New LRC Not So Much Fun - Is The Site Moderated Too Much Now?

I do not recall asking for a meeting, though I have expressed my views via email. People have claimed that one moderator is responsible for the majority of deletions, but that is anecdotal. I have no direct evidence to support that.

About a week ago I was banned by an unnamed moderator for a post critical of the moderation on this very thread, which of course was set aside by Robert as a place to discuss moderation.

Thankfully Weldon/Robert rescinded the ban, once I pointed out that the moderators were violating their orders.

My suggestion: don’t allow moderators to ban anyone. If a moderator believes someone needs to be banned, they can take their case to Robert or Weldon. Already, banned posters can automatically protest to Robert or Weldon. If Robert/Weldon made the decisions on banning, I doubt it would take much more time out of their schedule than the current system.

Besides, the moderators have proven that they can’t handle that kind of authority. For every poster they banned who really is racist or threatening, I bet there are plenty others who are harmless trolls, or just goofy, or express political opinions that the moderators don’t agree with.

Who knows, no rhyme or reason to it. As long as moderators retain the ability to delete articles and band posters without direct accountability, they’ll continue to toss out articles for no good reason.

That’s unbelievable that they tried yo ban you for criticizing them in this thread. Glad to see you Rojo reinstated you. Was that Mod banned for a period of time for their actions? Their authority should be stripped as they are moderating from a place of emotion/defensiveness. So sorry you have to endure this Mikeh.

1.3 million posts deleted since LR inception. Deleting posts is pleasure for them.

Since it became obvious the new modding system was targeting me personally, I started doing the vast majority of my posting anonymously. And guess what, rarely deleted anymore.

I'm staying on registered-name strike until it's fixed. Join the picket line, in numbers we will prevail. They want registered users posting, it improves their reputation.

This is not a bad idea.

I mean, at some point a serious poster has to wonder if there is a point to trying to have real discussion. Last week I left a few serious replies on a thread about crime, which disappeared completely within a few minutes. There was nothing obscene or racist about the thread. But it disappeared because some moderator didn’t like it.

That’s rich.

The censorship is out of control. The USSR had more free speech than here.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, it's happening naturally. I've noticed quite a few prominent registereds quietly disappearing over the past few months. In some cases, their hater galleries think they got banned, but I think most are still around, fed up.

It was one thing to endure anonymous haters, almost a badge of honor. Tolerating anonymous hater mods is a badge of stupidity.

I’m really sorry you guys have had to deal with unfair profiling from the Mods. It’s outrageous that your posts get deleted when you go registered, but are left up when you post anonymously. They are obviously targeting you. I would let Wejo know about this. He won’t stand for it.

very funny, yes obviously the site owners already know. But they won't do anything until they see enough discontent about it.

If anyone should be told, it's celebrities and notables who like to gossip about these boards. Get them talking about how things are worse than ever! They would have fun saying that. Worse than ever!

Same here. I received a bogus permanent ban due to racist posts, which I have never done in the 15 years I have been on LRC. Using a VPN my posts are rarely removed unless a thread is entirely deleted, or when I comment about the bogus reason I was banned.

The most likely reason the ban is permanent is that I was first banned for defending myself from a stream of attacks by a well-known mod who nicknamed himself for a city he won a race in in Scan-din-av-ia. . . .

A thread was well past page one when that clown entered and started attacking everyone who would not agree with his opinion. Posts were being deleted as fast as they could be posted. . . . I finally challenged the fool, after he posted, "See, most of the comments support my opinion." I replied, that was because he had deleted every comment that did not support his opinion, and that he was losing some 3:1 when including the posts he deleted. That post was deleted and I found that I received a permanent ban for "racist posts." . . . The bro--jos refused to do anything about the ban. Evidently defending yourself against a nasty troll wearing a moderator hat is unacceptable on LRC, because they like that mod who has done so much for them, ... like moderating for free because he gets off on deleting posts, and attacking people.

In an opposite example: It took the bro--jos over 15 years to finally ban a troll who was a puppy dog to them. The height challenged troll referred to by longtimers here as "Chicken Little." He posted under a huge number of names using loads of IPs (VPNs), and finally goofed enough times that he was caught making a so many of abusive posts that they could no longer justify looking the other way for that fool.

The two ban examples above are so different from each that the moderating and ban bias LRC is obvious. ... I one case, instant ban without appeal for a made-up charge. In the other an extreme level of bending over and protecting a troll that opened the door for that person to become more and more abusive over the years.

I expect that the IP used for this post will receive a permanent ban. The VPN I used has 1000s of rolling IPs.

Given the lack or required registration, I think mods need the ability to ban. I still remember dyestat and letsrun to a lesser extent back in the day where a troll intent on causing havoc could quickly make the boards an unpleasant place (putting it lightly) - if the only 2 people who could ban were in bed or in the air, it could derail discussion of major events.

Earlier today I started a thread with some suggestions on how to improve the forum, which was promptly deleted by a faceless mod with "no reason given".

I'll quickly recap the suggestions here:

Lots of threads with good discussions and informative posts get nuked from existence because they derailed in their latter stages. 90% of users could be discussing on topic, and then a couple of others start with politics, vaccines, whatever, and the entire thing is gone in the blink of an eye.

1. Instead of outright deleting threads, the norm should be delisting + locking. That way the thread is dead, no one can reply, no one sees it on the forum, but people can still read it if they have the exact URL. I guess this is inconvenient as users would have visible evidence of different moderation standards, so it's never going to happen.

2. Whenever a thread gets deleted (or better yet, delisted + locked), show the name of the account that did it. Put the threshold at 5 posts in total, or posts by 3 unique users. Threads with less activity than that can be deleted like they are today while the others retain a semblance of accountability. If the mods adhere to the sites' stringent moderation guidelines they should have nothing to worry about. They're only nicknames after all. If that's still no-do, then create an alias for each mod and put "deleted by alias".

It's kind of funny how this forum has a "moderation transparency" section. It's basically aggregate data that serves two purposes: 1) the owners get a sense of whether reports are being handled in a timely manner, and 2) any external critics can be answered with "look at this cold, hard data on how fast and how many posts/threads/users we nuke every single day."

Then it gets better with the community guidelines. Point 5 in the TL;DR. Email wejo if you are interested in moderating.

What could possibly go wrong, right? Inviting a bunch of Percy Wetmore types to do your bidding. Why would you give this role to someone who actively seeks it out? You should ask some of the registered users whom you see fit for the task and hear if they are willing to moderate for you (aka. be unpaid internet janitors). There should be enough to pick from and some of them may agree to do it.

Why was this thread deleted? The OP just wanted to know what percentage of threads were trolls. What in the world is wrong with that?

How much censorship is too much?