Moderating sucks

[manchild]

I understand that some threads went off topic, and I understand that they can be moderated, moved to off topic or locked, but I strongly oppose of deleting posts that contain no profanities, obscene words.

I wrote my opinion as answer to Pandamasque, almost whole A4 page, 490 words, took me a while. Nothing vulgar, nothing confronting or insulting to poster, just personal opinion about background of use of flags, with wider analysis, and it got deleted.

If you're going to continue with such moderating than ban posting, and allow only voting with Yes or No on topic subject. It is insulting to treat opinion of regular members in identical way as spam/scam posts. Some issues require in-depth analysis, mentioning of historical links etc. Not all can be explained by yeah or nah.

Locking would be acceptable, but this wiping of someone's effort to explain his viewpoint is insulting.

Please no PM from mod. on this one. I might delete it without reading just as mine and others posts were.


This is my post that got deleted just as if I've used profanities or posted porn content:

Pandamasque, I don't get your philosophy.

The thread is about flags which are symbols of nations.

There is more than plenty to live for, for family, for loved ones, for friends, for the possibility to live life by doing noble things and become enlightened person with developed ethics rather than just remain simple unethical creatures that we were born as.

Killing is justified only in self-defense, defense of weaker etc. That is the only unfortunate occasion when a person has no choice but that unwanted one, and war has nothing in common with it. The only affected by war are poor, while the ones who benefit are only rich.

Killing for country is a crime. No order is excuse. Wars are organized robberies hidden behind nationalistic fairytales.

Let me explain it trough example - you've probably familiar that thousands of allied pilots, tank crews and soldiers including civilians were killed by "famous" Krupp 88mm cannon. Among killed were many US soldiers, while the fact that is rarely mentioned is that certain rich citizens from the US who were shareholders in Krupp, made a fortune stocked in Swiss banks. That is the nationalism and patriotism without a shiny mask. No one ever arrested them, put them on trial, took money away and distributed it as aid for the families of killed US soldiers.

The western world has said NO to that in the late 60s. Abolition of compulsory draft in the USA marked a new era. Unfortunately, brainwashing done by media and religion still generates enough dogs of war who are ready to go and kill anyone they are told to kill - for salary. That is not defense organized by department of defense, that is murder organized by department of defense.

Not all people are delusional by nature, some are, and in developed societies that trend is rapidly decreasing. 90 years ago western countries had no problem to attract people to go voluntary in the great war. A few posters, slogans and other patriotic bs was enough to get them into trench slaughterhouse. Today, something like that would be impossible. Just think of it, how many people in EU would leave their job and take rifle to defend idiotic policy of some warmongering politician? That works only in dictatorships nowdays.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qWADMfQnQ[/youtube]

In the world where a person who revealed this crime shown on video is held because of it chains by the country that claims to be the leader of human rights and democracy, while it also tries to put behind the bars or kill another person who enabled it to be seen globally, instead of being given Nobel peace prize, we should be very worried about our future.

That is why I think that flags painted on fighter planes, tanks, embroiled on uniforms, and waved by those who commit crimes such as previously mentioned, shouldn't be part of F1 that was always informal circus, promoting cosmopolitanism, sportsmanship, human virtues and knighthood.

[mx_tifoso]

...
I wrote my opinion as answer to Pandamasque, almost whole A4 page, 490 words, took me a while. Nothing vulgar, nothing confronting or insulting to poster, just personal opinion about background of use of flags, with wider analysis, and it got deleted.
....

All of the "killing for country" content does not belong on this forum, the fact that the flag thread was in the off topic doesn't mean life and death are suitable for the site. Besides, the thread is about how to hang flags, that should be clear.

And there are plenty of other sites for that type of material, so you know what to do with your usual war/ethical propaganda posts.

And had I not taken the time to actually PM you letting you know of the editing you wouldn't even have a copy to post in here. As usual you take this too far; it isn't the first nor will it be the last unless you are banned permanently.

Give me a break.

P.S. The title is certainly amusing, and it gives an insight as to the seriousness of the content. It probably took a while to write too.

[Fil]

So in other words, mx, just because a thread is located in 'Off Topic', that doesn't mean one can go off topic in the 'Off Topic' threads?

[Richard]

This thread is off topic from the first post - Surely the title indicates that it should be a discussion about what a hard job the mods have? They do their best to keep this as a technical forum and spend hours clearing out the fanboi trash from car threads. They get little thanks and many complaints, so yes, moderating does suck!

...

As for manchild’s post, it is valid debate to be had in the wider world, but other forums do exist for that. The rights and wrongs of warfare certainly do not belong in a thread about the technicalities of how to hang/fly a flag correctly.

If you did want to have a debate about whether there should be national anthems etc, then that would be valid on the basis that the teams are globally funded nearly all based in England, and the drivers live in Monaco or Switzerland. I think that would be valid for this forum, but needn’t invoke the horrors of arms trading.

Manchild – please don’t misunderstand me, I do care about the issues you raise, and I'm an active member of Amnesty International. However we all need a little space away from the grim reality of life, and hobbies/sports such as F1 provide that haven/distraction.

[andrew]

When I saw the thread title, I thought it was maybe an interesting explanation of the time consuming and difficult task of moderating these threads designed to encourage certain detractors of the moderation team to simmer down and stop complaining.

Oh how wrong I was!

In fact I find it is a thread complaining about a deleted post, which I am assuming was inappropriate for the thread it was in, and has virtually nothing to do with moderation and is just a rant by Manchild, not being allowed to clutter-up a site about FORMULA 1 and MOTORSPORT with political propoganda. Whilst there are many evils going on the world that should be discussed and aired in the public domain, this is simply not the site for it. I agree with Richard's comment that we all need an escape from the reality of life and this is what sites like this are for.

What a storm in a tea cup!

[flynfrog]

oh look this thread again

[wesley123]

I quite agree with Manchild.

I do not see anything wrong with his post, he is just showing his opinion in what i understand correctly was a topic in the off-topic forum. I can agree that he might took it a little bit too far, but is that wrong or is that just use of your freedom of speech? I think the last, and if that 'killing' is such a big problem(which I cannot seem to understand why, the forum members are old enough to understand this), then just remove the parts which are the problem, send the writer of the post a pm asking him to change the words a bit.

What he is doing, like i said, is just showing his opinion, he is using the word 'kill' in his post, he is not doing some propaganda bullcrap that forces people to go kill each other, he is just giving his view on wars and relations to things.

If the vid was a problem in the post, you just remove the video and place a tag with the reason why it is done, and not the whole post.

No offence, but these are just quite the moderating basics, I was a moderator on a small forum for a few months, with an average age of 12 year olds, even we used more mature ways of moderating.

What Manchild did in hias post was just showing his strong opinion to something, but that seems to be a big problem nowadays, the human rights clearly state freedom of speech, that is when it is not offending to another person, race or nationality or when it is comprimising others safety. This post clearly was nowhere near this so i do not see the reason why it was deleted.

The moderators seem to be a bit too strict with moderating, what has suddenly become the problem of talking about the FEE in the Renault topic(for example)? We did the same thing with the DDD in 2009 and the F-Duct last year.

[Giblet]

If people understood how many posts need to be moderated, maybe they would formulate that occasionally, while trying, we wil sometimes make what are viewed as mistakes by people, but try to keep in mind at all times, this is an F1 site, and we do more moderating with off topic reports than with regular ones That has been my experience since I started this role.

Worse is when someone feels absolutely victimized and airs it out in the public forum quite regularly. I don't understand why this mud slinging has to happen in the forum when we have a system of PM's, and multiple user conversations. Was that route exhausted before this post? I highly doubt it.

There seems to be a loud liberal minority here that really find off topic barely related banter important and feel we should put effort into moderating it. We have car threads and race threads going off the rails, but the reports are about off topic threads.

My logic is the more we spend time pandering to the off topic needs of the very few, the other threads, and therefore the site, will suffer.

Another problem, is that an F1 wing, airbox, or tire will only cause so much discussion, and only to a certain level of 'heat'. When an off topic post is at the top of the page under 'general', all kinds of people jump in to throw their political two cents even though there was no interest in the thread topic until it reached the top of the posts on the front page.

More people talk about F1 less the more off topic posts are left on the front page. There are no hard and fast rules for moderation, and keeping everybody happy and the sites wheels greased is impossible, so you have to give up early and understand some people wil complain more than others, and more loudly.

The base problem stems from the fact there are like 9 million really smart and well educated people on this site, and few if any are butchers, bakers, or candlestick makers. It's a very good site to talk about just anything and get information.

You need to pick your battles around here, and that goes for all of us on both sides of this arbitrary fence.

[Ciro Pabón]

Moderation is about consistency... you know, fairness.

It helps a lot if you write people when you took major decisions, so they read about your motives before watching what you've done to their precious posts. It will save you lots and lots of time.

I would have erased most of the posts in the offending thread. They were OOT. They weren't OOF (out of forum).

To all mods, I think this forum is not about F1. This forum is about finding ways to attract and entertain F1 followers. Good luck with that.

[manchild]

Yes, I was the one who quoted the word "kill" as part of John Lennon's "Imagine" song about peace and against dogmatic tradition that causes wars, which national flags by default are the part of.

What followed were several posts of other members explaining how life would have no meaning if one wouldn't have something to kill for.

Pandamasque's posts I was replying on was written half a day ago and nobody had seamed to mind until it got deleted to justify deletion of my post.

Also, I didn't start raising political issues in that thread, just joined what was already going on, in what I think was the polite style.


I still stand to what I have written, and that is that flags shouldn't be part of F1 that was always informal circus, promoting cosmopolitanism, sportsmanship, human virtues and knighthood.

Example from most recent event - What do you think, how does an F1 fan from Libya feels (regardless of side, if he is on any at all) whose family member or anyone close was killed by the planes, warships and submarines carrying same flags as some of those raised on F1 podium?

What would happen on podium during ceremony if we had F1 driver from Libya, USA, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Iraq, North Korea, South Korea...?

They'd only cause problems, scenes etc. A driver can't be offended by name, race or religion of another driver, but he can be extremely insulted by the flag and anthem if under same his friends, neighbors and countryman are being killed.

They should either use flags for official political stuff and don't use them in sport. Or vice versa.

Using them for both is hypocrite and insulting.

[donskar]

I agree with mx tifosi on this one. Inappropriate for this forum.

[Steven]

Just adding my voice only to clarify the stance on this kind of issues on f1technical.

As you all know, we all like to discuss about f1 or other automotive stuff, which is great! Apart from that, there are other things in life as well, and you're welcome to discuss these in an off-topic thread (there have been threads about 'my new car', 'problem with computer', 'new browser', whatever). I will only support that.

However, and important, those who have been here long enough know that political issues usually cause nothing other than trouble. We've had notorious discussions about several wars and suppressions, and since then we will NEVER accept any political discussion anymore. I have said this repeatedly, and history had shown it's the only good way to go.

Of course, despite posts being off-topic, we respect input and will always try to move posts or lock threads, but if there is no other option, a delete may happen.

[Ciro Pabón]

Thanks, Tomba. Well said. I hope this helps...

[Ray]

[Richard]

I hope this helps...

National Rent-A-Fence on 1-800-352-5675 to keep the crowds back?