Blog Discussion Board
One of the reasons I’ve been so busy lately is due to trying to create a new, real website. This involves wrapping my mind around CSS and a variety of other things that fall under the category of “BEAR! Are you busy? Come explain how this works to me.” If, at some point, you should stumble across the new site, do not think that is what it is going to look like. I’m still experimenting with layout and templates, so it’s going to change quite a bit and quite often. I like having everything as clean as possible before unveiling — less trouble later — so it may be a while before there is an official announcement.
But! There are some things you guys can help me with, in the meantime. When the new site is up, there will be a separate discussion forum. I know I have an iron fist of moderation here, and I want to try to allow a space where discussion can happen without me poking my nose into everything, demanding I-statements. This is an experiment! It might be a bad idea. But, we’ll see.
I want to avoid being very involved with the discussion forum. The more involved I am, the more likely I am to start banning, modifying, or generally getting all up in everybody’s shit, and that’s exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to create for this alternative space. But, I don’t want to leave the space unmoderated, because that’s the equivalent of putting up a sign that says “ASSCLOWNS WELCOME — PLEASE DO MAKE FART SOUNDS.”
So, I am looking for people willing to be moderators. Do you need more details? That’s too bad! I don’t know shit about running a board, or whether this board will even be used. It will be a mysterious adventure lacking instructions and competence.
The few things I can tell you:
- I want a handful of moderators (more if people actually begin using the board)
- Experience as a moderator elsewhere is certainly welcome — maybe you will know what the hell you are doing, because I don’t
- I will be nigh-absent from the board, so it will be up to the moderators to work together to set the desirable tone, rules, and policies. It’s really going to be a blank slate, going in
- That means you’ve gotta be able to work with others
- I will reserve the right to nuke the whole place, should it all go to hell
- I will be available to moderators as a sounding board or final vote in disputes
So, if stepping into a nebulous role with few rules, very little guidance, and no technical support (sorry!) appeals to you, leave a note in the comments. I will put you on my very long list of things to do, and contact you once I’m ready to get moving.
Additionally! If you don’t have an interest in being a moderator, but you do have some suggestions on what you’d like to see in a Fugitivus discussion board, feel free to comment on that as well. Help is always welcome — I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m doing here.
Comments are closed.
Is it too late to warn you that this will be hellish and end only in tears?
Could I just, like, run at you in slow motion yelling “nooooooooooo…….”?
Too late? Crap. Best of luck, then.
My life is kindof exploded just now, but if you need a mod in a few months….
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I would love to help out. I kind of have a crush on your blog right now, and am sure I would love the site.
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I’ve never moderated before, but I feel strongly about the creation of good, safe discussion places, and I’d like to help in any way I can.
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Hi Harriet!
I’m quite new here, but loving what I’m reading and look forward to seeing a new post from you show up in my news feed.
The only suggestion I can make for you with your new site is to keep it as simple and clutter-free as possible. I find your current layout to be pretty good, and it works well with the screen-reading software I use.
If you’d like to get some feedback about the new sites friendliness from an accessibility point of view, I’d be eager to assist. That said, having read everything you’ve written here so far, I’m pretty sure that you’ll come up with something pretty decent with little I could recommend to improve it.
Two general purpose tips I can give you and others:
* In your HTML, try and put as much supplemental stuff after the main content. A basic navigation menu, then the post, then comments, then lik sto archives, related posts, blogroll, etc. That’s a pretty good formula. Navigation links, archive links, blogroll, tags, then post, then comments, not so much as it takes far too much effort to skip through the cruft to get to the good stuff.
* Related to above: If you view a page, select all, and then copy paste it into notepad/word/etc, you’ll get a good idea of what a screen-reader will be dealing with.
Thanks for all your time and hard work. I’m here to help you the best I can if I can, and am more than happy to do so.
Stay awesome!
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The slow-motion horror shot is, in fact, the baseline expectation I am working from — I’ve never seen a discussion board I like, that doesn’t degrade into horror and madness, and I can’t really believe mine would somehow magically be different. Mostly this is an experiment, and I will probably gain valuable experience of the “Good LORD never AGAIN” variety. But partly, this is to give an outlet to the people who have valuable/interesting/insightful things to say but can’t/won’t/don’t want to meet my commenting expectations, and partly this is to see if it can draw off some of the trolls into an arena with people who like to tussle, because I surely don’t. I suspect it’s more likely to backfire, and instead of acting as a siphon, act as a lightning rod and draw more assholes to the blog… but I can always nuke the whole thing, with no attachment, because I am not going to hang out there or read any of it.
I’m not really selling the job, am I?
And dude, I totally knew that you would be the lone voice of a reasonable “nooooooooooo.” That’s what I get for talking to experienced mods.
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hello hello hello
I could be interested, pending further details. I could possibly do a once-a-day-or-so sort of thing. I have quite good trigger radar and feminist education plus have worked in DV so am well-versed in power and control stuff. Of course, my ability to write about this stuff does not hold a candle to yours, but my ability to arbitrate is probably quite passable. Having said that, I have not ever moderated anything either and have about as much of an idea about it as you do.
So. There it is.
lex
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I’m not available to help out as a mod, but having been a mod and a site creator for a separate discussion board dealing with abortion issues, here’s what I can offer:
- have an easy way for mods to communicate and track any warnings/ bannings/ etc.. Not sure if you’ll go in for banning by IP or not, but anything where mods are working together without A Central Leader absolutely requires a centralized document/ site where the info is easily accessible.
- scheduling! Depending on your software, you can do ‘shifts’ of moderating, or break things out so different moderators are responsible for different threads/ forums. The former is great if mods only want to commit to 1 day/week of work, but the latter is often easier to track if you don’t have a clear way to mark off when the last person ‘finished’ their shift.
- as for banning and the like, have an initial set of rules and some boilerplate language to use when shit gets ugly. I’m kind of a wimp, and so having boilerplates (even ones that I came up with when sitting in the comfort of an ‘abstract’ mindset) has been super-helpful.
- get your disclaimers on – in this litigous society, with a board that’ll be talking about issues of safety, I’d highly recommend cribbing language from other boards that involve sensitive topics.
- photos/videos/avatars – for simplicity’s sake, I’d recommend not having these at all while you get started, or at least be draconian about approval (and disclaimer-ful about the ‘related videos’ stuff that shows up for YouTube videos. VAWA videos share keywords with triggerey rape scenes from movies, and YouTube’s algorithms often don’t know the difference.)
Good luck with the setup and coding – I’ll be excited to see where this goes!
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Though I’ve ran and/or moderated a few message boards, none had anywhere near the amount of suck that you are considering enabling. But that’s the point, right? This is an important topic and it’s worth shoveling away the shit, especially if someone else does it. I would really like to help moderate this as-of-yet-hypothetical forum.
Not only do I have a working brain that is used daily, but also a massive amount of tech experience for things like tracking and shutting down trolls. Also, I’m sympathetic to your cause.
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If you don’t have a forum type picked out yet, you might want to look at how Less Wrong is set up. The software that LW uses is based on Reddit, but modified to allow the community as a whole to moderate itself, via the ‘karma’ system. Comments and topics can be voted up or down by other readers (not by the person who posted them); your karma is the sum of the votes on your comments and topics. If you have enough karma (currently 50, I believe), you can start topics, otherwise you can just comment. Anyone with an account can upvote other peoples’ comments (you may want to change that – setting it so that accounts with zero or negative karma can’t vote would help stop trolls from getting a foothold by upvoting each other), but only people with positive karma can downvote, and each account may make a total number of downvotes equal to four times their total karma. Comments that have been downvoted to -3 are hidden from view by default, but not removed, so if someone wants to engage with someone who’s being offensive, and educate them, that can happen without it disturbing anyone else. (Comments are threaded; any replies to a hidden comment are also hidden.)
LW hasn’t had much problem with trolls, so that’s been sufficient there, but you’d probably want a bit more security. One idea that was floated on LW was to have accounts that have negative karma be banned from posting comments for a day for each point of negative karma that they receive. You would also probably want to set it so that accounts that went below a certain level of karma (say, -20 or -30) were permanently banned. Both of those – and, unfortunately, the ability to ban an account by hand – would need to be coded for you, as they’re not part of the existing setup, but if you’re interested, I could look into arranging it.
Less Wrong is here: http://lesswrong.com
The code is here: http://wiki.github.com/tricycle/lesswrong/hacking-on-less-wrong
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Okay, so, of all the times to delurk…
But!
I would be very interested in moderating a potential forum. I have done it before on a few occasions and I am also a (more rare, now) Shakesville commenter, so I’ve got the whole “safe discussion space” thing down pat.
Bonus! I am also looking at a summer where my advisor is going to be mostly away and I have no teaching duties, so I will have unprecedented levels of free time to, if necessary, do some micro-managing in the forum’s infancy.
So. Yes. You can check out what I’m about, if you like, since I’ve never commented before, at http://reasonablyangrydotwordpressdotcom and you can email me at llencelynn[at]gmail[dot]com.
Either way, good luck with the whole revamp thing!
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Well crap, that link hyper-linked itself. If it’s not clear, the “dot” words in the middle of it are supposed to be actual period symbols, so it’s not a clickable link. Such is life?
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That was the super helpfullest. Thanks!
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It’s secret code, only for those with decryption copy/edit skills.
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I’d be interested in helping moderate the forum. Sounds like it would be a good place for discussion.
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And because I somehow managed to mess up my own blog URL, it is correct on this comment, in case you want to check out my blog for potential-moderator-screening purposes.
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Yeah, oh well. If I had just not put the “http://” in front, it would have actually showed up the way I wanted it to!
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In similar experiments, siphoning the trolls off into their own little playground just stops them from getting bored and wandering off when they can’t make themselves heard. The playground retains and stores trolls and eventually becomes like a cesspit that’s constantly causing outbreaks of disease in the surrounding healthy areas. (Actually, with the experiment I’m thinking of, the infectious agents weren’t even *trolls* in the strictest sense, so much as just argumentative assholes)
But as long as you realize just what a bad idea this is, and are all set to nuke it from orbit when things get out of hand (it’s the only way to be sure), give it a shot by all means.
Somewhere way down the road, I think this idea could be valuable just to have a *better organized* discussion space (presumably with moderation standards on par with what yo have here). But as a specifically *less moderated* alternative to the comment threads? I predict tears, agonized wails, baby strollers rolling aimlessly through desolate streets on fire, crazed cannibals consuming the flesh of the innocent, /b/tards, and so on in that fashion.
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I’d be interested in helping.
I created this forum about a year or two ago: http://www.gettingbipdx.com/forum/
I’m web savvy and could definitely help out with the technical aspects.
Ive also been reading your blog for a while and think you are TEH AWESOME.
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Oh, and by this I meant I could help as a moderator of the message boards. I don’t know anything about actually making sites – sorry!
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I can certainly help moderate, if you’d like!
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Oh god /b/ nooooo
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Heh. Heh. As a witness to the same experiment Belial is (almost certainly) talking about… Heh. Well, i’m not really aware of other public feminist discussion boards so hey, maybe this will fill a niche! And tussling was a great way for me as a young feminist to sharpen my critical thinking skills, and my internet research skills. ^_^ i’ve got nooo interest in moderating right now. I hope everyone who really likes the place will find ways of keeping in company with each other in the event of a nuke. (IRC?)
…Heh.
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I was a member of Twisty’s old board. I also have my own board (which is pretty much dead and I can’t keep it spam free) and am currently a member of several other feminist boards.
It kinda sounds like you are heading in the direction of twisty’s board. I was very sad to see it go. The problem with feminist boards is often that because everything is so personal to the participants a careless words can really hurt people and it can result in a lot of conflicts.
Despite what I have experienced in the past, I would like to help you out with moderation and setting up if you still need people.
Cheers,
The Sea Feminist.
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It’s funny. When I speak about it in vague terms, people in-the-know always assume I’m talking about FaiD.
SB is really where the troll-corral is/was on those fora.
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When you’re looking into various codes that can be used on the forum (most forums I’ve seen use BBCode), look in to a [spoiler] code. It works in much the same way as a cut for a blog entry, and it would probably be very useful for a board like the one you’re suggesting, which would invariably have people posting super-triggery things.
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I don’t have a blog, just a dead livejournal, but I’m currently a lower-tier mod on a pretty sex-positive book-based forum.
http://terredange.net/forums/index.php?sid=c7725f2df81d7ff004196c62c675d3a7
Right now the worst issues I have are deleting spammers and going “hey guys STOP FIGHTING about how to pronounce the name of the sex angel, CHRIST,” but I have lots of practice dealing with forum drama from when I used to be active on four or five. I know I’m a lurker, mostly, but if you’re interested…this blog has done a lot for how I think and I’m very interested in helping if you’ll have me. (Plus, college student, so stupid amounts of free time.) I have almost no HTML experience, alas, but I can learn.
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I’ll just join the chorus here. I used to run a message board of upwards of 2500 members. Only 500 active ones, though. Those were plenty
It was fantasy and role-playing centered and a surprising amount of sensitive subjects were discussed. The man who passed the forum on to me had always said that being the Admin meant you had to be willing to be a dick (his words). Second chances are a maybe, thirds and fourths are a no-go. That’s one thing I learned the hard way. You can’t keep forgiving people for their continuously un-corrected missteps.
The other members had a really hard time processing that I went from fellow member, who’s all nice and diplomatic, to being the dictatorial Admin who has to protect the 13 year olds from creepy adults who would like to know about their sexual habits. (yes, we got those. EW!) That kind of job makes you a no-nonsense bossy type in no time, and I very soon became hated on the very forum I loved. Too bad.
Take this is a warning. It can be very hard for moderators of a forum to engage in discussions of sensitive subjects when also having to moderate them. Some people don’t have a problem seperating their rules-policing persona from the debator persona, but their fellow debators might have problems telling one from the other. And it can get very tiring to read through a thread and gathering thoughts to condense into a post/reply, and suddenly come to the last 4 replies and conclude that they’re in need of bannination and the thread ought to be closed. Dilemma. Dilemma. And durnit to boot.
Generally I can recommend (from my experiences with the moderators I had helping me out back then) that you have pretty clear guide-lines for what triggers a warning and reply-deletion and what trigges the almighty BanHammer, and that you make at least the essence of these guide-lines public, because then there’ll be less explaining to do (to the remaining members), when a member suddenly disappears for reasons that are now deleted due to triggerish offensiveness.
Whether the guidelines are public or not, there will always be complaints that they’re unfair, that the mods didn’t follow them, that the member in question really isn’t that bad, that zie won’t do it again, and can’t we give hir another chance. Hmmmm, where have we heard these before?
Yeah, either way: Unless it’s a really strong community that truly backs up the notion of safe space (in that case he mods’ jobs will be fairly easy and they can be laid back), then mods need to be prepared to be heavy-handed and hated. It’s a thankless job to moderate a forum.
Since I’m unemployed, I’m sure I can find the time to help you out with things if you’d like. So if you have any questions do let me know on jemimaaslana(at)gmail(dot)com I’ll be away at a convention all Easter, but then I’ll be back in business and will be able to get back to you again.
Good luck with it all.
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An interesting approach to the “separating mod persona from discussion persona” issue I’ve seen is to have an account that all mods can log into (referred to as the Voice of God on this particular forum) if they need to lay down the law (or ban hammer). I think this helps members realize that it’s nothing personal, just the rules being enforced, which tends to help dissipate some of the irritation toward mods. It isn’t necessary to use it for all mod actions, but it does help when you’ve got to approach more difficult or serious situations.
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Maybe because SB was started so early on in the fora timeline.
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Seconded on the “of all times to delurk” here, but…I’d be interested in modding for it. I used to mod on a depression community forum, and talk about a community needing to be careful of triggers and easily-contentious personality clashes! Plus I cut my internet debating teeth on Beliefnet’s abortion discussion forum some six years ago, and more recently made it to the final interview round of applications for Feministing’s community moderator position. If you’re interested and want some evidence that I am the kind of person I say I am, my blog is http://witch-words.blogspot.com.
Wish I had coding help to offer on the new site, but that’s very much *not* my area of expertise.
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I just want to second this warning to potential mods. When you’re a mod, everybody has an opinion on every mod decision you make. They think it’s appropriate to contest it when they weren’t involved in the slightest, to the point of derailing discussions. They think it’s appropriate to tell you which of your decisions they liked and which ones they didn’t, again, when they weren’t involved in the slightest. Consensus is great and all, but you’re going to encounter a lot of entitlement. I recommend developing callousness. It sucks for progressive discussion but without it, you just cannot run a discussion board
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That’s actually a really good idea. That way members can’t blame a specific mod for their warnings either, ’cause they’re all working under the same name.
On the other hand. That sort of anonymity can also lead to suspicion and mistrust. It’s a matter of balance – again – and which balance is right is deeply dependent on the flavour of the community.
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Quixotess speaks truth here. Mods, prepare for your inbox to fill with dissertations on why you are wrong, stupid, and a bully!
P.S. It’s still worth it.
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Argh, I have a love/ hate relationship with message boards. Am I the only one who initially went “Yippee! All the other ones I was involved with….oh yeah….”
However, this would be the first one I know of where the dynamics of power and control are discussed before it starts.
As a current and former mod AND a recipient of mod bullying, let me say:
Yes, but be careful. It is easy to take a side as a mod and then do whatever it takes to defend a friend. Try to make mod decisions group decisions. Don’t be quick to delete something or ban it unless it’s grievous. Sometimes looking at something with someone else can stop knee jerk reactions. Yes, there are jerky statements that will probably get a negative reaction from somebody, but not everything needs a mod intervention.
In the big picture, I learned from working with a really hands off mod that some personal squabbles work themselves out better when the rude statements are left up as proof, and the well trained community reacts. If it’s not a flat out egregious violation but more of a bad attitude, even of a long standing community member, hopefully the members of your community with the right tone will speak their conscience. Does this always happen? No.
I also had to deal with the crap of which you speak, the constant criticism and the feeling of herding cats, but that was bearable for the most part, for me.
Also, in the acute sense, I was the victim of some nasty, nasty bullying on a message board, and then one of the mods took the bully’s side. It was ugly, and I won’t do a play by play. Callousness is one thing, but try to listen, too!
So, uh, anyway, I may be willing to help. I have helped start and mod a few different message boards, including a semi-large commercial one.
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Oh, and I have had luck with proboards, if you don’t want to have to do a lot of the coding yourself. It can be public or private, you can ban posters, IP addresses, even certain words, and they do the karma thing. And, it’s freeeeeeeee.
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Also delurking here… Have some experience with modding (very) small boards, including setting up rules of conduct and such, and would be thrilled to be involved on whatever level, though admittedly my privilege-challenging education is very much ongoing. (Argh, another attack of the overly long sentence…)
My time is very free at the moment, and I’m online almost always – also in Australia, so if you need any coverage of inconvenient time frames, hit me up.
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