And you would be amazed at what a difference it makes.

And the other interesting thing that's a bit different than normal, is that we don't allow members to create posts, for the most part. We have a "suggested thread" section that they can post a thread in, and every day one of our mods goes through and releases about 4-5 of them into the "general discussion" area.

We also have a ton of "permanent" threads on various topics that are just long-running threads on things like cooking, home repair, auto repair, racing, hunting/fishing, camping, new movies, video games, pop culture, funny videos, etc.

We also run a free-for-all (but still no religion/politics ever) Weekend Drunk Thread that can cover just about anything and everything. No such thing as being off-topic in those threads. They get fired up on Friday morning, and locked Monday morning.

Again, it's a stupidly fun forum, with lots of interesting people and some of the weirdest and greatest discussions you'll find.

And nobody flinging **** at each other or yammering on just for the sake of hearing themselves yammer on.

Jeff, your board sounds great. I'd be very happy to see PPOT transformed using it as a model. I see no reason that it couldn't be, but Wayne would have to make it happen. I suspect there are too many members here who like things just as they are for such a transformation to happen in any other way.

I strongly agree with Tom, re your forcing people "to type in proper grammatical English; no short forms, no emoticons, etc." and, regarding politics and religion, they are always extremely divisive by definition and should be relegated to their own forum as they are here in PARF. I think, however, that PARF should not be a sub-forum of PPOT, but rather a completely separate forum; as it stands, in my opinion, it's not possible to prevent cross contamination.

Again, we have committed to the work that that level of moderation requires, and do our best to be fair (unless someone pisses us off, then fairness goes out the window), but in the end we have the luxury of not caring if a member stays or goes. If they add nothing, then who cares? Not the same situation as Wayne who's running a family-friendly commercial enterprise.

Believe me, our forum is most definitely not family friendly. Our slogan is "where intelligent discourse and depravity meet."

Really, the goal from the start was a simple one; go for the best signal:noise possible.

Do you see a possibility of PPOT evolving into such a board as those you describe without Wayne making it happen - and still be family friendly? Is PPOT as it is, family friendly?!

And, will you share what one or more of those boards is? I'd like to take a look.

As an interesting exercise, the next time you see a thread, just look at the individual posts and ask yourself if they are on topic to the thread, and if they add any value to the thread. Value could be a post that is directly related to the subject matter, or something funny. (We feel that humour trumps all).

Personally, I find that the more posts in a thread that are both of those, the higher quality the thread is.

That, in a nutshell, is what we try to enforce on the other board I'm talking about.

Not saying that it should be done here, or that it would work with the demographic around here, but it's something that works for me elsewhere.

One thing we gotta remember: this ain't our forum. We're just visitors.
We don't call the shots, we don't make the decisions.
Our opinion of how it's run means zilch. Ain't no democracy.

I used to hang on a forum where the inmates stole the asylum and took over.
Wasn't pretty. They didn't like what the OWNER of the site was doing so the moderators and a few close friends decided it was their forum and TOOK it.
Lost several Friends over that BS.

Iffn we don't like the rules we can go elsewhere.
Iffn we don't agree with the moderators we get a full refund of our subscription price (nuthin).
The people who run these forums put up with a lot of crap but they show an incredible amount of patience and are not heavy-handed. Sometimes I think they put up with too much but again, that ain't my call.

Sure the moderators get paid $millions to baby-sit us but just like NBA players, sometimes that isn't enough.

It's hard to push them too far. When they beotch-slap one of us we prolly had it coming for a looooooong time and we usually asked for it.
Gotta test their patience over and over and over before the give us the boot.
The rules are clear. I've come close to pushing the limit more than once by coming off as an A-hole but I "think" I know where that line is and respect em enough to not try to cross it just to see what will happen.

Iffn i ever go too far and get slapped I'll be the first to admit I had it coming.

Howz that fer sucking up? Think I can post pron and get away with it now?

j/k, I'll be the last to pull that stoopid stunt. There's plenty of pron on the inter-webs, don't need it here.

I don't disagree with anything you said, and didn't mean to imply anything different by my comments.

Just relaying what happens to work pretty well in another forum in response to a question that was asked. The key is that the other forum is nothing BUT PPOT, basically. That's its only purpose in life, so we're not constrained by the business requirements/limitations that Wayne has.

Again, I have nothing but respect for what the mods here do; it's mostly a thankless job that is worse than babysitting.

I have made a simple point, without meaning to come of as whining or causing any drama... just offering an opinion, respectfully. I don't expect things to change, but with all the infighting and vitriol, I am coming back less and less.

Soooooo.....what's your opinion of Jeff's approach regarding grammar?

This commentary applies more to PARF than OT, but...

With all due respect to my Pelican brothers and sisters here, an observation: it's not a lack of proper grammar or punctuation that is a problem in PARF. It's not the +1's, green font or emoticons either. Even four-letter words and 'trolling' aren't what drag the place down.
It's the interpersonal rancour which rapidly devolves into outright rudeness between several members that is the problem. It spills from thread to thread, hijacking topics as it spreads. The acrimony also jumps into the OT forum. Honestly, it makes the"Jane, you ignorant slut" comment from SNL sound like a term of endearment. If I were witnessing the verbal exchanges I see here in a real life social situation I would be making sure there was nothing between me and the door before the fists started flying. The behaviour bar here has been lowered incrementally to the point where personal attacks have to be pretty rude and severe before any action is taken. It's not a conducive arena to be posting in unless one happens to enjoy abuse. I suspect many more members would like to contribute but for the fact that several posters can't help but hurl invectives and trash the place.
I'm not particularly thin-skinned, but even I don't find two individuals taking turns calling each other &$%^$% and @$%^ all that enlightening nor entertaining. Edited - Z-man.

Well, I think I feel better now. Thanks for letting me vent here you mindless losers. Now go get a life!

See what I just did there with the green font? Coulda used a smilie as well. Y'all should try using more smilies when you call each other names.

Mostly good grammar is a good thing. But don't expect all the folks to post in business English. Mark Twain has a few good novels with a lot of slang. Larry the Cable Guy is not my role model for posting but he is undoubtedly funny.

I disagree - PARF is a forum for Religion and Politics. It is not a forum where derailed threads go. The problem with PPOT is that if someone posts up a controversial topic, the subject matter is not treated with respect and civility. Female pilots have nothing to do with religion or politics. The thread got derailed because folks here can't seem to comprehend how to engage in a controversial topic without flinging poo. Incidentally, the OP requested that the thread be closed, and then action was taken.

jeffgrant: what you propose is interesting, but if those requirements were placed upon the moderators here, then I would respectfully resign as a moderator. There are two of us who primarily moderate the OT sections -- Todd (Nostatic) and I. We don't get paid for our work, and we both have full scheduled outside of these boards, believe it or not. Thus, we don't have time to read everything, or as you suggest, read and then approve appropriate content and delete inappropriate content.

These boards are not passive or actively moderated - they are self-moderated. IE: if a member of these boards takes objection to a post, they can very easily hit a button and report a post to a moderator. Additionally, if a mod comes across an objectionable post, he has the ability to take action. Most forums that I have participated in follow this same model - it is proven, and it works, as long as the following takes place:
1. The members post mostly appropriate stuff. (ex: less than 10% of the posts need attention/deletion/modification by a moderator)
2. The members use the "report this post to a moderator" button for the 10% of the posts which are inappropriate.
3. The mods are fair in their actions.

Then there is that grey area - posts just short of a personal attack, posts which push the limits of the rules...etc. At that point, it is a judgement call by the mods -- sometimes we clamp down, and sometimes we let it slide. We try to be consistent, but that is not always possible. I think we let things go more than most places, which allows people to speak more freely - but unfortunately, some members take advantage of that freedom.

Oh, and BTW: m21sniper has been banned permanently from these forums at his request.

Carry on,
-Z-man.

This is one of the few times that I wholeheartedly agree with sniper!

Snipe repo'ed himself?

Beautiful.

To be clear, I didn't really propose anything... I was just relaying how another board runs.

And I totally understand your position, and even stated that I didn't think that those other moderation "guidelines" would fit in around here. I was simply providing some food for thought, is all.

None of us who moderate on the other site get any kind of payment, and the site almost breaks even thanks to the banner ads that we have.

There are about 4 of us who basically volunteer our time to do the full-time moderation, because it's worth it. (I also happen to do the site programming and hosting administration because I run a software company out of my house, so it's easy for me and I have the time). We also have a number of other "part-time" mods who moderate various special-interest areas of the forum as subject matter experts; our fairly active military threads are moderated by a member of SPECOPS, technical boards are overseen by myself, sports boards by another, etc.

I would argue that there can be no such thing as "self-moderation" though... to me that is the passive moderation I referred to, and allows the infighting and poo-flinging we've mentioned earlier. In other words, the mods don't actively moderate in order to keep threads in line or on track, they rather observe and deal with the major issues that break the terms of use and let the other things fall where they may.

Semantics, more than anything.

Again, not recommending that the style of moderation I described be applied here, just offering insight into how it's done elsewhere.

Snipe will be back. It's like Hotel California. He'll just have to get a new ID and IP.

Thanks Z-man. Makes sense to me.

This is the only off-topic bb I've ever even looked in, much less hung out in and, regardless of the ridiculous number of posts I've racked up, I still feel like a newbie, on the outside looking in. As such, I don't feel a sense of having a 'part ownership' in it as many here seem to (that's not a criticism).

I don't really care one way or another about this board. I try to obey the rules and I've only been banned once a few years ago - but push the envelope as much as anyone else. :D

I come and go of my own free will for entertainment, so who am I to complain? SmileWavy

Not on my watch.

Don't get me wrong -- at times, snipe was a nice guy and I've enjoyed several exchanges with him - including the banter. But at other times, he was unpredictable and out of control. Hard to keep a forum stable with individuals like that.

Fixed it for you, DARISC! SmileWavy

-Z-man.

The only reason I bring up moderation is to discuss moderation, not to criticize or complain about it on these forums.

Being a mod on a board is one of those things that you kind of take for granted, until you have to do it yourself. At that point you really have to start thinking about it, and forming some guidelines, and it becomes somewhat more complicated than you originally thought it would, or should be.

For instance, on the other board I've been talking about, we have our own mods-only subforum, and there are a ton of discussions about how to deal with various situations and individuals, as well as some rather heated discussions/arguments that are well out of the public eye. One of our prime rules is that all mods put on a consolidated public face; no public infighting or subversion, but behind the scenes everyone has their own take on things and thoughts on how it should be handled.

I find it somewhat interesting to discuss moderation with other mods in different forums/contexts, because we all seem to have to deal with the same issues, more or less, but have different ways of handling them with different restrictions. For instance, being associated with a business, PPOT I'm sure is more of a distraction than anything, whereas a strictly entertainment-based forum can operate with much more impunity.

That's not what I heard, rumors are flying that you and Todd are brazillionaires. how else could he afford all them 'spensive bassessess?

And then there's you with your "entourage"..................


How many kittens am I up to now?