Ah, Shangri La. It was wonderful while it lasted ... A place where everyone was above average elite and flames only occasionally shot out of jet turbines and were duly reported.

I migrated to this board from the Compuserve Travel Forum because of the more active participation by its gentle members. With increasing exposure and growing numbers here, some of the features of Compuserve boards seem to make a great deal of sense:
1 Actual names are required. Mine is a given. I have always felt that anonymity led to lapses in taste and even flame wars though even 'named' participants get into ad hominem attacks, name calling and mud wrestling on occasion. 2 Sysops, some paid and many unpaid exercised control over content -with- the ability to delete threads or even trim them or graft stray branches. Banishment was a last resort. They of course followed written guidelines of behavior posted prominently.

For myself, I agree that once someone responds to an initial post it no longer 'belongs' to the originator. You can edit out your original post but it's just not nice to delete even unpleasant responses or exchanges. I do agree with giving that authority to a sysop who follows the rules. Will that happen? Ask Bryan with the excess workload. Can he do it? Not likely.

Volunteer sysops might be possible though I don't know how the software works or if it would accomodate them.

For myself I'll continue to ignore the obvious trolls and treat flames with cool logic or cold indifference.

Whaddaya say, Arturo?

Jim

jimquan makes excellent points. The model he describes has been in use for years on CompuServe and AOL. The end users "moderate" discussion forums on a volunteer basis. That gives the administrators less work, and gives the users a chance to contribute.

I'm in agreement with the rest of you that deleting entire threads is too draconian of a way to handle the problem. I only mentioned it because had the same situation come up a month ago, it's what I would have done.

The point is, I think there ought to be some way to deal with these sorts of situations when they come up. FWIW, I was a volunteer sysop on CompuServe's Macromedia forum back in 94-95. I would be glad to volunteer for some sysop duty here, too.

jimquan and dgolds - I have only used Webflyer personnel in my examples above as that most closely reflects the current position. I appreciate that with workload and dare I say 'more important' duties, it is not practical for Michael and Bryan to moderate the whole board alone, every day.

[This message has been edited by james (edited 09-30-1999).]

IMHO, you guys are trying to solve a problem that doen't really exist. Maybe I'm naive but, aside from a few exceptions that are notable only because of their rarity, I don't really see a need for flame-retardent procedures at this point. But then I only check the areas that I care about...maybe I've missed something.

Flyertalk HAS become more popular in the past few months, with lots of new faces. But despite this, I would love to see FT retain it's small-town-feel. And every small town has its ocassional fued and wacko, but that doesn't mean you declare martial law.

I, too, have seen what flame wars can do in the newsgroup world and if I thought that were starting here, I'd be among the first to want to stop it, but for now, peer pressure and a sense of decorum seem to be enough...

As for deleting posts, the edit feature is sufficient. As for deleting threads, my vote would be no...

I think you're right about the current position Matt. I'm thinking about what I expect (worry) will happen in the next 6-12 months.

If you check under technical problems, I had to write Bryan and Michael to get four threads that I posted under the WRONG FORUM!

We should have some capacity. Or at least if we delete something it goes into an archive system that if someone wants it back can write WebFlyer and get the thread mailed to their e-mail address.

DGolds: No one should be posting anything nasty on a thread written by such a nice gentleman as yourself. If you want I can send my cats to scratch them.

PremEX: Hawaiian shirts are all i'm going to be wearing at a certain get together we're going to. In fact I got shorts to match!

Chauming's having a mini-flame war in the AMEX forum: http://talk.flyertalk.com/forum/Foru...ML/000146.html

If it comes to a vote, I am for deletion, since I prefer leaving the decision about "cleaning up" the board to the board members and this doesn't seem a terrible way to do it. With the delete feature, of course, came the implicit assumption that the originator owned the thread, since they could delete it. I posted under the working assumption that the thread could be removed.

Matt W.: I certainly respect your opinion. As always, you make good points. The degree to which a board is moderated is largely a matter of taste.

In my experience, volunteer moderators work well. Done properly, it doesn;t strike me as the imposition of "martial law"; more like having a referee around. It's not unlike what Cmdr Catcop does, just formalizes the role and gives it a little more oomph. But I can definitely see why some would prefer we not have it.

FWIW, I've seen more flaming here this summer than any listserv I'm on, and a couple of them have very large numbers of subscribers. OTOH, compared to the Usenet, we're rank amateurs when it comes to flaming.

Catman: Get Yaz and Eddie into the fray? No way! I wouldn't want to see either of those two sweeties hurt.

I like the ability to delete posts, but is it really needed? It can't be done in life, after all. If anyone knows different, please email me as I have a few episodes I wouldn't mind erasing .

I am in complete agreement with james that the originator of a thread should not be able to eliminate the entire thread. It's not the property of the originator. In fact, I'd argue that posts, once they're POSTED, aren't the sole property of the originator any longer, either. If the ability to delete individual posts can't be separated from the ability to delete entire threads, then it's reasonable to forbid deletion. Editing down to a period seems to work.

I find some of the other comments here about moderation interesting. Some of you may know that a couple of months ago I drafted an informal proposal to turn over the government of several aspects of the board to FTers. I didn't post it but I did have it circulated to a few (more than a few) "senior members" of the board for feedback. I was surprised when I got no responses. I let the matter drop then, though it doesn't have to stay dropped. I think any future idea for governance should come from "out there," but Matt's words should be heeded.
Flamers and cranks should certainly be tolerated as long as possible. They are a part of this thing, too, though few would mind if they left. Local flavor, you know?

Thanks bryan. I think, like Nanook, that most FT's try to ignore the nonsense, considering it to be orelevant stimuli and hoping it will go away. That's what I do.

Once again, why not have some rules explicitly stated up front? Wht not a "signed" agreement by users to abide by them to retain participatory rights? Even within a broad self-regulating community of the type Randy & Co appears to prefer, this would be helpful and quite workable.

-Are multiple handles permitted?
-Is personal criticism permitted?
-Are friendly exchanges like "Thanks" etc., between FT's to be discouraged?
-Is their a broadband problem to be considered so as to limit our posts?
-Is a certain degree of anonymity permitted or actively discouraged?
-Are repeated exchanges between "undisclosed" family members/close friends permitted?
-What is the policy regarding tradgeties and posting them on FT? Is this discouraged?
-Is it acceptable for FT's to disclose personal information regarding other FT's specifically against their will?

I would not knowingly and willfully violate any of the "rules" of FT or any others for that matter. Yet, I've previously been attacked for having too many posts and this occurred again yesterday. I was alledged to have used multiple handles and roundly criticized for that as well despite the fact that this seems to be routine on the boards. I was hounded and severely harassed because I conducted online conversations within FT threads among members of my family who choose to remain anonymous. I was mocked and publicly scolded on the boards for supposedly violating my anonymity! And so forth, and so on...!

If there is/are no rule(s)/guideline(s) established, then one is only left to "judge" retroactively the behavior of others. Laws are not imposed retroctively, nor are punishments applied in this manner.

I try, as mush as humanly possible, like most FT's, to be a good citizen of FT. Guidelines, however vague, would probably serve us all well. How could they hurt?

Waiting for a policy statement,
Thanks for listening,

Mark

I am usually for the non-moderation of boards and flame wars usually are pretty tame and burn themselves out. But when statements are made such as chaumings wish for someone to be murdered it goes beyond a normal flame war. (see the amex thread mentioned above). People like that need to be reprimended in some way as that is unacceptable. If it takes moderators then so be it. If the offender is booted there is nothing to prevent them from signing on again as a new user with different information. In this case a moderator would be helpful.

I find this board to be very enjoyable, humorous and informative so I will stay. Too bad there are a few bad eggs that try to ruin it.

As far as deleting posts and threads, once something is posted on a public forum it is no longer private and should not be able to be deleted. Editing your post is all that is needed. And having the ability to have at least one person able to delete posts and threads is great in cases such as catman posting in the wrong forum and then posting it in the right forum.

These are just my opinions.

There are two issues here - 1) deleting one's post, and 2) moderation issues. I think that one should be able to delete one's posts. One example is when Punki and others deleted their posts in avek00's thread. I thought it was pretty appropriate. And the other example is when by mistake multiple responses are posted or when they are posted to the wrong forum (recently I responded to something in AA, which really was a hotel issue and also discussed in the hotel forum). One can edit these posts to . or ?, but deleting is the right way.

With respect to moderating the group, I would not trust any poster or group of posters to act in that capacity. But I can accept (grudgingly) the role of Inside Flyer to do so.

The best thing to do is to avoid these flames. I was myself ridiculed in the Amex thread, as being clueless on something that I consider myself fairly knowledgeable. The best response is not to respond at all.

pgupta - Bryan has explained at least twice that the software does not allow deletion of individual posts without being able to delete whole threads. He has gone on to say that not deleting threads takes precedence so we have to lose the capacity to delete posts. In an ideal world your solution is obviously better, but it isn't actually possible.

You are absolutlely right that avoiding flames is the best thing to do and a dignified silence is often the best approach. I very much hope that that remains the attitude of 99.5% of users here and that the trolls stay under their bridges.

[This message has been edited by james (edited 09-30-1999).]

I liked the old "world" better. I do not know why the new scheme of things is better.