Moderation

Totally agree with this. Some of the comments on both the Zuleta and Ozzie Guillen threads are great examples (from both registered members and guests). People involved in shouting matches, overreacting to trivial things - indeed a level of childish bickering not seen before on this site.

Of course this depends on your time constraints but it would be great to go back to the old more civilized, if a little slower, way.

Also would it be possible for registering to be a compulsory condition before posting? This would stop a lot of the random guest comments and also (I feel) aid discussions as it is nice to know who you are discussing something with. This may also help to stop some of the distasteful comments too. Just a thought.

It comes down to what you want moderated, guys. Selective moderation is not equitable. One should be even handed. You want to eliminate intemperance, rudeness, personal attacks, vulgarity? Fine. You want to eliminate opinion, respectful dissent, strong protest against prejudiced drivel? Then you want a soma-laced discussion. That's not cool.

You nail the problem squrely on the head. The first week of open posting, everything was going along very well. There were a couple of cheap shots, but everyone was very well behaved - civilized.

Then the spam-bots came along, and Butch. As you know, Butch made personal attacks on Zuleta's personal life, and several people asked him to stop. But Butch also provided some information that was relavant to the discussion, and is potentially a good source for more information.

To make the point that part of his behavior was not acceptable, I removed his third personal attack. Unfortunately, there were a number of very good posts underneith that one that were lost as well. It's give and take, and I was actually considering just deleting the entire thread all together.

I like opinion, respectful dissent, and protest against prejudiced drivel - so long at it stays on topic (and occasionally when it drifts off topic). I don't see much value when a thread deteriorates into two sides repeating themselves over and over, like in the Tuffy gets Puffy thread. (After a long day of meetings, returning home to that had me ready to delete that thread all together as well. Fortunately, the arguement appeared to end before I got to it.)

The Tuffy thread (and a couple others) got me thinking, how can I promote better communication between people with strongly differing opinions? Technical solutions like requiring people to sign in, then limiting their number of posts over a period are the obvious, short term solutions, but they don't really appeal to me. As much as I'm a techie, and have some ideas about how to implement such solutions, it comes down to applying a technical solution to a social problem - something that I'm very much against.

I know you don't like all of the decisions that I make. Even I don't like them sometimes (especially when I act on a whim out of frustration as I almost did a couple of times). I don't wish for fame or fortune, or even for everyone to like me and my decisions. I just want to share my love for baseball, here in Japan, in what ever way I can.

Michael - Sometimes one gets carried away by the argument so much that one forgets oneself - especially if you love to debate on a topic you are interested in and knowledgeable about. This is where moderation comes in and as far as I am concerned you run the site very well. As one of the participants in the Tuffy gets Puffy thread I hadn't realised that it was getting quite so repetative and annoying. This is where it is useful to have someone on the outside who can call a stop.

As I mentioned in a previous thread on this subject, it is very useful to have this kind of moderation because, on reflection, it is not because of you that some of my posts don't get posted but because of myself. I have always been happy with moderation and would like you to continue.

If I have one suggestion for improvement it would be more posts explaining what you are doing rather than just doing them.

- If I have one suggestion for improvement it would be more posts explaining what you are doing rather than just doing them.

Better communication. Good point.

While I do like most of the posts submitted by non-registered fans, spamming is just a fact of life on the Internet, and there needs to be measures in effect to stop it. If the non-moderated style is much easier for Michael, then I might suggest allowing only registered users to post real-time, and have non-registered users submit their posts for approval, old school style [okay not really old school ]. I don't know how difficult a set-up like that would be, but by forcing everyone who wants to post to register, I feel that we might lose a few anonymous posters who've been helping out all along.

I totally agree and, as I posted in the Zuleta thread, I do appreciate the amount of time this would take you. If you could reinstate full moderation it would be very welcome.

Michael, I support whatever you feel is necessary. I don't feel anyone should be telling you what your policy should be on your own site.

However, if may just mention something about the Tuffy gets Puffy thread, as I was one of the contributors. You may have been irritated, but if you read it again, you'll see that Christopher and I debated the point in a vigorous yet controlled manner. I don't know why anyone could take offense at that sort of thing. Perhaps we were repeating ourselves a tad, but that was part of the debate. We used the words reiterate and repeat, and so it was a conscious effort on our part to focus on a particular point we had made earlier. There was no bad language, no name calling, and it was completely on-topic. We also agreed to cease the discussion voluntarily when somebody made that suggestion. I would hate to think that you'd feel the need to actually delete the thread. I wouldn't have described the thread as having "deteriorated."

True, Christopher and I have strongly held opinions, and we don't like to give ground in a debate. But that's often the nature of debate. Go after the spamsters, the racists and the name callers by all means, but please don't restrict robust discussions just because they're robust.

I agree with Mijow. This is your site. Run it as you wish. However, I think good communication requires some leeway for people to express themselves as they can. This may include repetition for emphasis, or argument fatigue, spelling errors or typos. As long as it is respectful, soundly constructed and clean, whats' the harm? Spirited debate makes the site interesting.

I also think real-time for registered users is worth a try. It eliminates spam, causes those visitors like me to commit to providing what will end up being sketchy personal info anyway, but you join the on-line community and bear responsibility for it and for your actions. I don't know if you have Terms of Service guidelines, but if not, it would be helpful to put everyone on notice as to what is acceptable and what is not.That in itself will be interesting with the cultural mix there is here.

Finally, I don't think it is fair to ask Westbay-san to babysit us. He has a life outside of this site. It is a big burden, I suspect, keeping it running, let alone acting as a filter to maintain standards. If one wants to be a part of a community, one has responsibilities. I think we are adult enough to self-police, to admonish in a positive way, behavior that clearly offends, as defined by the TOS. Surely we don't need Westbay-san to be the chat room monoitor?

For the record, the "this thread" I mention in the first post at the top of this page has been cleared of the spam that had swamped it (as Mijow-san points out in his Spam Alert thread). For those of you who've just joined this discussion: I was referring to the spam.

Meanwhile, I reckon Westbaystars-san did an excellent job of moderation before the open-posting experiment; discussion was allowed to flow, but not to flow out of control. I, for one, see no problem (from a participant's point of view) in reverting to that system again.

Sorry that you are back to monitoring, but I wanted to say that the new review step is a good idea. It allows me to clean up some typos and to have one last look and a deep breath before posting.

I used to view this page a lot, registered even, but not being able to post live just seemed like a waste of time. Occasionally, I've posted anonymously just because it seemed like a waste of time to log in.

Posting needs to return to real time, even if it means that everyone has to register first. It's good for discusion, it's good for questions. The point of a message board is the sharing of ideas at real time speed. I mean I could get the typewriter out and send my opinions across the Pacific to posters in the U.S. and elsewhere, but the season and or topic would already be dead.

The community will moderate itself if you give it a chance. Racism and personal attacks are not the aim of talking baseball and if they appear, they should be ignored; and posters banned.

I agree with that, too.

I agree with above, but has anyone considered banning people who regularly go against the rules? Of course it's easy to get around, but it does provide a barrier at the very least. I have to admit that I enjoyed the live posting, but yes, it did get out of hand. Can you banish people by IP address? And if so, am I in danger of that?

I also want to say that I like the preview...uhhh...option. It made me go back and delete something I said about robots coming out of the screen and strangling the people who make racist remarks...no joke.

I'd like to do away with moderation for those who contribute often (and that includes you, buymeabeer-san - no danger of being banned). It's a matter of taking the time to get the system right. Here's what I'm thinking of:

1. First, set up a system whereby one may get rewards for posting useful information. There will also be penalties (reward loss) for inflamatory remarks. Penalties will generally be used to knock one just below the free posting threshold.


2. Next, I'd like to make it easier for people to post in a well formatted, clear manner. There are a number of graphical editors for posts to make creating hyperlinks, lists, bold, italics, etc. much easier for non-technical people.


3. I'd greatly appriciate it if people would post using proper grammar and capitalization. It's amazing how many posts don't use capital letters at all, the proper pronoun "I" being the worst offender. Also, I find instant messaging "ur" for "you are" to be extreamly offensive. Call it a generation gap with this old Grey Beard moderator. Those of you with good old fassioned writing skills will be the first to be able to write away.


4. Finally, I want to have a system whereby I can provide positive feedback to people about their posts. For example, I make some subtile changes to some posts to make them a little less offensive (although that doesn't seem to help much). But mainly, when someone is repeating themselves, or when someone makes a statement that is clearly in error (like how often Zuleta has been hit by pitches per year), I'd like to point out the problem/error and give the poster a chance to fix it himself/herself before others view it.

It's interesting that so many like the preview function. It's been there all along, all I did was change it to the only option available to kill that spam-bot. You know? The spam-bot that attacked the site a couple weeks ago? It is made specifically for this forum software and relies on being able to post certain fields to a specific processing page. I modified the parameters to be outside the norms, so the bot can no longer post 20 messages in 5 seconds. It would be trivial to write a new spam-bot to target this specific site, but with moderation back on, it wouldn't be worth it (other than to annoy me).

Someone asked if I can ban people according to IP address. Technically, yes. Feasibly, no. AOL and other ISPs use multiple IP addresses for each request. For example, when requesting this page, the page request will come from one IP address, the request for the JapaneseBaseball.com logo at the top will be from another, and so on. Then there are anonymizers for people who feel strongly about privacy, or who really like to cause trouble (with any technology, there are legitimate and abusive uses). This is why I don't belive in technical solutions for social problems. Those who want to get around the technical solutions will find a way to do so while making things more inconvient to those who aren't a problem. (Witness what the RIAA and MPAA are doing with technology as an example - the pirates don't notice a thing, but my parents sending the kids a DVD from the U.S. causes all kinds of headaches. No need to send possible solutions, I have some - which the MPAA may not necessarily approve of.)

Anyway, I am listening to your feedback. And while there are some technical things I need to do to implement the above system, I hope that this system can help solve the social problems better than the current moderation system does.

Note: This is something I'm doing in my spare time, so don't expect it to be done next week. I've got some strict deadlines I need to meet with work that are taking a lot of time away from enjoying baseball and contributing here. Please be patient.

Wow, the reward system is downright Pavlovian! The graphical editor would be nice. My main suggestions are to keep it simple, encourage registration and community responsibility and have the ability to make edits to the post to correct typos, polishing or deflaming.

The cost of free speech is the tolerance of opposing views, sometimes presented in an impassioned way. The cost of a heavily moderated/censored site is boredom and disinterest. Look at the number of posts when things got heated vs. when there was little give and take. The key is to reconcile the two, to foster civil debate and exchanges. That requires both restraint and freedom, responsibility and creativity.

Positive rewards like encouragement, positive feedback and comment appreciation are far better drivers of behavioral change than punishment, ridicule and deprivation. More importantly, if you are going to post, you have got to take responsibility for the community...to keep it clean...to keep it vibrant....to keep it an attractive place that people want to visit.

- I'd like to make it easier for people to post in a well formatted, clear manner.

That would be good as long as the system prevents, as moderation does so well, POSTS THAT LOOK LIKE THIS!!!!!!!

- I'd greatly appriciate it if people would post using proper grammar and capitalization.

I hate to be a wet blanket, but this is likely impossible. People just can't spell or punctuate these days. (Grrr... don't get me started on this; it's my pet peeve.) Is it not possible to insert some kind of spell-check function as a required step in the posting process like the preview function?

- I want to have a system whereby I can provide positive feedback to people about their posts. For example, I make some subtile changes to some posts to make them a little less offensive...

Fantastic idea - especially from the viewer's standpoint. But won't it get you into long-winded behind-the-scenes arguments with people who don't find your feedback positive?

The reward/penalty system looks interesting. However, I am not convinced that it is the right way to go and would question whether it will perform the function it is intended to. As I have said, I don't really like real time, but appreciate how much time moderation must take and how tiring and frustrating it must be at times.

If you do give feedback to people then you need to think of a way you can have the final word rather than get involved in a lengthy debate about the post. I have noticed that some people get rather annoyed if you do exclude or delete their posts. I personally don't mind this as long as you say you are doing so and why.

Like Torakichi said, though, you won't be able to eliminate illiterates and so will have to continue to put up with spelling and other glitches.

Another problem with spelling is the mere issue of typos. Also, given the conversational and instantaneous nature of the Internet, it's going to be even more difficult to get folks to focus on grammar in this setting than it is to get them to do so in the "real world."

Jim Albright