Moderation Feedback

While I appreciate your role as an "admin", a posting should not be in the category of a thread titled "murderous" in the context of "government". This is especially true of the hijacking of a "Twitter" Fox news channel feed by some party over the weekend.

I would not appreciate having my words altered. The thread discussion process can be hijacked in a capacity which is neither declared nor clear to the posting parties if editing of comments occurs, including deletion.

For the most part, we did not need such admin parties to patrol, police, or otherwise edit during the prior blog.

With the amount of sacrifice in my life for this nation and my fellow citizens, I really have very little patience for individuals seeking to either recharacterize or edit my thoughts and ideas. I suspect others would join in that opinion.

More importantly, I am well versed in the tools of rhetoric and speech. I have written for print publications and am directly familiar with specifics in local and regional elections.

Editing of comments by parties other than the writer should be carefully controlled.

I appreciate the chat with Pablo tonight in order to help me track the discussion relating to FRB and Constitutionality/Governance of the United States.

For the party who posted about going to the silver/Pailin's corner to catch up with the originals on the old blog, I'm happy to join that corner. I just do not want to see the original blog participants relegated to a "corner" like a "time-out" for bad boys.

We already know we're in the distinct economic minority. We just don't need to be treated like that here in this blog, especially given the road travelled by many of us.

I suppose if it was Ginger chastizing me, then I would accept it. But, that is only due to the prior interactions with Ginger in the old blog.

But, I also like chatting and dialog related to the issues that TF posts. It helps to open the mind and broaden thought.

Strongsidejedi wrote:

While I appreciate your role as an "admin", a posting should not be in the category of a thread titled "murderous" in the context of "government". This is especially true of the hijacking of a "Twitter" Fox news channel feed by some party over the weekend.

I would not appreciate having my words altered. The thread discussion process can be hijacked in a capacity which is neither declared nor clear to the posting parties if editing of comments occurs, including deletion.

For the most part, we did not need such admin parties to patrol, police, or otherwise edit during the prior blog.

With the amount of sacrifice in my life for this nation and my fellow citizens, I really have very little patience for individuals seeking to either recharacterize or edit my thoughts and ideas. I suspect others would join in that opinion.

More importantly, I am well versed in the tools of rhetoric and speech. I have written for print publications and am directly familiar with specifics in local and regional elections.

Editing of comments by parties other than the writer should be carefully controlled.

Thank you for your concerns. A few comments:

1. As a writer for print publications, you should know that no publication is a free-for-all - the editor chooses what articles to publish and when. Likewise, Turd gets to choose the overall tone of his website. Do not forget that this is TURD'S site, and he sets the rules! If you want to see something different, feel free to start your own community.

2. No editing of content is done. No moderator is given the approval to distort or change the writing of any poster here. The only "edits" we may do would be to remove copyrighted material, pornography, or other extremely offensive content.

3. Comments are only unpublished if they violate community guidelines and offer no value because they spam, inflame or troll. Generally, we are opting for moving of comments into *appropriate* topic areas if they are off-topic, rather than removing them.

4. No-one is being censored here. You are more than welcome to continue discussion of controversial topics in a variety of forums. We simply ask that you respect the rules and respect the other posters here. 

5. Flaming, trolling, purposefully disrupting threads, pushing boundaries for no productive reason, and otherwise hampering this community will be discouraged (to put it nicely).

Now. Some of you guys may want a free for all where anything goes, but that is not what Turd wants. We had long conversations with him about this, and he wants a positive community that is a bit higher up on the evolution scale than what you might see at other sites. (For example, ZeroHedge, which we all love, tends to degenerate towards the negative and non-productive at its worst.)

We are still in the infancy stages of this community, and we may make some mistakes here and there as we figure out the best way to guide the community. However, we have the best intentions in mind. We ask you to please be supportive of the moderators, because they are here at Turd's bequest. 

Thank you!

admin wrote:

5. Flaming, trolling, purposefully disrupting threads, pushing boundaries for no productive reason, and otherwise hampering this community will be discouraged (to put it nicely).

Now. Some of you guys may want a free for all where anything goes, but that is not what Turd wants. We had long conversations with him about this, and he wants a positive community that is a bit higher up on the evolution scale than what you might see at other sites. (For example, ZeroHedge, which we all love, tends to degenerate towards the negative and non-productive at its worst.)

We are still in the infancy stages of this community, and we may make some mistakes here and there as we figure out the best way to guide the community. However, we have the best intentions in mind. We ask you to please be supportive of the moderators, because they are here at Turd's bequest. 

Thank you!

Thank you for this standard of decency and community that you are trying to enforce.

Hope you can keep the trolls at bay.

Z

Moderation in moderating

Probably a difficult and mostly thankless job; so far so good in my opinion Even though we're all metal heads we've been given the opportunity to explore other venues. THANKS FOR THAT!

It's up to each of us to keep things where they belong; we can do that if only out of respect for TF and all he does and has done for us.

Now back to our regular scheduled programing.

By the way, gold's up!!!

I have been following some since ZH. I do not need to elaborate. But the injection of some moderators is getting annoying... I understand you are trying to do good, and just trying to be a justice of the peace... but really? 

Enough said, self reflect. S

later

~Em

margaritatime wrote:

I have been following some since ZH. I do not need to elaborate. But the injection of some moderators is getting annoying... I understand you are trying to do good, and just trying to be a justice of the peace... but really? 

Enough said, self reflect. S

later

~Em

Actually, the more specific you are, the more it helps. First off, everyone has different ideas/expectations of what they might find "annoying" - and you'd perhaps be surprised if you had been going through the flagged comments to see what people flag. Some folks, after one comment they find irritating from a member, want the person booted. Others have asked for extremely strict moderation on threads they've started. Some members want all swear words off the site (seriously - though, this isn't going to happen - but yes, someone flagged a comment that was titled BITCHEZ once).

Trying to find a balance and also help shape community expectations is a challenging task - especially with this community, which can sometimes be volatile.

There's a member, and I won't name names, who regular irritates people in the blog comments. But he doesn't bother everyone. Should he be booted because some find him irritating? Right now, we're very very slow to boot people and generally give people a lot of slack and leeway.

So "annoying" doesn't tell me much - and trust me, given the amount of flagging and stuff that goes on here, the moderation could be much, much heavier than it is.

If you could be more specific and offer some productive feedback in what you would want moderators to do, that would be more helpful. I don't doubt that my moderation can be "annoying" sometimes. But it's kind of an annoyance we have to have in order to keep the site civil, at least in my opinion.

Thank you,
Stephanie

Dear hard working & under appreciatted Mods,

I'm not sure what policies are in place or what permissions have been delegated but when known spammers are flagged wouldn't it make sense to delete their accounts as well as keep an eye on their IP's?

This account is a known spammer & I have reported it.. twice if I'm not mistaken. The first time I linked to a spam honeypot that lists known repeat offenders pointing to this accounts activity (site spammed & user name). IMO that should be enough info for deleting/banning the account to deter further activity. Seeing it pop up again early this morning surprised me to say the least. Can we kill it with fire now?

Hat tips & love for all you do,

RuNuts ~cat~

I just blocked the account - the moderators are pretty quick with the spam but sometimes miss a few. Thanks for letting us know! :-)

Appreciate the work!

Turdites claiming 'first!' goes way, way back- probably well before some or most of the moderators even heard of Turd. It started when this was a small but vigorous group of people waiting on the edge of our collective seats for the next missive from the man himself... and has been a strangely coveted thing with our group. I would assert that whether it annoys a particular moderator or not, it is clearly a long-standing tradition with this community, and is one fun, silly and rather harmless way we define ourselves. 

Those it annoys can simply scroll past- and for moderators, surely you have more pressing concerns?

Just my 2 cents. And for the record, I have never got "First!". But someday, I aspire to- I set the bar high in life ;-)

I'd like to second what Pining said. It is such an incredibly harmless thing in my view, and just a bit of competitive levity in a place where the topics can be downright dark. Spontaneously developed traditions can become a pretty powerful social glue.

As a military man, I treasure some of the silliness that developed spontaneously within small tight-knit units. Those things sprang up spontaneously, nicknames got dished out willy-nilly...might not seem important but the small unit that lacked a desire to develop some "distinctives" usually wasn't "clicking" on a very fundamental level.

My vote is to avoid thwarting the things that give this group its own unique "flavor". We've had people harshing DPH, Shill, Tesla and plenty of others for what they do and how they do it and I really wish folks would just scroll on by or use the ignore feature. In my mind they, and everyone else contribute to the uniqueness that is Turdville. I LIKE Shill's news and Tesla's OI and I love DPH's "peacemaker" heart.

Rambling again :) Bottom line, let the "first!" posts be because I need to get one before Pining does....

*snicker*

I wouldn't have any issue with a "First" that also includes some valid commentary or is funny, witty, or somehow related to the topic.

I on the other hand would not miss one bit the one-word "First" "Second" "Third" inanity that clutters up the beginning of every thread.

That's my vote on it! For whatever it's worth. I don't have strong feelings on it either way.

If I ever am blessed with the opportunity to make a "First" post I will try to make it something useful to the blog!

What ever the moderators decide is fine by me, Turd did mention in his video trying to keep the main blog on topic.

Having been blessed with 2 "first" posts, I agree they add a certain HARMLESS competitiveness and is tradition from the old blog. I don't like everything everyone puts up there, so I scroll past it, no big deal. Its the little things that I like here that make it unique.

Actually I don't care either way BUT I don't think it's a big enough issue for the moderators to actually delete the posts.

If you are going to get that picky then get picky over some bigger issues.

I see no issue with the "first" post thing. It's humorous and harmless. Anyone that gets their "knickers in a knot" over this has a really low threshold.

Far too many other things to worry about - just my 2 pennies.

A little background. This is the first (no pun intended) site I ever posted on. I watched people on ZH post "First" everyday for many months. Maybe they delete those posts now like you are considering doing. Anyhow, I always thought it was ridiculous and childish to post that way. Then one day, I posted about fifth, and I thought, hey, somebody will actually see my post instead of it being buried 77 spots down. When I actually posted that day I think I would have been third but by the time I got done writing I was 5th or so. It occurred to me, hey what would it be like to post on a clean board, you know---First! I could then see why you can't post anything of substance if you're going to post first because somebody will cut in front of you. I finally understood the inner machinations of posting First. It didn't seem quite so silly then, and when, a couple of weeks later I happened upon any empty board I let Henateme post First because I was too afraid of looking like a moron by posting First, when I might have ended up third. But then 2 days later completely by chance (I was mowing the lawn and had just come in) there was a clean board again. I went for it. It was great. That's all I can say is that an empty board calls to you somehow, like its got your name on it or something ( I'm being silly of course), but there is a certain ridiculous satisfaction about seeing a clean board and knowing you're first in line. BTW Pablo above doesn't get the psychology of posting First. I say this light-heartedly. Pablo if you think you are going to post something of significance then you will never post first because by the time you scribble down your tome you will be 6th or 7th, not First. Just a light-hearted post to let you know I am on the side of letting those who want to post First, to be able to do so. Yes, it's stupid and childish, but its funny and harmless and cool. The whole reason I felt comfortable being able to post First is because the community here are a very likeable bunch of folks. BTW Fulgamite, no, I did not hat tip myself the 19 or so hat tips I got posting First. I think people liked that I explained why I did it. Not that he accused me personally, but a couple of days later he accused those of us in that Elite Club (ha, ha) of hat-tipping ourselves. Moderators- Like my friends above said, just leave it alone.

I can't believe that someone posting "First!" is going to be moderated. It always brings a smile to my face.

I left the last forum because it was over moderated. Whenever anything was posted that disagreed with one of the moderator's viewpoints, off to the root cellar it went, or into the garbage, never to be seen again.

Posting "First!" is such a small thing. Takes all of one second to scroll down to the next post.

It really disappoints me that a moderator would remove it because it annoys him/her.

I understand the sentiment of tradition and small town recognition that inspired a fun moment being the one who gets to shout "First" .....back when the site was new and playing in the minor leagues so to speak.

But being a member of the second wave of Turdites who came here maybe 8 or 9 months ago...I discovered this site at the same time I discovered several serious informative sites that offer great wisdom (as does Turd) about the markets,geopolitics, precious metals investing, etc...and these sites are Essential to my education. For me ,this is more of a 'serious' place for learning, than a ..."Turd Fan Club,which is what I see this "FIRST" thing being...it feels like the mickey mouse fan club...

but as Pablo mentioned,it would suit me better if the "First" poster.... might have something worthwile to comment about instead of just shouting 'first' 

Something like this maybe.......

"First! Wow, I cant believe I'm first !! Ive never been first before.... oh, by the way....did you hear the latest news/rumors ? NATO might be planning to bomb Iran. I wonder if that would be bad for the markets.... see? much more meaningful that way.

or ...."First !!" .... Eurpoean banks are collapsing like dominoes...... will the government confiscate my bank account and 401K ?

Its all about Perspective

In the scheme of all that is posted what's wrong with it? Who's hurt by it? Sometimes it's quite humorous.

The posts are not inflammatory, they do not use foul language or impugn anyone and sometimes make us smile.

What's wrong with a smile?

Don't like it? Then grow up, pass it over and move on... to the next posting.

You can do it and the effort is much less than bitching about it.