, and the staff are the ultimate arbitrators. It both cases it is not appropriate for the members to pile on, let the staff do their jobs, or you become part of the problem and slow things down.

We have had several cases where we had to really watch several people over the years to decide if they were trying to troll or just different. I think some were not deliberate trolls (though it was hard to tell), they just came here for the wrong reasons. They saw the Off Topic area and liked it. There is a reason the Off-Topic area posts do not count.

If you have read this through I thank you.

 

You can say the TS is the owner, but I highly doubt EETECH has compensated the TS or secured the copywriter from them. The true owner is the owner if this forum who may do as they wish with the thread and or post.