Rousing a little rabble

I know this is a serious warning, but somehow my first inclination was to cause trouble by marking this as spam.   I'm in a weird mood, I guess.

In all seriousness though, I do occasionally wish there was some way of flagging a post as inappropriate without actually calling it spam.  For example, if I see someone using foul language or being insulting while remaining on topic, it's not technically spam, but I'd like to bring it to someone's attention that it might not be appropriate and the poster might need a polite reminder that we're expected to behave civilly here.  Doing so in another post in the thread just makes a further digression and hijacks the thread. 

Fortunately, I rarely see people behaving very rudely here, and for that I am grateful to everyone.  It's nice being nice, and having others be nice as well.

Ken, that's borderline OK

Ken:

If a post has foul language or is totally slanderous, mean, or completely nasty in tone, then it's okay to mark it as spam if you IMMEDIATELY TELL US YOU DID SO.

What we don't want is people quietly marking a post as spam just because they disagree or otherwise find the poster is getting on their nerves.

It's time to calm down and go work on the layout for a while, then come back when you've had time to reflect on things. We prefer a live and let live policy on here, and we find critical posts, if done nicely, help us all think through the alternatives.

People aren't always completely tactful, so we need to all cut people some slack now and then. Also posts can cross each other so it can look like a poster isn't listening when in fact the two posts crossed each other - so keep that in mind as well.

Inappropriate

I agree with Ken and feel there should be a "mark as inappropriate" button next to the "mark as spam" button. 

This could be linked to a counter similar to the one that counts the votes we give for articles in MRH mag. 

When the "inappropriate" count reaches a certain level (determined by MRH staff) it could trigger a response from MRH staff who could then review the offending post and take whatever further action they deem necessary.

While I applaud MRH's decision not to censor the posts there have been many many posts of late that have been downright nasty with posters calling each other derogatory names etc.   I think MRH waits WAY too long before stepping in and giving someone a gentle reminder to "play nice".  This could even be done in a private e-mail between MRH and the offending poster.

These nasty posts are spoiling an otherwise great forum for the rest of us who just want to enjoy the hobby.

...

This is used on a lot of forums to great benefit, if a post receives to many negative votes, then the post is minimized but it is still there so that those who wish to read it can still expand it and read it.  This may not be satisfactory to the people who want to "make it all go away," but it removes the issue altogether by making it harder for those who don't want to read not having to read it unless they feel compelled to expand every minimize post they see.

There is one thing, however, that must be considered: a difference of opinion, or a difference of paradigm, no matter how staunch, is not reason enough to say something is "inappropriate."

Censorship

Hi Joe,

I saw in one of the recent, pertinent thread, that a poster was advised to start his own thread by MRH. From an outside position, the poster's comments were not off topic, nor offensive. Certainly no where near what we've seen on other threads and topics.  This does read as simple censorship.

Is the ability to remove posters from our own blog threads with MRH backing now supported, regardless of the reason?

Thanks!

Censorship

To me that is not censorship. The poster could still express his point of view in his own thread about the subject he wished to expound upon. In my opinion if the poster had been told that he could not express his view in his own thread, that would have been censorship. It was politely asked if the poster would start his own thread so as not to take the original topic off post. I have seen this happen many times.

So to me the polite thing to do is to ask the poster not to take the subject off topic, to start his own post. In my case of the crane turret thread, the first post was fine by me. It gave a link to a question that was asked. The second post got a little more verbose and was going off topic.

I don't believe censorship was exercised in this incident. You are still free to start your own thread to voice your opinion. Am I right on this or wrong?

Bernd

Politeness in action

Before, not after.

Blog is a thread with an owner

The difference is a blog is a thread with an owner, and to some degree as the thread owner you have the option to set some rules.

On forum posts, nobody owns the thread and dictating rules is less appropriate. 

Unfortunately, on MRH's website both types of threads looks virtually identical. In future releases of this website, we will be moving to make blogs more distinctive.

If you blogged elsewhere, you would own the blog completely and you would also be able to freely delete posts you didn't want on your blog. We'd like to strike a balance here between total dictatorship and total democracy when it comes to blogs.

My preference is you don't delete posts outright on your blog thread, but you can certainly set the rules for posting on your blog and you can ask someone to start their own thread if they want to discuss something you consider to be taking YOUR discussion off topic.

Se we're not saying it's all one way or all the other - we're hoping for a middle-of-the-road approach on blogs particularly.

Andy, yes we know

Andy:

Yes we know Bernd was belng a bit harsh in calling you out by name, but it is his blog. I'd like to suggest we bury this hatchet and not fan the flames any further.

Everyone's a bit on edge but we've sent enough private messages about this that I believe we have an understanding now.

We may look at expanding the post marking function to allow specifying if a post is considered spam or needing moderator review.

As the owner...

This is something I have always wished were the case here.  What a shame it is that one has to go elsewhere to get this feature.

It would seem that it is in my best interest to only use my blog at MRH if I want any control over how discussions might be cluttered by nonsense or skewed off topic.

I see examples currently of certain forum members (published MRH authors) who post in another members blog, not to offer anything constructive, rather, seemingly only to taunt that member.  To his credit, he largely ignores them and does not mark their posts as spam.  It's become rather sickening and tiring to watch.

But to quote a great Canadian drummer and lyricist,  Neil Peart,

"It is what it is, and whatever."

Thanks Joe

...

Well, that's in part because they aren't really private; they're public blogs. 

The way I've always seen it, is that as threads go, they always evolve.  The more one tries to tighten the channel, the less discussion occurs.  The more discussion occurs, the more likely you'll come across something interesting, even if it doesn't even have a whole lot to do with the primary subject. 

Take a good close look at any good public forum moderator [television] and you'll see that the panelists will indeed run all over the landscape bringing in what points they feel are pertinent, while playing off each other's responses.  The Moderator pays due respects either by a nod or even addressing specific points, but if there's a specific part they were most interested in, or they have a specific purpose in mind for the general question, they'll bring that part back up in a prominent way, as a retort question, and pull the discussion back on topic without any real comments of "lets not talk about that."  Doing the latter, it shuts down conversation, and one will never know what treasures were missed by not having that conversation.  The easiest way to end a discussion you don't like is to simply let it slide down the slope by agreeing that this other method could be used, then refocus back on the main subject at hand.  You concede the point, but you win the discussion.

for example, simply agreeing with Andy that perhaps there's other ways to cut internal gearteeth besides the equipment you're used to and then moving back to your project at hand by detailing your plan of attack for the  next step on the model and what you did [without actually saying that you're done talking about cutting gear teeth] completely turns the page on that discussion altogether and leaves no tailends Andy may latch back onto.

I have well learned through the process of the club's layout re-design that if there is a space ANYWHERE where two men are present, ANY two men will find a way to argue over how to use that space.  Forum space and blog space are no exceptions, and engineering is Certainly not an exception!

I do believe we have come to one good solid agreement here: we don't discuss sex or religion, and though we've come pretty close to discussing politics, we've learned that really isn't too keen of an idea either!!  We keep that agreement, we'll avoid 99.9% of all the bickerbattles that have ever played out on the internet.

Our biggest issues, though, seem to be those of paradigms - and we all have this issue, to a point.  We're all perhaps quite educated [most model railroaders tend to be so] so when we have our conclusions, you'd might as well put a ring through our nose before we'll cross the bridge and turn our backs on 10 or 30 or 50 years of experience working with the medium.  To see the contrary printed, that would constitute heresy!

I'm sure we could all work on how we react to such heresy when we see it!  Mind you, though, like I'd naturally expect from any one of you, I'm not laying down my telescope any time soon - you could sooner imprison me in my house for the rest of my life, than to see me give that up!