Report or Reputation?

[Diane]

[Max says: this originally appeared in the middle of another thread. Given the magnitude of the derail I thought it best to give it it's own home. Apologies to anyone inconvenienced by this.]

Good advice for EVERYONE to follow! Let's have less of the kvetching, yes? If someone's post pisses you off then Report it:



If it's not important enough to Report then it sure the hell isn't important enough to derail the thread, disturb the peace, and start with the "this is how much I don't like you" crap.

C'mon guys, get with the program: cleaning up these forums is everyone's job and your primary task is to keep the "I don't like you" kvetching and personal attacks to yourselves (assuming you're not willing to Report).

Thank you for your cooperation.

I have no problem finding my way to the neg. rep button as you have seen. So then he complains that I "neg repped" him. I can't win.

So if I have this right, you prefer we not say anything about an out of line post, we should just neg rep the offensive poster? But then since person gets the info on the neg rep -- HE can come back on and complain about our neg rep.

Max -- nobody wants to follow the rules more than me. I am just confused how to handle it. Up front in the post, or behind their back with the neg rep button. Please clarify since either way it comes out on the forum.

Diane

[LaHutti]

omg I can not even BEGIN to tell you how tired I am of the very few people scewing up thread after thread, and seem to keep getting away with it, while the people they harras get banned ... and you know who YOU are.
It's worse than a friggin kindergarden here....taking peoples "points" away and wotnot (I still haven't figured out what I can buy with them, so feel free to take them all....lol) ...where are you people from ???

[maxd]

Firstly, my apologies to the OP and the other readers for the following derail, I'll try to keep it as brief as possible.

I have no problem finding my way to the neg. rep button as you have seen. So then he complains that I "neg repped" him. I can't win.

Well, no offense, but I doubt anyone is going to thank you for neg repping them. AFAIC "neg rep" a fairly serious thing. You're basically saying "you are hurting these forums by doing what you have done here" and is intended to send a strong and unequivocal message. In my experience it takes an unusually open-minded person to take that on board and say "yeah, okay, maybe you're right", but there you go.

So if I have this right, you prefer we not say anything about an out of line post, we should just neg rep the offensive poster? But then since person gets the info on the neg rep -- HE can come back on and complain about our neg rep.

Ummm, not sure we're on the same page here. Let's start with this:



So the Reputation thing and the Report thing are totally separate issues, yes?

The Reputation thing is as I've described above: you're telling the person who posted that you seriously approve/disapprove of what they've said or done in a given post. In other words it's kind of a big deal, not the sort of thing you would do casually. And the comment box is there for you to explain why you did it. As an aside if you can't be bothered to leave a comment when you add/remove Rep then there's a good chance you shouldn't be doing it at all, IMO.

The Report post thing is a way to alert the Mods and Bryan to a particular post ... it does nothing to the OP's Reputation. The idea here is that you would Report a post when you think it's something we need to know about or deal with or suchlike.

Concerning the issue at hand, it is my belief that there is far too much "I think you suck" posting on the forums these days. Such posts accomplish nothing, they only piss off the person being slagged (probably their intended purpose). What they do is invite rebuttal or an "I think you suck too" which totally derails the topic at hand and seriously lowers the bar in terms of the quality of the discussion at hand. It's barely tolerable in extreme moderation and extreme moderation is not what we've been seeing lately, hence my recent move to get people to Report things that need attention instead of, well, bitching about them on the forums.

If you (meaning anyone reading this) don't like someone's posts then ignore them. If you really can't stand them then add them to your Ignore list and you simply won't see their posts. If that's not the route you want to go and something posted really pisses you off and you think it needs attention then Report it. If it's not worth Reporting then maybe you should consider just forgetting about it and moving on.

So if you're looking for general guidelines then I'd say if you think the Mods should know or do something about a post then Report it; if you have a strong message you want to send directly to the person who posted then consider the Reputation route.

I should add that this is basically my own take on things. I haven't consulted Bryan directly on this so everything said here is subject to his approval and will be modified as he sees fit.

Anyway, I hope that clarifies these issues. If it's still not clear then say so and we'll carry on the discussion.

[funeral979]

Sorry for the further derail, and maybe Max will consider that this discussion warrants its own thread.....

I personally think that the negative rep feature serves no good purpose. If someone doesn't like you, they can just negative rep you to "prove their point" (I was given negative rep once and the only comment made if I remember correctly was 'asshole'). And then you see one person negative rep someone, and pretty soon others join the bandwagon....or they get their buddies to negative rep the same person so they can lose all their points and become negative, etc etc. Then you have a member who has lost all their priveleges, looks like a jerk, and why? Because one person didn't like what they posted and others decided to join in.

There really is nothing positive about this feature at all. I honestly don't think me, or anyone else for that matter, should have the right to take away from someone's rep (save for the mods). And everyone can see who negative reps who...so it is kind of like a public bashing.

I for one would like to see a vote to have this feature removed...or at the very least, have mod approval before a negative rep can be issued.

If someone really has a problem with someone else or their post, a pm would be the proper thing to do, or as Max said, simply report the post.

[Nifty29]

Max,

Thankyou for bringing good worthwhile input ,like the majority of posters in this thread.

I'm not totally clear on the distinction between the two methods, in the sense that if something really offends you, and you think it brings the forum down, then you should certainly register your disgust with the moderators......but surely you would also want to register your disgust to the person concerned. However, your view is that it should be one OR the other, when both could well be warranted.

So, how does one make that distinction? Is one mutually exclusive of the other?

You state that neg rep should be used sparingly in dire circumstances.....but surely if it were that dire it should be subject to sanctions by the mods, which means it must be reported. I hope I'm making sense here.

Personally, in the past I have neg repped sparingly, save for the past month or two, as I was under the impression that Bryan was encouraging us to do so. It may well be that he didnt mean that, but its certainly the message I received.

The other issue is the neg repping of newbs. If a member with short tenure or low posts neg reps for being out of line it doesn't matter much, but if someone like me does it their rep goes into negative and all hell breaks loose. IMO newbs should be informed early about etiquette and expectations, lest they think that they can say what they like....the latest influx of newbs don't seem to give a rats about the place and are quite happy to throw insults around at people who have earned their rep here, and there needs to be a way for this to stop.

Anyway, its an interesting discussion, but I'm sure someone will make it about specific people, as has already occurred.

P.S. It is a bad idea to encourage people to PM others about their behaviour. It is asking for trouble, and the PM function should be used for communication between members that are happy to receive such messages from each other. If someone PMed me and lectured me about my posts I would tell them to get stuffed and rightly so (mods and friends excepted of course).

I do agree that the rep system should either be very well clarified with set boundaries, or scrapped altogether. I actually think that only mods should be able to deduct rep points as part of the infraction system.

[maxd]

I personally think that the negative rep feature serves no good purpose. If someone doesn't like you, they can just negative rep you to "prove their point" ... I for one would like to see a vote to have this feature removed...or at the very least, have mod approval before a negative rep can be issued.

I very much see your point on this. For whatever reason the whole Reputation thing has gone down the crapper recently because of exactly the tit-for-tat kind of thing you mentioned. It works the other way too by-the-by, people adding Reputation for no reason other than to offset the effect of people they don't like neg repping someone they do like.

IMO, if everyone were mature and responsible about this it would (might?) work. As it currently stands though it's pretty much a chaotic mess, or has been recently, and this does signal the possible need for some changes.

In general I like the idea of mod approval but I don't like that it means more work for us mods, and Bryan in particular. In fact I seem to remember that he was seriously considering scrapping the whole thing. Maybe that would be the best way to go, dunno. As it stands though a good percentage of the Reputation add/remove stuff I've seen recently is basically abuse of the system and ... well, yeah, no need to repeat myself.

[chayton]

I've been here awhile now and I don't believe I've ever negative repped anyone. I'm saving it all up for one big blowout!

I have reported posts though - not just if someone's being a jerk, I report spam if I find it before a moderator does, and I'll also report a post if someone put their email address or casino account numbers to hopefully keep it from showing up on Google.

BTW since the new forum upgrade I always get those two icons mixed up and always click the wrong one first - maybe the report one could be in a different color or something...?

[maxd]

I'm not totally clear on the distinction between the two methods, in the sense that if something really offends you, and you think it brings the forum down, then you should certainly register your disgust with the moderators......but surely you would also want to register your disgust to the person concerned. However, your view is that it should be one OR the other, when both could well be warranted.

Also a very good point. To be honest I don't think it is perfectly clear which way one should go, or whether either or both are appropriate under certain circumstances.

Let me try and shed some light by giving a few examples:

I almost never neg rep anyone, maybe two or three times a year. Given what I've said about it being a "dire circumstances" thing I guess that's probably not much of a surprise. So when and why would I neg rep?: when I personally thought I needed to send a strong message to the person in question. In other words I thought they needed to know that I believed they were doing damage to Casinomeister by doing whatever it was they were doing, but on a personal level not as a moderator-to-forum-member thing. Perhaps I have taken an overly severe view of the neg rep business but there you go I guess.

Other "example": in the back-end we can see the add/remove Rep stuff that everyone does. Up until fairly recently there actually wasn't a huge amount of activity, mostly just the usual "Thanks" stuff. However in the last few months the usage of add/remove Rep has skyrocketed and not in a good way. You'd think the comment part of it would be used to explain to the receiver what the thing was about but a good number of them are basically just abuse, stuff that would get people in trouble if they said such things on the open forums.

Even worse, IMO, is that now it's turned into a tit-for-tat thing: people will add Rep in order to offset someone else's neg Rep. So if Sally doesn't like Joe then she'll add Rep to anyone the Joe has neg Repped, apparently for no other reason than she doesn't like Joe, or disagrees with something (or everything) he does. Surely this is not what the system was intended for.

Another abuse of the system was a lot of spurious add Rep that happened several months back: a forum member or two were getting into trouble for their posting habits so their pals -- often folks they hung out with on other forums -- would all come and add Rep them like crazy, hundreds of points a day or more. Supposedly this was their way of protesting the fact that their "pal" was catching some stick from us. Again, not constructive use of the system. As it happens the troublesome forum members ended up getting the boot so that particular add Rep craze pretty much stopped there.

As I see it we're basically at a tipping point with the Rep thing: either we let it run wild (NOT a great idea IMO) or we need to put the screws to it in order to make it a more rational system. Maybe we need "Forum Rules" for it. And maybe it does need to be Moderated so that anything that doesn't meet the (as yet unpublished) guidelines gets tossed. I'm thinking that the "you're an asshole" neg repping and the commentless add repping would be primary candidates for getting tossed but all that would of course be up to Bryan to decide.

Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud here.

I should add a few words about the Report system: basically this one is working pretty well. I think it has the huge benefit of letting people communicate directly with us about what concerns them on the forums without it being a public announcement. That latter part seems to be hugely important, maybe because its not on the radar for the general forum population. In any case it's been a good thing, IMO, and I see it as a potential solution to some of the prickly issues we've been trying to deal with on the forums of late, namely moving the "you suck" stuff off of the forums and into the realm of moderation. As ever, just my 2¢.

[jetset]

I believe Max's posts here are on the money; they certainly resonate with me, the main point being that (as always) everything depends on the adult behaviour and responsible conduct of the members themselves.

If there are habitual offenders abusing the Rep facility, this presumably shows up in the back-end of the forum software, and perhaps those over-using this feature could be directed to this thread and its emphasis on the intention that the 'remove Rep' button is only for use where a serious personal objection has been triggered.

This discussion does serve the useful purpose of reminding us all that the quality of the forum is directly influenced by the manner in which we use it....all of us.

In well over a decade as a member here I have very rarely used the neg rep feature, and only then after disciplining myself with a cooling off period so as not to react in anger. That's because I regard neg repping as a very serious criticism of a fellow member, akin to a face-to-face censure and not to be used lightly or emotionally.

I do not personally believe that members here are so indisciplined as to warrant a moderator having to hold our hands over this neg repping issue; nor do I think it necessary to ditch a feature that does serve a purpose if properly and responsibly used.

I do accept that perhaps we need an addition to the forum rules or guidelines that educates newbies and emphasises the gravity of using Neg Rep - clearly there are members who do not fully appreciate its impact.

[ksech]

I was neg repped, the message left was rather blaise so I PMed the person nicely asking why, no reply back. I didn't think I had deserved the neg rep as it was given to a post that I had considered a fairly helpful reply, it wasn't condescending nor a "blast" to the OP. I think in the time I have been here I have neg repped 2 or 3 times and I do it sparingly as I think there are other ways to deal with situations.

I have reported posts, usually for the same reasons chayton stated. I don't come here looking for fights with anyone, I DON'T know you, and you don't know me, except for what I tell you. I try to be helpful if I can, I try to be caring and sympathetic if called when warranted. But lately, it just isn't fun to participate when thread after thread turns into some kind of slagging fest.

There have been a few really interesting topics which have been derailed because people have to throw in nasty, childish, snide remarks simply because they don't like a poster. This is supposed to be an adult arena where people can come and learn, share experiences, opinions, and debate in a clean, mature way.

It's wonderful we have so many new members jumping on board to participate, but the negative manner in which they seem to be doing so leaves much to be desired. People wonder why members of long standing are leaving or lurking, the constant bickering, thread derailments, and simple idiocy of creating multiple threads pertaining to the same thing is getting tiresome.

Yeah, I like some of the people whom some of you refer to as "troublemakers" and who you think get away without any serious repercussions. Do I always agree with what they do or say? No. Does this make me a bad person? To some of you probably, does this bother me? Again, no. I can't force you to like me and I won't even try. Such is life. If you don't like what I have to say, ignore me or report me.