The Origami Forum

Does anyone else see where this site is heading?

If you like I can delete our previous conversation. It´s your choice. Only tell me from where on you want it beeing deleted and I do.

i dont want anything from you. sorry

dani luddington wrote:Does anyone else see where this site is heading?

I know where I see it heading. I have no idea where you see it heading. Why don't you enlighten us?

At this point, I would put in a formal request to the moderators not to lock this topic within 5 seconds, even if things do seem to be getting a bit out of hand. I'd rather everyone get a chance to state their opinions and then get a civil discussion going on about it - locking a topic at a hairtrigger doesn't do much to encourage a constructive conversation. I'd like to think that we're all mature enough not to get into ad hominem attacks and nasty stuff like that.

Pretty please?

As you see neither Joseph nor me has closed it so far.
I´m very sorry that Dani is that sad, so I won´t close this topic.

Previous out-of-hand threads were closed because they violated this forum's rules. So far, no one in this thread has done so. So, if we do remain "mature enough not to get into ad hominem attacks and nasty stuff like that," we should have no problems, right?

Oh Dani, why do you do that?
I really don´t wanted to hurt you and now you are punishing the whole Forum for something I did wrong. It seems that it is too late now, we´ve lost a great member. I´m very very sad.

Anna, you didnt do anything wrong. I read the whole conversation before what dani said got deleted. I think this forum is just missing a sense of humor.

OrigamiDan wrote:I think this forum is just missing a sense of humor.

Nah, not completely true - Mr Wu has yet to boot out people who insist on calling him Mr Wu.

Do I now have to put a disclaimer that the above statement is made in jest?

dani luddington wrote:Does anyone else see where this site is heading?

Yes, I've been thinking about it quite a bit, lately, and I agree that it is very sad.

Come on, let's get a bit more constructive about this - just stating your feelings without explaining them in detail doesn't allow for much discussion, and runs the risk of people assuming incorrect things and jumping to wrong conclusions.

If it's the moderation, then my personal belief is that it's a good thing. It's not overly draconic and the mods do give a significant amount of leeway. What we see on the surface is just the mod's action - we don't see the amount of flak that the moderators take in the background, either in private messages or emails. And, if you've ever maintained a high volume list or forum before, you'll know that this background stuff can be pretty nasty at times, sometimes even more nasty than whatever sparked the incident in the first place.

If it's the duplicate thread locking, my gripe is that phpBB doesn't have an elegant way of splitting and appending posts to a topic (as far as I know, anyway). That would be nicer than having lots of little locked threads all over the place. There's always the option of doing this manually, but that takes moderator time (ack).

Well, at the risk of having my post deleted or the thread locked, I'll try to respond to your question.

The issues I see partly have to do with the moderation and partly have to do with the attitudes of at least some of the users.

While I understand why some of it has been done, I think that locking threads is overused. I agree that someone posting the same question multiple times creates a problem but there have been other situations where a thread has been locked and the original poster redirected to another thread that was very old and only vaguely related to the poster's question. I am not aware of any strict limitation that the software puts on the number of threads, so that decision is purely at the descretion of the mods.

I also believe that it is a very bad sign when the mods are arguing, and even worse when they are doing it in a locked thread. I take that as an indication that moderation is likely to be applied in an inconsistant way, which is frustrating for me. I have left other forums for just this reason. I don't want to hope that the less tolerant mod doesn't see my post so it doesn't get locked or deleted.

I believe that there are many people here that disagree about various philosophical issues that relate to origami. In particular, about how copyright law applies to origami. The mods seem to be close to agreement on that issue, but my sense is that they are not very tolerant of views on the subject that disagree with them, nor are they willing to let anything beyond a lukewarm disucssion about a contentious idea occur.

These things, together, make me fairly reluctant to contribute much to this forum for fear that my post might be locked which, in one sense, is a form of public humilation, or deleted, meaning my work was wasted.

To put it another way, I think the moderation is, perhaps, a little to strong and it sometimes works to stifle discussion. While you may not feel that it is overly draconian, I think it is starting to cross the line. There have been many times that I have considered posting a new thread or a reply only to decide not to because I do not feel comfortable with the environment created here.

Some of this comes back to what the purpose of this forum is and what people believe the purpose is or should be. If everyone is always afraid, so they always post very cautiously, the quality of the discussion will probably remain fairly high, but it will be limited to the people willing to deal with or ignore that tension.

Okay, here's an attempt at a response.

First, thank you for posting your feelings. We can't talk about how to improve things if we don't know what the issues are.

Second, thanks for posting within the forum rules. There is no reason to lock a thread or to delete a posting if it follows the forum rules.

malachi: there have been other situations where a thread has been locked and the original poster redirected to another thread that was very old and only vaguely related to the poster's question

I'll pass this on to Chris & Anna.

malachi: I am not aware of any strict limitation that the software puts on the number of threads, so that decision is purely at the descretion of the mods.

You are correct.

malachi: I also believe that it is a very bad sign when the mods are arguing, and even worse when they are doing it in a locked thread. I take that as an indication that moderation is likely to be applied in an inconsistant way, which is frustrating for me.

Well, we're all human, and we can only try to do our best. And I did contact the other mods privately regarding recent post deletions. I did not mean to carry on debate in the public forums, and I apologise for that. Also remember that the moderators vary in terms of age, culture, and language. We're not going to see things equally in all cases.

malachi: I believe that there are many people here that disagree about various philosophical issues that relate to origami. In particular, about how copyright law applies to origami. The mods seem to be close to agreement on that issue, but my sense is that they are not very tolerant of views on the subject that disagree with them, nor are they willing to let anything beyond a lukewarm disucssion about a contentious idea occur.

Discussion of contentious topics is fine by me, as long as the forum rules are followed. And, yes, sometimes we moderators forget exactly what the rules say, too.

As for the copyright issue, yes, I have strong views about it. I've been at the receiving end of numerous copyright violations, and have had to shell out for legal advice in dealing with some of them. So I think it's easy to understand why I have little patience for people whose sole rationalization for breaching copyright on models and diagrams boils down to "but I like the model and I want it". However, I have not (to my recollection) locked any thread nor deleted any posting simply because someone did not agree with me. (And if I have, I'm very sorry, and I'll do my best not do let it happen again.)

It's not just the contentious issues that have gotten out of hand, either. Some posters seem incapable of realizing that there are a number of different cultures represented here, and that forms of expression differ in different parts of the world. Phrasing that might seem rude to one person might be perfectly normal to another. If you're joking, make it obvious (put a smiley or something). And if it's at all unclear if someone is being rude or if that's just the way they write in their country, assume they're not being rude. It makes life easier for everyone.

I'll just talk about the thread locking issue for now.

As I see it, from a technical viewpoint, there's no advantage to locking threads. Locked threads just stay locked, and don't get deleted, so the number of threads just remains the same.

From a posting viewpoint, it's a very effective conversation killer, because the original poster will have to repost his query into the older thread. Regardless of how much work it takes, it's still a large mental barrier to surmount, and I think from the examples we've seen here, a very very small percentage of posters will actually do that.

So we'll end up with the following situations:

Currently:
1) Poster X posts a question about A.
2) Poster/Mod Y refers him to thread B.
3) Mod Y/Z locks thread.
4) Poster X reposts his question in B, maybe (like, 5% probability).

Number of threads generated = 1, number of posts generated = 2-3

Assuming no locking:
1) Poster X posts a question about A.
2) Poster/Mod Y refers him to thread B.
3) As thread isn't locked, Poster X can post a thank you message or further query because thread B didn't answer question A, thus spawning further discussion.

Number of threads generated = 1, number of posts generated = 2-3 (if query has been answered) or more (if extra discussion occurs).

Now, both cases will still produce a thread with the same number of posts (assuming the original poster's question has been answered satisfactorily). In both of these cases, the threads will quickly sink down to the bottom of the dross heap, as per normal forum clutter-clearing operation.

If a new discussion gets generated, that's better for all.

So, there's no real advantage, technically, to locking a thread compared to leaving it unlocked.

Feel free to pick flaws in this argument, or to propose a solution of your own.