138 replies to this topic 2 votes

[sudo]

Mephistopheles, on 06 May 2011 - 12:27, said:

Can the same anti-troll rules be enforced on Neowin IRC as well please? While things have improved after some culprits were banned there are still certain users - they know who they are, as do staff - whose trolling is downright annoying.

I'm fairly regularly on #neowin and I have rarely witnessed trolling (as defined in this thread, i.e. discouraging civilized/technical discussions). When a question is asked or a technical issue is brought up, there usually is a civilized and straight-to-the-point discussion around it.

If you were to moderate #neowin the same way you do the forums, you'd end up where #neowin is right now: a quiet, boring chat room, where even civilized discussions are being avoided in fear of getting labelled a troll and seing unjustified action taken against you.

The way to moderate #neowin is, and we keep pointing this out, to lead by example. Staff on #neowin should lead by example. If they don't want certain behavior/discussions from other members, they should not be manifesting said behavior or initiating said discussions. Staff on #neowin get away with pretty much everything: Flame bait, admitting to piracy, personal attacks, posting NSFW content without tagging.. et.al. People get banned/warned for that, staff got and are still getting away with it, on a regular basis.

A final note: Staff who are not moderators should NOT be moderating #neowin. Two issues with this:

1) People need to know who is moderating, and to whom should they go when they want to clear an issue (essentially the general consensus is: moderators > Supervisors > Admins, NO newsies or Devs)

2) Those staff members (newsies/devs) always interfeer when people call out another staff breaking rules. They set the channel to +m (Devs) or kick anyone they argue with (newsies). We see this fairly regularly, and it speaks heaps about the situation.

Point is, don't make rules if you can't play by them.

[DrCheese]

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Can the same anti-troll rules be enforced on Neowin IRC as well please? While things have improved after some culprits were banned there are still certain users - they know who they are, as do staff - whose trolling is downright annoying.

Are you serious? The channel is pretty quiet nowadays as it is. If anyone else gets banned for "trolling" then there's really no point in having an IRC server.

Also, if the users that were previously banned annoy you so much, why exactly do you hang around on their spinoff IRC server ?

[Neobond]

sudo, on 08 May 2011 - 00:50, said:

snipped

There's a problem with your justification of which staff should moderate IRC. It's a fact that IRC is where it's at for news operations, as a result there are always quite a lot of news staff on IRC all the time. Perfect candidates for moderation.

Also, people forget that a lot of the current news staff actually came from another staff group, with exception of those (who don't enforce moderation on IRC) that have been brought on and weren't even members of Neowin.

I do agree that staff should lead by example, and anyone is perfectly within their rights to report those types of infractions.

Plus #neowin is anything but quiet

[+Mephistopheles]

To quote the opening post of this thread:

Fred Derf, on 06 May 2011 - 12:20, said:

Q. What is a troll?
A. A troll is someone who will state something only with the intention of stirring up controversy.

DrCheese, sudo: Don't even try to tell me that certain (ex-)members weren't using troll memes or antagonising staff on purpose. They were, some still are doing it. By Fred Derf's definition that is trolling.

By the way, has it ever occurred to you that some are quiet because they don't want to end up being quoted by a leaky Twitter account rather than for fear of warns/bans? Think about it.

One often heard reason for the trollish behaviour is: 'Trying to talk to staff is futile, you will only be stonewalled.' Is that really so? Or isn't it also a question of how you talk to staff? To be honest I can understand why some of them reacted like they did in the past weeks. Take the 'rounded corners' meme which used to be thrown at Timan ever so often. It went on for well over a year - can you blame him for snapping in the end? I can't.

I do agree with sudo regarding the moderation issues - there is a lack of consistency, and there ought to be dedicated IRC moderators as the only ones responsible for moderating the channel. That being said - bring it up in a civilised manner like in this thread, rather than by moaning about every staff mistake in the channel. The latter will not get you anywhere.

Lastly: Why do I hang out on irc.kick-ban.me.uk, #kick-ban? Good question. Morbid curiosity I guess. Watching certain people act like they're so much more sensible than everybody else (yes sudo, I am looking at you) or moan again and again or openly admit to having dupe accounts on #neowin is amusing (while frustrating) at times.

[tiagosilva29]

This definition of trolling is almost every article on free software that goes on the Front Page News.
For ****'s sake, just make Mephistopheles a moderator again and send out amnisties for all the banned guys.
Also, what's this "rounded corners" meme and "kick-man-whatever"?

[Neobond]

Free software on front page news? Not sure what you mean there

[tiagosilva29]

Neobon said:

Free software on front page news? Not sure what you mean there

True, they rarely post them.

[Mike]

Neobond, on 08 May 2011 - 08:28, said:

All thats needed there is a little common-sense. Why report it to me when you know full well I hardly ever participate in #neowin when there are other staff and Supervisors present and interacting in the #neowin channel?

Would you report it to Daniel, Redmak or Frogboy as well, who also never participate in #neowin?

Come on!

So you don't care what your staff get up to? The "you" wasn't fully directed at you personally either, more just the general staff.

If you're not in a position to care about the staff or are the wrong person to report stuff to, did you send the message on to whoever is or just simply ignore it?

[Neobond]

Mike, on 08 May 2011 - 08:33, said:

So you don't care what your staff get up to? The "you" wasn't fully directed at you personally either, more just the general staff.

If you're not in a position to care about the staff or are the wrong person to report stuff to, did you send the message on to whoever is or just simply ignore it?

No, I got the message about the memes harassment stuff going on and forwarded it to staff for discussion, also the double standards of staff was discussed, but much of it was completely new to me.

Staff will tell you I'm not really a supporter of IRC, but I agree it's needed for staff operations and that's why I'm always logged in to it these days.

Despite what you believe, staff are held accountable for abuse of privileges, in the past some have lost their status due to it as well.

[+Mephistopheles]

IMHO the status of Neowin IRC needs to be re-evaluated. Should it continue to be the site's back room of sorts, an area with much laxer rules than front page/forum where members can hang out to chat? Or should it be staff-only to discuss site operations?

If it's supposed to be the former, take a good look at the rules and at who moderates the channels. There are some members of staff who imho should stay out of moderating IRC.

[Neobond]

It has been re-evaluated time and time again

But for all the bad that happens, the good out-weighs it I suppose. I've suggested a few times to bin it, but after discussing it (in a staff forum topic) it was decided that we should keep it.

Currently we're still looking to assign dedicated IRC moderators.

As for who shouldn't be moderating IRC, maybe that's better discussed in a PM with your reasoning.

[what]

Neobond, on 08 May 2011 - 07:40, said:

Plus #neowin is anything but quiet

Two months ago it was active all the time. Now you're lucky if you get a one hour spell in a day - often you get a few hours where there's nothing but the news bot posting. Even our small 'alternative' server is more active.

[Fred Derf]

Mike, on 08 May 2011 - 08:33, said:

So you don't care what your staff get up to? The "you" wasn't fully directed at you personally either, more just the general staff.

If you're not in a position to care about the staff or are the wrong person to report stuff to, did you send the message on to whoever is or just simply ignore it?

I think Neobond's point was that he has his hands full working on the front page and other background/long-term projects. The other Admins are busy with coding and other site issues. They don't always know the people involved and it would take them too long to get up to speed. Thus, complaining to an Admin about a non-mission critical part of the site probably won't get you the response that you want.

The key would be to find a Supervisor that is active on IRC (and yet also isn't "part of the problem") and send them a mature PM that outlines your concerns. Feel free to name, names and cite examples. If you can't find a Supervisor that is active on the IRC then you could potentially send it to me. However, I'll need to know which staff you consider to be part of the problem and which staff could potentially corroborate your story.

[Barney]

You may also forward a PM to me, however, I do not frequent IRC, so I would have to forward it to someone who is familiar with the situation. Regardless, we follow our Community Rules, so if you break the, you are potentially subject to whatever warns are appropriate.

[DrCheese]

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One often heard reason for the trollish behaviour is: 'Trying to talk to staff is futile, you will only be stonewalled.' Is that really so? Or isn't it also a question of how you talk to staff?

No. You do get stonewalled. If you query why someone is banned you get told it's just the way it is. This is extremely frustrating when people who you've been talking to for a long time and count as "friends" are suddenly banned for no reason.
The initial bans a few weeks ago that kicked the whole lot of recent drama off was totally unjustified and appeared totally out of the blue. No warning, no knock it off, no nothing. Just an insta warn/10 day ban over a convo that wasn't targeting anyone or offending anyone.

That said the actions that said banned members went out and did after justified a total ban yes, but the first bans did not.

As for the memes, a lot of them formed out of the stonewalling of constructive feedback about the site. Yes, the rounded corners one was retarded but some of the others were perfectly valid. The ones that formed about the horrible grammar/spelling/headlines and fact checking on the front page count amongst them.

Quote

Currently we're still looking to assign dedicated IRC moderators.

That will only work if the IRC moderators do not take orders from other non IRC mod members of staff in the #staff channel and if other staff members powers are removed. Otherwise it's just keeping the status quo, but putting out a human shield for the abuse that results when unpopular decisions are made.
It makes no sense that members of say the developer group, some of who rarely join in the conservation have full on admin powers, the ability to +m the channel and ban users. Likewise it makes no sense for random newsies or non moderation staff to go crying to a staffer with power and having a user banned whenever they get their feelings hurt, when if an ordinary member reported it would not result in a ban. (Yes, it does happen)