HTLAL might be gone

Discuss the LLORG's and HTLAL forum's past and its future here.
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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby Φιλόσοφος » Sat Aug 01, 2015 3:25 pm

SladeWilson wrote: I've seen it happen that one incredibly active person keeps a forum from falling into obscurity, on more than one occasion.


We had members like that, who were not only active but insightful and stimulating, however we banned many of them because we did not all share the same opinions and it being a forum, disagreement and polemic arose, which we would not withstand nor allow.

Thus only the subset of members who politely and mildly agreed with each other remained, accounting for the tediousness, tameness and barrenness others have referred to.

The more I think about it, the more I conclude moderation had as much to do with the forum's decline as the obvious technical issues and forbidding barriers for registering new accounts.
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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby Hrhenry » Sat Aug 01, 2015 3:30 pm

I've only had one log at HTLAL (a TAC Georgian log) and truthfully, I was never successful at it. Part of it was the TAC team - it just wasn't all that active or inspiring, for lack of a better word.

The other thing I guess that sort of bothered me was the format. It just didn't feel fluid. So I concentrated on logging my learning activities on a Blogger account. Even with that, things petered out after a while. I felt I'd said pretty much all I had to say and just stopped.

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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Sat Aug 01, 2015 4:02 pm

Φιλόσοφος wrote:
SladeWilson wrote: I've seen it happen that one incredibly active person keeps a forum from falling into obscurity, on more than one occasion.


We had members like that, who were not only active but insightful and stimulating, however we banned many of them because we did not all share the same opinions and it being a forum, disagreement and polemic arose, which we would not withstand nor allow.

Thus only the subset of members who politely and mildly agreed with each other remained, accounting for the tediousness, tameness and barrenness others have referred to.

The more I think about it, the more I conclude moderation had as much to do with the forum's decline as the obvious technical issues and forbidding barriers for registering new accounts.


Exactly. Very many people were banned, but it seems few people knew or have noticed.

often, the banning on htlal was secret and hidden: on the profile was "active" but the person was blocked (impossible to log in or access the PMs).

Since emk is a mod, it is better. Iversen and emk are truly good mods.
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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby Hrhenry » Sat Aug 01, 2015 4:08 pm

vogeltje wrote:Exactly. Very many people were banned, but it seems few people knew or have noticed.

Plenty of people noticed. Some even spoke out, but I think most just kept quiet out of fear of getting banned themselves.

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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Sat Aug 01, 2015 4:18 pm

Hrhenry wrote:
vogeltje wrote:Exactly. Very many people were banned, but it seems few people knew or have noticed.

Plenty of people noticed. Some even spoke out, but I think most just kept quiet out of fear of getting banned themselves.

R.
==


Yes, they would be banned then, for sure as well :(

What a pity that this forum automatically has the same mods. I think that this is not good.

It must be a vote and the mods must be the people who post a lot about the langauges and whom the people know and like.
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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby Bakunin » Sat Aug 01, 2015 4:22 pm

That's why I would like to see a change in the protocol regarding banning of senior members (to the extent we'll have such a status in the future). While moderators need to retain to right to ban members, I would like to see mandatory filing of a 'report' visible to all senior members, in a dedicated senior member forum, so that the community can review the decision and potentially make changes to the policies regarding banning of senior members. Specifically I would like to see who got banned when and why. Failure to produce such a report in a timely fashion (a week at most) needs to be sanctioned.

I don't think it's practical to consult members when making decisions, and I wouldn't want to give the community the right to overwrite moderator decisions retrospectively unless they are in gross violation of good behavior, but I think it's important that the community has insight into what is being decided and on what basis. This allows us to discuss and update the policies to keep them in line with how we want moderation to be applied in future instances.

I've been a member for almost 5 years, and I have seen many inspiring but 'difficult' members getting banned. That always annoyed me, in particular because I had no insight into the reasons, and what I could see on the forum rarely justified outright banning.
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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Aug 01, 2015 4:35 pm

Φιλόσοφος wrote:
SladeWilson wrote: I've seen it happen that one incredibly active person keeps a forum from falling into obscurity, on more than one occasion.


We had members like that, who were not only active but insightful and stimulating, however we banned many of them because we did not all share the same opinions and it being a forum, disagreement and polemic arose, which we would not withstand nor allow.

Thus only the subset of members who politely and mildly agreed with each other remained, accounting for the tediousness, tameness and barrenness others have referred to.

The more I think about it, the more I conclude moderation had as much to do with the forum's decline as the obvious technical issues and forbidding barriers for registering new accounts.


I remember that at one point a bunch of us left and a new forum was made? Gosh, my memory is gone. learnlanguage? Anyway, I didn't stay there long.
Then there was polydog in 2014... when HTLAL had issues...
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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby Hrhenry » Sat Aug 01, 2015 5:43 pm

Bakunin wrote:I've been a member for almost 5 years, and I have seen many inspiring but 'difficult' members getting banned. That always annoyed me, in particular because I had no insight into the reasons, and what I could see on the forum rarely justified outright banning.

The reason you didn't see much justification was because offensive posts were deleted by mods. I didn't and don't see that as a problem. But I do see moderation through fear as a problem that we probably shouldn't repeat here.

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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby sfuqua » Sat Aug 01, 2015 6:00 pm

Hmmn...
Maybe I prefer a tame and tedious forum. :D
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Re: HTLAL might be gone

Postby emk » Sat Aug 01, 2015 6:54 pm

Bakunin wrote:That's why I would like to see a change in the protocol regarding banning of senior members (to the extent we'll have such a status in the future). While moderators need to retain to right to ban members, I would like to see mandatory filing of a 'report' visible to all senior members, in a dedicated senior member forum, so that the community can review the decision and potentially make changes to the policies regarding banning of senior members. Specifically I would like to see who got banned when and why. Failure to produce such a report in a timely fashion (a week at most) needs to be sanctioned.

Since I've been a moderator, I'm only aware of a couple of senior members getting banned. In all but one case (that I know of):

  1. The member was warned publicly about which behaviors needed to stop, with reference to specific forum rules, and told that if they broke those rules again, that their account would be locked.
  2. The member broke those rules again.
The remaining case was more irregular, and the banned user contacted the moderators directly asking for reinstatement. We granted it. And as for several cases before my time, warnings were given, but more typicaly privately.

Unfortunately, it's not always possible to follow a public process like the one above. If somebody were to complain about receiving abusive and repeated PMs, for example, our general policy would be to accept that report in confidence, collect as much evidence as we could, and make a decision. This preserves the privacy of both parties as much as possible. As I understand it, this is standard policy for handling similar issues at many professional conferences.

Φιλόσοφος wrote:We had members like that, who were not only active but insightful and stimulating, however we banned many of them because we did not all share the same opinions and it being a forum, disagreement and polemic arose, which we would not withstand nor allow.

Heated debate is allowed (and even encouraged). Personal remarks are not. Here are the official HTLAL rules on the subject. These were originally written by Patuco, who joined HTLAL in 2005 and who acted as the senior moderator back when the administrator was much more active:

FLAMES, PERSONAL ATTACKS & DISRUPTIVE POSTING
Do not post deliberately inflammatory, argumentative or aggressive messages. If you disagree with a person, you can argue with his ideas in a respectful manner. Don't attack the person, his personality or what he is, even in an indirect way.

I know that some people find this rule too restrictive. For example, many people enjoy personal attacks and flaming. Once upon a time Polydog (a very interesting language forum) provided much greater leeway in this regard. But as I understand it, the administrator later clamped down considerably, and the forum is now locked to the public and invitation-only.

In general, if you want a forum with extremely loose rules about civility and appropriate behavior, you might have more luck with either Reddit (if they ever figure out what their policies are) or one of the chans. (Or on the sad remnants of Usenet. I miss the good old days before the Eternal September) But at least in the case of "classic" web forums, sooner or later, most of them seem to institute basic ground rules, or choose to become closed private communities, or choose to close the forum. For whatever reason, it's hard to find interesting "classic" web forums with extremely loose codes of conduct.

Personally, I know that we have a number of very interesting polyglots—people who speak lots of languages, who organize challenges, who always have really interesting things to say—who have a very low tolerance for incivility. If we relax the forum rules in this regard, we'll lose some of these people quickly. So allowing people to personally attack other people comes at a real price. It's simpler to have one set of rules for everyone.
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