Forum posting guidance?

Hi everyone,

Well I have quite absent to say the least.
No excuses, I am to blame.
Ok, so moderation...Well, this is a tricky one, and I seriously don't think that any kind of moderation is fool-proof.
The battle against forum bad behaviours is lost if we deal with it in a standard way.
The simple fact that members are chosen to be moderators will always be subject to controversies
and will reflect "agendas" for some.One could then choose to make everyone a moderator and hope that the "genuine" members will outnumber the trolls
and give a vision of the majority of members...This is not a light subject if you think of it, do we associate FSP to the vision of its members?
ABSOLUTELY! Who can dictate what this place should be but YOU?

One might say it makes no sense, and why run a website if it doesn't reflect your opinion?
What if my opinion is that internet gives us the power to regroup as humans and share knowledge
in its simplest form: communication.

I see FSP as an agora, a medium to exchange ideas, every participant equal, free to share his knowledge, formulate opinions, or just have a laugh with other members.
Don't we just all love standing back in that room we spent ho setting up and watch participant having a great time in front of our PA? It is simple after all:
we love to entertain.,our roots are similar and the peace message seems easy to grasp.

The only viable solution for me is a community based moderation:

Here is the most promising I found, still in DEV though, hopefully it will be released soon.No other mods have the same features.

full description here

Modification Description:
This MOD introduces Mass Moderation (MM) in phpBB, making its moderation mechanism similar to Slashdot.

Mass Moderation in phpBB is a new moderation policy for online boards and, in this specific case, for phpBB 3 boards. Currently, like most of the online forums, a phpBB board is moderated by a group of users, called “moderators”, that have the task of monitoring the correct activity of the board. However, there are online boards with several thousands of users and posts, where the moderation activity can require a considerable effort, and where the moderators could be outnumbered.
Moreover, into large online boards, just some posts and topics are noteworthy and contain good information. For this reason, users could spend a lot of time to find the information they are looking for.
In this scenario, Mass moderation’s policy aims to remedy these situations. Through some mechanisms, we want to eliminate moderators, the moderators activity, and classify forums information, that is posts and topics.

In this way, all the moderation duties are fulfilled by GOOD USERS: traditional moderators are no longer needed. When Mass Moderation is on, all registered users can participate in the moderation, by RATING TOPIC AND POSTS.
To RATE A POST, a user can choose one from some POST LABELS (i.e. informative, interesting, funny, off-topic, flamebait, spam, ecc). A good adjective makes the POST SCORE increase, while a bad adjective makes it decrease. The post score ranges from -1 to 5.
To RATE A TOPIC, a user can do it through a five star rating system (Horrible, Poor, Nice, Good, Excellent).

Mass Moderation system tracks your activity on the board. The quality of a user activity is measured through an index, called KARMA. User’s Karma depends on the scores assigned to her posts. A positive Karma indicates a good user activity, while a negative Karma indicates a bad activity. Topic ratings do not affect a user Karma.

But not all users can be participate to the Mass Moderation. Every time slot, the system calculates the Karma of each user, and assigns a number of MODERATION TOKENS to a set of users, randomly selected among those with highest Karma. Rating one post costs one token. Rating one topic does not cost any token, but you need to have at least one.
When a user can rate posts and topics, that is when he has at least one token, he becomes a MASS MODERATOR.

Each user can set a view threshold for posts in her control panel. If you set the threshold to n, you will be shown only those posts with score greater or equal to n. The other posts will be displayed in abbreviated form.

The forum administrator can fine-tune the mass moderation mechanism, by setting a number of parameters in the ACP (e.g. enable/disable MM, length of the time slot, number of tokens assigned in each time slot, etc.).
Also, Mass Moderation system implement some mechanisms that replace the traditional moderator’s actions. These mechanisms are called: Mass Moderation Move Topic, Mass Moderation Report Topic and Mass Moderation Auto Ban.
Every member have a vote (we're talking a click and no reload of the page [ajax])
new members and low post count users can't vote.

This week I will remove all existing mods from the forum, only the "member sub-forums" will keep their existing mods.
Every member can have its own sub-forum created upon request, manufacturers are welcomed to use this free service
for their business, keeping in mind that there will be NO MODERATION done by others on your sub-forum, you are in charge
of its content.
By making this clear from the start I think most will understand that the members sub-forum are no different from
"official" forum of brands. The sub-forum moderation will reflect a company policy, NOT FSP's.

We will also start a new team of moderators (old moderators are of course welcomed to apply), but this time
members will vote ( + and -) for who they want to see in this team. First phase will be a thread in which members will "offer"
their services.Second phase, a vote to see who will be kept in that team.

I will remain admin to keep the website up to date and make it a better place for sharing, but will not take part in moderating the forum once the new team is up and running.


Hopefully the community based moderation will sort most of the trouble, and the team will come up with a set of posting rules/guidances that reflects what you all want.

What do you guys think?

Many thanks first of all.

Could be good, still open to companies with agendas rallying round to recruit voters etc. The Karma bit is comforting but surley still open to manipulation?

Perhaps a terms and conditions for mfrs to adhere to?

People cannot be shot down, hounded or discredited because they voice an opinion on said mfrs product. People do not HAVE to like your product.
Of course open slagging of a product with no reason is also wrong, but if people did not market on an open forum....

Using the forum as marketing should really be a no no. Remove this one issue from any forum and it will be much cleaner. Information, not profit.
IE> BT Broadband forums rant about BT's service, or lack of, reguarly. BT do not witch hunt, discredit or hound the poster, on or off forum. They act professionally in thier replies.

That aside I think your proposals are noble, and once again may I thank you for your effort smiley20

GIVEorTAKE
Definitely agree with you that any kind of moderation being fool-proof is an unachievable, possibly a utopian ideal.

Re: "Mass Moderation in phpBB"

Thanks - looks like a good solution to try after reading the phpBB thread.

What stage of development is the software in to facilitate this as you describe, since it looks like there might be a few components still to be implemented which are 'assigned' for a future version(s)?

Tend to agree with Nick's point for having a Manufacturers and Suppliers T&C for Forum use and possibly a 'user group' set aside for these members?
Mik

Edit: add 'user group' point