The moderation here has always been very lax. Lately, with the influx of stupid people, it has become too lax. Or people have become too stupid for it, take your pick.
I agree completely. Unfortunately that also means admitting that I've been utterly insufficient in my job of maintaining this place (either myself or by appointing enough moderators), but seeing as how bad things have gotten I would be quite arrogant to suggest otherwise.
1) Rules must be written down, as specifically as possible. Moderators are not mind readers - unfortunately.
I originally meant for the Administration forum (invisible to normal users) to contain the "ruleset for moderators", complete with appropriate actions to be taken in certain situations, or when to notify admin instead. I never got around to actually formalizing the rules though, and as you say, as a result moderators have been extremely careful not to "do too much" (and so the final decision usually comes to rest with me anyway). Stronger moderation requires stronger guidance, which I'll try to provide, somehow.
2) Rules must be made a whole lot more strict. While the humane "let all the flowers bloom"-approach (otherwise known as a hippy way) is all fine and dandy, it will not work with large, heterogeneous crowds. Which has been seen here.
I agree completely, the rule system (as it is) was never meant to be actually enforced, as it makes a fatally incorrect assumption; that all members share a common sense of how to behave in a group. It worked only as long as the majority of active members were sensible, but now we've had an outflux of sensible people and a huge influx of socially inept people, tipping the balance way into crapland.
3) The yellow card is nearly useless and should be removed entirely. Reasoning; it will only work if the person is really concerned in what other people think of him. The card system itself is good, because it gives the moderators more power. And that is exactly what they'll need.
For a few users the yellow card has actually snapped them back into reality, but this just falls into the "nearly useless" of your statement. As with so many other things around here, I originally meant for the system to be quite a bit more extensive, with more levels of "punishment" between warning and ban. The level system was meant to be its positive reinforcement counterpart, to encourage good behaviour just as bad behaviour was punished. None of these systems were developed far enough to actually do the intended job, however, for example the current level system merely encourages post flooding instead. A balanced level/rank system, more cards, and more importantly more cards that hurt a little more than your ego would probably provide a positive effect.
As Alhexx points out though, it does also have the positive effect of letting other users (who might not have seen the offense) know that the guy isn't to be taken at face value. It might not mean much to the offender itself, but we might get a few less users starting to defend "innocent newbies" just because they don't know the truth. On the other hand, those defenders probably deserve a kick in the groin for being too gullible to begin with, and speaking without first checking.
4) Multi-forum moderators, or supermods are a good idea. To certain extent. The problem is that if there are not enough of them, the workload will get too large.
Unfortunately phpBB does not come with "supermod" functionality built-in, so right now I have to actually appoint these mods to every forum. There's probably a hack for it though, as I'd love a more stable implementation of different levels of authority here.
5) So called Judge Dredd-moderator. Term coined by yours truly. Moderator who is the law; police, judge and jury in one person. You'll need them. Since it seems that there are more idiots and mods have less time in their hands you must give more responsibility to the mods. Lots more.
Heh, I like that idea. Not unlimited power, but pretty damn close. I'd be prepared to at least cut off a few sub-forums (like General or Unrelated) into Judge Dredd-controlled territory, and get them off my mind. Note that todays moderators technically have this power already, but are afraid to use it (point 1). The banning issue itself isn't a huge
administrative deal (since I made a card button to do it in two clicks), and while I do appreciate making final calls, I'm way too lenient in many cases and quite frankly it's a bit tiring to always be the one "responsible" for banning people, even if they are morons.
6) Rules must be enforced in much more strict way. Seriously much more strict. No more yellow cards. No warnings.
This is actually what I wanted with my yellow cards (or rather, the multiple levels of cards I had in mind). First card, time-limited ban. Second card, longer ban (or permanent), and so on. Also cards would be time-limited, so if a user warned once kept clean for, say, six months, the card would automatically be pardoned. This of course also requires that the rules become way more formalized and prominently displayed. A lot of the simpler rules could even be scripted to be prevented, like double-posting, thread revival or avatar abuse. Or at least to display a warning, like "you risk breaking the rules / offending people at this point", after which any annoyed moderator could instaban (since the user obviously had the intent, then).
Permaban for repeat offenders is certainly the way to go, and is how we do things now (except the definition of "offense" is way too lenient). I'd also like a system where moderators could attach a reason for the ban, which could then be seen both by users (via banner user's profile), and the user himself (trying to visit the forums).
Alhexx: I'm way for something more than a silent warning for first offense, it should be felt. Of course there are varying degrees of offenses, but offenders should at least feel they lost something because of what they did, and if a sincere apology is not quickly forthcoming (either directly or after a temporary ban is lifted), then the user should be banned anyway (since he's clearly not in possession of the common sense we so value here).
7) Moderators must be responsible for their forum.
Speaking of this problem, it could maybe be solved by another "feature" I was thinking about a while back, namely publically indicating when a user last logged in. For forum moderators, this information could even be presented as part of the forum display, a notice displaying the "activeness" of the current moderators. Stripping the moderator of powers every time he/she will be busy simply creates more administrative work, so if this sort of thing could be automated instead, it would be much preferable. And I don't mean automatically stripping mods of power, but rather indicating that they're just currently inactive and will still kick your ass later.
8) Moderators, especially supermods and mods for high-volume forums simply must be fluent in English. Not speaking, but they must be able to read between the lines, see hidden meanings, notice attitude and get jokes. It also helps if they write well, or at least well enough that there will be no misunderstandings because of that, but understanding written English is a must.
I agree that this is indeed damn near necessary in order to fairly (and strictly) moderate a public forum. Or course, a lot of the visitors that need moderation don't speak good English to begin with, so the moderator's skills are often a bit wasted. But having educated and literate people on the top certainly increases enjoyability for the intended target audience. The only problem I can see is that as it stands, there aren't enough highly literate people that I can trust as moderators around here these days. If the forums somehow get back to their glory days, they would probably attract more, but for now probably at least the non-technical forums will have to have a few less-than-perfect moderators (albeit they might exercise a bit more care when stepping into situations).
9) Registration needs to be more strict, if you want to control the idiot flood. Sure, it will prevent people just from popping in and asking things, but then again... most people seem to be rather pooping in than popping in these days.
The forced lurk period is a good idea, though maybe with one or two forums still open for public posting. Rather than closing registration periodically though (which still leaves the open period open for morons), I'd like a registration + lurk (limited posting) + full user rights sort of process, with a forced lurk period where you can't post in "content" forums. Special users could be exempt, of course. The "questionnaire" thing at registration is also a grand idea, both to know how people get here, and more importantly to find out what they hope to accomplish here. I'd also like more user levels to accomplish this, i.e. you could either have guest posting or "limited" users that are allowed to post relatively freely in some parts of the forums, while "proper" accounts require the full registration process (either with lurking or by reference of some regular). This
could be done with phpBB via user groups and manually keeping track of lurkers, but definitely needs a script.
Oops, I notice I hadn't finished reading point 9 before writing the above. So yes, the forced lurk is my favorite. At least Sweden has laws against keeping personally identifiable information on mass registry (it could even be argued that the IP logs violates laws such as this). However, if the user explicitly has to approve of his data being part of the site's database (doesn't have to be public), then the legal issues would mostly evaporate. Forum registration and participation is not forced upon anyone after all, so we can require users to give up a few of their own rights to gain the right of posting. Just like those EULAs.
Alhexx: While we most certainly would not get to know the person from a few lines written at registration, we would certainly be able to weed out the most unpromising candidates. Also, there aren't a lot of people registrering really (typically a few each week at most), so I can probably live with an admin-approved registration process. If you have a lurk period, then the admin has plenty of time to decide whether to approve the ultimate registration, or to cancel the request.
10) Karma system. This has been talked about before, but for different reason. It might help, though. But is there per-post-karma-rating mod for phpBB?
This ties in closely with the level system I originally wanted. My original idea was quite an extensive per-user karma system that would ultimately display as (or at least affect) your "level". Positive karma would be given by various actions, like posting in content forums, and to a small extent also in off-topic forums. Small amounts of karma could be given/taken by specific per-post feedback, where karma from high-level users would count more than karma from low-level users etc. Negative karma would be given (in descending order of magnitute) by warnings, having your topic deleted, having your post deleted, having your topic moved, or by per-post feedback. Inactivity would not affect karma. Also, users' karma record would be on public display in their profile. It might work (with the whole positive/negative reinforcement thing), of course it would mainly affect people who were good to begin with. I'm not sure if warnings should be automatically issued if your karma becomes negative enough. I think there are some mods for this sort of thing, but as with any mod I'd want to personally adapt it for the forums before putting into extensive use (plus I don't think there's a pre-made script as extensive as I'd like anyway).
11) Titles. It needs to be very clear who is admin or mod. Make it so with their title. Use the colors and bold to make it stand out. Remove possible "Moderator" custom titles, if the person is not one anymore. Vice versa, mods and admins with custom titles still need to have the "Mod" or "Admin" visible.
This is a problem I noticed a while back, that any title (like our 'Freak' and 'No life' titles) overrides moderator/admin titles. This is utterly stupid and should be changed, actually moderator/admin status should be shown in a different way than a title altogether, like a small icon and/or colored user name.
1) Rules must be written down, as specifically as possible.
Yes. Preferably as a special, clearly visible link at the top of every forum index, plus the post editor. Quoting the rules should not have to involve finding the rules topic and making a link, it should optimally just be a pre-made moderator tag, such as:
[ rules ] -->
rules[ mod ] Some text [ /mod ] -->
MOD EDIT: Some textI think it would be a good idea to open a "moderator Forum", which only admins and mods are allowed to visit. This would be a good place for discussing moderative questions, coordinating work between moderators etc...
What, it's not visible? Well fuck, that would explain a thing or two... *goes off to check permissions*
I also think that Mods should'nt be able to ban unless its the short time ban, might lead to abuse if you just decide you dont like someone because of say, a political view.
So far the only case of moderator abuse was Jari banning himself, moving some topic and editing his own posts to nothingness (which doesn't even require moderator rights). And the only reason I called that "abuse" is because his posts were quite valuable to the forum to begin with. I still take care about which moderators I select, plus I think moderator abuse is the least of our worries right now -- rather the complete opposite.
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