Forum Guidelines and Moderation Discussion Thread

[electrolyte]

We have decided to change the rules for Crowd Pleaser winner to have a two wins limit. The lockout period is still 12 months for eligibility, but if a member wins twice, they'll no longer be eligible to win Crowd Pleaser.

We're considering changes for the HIT Poster eligibility. Please see @kryss's post above about ideas for that.

 

[Jaded]

When you say "only being able to win once a year" is this for the whole forum or for each member?

If it's for the whole forum - I'd be for that.

Like have the voting at the end of the year.

I think it would cut down on potential spamming of hits by a member just wanting to be in the awarding process in a given month.

Now, someone could still post a ton of hits all year with the mindset of only wanting to be one of the candidates at the end of the year, but I think it would be a lot less likely than it is now. I'm just typing out loud at the moment

It would be once a year per member. Like if I won this month, I wouldn't be able to win again till July of next year.

(obvs I can't win but you know what i mean)

 

[Peachy]

It would be once a year per member. Like if I won this month, I wouldn't be able to win again till July of next year.

(obvs I can't win but you know what i mean)

Ah, I gotcha

 

[bxpretzel]

@bxpretzel, since you brought this up, do you have thoughts on this?

i'd prefer that people are locked out after two wins. thanks for asking

 

[Squatty]

Would you guys like to vote on what happens with HIT Poster?

Two win lock out or extending it to only being able to win once a year.

Two win lock out.

There aren't more banners you can give out. No extra trophy points.

I think twice and done is good.

 

[humbleturker]

- Pessimism. EVERYDAY. From a lot of members. I know not everyday is sunshine. On or off the computer. I know mTurk isn't the most exciting thing, but it pays my bills. I feel like it's the mood of the thread for a large chunk of the day. Cynical jokes, bad life choices jokes, etc. I'm grateful for mTurk. Do I see myself working on mTurk forever? Absolutely not, but it's what I have now and I make the best of it without bitching on the boards about it everyday

Give the man 64 silver dollars.

Also, I don't want to feel like having these banners is a detriment. I understand the philosophy of you can't win them all and whatnot, but I don't want to have this stigma out of the ether that I'm the type of person who got these for purely extrinsic reasons.

 

[catnapped]

Two win lock out.

There aren't more banners you can give out. No extra trophy points.

I think twice and done is good.

Was going to say the same thing but my (forum) better half beat me to it.

 

[Mr. Krabs]

I just want to start this off by saying that I don't have a problem with anyone on this forum and that this isn't directed at anyone, just merely my observations and thoughts on how to help improve our community.

In May/June I was really active on this forum. Specifically in posting hits/times/tips/etc. In that month I tried to post and do as many hits as I could report a time. This not only benefited the forum but also me as well. Many times I would feel lazy and not want to do a hit but I did it anyway because there was no time reported on the hit and I wanted to contribute to the forum. What I learned in that month is that a lot of times you get more recognition my making jokes and posting gifs instead of contributing to the work thread. Looking back at the daily threads from that month you see a lot of hit posters and helpful members with no likes surrounded by gifs and random posts with a bunch of likes.

It gets a bit discouraging (for me at least) that it seems like my lame jokes get more recognition than real contributions to the forum. If you take a peak on one of the other forums you see hit posts getting 5-10 likes on average. I've come to realize that even I've slowly but surely trained myself to just liking jokes and banter and not helpful members posts. I just want to make it clear that I am not against people that joke around and lighten the mood on the daily work threads. I'd just like to see the members that go out of their way to help us get a bit more love is all.

In regards to the Hit Poster Award I'm all for the two win lockout. I never really liked the criteria being the top 5 hit posters since it encourages posting hits that could be potentially terrible. But I'm not really sure what other way you would do it without it'd being too time consuming.

 

[aveline]

I just want to start this off by saying that I don't have a problem with anyone on this forum and that this isn't directed at anyone, just merely my observations and thoughts on how to help improve our community.

In May/June I was really active on this forum. Specifically in posting hits/times/tips/etc. In that month I tried to post and do as many hits as I could report a time. This not only benefited the forum but also me as well. Many times I would feel lazy and not want to do a hit but I did it anyway because there was no time reported on the hit and I wanted to contribute to the forum. What I learned in that month is that a lot of times you get more recognition my making jokes and posting gifs instead of contributing to the work thread. Looking back at the daily threads from that month you see a lot of hit posters and helpful members with no likes surrounded by gifs and random posts with a bunch of likes.

It gets a bit discouraging (for me at least) that it seems like my lame jokes get more recognition than real contributions to the forum. If you take a peak on one of the other forums you see hit posts getting 5-10 likes on average. I've come to realize that even I've slowly but surely trained myself to just liking jokes and banter and not helpful members posts. I just want to make it clear that I not against people that joke around and lighten the mood on the daily work threads. I'd just like to see the members that go out of their way to help us get a bit more love is all.

In regards to the Hit Poster Award I'm all for the two win lockout. I never really liked the criteria being the top 5 hit posters since it encourages posting hits that could be potentially terrible. But I'm not really sure what other way you would do it without it'd being too time consuming.

I couldn't agree more. This forum has developed this whole culture of shitposting that feels very unsettling to me. I'm not really sure how to approach it, though. In the past, we've always just tried to drown it out by posting HITs or doing what we can to make sure that work-related questions are being answered, but as you can see, that has very little effect.

Sometimes we try to be a little more direct and we'll ask that people tone things down or move something to another thread, and we end up with 10-20 people all giving us snarky replies or just blatantly ignoring our requests. The whole wrestling gif thing is a good example of this. People will go nuts with it at times and our attempts at dealing with it are always met with people shitting on us. And this is coming from many of our main posters, so it makes it difficult for us to really put our foot down because it just ends up with the whole forum up in arms about "out of control mods."

So, what do we do? Do we just start banning everyone? I don't think that's the right way to approach it. And the more we crack down, the more people we tend to alienate. We're happy with this community and the people that we have here, so alienating half of our top posters isn't something that we want to do. But it has become so ingrained in the culture here that I honestly don't know what to do. A culture shift requires everyone to chip in. We only have nine staff members here. We can't do it ourselves.

I want it to change, though. I think we can be a work forum that maintains the strong social atmosphere that we have, and still cut out this culture of shitposting that seems to currently exist here. I'm open to suggestions.

 

[jenaling]

I couldn't agree more. This forum has developed this whole culture of shitposting that feels very unsettling to me. I'm not really sure how to approach it, though. In the past, we've always just tried to drown it out by posting HITs or doing what we can to make sure that work-related questions are being answered, but as you can see, that has very little effect.

Sometimes we try to be a little more direct and we'll ask that people tone things down or move something to another thread, and we end up with 10-20 people all giving us snarky replies or just blatantly ignoring our requests. The whole wrestling gif thing is a good example of this. People will go nuts with it at times and our attempts at dealing with it are always met with people shitting on us. And this is coming from many of our main posters, so it makes it difficult for us to really put our foot down because it just ends up with the whole forum up in arms about "out of control mods."

So, what do we do? Do we just start banning everyone? I don't think that's the right way to approach it. And the more we crack down, the more people we tend to alienate. We're happy with this community and the people that we have here, so alienating half of our top posters isn't something that we want to do. But it has become so ingrained in the culture here that I honestly don't know what to do. A culture shift requires everyone to chip in. We only have nine staff members here. We can't do it ourselves.

I want it to change, though. I think we can be a work forum that maintains the strong social atmosphere that we have, and still cut out this culture of shitposting that seems to currently exist here. I'm open to suggestions.

For me that's why I love the chat thread. I know it's just limping along because a lot of people didn't want to (or found it difficult to manage) to keep two threads open, but I maybe it's worth giving another shot. I know it isn't the perfect solution for everyone, but it's something that does already exist.

Something's gotta give, right? Or people keep leaving/not talking, which doesn't help with turking or socializing.

 

[kryss]

When you say "only being able to win once a year" is this for the whole forum or for each member?

If it's for the whole forum - I'd be for that.

Like have the voting at the end of the year.

I think it would cut down on potential spamming of hits by a member just wanting to be in the awarding process in a given month.

Now, someone could still post a ton of hits all year with the mindset of only wanting to be one of the candidates at the end of the year, but I think it would be a lot less likely than it is now. I'm just typing out loud at the moment

i'd prefer that people are locked out after two wins. thanks for asking

Two win lock out.

There aren't more banners you can give out. No extra trophy points.

I think twice and done is good.

Was going to say the same thing but my (forum) better half beat me to it.

Sorry guys, I just got back.

Also, do you feel if the two time lock out would discourage people from posting HITs?

Is this something you all feel we should take a vote on?

 

[Squatty]

Sorry guys, I just got back.

Also, do you feel if the two time lock out would discourage people from posting HITs?

Is this something you all feel we should take a vote on?

It doesn't discourage me from posting. I like helping people.

I do try not to post too much though, so that others have a chance at winning.

If I see a good hit and it isn't on the thread, I will post it.

 

[ecko]

I couldn't agree more. This forum has developed this whole culture of shitposting that feels very unsettling to me. I'm not really sure how to approach it, though. In the past, we've always just tried to drown it out by posting HITs or doing what we can to make sure that work-related questions are being answered, but as you can see, that has very little effect.

Sometimes we try to be a little more direct and we'll ask that people tone things down or move something to another thread, and we end up with 10-20 people all giving us snarky replies or just blatantly ignoring our requests. The whole wrestling gif thing is a good example of this. People will go nuts with it at times and our attempts at dealing with it are always met with people shitting on us. And this is coming from many of our main posters, so it makes it difficult for us to really put our foot down because it just ends up with the whole forum up in arms about "out of control mods."

So, what do we do? Do we just start banning everyone? I don't think that's the right way to approach it. And the more we crack down, the more people we tend to alienate. We're happy with this community and the people that we have here, so alienating half of our top posters isn't something that we want to do. But it has become so ingrained in the culture here that I honestly don't know what to do. A culture shift requires everyone to chip in. We only have nine staff members here. We can't do it ourselves.

I want it to change, though. I think we can be a work forum that maintains the strong social atmosphere that we have, and still cut out this culture of shitposting that seems to currently exist here. I'm open to suggestions.

Is there anyway to create a third type of post? right now we have only two types, "hits" and "not hits". if we could have a third "off topic" type you could add the option to not show them, the same way you can go into "hits only" mode. place an option in the reply box that lets the poster mark their post as OT.
My personal reasons for not going into grind mode is that there is a lot of very useful info that gets discussed and i do not want to miss out on that, this would allow someone to avoid the discussions not work related without missing out on the good stuff.
This may not be possible but it is an idea i have been thinking about for awhile.

 

[kryss]

It doesn't discourage me from posting. I like helping people.

I do try not to post too much though, so that others have a chance at winning.

If I see a good hit and it isn't on the thread, I will post it.

Alright.

What about holding a vote? (unless we have an overall consensus from the majority of members)

Options:

Can only win HIT Poster once a year.

or

A cap of two wins with a minimum of 6 months in between wins.


-----------------

Or any other suggestions

 

[ecko]

Alright.

What about holding a vote? (unless we have an overall consensus from the majority of members)

Options:

Can only win HIT Poster once a year.

or

A cap of two wins with a minimum of 6 months in between wins.


-----------------

Or any other suggestions

A cap of two wins with a minimum of 6 months in between wins.
seems reasonable to me.

 

[Squatty]

Alright.

What about holding a vote? (unless we have an overall consensus from the majority of members)

Options:

Can only win HIT Poster once a year.

or

A cap of two wins with a minimum of 6 months in between wins.


-----------------

Or any other suggestions

I thought it was already decided, based on @electrolyte 's post above

 

[kryss]

I thought it was already decided, based on @electrolyte 's post above

That one is for Crowd Pleaser.

 

[Squatty]

That one is for Crowd Pleaser.

Whoops. I wasn't paying attention.

 

[kryss]

For me that's why I love the chat thread. I know it's just limping along because a lot of people didn't want to (or found it difficult to manage) to keep two threads open, but I maybe it's worth giving another shot. I know it isn't the perfect solution for everyone, but it's something that does already exist.

Something's gotta give, right? Or people keep leaving/not talking, which doesn't help with turking or socializing.

I love the chat thread! I don't think it's too difficult to keep open another tab, I often forget to. I think some of us chattier folks (me) just need to be more cognizant of it. I have a bad habit of going way OT in the work thread. I think it definitely doesn't hurt to keep trying to use it, but i also think it's okay to have the OT banter in the daily thread too.

 

[Vanyanka]

I have a sincere question. What differentiates socializing and having fun from shitposting? I truly want to be a better member of the community but sometimes I get caught up in hearing my witty self talk.