Make the Dead Pile Mod only

[TheJord]

I think this is pretty self explanatory; with recent unpleasant activity I think restricting who can see these should disappear.

[Kralik]

That may be wise. My original thoughts were this:

My wife has been a part of several internet forums which have had their fair share of scandals, backbiting, and gossip. One of them had (has?) a crazed administrator who starting banning people left and right and deleting posts whenever a criticism or link to another website (!) was mentioned. It also came out that she was a scammer and was ripping people off by taking their money for products that she never delivered, but this information could not be posted without it being almost instantly deleted.

For this forum, I wanted to avoid that mess. Not that I expected the administrators--AHEM --to go crazy, but I was hoping for some transparency so that people know that mods are only stepping in to edit and delete posts when it is necessary. If a post is deleted, I want the member who wrote it to be able to see why it was removed. Perhaps that would be better handled via PM's, as it seems to have backfired now. Mostly the idea was to help keep mods accountable for their actions.

[FM]

I'm all for hiding it again, it's not doing much good. I, for one, have been avoiding using it not to start ruckus, since people can go there and quote the psots that got deleted to whine about it in other topics. Also, users who do this tend to distort the facts to their benefit, and end up turning community members against the staff, so I'm all for letting them whine about based solely on "their word", it's easier to handle.

[Kralik]

Dain, thoughts?

[DáinIronfoot]

Personally, while I didn't have a problem with making the Dead Pile viewable by all, I never saw a need for it. I have no problems with making it invisible to the general public again, especially if it's causing problems to have it otherwise.

[Kralik]

Should be done--let me know if it doesn't work for you.

[SomeRandomDude]

I agree with Jordy, we already have a reputation as the Gestapo, so we might as well go full-blown.

And now I can vandalize the Dead Pile again. w00t!

[Elessar's Socks]

Mostly the idea was to help keep mods accountable for their actions.

The admins have the final say, but I agree with keeping our mod activities transparent. Not only to keep mods accountable, but also to make sure everyone is on the same page. Uncertainty tends to make people assume the worst.

I should also add that hiding the Dead Pile doesn't solve the underlying resentment caused by having posts edited/deleted. Rather than being reserved as an extreme measure, it's being used as an everyday tool to prune topics to perfection. Earlier I had misgivings about editing even deck titles because while it might increase order, it just contributes to the atmosphere of interference and opens the door to offhand modding. Frankly the trade off isn't worth it to me, and I think we're now seeing the backlash.

Maybe we could try posting general warnings in the thread or even temporary lock a topic to give people time to cool off, but in most cases leave the posts alone. From what I've seen things do calm down afterward, without the added dig and resulting defensiveness that comes from modding the actual posts.

[TheJord]

ES you are truly the voice of reason.

I agree with the man and retract my earlier statement

[AgentDrake]

Have to agree with ES, and TheJord on the "Offensive Posting" topic. Things seem perhaps overly modded.


"But don't we NEED that many mods, given the tension that's been floating around right now?"

Well, not really. Kralik and Dain can play gods all they want with TLHH, but honestly, too much mod activity from the rest of us potentially creates the perception of a playpen for the mods, where everyone else is just posting stuff... and anything and everything doesn't meet the ideals of all the mods gets pruned out, as ES put it. Increases tension, and tension is bad for tense situations.

Also, I figure that despite this, re-hiding the Dead Pile is a good move, for the moment at least. If some sort of mod resentment in the future surfaces, we can always point out that opening it up didn't exactly work out too well. It was a good idea to open it up, but unfortunately, good ideas don't always work out. Now, it's just a floating Record-of-Wrongs. A statement explaining why the Dead Pile was closed again would be nice, but close the barrow and leave it closed for now.

And let's avoid shuffling stuff in there unnecessarily. A few off-topic posts, so what? A little bit of spam, no big deal. Who cares? There's a balance that has to be kept. No spam, and where's the nice, happy, casual TLHH that we all love? Too much spam, and ditto the problem.