Gathering my thoughts on moderation at TSZ, I found that I really have two OPs to write: one discussing the effects of rules and moderation at TSZ, and another exploring why the moderation — particularly the Guano-related stuff — has those effects. The second topic is by far the more interesting, but it’s the first topic that has the most practical import, so I’ll address it now.

In a nutshell: We’ve already experimented with different levels of moderation at TSZ, and the results are in. Less moderation works better.

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Having taken a brief break from commenting and still taking a break from proactive moderating, I still find myself sucked into reading OP’s and comments. Not wanting to stir the hornet’s nest of currently active discussion and not having enough time to get up to speed on all the current issues where commenters are discussing deep issues of the day, I wondered about opening a thread titled something like “Suggestion Box” to get people’s thinking on any improvements Lizzie could consider that might ameliorate concerns over site policy, aims, aspirations etc. Continue reading →

Is a full time job.

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Apologies to anyone who tried to post an OP or send a PM over night and couldn’t.  Permissions are restored.

I was trying to set up a means for the admins to confer together on site rather than singly by PM  or by email, as a result, set the cat among the pigeon (skua among the penguins?) by first of all making a “password protected” page for the admins, new comments to which appeared in the “new comments” list, arousing great alarm, and in any case turned out to be visible from the dashboard.  So I tried another WP option which was to make it a “private” page, but people could still see it from the dashboard.  So I switched off that.  But then people couldn’r post OPs or receive PMs.  So I’ve restored it again.  We will keep the “private” admin page, but for those curious about it, you will find you can access its comments via the dashboard.   Which is fine by me – it wasn’t like we wanted to plot anything anyway, just have a means of conferring about stuff (security issues, strategies, plug-ins, rules etc) between our selves.  So this seems a good solution.  Nobody need get paranoid because they can always check the record, but it won’t be a prominent feature of the site.

As we have some newcomers, and some new-oldcomers (including me!) I thought I’d just draw everyone’s attention to the Rules of the Game at TSZ.  They are written here and updated from time to time, but I have also pasted them below.  We do try not to be heavy-handed with them, and to be as equitable as is humanly possible, but we will make judgements that you disagree with, possibly with good reason.  The good news is that you can discuss these in Moderation Issues, and that, with the exception of a very narrow and specific range of material, posts will only be moved, not deleted.  Moving a post because it contravenes a rule does NOT imply ANY kind of moral judgment on the post.  A post can be morally justified yet contravene the rules, and can be morally indefensible yet remain within it.  The rules are entirely orthogonal to morality, and when we ask you to “assume all other posters are posting in good faith” we do not require that you believe it, any more than the assumption of innocence until proven guilty requires belief in a person’s innocence.That is why I call them “Game rules”.  They are simply the rules of the discussion game as played here at TSZ.  We also have the Sandbox for off-topic scrapping that is getting in the way of discussion, or even off-topic chat about fun stuff.

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There seems to be a growing mythology about this site that I would like to nip in the bud.  This post is primarily for those at Uncommon Descent who bring up the subject of this site in their posts and comments.

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Apologies for absence (which will continue a little longer, but the end is in sight) – I am just catching up with things here.

First of all, I’d like to confirm for both regulars and occasional readers that the policy of this site is not to delete comments (apart from commercial spam).  They can be moved, but remain visible.  The only content that is redacted is content that is NSFW or malware links.

Similarly, the only grounds for banning (again apart from commercial spammers) are posting NSFW content or malware links.

If you have author rights here, you will find you have the technical ability to temporarily delete comments, but please do not do so.  Thanks to those who restored the deleted comments, and thanks to KN for his graciousness over this matter.

To some of those at UD who have commented on Barry’s thread claiming he was “effectively banned” here:

• No, he was not, although it may have seemed like it at the time, and I have now given him the permissions to post an OP if he would like.
• The strapline to this blog is addressed to all who post here, including me.  I have always liked that line from Cromwell, and it is a core principle of this site, however difficult to adhere to.
• We are not a “bunch of atheists”.  A lot of us are opponents of the Intelligent Design movement, but not all, and of those of us who are, not all of us oppose all aspects of Intelligent Design as a concept.  Also of those who are opponents of Intelligent Design, not all are atheists. And of those who are, at least some of us have come to that position via a long and thoughtful, sometimes painful, road.
• Finally: anyone from UD is welcome to post here, and while the default registration is “subscriber”, author permissions can be given on request.

The spike in files and hits in January was the hack, followed by a drop in traffic, not surprisingly!  Since the fix and the move to the new hosting service, things have been getting steadily busier, with average daily visits for each month steadily increasing (monthly visit totals are the yellow bars).

Lovely to see such vigorous discussion!  Thanks, guys!

Apologies to all for the break in transmission.  We are now with a new hosting service, tsohost, who did a fantastic job getting the site up and running yesterday.  Let’s hope we see better performance from now on.

Re this:

The principles on which this site is run are summarised here and here.  The key rule is: “assume other posters are posting in good faith”.

That does not mean that you have to believe that they are posting in good faith, simply that you should make that assumption for the purposes of discussion.

I will not “correct” posts – people are responsible for their own posts, and for any errors they contain.  I will not delete posts, although I may move posts to a different thread, or to the Sandbox or to Guano.  They remain publicly viewable. I will however, delete links to porn or malware, and posting such links or material are the only grounds on which I will ban anyone.  Posters are complete free to disagree with me, with each other, and to be mistaken.

UD is run on different lines.  Fine.  I prefer mine.

Not a hack this time, but temporary loss of the domain name, for some reason I have yet to fathom.

Hope you all got some fresh air 🙂

Sorry I’ve been away for a while, and especially sorry about the  hack!  From the rapidly repopulating user list, it looks as though most regulars have signed back on, and it’s good to see new faces too.

So this thread is for general chit chat – introduce yourself, make yourself at home, have a beer.

Mine’s one of these:

It turns out you can’t mention “poker” in a comment. So would someone like to suggest a substitute? It can be such a useful analogy/example, when discussing probabilities!

I’m banned from UD as of today, so if you’d need a response to any of your UD posts, do feel free to repeat them here 🙂

And apologies to those I’ve ignored here. I only seem to be able to obsess about one site at a time, so back to obsessing about this one.

Lots of things to write about, I think, including a Mind & Brain thread that I’ve been mulling over for some time.

But for now, welcome to the banned and the unbanned from UD!

I don’t know why, but I’ve always had an affinity for penguins, and a chinstrap has been my avatar for a while at Talk Rational.  I tend to parse the chinstrap as a smile!

Anyway, when I was googling for images for this blog, I came across these beautiful argumentative chinstraps, photographed by Arthur Morris.  Check out his blog, Birds as Art  – he has some awesome photos.  It’s in the blogroll.