Moderation statistics :)

high success rate on what is ultimately a subjective job? A success rate that high for volunteers who have minimal training is not "incredible", it's total bull**** - no system is that perfect when it's based on judgement calls. Maybe if they had all had many years of experience in busy HR departments of different companies, sure, but they don't.

Of course the process "works" because there is no accountability or transparency, there is no scope for it to go wrong If it wasn't working, how would you know?

How the hell is what I'm suggesting reflective of not understanding that the forum is owned by a private company? Who said do things by committee? I hope your meetings aren't ran like this - someone makes a suggestion, and then you widly extrapolate what they mean

That's the thing, though. The error rate need not indicate bias. It may just be a genuine case of error or misunderstanding. Also, fewer cards issued may not be an indication of a productive community, nor is a higher amount of cards issued an indication of questionable activity on the part of the mods. Over the last couple of months I have reported so many spammers. I'm sure you've seen them around. Kitchens, "love remedies". One time chat was flooded with them. Those are the kind of posters that definitely need banning, but of course they will always return with new accounts, and there's nothing the mods, or TSR, or the community can do about it.

What would be helpful, I agree, is improved interaction with the community. The rules can be ambiguous, and that can lead to misunderstanding. It is known that we get trolls here from the Misc (amongst others), and yes, it would be helpful for people to know to avoid them, because the kinds of threads they create can cause upset and get people worked up and into trouble. Of course, that's assuming that TSR knows who is who. I don't know if they do.

OK let's say you ARE the customer, but as Gofre said, why do you need to see this? Where's the demand? What's the benefit to TSR? Any business would need to understand the benefits of doing well... any thing, even if it's customers want x

Let's say it IS only 5 minutes of work (which it won't be... ), but then let's also say that that TSR would make way more money, by putting those efforts elsewhere ie: this would be a low priority, compared to something else, and again, you'd still need to say to TSR what exactly are the benefits?

Working in a "multi million pound business" myself last year, I know how bloody freaking slow it is to get things done, because of bureaucracy(ie: Generally the bigger the organisation, the slower things get done)... - it took several months to move some kit from one part of the data centre, to another part of the data centre, in the same damn room...

And TSR is in effect a "live production" environment - you'd need to go through testing elsewhere, and then see if it will work properly when "live" on the site.

****ing hell, do you want me to write a business case for this? For the millionth time, accountability and transparency are inherently good things for a moderation system, and would cost almost nothing to implement. It would show strengths and weaknesses of the moderation, areas to improve, trends and pretty well information business would consider important. Or maybe they can **** around with the UX and CSS a bit more for a considerable cost

And yes it would only be only 5 minutes of work because it'd be one SQL statement ran monthly, which could easily be automated

You don't need test environments to make a database query even if it's connected to the live db This is something that could be pushed through in an afternoon. Cost? Negligible. Benefits? Lets actually see how the moderation is actually functioning!

From the business model I work in, I can tell you that categorically isn't true. You're a customer if you use a product provided by the company e.g. the forum. More so if you generate revenue for the business.

See my edit RE: Facebook

Lots more info here as well:

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=facebook%20users%20are%20customers

And again, even IF you're the customer, why should TSR be accountable to you? And not it's parent company? Why should TSR staff be accountable to you, and not the managers? Or section leaders?

What are the benefits to TSR specifically. What is the demand for this? Just becuase YOU want to see how the "moderation is actually functioning" that doesn't mean others do

And besides, let's say we do have a system in place, andwe give say 100 yellow cards, 100 blue cards etc... You won't know what that's for and if you want the transparency ie: to see exactly what was warned, when, then you'd be able to identify who got warned, because of what they said

What they got warned for may also be pornographic as well. There's far too many risks to this, for "full transparency" to users. BEsides, do any other forums do this?

DEFINITION OF 'CUSTOMER'
An individual or business that purchases the goods or services produced by a business. The customer is the end goal of businesses, since it is the customer who pays for supply and creates demand. Businesses will often compete through advertisements or sales in order to attract a larger customer base.

Users are using the service provided by TSR, the forum as search. Happy customers keep on coming back. If there are no users of the forum, the whole company collapses. Better moderation = better community = better service for everyone.

Seeing the stats surely will show if the card system works, if there are problems that need sorting, if spam is an issue, the list goes on. To actually want to be blind to moderation statistics makes no sense at all. Yes other forums do this, and even if they didn't, why does it matter? It's not like TSR couldn't set a precedence is it?

Actually it does. It's a subjective job with minimal training. Rationally, there should be a high error rate but as Mr Vlad pointed out, they somehow, magically get it right 99% of the time. That simply isn't possible.

Cards issued may not, but they could do. Also you've shot yourself in the foot here. Your report on spammers actually proves something - if there was a table showing this and if there was an increase in spammers, it would actually show that they need to improve the registration and spam capture process. So there we go, the table would prove something useful to the community and company.

It's good to know the health of the community - other forums do it, and explain if an account is a dupe or not, helps other users stay away from interacting with such accounts, plus it would be good for everyone to see how many cards are overturned.

So what exactly have you paid for?

Besides let's say such a system is implemented, you're ignoring the knock on costs and effects

You can't put peoples opinions in to a pretty graph. You can put things like how many people have been banned, carded etc.. In to a graph but what if we have an influx of trolls in x month? So the system thats been implemented is pointless because the data is meaningless without context

And because it is about context and what people have said or done then it means extra admin work for TSR , to sift through the data and try and make sense of it

Again what's the benefit for tsr itself?

Posted from TSR Mobile

What other forums do this? I browse a few as large as TSR semi-regularly, and have never seen this.

X.

If you can tell me what relevance that actually has other than a fallacial tangent, I'll be glad to answer.

Mods - you're embarrassing yourselves. Again.

Stop answering.

Some of the CT have previously come out and said that transparency in modding is a good thing.

You're simply trying to defend the indefensible because it by extension defends your occasional poor decision making. What should really defend your poor decision making is that it's allowable under the circumstances - not that making mistakes is what you intended to do all along and the best way to sort that out is to keep it secret.

Tell me, where would TSR be without the forum users? Seems that the problem is that the company doesn't seem to care about it's actual base customer.

Doesn't matter if we are here voluntarily or not, without the users, TSR wouldn't be able to advertise its market reach.

Nevertheless this is all distracting away from one of my main points that the success rate of the moderation is impossibly high. To argue against moderation transparency simply sounds like you don't want to be shown to have a flawed system in place and in this case, you couldn't care less about the customer as long as the boss is happy.

So which is more likely, bias, or that a group of volunteers with minimal training are right 99% of the time? Bias as in when a mod makes a decision, others don't objectively consider both viewpoints, but they will inevitably side with the moderator.

I don't know. Neither do you, nor anyone who doesn't know what goes on behind the scenes. You expect bias. I expect caution. In order to know for certain, we'd need an independent third party to come in (as in, not a TSR member, nor a mod or TSR employee) and go over every single decision made by the mods along with any objections to said decisions, for a period of, say, three months so that there is a decent amount of data available. I don't think that's going to happen.

In the interest in moderator transparency, can you release statistics to do with moderation on a monthly basis such as amount of cards issued, bans issued, and cards overturned.

A healthy community is one where the moderation is transparent and accountable, and it would help everyone to know of pitfalls that can be avoided, and trend in the moderation

Mods - you're embarrassing yourselves. Again.

Stop answering.

Some of the CT have previously come out and said that transparency in modding is a good thing.

You're simply trying to defend the indefensible because it by extension defends your occasional poor decision making. What should really defend your poor decision making is that it's allowable under the circumstances - not that making mistakes is what you intended to do all along and the best way to sort that out is to keep it secret.

I have no problems with transparency when it is beneficial to have input from the community, but the thing I dislike most strongly about your suggestion is that your proposed statistics give pretty much no information about what you want to know i.e. the bias/quality of moderation. Knowing the number of cards and banned issued tells you only how many cards or bans were issued, it tells you nothing about the correctness of the decision to issue them.

To even begin interpreting the data you would need to take other factors into account. For example you would expect some correlation between number of posts made and cards issued, or between reports made and cards issued. There are many more factors to account for than just the quality of moderation e.g. number of posts, number of reports, time of year, unpredictable waves of rule breaking activity (e.g. persistent dupes or attacks by other sites/organisations), level of card, user history, the forum where the rule breaking occurs, type of rule breaking, availability of moderators etc.

I also think it is a myth that moderation is necessarily subjective. Most of the time it is pretty clear cut. Advertising, swearing and adult content are almost always black and white cases. There certainly are grey areas, but mostly around offensiveness and trolling. In those grey areas the moderation team will frequently seek a second opinion and so decisions are made by committee. The fact that a lot of rule breaking is black and white, and that there are processes in place to standardise and peer review contribute to a high success rate for cards that are issued. Actually I think that somewhat misses the point though, because I guarantee and the mods will freely admit that a lot of stuff which should be carded is not (primarily because it isn't seen/reported) and this is where the biggest error rates occur over a perfect moderation system. The apparent inconsistency that results is what frequently frustrates users and causes resentment towards moderation.