All I know is this: I made statements that I wanted read by the people that run this organization and now they are gone.
That's a min of 8 posts I've made in the last 48 hours that have been deleted and you wonder why people are screaming about lack oif communication.
This is another issue that should be addressed. On our forum, if someone posted something with forbidden language a moderator could either edit the post or delete that single post. Now you will tell me that all you can do is delete the entire thread. If thats the case, replace the software that runs the forum with something that is more flexible.
Thanks for your time,
Movieman
I just made up my mind on this..enough is enough..I've spent almost 20 hours over 2 days dealing with issues related to this forum and that's insane.
My posts are deleted, the emails to the project people go unanswered.
gentleman, enjoy this and some of you will really love to hear this:
I am gone from this totally..call it what you want, temper,frustration, but this is run like it's some 16 year old kids website not a business.
Good Bye!

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All I know is this: I made statements that I wanted read by the people that run this organization and now they are gone.
That's a min of 8 posts I've made in the last 48 hours that have been deleted and you wonder why people are screaming about lack oif communication.
This is another issue that should be addressed. On our forum, if someone posted something with forbidden language a moderator could either edit the post or delete that single post. Now you will tell me that all you can do is delete the entire thread. If thats the case, replace the software that runs the forum with something that is more flexible.
Thanks for your time,
Movieman

BOINC devs will never edit the forum code so that mods or devs can edit posts, they have already stated that as a fact.

your posts should still be there and available for mods & devs to read it just hides them from joe public, I am a mod at QMC and when any of us delete a post or thread it is still there to be seen by us

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Yes, deleted threads/posts can be read by admins.

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Since we are priveldged to have you here at the momen, may I offer a quick remark.

I used to crunch for BBC/CE DC project, and the message board is so civilzed, there is actually no comparison to here. I am not sure exactly why, maybe the nature of climate change and the real devotion to the cause, but again this project is equally important.

What happens here is the follows: You get a useful discussion going on between a number of people on a serious issue and the discussion is civilized (check the discussion portion involving me, jose, fluffychicken, dcdc for example). Very impotant issues raised and in te heart of the matter.

Then suddenly out of no where, comes a one line post that is offensive to one of us say. The offended person replies with a quick one line and back to the important matter at hand. Does it stop there, no. It keeps escalating. SOoon enough one of two things will happen: Either the person would be fed up, give up the serious discussion and close the window, or stick around and get hammered.

The end result is always the same: The discussion is totally derailed, the posts are lost in the mid of the maze of insults, and will eventually be pushed down all the way and be hifdden. When any other user comes and open the post latter to check it (say the header grabbed his attention), then since the default is newest first (and most users leave it that), what do they see at the first page? The insults. Do they go through this whole thing looking for something useful? no. they move on.

Mission accomplished.

If you still have access to this deleted post, look starting from the last one upwards. Check and you will see what was the post that sudenly required this deluge to start. You will be surprised how it works like this every time.

The only thing I can say, is that the policy of the moderators at BBC/CE is very clear and I think is different than here. If you would please allow me to provide some constructive cretisim (sp):

users respond to the offending post because they have no other course of action they know of. So let us say there is a clear stated policy (say a sticky) that states that:
Members who post offensive posts shall have the contents of their post removed by a moderator at his/her discression. the contents of the message will be replaced by a public warning. Should another offence occur, the member shall be banned from posting for a period of three months, the message content removed, and a ban notice inserted in the message content.
A three strike rule applies. Ie: A third ban ==> no more posting priveldges.

Watch how civility will suddenly be restored. It will make your life so easy becuase there will be no offenses. The trouble makers will test the system, and if they see it works (warning) they will go somewhere else.

You do not need to stick around here either. The red x at the bottom of the message is enough to alert you that something is wrong. Because everybody now knows that they can push the button to report the offensive message, they will carry on with their discussion and ignore the offender (they know that you will read the posts and decent poeple don't want to offend by nature).

By you sir removing the post all together you just did these guys the best favor ever. You removed an constructive and important discussion thread about the credit system which has started a few hours ago after poeple recovered from the shock. You also removed the post that quoted David Barek remark at XS forum which put an end to a lot of concerns and made all the necessary assurance to the top teams (come to think about it, I would hasten a guess that this is what brought on the last major deluge).

the offenders did not loose anything by the thread being deleted. They gained what they wanted. they will always start another deluge on the next thread once it gets useful. that is the whole game to them which unfortunatly no body seems to be able to stop.

We, lost by removing the thread. I wonder whether you can restore it for 15 minutes or so, so that I can copy the posts of the four of us and start a new thread and quote them all so we can continue tomorrow? (I wonder what will happen then).

the only way for this board to work is stamping down. You have the authority. use it please. This is not "speak freely2 forum or usenet. The vast majority of thepeople don't even dare to venture here, even to look for info.

Would you believe me if I tell you (check the record) that I only made one post since I joined. I made seven (I think) this afternoon alone on this thread as a last effort attempt to do any and everything possible before it is too late, so that I have a clear conscience, even though I know what will I be facing?

there are a couple of moderators from BBC/CCE who crunch for this project: honza and MikeMarsUk. I know that this is not my place, but may I suggest a private chat with them may provide useful info.

Thank you very much.

Appology for long post. Thought maybe to grab this opportunity.

Yes, deleted threads/posts can be read by admins.

Thought I best add that so people know the posts are still available to be read, Ethan bet you will be glad to go home!! lol

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All I know is this: I made statements that I wanted read by the people that run this organization and now they are gone.
That's a min of 8 posts I've made in the last 48 hours that have been deleted and you wonder why people are screaming about lack oif communication.
This is another issue that should be addressed. On our forum, if someone posted something with forbidden language a moderator could either edit the post or delete that single post. Now you will tell me that all you can do is delete the entire thread. If thats the case, replace the software that runs the forum with something that is more flexible.
Thanks for your time,
Movieman

The mods can hide individual posts, but most seem to take the easy way out and just hide the whole thread.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

Appology for long post. Thought maybe to grab this opportunity.

Hee hee no apologies for a long long thread, if we were to go back to the message that started it all I guess many people would say its the 1st post but that depends on people perceptions as were all different.

Get use to petty arguments like this it does happen unfortunately when it comes to credit for some unknown reason its like a status symbol for some people I guess??

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The mods can hide individual posts, but most seem to take the easy way out and just hide the whole thread.

In this case its probably lack of time to go through all the messages last time I checked the thread was up to around 290 posts I think, far easier just to remove the whole thing from public view and leave it for the developers to read all the comments at a later date. The convo was going down hill big time :)

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The mods can hide individual posts, but most seem to take the easy way out and just hide the whole thread.

In this case its probably lack of time to go through all the messages last time I checked the thread was up to around 290 posts I think, far easier just to remove the whole thing from public view and leave it for the developers to read all the comments at a later date. The convo was going down hill big time :)

ok, so what is the solution. Now we are trying to come to some agreement say about an issue. How can we discuss here like civilsed people?
Is it worth comming here at all? And what is the alternative? We are not happy with the communication, yes? What communication can take place in this environment? No way.

Management has now made it clear that they will be open to discussion/comments about the system. Ok, so we start to talk. Some of us may not even have talked before, but sisnce we are seening the light at the end of the tunnel, we grab to whatever hope there is, in this critical time. Yes?

So what happened, we lost the whole discussion, and probably many other pieces of info in other posts too.

the moderator cannot just sit there reading every post. He is probably an RA or even an important person who takes a few minutes to visit from time to time to get for himself a feel of what is going on, listen, etc.. Not to put out fires.

this is hopeless in my openion withoyt a warning/suspention/removal policy. No way out.

ENOUGH BEING NICE PLEASE. WE DO NOT WANT NICE.

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People can communicate and talk on the subject they just want it to be civil, alot of comments in that thread should not of been there at all.

a sensible discussion would have been nice but the credit situation brings out the good, the bad and the ugly on the forums.

Good thing would be for the new forum code to be uploaded that allows devs & mods to bar people from the message board system for upto 2 weeks in a row, then open up a thread for discussion telling people to be nice. If someone is not warn them and then if they carry on bar them for a period of time upto 2 weeks.

Of course all messages are still logged and available to Devs so they can always check out what the Mods are getting upto

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excellent idea. If I have time this evening, I'll see if I can get it up on ralph and then on R@h.

David,

it seems some of the problems are due to the nature of this message board (i.e. it's not great). Would you be interested in having message boards hosted at Free-DC in the same way we do for SeventeenorBust and a number of other projects ?? It's all using vbulletin.

I'd be happy to do that and set you all up as moderators etc..

Bok

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The mods can hide individual posts, but most seem to take the easy way out and just hide the whole thread.

I wish it was that easy. The problem is we don't have the ability to edit messages. So if person A says something offensive, and persons B through F quote that post in theirs, then deleting post A has no effect since it's posted in four other places.

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He is probably an RA or even an important person who takes a few minutes to visit from time to time to get for himself a feel of what is going on, listen, etc..

I'm not in the baker lab, I just helped test R@H get things going before it was public. My day job is as a project manager for another department on campus, and to manage our department's boinc deployment (user = housing and food services).

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excellent idea. If I have time this evening, I'll see if I can get it up on ralph and then on R@h.

Kewl, I know it has been tested and deployed on SETI@Home so it should all work correctly but if it doesn't work correctly at least you have RALPH to test it on and make sure it works 1st of all. Once installed at least you have another tool to try and calm things down, so long as its not misused by anyone ;)

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Found the message

In the past few months, some of the SETI at home message boards have been overwhelmed by "trolls": people who write large numbers of insulting and irrelevant messages. There aren't that many of these people - maybe a dozen or two - but their effect is to make the message boards very unpleasant,which (according to many reports) causes lots of people to stop running SETI at home.

I've added a new feature that lets moderators "banish" users; this prevents them from posting for 2 weeks. I hope this feature, used wisely by S at h moderators,will solve the problem.

If your project has similar problems, you might want to deploy this feature, and instruct your moderators to use it. It's in the latest PHP code; you'll need to do a minor database update (in html/ops/db_update.php).

-- David

Edit: So don't know if its 2 weeks you have to stick with for a banish or maybe its configurable?

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Found the message

In the past few months, some of the SETI at home message boards have been overwhelmed by "trolls": people who write large numbers of insulting and irrelevant messages. There aren't that many of these people - maybe a dozen or two - but their effect is to make the message boards very unpleasant,which (according to many reports) causes lots of people to stop running SETI at home.

I've added a new feature that lets moderators "banish" users; this prevents them from posting for 2 weeks. I hope this feature, used wisely by S at h moderators,will solve the problem.

If your project has similar problems, you might want to deploy this feature, and instruct your moderators to use it. It's in the latest PHP code; you'll need to do a minor database update (in html/ops/db_update.php).

-- David

Edit: So don't know if its 2 weeks you have to stick with for a banish or maybe its configurable?

I don't know, but they will probably have to eventually implement a permanent ban as well. Some people just do not learn. Two weeks in time out seems to be about right for a repeat offender that has not been banished before.

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I don't know, but they will probably have to eventually implement a permanent ban as well. Some people just do not learn. Two weeks in time out seems to be about right for a repeat offender that has not been banished before.

Its quite sad that this method is needed, just glad that when all the stuff at SETI kicked off that they decided to design & implement this new feature. Wonder who is 1st for the 2 week sinbin? ;)

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The mods can hide individual posts, but most seem to take the easy way out and just hide the whole thread.

I wish it was that easy. The problem is we don't have the ability to edit messages. So if person A says something offensive, and persons B through F quote that post in theirs, then deleting post A has no effect since it's posted in four other places.

So it's not worth the work to weed out a few bad posts ( and the related posts with the quotes) and leave the meat of the discussion visible? Perhaps THAT is some small part of the problem people have with the communications on this project.

Hiding the whole thread just forces people to quote their own posts that weren't the problem, but now have to be reposted out of context.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

The mods can hide individual posts, but most seem to take the easy way out and just hide the whole thread.

I wish it was that easy. The problem is we don't have the ability to edit messages. So if person A says something offensive, and persons B through F quote that post in theirs, then deleting post A has no effect since it's posted in four other places.

So it's not worth the work to weed out a few bad posts ( and the related posts with the quotes) and leave the meat of the discussion visible? Perhaps THAT is some small part of the problem people have with the communications on this project.

Hiding the whole thread just forces people to quote their own posts that weren't the problem, but now have to be reposted out of context.

There were over 270 posts in that thread - probably over half needed modding or quoted posts that needed modding. Obviously it'd be best if the theme of the thread could be left in tact, but it's not a small job, and certainly not one that could be done in real time.

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