Moderation: Too much or too little?

[The Chairman]

I think there's a place for some content moderation ... particularly where unsafe diving practices are being promoted,

But to some people, if you wear split fins, you will surely die! Where do we draw the line? What is often seen as highly dangerous (Voodoo Gas, AKA NitrOx) may be entirely acceptable in just a few short years. We have only two concepts that are disallowed here: Learning Scuba without an instructor and learning Cave/Overhead Scuba without an instructor. Outside of that, we encourage people like yourself to defend or decry various practices and let the reader sort things out. Any more than that, Bob, and we might cease being an interactive service protected by (get this) the decency laws.

Officially, ScubaBoard does not vet any information. We rely on our usership to correct and debunk.

For the most part, I agree with everything else you posted.

 

[Buoyant1]

But to some people, if you wear split fins, you will surely die! Where do we draw the line? What is often seen as highly dangerous (Voodoo Gas, AKA NitrOx) may be entirely acceptable in just a few short years. We have only two concepts that are disallowed here: Learning Scuba without an instructor and learning Cave/Overhead Scuba without an instructor. Outside of that, we encourage people like yourself to defend or decry various practices and let the reader sort things out. Any more than that, Bob, and we might cease being an interactive service protected by (get this) the decency laws.

Officially, ScubaBoard does not vet any information. We rely on our usership to correct and debunk.

For the most part, I agree with everything else you posted.

However...if someone sorts out the wrong advice, uses it, fails miserably...then when asked WHY they did what they did (or their next of kin does) and they say "They learned that on SCUBABOARD!" Then we go back to the NetDoc defense fund telethon!

I'm not sure that I'd WANT that sort of thing (disclaimers or not) hanging over my furry hatted head! I think the mods need to be well versed in dispelling bad advice!

 

[The Chairman]

However...if someone sorts out the wrong advice, uses it, fails miserably...then when asked WHY they did what they did (or their next of kin does) and they say "They learned that on SCUBABOARD!" Then we go back to the NetDoc defense fund telethon!

Actually, if we did that and then MISSED any bad advice, we would be more at risk. As it is, the family can sue the person who gave the unsafe advice: not me. This is not merely my opinion: it's the advice of counsel.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

But to some people, if you wear split fins, you will surely die! Where do we draw the line? But to some people, if you wear split fins, you will surely die! Where do we draw the line? What is often seen as highly dangerous (Voodoo Gas, AKA NitrOx) may be entirely acceptable in just a few short years.

I draw the line at basic safe diving practices. I'm not talking about equipment choices or personal diving style preferences ... but do you really think promoting 200+ foot bounce dives on single cylinders is going to be entirely acceptable in just a few short years ???

I highly doubt it ... that would be a giant step back to the days when diving was viewed as a "manly" activity ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[PeterNBiddle]

Don't start a fight and hide behind a skirt. (That used to be such a powerful statement, but now, especially in my distaff environment, it is blunted)

Interesting - I've always taken this statement to be from the perspective of a child hiding behind his mother's skirts. In that context it's not very sexist at all.

Now realizing how terribly wrong I got it. I like it better my (wrong) way.

 

[lowviz]

I draw the line at basic safe diving practices. ...//...

Define "basic" and "safe". That's [-]your job, Bob[/-] sorry, our job as a responsible community.

...//...Officially, ScubaBoard does not vet any information. We rely on our usership to correct and debunk. ...//....

That is censorship in its finest form. Think about what was just said. Content is completely uncensored. Why? If you post something harmful, stupid, or just plain wrong it will almost certainly be "censored" or corrected by the community. Nothing is perfect, this comes close.



Moving on to "attitude", Pete brands SB as "friendly". Lots of us approve of this, more that just most. Very few of us are looking for a hotbed of dissent. A good agument/discussion is not dissention. All too easy to confuse the two.

A few are looking for a place to fight the good fight. This requires moderation if the site is to remain friendly. Given the proper forum(s), dissent keeps moss from growing on the infrastructure. Things get examined and aired out. Such as now.

And every once in a while, a few of us just get stupid and chase each other across a couple of threads mostly just having fun poking "toes over the lines". Aka,

Nice place you got here, Pete.

---------- Post added at 05:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:26 PM ----------

Interesting - I've always taken this statement to be from the perspective of a child hiding behind his mother's skirts. In that context it's not very sexist at all.

Now realizing how terribly wrong I got it. I like it better my (wrong) way.

And I can be wrong too. That post concerned what I considered to be an inflamatory statement made in a childish way in a forum that prevented direct confrontation. We could discuss this...

 

[gcarter]

If I were to say something like "Sorry, I ran out of Duct Tape", then that would have been snarky. My point was not to inflame, but to ascertain that lest my "understanding" be misconstrued, I don't think my position changed much from using one statistic over another. As I said earlier, I don't think I minimized the issue nearly as much as some have inflated the same.

Where I come from, the sentiment is summarized as "same meat, different gravy".

 

[Cave Diver]

... but changing and removing things that are already in use is moderation, Pete ... because it alters the appearance, and in some cases the meaning, of posts that have already been made. Yesterday morning's activity is a perfect example, and really does highlight the more salient point that Buoyant1 made ...

I understand the principle of what you're saying Bob, but I disagree with the bolded part in practice. Removing the smiley simply left the word in place in previous posts. It doesn't substantially alter the meaning of the message, just the method it's displayed. (words vs. image). This is not the first time that smileys have been removed, and caused a large uproar and it probably wont be the last.

That is exactly how I took the moderation that resulted in the substitution and subsequent removal of a smiley that altered my posts here ... and I'm generally supportive and inclined to give your staff the benefit of the doubt, as my prior posts in this thread would demonstrate. Yesterday's moderating activity did nothing positive, and only sent me a message that certain staff members generally view participants here as a bunch of muppets that can be toyed with. That made me angry.

I was unaware that this smiley substitution happened until late yesterday afternoon. Although I had several people ask me about it and describe it to me, I did not witness it for myself. Whether it was a joke, or something else I can't say at this point, but regardless what the cause was, on behalf of the staff, I apologize for the incident. I am looking into that to try and determine what happened, but that is all I can say regarding the matter.

You really need to address it at the staff level. Or you can continue to deny that the problem exists, and assume that a certain segment of your membership is overreacting ... because at the bottom line, it's not our board ... it's your board and your call ... and you are the only one who can really do anything about it. But if you choose the latter path, then to my concern

threads like this one are ill-advised ... because it's a pretense that anything we say will make a difference. So why bother?

In response to the comments I highlighted in red, I understand your position but I disagree. The reason I disagree is because there are some of us on staff that take the comments generated here to heart and those comments do make a difference to some of us. There are several conversations going on amongst staff right now as a result of this thread and it's opened the eyes of some of our newer mods to things they had no idea of.

So in spite of (or maybe because of?) the most recent smiley inquisition, a lot of valuable points have come up that will help shape responses in the future.

This is true, Marcia ... and to my concern the appropriate response to anti-social behavior is to address it at the level of those who are doing it ... not by removing things that affect everybody.

I agree with that. It is also practiced on many levels. And the general response when that is done is that we're "picking" on a user. Most days we can't win for losing, because no matter which way we decide to handle something, someone is going to think it's the wrong approach. The best we can do is to try and pick what we feel is the most appropriate approach for a given situation and then rely on the feedback like we've been getting here to help us improve the next decision.

 

[lowviz]

...//...So in spite of (or maybe because of?) the most recent smiley inquisition, a lot of valuable points have come up that will help shape responses in the future. ...//...

this is me bein' 'haved again.

 

[Cave Diver]

I think there's a place for some content moderation ... particularly where unsafe diving practices are being promoted, at least in forums where the relatively inexperienced may be influenced by them. I also think blamestorming should be moderated ... particularly in the Accidents and Incidents forum where it's supposed to be against the rules anyway.

The problem is that if we moderate *some* content, we need to moderate *all* content. If we moderate one thing and miss another, then the implication is that we have endorsed that by default. So if we miss something and someone takes it as sound advice (because otherwise we'd have moderated it right?) and then gets hurt, odds increase that we're gonna get the blame for it. And the last time I checked I was a volunteer - I'm not compensated nor insured for my opinions here and I sure as hell don't want to be liable for failing to properly vett some piece of information that gets someone killed or injured. Even if I was found not liable, what's it gonna cost me to defend myself? No thanks.

The whole "do a search" concept rubs me raw ... people who do that should be moderated, warned, and if they continue doing it, banned from forums where newer divers are asking questions. Those three words probably do more to inhibit interaction on ScubaBoard than anything else that happens here.

I know this sounds overly simple, but the best solution is to report the post. As has been said time and time again, we don't see everything. If we're made aware of it, we can do something to address that and the individuals who like to respond that way.

Again, I see this falling under the "blamestorming" category ... particularly in A&I, where it's supposed to be verboten. And I have, on several occasions, reported posts there that went unmoderated for long periods ... if at all ... which were clearly a violation of the rules for that forum. A recent death during a class at one of my local dive sites brought about a spate of posts calling for the head of the instructor ... this was long before there was any information about what actually happened to cause the accident. There were several wild-ass claims of standards violations that I KNEW to be incorrect simply because I'm familiar with the site ... those were allowed to remain, and remain to this day.

We have to go off our best judgment and sometimes if an action is not clear we choose to do nothing rather than to enforce too much moderation. Unless we have the same first hand inside information that you have, it's hard for us to look at a post against the same yardstick you're using.

So rather than staff wasting effort on piddly stuff like how someone might take a smiley ... try focusing on the more important stuff that really inhibits participation here.

I agree with you. That's part of the reason for this thread - finding out what things are relevant to our user base is important to me.