www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D - On Forum Moderation

reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
 From the time I first visited the D newsgroups in 2003 until now, 
it has always been an open forum. Heated discussions have always 
popped up from time to time, but rarely has there been the need 
to ban anyone. Since I joined the moderation team, I've been 
following the loose policy that Walter has always espoused, which 
is something along the lines of "maintain professional decorum".

Granted, certain posts can really stretch the boundaries of 
"professional decorum", but I think that's perfectly fine. We're 
all adults here and should be able to handle verbal barbs now and 
again. Where the moderators draw the line is when the verbal 
jousting turns nasty. We have deleted posts in such cases, but 
again, that's quite rare.

In my own opinion, what we should not start doing is banning 
people simply for expressing displeasure with the language or 
disagreement with its leadership. Yes, I understand that there 
are a handful of people who seem to do nothing but spread 
negativity and be contrarian. I disagree with almost everything 
those guys post. But that *is not* a bannable offense, nor should 
it be.

I also don't want to be deleting negative posts just because 
they're negative. Then we get into the business of deleting 
replies that quote them, and maybe even losing some actual useful 
signal in all the noise.

If such posts bother you, then simply ignore them. Don't reply. 
Even better, don't read any posts by that person at all. D is not 
a religion and there's no need to get upset or take it personally 
when someone comes here and says negative things about it. Just 
keep on doing what you do and forget about it. We as a community 
are not going to suffer from negative forum posts unless we allow 
ourselves to suffer. And no, it's not going to hurt us in the 
world at large. We've suffered worse on reddit.

If you do feel the need to reply to specific criticisms, make 
sure you are in a proper state of mind before putting fingers to 
keyboard so that you can keep it focused on the criticisms and 
not take it personal.

That said, it would be nice to have a means to lock a thread that 
has become unproductive (I would have locked the feedback thread 
by now). But we don't have that and we aren't going to as long as 
we are backed by a newsgroup.
Oct 19 2019
next sibling parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:


 I also don't want to be deleting negative posts just because 
 they're negative. Then we get into the business of deleting 
 replies that quote them, and maybe even losing some actual 
 useful signal in all the noise.


For the record, I just deleted three posts, from three different 
users, near the end of the feedback thread that were nothing but 
mudslinging. I'm not going to crawl back through the rest of the 
thread to delete more. But henceforth, since I can't lock the 
thread, any posts that are simply about throwing insults will get 
the ax.
Oct 19 2019
parent divi <a b5.re> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 13:12:38 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 For the record, I just deleted three posts, from three 
 different users, near the end of the feedback thread that were 
 nothing but mudslinging. I'm not going to crawl back through 
 the rest of the thread to delete more. But henceforth, since I 
 can't lock the thread, any posts that are simply about throwing 
 insults will get the ax.


For what it’s worth this was genuinely noticeable and much 
welcomed.
Oct 20 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 From the time I first visited the D newsgroups in 2003 until 
 now, it has always been an open forum. Heated discussions have 
 always popped up from time to time, but rarely has there been 
 the need to ban anyone. Since I joined the moderation team, 
 I've been following the loose policy that Walter has always 
 espoused, which is something along the lines of "maintain 
 professional decorum".

 [...]


Thanks for this statement. Seriously, this is a sound and liberal 
point of view and I appreciate it.
Oct 19 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent reply FeepingCreature <feepingcreature gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 From the time I first visited the D newsgroups in 2003 until 
 now, it has always been an open forum. Heated discussions have 
 always popped up from time to time, but rarely has there been 
 the need to ban anyone. Since I joined the moderation team, 
 I've been following the loose policy that Walter has always 
 espoused, which is something along the lines of "maintain 
 professional decorum".

 Granted, certain posts can really stretch the boundaries of 
 "professional decorum", but I think that's perfectly fine. 
 We're all adults here and should be able to handle verbal barbs 
 now and again. Where the moderators draw the line is when the 
 verbal jousting turns nasty. We have deleted posts in such 
 cases, but again, that's quite rare.

 In my own opinion, what we should not start doing is banning 
 people simply for expressing displeasure with the language or 
 disagreement with its leadership. Yes, I understand that there 
 are a handful of people who seem to do nothing but spread 
 negativity and be contrarian. I disagree with almost everything 
 those guys post. But that *is not* a bannable offense, nor 
 should it be.

 I also don't want to be deleting negative posts just because 
 they're negative. Then we get into the business of deleting 
 replies that quote them, and maybe even losing some actual 
 useful signal in all the noise.

 If such posts bother you, then simply ignore them. Don't reply. 
 Even better, don't read any posts by that person at all. D is 
 not a religion and there's no need to get upset or take it 
 personally when someone comes here and says negative things 
 about it. Just keep on doing what you do and forget about it. 
 We as a community are not going to suffer from negative forum 
 posts unless we allow ourselves to suffer. And no, it's not 
 going to hurt us in the world at large. We've suffered worse on 
 reddit.

 If you do feel the need to reply to specific criticisms, make 
 sure you are in a proper state of mind before putting fingers 
 to keyboard so that you can keep it focused on the criticisms 
 and not take it personal.

 That said, it would be nice to have a means to lock a thread 
 that has become unproductive (I would have locked the feedback 
 thread by now). But we don't have that and we aren't going to 
 as long as we are backed by a newsgroup.


A relevant blogpost from a different forum: Well-Kept Gardens Die 
By Pacifism.

https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism


 Some­where in the vast­ness of the In­ter­net, it is 
 hap­pen­ing even now. It was once a well-kept gar­den of 
 in­tel­li­gent dis­cus­sion, where knowl­edge­able and 
 in­ter­ested folk came, at­tracted by the high qual­ity of 
 speech they saw on­go­ing. But into this gar­den comes a fool, 
 and the level of dis­cus­sion drops a lit­tle—or more than a 
 lit­tle, if the fool is very pro­lific in their post­ing. (It 
 is worse if the fool is just ar­tic­u­late enough that the 
 former in­hab­itants of the gar­den feel obliged to re­spond, 
 and cor­rect mis­ap­pre­hen­sions—for then the fool dom­i­nates 
 con­ver­sa­tions.)



 So the gar­den is tainted now, and it is less fun to play in; 
 the old in­hab­itants, already in­vested there, will stay, but 
 they are that much less likely to at­tract new blood. Or if 
 there are new mem­bers, their qual­ity also has gone down.



 Then an­other fool joins...


And yes, better moderation tools would probably help a lot. I 
think mods here should in general be more willing to shut down 
threads or avenues or discussion that are going nowhere. It 
doesn't have to be an outright ban, often interrupting the 
vicious circle of posts and responses would already solve the 
issue.
Oct 19 2019
next sibling parent reply Aliak <something something.com> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 14:49:21 UTC, FeepingCreature 
wrote:

 On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 [...]


 A relevant blogpost from a different forum: Well-Kept Gardens 
 Die By Pacifism.

 https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism


 [...]



 [...]



 [...]


 And yes, better moderation tools would probably help a lot. I 
 think mods here should in general be more willing to shut down 
 threads or avenues or discussion that are going nowhere. It 
 doesn't have to be an outright ban, often interrupting the 
 vicious circle of posts and responses would already solve the 
 issue.


Hasn’t modern forum software largely solver problems like this 
with voting, karma, etc? What kind of tools are available for 
mailing lists other than banning users? (Even deleting messages 
can’t be done once they’re in me inbox)
Oct 19 2019
parent Jesse Phillips <Jesse.K.Phillips+D gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 15:28:46 UTC, Aliak wrote:


 Hasn’t modern forum software largely solver problems like this 
 with voting, karma, etc? What kind of tools are available for 
 mailing lists other than banning users? (Even deleting messages 
 can’t be done once they’re in me inbox)


I don't think the voting system is good for moderation. I started 
on reddit voting up and down every front page post because I 
wanted it to know my interests. I was not intending to dictate 
the quality, disagreement, or even agreement. There is a report 
button for addressing actual problematic posts.

There is however a difference between organized discussions and 
censorship.

I actually find the post constantly diving into meta discussions 
about form moderation, lack there of, or the arguments about 
being talked to rudely or not: to be the most distracting. It is 
not that the discussion is happening, but because it is happening 
in lou of making an actual rebuttal.

Someone apologized to me for their "potty mouth" as they thought 
I might take issue, my response was "only if it gets in the way 
of communication."
Oct 19 2019
prev sibling parent Guillaume Piolat <first.last gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 14:49:21 UTC, FeepingCreature 
wrote:

 A relevant blogpost from a different forum: Well-Kept Gardens 
 Die By Pacifism.

 https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism


This article describes accurately the situation we are in, and 
how better things could be if using some kind of classical 
solution. I wish the problem was taken seriously: this is a 
scaling problem.

I have seen one phpBB forum killed by my own refusal to ban one 
abusive user - it was a friend - experienced people were telling 
me to ban him. That user would jump at every newcomer in the most 
odd way, and very quickly this friendly online community dwindled.

We have a thriving D Discord because the moderation team won't 
tolerate abusive behaviour. The ToS is to follow... the Discord 
ToS. And people do not hesitate before interacting there, as it's 
safe.

I think we have a lot to win there.
Oct 19 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent IGotD- <nise nise.com> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 From the time I first visited the D newsgroups in 2003 until 
 now, it has always been an open forum. Heated discussions have 
 always popped up from time to time, but rarely has there been 
 the need to ban anyone. Since I joined the moderation team, 
 I've been following the loose policy that Walter has always 
 espoused, which is something along the lines of "maintain 
 professional decorum".

 Granted, certain posts can really stretch the boundaries of 
 "professional decorum", but I think that's perfectly fine. 
 We're all adults here and should be able to handle verbal barbs 
 now and again. Where the moderators draw the line is when the 
 verbal jousting turns nasty. We have deleted posts in such 
 cases, but again, that's quite rare.

 In my own opinion, what we should not start doing is banning 
 people simply for expressing displeasure with the language or 
 disagreement with its leadership. Yes, I understand that there 
 are a handful of people who seem to do nothing but spread 
 negativity and be contrarian. I disagree with almost everything 
 those guys post. But that *is not* a bannable offense, nor 
 should it be.

 I also don't want to be deleting negative posts just because 
 they're negative. Then we get into the business of deleting 
 replies that quote them, and maybe even losing some actual 
 useful signal in all the noise.

 If such posts bother you, then simply ignore them. Don't reply. 
 Even better, don't read any posts by that person at all. D is 
 not a religion and there's no need to get upset or take it 
 personally when someone comes here and says negative things 
 about it. Just keep on doing what you do and forget about it. 
 We as a community are not going to suffer from negative forum 
 posts unless we allow ourselves to suffer. And no, it's not 
 going to hurt us in the world at large. We've suffered worse on 
 reddit.

 If you do feel the need to reply to specific criticisms, make 
 sure you are in a proper state of mind before putting fingers 
 to keyboard so that you can keep it focused on the criticisms 
 and not take it personal.

 That said, it would be nice to have a means to lock a thread 
 that has become unproductive (I would have locked the feedback 
 thread by now). But we don't have that and we aren't going to 
 as long as we are backed by a newsgroup.


The best forums on the net seems to moderate the topic not the 
conduct so much unless it is outright illegal. However, in order 
to keep thread topics on topic I think there must be moderation 
of the topic so that the threads don't derail. I think that the D 
forum should try a similar approach. Moderators should also have 
the "break out thread" option, creating a new thread for someone 
who went OT but still has a interesting post.

If someone want to express the general hate for D for some 
reason, then they must create a thread for this and not infest an 
existing thread about some other technical issue. Some people 
have opinions about leadership and which direction D should take, 
they should be allowed to express their opinion but in a thread 
dedicated for that topic in particular.

I don't want a "sterile" forum, I can take a punch. People who 
can objectively argument in the subject are the winners and the 
ones who behave badly just degrade themselves anyway.
Oct 19 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent Andre Pany <andre s-e-a-p.de> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 From the time I first visited the D newsgroups in 2003 until 
 now, it has always been an open forum. Heated discussions have 
 always popped up from time to time, but rarely has there been 
 the need to ban anyone. Since I joined the moderation team, 
 I've been following the loose policy that Walter has always 
 espoused, which is something along the lines of "maintain 
 professional decorum".

 [...]


We can't lock it for the mailing list or nttp access but we can 
implement some small functionality to lock it from the web access 
and that should already solve the problem.

But I am convinced we need not only a modern forum software but a 
community software if we want to build a big, great and healthy 
community.

Kind regards
Andre
Oct 19 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent reply matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 ...


We shouldn't have a rule in this Sub-Group like most of content 
should be technical and on the subject?

Or at least have different groups for Technical and other things 
(Like Off-Topic).

Personally I hate drama in technical forums because it's just a 
waste of time.

Matheus.
Oct 19 2019
parent reply NaN <divide by.zero> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 17:17:40 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 ...


 We shouldn't have a rule in this Sub-Group like most of content 
 should be technical and on the subject?

 Or at least have different groups for Technical and other 
 things (Like Off-Topic).

 Personally I hate drama in technical forums because it's just a 
 waste of time.

 Matheus.


Just have an off-topic unmoderated forum, move all the shite over 
there, drift off topic, flogging a dead horse, or tiptoeing over 
the lines of decency (Who hoo thats me!) move it over there.
Oct 19 2019
parent rikki cattermole <rikki cattermole.co.nz> writes:
On 20/10/2019 11:52 AM, NaN wrote:

 On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 17:17:40 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 ...


 We shouldn't have a rule in this Sub-Group like most of content should 
 be technical and on the subject?

 Or at least have different groups for Technical and other things (Like 
 Off-Topic).

 Personally I hate drama in technical forums because it's just a waste 
 of time.

 Matheus.


 
 Just have an off-topic unmoderated forum, move all the shite over there, 
 drift off topic, flogging a dead horse, or tiptoeing over the lines of 
 decency (Who hoo thats me!) move it over there.


You can't move it on a NewsGroup.
It will exist partially in both places.
Oct 19 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:
On 19.10.19 14:59, Mike Parker wrote:

 
 If such posts bother you, then simply ignore them. Don't reply. Even 
 better, don't read any posts by that person at all.


Messages by some posters pretty reliably have contents that are 
significantly less valuable than the screen space the posts take up in 
the threaded view. My client is already set up to delete messages 
written by certain people. Maybe this feature could be added to the web 
forums.
Oct 19 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:


 If such posts bother you, then simply ignore them. Don't reply. 
 Even better, don't read any posts by that person at all.


That doesn't really solve the problem. Those posts are off topic. 
Going back a few years, when we had the announcement about 
Facebook using D, some joker decided to post a laundry list of 
problems with D, most of which was false. It was a post that 
contributed nothing to the discussion and had nothing to do with 
the announcement. I've never replied to threads here to talk 
about my son's soccer games or the outcome of a visit to the 
doctor's office. The worst offenders are likely cutting and 
pasting from posts they made three years ago, because it's the 
same tired stuff every time. Any forum with meaningful traffic 
has rules about off-topic posts.


 And no, it's not going to hurt us in the world at large. We've 
 suffered worse on reddit.


I find that hard to believe. If I was going to build a business 
around a language and the only official forum had stuff like that 
on thread after thread, I'd look elsewhere. I've never seen it 
with another language.
Oct 20 2019
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/20/2019 2:03 PM, bachmeier wrote:

 I find that hard to believe. If I was going to build a business around a 
 language and the only official forum had stuff like that on thread after
thread, 
 I'd look elsewhere. I've never seen it with another language.


I did step in on the Feedback thread and removed about 30 posts of back and 
forth bickering of no discernible value.

If things like this go off the rails in the future, an email to Mike Parker or 
myself can let us know that we need to step in.

Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your buttons. It 
never ends well. I have a lot of experience in that direction, all of it
negative.
Oct 21 2019
parent reply welkam <wwwelkam gmail.com> writes:
On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push 
 your buttons.


And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing 
their code so they would not get buffer overflows.
Oct 21 2019
next sibling parent Mark Rousell <mark.rousell signal100.com> writes:
On 21/10/2019 22:45, welkam via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your
 buttons.


 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing their
 code so they would not get buffer overflows.


The best advice is often difficult to do in practice. ;-)

But it's still good advice.



-- 
Mark Rousell
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.com> writes:
On 10/21/19 5:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your buttons.


 
 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing their 
 code so they would not get buffer overflows.


Nice simile. I agree there's plenty of evidence ever since the Internet 
has been invented that just giving people advice to not feed the trolls 
doesn't work.
Oct 22 2019
next sibling parent "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 09:41:58AM -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d
wrote:

 On 10/21/19 5:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your
 buttons.


 
 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing
 their code so they would not get buffer overflows.


 
 Nice simile. I agree there's plenty of evidence ever since the
 Internet has been invented that just giving people advice to not feed
 the trolls doesn't work.


Yes, they need to start using D instead of C. :-D  I.e., they need to
use a framework where by default "buffer overflows" don't happen.


T

-- 
Those who don't understand D are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. -- Daniel N
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling parent welkam <wwwelkam gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 13:41:58 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 On 10/21/19 5:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when 
 writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.


 Nice simile. I agree there's plenty of evidence ever since the 
 Internet has been invented that just giving people advice to 
 not feed the trolls doesn't work.


I added new word to my vocabulary that I would not use in the 
future :D

It doesnt work not only for not feeding the trolls. It applies to 
pretty much everything where humans are involved. For programmers 
you can carefully check your code, write tests, have other person 
review your code and still bugs get trough. We humans are flawed 
and fail constantly and our systems need to take that into 
account. If you create a system where success is solely dependent 
on good will of the people or them being excellent it will fail.

That is the biggest reason why communism always produces bad 
results. While they correctly identify problems with capitalism 
their solution to the problems depends on people being smart and 
when making decisions they should prioritize betterment of all 
instead of personal or family gains. In practice people make 
decisions that benefit them and their family.

A good example of system that takes human flaws into account is 
science. Scientist fights constantly with bias and have many 
systems to help with that and they regularly produce awesome 
stuff.
Oct 23 2019
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push your buttons.


 
 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when writing their code so 
 they would not get buffer overflows.


Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. The analogy isn't
apt.

Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to trolls doesn't work. 
This is where experience comes in - it takes a few years for youthful
enthusiasm 
"this time it will be different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion
by 
experience.
Oct 22 2019
next sibling parent reply bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push 
 your buttons.


 
 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when 
 writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.


 Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. 
 The analogy isn't apt.

 Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to 
 trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it 
 takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will be 
 different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by 
 experience.


I'll repeat that ignoring trolls doesn't solve the problem. If 
someone says in 40 different threads that they don't use D 
because of the D1/D2 split, and nobody responds to say "that's 
BS" then thousands of people that don't know D will come across 
those posts, assume it's true, and move on to a different 
language. Or worse, they'll see one troll talking about D's 
compiler bugs and another troll talking about D being a dead 
language and another troll talking about something else. Nuke 
those posts and the problem is solved.
Oct 22 2019
parent reply Jonathan Marler <johnnymarler gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:44:22 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push 
 your buttons.


 
 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when 
 writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.


 Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. 
 The analogy isn't apt.

 Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to 
 trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it 
 takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will 
 be different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by 
 experience.


 I'll repeat that ignoring trolls doesn't solve the problem. If 
 someone says in 40 different threads that they don't use D 
 because of the D1/D2 split, and nobody responds to say "that's 
 BS" then thousands of people that don't know D will come across 
 those posts, assume it's true, and move on to a different 
 language. Or worse, they'll see one troll talking about D's 
 compiler bugs and another troll talking about D being a dead 
 language and another troll talking about something else. Nuke 
 those posts and the problem is solved.


How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is 
making valid criticism?  Some people could consider your last 
post as trolling as you're criticizing how D decides to moderate 
its forums.

People should be free to express and discuss their criticism.  I 
think the only time moderators should step in is if the 
discussion devolves into harrasment or something inappropriate.  
It's still not easy to define what that is, but the point is that 
deciding to silence or remove people's discussion is a big deal, 
it should be a last resort.

You do bring up a good point that alot of posts/discussion don't 
add anything and can leave a negative impression.  However, 
rather than removing posts of this nature, I would employ a 
rating/ranking system like reddit that moves that stuff to the 
bottom of the thread or minimizes its presence in some way. This 
way the community can decide what they find interesting rather 
than forcing the moderators to take a much more dramatic action.
Oct 22 2019
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:

 How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is making valid 
 criticism?


Great question.

Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable specifics. Even if 
it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, it has that effect. For example:

  Trolling: D is no good.

  Not Trolling: Bugzilla NNNN is blocking me. Does anyone have a workaround?
Oct 22 2019
next sibling parent reply Jonathan Marler <johnnymarler gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:11:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:

 How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is 
 making valid criticism?


 Great question.

 Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable 
 specifics. Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, 
 it has that effect. For example:

  Trolling: D is no good.

  Not Trolling: Bugzilla NNNN is blocking me. Does anyone have a 
 workaround?


Providing actionable feedback is certainly better, but do you 
think moderators should remove non-actionable criticism?  If I 
just said, "I don't like dub", should that be removed?

It also sounds hard to say whether or not something is 
"actionable".  Technically, saying "D is no good" is actionable.  
Making D "better" could be a reaction, though it's very vague.  
So to me it sounds like your saying, vague and general criticism 
should be removed?
Oct 22 2019
next sibling parent reply Greatsam4sure <greatsam4sure gamail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:25:31 UTC, Jonathan Marler 
wrote:

 On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:11:56 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:

 How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone 
 is making valid criticism?


 Great question.

 Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable 
 specifics. Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the 
 writer, it has that effect. For example:

  Trolling: D is no good.

  Not Trolling: Bugzilla NNNN is blocking me. Does anyone have 
 a workaround?


 Providing actionable feedback is certainly better, but do you 
 think moderators should remove non-actionable criticism?  If I 
 just said, "I don't like dub", should that be removed?

 It also sounds hard to say whether or not something is 
 "actionable".  Technically, saying "D is no good" is 
 actionable.  Making D "better" could be a reaction, though it's 
 very vague.  So to me it sounds like your saying, vague and 
 general criticism should be removed?




I have read on this forum many times why D has fail and will 
never succeed.Such posts is unacceptable at least on the D forum. 
You an do that outside this forum but on this forum is completely 
unacceptable to me.


stack overflow has a voting system. We can add a voting system 
that can help the people in charge of the forum to take decisions.

(1)We can force people to select options when reply to post-such 
as relevant,on topic, out of topic

(2) we can allow people reading the post to also vote by just 
clicking a button.

We need some level of moderation on the forum
Oct 22 2019
parent Jonathan M Davis <newsgroup.d jmdavisprog.com> writes:
On Tuesday, October 22, 2019 3:58:36 PM MDT Greatsam4sure via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:

 stack overflow has a voting system. We can add a voting system
 that can help the people in charge of the forum to take decisions.

 (1)We can force people to select options when reply to post-such
 as relevant,on topic, out of topic

 (2) we can allow people reading the post to also vote by just
 clicking a button.

 We need some level of moderation on the forum


This really isn't a forum. It's a newsgroup which has a web interface as one
of the ways to access it. Many of the posters here either access it directly
as a newsgroup or via the mailing list interface. As such, features that
don't exist for a newsgroup or mailing list don't make sense for the web
interface, and that would include voting.

- Jonathan M Davis
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/22/2019 1:25 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:

 Providing actionable feedback is certainly better, but do you think moderators 
 should remove non-actionable criticism?  If I just said, "I don't like dub", 
 should that be removed?


It's useless information, so yes.


 So to me it sounds like your saying, vague and 
 general criticism should be removed?


Content-free things like that, yes. It's of no value to anyone. I seriously 
doubt anyone would miss such posts.

Criticism is welcome, but it has to be specific.
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling parent Claude <claudemr live.fr> writes:
 Providing actionable feedback is certainly better, but do you 
 think moderators should remove non-actionable criticism?  If I 
 just said, "I don't like dub", should that be removed?


Trolling is always context dependent. We cannot be picky like 
that.

Making strict rules does not necessarily mean that you must apply 
them strictly.

But they are a sort of boundary, a sort of frame.

In fact, when a newcomer comes into the forum, just by reading 
some posts, he should FEEL by himself how people generally 
behave. He does not even have to specifically read the rules. He 
should know, and then he's implicitly incited to behave.

But if he sees that everyone is throwing names at each other, and 
random guys can come in and puke on the language without 
suffering any consequences, then why would he make any efforts?

Of course, people will "play" with rules, cross them etc, and 
it's fine, we're humans. It's at the appreciation and wisdom of 
the moderators.


 It also sounds hard to say whether or not something is 
 "actionable".  Technically, saying "D is no good" is 
 actionable.  Making D "better" could be a reaction, though it's 
 very vague.  So to me it sounds like your saying, vague and 
 general criticism should be removed?


We should not go in that sort picky details. Again, it will be 
left at the appreciation of the moderators.

In all the internet forums I've seen, the only one by far were 
the ambiance was friendly was a latina dance forum (yeah, I know) 
where we were talking A LOT about politics and religions and the 
most polemical subjects we could even find (and "R-value ref" was 
not one of them :) ). And the forum worked and everybody was 
happy because:
- The moderator team was strong and fair.
- The rules were clear: no "ad hominem" etc.
- If someone was crossing the line too many times, he would be 
warned by private messages.
- There were only a few unhappy members that claimed the forum 
was not a democracy and that the Big Chief Moderator was a 
dictator. But everybody liked him and nobody took those guys 
seriously.
Oct 23 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent reply NaN <divide by.zero> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:11:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:

 How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is 
 making valid criticism?


 Great question.

 Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable 
 specifics. Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, 
 it has that effect. For example:

  Trolling: D is no good.


That's only trolling if the person saying it is doing so 
specifically to wind people up. Otherwise it's just regular 
complaining.

Trolling is literally defined by the intent. You cant say the 
intent is irrelevant, it's the whole point of trolling.
Oct 22 2019
next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx> writes:
On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 08:40:52PM +0000, NaN via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:11:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:

 How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is
 making valid criticism?


 Great question.
 
 Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable
 specifics.  Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, it
 has that effect.  For example:
 
  Trolling: D is no good.


 
 That's only trolling if the person saying it is doing so specifically
 to wind people up. Otherwise it's just regular complaining.
 
 Trolling is literally defined by the intent. You cant say the intent
 is irrelevant, it's the whole point of trolling.


I think you missed Walter's point. The crucial operating word here in
Walter's post is "specifics".

No matter how "trollish" a complaint may sound, if it contains a
description of a specific problem, such as "D sucks because when I tried
to import std.zip, it gave me error XYZ!", then action can be taken to
ensure that the same complaint will no longer be valid in the future.
Regardless of how "trollish" the intent behind it may be, such a
complaint is actually useful because it points out actual, specific
problems that can be addressed.

But when a complaint is vague and has no specifics, then no action can
be taken. Saying "D is no good" is non-specific, and inherently
unfixable, because even if you try to make D better in the general
sense, that doesn't mean the author will think that it's better now. He
can continue repeating "D is still no good" forever, and you can never
fix the problem because the problem is non-specific and undefined.

Usually, the reasonable response to a non-specific complaint like "D
sucks" is to ask for more specific details.  But when all efforts to
obtain specific information fails, then it becomes clear beyond any
reasonable doubt that the author is just mud-slinging; he does not
actually have a specific problem in mind but is merely making vague
complaints that can't ever be addressed. The persistent evasion of
specific complaints proves beyond doubt that the intent is to troll, not
to help.


T

-- 
Doubt is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Oct 22 2019
parent NaN <divide by.zero> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 22:16:17 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 08:40:52PM +0000, NaN via Digitalmars-d 
 wrote:

 Trolling is literally defined by the intent. You cant say the 
 intent is irrelevant, it's the whole point of trolling.


 I think you missed Walter's point. The crucial operating word 
 here in Walter's post is "specifics".

 No matter how "trollish" a complaint may sound, if it contains 
 a description of a specific problem, such as "D sucks because 
 when I tried to import std.zip, it gave me error XYZ!", then 
 action can be taken to ensure that the same complaint will no 
 longer be valid in the future. Regardless of how "trollish" the 
 intent behind it may be, such a complaint is actually useful 
 because it points out actual, specific problems that can be 
 addressed.

 But when a complaint is vague and has no specifics, then no 
 action can be taken. Saying "D is no good" is non-specific, and 
 inherently unfixable, because even if you try to make D better 
 in the general sense, that doesn't mean the author will think 
 that it's better now. He can continue repeating "D is still no 
 good" forever, and you can never fix the problem because the 
 problem is non-specific and undefined.

 Usually, the reasonable response to a non-specific complaint 
 like "D sucks" is to ask for more specific details.  But when 
 all efforts to obtain specific information fails, then it 
 becomes clear beyond any reasonable doubt that the author is 
 just mud-slinging; he does not actually have a specific problem 
 in mind but is merely making vague complaints that can't ever 
 be addressed. The persistent evasion of specific complaints 
 proves beyond doubt that the intent is to troll, not to help.


No I got his point. If it's just pointless complaining that 
nobody can do anything about then it's trolling, even if its not 
meant that way the result is the same.

I dont agree, just complaining even pointlessly is not trolling. 
If it keeps going on and on and the poster doesnt want help or 
isnt interested in the issue being addressed in some way then you 
can say they are "probably" trolling. Thats pretty much what you 
say in your last paragraph.

But dont redefine trolling from the wrong end. Trolling may be a 
waste of time, but being a waste of time isnt trolling.

Is I said im my other reply you be better to say..

Drift off topic and your posts may be deleted.
Flogging a dead horse and your posts may be deleted.
Personal insults and your posts may be deleted.

Dont even mention trolling.

But there still needs to be an off topic group imo.
Oct 23 2019
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/22/2019 1:40 PM, NaN wrote:

 That's only trolling if the person saying it is doing so specifically to wind 
 people up. Otherwise it's just regular complaining.
 
 Trolling is literally defined by the intent. You cant say the intent is 
 irrelevant, it's the whole point of trolling.


Whether it's intended or not makes no difference, it's useless and a time
waster 
to every other reader.
Oct 22 2019
parent NaN <divide by.zero> writes:
On Wednesday, 23 October 2019 at 01:12:39 UTC, Walter Bright 
wrote:

 On 10/22/2019 1:40 PM, NaN wrote:

 That's only trolling if the person saying it is doing so 
 specifically to wind people up. Otherwise it's just regular 
 complaining.
 
 Trolling is literally defined by the intent. You cant say the 
 intent is irrelevant, it's the whole point of trolling.


 Whether it's intended or not makes no difference, it's useless 
 and a time waster to every other reader.


It may be useless and time wasting but that does not make it 
trolling. And the question was how do you define trolling. Not 
how do you define usless and time wasting.

Just because all grass is green (not true) doesnt mean everything 
that is green is also grass.

If you want to ban pointless and time wasting, ban that. But dont 
say we're banning trolling and then bend that definition to 
include anything you think is pointless.

In fact if you want rules of conduct you'd be better not 
mentioning trolling at all, just list specific behaviours that 
are proscribed.
Oct 23 2019
prev sibling parent reply Laeeth Isharc <laeeth kaleidic.io> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:11:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 10/22/2019 1:01 PM, Jonathan Marler wrote:

 How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is 
 making valid criticism?


 Great question.

 Trolling is when the criticism lacks any sort of actionable 
 specifics. Even if it isn't intended as trolling by the writer, 
 it has that effect. For example:

  Trolling: D is no good.

  Not Trolling: Bugzilla NNNN is blocking me. Does anyone have a 
 workaround?


Sadly it's quite possible to have the form of a genuine valid 
criticism with plenty of specifics with the intent and effect 
being to troll.

There just no way objectively to determine except by using 
discernment and good judgement and of course that opens up room 
for arguing about it.  Which is why moderation beats censorship.

For example if one were that sort of person one could have had 
endless fun if the rules were as you suggested asking apparently 
sincere questions about the absence of generics in Go on golang 
forums.

Wholesomeness and destructive behaviour, they are contagious both.

It's the asymmetric warfare aspect of things that makes it so 
destructive to the spirit of a community.  It takes no time or 
effort at all to stir things up.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5791909/


Thus, not only can negative mood and the surrounding discussion 
context prompt ordinary users to engage in trolling behavior, but 
such behavior can also spread from person to person in 
discussions and persist across them to spread further in the 
community. Our findings suggest that trolling, like laughter, can 
be contagious, and that ordinary people, given the right 
conditions, can act like trolls. In summary, we:

present an experiment that shows that both negative mood and 
discussion context increases the likelihood of trolling,

validate these findings with a large-scale analysis of a large 
online discussion community, and

use these insights to develop a predictive model that suggests 
that trolling may be more situational than innate.
Oct 22 2019
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/22/2019 5:35 PM, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 There just no way objectively to determine except by using discernment and
good 
 judgement and of course that opens up room for arguing about it.  Which is
why 
 moderation beats censorship.


This is why "codes of conduct" are an exercise in frustration. One can always 
conform to the letter of it and yet still be abusive.

I agree it takes a human moderator, not specific rules, to use judgement to 
remove posts that are unacceptable, and that's the route we'll be taking.
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Laeeth Isharc <laeeth kaleidic.io> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:01:54 UTC, Jonathan Marler 
wrote:

 On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:44:22 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push 
 your buttons.


 
 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when 
 writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.


 Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. 
 The analogy isn't apt.

 Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to 
 trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it 
 takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will 
 be different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by 
 experience.


 I'll repeat that ignoring trolls doesn't solve the problem. If 
 someone says in 40 different threads that they don't use D 
 because of the D1/D2 split, and nobody responds to say "that's 
 BS" then thousands of people that don't know D will come 
 across those posts, assume it's true, and move on to a 
 different language. Or worse, they'll see one troll talking 
 about D's compiler bugs and another troll talking about D 
 being a dead language and another troll talking about 
 something else. Nuke those posts and the problem is solved.


 How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is 
 making valid criticism?  Some people could consider your last 
 post as trolling as you're criticizing how D decides to 
 moderate its forums.

 People should be free to express and discuss their criticism.  
 I think the only time moderators should step in is if the 
 discussion devolves into harrasment or something inappropriate.
  It's still not easy to define what that is, but the point is 
 that deciding to silence or remove people's discussion is a big 
 deal, it should be a last resort.

 You do bring up a good point that alot of posts/discussion 
 don't add anything and can leave a negative impression.  
 However, rather than removing posts of this nature, I would 
 employ a rating/ranking system like reddit that moves that 
 stuff to the bottom of the thread or minimizes its presence in 
 some way. This way the community can decide what they find 
 interesting rather than forcing the moderators to take a much 
 more dramatic action.


Censorship is a slippery slope and at some point in a volunteer 
community someday somebody who turns out to be the wrong person 
might end up being given that job and it could be a while before 
the problem is identified and it's possible to do anything about 
it.  And just the perception of censorship isn't great.

On the other hand if people are trying to have a serious 
conversation then it's easy for it to be sidetracked or worse by 
people with no skin in the game and just like spending time on 
the interwebs arguing with people.

It probably doesn't create the best impression for corporate 
users.  Imagine you're a guy in a tech team at JP Morgan trying 
to persuade your boss to try using D.  And there's some 
announcement of something that should be an occasion to build 
constructive energy and ends up becoming another why D will never 
succeed thread. What sort of impression is your boss going to 
form of things?  Quite a lot of corporate people are quite 
superficial and swayed by social factors, but I suppose they are 
also often the ones with the money to decide.

It's not necessarily bad that people easily deterred find 
superficial reasons to avoid D, at least at this stage.  I told 
someone at dconf you know maybe in some years we will look back 
with nostalgia at the days when people were only involved in D 
because of intrinsic motivation and not in order to build their 
career, and that may end up being right - one of the costs of 
success.

I'm not speaking out of personal or business interests because 
I'm in a different context.

But still, it might be better to have a degree of moderation 
where you only delete messages that violate standards in an 
extreme way and simply move messages that are off thread or forum 
topic to a general chit chat forum.  Then nobody can seriously 
complain about censorship and visitors won't be too put off by 
the first impressions.

I don't know how much work it would be, but it might be best to 
start by not being excessively reasonable or realistic when 
considering choices and then when you know what they are to see 
how they might be made realistic.

So maybe one could consider having a paid community support or 
development person with part of their job being forum moderation 
but other duties being to build community in other ways and maybe 
do outreach to companies and other communities that might benefit 
from D but haven't heard of it.

Just make sure their values are aligned with those of the 
community.

It's really the web interface that creates the public impression 
for outsiders so even if all you did was change the web view that 
would be a lot.  If I remember correctly you can cancel newsgroup 
postings so I presume you could move messages to a chit chat 
forum.

Smart people might say a lot of things but it's hard for most 
outsiders to know who someone is and what credibility they might 
have if you don't have the context.  So if you could easily see 
oh Jonathan Davis wrote std.datetime when reading a message by 
him, or Adam Ruppe wrote the D cookbook, and is author of a 
popular library that might help people navigate conversations.

Having verified accounts might be one way to combat the 
occasional sock puppet type episodes.  I mean for people who have 
contributed something valuable in some way.

There are occasions when I wonder if some frequent 
controversialists write D at all.  Nothing wrong with posting 
here in a chit chat section, but if somebody is not even 
pretending to try to be constructive and they have never 
contributed code, talks, documentation,or resources then is it 
actually sensible to make it easy for them to lower the tone of 
the conversation?

It would be kind of interesting to see a little icon by someone's 
name saying average sentiment score.  Of course false positives - 
Manu complaining quite rightly about Windows support again (a 
false positive because in his case that would be dissatisfaction 
en route to fixing things!)

The cryptocurrency communities have had to deal with much tougher 
challenges than us, and I wonder if Amaury might have any 
insights.
Oct 22 2019
next sibling parent jmh530 <john.michael.hall gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 23 October 2019 at 00:24:03 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
wrote:

 [snip]

 It's really the web interface that creates the public 
 impression for outsiders so even if all you did was change the 
 web view that would be a lot.


Agreed.


 [snip]
 Having verified accounts might be one way to combat the 
 occasional sock puppet type episodes.  I mean for people who 
 have contributed something valuable in some way.


+1
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 10/22/2019 5:24 PM, Laeeth Isharc wrote:

 There are occasions when I wonder if some frequent controversialists write D
at 
 all.


They're usually betrayed by the lack of specificity in their complaints, which 
is why I thought I'd put some focus on that.
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling parent Paolo Invernizzi <paolo.invernizzi gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 23 October 2019 at 00:24:03 UTC, Laeeth Isharc 
wrote:


 It probably doesn't create the best impression for corporate 
 users.  Imagine you're a guy in a tech team at JP Morgan trying 
 to persuade your boss to try using D.  And there's some 
 announcement of something that should be an occasion to build 
 constructive energy and ends up becoming another why D will 
 never succeed thread. What sort of impression is your boss 
 going to form of things?  Quite a lot of corporate people are 
 quite superficial and swayed by social factors, but I suppose 
 they are also often the ones with the money to decide.


I'm not using Slack, right now it gives the impression of being 
'semi-official', as it's not mentioned neither in the Community 
menu of the site, but I was told that discussions are productive 
and positive over there.
Maybe, it's because it's 'semi official', so, what about keeping 
it 'invite only', but provide a read-only view of the best 
channels? For sure it's a net increment of positivity.

I've also suggested to improve periodic reports around the status 
of specific work topics: something like the ones provided for 
SAOC, see the FreeBSD periodic status reports [1] provided by 
workgroups. Yes dub, I'm looking at you!

As a final point, I also suggested some days ago to add some 
features, like locking a thread, to the forum interface only.

[1] https://www.freebsd.org/news/status

/P
Oct 23 2019
prev sibling parent bachmeier <no spam.net> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 20:01:54 UTC, Jonathan Marler 
wrote:

 On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:44:22 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push 
 your buttons.


 
 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when 
 writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.


 Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. 
 The analogy isn't apt.

 Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to 
 trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it 
 takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will 
 be different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by 
 experience.


 I'll repeat that ignoring trolls doesn't solve the problem. If 
 someone says in 40 different threads that they don't use D 
 because of the D1/D2 split, and nobody responds to say "that's 
 BS" then thousands of people that don't know D will come 
 across those posts, assume it's true, and move on to a 
 different language. Or worse, they'll see one troll talking 
 about D's compiler bugs and another troll talking about D 
 being a dead language and another troll talking about 
 something else. Nuke those posts and the problem is solved.


 How do you decide when someone is trolling and when someone is 
 making valid criticism?  Some people could consider your last 
 post as trolling as you're criticizing how D decides to 
 moderate its forums.


My standard (that I provided in my earlier post in this thread) 
is to get rid of off-topic posts. The person that led to this 
discussion will post lengthy commentary about how D won't succeed 
because of [fill in one of many complaints] in a thread on almost 
any topic. It's impossible to know why he posts that stuff, but 
it sure seems to be a desire to vandalize discussions so that 
outsiders will stay away from the language. That's off-topic. 
Nobody else should have to read it or respond to it, and nobody 
should see it when Google brings them here. There's no right to 
derail conversations.
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent NaN <divide by.zero> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 10/21/2019 2:45 PM, welkam wrote:

 On Monday, 21 October 2019 at 07:16:16 UTC, Walter Bright 
 wrote:

 Mike's advice is still good. Don't reply to people who push 
 your buttons.


 
 And all the C programmer need to pay more attention when 
 writing their code so they would not get buffer overflows.


 Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. 
 The analogy isn't apt.


You miss the point : In both cases the advice is more "self 
control", which only gets you so far.



 Nevertheless, I do know that asking people to not reply to 
 trolls doesn't work. This is where experience comes in - it 
 takes a few years for youthful enthusiasm "this time it will be 
 different" to reply to be battered into bitter oblivion by 
 experience.


When the only people left in this newsgroup are old graybeards 
then the trolls will probably be fighting over thin pickings.
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling parent welkam <wwwelkam gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 19:11:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 Buffer overflows are unintentional. Replies are intentional. 
 The analogy isn't apt.


I dont agree that its useful or correct way of looking at this. 
If you could ask people before they go on this forum whether they 
want to post the things they do in response to some messages they 
would say no but they post it anyway and regret afterwards. I 
would not label that kind of behavior as intentional.

Some emotions are really good at making/forcing us to engage with 
a content. Anger is the best one at it. This should explain to 
you why some things get viral on twitter or why media wont stop 
talking about Trump. Any way in a forum the size of this a 
message that successfully triggers anger emotion to the reader 
are guaranteed to receive a response.

If you still think that there is a choice involved here think 
about click bait. Its universally disliked and still keeps 
working.
Oct 23 2019
prev sibling parent Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
On Sunday, 20 October 2019 at 21:03:52 UTC, bachmeier wrote:

 I find that hard to believe. If I was going to build a business 
 around a language and the only official forum had stuff like 
 that on thread after thread, I'd look elsewhere. I've never 
 seen it with another language.


It is a discussion forum, and any discussion is inherently 
competitive and tiresome, you can't ban that. An easy solution is 
to reduce your consumption of social media and your mental health 
will improve.
Oct 23 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Claude <claudemr live.fr> writes:
Hello,

I also think forum moderation is too relaxed (though I wouldn't 
have said that 6 years ago).

I do not think it's pacifism that kills forums/newsgroup, but 
what I would rather call chaos or anarchy, so in other words, the 
lack of rules and lack of rule enforcement.

The D community gathers very skilled people. It's a thrilling 
experience to be part of that.

But it's sad to see every now and then threads like "Why D is 
dead" or "20 things D needs to be great", etc. It's sad because:
1- It's usually negative non-constructive criticism. It's often 
poorly formulated. It usually raises problems that have already 
been discussed.
2- It gives the impression that anyone can come up with its 
desiderata, and dump it on the forum expecting to be taken 
seriously.
3- Worse than that, it wastes the valuable time of some more 
experienced good-willed members who take the time to reply to 
that.

We can get more accurate and serious feedback via polls or some 
statistics.

Well yes, we are all adults, but there is a great difference 
between a 25-year old impatient guy who just came out of school 
and knows nothing about the industry (and it's not his fault, 
obviously) and a 60-year old dude who has hundreds of thousands 
of line of code behind him.

To say it bluntly, I find some guys show very little respect to D 
leadership (or other members) work. And, as we cannot change 
people (or judge them, in some philosophical sense), the D 
leadership should strengthen the moderation. It might be 
counter-intuitive, but to preserve peace, I reckon it's better to 
have clear rules (even if too much restrictive), at least 
everyone knows where are the boundaries, than no rules at all 
(which in fact is always the untold rules of the strongest within 
a false liberal paradise).

So I think D forums need better tools to do moderation:
- Allow to move threads.
- Kick/ban users.
- Have a visible pinned thread containing all the rules 
(netiquette etc) so it is obvious what is OK and what is not.
- And a "bad cop" moderator who will have to take on himself the 
mundane task of enforcing the rules and likely being detested for 
that (but that's part of the job, you have to be wise, fair and 
have some sense of irony).

Claude
Oct 22 2019
parent GreatSam4sure <greatsam4sure gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 22 October 2019 at 10:02:35 UTC, Claude wrote:

 Hello,

 I also think forum moderation is too relaxed (though I wouldn't 
 have said that 6 years ago).

 [...]



The forum must be moderated. It is affecting D in a negative way. 
The leadership must take a drastic step to do it.

A thread must stay focus on a matter.
Oct 22 2019
prev sibling next sibling parent reply welkam <wwwelkam gmail.com> writes:
Please dont use the term troll here. Its poorly defined, can mean 
different things to different people and depends on intent of the 
poster. We should not care about intent when moderating and only 
care about effect of the message.

Second philosophical debates about censorship while interesting 
would only muddy the waters and distracts from what needs to be 
done.

The problem is that some people here constantly degrading 
discourse by derailing conversations, bringing up topics that 
were beaten to death without providing nothing new, directly or 
indirectly calling/treating others like an idiots, increasing 
negativity without any benefit. We need to stop this kind of 
behavior and do not let few people to lover the level of this 
forum.

My suggestion is to threat this the same way as legal system 
threats harassment. In legal system harassment is not described 
as specific thing that has been done but as a pattern of 
behavior. If you have been called names by a person its not 
harassment but if you are being called names everyday by the same 
person then its harassment. So if a person does a drive by 
posting of D sucks no action is needed but if the person keeps 
posting the same thing over and over a disciplinary action needs 
to be taken. My suggestion would be to issue a warning first and 
if nothing changes do a temporary ban from posting. If nothing 
changes a permaban is needed.

Things to not do:
- Do not delete posts and threads of new people complaining about 
D. While they usually do not contain any good ideas or anything 
that we already didnt know they do provide a way to know 
painpoint that users experiance.
-Do not overmoderate oftopic posts. Even if a person was deemed 
to constantly derail conversation and disciplinary action was 
taken his/her post should not be removed.
Oct 23 2019
parent Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
On Wednesday, 23 October 2019 at 21:23:15 UTC, welkam wrote:

 We need to stop this kind of behavior and do not let few people 
 to lover the level of this forum.


You can't increase the level of this forum by protecting 
stupidity though, it's oxymoronic.
Oct 24 2019
prev sibling parent Dan <dan.partelly rdsor.ro> writes:
On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 In my own opinion, what we should not start doing is banning 
 people simply for expressing displeasure with the language or 
 disagreement with its leadership. Yes, I understand that there 
 are a handful of people who seem to do nothing but spread 
 negativity and be contrarian. I disagree with almost everything 
 those guys post. But that *is not* a bannable offense, nor 
 should it be.

 I also don't want to be deleting negative posts just because 
 they're negative. Then we get into the business of deleting 
 replies that quote them, and maybe even losing some actual 
 useful signal in all the noise.


It was Machiavelli, I believe, who argued that one should kill 
his detractors to stay in power. I tend to agree with him. If you 
want to get shit done, naysayers in the least will erode your own 
will and you'll end up like in a paradox like Andrei Alexandrescu 
who stated on those forums in past that, and I paraphrase, "My 
dream job is the worst job I ever had".

But also, pay attention to what you label trolling and 
negativity, even if sometimes will be very hard to walk the line. 
  Because if you do not, you risk bathing every day in your own 
intellectual cesspool and that's the last thing you want. It's 
not funny being there.

Also, changing the rules of the forums in itself will do nothing 
for D language by itself.Too many times when shit hits the fan 
people change leaders, invent new rules, codes of conduct only to 
find themselves in the same precarious position as before. Cause 
changing leaders without changing  the culture of the 
organization generally results in the same old song. D needs to 
find it's culture, it's identity, both as programming language 
and organization .

D needs strong leadership, more action and less talk, if it is to 
raise to any prominence. Get shit done should be the new mantra 
of D leadership. If you want D to succeed, you need direct 
leadership, not leadership from shadows and immeasurable delays 
to DIPs and other requests to D project management. Maybe the 
leadership should also read "Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink 
and "The mission, the man and me" by Peter Blaber to help them 
negotiate the extremely complex dynamic of an open source project 
of this scale. Yes, books written by military man. Books on 
getting the shit done. Today, not in 2 years from now.
Oct 24 2019