Cycling UK Forum

It's slowly dawning on me that, for whatver reason, internet forums require fairly severe moderation to be usable. While I consider the moderation on here to be a little on the strict side, the fact that the forum's name is that of an organisation, the forum is visited by a range of people (and many newcomers) and it lends itself to being a valuable resource, I cannot see how the moderation can be anything but strict. The fact that it is still possible to enjoy a laugh is testament to the moderators drawing a fine but well-judged line. The forum has been going over ten years in its present form. I think that is an incredible achievement. Long may it continue.

There a relatively few frequent posters on here. It's not hard to get an idea of their varying styles over time. The overriding thing for me is good faith, which tends to show through. It's my impression that the Brexit thread has been poisoned by a very few people who are not posting in good faith.

Vorpal wrote:

PDQ Mobile wrote:.
It is, quite frankly, censorship.

It was temporary, and meant to be a 'time-out' not censorship. There was a lot of sniping early today and a number of posts were removed.

Couple of things:
1. If it was a temporary "cooling-off" block then probably would have helped had the "Time-Out" post said that.

2. I wonder if the Brexit thread is a bit different from most other threads in that it is longer and ongoing (and does seem to have solved the earlier issues with 101 different overlapping threads swamping the forum). I suspect were it to be locked permanently then we'd quickly get vast numbers of different new threads starting up as each new "amazing" news report appeared.

I suspect that generally, when a troll starts prosing abusive content to different threads they get warned, then banned for a period then banned permanently (at which point they re-register under a different user ID - I've seen one pretty obvious currently active one).

So an idea: if somebodies posts to the Brexit thread are causing too much moderation (or issues that would cause action elsewhere), then why not just ban them from the Brexit thread (for a period, as for other bans). No need for a technical block, just tell them via PM they can no longer post to the thread for <n> days and if they do then it will become a forum ban for <n> days which does have a technical option.

Ian

But is it technically possible to prevent a certain user from posting on certain threads or subfora?

Cyril Haearn wrote:But is it technically possible to prevent a certain user from posting on certain threads or subfora?

Specific Topic ban . . .. pretty sure "No".
Specific Section ban . . . . probably not.

I guess that something else might happen if a User was banned from ( only a ) part of the forum . . . .

While the Brexit thread is locked, I can't think of any other way of raising this.

We are left staring at a gross insult directed at leavers from an unusual source in the form of Al.

Sorry about that. I did not have the time & energy to deal with it, and no one else volunteered

Vorpal wrote:Sorry about that. I did not have the time & energy to deal with it, and no one else volunteered

No need to apologise. In reality, I suspect it's a sign that nobody bothered to read it.

thirdcrank wrote:

Vorpal wrote:Sorry about that. I did not have the time & energy to deal with it, and no one else volunteered

No need to apologise. In reality, I suspect it's a sign that nobody bothered to read it.

I read it and mentally substituted what I took to be the correct target.

All this talk of Brexiters, Leavers, Remainers, it's no surprise when sometimes the wrong thing is typed - especially in the heat of ...err... battle. There was another one yesterday (can't be bothered to find it), where someone who I took to be a Remainer made an uncharacteristic comment. Perhaps wrongly, I took it to be a mistake. Perhaps a 'not' missing, or something.

In other words, we all know each others' thoughts. We just skim read to confirm how right or wrong they are.

I can't think of anywhere to put this.

Duplicate threads.

A mistake we can all make, especially if the existing thread has a cryptic title (Big hint here for posters to avoid clickbait thread subjects.) Further news about long-running stories such as court cases can be problematic as there may be ages between episodes.

Sometimes, it may be a sign that somebody with red-hot news is keener to scoop the headlines rather than first read what others are posting.

At the moment, we have three threads, all started today about bike lanes being a waste of money.

thirdcrank wrote:I can't think of anywhere to put this.

Duplicate threads.

A mistake we can all make, especially if the existing thread has a cryptic title (Big hint here for posters to avoid clickbait thread subjects.) Further news about long-running stories such as court cases can be problematic as there may be ages between episodes.

Sometimes, it may be a sign that somebody with red-hot news is keener to scoop the headlines rather than first read what others are posting.

At the moment, we have three threads, all started today about bike lanes being a waste of money.

I think that people don't always look to see if someone else has posted something.

It was worse than 3 threads about the same thing, because one of the threads quoted several articles, one of which was also posted in a fourth thread.

Vorpal wrote:I think that people don't always look to see if someone else has posted something.

That is not fair, Vorpal.

I posted my thread at 8:59 (with an accurate title). Cugel posted his at 9:00 (also with an accurate title). How on earth could either of us have seen the other's thread before posting? Then Mike Sales came up with his version at 9:11. Assuming he took more than ten minutes to type his piece, he also wouldn't have seen either Cugel's or mine.

It was worse than 3 threads about the same thing, because one of the threads quoted several articles, one of which was also posted in a fourth thread.

That may be so, but you shouldn't have merged two threads on opposing topics (as I have pointed out in the thread itself).

661-Pete wrote: ... That is not fair, Vorpal. ...

Whoa! I was the one who raised this general subject, based on one egregious example. I didn't perform a forensic analysis and as always there can be unimpeachable explanations in individual cases. Whatever the cause more generally, it can at best be confusing and if a discussion needs to be tidied up for the benefit of the readership as a whole, it can involve a lot of work merging threads, especially if the subject attracts a lot of immediate interest.

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PS My embarrassingly high post count shows I spend too much time on here. If I see a duplicate thread I generally report it with a view to a timely tidying up things for the benefit of all. Having reported it with the no reply box checked I generally forget so I have only my general impression, but this seems often to involve "the usual subjects." Having noticed even more duplicate threads today than usual, I thought I'll wait till they are all edited into one easy read before I spend time trying to make sense of the comments. And let's remember that although merged threads retain the chronological sequence of posts, that can lead to a very lumpy storyline, unless a (volunteer) mod does a lot of housework.

661-Pete wrote:

Vorpal wrote:I think that people don't always look to see if someone else has posted something.

That is not fair, Vorpal.

I posted my thread at 8:59 (with an accurate title). Cugel posted his at 9:00 (also with an accurate title). How on earth could either of us have seen the other's thread before posting? Then Mike Sales came up with his version at 9:11. Assuming he took more than ten minutes to type his piece, he also wouldn't have seen either Cugel's or mine.

I have to admit that I did not see what times people had posted. Some of them already had several responses, and two had been merged by another moderator by the time I got to it.

Even if it was unfair in this particular circumstance, most of the time when the same topic / article is posted several times, they are hours, or even days apart.

661-Pete wrote:

Vorpal wrote:I think that people don't always look to see if someone else has posted something.

That is not fair, Vorpal.

I too saw this article - it's headline news in the Guardian. The good news is that it was instantly (well, actually I read it last night) posted on here which shows that we are on the ball and the forum is a good source of news about cycling. Hats off to all those forum members who posted and thanks to thirdcrank for getting it tidied up. It's all good!