Goodbye CGP, at least for now

[edhorch]

You can't really expect perfect objectivity when moderating a group, but being wildly inconsistent, and moderating with the business end of your boot just don't cut it for me any more. So, from now on I'll be watching ospd-scrabble.

I've been participating in chat rooms of various sorts for long enough that I can't call them "Internet" chat rooms

Comments

[dossy]

Amen. As you said: the way we self-regulated Nazi moderators "back in the day" was to all just leave and let them play King of the Mountain by themselves. Good moderators kept their communities, the bad ones ended up alone.

When/why did people stop doing this?

[edhorch]

Good moderation takes time, and most forums are much higher volume than they were back then. It's a lot easier to sit back and wait for someone to get mad enough to complain.

In the case of CGP (which is a Yahoo group), it's also the most timely way that a lot of information of interest to tournament Scrabble players gets out, so members don't leave it lightly.

[dossy]

However, if more did leave, it would either create an opportunity to form a new communication channel (different Yahoo Group, or Google Group, or mailing list, or whatnot) moderated differently.

Good for you for taking the first, brave step. I hope more people follow in your footsteps.

[ftangredi]

I have a question about how this banning works. Does it mean the person can't log onto CGP at all, or just that the person can't post there? If they can't post there, can they still answer posts privately to the poster?

[edhorch]

It's controllable by the moderator, but in the vast majority of cases (including the Yahoo groups I moderate), banning someone completely blocks their access from both reading and posting. Also, if you moderate heavily enough that you get to the point of banning people, you also enable the setting that a moderator has to approve all new members so that someone you've banned can't sneak back in under a new email address or Yahoo ID.

I don't know for sure, but I'd strongly suspect that Sherrie does things this way, because it's the closest thing to security that you have on Yahoo groups.

[ftangredi]

Ah. In that case, I wonder how a certain party was able to read and respond to a post I made on CGP after she was supposedly banned.

I fully believe that there has been a lie told.

[vavaverity]

i think that depends on when she got banned. it seems like that happened on the same day as the email in question. that's really the only way it could have come to her still.

there is also the read only option, which she might have put her on. you can read but not write to the group.