Mod Bait (at your own risk)

[Suffolk 83]

Baker fucking sucks he's not fucking pragmatic. He can suck a bag of dicks. He's more do nothing than anyone. Just stand there and smile and not take a side or do anything to offend anyone sensibilities. Why are moderators here making political comments? Get of out here, seriously

 

[George_Apley]

Baker fucking sucks he's not fucking pragmatic. He can suck a bag of dicks. He's more do nothing than anyone. Just stand there and smile and not take a side or do anything to offend anyone sensibilities. Why are moderators here making political comments? Get of out here, seriously

Lol what the fuck is this? As though mods of a forum have to be politically neutral? Settle down.

 

[Arlington]

Why are moderators here making political comments? Get of out here, seriously

I think moderators should refrain from overt electioneering.

But this whole forum is political--literally the policies and policy-making of our polity: the (metro)polis of Boston. Addressing the phrase "Boston worst traffic in the country" is already a hot mix of polity and adjectives.

I don't think we'd have a workable forum if the rules forbade attaching adjectives to politicians and political dynamics, particularly a word so anodyne as "pragmatic" (which was intended to set Baker & Hogan off from the national R party, because they are different in identifiable ways).

 

[George_Apley]

I think moderators should refrain from overt electioneering.

I wouldn't even cede that much ground. If political conversation is relevant to a thread, there's ZERO reason moderators, admin, etc. should not participate however they see fit, so long as they aren't abusing their power by silencing disagreement. That this is even a question is absurd.

 

[Suffolk 83]

Yea mods should be refraining from making political comments if you're running a healthy forum. If you want to run an orangeman forum than by all means go be political but this shit shouldnt be. You're supposed to be policing trolls, which you guys do a terrible job of btw, so it makes sense you don't know how to remain a neutral moderator.

 

[George_Apley]

Yea mods should be refraining from making political comments if you're running a healthy forum.

Explain how a mod participating in a political discussion creates an unhealthy forum. This is an internet forum, not the Continental Congress. Robert's Rules of Order don't apply.

If you want to run an orangeman forum than by all means go be political but this shit shouldnt be.

Please point out the specific comments by the mods that are "shit" that shouldn't be. As far as I can tell you're annoyed that Charlie Baker was referred to as "pragmatic", which is the most mundane shit to be pissed off about, jfc. A more productive tack would have been to explain your disagreement with that assessment of the governor, and have a civilized discussion about it, but it seems you'd rather try to bait the mods. Good luck.

You're supposed to be policing trolls, which you guys do a terrible job of btw, so it makes sense you don't know how to remain a neutral moderator.

This is a laughably contradictory statement. Mods are supposed to police trolls yet remain neutral? How else are we to moderate if not by using our own judgement? A bunch of users are routinely edited or deleted. Sometimes publicly, sometimes BTS. Some users think it's too much moderation. Some think it's not enough. Apparently YOU think we also should have taken an oath of neutrality on all political issues when we became mods. Sorry, we weren't told that becoming moderators meant ending any meaningful participation in the forum and relegating ourselves to the mods behind the curtain.

Now, this is one area where your unwise and tactless ad hominem attack against the moderators actually has a productive point buried in it. We don't have a code of conduct for this board. We never have. The forum has always been lightly policed or not policed at all. Maybe we want to have a conversation as a board to discuss implementing one, especially if folks are going to start bitching about the moderation. You know what's not a conversation? Pointedly sniping at the mods with no explanation.

You are 100% free to cordially disagree with anything that anyone posts, moderator or otherwise. Hell as far as I'm concerned you can be borderline rude. You won't get edited or deleted or banned. I'm happy to have a conversation about moderation and take constructive criticism. But don't keep going with this line of personal attacks. You've been a member here since 2007. Work out whatever bug that's stuck in your craw. Now.

 

[tysmith95]

Well, prepare for WW3

 

[Suffolk 83]

Explain how a mod participating in a political discussion creates an unhealthy forum. This is an internet forum, not the Continental Congress. Robert's Rules of Order don't apply.



Please point out the specific comments by the mods that are "shit" that shouldn't be. As far as I can tell you're annoyed that Charlie Baker was referred to as "pragmatic", which is the most mundane shit to be pissed off about, jfc. A more productive tack would have been to explain your disagreement with that assessment of the governor, and have a civilized discussion about it, but it seems you'd rather try to bait the mods. Good luck.



This is a laughably contradictory statement. Mods are supposed to police trolls yet remain neutral? How else are we to moderate if not by using our own judgement? A bunch of users are routinely edited or deleted. Sometimes publicly, sometimes BTS. Some users think it's too much moderation. Some think it's not enough. Apparently YOU think we also should have taken an oath of neutrality on all political issues when we became mods. Sorry, we weren't told that becoming moderators meant ending any meaningful participation in the forum and relegating ourselves to the mods behind the curtain.

Now, this is one area where your unwise and tactless ad hominem attack against the moderators actually has a productive point buried in it. We don't have a code of conduct for this board. We never have. The forum has always been lightly policed or not policed at all. Maybe we want to have a conversation as a board to discuss implementing one, especially if folks are going to start bitching about the moderation. You know what's not a conversation? Pointedly sniping at the mods with no explanation.

You are 100% free to cordially disagree with anything that anyone posts, moderator or otherwise. Hell as far as I'm concerned you can be borderline rude. You won't get edited or deleted or banned. I'm happy to have a conversation about moderation and take constructive criticism. But don't keep going with this line of personal attacks. You've been a member here since 2007. Work out whatever bug that's stuck in your craw. Now.

Wow sensitive much? I'm not going to get in a flame war with you as you're already picking apart my comments. I will say this, how are you supposed to police trolls fairly if you're being a troll yourself? Don't get your panties in such a bunch George, the problem started long before you became a mod and you've just continued the mediocrity. Many of the quality, thoughtful posters are already gone by now so the damage has been done

 

[HenryAlan]

Not for nothing, but if the mods were going to police trolls more strictly, I suspect Mr. Suffolk wouldn't be here by now.

 

[fattony]

Not that anyone asked me, but I think the new mods have done little to improve the forum. You just like moving posts around which is more confusing than helpful. Delete trash posts and ban the people who had three deleted posts in some period of time (a month maybe). That’s moderating.

Also I think your little blue badges come with some restrictions and responsibilities. I didn’t think the post that upset Suffolk was so bad, but you must agree that mods should retain a modicum of impartiality about some things. It’s like being a cop or a manager. With your responsibility to the people you have power over, you give up some of your freedom to say whatever you want.

 

[Arlington]

I think it would be useful to see the post (by me) that Suffolk 83 was reacting to:

A system of HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes is the agreed "purple" solution in Virginia (between the state-level Rs and the suburban Ds), and it would seem like a better solution than "do nothing" which has been the response in Maryland and Massachusetts, whose solid-D legislatures seem strangely unable to act regardless of whether they have a D governor (Patrick or O'Malley) or a pragmatic R (Baker or Hogan)

I didn't attach an adjective to "D governor" because Deval Patrick and Martin O'Malley are generic Ds (or is even that too provocative a thing to say?). I did attach an adjective to Charlie Baker and Larry Hogan because they are not in the mainstream of their party, but have contrasted themselves in actually building transit (GLX and Metro Purple, respectively) after making a big deal about cost control.

Contrast the behavior of Baker and Hogan to the behavior of Governors Walker (WI), Kasich (OH), Scott (FL) who all summarily canceled their state's awarded High Speed Rail projects (MKE-MSN, CLE-CMH-CIN, TPA-ORL). I felt that was worth describing in, you know, words.

And then there's the strange case of Virginia where despite single-term governors and a largely R legislature they actually both build rail projects and use PPPs to add toll lanes to highways (I guess R's are happy that some big companies are cut in on it, making it look "capitalistic").

How would one have a discussion of this without drawing in examples of how inter-party and gov-leg relationships work and what kinds of outputs they do or don't produce?

 

[Arlington]

Not that anyone asked me, but I think the new mods have done little to improve the forum. You just like moving posts around which is more confusing than helpful. Delete trash posts and ban the people who had three deleted posts in some period of time (a month maybe). That’s moderating.

Also I think your little blue badges come with some restrictions and responsibilities. I didn’t think the post that upset Suffolk was so bad, but you must agree that mods should retain a modicum of impartiality about some things. It’s like being a cop or a manager. With your responsibility to the people you have power over, you give up some of your freedom to say whatever you want.

Thanks for the feedback!

I've been a post mover and relabler and welcome the feedback. I believe it adds value to have thread titles and thread content be related (I recall that an early active MBTA thread was titled "Driven By Customer Service Part Deux" and I think that's too much an inside joke).

When people start new threads (Like the East-West one) it is sometimes that they failed to notice that we'd already been talking about that same study (in the Amtrak / Intercity thread)

 

[Equilibria]

How would one have a discussion of this without drawing in examples of how inter-party and gov-leg relationships work and what kinds of outputs they do or don't produce?

(A) you can't, and (B) there isn't any expectation on aB that mods censor their political views. No idea why anyone would think there is.

Stop "baiting" the mods (I have no idea what that even means) and make your argument about managed lanes on the managed lanes thread where we discuss managed lanes. We don't need threads started just to troll specific people, so toss this one.

 

[George_Apley]

Wow sensitive much? I'm not going to get in a flame war with you as you're already picking apart my comments. I will say this, how are you supposed to police trolls fairly if you're being a troll yourself? Don't get your panties in such a bunch George, the problem started long before you became a mod and you've just continued the mediocrity. Many of the quality, thoughtful posters are already gone by now so the damage has been done

Not sensitive and this is not a flame war. I'm legit confused by your outburst. I want explanations. Talk to me about how Arlington and I are behaving like trolls. I'm happy to take constructive criticism and I agree that we could do better. All you just did is lob some more insults about sensitivity and panties. I didn't insult you at all. How you could possibly interpret my post as trying to start a "flame war" is also confusing to me. Address my points; they're asked in good faith. If you're not acting in good faith then what are we really doing here? Complaining that I don't do enough to combat trolls while simultaneously baiting me with insults seems like an odd strategy. If you think the forum is dead then leave.

Not that anyone asked me, but I think the new mods have done little to improve the forum. You just like moving posts around which is more confusing than helpful. Delete trash posts and ban the people who had three deleted posts in some period of time (a month maybe). That’s moderating.

That's fair. Like I said above, we don't have a code of conduct or any governing procedures for deciding how heavy-handed we are with identifying "trash posts", let alone banning people. I've been pretty conservative about leaving content up. Maybe *too* conservative. I'm willing to bet that *most* users would have banned by now under a liberal definition of shit-posting.

Also I think your little blue badges come with some restrictions and responsibilities. I didn’t think the post that upset Suffolk was so bad, but you must agree that mods should retain a modicum of impartiality about some things. It’s like being a cop or a manager. With your responsibility to the people you have power over, you give up some of your freedom to say whatever you want.

See, I think that would be kind of overbearing. I guess it depends what "some things" are. This isn't a place of business or a court of law or a formal debate hall. It's a place for people to talk about ideas in a mostly unstructured way. As long as Mods are following the same common courtesy and decorum that's expected of all, and don't let their personal preferences affect their moderation, I really don't see what the difference is if mods proclaim those personal preferences. Electioneering should absolutely be frowned upon if it's a thread derail, but if we had a thread about politics I would not see the problem, no. Regardless, in no world is using an adjective to describe a politician a reason to throw a fit.

(A) you can't, and (B) there isn't any expectation on aB that mods censor their political views. No idea why anyone would think there is.

This is how I look at it too.

Stop "baiting" the mods (I have no idea what that even means) and make your argument about managed lanes on the managed lanes thread where we discuss managed lanes. We don't need threads started just to troll specific people, so toss this one.

Baiting mods means begging for a ban. On plenty of forums Suffolk would have been tossed. Maybe we should have done that. That's kind of what I'm asking about. Should we be swinging the ban hammer more?

To be clear, I didn't start this to troll Suffolk. I split the convo because I wanted answers.

 

[Equilibria]

See, I think that would be kind of overbearing. I guess it depends what "some things" are. This isn't a place of business or a court of law or a formal debate hall. It's a place for people to talk about ideas in a mostly unstructured way. As long as Mods are following the same common courtesy and decorum that's expected of all, and don't let their personal preferences affect their moderation, I really don't see what the difference is if mods proclaim those personal preferences. Electioneering should absolutely be frowned upon if it's a thread derail, but if we had a thread about politics I would not see the problem, no. Regardless, in no world is using an adjective to describe a politician a reason to throw a fit.

I didn't understand that you had created and named the thread, sorry. That clears some stuff up for me. I personally wouldn't have created a new thread to publicly try someone's behavior. Keep that sort of thing in the PMs?

There are some folks here, I guess, who could be seen as "baiting" by making the same unpopular, offensive, or simple-minded statements over and over. Maybe ask for someone to delete posts with excessive swearing or offensive language, give them 24 hours, then do it yourself? If you have to keep doing it over and over, PM among yourselves and make a collective decision? No need for a discussion thread.

Beyond that, we have an ignore button. I've used it.

 

[393b40]

I think the mods have gotten a bit heavy-handed since the site change... not in the sense that I think they're biased politically but I don't like the constant juggling of posts around threads at all so that it fits whatever the moderators belief the narrative is rather than the original posters. Please stop mucking with the user-generated content. Just because you don't like where some inserted an opinion about something does not mean it should be moved to a more "appropriate" location.

This forum functioned for over a decade with barely any kind of moderation. Keep the trolls out but let the content stay organic.

 

[Equilibria]

I think the mods have gotten a bit heavy-handed since the site change... not in the sense that I think they're biased politically but I don't like the constant juggling of posts around threads at all so that it fits whatever the moderators belief the narrative is rather than the original posters. Please stop mucking with the user-generated content. Just because you don't like where some inserted an opinion about something does not mean it should be moved to a more "appropriate" location.

This forum functioned for over a decade with barely any kind of moderation. Keep the trolls out but let the content stay organic.

I don't disagree, but this seems like a one-time thing. I don't mind reorganization once to clean things up after a decade of free-form (when we lacked the tools to fix it).

 

[Scott]

Cleaning up is one thing. Taking a my way or the highway attitude toward long-time members who have contributed (in some cases) for 2 decades is arrogant and destructive to the institutional knowledge of this forum

 

[Arlington]

Cleaning up is one thing. Taking a my way or the highway attitude toward long-time members who have contributed (in some cases) for 2 decades is arrogant and destructive to the institutional knowledge of this forum

Is there a "my way or the highway" thing going on here?

So far (at least as I read this thread)

• Two moderators (George and I) have said "No" (in two different ways) to Suffolk 83s request for a particular model of mod self-censorship
• No moderator has encouraged any "or the highway" trajectories
• We have said Moderation would consist of moving content,
  • Specifically moving inter-personal controversies to controversy threads (rather than topical threads)

 

[Equilibria]

Cleaning up is one thing. Taking a my way or the highway attitude toward long-time members who have contributed (in some cases) for 2 decades is arrogant and destructive to the institutional knowledge of this forum

If you're referring to the moving of content within the MBTA and other general threads, many of which have had their names changed in the past couple of months... I can see why that might be annoying, but cleaning up the forum organizationally was one of the stated goals for the new mods. The community planned this a year ago before Ed bought the site.

If it's the other thing... Suffolk inexplicably went on a rant against a mod expressing a benign and thoughtful political opinion (honestly, it never occurred to me before that someone could even have a problem with an aB mod criticizing the State Legislature). George pulled that discussion offline (which I'm not sure I agree with) but didn't delete the post or ban/suspend the poster. Now we're talking about it. I'm not sure what's pushy or oppressive about that.