Sorry, some of following quotes are Fabrunelle, not polpolrene (just took from polpolrenes post)
We don’t draw lines, we just go as far as possible in that direction and in every aspect.[quote=“anon40790172, post:19, topic:6691”]
There is no single owner.
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There is not just 1 name as the registered “owner” ? Just that if it is, then it wouldn’t matter whether…[quote=“anon40790172, post:19, topic:6691”]
we don’t feel like the forum belongs to us
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Because it would. Lol, just got to say that being told it is not “felt” like it is owned by an individual and the Community are told they own it “in spirit”…it doesn’t really clarify anything. [quote=“anon40790172, post:19, topic:6691”]
Do we need like 15 admins?
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I don’t understand where you are going with all this or who suggested any such things. “Owning” and “operating” a forum are different things. The only point was that the registered “owner” would be a group not an individual.
If you read my post carefully you’ll actually see that I agreed with you that people can call for @ moderators in a topic instead of sending a PM. Here it is:
The only thing I said was that it doesn’t fits all cases.
Why so offensive, I just told you I agreed with your idea to call for mods in a topic instead of sending them a PM in some cases. It’s perfectly on-topic.
How? I laid out some serious issues with the idea that a whole community own a forum/URL etc. Would be great if you address them instead of saying that you just want to go as far as possible. So easy to say: “I’m gonna create world peace in 15 years”. Someone would ask me “how?” And I would reply with: “we just go as far as possible in that direction and in every aspect.”. That’s not really coming up with a proposal, but more like coming up with just an idea. I think I know a number of ideas that way.
Again, I laid out some serious problems with this approach. I’ve seen no answer or solution whatsoever. Same for the “let’s make this a 100% democratic forum” idea. Or this one:
I showed you in one reply here that we actually had polls/votes and that not even 7% of all members voted. No democracy there. Would be great if you could address these issues that I’ve raised concerning your OP. Otherwise you are just coming up with ideas (and that’s fine) but not actual proposals.
Currently, a handful of people decide who becomes a mod and inherits the very special powers and authority over the much larger Community. These powers can potentially impact freedom of speech, shut down dissenting voices, steer the direction of the forum politically etc. Because of this, it is important that systems are as transparent and as accountable and involving of the larger community as possible.
The current system is open to abuse……now……and needs changing asap in my view.
Yes, we should thank the early mods/admins etc for birthing the modding system and giving us a live baby……the time has just come for its inoculations against viruses and systemic diseases. Too many issues are being conflated here and too much emotion.
It has been recognised by Fabrunelle that the system should be made more transparent and accountable, even if others do not……he appears to just want to postpone things until either after launch or at a time after that when the forum has over a certain amount of users. I think this is the only question left really….what is the timeline for the transfer to a more accountable/inclusive/transparent system and what should it look like? This is why we need other ideas from the community around these ideas for potential improvements.
Thinking about it, I really do feel this is a pressing need and should be done sooner, rather than later. This is the topic to explore/debate the relative merits of delaying or implementing asap.
This whole debacle about modding came about following a comment by Happybeing explaining how a recent crop of mods had been chosen by existing mods. When questioned about why there was no Community inclusion in this process, the explanation given by Happybeing was that no direction was given by either Maidsafe or the Community, so he (maybe with others) chose who was to be a mod themselves. Happybeing said he was happy to take responsibility for everything that occurred from this point, (which suggests it was his decision alone– otherwise why take responsibility).
This is the point at which my argument begins and pertains to. It is clear I think, that mods claims that I am singling out 1 person unfairly is false, as he has taken responsibility for it himself.
I would argue that the Community should have been consulted at this point on how to best recruit mods – not just go ahead and do it.
This debate had become very contentious and a number of complaints have been made from users concerning this and other modding issues with some proposing reform.
The Meta category was taken from the front page during such a heated debate. The reasoning given by mods was that in their opinion it was a distraction to users and the Category was now seen as less relevant to the Safe Network than anything else.
Understandably, (among this particular freedom of speech loving, anti-authoritarian Community) I think, this action raised a few eyebrows and turned up the heat. Once my eyebrows had returned to the front of my head, I saw this action as misguided and not thought through politically or from a PR point of view really, I saw it as a mistake – it left an understandable impression that need not have been left (just my opinion). If you look at it in political terms, there were 2 opposing camps about how forum governance should be run. Effectively, all arguments against the current incumbent mod regime would henceforth be given less prominence and the arguments heard by fewer people – fact.
There have since been a number of incidents of mods moving posts critical of modding to off-topic. This has been complained about by more than myself (as the mods know full well, despite constantly trying to reduce this issue to just myself complaining). In fact my recent suspension was started by a new user complaining about the same thing. This was initially denied by mods and I was told to get my “facts straight” and stop repeating falsehoods – this was despite clear evidence that it happened, though this was just brushed over. Again, it gives a bad impression, an impression that mods have no right to complain about people being left with – they created it, it’s a result of their seemingly authoritarian actions. You can’t complain about a reputation……it’s a result of your deeds.
Anyway, we’ve now had suspensions of users arguing against the current system and the constant repetitive claim that the system has around 99% support (we are making a fuss of nothing). Supporting “evidence” for this has been offered in the form of “likes” given to some threads on the main page – highly dubious in itself as there is no “dislike” button….how come the likes figures aren’t taken from the views figures then by the same flawed reasoning all those viewing but not liking must therefore dislike it? It also completely ignores the fact that this whole line of argument is completely undermined by the fact that the opposing “party” and argument does not have the same audience/prominence due to the previous mod action of removing Meta.
So, anyway, scooting forward to today, I have been trying to look at ways to make the modding more transparent/accountable to community etc. I am now told that this is something that could be addressed after launch……maybe. The reasoning is that it would be a distraction to Devs, not enough people on forum etc – I think this may need exploring a bit further though. Is continuing like this less of a distraction and what do devs have to do with modding in any case. All they have to do is not read Meta….lol….its not on the front page.
I am also told that I would need maybe 20 people to support reforming the modding system to be able to effect change. The place to do this is the Meta category, which reduces the chances massively though due to mod actions………this leaves an impression.
I’ve read the intro only as I don’t have time for this. You paint a picture, that to my recollection is again inaccurate - it’s how you recall it, how you see it, but I differ. Perhaps if you would provide links, we should all be able to see what actually happened and judge for ourselves, and you would not then find others correcting you, at length, which you then regard as “spamming” or “off-topic”.
Again, I ask you to clearly make a proposal for the changes you want, we’ll pin it on the front page for everyone to see and discuss, and it can be put to a vote.
Until you do that, you can expect to be debated, and corrected, as part of a community, not all of whom agree with you, and in my own case have different recollection the things you keep reporting as fact.
Final warning for spreading this nonsense @Al_Kafir. @anon40790172 has responded to this lie multiple times with the links that showed the truth but you seem to dismiss those and continue to attack us with this lie.
Offensive? What in anything I said could possibly be described as “offensive”.[quote=“, post:22, topic:6691”]
Yeah, been there done that, told you multiple times that not doing it anymore, yet you keep repeating this to me - is this what causes flame wars? Because of my dissatisfaction with these systems I started this thread which you seem unable to remain on topic with. Why just keep repeating use @ moderators all the time?
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Please circle the part, discuss with your colleagues, give it due consideration, reach consensus etc…lol
He is not the only one who recognises that there are areas that may be improved. What is needed is actual changes, not just pointing out potential deficiencies. I would welcome constructive changes to be presented (As a member and as a mod)
Honestly, not as a mod, but a person, all I’ve seen is mud throwing, and occasionally a good idea in there. How can anyone action your concerns, the concerns are pointing out what you view as faults and very little willingness to discuss those things. Dunno if I am the only one, but for months I have been waiting for a suggestion of actual changes to be made by yourself or others.
This is my personal opinion (I am not trying to explain the official position):
You still have your freedom of speech, but not on other people’s property (and every web site is a property of its owner(s))
It isn’t important that systems involve the community (the old “inclusiveness” nonsense), but that they’re private, so that there is always the opportunity for a better one to be set up, if management of currently dominant communities doesn’t fulfill the needs of certain community members
Maybe yes, maybe no, but it’s related to modding, not to what forum participants (99% of whom haven’t been modded) care about. So it’s completely understandable that few people care about this.
As one of few people who have been modded and officially warned on more than one occasion, I may have certain opinions about the quality of modding myself. Once I think I posted in Meta about it, but that’s as far as that goes.
You did that more than once and you’re still not happy, so why not start a new community?
On this site, yes. But you can start a new site today and implement a better moderation policy before end of day today.
You made your points, you did that more than once and you got nowhere with that. Maybe it’s time to stop talking and get to work?
Would anybody else like to interject at this point who have had experience of this. I know that I myself have and that the new user @Natalie_Bertoncello also had the same experience prior to my suspension. I believe @Warren also had posts critical of modding removed. I do not tell lies and moving my posts around and continuing with these accusations of lying to a long standing community member is totally unacceptable. Although it will do yourselves no favours whatsoever, I fully expect you to remove this legitimate defense of the false accusation and further suspend me. Well done guys…
Asking for a full community consensus but you’re expecting to be treated differently because you’ve registered a username before others did? You do tell lies and they have been pointed out about ten times already.
lol…OK…I’m going to investigate this further, because I know I don’t tell lies. Going back to the time of suspension, the mods definitely 100% lied when they claimed I said that posts were removed FOR being critical…if not moved to off-topic, then either deleted or moved from front page anyway. However, I can assure you I do not lie, but will own up to any mistake I may have made in this regard.
Will mods do the same for my counter accusation of lying?
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OK,….lol….I have no idea how to set about investigating this. Because of this, I am at the mercy of somebody coming to my rescue to whom this has also happened. Because of this, I will have to retract the claim that critical posts were moved to off-topic (unless some white knight comes riding by). I obviously do not however admit to deliberately lying – that is a step too far and the accusation crosses the line. People can make mistakes without intentionally lying. Anyway, I will not repeat until such a time as more information is available to support the claim and concede I may have been mistaken.
OK, in my defence, I was intending to make the larger point that posts were moved away from main page, given less prominence, moved to off-topic or deleted. As the Meta category is away from front page, it is also treated as off-topic, in that people have to search for it, it has a smaller audience. A whole swathe of posts that were critical of modding were moved to a less prominent position, treated as off-topic when Meta was moved. That was the larger point I was making.
Yes, you got a bit of a punch in there (unless rescued), I should have checked first, my error and I concede the lesser charge of being mistaken, won’t repeat until sure, but as I say, I did not and do not deliberately lie. I should have just said “moved to a less prominent position”, but I didn’t, so yes, I’ll give you that one.
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You also seemed to omit to answer the “offensive” question, so now if you could just justify the final warning and expand on the accusations of me being an offensive liar, then I would appreciate it. .
First of all, I’m not a moderator. However, as a ‘regular’ member I participate in self-regulation. If folks get all political, has to go in the off-topic section. I must have done that 3 or 5 times. Including my own threads it would be nice to vote something to off-topic so the whole thread doesn’t get butchered. <— there it is. I’m demanding what the software does not allow.
Second, I think banning you was not a good idea. Because you’re a member for so long, you’re not just a spam account and you’ve been expressing yourself as yourself. I can see a spam account being banned within 1 hour, that’s awesome hats off to the mods because sincerely I’ve never noticed a single spam account yet.
Thirdly, the most productive thing we can do is invent our own forum software and adopt it. Otherwise like pointed out before @Blindsite2k made his own uncensored forum… Folks get annoyed with trading talk, so I made a trading forum → discuss.safex.io@Al_Kafir if you had some new software for a forum I’d probably check it out, and adopt it seriously!!
Fourthly, this forum is about the Safe Network. It should be obvious that $ht talking about the Safe Network is off-topic, it is unproductive. Unless… there is a point… if the Safe Network has X.Y.Z. feature that sucks. And an alternative proposal is made and demonstrated Z.Y.X. with proof of it working, then it’s on-topic $ht talking. I hope that would be obvious as a productive thread.
Fifthly, alternatives and collaborative material will be critical when raising issues. If you have a problem you’ll must be coming along with solutions and clear ones that people can read. Unemotional objective solutions because otherwise it’s a huge distraction. I’d tell you that as a survey of my own, most folks would rather use some other solution of software for the forum. But this one suffice for now definitely.
Sixthly, I feel like mods just issued the ban, because it’s the palliative solution to gather their bearings. I didn’t even notice this 20 days ‘debacle’ AT ALL until expressly shown to me. So there is some under the rugging going on, but as well this argument doesn’t serve folks.
@Al_Kafir this kind of dispute could just as easily and Even more effectively found it’s way into Project Decorum, and a collaboration between yourself and @seneca to come up with the forum software with the democracy you demand, etc.
A recap → self regulation is important, yes some things are Political, and personal opinionated in totality and completely offtrack of the worldview that Safe Network is open source, it is encrypted and private and secure, and anyone can join because they have a computer - other things they go off-topic and they can have a section of their own. That includes the personal rants of folks. You can just as easily make a blog post, make a thread mark it as “other projects” and leave it be. And if it’s bumped 1000 times and made the spectacle of personal ranting… off-topic.
So a clear solution I see is make a specification, talk about the issue you want to solve and use personal experience.
Hi, yes I can agree with a lot of what you say. I think I must be confused somewhere tbh. If this is a private forum with private owners etc, then I’m not arguing anything. In that case, all I would object to is the way it is “sold” as a community forum. How it was run would be nothing to do with me. I was under the impression that it was supported by Maidsafe and intended as a community run forum. If I was wrong in this, then as I say I have nothing to argue. I haven’t actually made any demands though either. Are mods employed/hired by owner or in any other way invested? I’m just not grasping the set-up.
Anyway, if not intended as private, and instead community run, then I think I’d have the right to try to change the system on this forum, rather than start another.
I also don’t have any coding skills and Seneca the mod you mean?
I think some clarification as to ownership and intention would help.
Register and you’re on the forum and can join the discussions, so it doesn’t seem to be private. You have got the right to make proposals for this forum(which I haven’t seen, only read that you don’t like the way this forum is set up currently). So as long as you’re not doing any suggestion you’re only nagging and bashing the current way it has been set up. A setup that already gave you 1.5 years the chance to discuss everything related to the project I believe you must be interested in?
I haven’t used the word lie in any of this because I think it’s hard to know whether someone lied or not and I would like to be sure before making such an accusation. What I do say is that the above is one of many examples where it’s important IMO not to let inaccurate statements stand, yet you are generating so many we can hardly deal with them all. I’m amazed that @anon40790172 and others have taken the time to do so - I simply don’t have enough time to do that, and to read everything, and to respond to the more productive topics where new people are arriving, curious, interested, want help etc. or where details of how things might work, websites, forums, structured data, security, or how to do marketing and so on, are taking place.
Those are all very important to me and to the project, so while your concerns and wants are worthy of consideration, they can’t be addressed by you continuing to cause disruption and using up so much of our personal volunteered time without getting to the point and advocating for a specific proposal.
After at least a couple of months of this, you have not made a clear proposal for changes, though more than once you said you were going to.
When I asked about a month ago why not, you said because it wouldn’t be seen - you would do it when Meta was put back on the front page. My response was, well if you make a clear proposal, we could pin that to the front page, which would give it at least as much visibility, if not more. I also said that putting Meta back on the front page was a separate issue, and that linking them just made a deadlock, and I suggested it would be necessary for you to treat them separately so we could move this forward.
You have not responded to those specific comments, or further invitations on my part to put forward a clear proposal so we can resolve this.
Instead you’ve continued to present things as facts that have been found inaccurate, and continued writing large amounts of opinion and interpretation - often presented as fact - which amount to mud slinging and indirect personal attacks on the team and unspecified individuals (“two mods”). Because they are your opinion, your interpretation, and frequently inaccurate reporting of events (certainly disputed), repeated in order to perpetuate a picture of moderators here that is your fantasy.
You have been unable to hear anything said to you that doesn’t fit this picture, and have completely rejected the possibility that your behaviour had been even in part a cause for the repeated corrections and warnings, and in the end a short ban. Something we do very rarely indeed.
BTW when I was made a moderator - I accepted an invitation from the community (not another admin or mod), and in that invitation I think it’s fair to assume the community expected me to use the privileges of a moderator which range from deleting spam posts and accounts, to banning users who persistently cause problems. Nobody said, hey, we want to give you some rules, or for you to work some out and put them to us. Not even you. I realised that as the team grew, it would help us to be consistent for us to have some guidelines beyond the defaults that came with the forum. Also for clarity with visitors, and so they could hold us to account (as often happens if people feel were not operating to them). Other mods agreed, but I can’t say who suggested it. I recall @anon40790172 being one of several miss who advocated and set up more internal processes and “moderator resources” that built on that, helping new mods get up to speed, and streaining our work etc.
The community chose me back in the days we pretty much knew everyone, because they felt I’d do a good job, and I just got on with it. There were others with more privileges (admin), but as they didn’t have the time for moderation, I was added to the team, and as yes, I’m responsible for my decision to invite others to join me when I realised I needed more help.
You might imply I should have done this or that (involve the community in selecting other mods for example), but you didn’t suggest it at the time and nor did anyone else. Not even when new mods were announced. So while I take responsibility for the system that has evolved, initially under my influence, but increasingly less so with input from other mods and the community increasing, that doesn’t mean I’m claiming credit or responsibility for everything. You could have raised this right back then.
So I’m standing by what I did, and by the process by which it has evolved, and a team of high integrity, hard working volunteers, who have ensured this forum is absolutely doing a great service for the project - but which will no doubt continue to evolve it’s processes, including moderation and perhaps at some point the selection process, though I don’t support that at this time. Make a case and maybe I will be swayed - you made much of my being persuaded to moving off-topic from the front page, for which you like to claim some credit (I recall certain mods advocating it strongly too ). So… why not get on and make the case here, instead of all this distraction.
Also, please note that Meta posts appear under other topics when read to the end, so even though they are not on the font page, they are far more visible than off-topic, and regular visitors will definitely see them.
We as a team are spending a lot of time on this, while few, if any apart from yourself, in the community continue to be concerned about it - again - and it simply can’t continue. As I’ve said more than once, there are options open to you, but you’ve not taken them, nor responded constructively to help us find a way to make them work for you (if indeed they can’t already).
absolutely no way I’m responding to any of those mod posts until such a time as you respond to the “offensive” issue. I am trying to make suggestions and keep on-topic, but the mods have just totally hijacked the threads and refuse to explain themselves. If my comment was “offensive” then why not either remove it or concede it was not offensive.
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I notice you changed the colour of the above post, after I posted this. Is that another warning - if so do it after this post, not before.
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Here’s where we are up to; I have responded to your claims of “lying” by clearly explaining my mistake and giving the circumstances and reasoning. It is now your turn to answer both the “offensive” issue and address my claim that it is the mods that are lying. A further explanation of how you differentiated the lie from the mistake would also be helpful.
Failing any of that, then maybe an on-topic contribution to the thread may help further the discussion – more of the same does not.
This is what I’ve said. Not that strange isn’t it? It actually agrees with a proposal you did about not sending a PM to @ moderators but instead react in topic and get moderator attention that way. And I got this reply from you:
So I asked:
And now we get this…
So now you call this the “offensive issue”? Well let me clear that for you. I actually agreed on a idea you came up with, and as a reply back I get the question if this causes flame wars? And you accuse me of not being on topic? Right after I agreed (for a part) on something you purposed? To me that’s quite offensive to the fact that I actually agreed on something you came up with. Not offensive to me personally but quite offensive to a reply in which I responded to a point you made. And because it’s not personally offensive (although not quite a normal way to have a conversation IMO) it’s not a personal attack and just strong opinion. It’s also not in yellow, so not really a “mod” thing. Feel free to read my replies again and see that I actually agreed on something you purposed.
That some people have power over other people through property (where property itself is a made up but generally useful notion) is the nonsense. Even greater nonsense is the idea that nothing should interfere with this nonsense.
North Korea has power over you because they made a nuke and that nuke is their property. But their nuke was made to reduce my enjoyment of my property. Precisely, you can’t interfere with that property of their nuke or their property. But if they use their nuke on me I won’t be able to enjoy my property. But you have to understand that their nuke as property gives them more power than you so you have no right to complain because you have less power and those with the gold make the rules.
People working with or stuck on this lower ethics should be more subject to quarantine because their ideology constrained lower ethics is comparatively speaking is a contagious fear based disease.
). So… why not get on and make the case here, instead of all this distraction.