Cursing Thread Locked?
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I’ve lurked here a bit, but the cursing thread and the one about pics of hot chicks “inspired” me to register and post.
There appear to be two possible reasons for shutting down the cursing thread:
1. You’re not interested in feedback that contradicts staff preferences.
2. You felt the thread was getting out of hand because there was some bickering going on.
I am a moderator on a website that gets a lot more traffic and is far more ideologically diverse than this one is. While it is hardly the Wild West or even close to the worst that’s out there, it gets its share of off-topic discussions, flame wars, profanity, and trolling. Here’s some advice from my experience:
If the first reason was why you closed the thread, that will not sit well with members. When you post something and leave it open for discussion, you leave it open or at least announce a time or page limit from the get-go. When the moderators at my site made a highly controversial decision about this time last year, they left it open and let people have their say for 100 pages. Yes, 100. Then they locked it and we all moved on.
If it was the second reason, I can tell you that the “bickering” was so mild that it wouldn’t even be considered bickering on most forums. No one would get out any popcorn for that thread, and the person who commented that another’s post was rude wouldn’t survive too long on a lot of forums.
Through experience, I know that rules are hard to make, enforce, and interpret online. Rules governing profanity and offensive language are especially thorny, and you are just going to create needless headaches for yourselves as your membership here grows and diversifies. Offensive language is a massive gray area. People will use euphemisms, test the limits, argue endlessly about the nature and the intent of something, etc. If I write that the bike I bought is a piece of crap, will that get zapped? If not, then what’s so much worse than writing that it’s a piece of s**t? And really, what is the difference between writing f**k and writing the real thing? Everyone knows what it is, and I’ve already seen people employing that tactic on this site, though not with that word. Should LMAO be banned? Again, everyone knows it’s abbreviated profanity.
Should you feel the need for specific rules, make them simple and with little or no gray area. For example, we banned pictures depicting nudity or porn, with nudity defined as bare buttocks, genitals, and females’ nipples. With porn, it’s the “I know it when I see it approach.” We’ve had very little trouble with this rule.
Rather than moderate for language, you should moderate content and behavior, especially personal attacks. It’s pretty easy to tell when someone is being a jerk. Disagreeing vehemently about something is not being a jerk; disagreeing vehemently and calling the other person an ignorant pr**k is.
On the site I help moderate, we have a policy that basically says that people need to act like grownups, that the more they act like jerks, the more likely we are to delete posts and threads or ban users, and that the moderators will have to make the calls about what goes too far.
Problem users will moan that such an approach is too vague (and they did), but they will game the system if you try to be super-specific (which they also did). Eventually, most get the message, and those that don’t eventually get sent tumbling into the Internet netherworld. I’ve locked or deleted threads that got out of hand, and I’ve banned and deleted users, and that helps others get a sense of the level of decorum expected.
You might also eventually consider creating an off-topic forum that is visible and accessible only to registered users who are logged in. As your membership grows, there might be a need for that. Plus, it may encourage site loyalty and traffic if members also have a place to BS around in addition to discussing biking matters.
If the people signing the paychecks want really heavy moderation, then that’s the way it is. Otherwise, as I said already, you’re just going to make headaches for yourself and waste a lot of your time.
Finally, try not to take dissent and criticism personally, or at least try not to let it get to you. Many users hide behind avatar names instead of their real ones, so there is virtually no accountability for what they write. I tend to treat posts from such users with far less regard than I do those from people whose names are behind them, whether by username or otherwise. Especially when you’re new at the moderating game, it’s easy to let things bother you, but you have to accept that people will question you and even sling some s**t at you. After taking action to protect some female members that were being targeted, I learned that said females were thanking me with some pretty interesting sexual favors. And so it goes.
And not all criticism is an attack; some is constructive and well intentioned, and if you can differentiate it from the whining and the garbage, it can help you.
Good luck!
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