Speak for yourself, buster. 
If you think Bill Gates is above it all, high and mighty you don’t know me very well.
Maybe friction is what we need to gain traction. 
There’s version control differencing on post edits. There was a slight personal insult at the end of the omitted sentence. 
Agreed.
Moderation should not turn into banditry, authoritarianism and corruption. What happens on this forum sometimes. People should not be attacked (bullied) personally and forcibly silenced if they want to say something on the topic. Moderation should be applied only to those who tend to engage in banditry, authoritarianism and corruption. Of course, if the moderator is involved in this bad behavior or is on the side of such characters, the forum is over.
Some of Haiku users and forum contributors are 
So that’s another reason for moderation.
If you have trouble with a specific decision from the moderation team, you can ask us (in private messages, because, if we hide things, it’s not to re-post them in public ourselves later on…).
From what I see (as I am a moderator, I do see the hidden messages, however I rarely use my moderator powers, since I am usually involved in the discussions and I prefer for someone else to make the decision, in case I could be the one being annoying in an argument), I can tell you that they usually bring nothing to the discussion, except fuel for people getting angry at each other. And also, think about the fact that it’s always messages from the same 2 or 3 users, and that the posts get flagged by several people as inappropriate. I think that says something about the users that tend to write things that require moderator actions, rather than about the moderation team.
I am a member of a forum for British Railways enthusiasts which I no longer contribute to because of one moderator who was vindictive and thin-skinned, and prone to suspend accounts on the slightest technicality. Worse, this person wanted to use the forum to enforce his own views on matters off topic. In this instance he would ensure at any opportunity to air his view on masks as “authoritarian”, which was funny as the premier authoritarian on that forum. After I had crossed swords a couple of time the forum software notified me that this member had begun following my posts. In other words now stalking me so as not to miss any opportunity to “catch me out” for something, which I found rather creepy.
In other words a perfect model of how not to moderate a forum. Fortunately I have no comparable experiences here, and cannot think of any moderator who might fit this mould. In fact I hardly know who they are which suggests they are working discreetly to keep the forum safe.
Very important is how moderation complaints are dealt with. I tried in this other forum to complain to the team, and they all closed ranks around this moderator who I know had prior form in misusing has authority. So whilst I think the moderators are doing a very good job, in the instance that there are non-spurious complaints against one I think it is very important to treat it seriously. Especially as I think there are quite a lot of people here who might be neurodiverse like myself and may be sensitive in varying degrees.
My only comment is that the “no politics” rule can be a minefield and be gamed by those who wish to sow mischief. To give an example, Lunduke a while back found nobody wanted to speak on record and so he accused us as being political. I thought that he disagreed with our core values, which sit above politics. By allowing a disgruntled commentator to bring our values into the realm of politics, I think we empowered Lunduke to shut down our ability to clarify our values.
Would a moderator please consider unhiding my comment on this thread please?:
Specifically this one: Comparison with other OSes - #9
…because I think it being flagged as off-topic is incorrect. Flagging conversational replies like that as off-topic is also going to have a stultifying effect which we absolutely don’t need here. We need interesting, varied, lively opinions and we should allow people to inject a bit of character into threads. If the forums are just going to be autistically perfect every time they are not going to be engaging (except to autistic people) and growing them will be harder.
I think it probably would not have been flagged by as many people if you had inserted a link to the video in some of the text in your reply. Having an embedded youtube video unrelated to Haiku/computing/etc… on the page is a bit annoying.
Your reply was just an unrelated youtube video, it was flagged by another user as off-topic.
Since it actually is off-topic (and did not contribute to the discussion in any way) there is not much reason to unhide it.
since when does autism have anything to do with perfection? You could have made this point just aswell without bringing up autism.
It doesn’t seem like a good idea to try to silence community members in such a way. It would be better if someone had a concern to say, “Hey, in the future avoid posting off-topic videos on my topic.”
Nobody is reporting peoples posts in good faith, if that post isn’t actually inappropriate. What was the post? I would like to see. I would like to participate in the community, but I am being prevented from doing so. If it is bad, then it should just be removed. None of this hiding business. If it’s nothing vulgar or inappropriate, then why bother? You aren’t coming out ahead, all you are doing is leading to community members and potential community members feeling unwelcome.
Some people here I think need to try and be more understanding. They are too sensitive, and I say that with the best of intentions. It’s like the one who posted about having a 400GHz computer, and people were making light of a slight error and making jokes about how fast that would be. Someone could have considered those cracks off-topic. The person in question left, because there was joking on a “dev forum”. It’s not a dev forum, it’s a community forum, and these issues aren’t inspiring of a community feeling.
Removing posts would make it harder to “put them back” if deemed appropriate. Hiding is a thing that can be easier to undo, if need arises.
As for the 400Ghz computer issue, now you are asking people here to be more understanding of inadequate posts, when that guy wasn´t ?? Sure, maybe those posts were not serious, but just because this is a dev/community forum ( yes, both ) they are somewhat on-topic. And that wouldn´t derail in a veiled written-fight, like many others that need to be cut short by hiding some inadequate posts.
( I didn´t see what the video in that link was about, or saw but dismissed as silly/not useful, but if a couple people objected to it, and moderators looked at the issue and agreed with them, it was the right decision to keep the forum civil and organized. Unfortunately, seemingly inofensive posts sometime can open some worm cans that are better left closed.
Offensive to who? Is it actually offensive, or was it just “off-topic”. Those are two completely different things. As far as I know, there is an actual dev forum. I would never waste anyones time there. This is a community forum where people should be able to have fun, share things that they may think is relevant to the topic. If it’s not actually offensive, then what’s the issue?
I have seen posts redirected too. Why was the one in question hidden, instead of directed or split off onto an appropriate topic? Why not just message the poster and ask them to edit or move their post? I’m not so much speaking about the post belonging or not, I’m talking about the attitude of the people involved. It’s clearly not a community oriented attitude.
Well, we seem to not agree here, and that is ok. But it is community oriented attitude, because otherwise things get out of control, little by little, then very fast. Just look at any ( most ? maybe there are some were this do not happen ) multiplayer games, where people seem more interested in inconveniencing others than playing the game.
Again : the "400Ghz processor " comments were not offensive. And you seem to disagree with them. So I would also ask what´s the issue.
Many posts are hidden then later unhidden, after being edited by their creator, when some good consense comes from talking and explaining the person the reasons it was hidden. Some posts, on the other hand, do not deserve this, because they were created in anger, or just to put fuel in the fire. And that is not needed, no matter the place.
As far as I am led to believe from moderator posts, this post wasn’t such an issue. So the flagging first is irrelevant. Move it, message the poster, do something that you would do to a friend and treat them as you’d want to be treated. Nobody likes having their stuff flagged as if they did something inappropriate. The goal is to have a thriving community, not a private club. Obviously if something actually gets out of hand, that is a different story. The community will never know though, because the post was hidden. Also, nobody will want to alter their post or offer more relevant substance when these types of actions are taken, it just leads to bad feelings.
And I didn’t disagree with the jokes about 400GHz, I’m referring to it as an example of things people shouldn’t get offended by.
It’s indirectly a community, it’s directly an informational forum. As such, it generally works pretty well, and consequently I’m grateful for occasional moderation that removes off-topic stuff. People who feel “silenced” could try contributing something relevant and see what happens.
I’ve seen forums where there’s a separate forum for “community”, i.e. have fun with whatever irrelevant chit chat. In my experience, they’re pretty lame, depending on the nature of the handful of people who actually come for that kind of thing, and everyone still wants to bring their fluff over to the content forums because that’s where you can reach people with it. People come here for content related to Haiku, and find a well managed discussion forum. That’s good.
Well both the website “title” and description from the main site say community quite directly. And that is my point with regards to the way people deal with issues, not with the content itself. If someone had a problem with an off-topic video, there is a category called “Off-topic”. Or just say something constructive. That’s what you would do to keep a community thriving. A flagging or reporting of peoples posts to the admins isn’t something productive at all. It is going to seem petty to anyone. You’d think it was petty, and whoever flagged it would think it was petty if it happened to them. Wrong tool for the job.
You have to let people vent steam now and then, lest they blow up. Can’t expect a healthy living being to be all business all the time. And if we can get to know each other as individuals, too, that will only help the forum, and Haiku as a whole.
As nephele said before, “Flags hiding posts is usually only temporary untill a moderator aproves it.”
For this latest flare-up of this thread, some music video on youtube was linked in an otherwise empty post and was flagged “offtopic” by a user. I haven’t seen the flag in the moderation inbox, but someone must’ve agreed with the flag and kept it hidden.
Personally, I often agree with off-topic flags, but unhide them anyway. In future I’ll try to jump to the additional hoop to PM the author to ask if they would consider staying on-topic and/or stop their annoying habits. I very much detest having to scroll over huge “clever” memes, looping gifs and being baited by some video that turns out to be some music video (could be much worse, I admit…).
So, I agree that we moderators shouldn’t always hide off-topic posts, but PM the authors instead. Let’s leave hiding posts to when people infringe on the more serious items of our Policies | Haiku Project.
I think that’s the main important thing here.
Imagine being in the shoes of people trying to have an interesting conversation (maybe some newcomer to the forum who asks a question for the first time). Instead of getting useful replies, you get people pointing out typos in your post (OK, maybe one person doing that is fine, but 5 persons in a row?) and a link to a music video. (to take exemples from recent events in the forum).
How do you think that person will feel about your community? They will think it is useless and making fun of newcomers, and they will leave. Then the forum will be the same 3 people crying about freedom of speech. If you have something to say, open your own topic, don’t post offtopic and nonsensical replies. This will help keep the forum welcoming to everyone.