Should reports be moderated?

I would normally not post a Private Message received but I will in this case, especially since it contains no private data. Dearly departed [b]Goblin[/b] wrote this to me about a week ago:

"[i]I guess I'll never really know although Jackson does seem like a pretty reasonable guy. Frankly I'm blown away with amazement that I have not been banned. If I was Jackson I would have banned me.[/i]"

At this point, it seems pertinent to highlight the fact that some members [u]want[/u] to be banned.

[blue]Hi Moore,

It's a quirkly little fact about running forums: There are indeed some people who derive some measure of satisfaction by causing trouble and being banned. In fact, I had to throttle back on my use of the "Serial Antagonist" polls on the other forums because I ascertained that there were people who were actually aspiring to receive the title.

The embarrassing thing about Goblin is that I played right into him. I had banned him a couple of years ago, and he emailed me last year complaining that his ban had been unfair and that he really wanted to participate in the Argentina forum and that he had a lot of info about Argentina to contribute, etc., etc., etc., and like an idiot myself, I lifted his ban.

Thanks,

Jackson[/blue]

Jackson,.

When I first discovered AP, I found the forum to be both informative and entertaining. I have not been back on line for a few months due to tax season. I was surprised to find the amount of discord between members, no longer the gentlemanly, more or less, discourse I was use to.

IMHO, it now appears AP does need some level of moderation to insure those of us who have enjoyed the forum in the past and new members attracted for the information and camaraderie that goes along with mongering in BA can enjoy using this valuable source of information without having to tolerate the "idiots" that seem to believe their opinion is the only one of value.

Doppelganger

Instantaneous message posting is important. I'd prefer to see you co-op members to act on your behalf to head off an errant discussion than to slow the posting of reports by senior members.

FT

[blue]Hi Full Throttle,

The problem that I perceive is not "errant discussions", it's "argumentative discussions".

In any event, anyone who was moderating the forum would have the same issue that I have: Once the exchange starts, it can escalate into an argument within a matter of minutes. You can't prevent this unless you monitor every post as it appears like a chat room, and nobody is going to to that.

Perhaps the solution is to make reports visible immediately, but limit members to one post every 6 hours. This would create a sort of "cooling off" period between posts. My guess is that a lot of guys would lose their motivation for arguing if they had to wait before they responded to another member's report.

Thanks,

Jackson[/blue]

[QUOTE=Jackson]

Perhaps the solution is to make reports visible immediately, but limit members to one post every 6 hours. This would create a sort of "cooling off" period between posts. My guess is that a lot of guys would lose their motivation for arguing if they had to wait before they responded to another member's report.

Thanks,

Jackson[/QUOTE]But it looks to me like some of the guys who live in BsAs log on from time to time and respond to several posts/questions. Sometimes I have gotten behind on reviews and will post more than one in a few minutes.

I don't see how you can throttle the offensive posts/posters without throttling the helpful posts/posters too. That would be an unfortunate trade off.

AllIWantIsLove

2% of the members are causing 90% of the problems. I know it might be a pain in the ass, but maybe you can pm those guys who seem to always be at the center of the fray, and let them know they are a detriment to the board. Pull them to the carpet, and ask them what they are going to do to change this behavior. Because we've been talking about this problem lately, I think it's having a positive effect on the board.

With that being said, I think another reason why the board has transitioned into a flame fest (beyond the 2% who tend to promote this behavior) is due to the fact that more and more members are trying to profit from this board. As a result, many of the major flame wars (Alamo flame, Taxi Driver flame, Mayra flame, Saint flame, Mansion flame) in the past year were started because a monger questioned someone's services, and other members quickly jumped in to support him or her.

I'm not sure how to address this problem because mongers need to voice their dissatisfaction when services don't meet their expectations. This is one of the reasons why I respect Saint, he completely disassociated his business from this board and doesn't rely on the members to operate his business.

Anyways, those are my observations.

Thanks,

Judd

[blue]Hi Judd,

[quote]This is one of the reasons why I respect Saint, he completely disassociated his business from this board and doesn't rely on the members to operate his business.[/quote]With all due respect, Saint stopped "marketing" his apartments on the Forum because he made a determination that as a group, sport fuckers are too cheap to rent apartments at his price point.

Thanks,

Jackson[/blue]