Monthly state of the forums discussion - what are we doing right, what should we do differently, what can we improve

Mikeh33 wrote:

Weldon, the moderation on this forum drives people away and makes the user experience much worse. People “attack” the moderators on this forum because they make the forum unpleasant. I could tell you stories of dealing with them personally, but everyone on this forum has their own story, and I’ve told mine too many times.

Here is what you should do:

Forbid moderators from removing any post or thread unless it meets the following criteria:

1. The post is physically threatening to another poster. Literally threatening. Rudeness does not count. This is the Internet.

2. The post is pornographic. Not discussing how they lack a girlfriend.

3. The post doxxes someone.

4. The post is critical of high school age runners. College and especially pros are fair game.

5. The post is clearly spam. Not someone who posts on the same or similar topics frequently. That is not spam, it is someone who may be too fixated on a topic. I’m talking about unauthorized advertisements, obscene posts, or repeat nonsensical posts.

That’s it. We must stop moderating posts because the moderators think the post is annoying, or stupid, or they disagree with the politics, or they don’t like criticism of a particular runner.

And above all, moderators must stop deleting and banning people whose only crime is being critical of the moderation. It’s just words, not violence, and it’s not the end of the world. People are critical of the moderation because they care about this site, and because the moderation here is very poor. The message board can survive a few posts critical of moderating practices. And let’s be frank: criticism of a moderator will get you deleted and banned within minutes if not seconds. But other things…not so much. This creates the impression that the moderators are mostly here to protect their own position.

This used to be a really fun site. In fact, I would say that I probably had more fun on LRC before 2023 than I had almost anywhere else. That all ended as the moderators turned the screws and began to eliminate a lot of of the goofiness and fun that used to characterize this message board. Recapture that. It can be done, but you’ll have to make some hard changes.

it's a cess pit wrote:

I think the biggest issue is that you often consider honest criticism of moderators as "personal attacks" and ban users for pointing them out, even on threads like these when it is openly asked for.

I understand not wanting to have those kind of tedious mod callouts on every thread, but when you open up threads like this for example, you should NOT ban people for pointing out well known long term issues with some of the most prominent mods and owners of this site.

It comes off as saying "tell us how we can improve" then banning people for giving honest answers. Very Trumpian. Dishonest and reveals that there is little to no real intention of self-evaluation.

Until you realize that some of the 'real trouble makers' are on the mod side, the site will continue to earn it's long standing reputation as the on-line cess pit of the running world..

wejo wrote:

1) Personal attacks, insulting posters, going off topic are going to get deleted. We don't want to be 4chan. We have some civility even thought we support the concept of free speech.

As for being critical of moderation I've got bad news:
1) I'm going to implement a new rule. if you complain about a moderation in a thread and are using an anonymous name you will automatically get banned for 3 days.

this is such an insider baseball thing but people will go into threads and go off topic and say "the moderator who shouldn't be named is a drug cheat" and then complain when they get banned.

I was going to tell mods to just delete the posts but when that happens the offenders sometimes then clog up the thread with more posts "where have my posts gone" when they know what they are doing.

If you have sincere complains about moderation there is an easy out below:
3) In any thread if you have a legit problem with moderating click the # button next to your post and send it to me and i will personally review it. occasionally someone will do this and their post wasn't removed by who they thought i twas.

wejo wrote:

Mikeh33 wrote:

Weldon, the moderation on this forum drives people away and makes the user experience much worse. People “attack” the moderators on this forum because they make the forum unpleasant. I could tell you stories of dealing with them personally, but everyone on this forum has their own story, and I’ve told mine too many times.

Here is what you should do:

Forbid moderators from removing any post or thread unless it meets the following criteria:

1. The post is physically threatening to another poster. Literally threatening. Rudeness does not count. This is the Internet.

2. The post is pornographic. Not discussing how they lack a girlfriend.

3. The post doxxes someone.

4. The post is critical of high school age runners. College and especially pros are fair game.

5. The post is clearly spam. Not someone who posts on the same or similar topics frequently. That is not spam, it is someone who may be too fixated on a topic. I’m talking about unauthorized advertisements, obscene posts, or repeat nonsensical posts.

That’s it. We must stop moderating posts because the moderators think the post is annoying, or stupid, or they disagree with the politics, or they don’t like criticism of a particular runner.

And above all, moderators must stop deleting and banning people whose only crime is being critical of the moderation. It’s just words, not violence, and it’s not the end of the world. People are critical of the moderation because they care about this site, and because the moderation here is very poor. The message board can survive a few posts critical of moderating practices. And let’s be frank: criticism of a moderator will get you deleted and banned within minutes if not seconds. But other things…not so much. This creates the impression that the moderators are mostly here to protect their own position.

This used to be a really fun site. In fact, I would say that I probably had more fun on LRC before 2023 than I had almost anywhere else. That all ended as the moderators turned the screws and began to eliminate a lot of of the goofiness and fun that used to characterize this message board. Recapture that. It can be done, but you’ll have to make some hard changes.

1) Personal attacks, insulting posters, going off topic are going to get deleted. We don't want to be 4chan. We have some civility even thought we support the concept of free speech.

As for being critical of moderation I've got bad news:
1) I'm going to implement a new rule. if you complain about a moderation in a thread and are using an anonymous name you will automatically get banned for 3 days.

this is such an insider baseball thing but people will go into threads and go off topic and say "the moderator who shouldn't be named is a drug cheat" and then complain when they get banned.

I was going to tell mods to just delete the posts but when that happens the offenders sometimes then clog up the thread with more posts "where have my posts gone" when they know what they are doing.

If you have sincere complains about moderation there is an easy out below:
3) In any thread if you have a legit problem with moderating click the # button next to your post and send it to me and i will personally review it. occasionally someone will do this and their post wasn't removed by who they thought i twas.