So we need a moderator for the moderators? LOL - now that's the definition of irony...

I'd expect that Robin's 'donation' has been 20+ hours of effort, every week, for many years.

Just a thought ... may already be this way, thought sounds like it isn't.

When it comes to the moderation (or over moderation) as some call it, why not implement a "two (2) missile key" system?

One moderator can flag the concerning post, and it must be secondarily approved by a second moderator. That second moderator should be an outside to the specific sub, and the site could randomly choose from a list of mods to involve.

Perhaps more sever actions require a third (3rd) key to be turned in the sequence?

There are reasons the world has developed judicial tribunals for important matters....

Maybe, just maybe, taking this absolute power out of one person's hands will help.

-Brian

How dare you elude that Robin might be a "poindexter"?
I think he'd prefer to be known as a Pindexter!

Robin,

Would you be willing to share a couple infographics, charts, or text breakdowns of Pinside's membership demographics?
Perhaps those following this thread will be surprised to learn what percentage of men vs women vs gender-neutral Pinsiders we have?
Also How many members are between 11 - 15 years old and 16 - 20.

-Brian

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Wow, this topic has really taken off. Clearly this topic is important to many of you and that makes it important for me too to address.

As with many other decisions, the "issue" of Off Topic postings (or: the noise ratio as some call it) is a tough balancing act between two camps of Pinsiders who both want something different from the site. There's the people in camp A who are asking me to do something about the noise ratio and there's those in camp B who don't care about it and enjoy the off topic banter in topics. Both sides are pulling on me.

This all started because of some O/T ejects done in some long running threads, in a well-meant effort to steer those topics back on track after several complaints from the camp of people who dislike the amount of noise. In hindsight this probably wasn't a good idea but at least it's got us re-thinking this "problem".

I talked in length about this with the moderator team and with some close friends too. We all agree that the forums are an organic environment. Trying to catch everything in rules and regulations is not something any of us want to pursue. It kills the natural flow of a forum environment and, let's be realistic here, it's just not doable to expect thousands of people who post here daily to all stay perfectly on topic all the time. Probably pretty boring too.

Soooo --- I think we should conclude that off topic posting is generally okay...

...If it is not done to intentionally derail a group of people that are TRYING to have an on-topic conversation.
...If you are considerate to the OP, particularly in For Sale threads and Tech threads. Would you like a whole bunch of off topic post in your for sale thread? Same with Tech threads, often the reason that we get new members is they need help with their NEW toy. Let’s not make them feel that their tech issue is not really important to us.
...When it's not two people having a back and forth that serves no purpose for any of the other viewers (except those who like popcorn).
...If it's in a thread that often has already served its purpose (gazillion pages long) or in a "waiting for new info" state.
...If you are not being told by a member of the mod team to please take an off topic discussion to a new thread. Example: people start talking about the latest Tesla automobile in a topic about Spooky Pinball. The moderation team asks you to open a new thread in the Off Topic bar for discussing said Tesla - you will then comply to that request. Of course it's still fine to post a link to that new thread to point other Tesla fans there.

Note: these are not firm rules, but more guidelines to give you an idea of how we see things.

Well, there you have it. That will probably sound good to all of you in camp B, but still leaves a problem for those who would like to filter out some of the noise (let's face it, when there are 200 new posts in the Hobbit thread and only 4 are about the Hobbit it gets kind of time consuming to keep track).

I am a tech guy and believe the answer to this lies in a technical solution. There are some ideas floating in my head about a simple post rating system, similar to the NSFW images tagging and the drain feature: put all this stuff under the user control. Allow the community to rate posts on their interestingness (on-topicness if you will) and then allow individuals to set a filter. Very simple and very effective. Everyone can choose their own setting, people in camp A can set it high to filter out the noise and people in camp B can set it low or even disabled. All your choice! I think it could work. And if you don't like it, simply disable the feature

Anyways, I hope this post explains the difficulties of running a growing forum and the ideas that might help to keep it an interesting and/or fun site to visit for all.

Moderator 1: "I've got Teekee at 2 o'clock high.

Moderator 2: "He's too close for missiles Goose, I'm switching to guns. - I've got tone, I've got tone!"

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Robin: "That's a negative on the fly bye, Blondetall"

I'd be interested in this also but that's a lot of extra work for Robin and volunteer moderators. And they do a lot already around here.
Maybe you could post a topic and include a poll.

"Negative Blondetall, the pattern is full".
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball/index.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The Place to go for Pinball Repair Info

I agree with all of Robin's points except this one:

I don't see what's wrong with an occasional bacon bump in a FS thread (since boobs were recently disallowed...a move which still hurts my feelings ). If I'm selling something, I couldn't care less if people are talking about bacon or Teslas or whatever they're discussing. If my ad is constantly getting bumped, that's a good thing. If the OP doesn't understand that, he's not too bright.

Pfft - 'tis but a simple SQL query for Gender="Male" and another Gender="Female".

For a Pindexter like Robin, a mere pittance -- just a couple minutes time.... blindfolded even....

Maybe a few more for to run sums based on Age=, but we're not talking about much.

I trust he may already know this, as knowing your demographic is rather important to running a successful site.

Flagging for inappropriate graphic in post.

I was referring to ICBM missile launch keys... Don't you remember the opening scenes in the move War Games?

As I highly influential big fish ( ) I think as always Robin has the voice of reason.

Made it back safely… the two missile system doesn't work.

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Thanks Robin, I appreciate you being willing to compromise on the off-topic posting and relax on the restrictions a bit.

I tend to go with the "fly by the seat of my pants" approach, and then take evasive maneuvers.

I voted (twice) for the off-topic rating system implementation, and hope that it will do some good. I know lots of you guys on here like to chat with your virtual/real pinball buddies and of course off-topic is going to come up more often than not, but it's a bit hard to balance letting you all have fun with trying to keep certain topics moving along, people purposely derailing thing, trolls, family friendly, etc.

I counted one day and we had over 60 reports... in one day... for just two threads... with multiple people reporting against multiple posts. It wasn't just revenge reporting (which we've had of course) and sometimes they had a good point when there were pages of posts with no context of the topic. So we'll post something along the lines of "please stay on topic," which gets you chatty people riled up and just makes you mad at us. So then there are more snarky off-topic posts usually aimed at the mods. Then there are more reports for those off-topic posts, and the on-topic people get mad because we aren't doing enough to satisfy them and start leaving us nasty notes along with the reports like "OMGWTFBBQ aren't you doing anything about this?!?! Do your jobs mods!!!! They're making fun of you!!!!!!"

Then after awhile of this back and forth drama, on a few problem threads within the hundreds of threads and thousands of posts for each day, the 10 of us go insane. (Or however many mods are around at the time, since one of us lives in the future, some have been on summer vacation or working 2 jobs, and one has been busy trying not to murder her husband.) We occasionally may over-compensate just to prove that we ARE doing something, dang it... which means that people get ejected and madness ensues. Wash, rinse, repeat. There's no winning for us.

I fully believe that by giving the ability to mark posts as "off-topic" to the masses then also having the ability to filter those out (or not!) that hopefully everyone will be happy. Surely there's nothing that you can complain about with that, right?

Oh my God what the f**k barbecue???

I thought I had come up with a pretty good solution to being randomly kicked out of threads. But nooooooo....

You want to guess how many reports we get on the for sale ads that go something like this?

Machine for sale... blah blah price, pics attached.
OMG, your price is way too high!
No, that's about right.
No, I totally got my machine for only $2.99 and it came with a side of fries, and if you ask more than that for it then you're stupid and a flipper.
I like fries.
I like turtles.
Flippers suck!!!!
If you've ever made money on anything at all, you're a flipper.
Does anyone know how to rebuild a flipper? Mine aren't working right on my TMNT.
TMNT pinball sucks!
Oh hell no, TMNT rocks! I saw them in person one at Jared's concert. It was awesome.
Jared now works for Stern, and the rumor is that Stern is going to remake TMNT because Vanilla Ice wants one.
Vanilla Ice sucks.
Vanilla Ice once remodeled a house down the street from me.
Does anyone know the housing code for putting on a pinball addition to my house? I live in Canada and we don't have basements so I'm going to build out.
Canada sucks!
The exchange rate between Canada and USA sucks, so I can't buy any more pinball machines.
I don't know of anyone selling a machine anyway.
OP- Um... I have a machine for sale. This is a sales ad.
Shut up OP, you're a flipper! If you didn't want us talking about Vanilla Ice and Canadian basements, you should have just put it in the marketplace!

Hahaha, that's hilarious

Damn...that's pretty good. The only thing you missed was the grammar police ppl.

What category should the lionman thread fall under? If that thread keeps growing, we may need Jay and Scott to make a special server donation.

That thread makes me chuckle.

I drained that one ages ago. People are still posting in it? Sheesh

It's still getting bumped. I'll take that any day!

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Welcome to circus-side. Where the header of a thread means nothing about the content contained within.

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I like Turtles.

With fries!

Lionman is in a league of its own!!

Don't you know turtles like pizza dude.

Posts like this is why, IMO, to give Robin a break, Pinside should have one "Grand Poobah Moderator " to make the final calls on controversial thread ejects/ bans....and that moderator should be Blondetall

I donate because some of the tech help I've received on here has literally saved me hours of hunting for a solution to a pin problem, which also keeps my wife from being p!ssed off because I'm still in the garage when it's dinner time.

Oh man, I'm screwed.

Maybe it should show the name of the moderator who edits a post or gives someone a thread eject?

If you've read what was said earlier in the thread, you'll see why that's not such a hot idea.

I disagree, if a moderator had to put their name to it, might make them think twice for sending an unwarranted eject

If names were attached, that would open the door to unnecessary retaliation, as one moderator mentioned.

If you've read Robin's earlier post, he put forth some guidelines to help prevent unexpected ejects from happening.

Personally, I think pretty much all the concerns were raised earlier in the thread have now been addressed and don't need to be rehashed unless something doesn't work out after an initial break-in period of the new moderation guidelines.

Yeah, I read the whole thread, thanks.

what about the unnecessary retaliation some moderators put upon some of us wonderful red hearted Pinsiders?

Who needs names? I called out the mod who banned me a while ago based solely on their grammar and writing style in the eject message

Not everyone can understand LIONMAN!

I peed a little! Funny stuff....and right on!

They've got meds for that.

Or these.

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You have a little something on your nose.