popinfresh

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvin 



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It's not really feasible to send a note to everyone on why their posts are removed.

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Some threads get dozens of posts deleted because they've been derailed into all sorts of insulting or heavily political discussion.

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If you can't stand what a particular member is saying on a regular basis then the appropriate response is not to push them into arguments in order to get them banned or declare that what they're saying should warrant a ban, you would put them on your ignore list by clicking their username and blocking their posts so you don't have to read them any more. There is a flag button at the bottom of posts if you feel that a comment is breaking the rules.

First, I believe what they were asking for was simply to be notified that a post was removed not specifically why it was removed. I would concur with this and it could (and should) be done programmatically through the forum software. If a post of mine is removed there should be some indication in my profile with the post that was removed (and grouped by thread). This shouldn't be something you have to manually do and most certainly can be automated.

Secondly, I do not like the heavy handedness of this censorship and think the more appropriate method of handling this would be to provide (and use) better tools to allow readers to shape their experiences themselves rather than selectively removing anything. The fact that you state here that things have been deleted because they included heavily political discussions is disappointing.

Thirdly, I assume that authors have the same tools available to normal users and as such if they find that an individual is consistently responding to their stories with negative personal attacks they should simply ignore the user. Likewise, rather than deleting posts based on what a moderator deems as breaking some set of rules, leave it to the members to decide these issues by making use of the flag as inappropriate button. Work on setting appropriate thresholds to auto hide the posts rather than deleting them. This could be done in much the same way as a post by a user on my ignore list. The post would simply show up as hidden due to being flagged as inappropriate. Obviously things such as threats should be removed and the user banned, however, If I express for example that I think Neil's articles suck you should not delete such a post nor ban my account. Neil should simply add my account to his ignore list just as you would expect us as users to do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marvin 





It's not just once that it happens, there's been commentary on the use of the 'editorial' tag. That discussion doesn't need to go into the thread itself. There's a feedback section on the forum where each issue can be contained in its own thread. Readers in general want to read about the topic of the article since it's how they reach the discussion thread in the first place. Someone clicking on a promotion of some sort clicked it because they're interested in the promotion, a discussion about whether the promotion is legitimate or properly advertised as a promotion is not relevant.



Put yourself in the place of the authors making the articles. You spend time putting together a story, trying to use the research you managed to do from the sources you could get hold of in a timely enough manner so people will be interested in it and then people just dismiss it as click-bait, mislabelled, late or they pick out typos and make some derogatory comments about the author. That commentary doesn't do anything positive for the forum discussions and likely won't prevent it happening again.



The more that people do it, the more other people are encouraged to do the same. If all those meaningless discussions were removed, you'd lose nothing at all from the conversation. If people have such a fetish for this kind of minutia, there are more appropriate ways to deal with it, use feedback or email directly.



The forum exists in its present form because of the articles the authors post, consider if it was just members making threads and they are supported by the promotions. It's not too much to ask that forum members show them a little respect. After operating the site for 18 years now, I think they've earned that much. Constructive criticism is useful, the guidelines are helping people to understand what is constructive and what is destructive.

What this says to me is that many of the authors at AI have had their feelings hurt because some people didn't like their work. As authors writing to a public forum you should expect that there will always be people who will offer more than constructive criticism. You should also expect that the issue with Neil about "breaking news" (that obviously prompted this post) will occur. I would argue that incident would fall in the realm of constructive criticism. In my opinion that could have been handled by Neil in a much better way similarly to how he did at the start of this tread. Simply explaining why you chose to label the story as breaking, and then agree to disagree upon the second followup about it and stop responding. Instead of doing this Neil continued to "feed the troll" debating his editorial decision. Lastly on this incident, if you look back to the stories that day, AppleInsider posted three stories that were all relatively the same, and all were regarding some iteration of "Apple eating Intel's lunch". Not only was this a tad excessive, it also demonstrated to me that maybe AppleInsider could stand to be a little more introspective about their organizational efficiency (something like the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing).

Again, I would much prefer to see improved forum tools that give both the authors and readers better control in filtering out things they do not wish to see. This would include the ability for a reader to, for example, block content from a specific author. Another example of these tools that could stand to be improved is the ignore list. Currently if I place a user on my ignore list, it hides their posts and labels the post as from a user on my ignore list (this would be the preferred method of what I described above). If this post gets quoted by another user, however, it does not get hidden like I would expect it to be. The quote system should display in the same way the original post does by showing that the quote is from a user on my ignore list rather than displaying the quoted post.

In summary, I don't need you to protect me from some childish member who resorts to name calling; and neither should the AppleInsider staff. Provide the tools to manage our experience and let the community handle themselves.

-PopinFRESH