How a moderator can ruin a good site for users

[banibhusan]

I would agree with the premise that over moderation can ruin a good site,,,,but I really don't think betting fits in very well with the technical site.

And moreover I feel, sometimes its down to the responsibility of the members to respect the rules and post in the designated threads, and also avoid unnecessary arguments as much as possible.

I know it's difficult considering the current popularity of the forum, but if we want this forum to remain as it was earlier, we have to create that awareness amongst the posters.

[wesley123]

Fact is:
Hordes of bright forum members have chosen to leave and the quality of thread content or even thread topics has dropped severely over the years.

100% true, now the forum is filled with these 'aerodynamicist' yet still asking the most dumb questions possible. The same guys that post in every topic, apart from in topics like these.

I surely don´t agree with offensive posts and posts /threads gone completely out of control-off topic and silly personal pingpong matches.

Threads rarely go completely out of control in my opinion and I think people agree with this. When I look at threads I have the feeling only the car threads are moderated, and that is done too much. If you look out of these 24 team topics you'll see flaming, useless posts, trolls, and everything you do not want. Instead of 'attacking' the poster they 'attack' the posts, and not in a good way. I have said it already multiple times before.

Great that they want threads to be completely OT but then they get split and merged with other threads where then 5 discussions are held through each other, making these topics pretty much unreadable.

I do not agree with a policy of filtering the forum for personal interest or aims of moderators even thogh I have never ever experienced any action onmy posts that were undeserved.

Never had that either and I think they leave your opinion very well

[bhall]

[...] I feel that Tomba by and large does a good job with his moderators.

[...] I know a guy here who plugs tons of figures from literature and from his own invention. He then shakes them and presents them as an indigestible hodgepodge cocktail.

[...]

If you use unsuitable models for physical phenomena your figures will be equally far from reality. So there can be many instances where figures suggest an objectivity that isn't there in reality.

But what are you to do in case a guy is rather obnoxious about his own ignorance? Some people can be very pig headed or need more robust language to come to grips with their own shortcomings.

If he continues to be pig headed about it I may have to be a bit more robust I think.

In the end it is for the owner to make the policy and for the users to respect it and carry on.

Engineering has nothing to do with democratic decision making or politeness.

Though I couldn't put my finger on it at first, I knew there's a good reason why this thread positively reeks of hypocrisy.

(Those quotes are all from the same thread, by the way.)

[Pierce89]

Solution: Get Bar555 back over here. He used to religously post every update on every car. Now he does his little blog instead of coming here.

[flynfrog]

Fact is:
Hordes of bright forum members have chosen to leave and the quality of thread content or even thread topics has dropped severely over the years.

100% true, now the forum is filled with these 'aerodynamicist' yet still asking the most dumb questions possible. The same guys that post in every topic, apart from in topics like these.

I surely don´t agree with offensive posts and posts /threads gone completely out of control-off topic and silly personal pingpong matches.

Threads rarely go completely out of control in my opinion and I think people agree with this. When I look at threads I have the feeling only the car threads are moderated, and that is done too much. If you look out of these 24 team topics you'll see flaming, useless posts, trolls, and everything you do not want. Instead of 'attacking' the poster they 'attack' the posts, and not in a good way. I have said it already multiple times before.

Great that they want threads to be completely OT but then they get split and merged with other threads where then 5 discussions are held through each other, making these topics pretty much unreadable.

I do not agree with a policy of filtering the forum for personal interest or aims of moderators even thogh I have never ever experienced any action onmy posts that were undeserved.

Never had that either and I think they leave your opinion very well

just look for the post per day it tells all

[Steven]

It appears that this thread needs my two cents, or perhaps my 500 euro.

The point here is that there are generally 3 types of people over here:
- those are are technically knowledgable. They have been asking for consistent and more thorough moderation, hoping to increase the % of technical valuable posts
- those who want to learn, they usually are silent when it considers moderation topics. Fortunately, people who are aware they need to learn and are interested are needed and well within the spirit of this forum
- fans. Members with hardly any technical interest, posting only in race threads and general chat topics. Those are always complaining about too strict moderation, but unfortunately there's nothing we can do. I've recently kept myself busy studying other f1 forums, and I must say I feel pretty good about this very forum.

I am with marcush & myurr.

What used to be a technically great site has been severly degraded by non technical people spouting gibberish as fact. There was an intention to introduce a post grading system - I hope it comes. There are 2 members whose (frequent) posts I always skip because they are complete drivel - and WB is not one of them.

The rating system is coming on May 17, which is the announced maintenance date.

[sunny1304]

i am a silent user mostly....but i just want all of u to look at the following page:

viewtopic.php?p=342727&f=12#p342727

the topic is about F2012's technical aspect....if u go through this(page no 288) page , do u see any technical discussion ????

what should be the mods role here ???

[donskar]

First, I do not accept the thread's title:

How a dictatorial moderator can ruin a good site for users

The mod is not a dictator.
Moderators are not ruining the site.
The mods have a very difficult and thankless task. They do it pretty well. I could not do as well.

IMHO the "problem" is a good one: the site's growing popularity and the passion of its participants. As more and more people join, the average technical level of visitors, and therefore threads, will certainly decline a bit.

Those who run this site might have to decide between two courses:
1) enforce stringently "technical-content-only" and thus reduce membership
OR
2) allow or even encourage general discussion and thus create an even more popular site

We have lost some intelligent -- even eloquent -- members. That is at least partially a result of the current state of F1. All just MVHO.

[xpensive]

...
IMHO the "problem" is a good one: the site's growing popularity and the passion of its participants. As more and more people join, the average technical level of visitors, and therefore threads, will certainly decline a bit.
...
We have lost some intelligent -- even eloquent -- members. That is at least partially a result of the current state of F1. All just MVHO.

Sorry to disagree Don, I think the discussion at hand here is the sudden new policy to simply delete posts when a certain moderator considered it "off-topic" or something else, not necessarily breaking any formal rules for posting.

For people like myself who has been here for quite some time and made a few friends which I keep in contact with outside the forum, it is natural that you establish a good-spirited bickering with an eye-twinkle. Such posts are now all of a sudden regarded as foul and being almost brutally deleted.

This is very disappointing.

As for the technical level, it has not decined just a bit, it has fallen like a ton of bricks. When I tried to engage a discussion over different materials for a push-rod recently, only marcuch and riff_raff responded, three years ago we would have been a dozen.

Unless you are into picture-aerodynamics of course, discussing imaginary vortexes, separations and stallings?

[hollus]

Since you are asking for feedback...

A quick fact: Whiteblue is the poster with the most posts. A quick look to member statistics reveals that this has been achieved in about half the time than for most other heavy posters. Interestingly, the same look also reveals that he is likely to lose the "race" to the first 10000th post...
Anything that happens to your posts is bound to be magnified 9000 times. The same way that football teams that spend a lot of time attacking are favored by penalties more often than defensive teams. The more time spent in the area of the other team, the more penalties there will be. The more posts made, the more posts that can get moderated.

That said, the person with the most posts in a forum is never the one making the most insightful posts. The filter for when something is worth posting is obviously set lower than for other people.

Whiteblue: You are the best googler in this forum. The same way that CrucialExtreme is the best image finder right now, it makes you a valuable member. You can find quotes from the past that nobody else can, you seem to be able to find links between two events that would otherwise remain hidden to most people. That said, you seem to find a lot of gems and a lot of crap. It goes with the territory of making the most posts, and it is not always easy to distinguish between the two. You also often give the impression of having an agenda, but that is only my personal opinion. In this particular case, the first post is quite legitimate if you feel like that, the title and leading poll can only be described as sneaky in view of the real subject at hand.

I personally have followed with great interest your betting odds threads. They are nice, they are thorough, they are informative and they most definetely belong in the off-topic section. Moderation is very loose in the off topic section, there almost everything except insult goes.

...
Posts that are in accordance with the rules, are respectful with the other users and do not violate the rules for posting in particular threads (car development , race threads) should be protected against deleting and copy pasting to another place. That has always been the policy on this board.

Do you realize that what is appropriate in particular areas of the forum is the decision of the moderators, that that is in the very definition of a moderator?

...as long as the dictator rules.

Do you realize that that is against the posting rules?

Again. You have the most posts in here (you do have 2.75% of ALL posts). That doesn't make you the most important poster nor the most correct one, but it does make you the most likely to attract moderation! It doens't mean there is a crusade against you.



One last note: The voting system is coming. It might be bad or good, I don't know, but it is intended to deal with the fact that there is an impossible work load on the moderators right now. It should have a subtle but steady effect on many things.
Let's give it a go, lets give the moderators a truce while it is being implemented and tested and fine tuned, maybe let's give it a 100 day grace period like it is done for new politicians; and then lets see what the situation is like in the forum.

[donskar]

X, I disagree with the specific statement of the OP, therfore I addressed the broader issue.

Yes, there is far less technical content, and what there is focuses primarily on aero. But F1 seems to be driven almost totally by aero and tires, both far outside the technical background of nearly all participants here. IMHO, except for minutia, there is little the majority can discuss about engine design or suspensions, to mention two broad examples.

...

Do we want F1 Technical to be a sort of online SAE discussion group?

...

Question to all: "Are there other F1 forums that (succcessfully) focus strictly on technical discussions?"

[xpensive]

O'boy, that's 7000?

Another problem is that this is a technical form without a technical moderator since Ciro, no big wonder petrolheads leave.

[strad]

Sorry to disagree Don, I think the discussion at hand here is the sudden new policy to simply delete posts when a certain moderator considered it "off-topic" or something else, not necessarily breaking any formal rules for posting.

For people like myself who has been here for quite some time and made a few friends which I keep in contact with outside the forum, it is natural that you establish a good-spirited bickering with an eye-twinkle. Such posts are now all of a sudden regarded as foul and being almost brutally deleted.

=D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

[Pierce89]

Bring Back Ciro! Bring back Ciro! Bring back Ciro!

Ciro Pabon is a former mod, for those who didn't know.

[GSBellew]

Moderating is a job where it is near impossible to keep everyone happy.

Under moderate & half the members will say the place as gone to the dogs.

Over moderate & the other half will have the same response.

Those who complain about Moderators would probably think very differently if they gave up their own free time
to moderate on an Internet forum, speaking from experience elsewhere it's not as easy as it appears from outside.

I say leave the moderators to it, once they are not deleting or manipulating posts to twist things for their own means
then I do not see any abuse of power.