This week in moderation: Are there rules on this message board? How do the mods decide which threads to delete?

No rules. Mods have free rein to delete anything they disagree with or hurts their feelings.

apparently there are "rules". They seem to be arbitrarily enforced though. This link is at the bottom of every thread.

letsrun.com

Moderation Statistics

Open link

There's some stats on the link I provided that would lend some evidence to this. Not sure why you would delete 5-6x more posts than are reported without there being some sort of bias. Maybe there is a logical reason though, I'm not a moderator.

Unique Posts Reported
260,541

Posts Deleted
1,360,259

REPORTED

1. The moderators just "decide" which threads to delete.

2. The mods are always right.

Perhaps I should do this once a week but I'll use this thread to discuss moderation and the status of the forums.

I will answers questions in it and then lock it.

Yes we have rules and guidelines for moderating. They are here:

letsrun.com

Moderation Statistics

Open link

The biggest issue might be with what non-running threads we leave up. Our rules above explain the issue: "Every thread started appears in the main forum index. To manage this limited real estate, entire threads may be deleted due to moderator discretion or because the thread has spiraled out of control. Please use the "Report Objectionable Post" on the first post for threads you would like to see removed. Placeholders do not show up for deleted threads on the main index, so you will not be able to see why your thread was deleted if you were the thread starter."

That is because 1) Entire threads with hundreds of posts can be removed and don't count in the stats as being reported.
2) Mods can delete posts that aren't reported. Ie we're surfing the site like you and see something nuts, we may delete it.

While a lot of what we try and get a handle on is posters insulting one another or being disrespectful to one another, the biggest issues for moderators besides making the judgement call on post reported to us, are a handful of posters who are obsessed about a particular issue and essentially make the boards much worse off because of it. They try and hijack the boards for their own obsessions.

Right now there is

1) A poster posting over and over about Nico Young's personal life. Not only are the posts homophobic but the person is sidetracking probably at this point hundreds of threads with this stuff. We ban the poster, etc, but they keep coming back for more. So if you see any posts like this the best you can do is report them.

Thanks for responding.

I'd point out that the repeated postings that eventually get deleted are virtually always under unregistered userids. Something to think about.

Also I would say moderating the Huntington University threads or posts about Addy Wiley are the most difficult thing. Not only is the subject matter very difficult but when do we decide to not let every Addt Wiley thread sidetrack into a Huntington University thread?

And then there is the issue of people trying to manipulate the report a post function and perhaps voting related to these threads. So as users you can always keep us aware of problematic posts.

Yes that is true but we do abandon something we believe in, anonymity because probably less than 5 people really abuse it.

We are thinking of ways to combat it.

I’ve seen a dozen different threads in short order about scrolling LR in the toilet. Either you started them all or you hopped on a spam trend warranting deletion.

Would a happy medium require that you must be a registered user to start a thread?

Anonymous users can still post and vote, but this might cut down on duplicate posts and provocative troll posts.

then explain existence of Adult, newname, and a few others that saturate threads with known falsehoods and continue to be allowed to exist on this forum?

Could that be when a thread is deleted, it removes all posts?

The moderating is out of control. Of course wejo will just deny everything but words are too easy, the actions of the moderators speak volumes. If a thread is not abusive, does not have illegal content, is not spam, then leave it alone.

And why is it always the examples of “excessive moderation” that people give are no value threads? Never once have I seen a whiner point out a thread that was actually a loss for the LRC community to be deleted.