Dear Randy:

While checking FT today I noticed that my signature line has been edited by persons unknown. The edit in question removed one specific term from the signature line. I can only assume that that this edit was made by either a Moderator or you (or you as a Moderator ). I am only posting this in ORP because I don�t know of any method to address the FT Moderator Group as a whole, either by PM or e-mail.

Please be advised that the signature neither endorses the use of the edited term nor indicates approval of use of the edited term by others. In fact, the sig was an oblique reference to posters who seem to believe that their self-absorbed interests and post-padding efforts are an appropriate usage of FT bandwidth.


The editing and editing procedure makes me ask the following questions:

1. Who edited the signature line?

2. Why was I not contacted by the editor/Moderator and asked to edit the signature before the editor made the change?

3. If the sig line was so offensive that it warranted immediate action, would it not be common courtesy to contact me at the time of the action to advise me of the edit, the nature of the violation and (I assume) an appropriate disciplinary action?

4. If the edited term is such an egregious violation of some FT standard, why are the same term (and variations thereof) allowed to stand in the following posts (at least in one case, in a font format both 3X the size of my sig line AND highlighted in magenta)?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...7&postcount=81
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...1&postcount=13
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...5&postcount=94
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...7&postcount=96
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...&postcount=129
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...&postcount=131
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...&postcount=132

Please be advised that I am not necessarily seeking an answer from you or trying to waste your time on this somewhat trivial matter. I simply do not know where else to pose this question to the entire Mod population. Thanks in advance for allowing me to post this in your forum and I look forward to an answer from the Mod board soon.

Best regards,

kcvt750

The signature question.

First of all, thanks for the question. I'll repeat your questions below with answers. I think those who view this will be quite surprised at the answer and of course those with the black helicopter conspiracy theories will again return to their caves with disappointment that Dick Cheney did not have anything to do with this (just a joke!).

The editing and editing procedure makes me ask the following questions:

1. Who edited the signature line?
Answer: No one edited the signature. What happened was that a word that you used in your signature was recently added to the banned word list on FlyerTalk and the system automatically inserted "..." as the replacement. The word was added to the banned list only because of a growing number of complaints about the word being used. The standards for these words come from the community itself.

2. Why was I not contacted by the editor/Moderator and asked to edit the signature before the editor made the change?
Answer: Because no editor or moderator was involved. In all cases except two (I did an edit on MapleLeaf and parnel's signatures in the past without first contacting them as a preventative measure), myself or the moderator will first contact the member regarding the change. If the member fails to respond and we notice they have read the request, we will make the change in due time. For the record, the moderators themselves introduced a policy that forbids Moderators from changing signatures. Only Senior Moderators (there are four of them) have the technical ability to change them.

3. If the sig line was so offensive that it warranted immediate action, would it not be common courtesy to contact me at the time of the action to advise me of the edit, the nature of the violation and (I assume) an appropriate disciplinary action?
Answer: As has been explained, the change was made because of a change in banned words. It was totally part of the system and there is absolutely no way that we could have known the word was being used in your signature.

4. If the edited term is such an egregious violation of some FT standard, why are the same term (and variations thereof) allowed to stand in the following posts (at least in one case, in a font format both 3X the size of my sig line AND highlighted in magenta)?
Answer: We've never considered the moderator volunteers to be a police force. First and foremost they are here to assist members in placing posts, finding information and getting more out of FlyerTalk. We do not proactively spend hours culling through the signatures of the 110,000 members of FlyerTalk. If we see something that looks out-of-place, we contact the member as described above. But looking at the signature of every member of every post in any thread a volunteer may be viewing in not considered a part of our volunteers presence on FlyerTalk. Again, we have no intentions of being a police force. As for these examples, I'll go take a look, but be prepared for them to come haunting you in PM since you may have outed their existence. But it would be unfair to judge the volunteers or FlyerTalk as being inconsistent, similar to judging your local police and state patrol on why you got a ticket for speeding and others who passed you earlier did not.


So, I hope this answers your questions.

BTW, I'd like to thank Senior Moderator SanDiego1K for the research on what happened to the signature. She took it upon herself to research and figure out what caused the change in your signature since there was nothing in the detail that indicated that any volunteer had taken any action on your signature. This displays again just how lucky all members of FlyerTalk are to have such a dedicated staff of volunteers on FlyerTalk.

As an update. All signatures listed above were checked by me and there was only one that was out of whack - the font size was larger than normal posting font size. We have contacted the member in question.

P.S. it may be that the members themselves edited their signatures before i got there. But for now, they are clean.