Yuuup.

If giving people a hard time and being a smartass gets you on the list, then I'm at the top of the list. Nice knowing y'all.

i think huge swaths of the internet are already a pretty convincing argument for this being the worst possible way to encourage a healthy community. i've seen it myself in many different forums. if you go with a no holds barred "self-policing" community, what you end up with is an insular and shrinking group of people so odious they can only stand each other, and then it turns into a ghost town. even one or two obnoxious trolls can ruin a community if they're stubborn enough. i don't have to cite examples, do i? we've all seen that.

RGP is still alive last i heard, but trolls did a huge amount of damage to its community that had an impact for years. it's far from the only example of that kind of thing. i could point to several examples of local northern virginia boards that had thriving communities that were decimated and devolved into really sketchy scumholes due to owners taking a "no censorship" policy. (Pheerboard, dcshows, Fairfax Underground .. i have tons of examples). trust me, just like in real life, some policing is better than no policing, even if i don't always agree with the cops.

Its about time!!!

I get those invisible warnings when I do something wrong. And thread ejects without acknowledgement.

That's OK though, I know the drill by now.

Thanks, guy with a brand new account who may or may not....oh never mind.

Looking forward to the new rules.

Let's make Pinside great again!

Robin for President !!!!!!!!!!!

Does this MEAN all the "d!cks" have to pull out?

What a world, what a world.....

Accuracy please.

Pinside is still is very fun and helpful *overall* -- it just depends where your focus is.

I focus mainly on restoration and solid state help threads. I only see the best of people in those types of threads.

The issue is not with Pinside overall -- it's with very specific types of threads (such as certain manufacturer threads) where things can get heated.

-mof

Exactly. Not the majority of Pinside topics or Pinside members.

Just the putz's.

You have rules here, just enforce them. From my perspective, if you don't enforce the rules, it's better not to have them.
How you enforce them is up to you. I would be happy if you just banned those that need it.

Kaneda was an excellent example. Like him or not, he was disruptive in the forums and personally inappropriate with Robin. He can still participate in the pinball community, just not in the Pinside community.

Others likely need to go as well.

Robin, yes of course if someone is utterly despicable, unruly and or someone who harbours bad will toward the community should be dealt with. The problem dear Robin what is the context. I've been on the receiving end of some moderation notices..maybe 3 in the 4 years I've been here. Probably all of them for slamming the Anonymous Group. There are some heavy handed moderators on your forum. I dare say their objectivity is compromised when it comes to certain subjects and topics. I think you need more defined guidelines to help keep us safe. Ex: personal attacks, racism, sexism, threats and obscenity. I mean if you say something negative about a machine or a company..should this be grounds for moderation? In short we need clarity. Thanks for your hard work.

download (resized).jpg

The whole thumbs down this is just a way for people to "stalk" and pick fights. You should get rid of it, like I did.

Now that's a good suggestion.

in my opinion, thumbs down helps people express their disagreement with someone without filling the thread up with more posts whose only purpose are to disagree with a prior post, most of which would only be re-iterating what someone else said anyway.

How about having some other way of classifying forum posts other than thumbs up/down?

I remember Slashdot being one of the first sites to have flags for Insightful/Offtopic/etc. I don't remember the specifics, but it does look like their original moderation charter is still accessible. [1] Here's a slightly different explanation with a comparison to Reddit's policy. [2]

If there was an easy way to set a user's tolerance level ("Only show me on-topic posts" or "I feel a little silly today, show me everything"), you could effectively filter out unwanted posts completely to make it look like they never existed. Of course, as you probably already know, hiding quoted posts in on-topic replies can be tricky. In the past, doing something like this would require a significant amount of extra server processing, but you could experiment with pushing that down to run on the client browser.

This relies on both user and moderator participation to flag the posts. You could even allow the original poster to self-moderate, for example: she's in a goofy mood and she's going to flag her snarky animated GIF post as "Offtopic" and "Funny".

I stopped reading Slashdot a while back, so I don't know if they abandoned this form of moderation or not.

[1] https://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml *and*
https://slashdot.org/faq/mod-metamod.shtml
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/386c75/sourceforge_locked_in_projects_of_fleeing_users/crsw1e5/

Wish you would. Not a huge purge, just clip out some people that do nothing but troll. If you had clipped out 10 of the worst a couple years ago, you would probably have the better Pinside you are looking for. But instead you are trying to apply your own sensibility. Truth is Robin, that if everyone on Pinside had your even temperament there wouldn't be problems. However you cutting people breaks over and over is what lets them act worse and worse. It almost seems impossible to actually get banned from here no matter how outrageous the behavior. And all that does is breed more bad behavior. If someone takes things to the Nth degree, someone else feels justified to go to N-1. And then you have two problems instead of just one.

And I feel this is on topic of this thread discussing a purge. If you disagree, feel free to purge it.

Yeah I think a lot of people read the first post and got happy...then read Robin's and got a little deflated.

If you cut out most of the negative threads about the manufacturers that would cut out a lot of the issues.

Might as well just make it ALL positive while you are at it. The only pin makers that come on here now are Spooky and Heighway.

That's where a lot of the real value comes in. No Stern and no JJP now.

True, but in reality it just serves as a "stalking" tool for stalker types, and part of the decree is that stalking is lame. I think we could all live without it.

This is my experience. Since I'm identified as a "Pinside guy", I'm often caught having to hear people complain about Pinside.

Maybe that was before my time? I really do not see any difference granted maybe I do not remember the time before it was toxic. I did decide it was in my best interest to not spend as much time here...

I think pez is right, and I also agree with you.. it wouldn't be terrible either to be without it. Maybe just a thumbs up so it's all unicorns round here stalkers can't do much if there's no thumbs down, and if you agree with someone thumb em up

HEY IS THIS ABOUT ME?!?!

Very true. Take my feed back score as an example. I have 41 thumbs down. At least 90% are from Kanada or one of his many fake accounts. I'm sure you all remember Taco Tuesday, and the many others. At least these fake account thumbs down should be removed from peoples feedback score.

There's a post drain button to help with that, down in the lower left corner of each post (it looks like a waste basket). If enough people click drain on a post, and it gets hidden from view with a "this post is hidden" message.

So a thread ban is not a pinside achievement i haven't checked my achievements page lately

Looking forward to some peace and quiet, and maybe even the return of technical knowledge and helpful threads where diagnosis and systematic troubleshooting help is given.

Not going to lie, I've considered leaving many times. The redeeming factor is Pinside helped me find the local community, both in Dayton and the one I will soon join while stationed at Eglin AFB.

Sounds great. I've had to put a lot of people on ignore to keep the signal to noise ratio good around here.

Awesome. I got caught up in the BS for awhile. Had to take a self-imposed pincation. Very happy to see this.

As BSD says if you push the start button with no credits:

"Aren't you forgetting something"?

In this case - someone.

Bravo robin I support whatever you want to do. You have a vision. Continue taking steps toward it.

Fortunately, the trolling and negative comments here are relatively mild compared to comments you might see following a Yahoo article where there appears to be no moderation at all and it's a constant attack of the liberal and conservative trolls. That said, I'm appreciative of PinSide setting reasonable behavioral expectations.

The list of xerico no less lol

How about publishing a list of users that should be banned and the ability to just bulk ignore them if we decide to?

I find most of the people who even care enough to leave a downvote generally tend to chime in. Some of my favorite people here are the ones who are too technologically incompetent (or possibly just don't care) to even recognize the system exists but are filled with a wealth of pinball information, usually the same kind of people who don't really go into the off-topic sections at all and just talk pinball - the more "classic" folk.

Sure they may have no clue how to set a profile picture, or type IN ALL CAPS/all lowercase, but they'll get your game fixed in 5 minutes.

Preventing Pinside babies daily

I have a "fan" too. Can't help but follow me around and thumbs down posts. I'm honored that he cares so much.

I think a bit of cleanup will be a good thing. It's to where you can't be honest about something without some hothead jumping down your throat.

I support this 100%... good move Pinside

As a former moderator of a real-time gaming site I can tell you leaving a large grey area open to the judgement of your team of moderators is very beneficial to the community. Specific line-in-the-sand guidelines don't work because as soon as you write them down you'll have the bad actors being as obnoxious as possible without actually violating a rule.

My experience has been when the moderated party has the ability to appeal and tell their side of the story, the judge (Robin in this case) can communicate with the moderator team if things should have been handled differently and make changes going forward. And of course overturn actions taken if that's warranted.

We kept a database with actions taken so everyone on the team knew who had been moderated, when, and why.

That is a problem... the rules are enforced heavy handed against some, while other seemingly get away with murder. Definitely appears to be a double standard. Step One for Pinside is enforcing the rules consistently and evenly.

A Purge oh goodie now that will be special.

Of course everybody likes to pretend they are above it all and don't enjoy Pinside but the fact that 99.99999% of owners have visited Pinside says it all. Most people who visit the site are lurkers and don't participate. Following the controversial threads is pure entertainment for me and I learn a ton in the process including which manufacturers and individuals to stay away from. The vast majority of the people I have met in person because of this hobby are top notch and would consider my friends. But with that being said, before Pinside (BP) I got ripped off by some (well known) unscrupulous sellers who had no problem taking advantage of a newb. I say let the drama play out, and if you can't take the heat then stay out of the kitchen.

Really like the idea of a list of tags like "off-topic" and "insightful". Any time there's a simple up/down system it turns into either "your subjective statement doesn't fit my personal taste" or "I dislike you so eat it".

Currently the only real beneficial use of the thumbs down, community wise, is flagging really bad advice or dangerous advice. Would love to see more a sophisticated set of tags.

Personally I would team this with runaway threads being locked sooner.
I know this makes the moderating harder, but life sucks

I have nothing to say.

He tried this before and most people, myself included, hated it. It's just a way of disagreeing without clogging up the threads.

Besides, he put a time limit on thumbing posts down.