A reply of yours, quoted below, was deleted by a Bitcoin Forum moderator.

[Timelord2067]

Cyrus and hilariousandco u=164822 / hilariousetc u=397737 / hilarious* u=1424594 are the main offenders - randomly deleting post weeks and even months/years later - usually in my own threads that I have started (hence the replies are on topic).

Untrustworthy behaviour especially when they then gloat they have done it.

(and most of the time those posts don't show up in a "post deleted" message either)


@theymos sits back and does nothing to curb their behaviour.


OP: My advice is to archive as you go.  Don't rely on any "auto" archiving of your posts, it's always best to archive your own work.

[1714855105]

1714855105

[Little Mouse]

Although this happens very rarely that a good post or reply is deleted by mistake, I think a proper or close reason would be good. One of my post was deleted by moderator and I still do not know what the reason is.
As like said in previous post, dropdown menu with some most common case would be good edition.

[truth or dare]

Cyrus and hilariousandco u=164822 / hilariousetc u=397737 / hilarious* u=1424594 are the main offenders - randomly deleting post weeks and even months/years later - usually in my own threads that I have started (hence the replies are on topic).

Untrustworthy behaviour especially when they then gloat they have done it.

(and most of the time those posts don't show up in a "post deleted" message either)


@theymos sits back and does nothing to curb their behaviour.


OP: My advice is to archive as you go.  Don't rely on any "auto" archiving of your posts, it's always best to archive your own work.

Do mods actually have the power to deprive the user of the usual notification by PM?
I have noted some examples of moderation that are clearly not impartial verging upon stalking and vindictive.

The problem is the conflict of interests where moderators are paid by members here on this forum. It may not be immediately obvious to the poster that their post conflicts with the interests of a member that a moderator needs to keep happy. Hence, why the stats I mention, would be useful to track and analyse.

Hilarious and Co is extreme. Theymos is aware, but as with other abusers of the system. He will allow members to suffer abuse if he thinks the abuse is isolated to out-spoken or less popular members. This may explain your own treatment.

As ever, push for transparency and objective standards. Those are the only things that will protect you if you deserve to be protected long term.

While there is a gross lack of clear objective standards for red tags, post deletes etc the abuse and manipulation will never be prevented.

There Will also always be a genuine wide ranging difference of opinion among the mods to which posts are eligible for delete. That wide range could be drastically narrowed with clearer guidelines.

[UserU]

Do mods actually have the power to deprive the user of the usual notification by PM?

This was brought up some time ago IIRC, and I think there's an option not to notify the user.

On previous occasions, I did notice that my post count decreased by 1 or 2 but received no notifications when they happened.

[wwzsocki]

- username of a moderator who made the deletion (for an easier contact),

This probably isn't a good idea, since it would undoubtedly cause a flooding of moderators' inboxes with requests for the same information and/or bitching about post deletion(s)...  

...I understand that there could be more PMs sent with stupid questions from spammers whos posts were deleted for good reason, but this can happen only once because we have the IGNORE function, so overwhelming amounts of additional work could be easily minimized. Additionally, if usernames would be provided, then there could be additional forum rules implemented regarding the communication with moderators to avoid spam and unneeded work...

As I remember, mod of Mining board is very strictly and delete lot of decent posts there. I don't see any reasons why your posts were deleted. But in other boards, good posts aren't usually get deleted without any reason...

...I post in mining both btc mining and altcoin mining. I get one to three posts deleted every week ... Frodocooper can be heavyhanded and over delete. Once in a while I will pm complain to him...

This is really strange that in section as mining moderator is "heavyhanded" and "over delete" because it is obvious from the first look that this board suffers from low user attendance, lack of new threads and interesting discussions.



I would be able to understand such behavior and even accept many mistakes in boards like Altcoin Discussion or any other with high amounts of spam, new threads and very high writing frequency, but it is enough to look at the screen above to know that the mining section is just the opposite and literally needs more posts and frequent writers.

Until today, I thought that my local section suffers from low frequency, but compared to mining we are standing really strong, have multiple active threads with many updates and active discussions, despite there are only a few frequent users there.

Now I am speculating, but it is possible that the mining section is in such a bad condition, just because too many good posts are removed for no reason, which obviously scares off every user from writing another post in this section. For me, it is enough to avoid this board and from this time I haven't posted there, despite we could have an interesting discussion with the OP in the The winter mining setup thread.

Do mods actually have the power to deprive the user of the usual notification by PM?

...I think there's an option not to notify the user. On previous occasions, I did notice that my post count decreased by 1 or 2 but received no notifications when they happened.

This is something new for me, despite Legendary   from now I will try to know my exact post count number because this is true that sometimes I had problems to track the post count in signature campaigns, they just don't match from time to time and I thought it is because of posts I have deleted.

I was sure every time our work is removed we got a notification and it would be great if somebody from the staff confirms this information?

[truth or dare]

Do mods actually have the power to deprive the user of the usual notification by PM?

This was brought up some time ago IIRC, and I think there's an option not to notify the user.

On previous occasions, I did notice that my post count decreased by 1 or 2 but received no notifications when they happened.

Interesting. I can think of no scenario though where not informing the member their post had been deleted, would be sensible, or fair.

If an entire thread was nuked, that could account for the missing posts. OTOH it could be that option the mods have which you mention. 

As someone has said keeping your own records could be useful. Is there some plugin that can auto archive every post you make?

[El duderino_]

I have had some similar thing, small example a thread I made myself for a game, discussing some game types or how to do something and a MOD deleted some of those post      Also thought why would this ever be deleted, couldn't be more on topic

[o_e_l_e_o]

This was brought up some time ago IIRC, and I think there's an option not to notify the user.

On previous occasions, I did notice that my post count decreased by 1 or 2 but received no notifications when they happened.

I've never heard of that before. I'd be interested if a mod could confirm or deny this.

If an entire thread is deleted or trashed, then you do not receive a notification about your replies in that thread also being deleted. If your post specifically is deleted, then as far as I am aware you will always receive a notification.

As someone has said keeping your own records could be useful. Is there some plugin that can auto archive every post you make?

Loyce's site archives every post (unedited) that is made here: http://loyce.club/archive/posts/

[hilariousetc]

The name of the mod deleting should be transparent.  If that is not going to happen you should be shown a percentage of deleted posts that have executed from each mod.

All that would do is lead to more crying and disgruntlement towards mods. We would have dozens of threads created a week like, hilariousandco has removed three of my posts? Is this a personal attack? Blah blah blah. Names don't need to be shown. If you believe a post has been removed incorrectly or they're being removed often without reason and suspect a mod is abusing his power or attacking a person then create a thread about it or contact theymos. If mods were abusing their power and repeatedly removing posts for incorrect reasons it would be instantly apparent. Not only would theymos be able to see something is up but people cry here over one post being removed so imagine what would happen if mods were genuinely targeting people.

Do mods actually have the power to deprive the user of the usual notification by PM?
I have noted some examples of moderation that are clearly not impartial verging upon stalking and vindictive.

No, they don't. Timelord is just paranoid and biased and makes assumptions time and time again and this is all fuelled by his dislike of me merely because I excluded him from my trust-list due to his wildly inaccurate trust ratings. He also doesn't really know how this forum works because he assumes it was me or cyrus that removed a post because our names are on the sub boards. The only time a person won't get a notification is if the entire thread is removed.

The problem is the conflict of interests where moderators are paid by members here on this forum. It may not be immediately obvious to the poster that their post conflicts with the interests of a member that a moderator needs to keep happy. Hence, why the stats I mention, would be useful to track and analyse.

People aren't going to get special favours just because I'm on their campaign. If that was so and it was exposed and I'd almost certainly be removed as a moderator and that's not something I'm going to jeopardise so me having a signature is irrelevant to my moderation. You'd have a much more logical argument about us removing posts/handling reports since that's what we actually get paid to do but again, if we were abusing our power people would notice.

usually in my own threads that I have started (hence the replies are on topic).

So if you create a thread about cars and start talking about Dr Who that's on topic?

This was brought up some time ago IIRC, and I think there's an option not to notify the user.

On previous occasions, I did notice that my post count decreased by 1 or 2 but received no notifications when they happened.

This is incorrect. Staff do not have an option to do that. The only way you'd be missing posts without a notification is if an entire thread was trashed that you had posted in and they're usually only removed when they're a generic spam thread or something like that.

[TECSHARE]

Regarding abuse of the reporting system, perhaps some kind of compromise can be reached. Some users use reports as a method of interfering with, silencing, and getting retribution upon other users. Of course this makes moderator complicity indistinguishable from them simply doing their job, and it is unreasonable to expect them to keep up with every petty dispute.

My suggestion for a potential mitigation of this problem, is to create a system that notifies the moderator if a single user is reporting a very large amount of posts for a single user. The idea being, that if a user is targeting another user by spamming reports, those reports would start being highlighted from a yellow, to orange, to red scale, making identification of users reporting large amounts of posts from a single user easily identifiable. This at the very least will allow moderators to quickly identify potential abuse of the reporting system and take that into account as part of their judgement call in taking action against a reported post.

I think this would, assuming that in fact there is no moderator complicity in these actions, help them to recognize this kind of abuse, and prevent it, as well as help assuage any accusations of complicity while still maintaining opacity regarding individual moderator actions to the general forum public. Of course I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement, so I have no way of knowing if this would be worth the time to create such a system, but if it is not exceptionally difficult I think it might be a valuable addition for all involved.

[hilariousetc]

Regarding abuse of the reporting system, perhaps some kind of compromise can be reached. Some users use reports as a method of interfering with, silencing, and getting retribution upon other users. Of course this makes moderator complicity indistinguishable from them simply doing their job, and it is unreasonable to expect them to keep up with every petty dispute.

My suggestion for a potential mitigation of this problem, is to create a system that notifies the moderator if a single user is reporting a very large amount of posts for a single user. The idea being, that if a user is targeting another user by spamming reports, those reports would start being highlighted from a yellow, to orange, to red scale, making identification of users reporting large amounts of posts from a single user easily identifiable. This at the very least will allow moderators to quickly identify potential abuse of the reporting system and take that into account as part of their judgement call in taking action against a reported post.

I think this would, assuming that in fact there is no moderator complicity in these actions, help them to recognize this kind of abuse, and prevent it, as well as help assuage any accusations of complicity while still maintaining opacity regarding individual moderator actions to the general forum public. Of course I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement, so I have no way of knowing if this would be worth the time to create such a system, but if it is not exceptionally difficult I think it might be a valuable addition for all involved.

Sounds complex and maybe it would help, but it usually quickly becomes apparent which users have issues with each other as you'll see the same names popping up in the queue. For instance, I tend to avoid reports from certain users or against certain people and especially when they have your name in them or when they're from users who are known to have issues with you. Oftentimes the reports might be accurate or technically against the rules - off topic etc - but it's usually not you who started the subject going off topic and I'm not going to go through all the posts just to try find where things went sour. Of course, another mod may see the report and then act on it and just remove your posts and I can see why that would leave you feeling like there's biases going on. Personally, I don't find slight deviations in topics that much of a big deal as that's naturally going to happen but when entire threads are derailed and overtaken by personal beefs that's when things become a problem.

[TECSHARE]

Sounds complex and maybe it would help, but it usually quickly becomes apparent which users have issues with each other as you'll see the same names popping up in the queue. For instance, I tend to avoid reports from certain users or against certain people and especially when they have your name in them or when they're from users who are known to have issues with you. Oftentimes the reports might be accurate or technically against the rules - off topic etc - but it's usually not you who started the subject going off topic and I'm not going to go through all the posts just to try find where things went sour. Of course, another mod may see the report and then act on it and just remove your posts and I can see why that would leave you feeling like there's biases going on. Personally, I don't find slight deviations in topics that much of a big deal as that's naturally going to happen but when entire threads are derailed and overtaken by personal beefs that's when things become a problem.

I am aware that this may be the source of some or all of the confusion. As moderation duties often overlap, some moderators may be less aware of these dynamics than you are, which is why I made this suggestion to make it a simple task to quickly identify this activity for all of the moderators regardless of how familiar they are with the most recent spats or the tendency of people spamming reports about a particular user.

I mostly take issue with the fact that, as you stated, some moderators will simply remove the posts not taking all the things into account you have mentioned. This defacto creates a passive state of selective enforcement, intended or not, just by virtue of the fact that the reports themselves are targeted. The people spamming reports know the mods have a lot of reports to get through, and statistically if they spam enough reports, a portion of them will get removed. This is why I suggested this, or perhaps maybe a similar system, that has some kind of built in feedback to make it clear to moderators when this kind of activity is occurring.

[UserU]

This is incorrect. Staff do not have an option to do that. The only way you'd be missing posts without a notification is if an entire thread was trashed that you had posted in and they're usually only removed when they're a generic spam thread or something like that.

Understood, thanks for clarifying.

[Timelord2067]

Do mods actually have the power to deprive the user of the usual notification by PM?

Yes.

ON another SMF forum there is a post:



As a global moderator I click delete and get this dialogue box:



I click ok, and the message is gone.

No advice to the user.


Which is why I know the moderators are making bold face lies about what they can and can't do here.  It only takes minutes to set up an SMF forum on a website (and it's free!) - give it a go and see what you can and can't do Vs what you are told can and can't be done on an SMF based forum.

[TryNinja]

Which is why I know the moderators are making bold face lies about what they can and can't do here.

Did you stop to think that this message was added by theymos and that he made it so that every time you delete a post, a notification is obligatorily sent to the user? And if this is hardcoded (function deletePost() { delete(); sendDeleteNotificationPM() }) there is no way a mod can "bypass" it? And maybe the fact that you can delete a post in your SMF forum without a warning is because this is not a pre-existent feature?

No match to this kind of message on SMF: https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1/search?q=A+reply+of+yours&unscoped_q=A+reply+of+yours

It only takes minutes to set up an SMF forum on a website (and it's free!) - give it a go and see what you can and can't do Vs what you are told can and can't be done on an SMF based forum.

BitcoinTalk SMF code is heavily modified. It's not like theymos can't add his own features or edit pre-existent ones.

[hilariousetc]

Do mods actually have the power to deprive the user of the usual notification by PM?

Yes.

ON another SMF forum there is a post:



As a global moderator I click delete and get this dialogue box:



I click ok, and the message is gone.

No advice to the user.


Which is why I know the moderators are making bold face lies about what they can and can't do here.  It only takes minutes to set up an SMF forum on a website (and it's free!) - give it a go and see what you can and can't do Vs what you are told can and can't be done on an SMF based forum.

So where exactly is the deprive this user of notification box or button? The only person that is lying here is you. You're spreading misinformation about something you know nothing about. Again, you really don't know how this forum works. Stop being paranoid and stop spreading false information. Do you really think I'm going to publicly post a 'bold faced lie' when theymos or any other mod could contradict me or prove otherwise? To reiterate a fact: staff here cannot choose to deprive a user of a notification of a deleted post. Whether you can on any other version of the software or on any other fourms is irrelevant.

[Halab]

Do mods actually have the power to deprive the user of the usual notification by PM?

Yes.

No.

ON another SMF forum there is a post:

As a global moderator I click delete and get this dialogue box:

I click ok, and the message is gone.

It's absolutely the same here.
[edit] and a message is automatically sent to the user of the deleted post.[/edit]

No advice to the user.

Mods do not have the option to disable notifications that a post has been deleted.
Hilarious has already given the case where you will not receive a notification for a deleted post.

[Timelord2067]

If you say so. 

[wwzsocki]

...If you believe a post has been removed incorrectly or they're being removed often without reason and suspect a mod is abusing his power or attacking a person then create a thread about it or contact theymos. If mods were abusing their power and repeatedly removing posts for incorrect reasons it would be instantly apparent...

So, there is no other way and I would have to open a new special thread to know why my posts were deleted?

I don't know if mod in the mining section is abusing his power or even if it was a moderator from this board who deleted my posts and that is the biggest problem.

It is clear that somebody removes posts from this section and many times is very hard or even impossible to find a reason for this, additionally, it happens frequently as other members stated in this thread. The mining board looks pretty bad in terms of discussion frequency, new posts, and threads, so such behavior is at least strange in my opinion.

[hilariousetc]

...If you believe a post has been removed incorrectly or they're being removed often without reason and suspect a mod is abusing his power or attacking a person then create a thread about it or contact theymos. If mods were abusing their power and repeatedly removing posts for incorrect reasons it would be instantly apparent...

So, there is no other way and I would have to open a new special thread to know why my posts were deleted?

I don't know if mod in the mining section is abusing his power or even if it was a moderator from this board who deleted my posts and that is the biggest problem.

It is clear that somebody removes posts from this section and many times is very hard or even impossible to find a reason for this, additionally, it happens frequently as other members stated in this thread. The mining board looks pretty bad in terms of discussion frequency, new posts, and threads, so such behavior is at least strange in my opinion.

Not unless you ask a mod. If you're confused just said a friendly PM to the sub board mods to see if they can shed some light on it. If you're repeatedly having posts removed that you don't believe should have been then either contact an admin/Global or create thread in Meta with an argument as to why you believe they were removed in error. You can PM as well and I can search the report queue to see if there's any handled reports but if another mod has just removed the post of his own volition then I wouldn't be able to tell. As I've said before, I think the best solution would be for theymos to implement a system where we can choose a reason from a drop down menu and/or give comment in an additional field and that would solve a lot of problems. Sometimes users might make a relevant and on topic post but if it's for instance in a thread that has been necrobumped then all new posts are liable to be removed and this has annoyed a lot of people in the past because they just see their relevant and constructive post get deleted.