[iamzack]

I've never particularly felt that locks are overused. Whenever a lock doesn't have good enough reason behind it, it usually gets reversed. shrug.

[Flipside]

To be honest, I think I've locked maybe 2 threads in the last 6 months, and one of those was in Gaming...

[NGTM-1R]

Maybe it's my EVE experience talking, or maybe the nostalgia filter. But I'm not even sure we still have the capacity in here for the sort of knock-down drag-outs that the moderation apparently feared and got more strict because of awhile back. Trash and Liberator and Kazan are gone.

And the all-pervading "no drama plz" that seems to govern current moderation appears to honestly stifle discussion. I'm not suggesting we unmonkey the crowd again. (In the name of all that is good and right, I swear I'm not. Please don't.) A little drama might be a necessary price to pay to enable GD or other forums to flourish.

[iamzack]

i've only been here like two years and i have psychic powers

the biggest debate topics always follow the same pattern, eventually leading to drama, monkeyings, and locks

people get SO. SRS. and it's hard not to when debating a serious topic

so on the one hand, srs threads lead to srs raeg

but on the other, there are always little gems of knowledge and wisdom hidden in the drama

sigh

i have decided that i don't care about this subject anymore

[Scotty]

Where did we have that very informative, decently civilized Teleportation thread a while back?

I miss that one.

[MP-Ryan]

I'm glad someone brought this up.

I'm a participate in another forum that's been running independently since 1999 - formed, maintained, and populated by a group of gamers.  Granted, it's somewhat private and has maybe ~60 active members, but I raise it because it is, quite literally, completely unmoderated.  About 6 people are administrators that take care of technical and housekeeping (e.g. wrong folder, double post) issues, but there are no policies, no moderators, no locking, very few splits, and in general it is up to the community to police itself.

And it works.

While that model might not work here due to the number (and ages) of the membership, I'd also agree that the locking gets a little heavy-handed... and I get particularly irked when a thread I'm contributing to gets locked/unlocked/locked repeatedly.  And yes, that happened not two months ago.

All in all, GD posts are more prone to getting out of hand, but I think there's a fair argument to be made for less formal moderation and more correction by peers - you get enough people actively contributing to a thread (even if they are debating) and the useless nitwits will eventually give up, fade out, or be entirely ignored.

Nothing against the moderators we have, but personally I'd prefer if GD were left unmoderated, save for housekeeping matters - it's general discussion, who gives a **** if some people get out of hand - the rest of us are perfectly capable of acting like adults and ignoring them.

Just my $0.02

And Battuta, if you don't start capitalizing the first letter in your sentences again, I'm going to track down your address and mail you a box of old keyboards with nothing on them but Shift keys, so help me.

[Flipside]

Personally, I try to keep moderation to an absolute minimum, usually just a quick word of 'calm down guys' is enough to make people take a breath, but I think no Moderation at all wouldn't work for the exact reasons you stated, as well as the fact that we have a changing demographic in here, I think a lack of Moderation would give the wrong message because not everyone in GD has a vested interest in Freespace SCP.

My concern is that, without Moderation, GD would end up as HLP's Mos Eisley, a place where the faint of heart dare not go because they are terrified of stating an opinion that a flamebaiter doesn't agree with and being attacked. Sometimes 'Freedom of Speech' means supplying an even platform for all people, rather than simpy letting people say what they like.

[karajorma]

Basically, as I have repeatedly stated, it is my opinion that moderation in GD (and in other forums in HLP too) overuses locks and monkeys (or whatever you call them now).

Eh? At this time Hard Light Monkeys is empty and there are only 3 members of the Political Prisoners , High Max (who I will remove as he's banned anyway), Liberator and Trashman. I'd love to see anyone tell me that either of those two is able to act like a mature adult in a rational political debate.

As for the rest. I'm quite happy to sit on the sidelines and let you guys debate this a bit more before I state my opinions on the matter. Don't want to make it look like I'm trying to prevent this debate.

[Flipside]

I will say this as an aside, this board does lean to the left, there's no real point in denying that, and it can be a problem on occasion. I know I lean to the left, and so do a lot of the Moderators, and it does cause complications when we are faced with strong views on things like Homosexuality or Abortion. As I said before, we are humans too.

Personally, I think we hit a pretty good medium to be honest, there are boards that are unmoderated, and there are boards that will happily delete threads about Politics or Religion or anything of that ilk within a few posts. We have a strong anti-deletion policy on HLP, it's only done if considered absolutely essential, and as far as locks are concerned, well, as I said earlier, that's partly down to cultural differences, and partly down to the fact that after a while as a Moderator you learn to spot threads that are headed nowhere or into an argument, and it's often better to nip it in the bud. Do we jump the gun on occasion? Quite possibly. Often threads are locked not because of the content of a post, but because, after several years, you just know when you're about to have to read several pages of responses to that one particular post as everyone queues up to bash the poster.

[karajorma]

Ironically the issue when Kazan used to shout a lot on this board was that it leant to the right.

[NGTM-1R]

Ironically the issue when Kazan used to shout a lot on this board was that it leant to the right.

No, we still pretty much leaned to the left, it's just Kazan, as aldo once observed, was so incredibly annoying people would disagree so as not to be on the same side as him.

[Flipside]

Admittedly, Kazan used phrases like 'Christofascists' so we aren't talking about someone who didn't promote the grief he got Same with Lib and his views on Liberals or certain views on Republicans that are expressed on here. We can tend to land harder on those who generalise Liberals and left-leaning views than those who generalise about Right-wing supporters, it's not a definite, immediate problem, but it is something I think we need to be aware of

Edit: The ironic part is that about 5 years ago, this thread would have been locked by Shrike with the comment 'Benevolent Dictatorship'...

[StarSlayer]

I think General Discussion debates should be settled in FS2 multiplayer matches.  Obviously the out come of dogfighting should divine the truth of the matter, might makes right afterall.   

[karajorma]

Ironically the issue when Kazan used to shout a lot on this board was that it leant to the right.

No, we still pretty much leaned to the left, it's just Kazan, as aldo once observed, was so incredibly annoying people would disagree so as not to be on the same side as him.

I'm actually referring to his comment that the active moderation staff at the time were all right wingers. Of course he was completely robbed of that argument as soon as I became a global mod and eventually an admin. But at that time he did have a point.

[Grizzly]

Ironically the issue when Kazan used to shout a lot on this board was that it leant to the right.

No, we still pretty much leaned to the left, it's just Kazan, as aldo once observed, was so incredibly annoying people would disagree so as not to be on the same side as him.

Wether 'this board' tends to lean to the left or right is up to debate as well. In Dutch politics, the progressive liberals and the christian democrats are viewed upon as 'right wing' by the socialists and green parties and 'left wing' by the conservative liberals and the populists.

[karajorma]

When talking about politics you might as well use the American definitions cause there are few debates from other countries where anyone disagrees.

[Grizzly]

When talking about politics you might as well use the American definitions cause there are few debates from other countries where anyone disagrees.

But the american ones are so narrow!

[TopAce]

The problem doesn't lie in what political positions the mods/admins tend to represent. It's inevitable that political debates come about from time to time and regular members and mods/admins have to deal with each other.

The problem is that personal attacks are basically allowed and encouraged. GenDisc and recently Missions and Campaigns lacks a general humanity that the community once had. Trolling is not punished. Take a look at Relentless's release thread. Instead of its participants being banned for a LONG time (To be fair, for four years, because that's the amount it took for KappaWing to make the campaign), nothing happened. As soon as the first negative "reviews," which had nothing to do with the campaign, arrived, people had an open invitation to join the bandwagon. No one got punished but KappaWing, whose release thread was allowed to die. Instead of banning the trolls and those couple of individuals responsible to derailing and killing the thread. Trolling is encouraged. If it happens in your release thread, bad luck. It is the thread that is at fault, not the persons that post in it.

Same thing happens in the current Turkish dissertation thread. Personal attacks are rife. If something happens, it will be at most a lock. Nothing more. Then the same persons continue the flamethrowing in a different thread. Then that gets locked, and the whole process starts again.

HLP needs a lot more bans and monkeying. Simply locking threads solves nothing. Nothing at all.

[Bobboau]

except locks and bans were not the norm in the good ole days, trolling and flame waring were.

[Satellight]

I'm more disturbed with the "OMG someone post in a necro thread". If a subject is relevant to the poster's situation, I don't know why it's a crime to post in it.

It's maybe something I don't understand because I'm not here for a long time, and maybe someone can explain it to me ?

When I encounter some difficulties about FreeSpace, it's not a problem for me to browse the previous subjects -even the very old ones- to find a solution before opening a new thread. But for now I will hesitate to post in a old thread.