Escalation in race and team threads

[coaster]

Rocket pendulum fallacy, nzjrs.
God bless that man, i miss his idea sharing.

[RZS10]

On another very busy F1 forum, I saw that during the race a new topic was immediately opened in which people could discuss the crash between Lewis and Max.
As a result, the race topic remained calm and there was talk about what was happening with the other 17 drivers at that moment. That has remained the case after that.
It might be an idea to do the same here, should something bad happen again (which I'm sure will). See if that works here too.

After Silverstone someone tried a bit of an opposite approach and made a seperate thread to discuss the 'what' and 'how' of the incident without going into the "who was at fault" question and it still ended up being discussed because the lines between what was ok and what wasn't were very blurred and the thread was locked eventually.
The above seems like a sensible solution, essentially banning discussion of the incident in the race thread and moving it elsewhere to keep the main thread healthy - as a bonus it's very easy to enforce compared to the other solution.

[Slo Poke]

Rocket pendulum fallacy, nzjrs.
God bless that man, i miss his idea sharing.

Me too! Pity his slip was showing...

[Steven]

Some posters seem to 'collect' downvotes and it would be just what some are seeking.
Also, it is personal perception what is trolling, so a downvote counts if I (or anyone else) do it, but if it takes a number of votes to produce any result it would remove individual preference and also prevent it being used as a 'weapon' against a poster maliciously.

I may feel something is bad, while it is quite acceptable to most others, or the reverse could be true.
One persons preference and action would have no impact, but if (say) 6 people thought it malicious, excluding the poster from that thread would break the chain, but if it was an innocent misunderstanding or mis-interpreted it would have no lasting effect on the poster or on that poster in other threads.

There would be the 'Ah, him again' effect and people would be in no doubt,- Troll: Do not feed

I'm not really sure how "collecting downvotes" can be a thing? What's the point? The only result will be that the mods will light an additional spotlight towards that person.

Thinking further about the "bickering thread" warning... How do we avoid every race thread being marked as such? And would there be a point where we can remove that warning?

This is a technical forum right? Is it possible to establish minimum requirements for new users? For example:
Upon joining, the user has to read selected portions of the regs (maybe emphasis on defending and overtaking clauses) as well as a brief case study review and pass a short quiz before being allowed to post. It would of course be fairly easy and give infinite redos until passing. This would at least instill a basic familiarity of the rules and how they are and have been enforced.

A lot of the vitreol surrounds racing incidents, and it is painfully apparent that a large chunk of participants have a poor grasp of the rules and how/when they apply.

Maybe instead of a quiz there could be a stickied post or something, with links to the regs and example videos.

PS - I realize this is maybe impractical but hey maybe it triggers a better idea from someone else.

A small set of questions about the regs here before a user's first post might help.
On the other hand, every user's first post already ends up on the mod approval list, so people who are completely wrong then are blocked already. Perhaps adding more burden for first posts isn't really what we want to introduce.

On another very busy F1 forum, I saw that during the race a new topic was immediately opened in which people could discuss the crash between Lewis and Max.
...
It might be an idea to do the same here, should something bad happen again (which I'm sure will). See if that works here too.

I have always been a supporter of shorter topical threads. These extremely long threads for me are just a mess, inducing the problem that people don't care to look back in the thread (I mean, who can be bothered reading 10 pages back before posting, when what he posts might have even been posted 11 pages back)...

So, a definite yes! Feel free to take the initiative. Don't overdo it, but at least, when there is a crash with one of the title contenders involved, a separate topic seems fitting.

[dans79]

I'm not really sure how "collecting downvotes" can be a thing? What's the point?

I don't know if you have the ability to search user and/or moderated deleted posts, but I know on a few occasions problematic users have said something along the lines of "keep them coming, or ""I know I'm getting to you/them".

As i read it, that's the problematic users taking pride in the fact they irritating other users enough to garner downvotes.

One way I think you might be able to handle problematic posts, is to allow multiple users to report them. Currently once one person reports a post no other users can.

Allowing multiple people to report a post, would give the moderators more points of view to base their decisions on, while still giving them the final say.

I am still however of the firm believe that the moderation staff must crack down harder on those who are constantly making passive aggressive and trolling posts. As far as I'm concerned that is the root of the problem. People will only tolerate so much before they retaliate, and when people retaliate that's when you end up with a mess of a thread that needs cleaned up.

Just last night I reported such a post, and stated it was nothing more than a trolling post looking for a hostile response. That report was closed and nothing was done. I logged in this morning, and sure enough it got one response with a negative tone, and another thats was definitely hostile/personal.

I've had more private conversations than I care to count about if reporting posts is worth it. If the moderators don't take into account a posters history (it doesn't seem that they do), then reporting posts is of a lot less value in my opinion. It's not hard to craft a post that on its own seems benign, but when read in the context of previous posts, it becomes much easier to see motive/intent/agenda.

[Wouter]

I don't know if you have the ability to search user and/or moderated deleted posts, but I know on a few occasions problematic users have said something along the lines of "keep them coming, or ""I know I'm getting to you/them".
[ ....]
One way I think you might be able to handle problematic posts, is to allow multiple users to report them. Currently once one person reports a post no other users can.

Allowing multiple people to report a post, would give the moderators more points of view to base their decisions on, while still giving them the final say.
[ ....]
If the moderators don't take into account a posters history (it doesn't seem that they do), then reporting posts is of a lot less value in my opinion.

I can assure you that a moderator, I don't know about every moderator, will certainly look at a poster's post history.
They can also view the messages they have deleted.

I would also like it if several people could report a post. Everyone probably has a different reason for papporting the message and more can be done with those different opinions than with just one opinion.
Now if a moderator disagrees with that one opinion, nothing will be done.

[PlatinumZealot]

I think sadly things won't change. I'll be the first to admit I can't help but get sucked in to it. As others have said a lot of the posts are made intentially to antagonise people and it works. A more recent trend is for things to escalate beyond the race threads and even this site, which is quite scary really.

Yeah , I too fall in to the trap far too often! With such a large amount of constant antagonising posts, the race and team threads just fall down completely.

I have received serious threats of violence already via PM. I don't know if the poster is still around so as far as I am concerned my safety can be threatened again. So I implore posters to be careful what is said. We have a new breed of poster afoot. Your safety may be at risk.

[El Scorchio]

I'm not really sure how "collecting downvotes" can be a thing? What's the point?

I don't know if you have the ability to search user and/or moderated deleted posts, but I know on a few occasions problematic users have said something along the lines of "keep them coming, or ""I know I'm getting to you/them".

As i read it, that's the problematic users taking pride in the fact they irritating other users enough to garner downvotes.

One way I think you might be able to handle problematic posts, is to allow multiple users to report them. Currently once one person reports a post no other users can.

Allowing multiple people to report a post, would give the moderators more points of view to base their decisions on, while still giving them the final say.

I am still however of the firm believe that the moderation staff must crack down harder on those who are constantly making passive aggressive and trolling posts. As far as I'm concerned that is the root of the problem. People will only tolerate so much before they retaliate, and when people retaliate that's when you end up with a mess of a thread that needs cleaned up.

Just last night I reported such a post, and stated it was nothing more than a trolling post looking for a hostile response. That report was closed and nothing was done. I logged in this morning, and sure enough it got one response with a negative tone, and another thats was definitely hostile/personal.

I've had more private conversations than I care to count about if reporting posts is worth it. If the moderators don't take into account a posters history (it doesn't seem that they do), then reporting posts is of a lot less value in my opinion. It's not hard to craft a post that on its own seems benign, but when read in the context of previous posts, it becomes much easier to see motive/intent/agenda.

Totally agree on allowing multiple people to report a post. I think it would be helpful.

[west52keep64]

Just throwing in my tuppence as a long time reader. The rating system doesn't really add anything to the forum in either direction. A lot of the positive ratings appear to just be exchanged between fans of the same teams/drivers, or just from people posting lots of photos in to the car threads. Negative ratings have no real impact on the members that receive them, and others have mentioned they are almost treated like some kind of vindication of their views. I mostly ignore the ratings as they have little meaning.

I read the race threads during practice and qualifying, but I tune out after that as they normally aren't particularly interesting beyond that point. Some team threads are better than others, but the Mercedes and Red Bull team threads are pretty terrible and not really worth reading.

[nzjrs]

It's a good point that negative ratings don't actually have any consequences on the poster. But it's partly moot because voting is disabled in race threads anyway.

[dave kumar]

Rather than flag a post as ying-yang (as it's never one post that is responsible), members would be able to flag a thread as having entered a ying-yang state. If enough members flag a thread in a given time period, we cross a threshold or reach a quorum. Crossing the threshold may simply result in a change in the icon of the thread / background colour when viewing the thread, to warn potential readers and posters that we are entering ying-yang territory. Entering ying-yang state could also be used to bring the thread to the attention of the moderators who may wish to take further action.

Good to see a proposal to improve this!

But, why wouldn't downvotes work for trolling? I mean, that was part of the point, even though you could perhaps argue that trolling could be reported instead.
...

Fair question, what does my proposal add that you can't do through downvoting or reporting a post? Downvoting is against a particular post and often it doesn't feel appropriate to single out an individual when it is a series of posts that have taken the thread off-topic or in to a ying-yang argument. In these cases, it takes two-to-tango. It is the reaction of multiple members that results in the thread becoming boring or worse, toxic.

My current tactic is to just stay out of the thread, may be come back in a few days and see if everyone has moved on. But this seems a bit weak. I feel I want to be a better citizen of F1Technical who doesn't just walking away. Yet I don't feel the current downvoting captures what I want to say. What I want to say is the equivalent of 'yes, let's all agree to disagree and move on'. And I would hope that if you saw that a thread was flagged as being unhealthy, that some of us (most of us?) would think before posting something that perpetuated that state. It might just put the brakes on something and reduce the burden on the moderators.

And a thread being flagged as unhealthy is a transient state. So if a thread gets enough votes in a fixed period of time, it is marked as ying-yang, but equally if it then receives no further votes over a similar time period, it will have the ying-yang flag removed. All this can happen without any intervention by the moderators.

It is a bit of speculation as to whether members would flag a thread using this mechanism but I feel we need some way to collectively express the culture of the forum and a form self-moderation by the members is one way to do this. I'd be interested in hearing any other ideas for achieving this.

There were lots of other good ideas posted here, like encouraging members to be more proactive in creating threads so they are more tightly focussed, rather than dragging existing ones down some rabbit hole. And I'd also like to ask for a bit more consideration when replying to posts. Acknowledge the other person's position, state your case and then accept you may not have the last word. Be kind and play fair.

[hUirEYExbN]

I still think that a reason should be required for both up and down rankings as well as the voter being visible. I think it would reduce the amount of silly votes.

[zibby43]

I don’t see votes as a problem.

They’re not the reason threads are going off the rails.

But, the amount of users that have multiple accounts for the sole purpose of mixing it up with their “burner” accounts is a serious problem.

I have a feeling those folks that think they’ve beaten the system or have gone undetected are going to be in for a rude awakening.

[nzjrs]

But, the amount of users that have multiple accounts for the sole purpose of mixing it up with their “burner” accounts is a serious problem.

If you have suspicions about sock puppet accounts DM the mods, I'm sure they will just delete them.

I said earlier I don't have any in mind so I'm curious who these are.

[Wouter]

But, the amount of users that have multiple accounts for the sole purpose of mixing it up with their “burner” accounts is a serious problem.

I never noticed that there are sock puppet accounts here.
You can discover them as they have the same writing style.
I don't think that's a big problem here, on the contrary, that it's not a problem at all here.
The problem is that some are very fanatic and think they are always right and not open to other points of view.