Forums A couple of questions.

[LW]

Examples in this Post are left out or censored out to avoid things like the Meta Effect or unnecessary hate.

It's Christmas tomorrow! Woo! People have a lot of free time and look around Forums a lot more.

With that influx of people I've seen a few things I'm not sure about though which I'd want to know about.

1: Is there any official-ish rule laid out on Late Answers or Necro-Posts?
I've seen this happen a few times yesterday and wasn't really sure whether or not to flag. A couple of now rather irrelevant Milestones were bumped to the top of the Forums using a reply. I come from a couple Communities with relatively different views on that. When reviewing the Forum Rules however I saw nothing the like. If a still relevant post is bumped back up I don't see an issue, though what if e.g. a Milestone from 13 Months without activity is bumped, does it warrant a flag?

2: Profile/Wall Posts
Just a yes/no from an informed Standpoint would suffice here:
Is it worth it moderating Walls?

Monitoring the most recent Status Updates you relatively quickly get to see some Link-Only Statuses thrown around which would be unacceptable and likely deleted if posted as a Forum Thread or reply, take some examples:


Now throw the "It only reflects badly on the person doing it" factor overboard because this stuff also gets fed through Google:



Profile Posts are shown in many places on the Forums including the Homepage and are most people's way to try and post out spam without needing 5 Messages. The reason I'm bringing this up now is partially because I saw this Profile Post. Give me an OK and I'll flood your Mod Tab.

3: Introduction Section Posts
What do we do about that section? I more often than not see people just doing stuff like this:


Should this be flagged or just left to die? Asking for improvements most likely won't yield results, I wouldn't have seen someone edit their Introduction to make it better more than once or twice.

4: Flag Feedback
This happens every now any again though at times I'd want to know whether or not my flags were approved, declined, had action taken, etc. This wouldn't need to be for every flag and not all the time though sometimes I'd want to know whether I flag stuff the right way, whether I flag the wrong stuff etc. This is also part of why I'm making this thread, to spark a bit of Discussion on what to waste Mods' time with

 

[zeke morgan]

Ok some interesting points here are my take on the following

1) There isn't any official rule on posting on late answers or necro-posts, personally I think if people are posting on very old threads - for example some flagged, and some I've noticed are from 2016 - then this would definitely warrant a flag and we can talk to the user about this, or even look into more serious moderation for those areas involved. I will be setting some time aside in the coming days to go over old threads and close one's which have had no activity on in some time so hopefully this should sort this out. I will also raise this issue with the forum team, where possible (probably in our next meeting) to see if we can agree on some amendment to the forum rules about this

2) Personally I would say profile posts aren't monitored and shouldn't be moderated as harshly as other areas of the forums. It's my belief they should be free for users to post about what they wish, and if this includes links to their videos then this is fine - with that being said it would be nice to have more to work with then just a link, some context or additional wording would be better.

3) I have also noticed and been resolving more and more flags about this recently. I will admit I haven't quite found the best situation for this, sometimes I will reply on the thread asking for more details to try and turn it into a proper introduction, and others I will remove this completely and message the user (especially if this is spammy or just used for self promotion).

4) First of all no flag that is reported is ever a waste of our time . I can definitely look into providing more feedback on the flags that I resolve, and you can also feel free to ask any of us for more feedback regarding a flag that you may have submitted. The only issue I could foresee with this is when we (as the moderator team) have loads of flags to get through, moderate and report - speaking from experience sometimes I check the forums in the morning and their could be 20+ flags to get through. As you said this feedback wouldn't need to be for every flag but its something I will make a conscience effort to do more in the future, and again something I shall bring up with the forum team

 

[LW]

1) There isn't any official rule on posting on late answers or necro-posts, personally I think if people are posting on very old threads - for example some flagged, and some I've noticed are from 2016 - then this would definitely warrant a flag and we can talk to the user about this, or even look into more serious moderation for those areas involved. I will be setting some time aside in the coming days to go over old threads and close one's which have had no activity on in some time so hopefully this should sort this out. I will also raise this issue with the forum team, where possible (probably in our next meeting) to see if we can agree on some amendment to the Forum Rules about this

I don't think closing old stuff will be quite the solution, it is a rather rare occurrence so I believe you'd just waste your time running through closing stuff for that and we all know you have better things to do

2) Personally I would say profile posts aren't monitored and shouldn't be moderated as harshly as other areas of the forums. It's my belief they should be free for users to post about what they wish, and if this includes links to their videos then this is fine - with that being said it would be nice to have more to work with then just a link, some context or additional wording would be better.

Nothing to really write about this part, everyone has their standpoints

3) I have also noticed and been resolving more and more flags about this recently. I will admit I haven't quite found the best situation for this, sometimes I will reply on the thread asking for more details to try and turn it into a proper introduction, and others I will remove this completely and message the user (especially if this is spammy or just used for self promotion).

So it's not only me not fully knowing the course of action on that, good to hear that

I can definitely look into providing more feedback on the flags that I resolve, and you can also feel free to ask any of us for more feedback regarding a flag that you may have submitted. The only issue I could foresee with this is when we (as the moderator team) have loads of flags to get through, moderate and report - speaking from experience sometimes I check the forums in the morning and their could be 20+ flags to get through.

Yeah I can understand perfectly that waking up to that many flags is a pain, especially when it's me mass flagging someone's profile up and down again, not saying it should be a required field, just that sometimes (Especially on declined flags) it would be helpful to hear back on it, partially that I don't waste two people's time with a wrong flag again, especially because I come from places that flag a lot . Handling an issue quicker is of course more important than patting the flagger's ego with a long message on it but sometimes it'd help people know a flag has actually been handled (Heard quite a few people in chat in the past going "My flag hasn't been handled for a while"). Maybe it could be changed to just sending the "Your recent flag has been XY" message even if there is no comment on it? I've never really had access to XenForo Backends so I have no idea to what extent that's configurable.

Thanks for the reply and the credits, stuff like this helps me understand some stuff better

 

[Koala_Steamed]

1. For people bumping old threads if it is still relevant I'm fine with it, I'd rather not over moderate that sort of thing. If a user is bumping lots of old threads and without adding any real information then that would fall under spamming though.

2. For profile posts they haven't really been moderated so far. I'm not sure which way to go on that one, on one side it's nice to see occasional updates that someone has new content but then there is also others that are just using it to spam to get on the forums front page. Will have to be discussed more with the forum team (maybe we can have a forum poll on that).

3. For the intro section if someone posts a thread "Hi i'm new to the forums check out channel link" I'd rather keep the thread but have a reply getting the user to post more about them. For posts that are just "channel link" they may just get deleted as it's obvious that they haven't even tried.

4. We do get quite a few reports that are rejected. We should probably let users know why the report was rejected so that they know what sort of things are acceptable on the forums.

Thanks for bringing all these up, definitely things we will discuss in our next meeting

 

[LW]

I can definitely look into providing more feedback on the flags that I resolve

We should probably let users know why the report was rejected so that they know what sort of things are acceptable on the forums.

This is working like a charm, thanks for that!

ALSO
Is it possible that the 5 Message Link Filter doesn't mind [MEDIA] tags like YouTube videos? Could you fix that?

 

[Louisse Subido]

This has gotten my interest, watching this thread

 

[Koala_Steamed]

View attachment 19771
Is it possible that the 5 Message Link Filter doesn't mind [MEDIA] tags like YouTube videos? Could you fix that?

Not sure that it's possible as it just filters the http, at the moment we have the filter set to manual so the moderators can either accept on decline the post

 

[THE LAUGHING TREE]

what have i signed up to dude