Suggestion Box

[vw vixen]

Hi Webbie,

First of all, I know you (and your Webbie pals) have a big job around here, keeping an eye on all of us members. But there are some things that are really bothering me, and I'm not alone, about the way you selectively poof posts and entire threads.

For example, we were having an otherwise nice discussion in Viewpoints today. Sure, no thread is perfect, but all in all, we were sticking to the topic and people were sharing interesting thoughts and ideas.

On page 7 or so, a troll who has been stalking a long time member showed up and started to poke her into fighting, she ignored the troll. But instead of taking action against the troll, you deleted the entire discussion! Why punish the rest of us because of one persons bad behaviour?

I have some ideas, and I'm sure others can chime in as well, on how you can improve this site. Since I've been a moderator and administrator on several other forums, I've learned some things along the way which made forum life much easier. I hope that you will listen to us and improve your site so that it is a bit more fair for everyone.

1. Make it more difficult for a person who is banned to sign up again and immediately start causing problems. Whether you decide to ban IP's, whatever, there has to be a more appropriate way to deal with these types of posters without punishing us all.

2. Take action against the trolls- for example, the other night in VP someone (a troll) used a racist remark against a long time member. The Webbie poofed the post, but did not punish the poster. That person should have been banned for making the comment, but still today they are here posting.

3. Delete a comment if it is inappropriate, but leave the thread intact. The reason this is important is because when individual posts are poofed, the whole flow of the thread is disrupted. People who saw the comment are going to be responding to it, and then the entire thread gets so confusing. By deleting the content of the post, you can see that something was said by a poster, but was deemed inappropriate by the Webbie. You could insert a stock "content removed by moderator" line.

4. Lock threads instead of deleting them entirely whenever possible. If threads were left intact, people are forced to stand by their words, instead of saying "I never said that."

5. Require a minumum of 50-100 posts to participate in Viewpoints threads. I'm assuming that most of your Webbie time is devoted to Viewpoints as that area has the most controversial topics. Set up that area to require a certain number of posts before someone can come in and post there. This would further diminish the troll problems because they would have to post somewhere else on the site before they could jump in and create havoc.

6. Tell us when a line has been crossed. Because sometimes an very innocent post or thread gets poofed, and the rest of us have no idea why. If we are doing something wrong, step in and lock the thread, delete a comment, do whatever you need to do, but tell us why so we don't make that mistake again. We are smart people, if you tell us we need to stop doing something, we will.

7. Have consistency among the Webbies. I understand that you are not one person, but set up strict guidelines for your fellow moderators and follow them. Nothing is more confusing to us posters than wondering why someones thread or comment was allowed to stand, then a few hours later a different moderator decides they don't like it.

Thank you, Webbie, in advance for listening to our thoughts. This is an otherwise very nice place to post and I've read and learned so many interesting things, and some people have become like friends to me. I just hope you can understand our frustration when an entire group of nice, respectful people are punished by the bad behaviour of a few others.