Criticism of Moderation

[Sinfire Titan]

Information regarding the Ignore function should remain private at all times.

[EjoThims]

I'll get to BB later. But first, this thing isn't as one-sided as ImperatorK claims.

Thank you Prime.

Gonna toss a bit of fire myself, but it is nice to see the more juvenile of these two officially called out.

Positive contributions should make no-one immune to moderation.

I agree, but I think it should be reiterated that I do feel that positive contributions should definitely make people resistant to moderation. Maybe in the 5 to 10 range.

Also, BB, I was actually kind of hoping you were Sunic when it was hinted (not very subtly) that others though you might be. I miss Sunic, despite the differences we at times had, and not merely for entertainment purposes.

And I do actually think that a personally viewable only 'douche-meter' is a good idea, at least as far as the major benchmarks are concerned. Because the more informed we are, the easier it is to police ourselves, despite any differences in views on what constitutes douchery and the appropriateness of occasional douchery as a tool of learning.

[BG_Meg]

I always thought that Meg and Josh had a strict "no-tampering-just-deleting" policy about posts. I remember her specifically saying somewhere even if your offensive post has paragraphs of good stuff, the whole thing will be deleted because of the one offensive thing.

Yes. No editing, only deletion.

[BG_Meg]

Mods don't even know the "rules" they're enforcing? *gasp*

Give me a break.

Modding with a light hand means there is a lot more ambiguity to the rules. There are very few hard and fast rules. That's why it's been summed up as "don't be a douche"

Immaturure passive aggressive bullshit IS being a douche. Cut it out.

Another result of modding with a light hand is that we put up with a LOT of bullshit.

As has been pointed out, we're human too. As we're allowing a lot of crap to pass through here, you NEED to be more tolerant of us. It's not going to be perfect. You can't have it both ways.

I think honestly I'd be a little more tolerant if I wasn't shelling out the cash to keep this site going. I feel the need to remind everyone this is a private venture that we pay for with zero revenue.

If the community helped support the site, I'd be more inclined of treating it like a community site.

So- thoughts? What would you think if we started asking for donations?

[Kajhera]

I'd dig into the dregs of my paypal account to look for the online equivalent of sofa change, then toss it your way, probably.

That quarter was a long way from buying me something useful anyway.

[bhu]

It wouldn't offend me, but being dead broke I wouldn't be able to give much.  If I can get a job soon that'll change.

[BG_Meg]

I agree, but I think it should be reiterated that I do feel that positive contributions should definitely make people resistant to moderation. Maybe in the 5 to 10 range.

...

And I do actually think that a personally viewable only 'douche-meter' is a good idea

For the first, that definitely happens. People that contribute positively are in a different column when it comes to moderation. We don't take every post into consideration in isolation.

For the second, nit going to happen. We tried negative karma before and people weren't capable of handling it. So etching more would be much more trouble then it was worth.

[zugschef]

make a thread with bets... the wager is a donation to the site...

[Tshern]

So- thoughts? What would you think if we started asking for donations?

If there is a free way of moving money from here to there, I could chip in 15 bucks a year. To be fair, I also have nothing to complain about the moderation or functions of the site yet.

(click to show/hide)

Do like the Catholic church, donations remove your old warnings.

[Basket Burner]

I think that the douche meter was a reference to seeing your own warning status, not to some sort of negative rep system which would just be abused mercilessly by certain people.

[RobbyPants]

I could see the donation thing. It's not like I'm not on here all the time.

(click to show/hide)

Do like the Catholic church, donations remove your old warnings.

Lol 

[archangel.arcanis]

make a thread with bets... the wager is a donation to the site...

This is actually illegal in some states. So that would be a no go there, but I do like that you are being creative with ideas for it.

Personally I'm not in a place to donate if that was what was needed, and I suspect that many here either couldn't or wouldn't. There are 2 options that I can see that could be used. First would be ads on the forums, preferably those that pay per view rather than click. I'm pretty sure that is a route no one would really want, but it is an option. The second is what another forum I'm on does. They have an account with Amazon in which they get a reference link in which any purchases that initiate through that link get a % given to the reference account. They also did the same thing for Impulse (now the GameStop direct download service), but that site is primarily computer gamers who are buying games anyway. For them the good months balance out the bad and the links pretty much pay for the server and domain renewals, and have for the 2 years since they started using it.

That is my 2cp on helping fund the site, which I'd rather have ads than see this place disappear if it ever were to come to that.

On the flip side I really don't have any complaints about the moderation in general, I voiced my opinions and concerns earlier and that was that.

[littha]

I guess a lot of people here are in no position to donate, I'm a student and can barely feed myself currently. A big part of the reason I spend so much time online is that other forms of entertainment cost money and I get free internet from the uni...

As far as what I could contribute... I could click on some adds but even then I have no money to buy anything off of them... 

[X-Codes]

I guess a lot of people here are in no position to donate, I'm a student and can barely feed myself currently. A big part of the reason I spend so much time online is that other forms of entertainment cost money and I get free internet from the uni...

As far as what I could contribute... I could click on some adds but even then I have no money to buy anything off of them... 

I can eat, but I don't have any furniture... I guess these two things explain each other.

I do agree with the last statement, though.  This site does seem to get some decent traffic nowandays.  Perhaps it's time to pick up some google ads?

[BG_Meg]

Re: the amazon piece- I've looked into that before. You have to have a business set up in order to do it, so full business licence, tax ID number, etc.

We could try a donation thing and just see how it works. I know a lot of people are students- maybe look at doing something like $1/month or something like that- if enough people do that, it may balance out.

If it doesn't work, we'll revisit.

[sirpercival]

You could make a poll, get feedback from the site at large.

I'd be willing to contribute some -- I find ads in general quite annoying, so I'd prefer donations if that's a viable option.

I don't mean to pry (so feel free to ignore this), but what are the hosting fees like for a site this large?  What sort of user monetary participation do you need to cover the costs?

[BG_Meg]

Right now they aren't much, thankfully. All in all it's about $20/month. That obviously doesn't count any hardware or time or anything like that. We really should go to a virtual dedicated server though, which would be more expensive, but still reasonable. If we did that, we wouldn't have the hosting issues we sometimes get plagued with now.

[Prime32]

There are 2 options that I can see that could be used. First would be ads on the forums, preferably those that pay per view rather than click. I'm pretty sure that is a route no one would really want, but it is an option.

GitP has been doing this for a while now, and it's not too obtrusive.

[X-Codes]

There are 2 options that I can see that could be used. First would be ads on the forums, preferably those that pay per view rather than click. I'm pretty sure that is a route no one would really want, but it is an option.

GitP has been doing this for a while now, and it's not too obtrusive.

Yeah, if they're limited like on MW or GitP then it's fine.  They only get obtrusive if you try to overdo it.

[InnaBinder]

There are 2 options that I can see that could be used. First would be ads on the forums, preferably those that pay per view rather than click. I'm pretty sure that is a route no one would really want, but it is an option.

GitP has been doing this for a while now, and it's not too obtrusive.

Yeah, if they're limited like on MW or GitP then it's fine.  They only get obtrusive if you try to overdo it.

I've seen other sites that choose to show ads to folks that aren't signed in, but not those who are.  I don't know how it actually interacts with their collected click-generated payments, though.