I'm overall very pleased with this forum just as I was initially

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CrazedNerd

Guest
I tend to think that nothing good lasts forever, and be extremely skeptical of everything I consider good, but i've been here for a little while and I still think this forum is great. I don't just extend that to the moderators and admins (even though they do deserve support and thanks in my book), but the other users who at least try to be helpful to strangers on a regular basis. This experience has been dramatically different from other forms of online discussion, a sometimes with cryptic/asymmetrical moderation where they don't even care about what you think. There's certainly a lot of understanding here that every forum has to at least be mildly beginner friendly...
 


I also agree...this is a very good Forum full of helpful members who don't bash other members like we see on other Forums.
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I, as a member, find that to be untrue.

It is my experience, that if I have a problem.....and further if I have been reasonable in my efforts to solve that problem.....then the Moderators/Admin here are not only ready and willing to help but will go out of their way to do so in the friendliest way imaginable.
Oh that's exactly what i was saying, it probably isn't terribly necessary to extend the gratitude terribly but i was just in one of those moods where i was feeling happy about linux.
 
It is great to have a forum that is so helpful and lovely to see people getting the answers they need. A great off topic section to and tutorials very balanced over all. Most important a friendly atmosphere.
 
Ah, I just saw that my message got deleted on the backup restore.

I was, more or less, saying that this forum is so good not just because their moderators and the folks that are here to help, but also and very importantly thanks to all the people that hang around and post very good questions that spark the best conversations around Linux. Everybody has a share of kudos.

Also, it's great to see that the Linux subject is so vast that many times I come and check the forum only to see a lot of subjects I can't just say a word about, despite all the years using it.
 
My post too was culled in the re-boot,
 
before the whole backup thing, i basically just was talking about the challenges of being a moderator in today's world with all the spamming and advertising, and how you used to be able to have unmodeted places of discussion (giving a pretty detailed example) just because the internet in it's early phases wasn't so much of a crazy money tool, and also wasn't seen as having the same level of importance as the electricity and water.

I guess you could still have an un-moderated forum if your topic was obscure and "cringey" enough...however, this forum is at the top of the search engine for linux, and even though many don't care about it as a kernel/operating system, it is a computer related forum which means you can't have the proper shade of obscurity...the admins and mods do a great job at keeping this alive.
 
I view moderation as being a janitor. It's not a glorious position, but something you do because it's gotta be done by someone.

It's also sometimes being a shepherd. By that I mean I keep the flock free from dangers - like spammers and those who would have their fun at someone else's expense.

Another thing I do is make sure, except in extreme conditions, you know what's going to happen if you continue doing what you're doing. If you violate the rules, I'm gonna let you know what's coming. After that, the ball is in your court. If you keep doing what you were doing, I'm going to take the actions I told you I was going to take.

There are some violations where I'd not warn them. There's no 'second chance' for some infractions.

But, as a general rule, you've really gotta work at it to make me ban you. You gotta put effort into it.
 
I view moderation as being a janitor. It's not a glorious position, but something you do because it's gotta be done by someone.

It's also sometimes being a shepherd. By that I mean I keep the flock free from dangers - like spammers and those who would have their fun at someone else's expense.

Another thing I do is make sure, except in extreme conditions, you know what's going to happen if you continue doing what you're doing. If you violate the rules, I'm gonna let you know what's coming. After that, the ball is in your court. If you keep doing what you were doing, I'm going to take the actions I told you I was going to take.

There are some violations where I'd not warn them. There's no 'second chance' for some infractions.

But, as a general rule, you've really gotta work at it to make me ban you. You gotta put effort into it.
I personally think the role of warning somebody about what they're doing is very important, because like you've said before, people don't read all the rules. I'm certainly in the latter camp, even though at this point I always read them when i see a discussion about it. I tend to see behaving on a forum as just meaning "1. stay on topic", "2. don't be an asshole", number 2 basically means not spamming, bullying, flaming, harrassing. If I were a mod, and someone told me they got death threats from someone else through a PM, i'd just remove them without any remorse or discomfort...as a non-moderator, i just let the moderator do what they do without intervention, one time i reported a weird spammy link on a forum, but my attitude is that if i don't feel that i can trust the moderator to deal with something that's being put out in the open, then the forum is probably managed badly or the moderator just isn't going to care if someone else is doing something at my expense, and that doesn't necessarily mean the whole forum is bad, but we are clearly at cross purposes and there's nothing i can do about it.

I should say thought that i don't think "staying on topic" is ever very straightforward, because if people bring something up, then is if someone brings something up related a problem? For example, if congress passed something that changed internet regulations, it would both be related to this forum in a loose way AND politics, and that wouldn't necessarily be something that a mod could make a quick judgment call on.
 
Oh, we wander off topic all the time. So long as the person's getting helped, I don't pay too much attention to that. At the end of the day, we're a community. As such, we're gonna gab. It happens.

And, I can't possibly notice everything. I skim every post, but I might miss stuff. That report button is there for a reason. If it's questionable, you can always report and it we'll take it from there. If it's blatant, please do hit the report button as it will draw our attention quicker. (We get handy notifications for that.)

Also, we deal with a whole lot of spam accounts. They generally don't get to the point of being able to post, but sometimes they're clever and slip through the cracks.
 

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