Life In 19x19

[admin]

In another thread, in the 'study journals' forum...

Ortho wrote:But it might be the ...polite thing to do to limit our discussion to things Tami wants to talk about _in her Study Journal_....

I think that phpbb has an option for giving the first poster in a thread 'ownership' of the thread. IOW, he/she would have moderator powers in that thread.

If it can indeed be done, I'm thinking of doing it in the 'study journals' forum. Any thoughts?

[/admin]

Sounds reasonable to me.

I don't agree. If you want that level of control, make your own blog.

I think posters should respect the wishes of the original poster within reason, but moderation powers? No.

I am having problems with the citation of Ortho's message as a basis of motivation for regulating study journals:
- If the first poster of a thread wants only specific things to be discussed, then this can be unclear to other users, unless the first poster uses the first post to declare those things as being the limit of discussion.
(*) - Ordinary users do not have the discipline of administrators. If the first poster is an ordinary user and violates his own limits of discussion in his thread but denies other users to violate those limits, then this creates bad feelings.
- The "But" introducing Ortho's message suggests that something was done wrong in his opinion. What? Did some sort of impoliteness take place? I do not think so. His message succeeds my message, so I even wonder whether he suggests my impoliteness. Discussing features of study journal is one thing, but discussing it in a context of Ortho's dubious opinion is unnecessarily overloading a factual discussion on a possible forum feature with specific side aspects.
- It is hard to predict what a first poster in a study journal might consider "polite". It is less hard to predict that a first poster in a study journal deserves some "respect" for his study project in his thread. It is unnecessary to overload considerations of respect by considerations of politeness.

Now to the suggested forum change itself:
- I dislike special power of first posters of threads very much because the fundamental purpose of a forum is discussion and is not censored discussion.
- I dislike partial admin power by ordinary users for in particular the reason stated above. (*)
- Some respect towards study journals is reasonable in principle, but must always be viewed in a context. E.g., if the first poster of a study journal thread derails to particular other topics, then it cannot be interpreted well as missing respect if other users do the same to those other particular topics. The first poster's admin power would thus be overkill. The appropriate solution would be an amendment of the TOS stating something like "Study journals deserve respect.".

I wish it weren't necessary, but given the state of the forum, I think it is.

yoyoma wrote:I don't agree. If you want that level of control, make your own blog.

Yes, that is essentially the idea here: allowing every member to have his/her own blog. See journals on slashdot for a good example of how this is done.

Would you feel differently about it if I had said "I'm thinking of adding a new feature: a blog for every member."?

So shall we add a new forum - "Study Journals (Moderated)"? Those who object to the idea are free not to go there?

There may in fact need to be some rules/expectations. People with moderator control should not be using such threads to comment on other threads/members but rather on their own activities/studies. However, I have little doubt that if an original poster makes a controversial statement, some of our more rambunctious members will quickly cut and paste it into a new (unmoderated) thread in order to reply.

Putting it as personal blogs makes me slightly more disposed to like the idea (I usually mark all study journals as read immediately, though Boidhre gets an occasional exception).

However, I think moderation powers are just an invitation to flamewars in other forms, and a lot of negativity. Our mods are currently pretty good. Our average member, probably less so.

while one the one hand I understand and appreciate the perceived problem you're trying to solve, but overall I think this is a bad idea.

On second thought, maybe the moderators should moderate.

Not wishing to elaborate, but I don't like it. Unnecessary.

Joaz Banbeck wrote:[admin]

In another thread, in the 'study journals' forum...

Ortho wrote:But it might be the ...polite thing to do to limit our discussion to things Tami wants to talk about _in her Study Journal_....

I think that phpbb has an option for giving the first poster in a thread 'ownership' of the thread. IOW, he/she would have moderator powers in that thread.

If it can indeed be done, I'm thinking of doing it in the 'study journals' forum. Any thoughts?

[/admin]

IMX with the Participate software, where the originator of each thread was its moderator, that worked quite well. Sometimes disputes arose when the originator deleted someone's note, but overall it worked well. (I was for a while what was called the Lead Helper for the software on the Source service, which is long gone.) What you are suggesting is limited to personal threads, and seems quite appropriate to me.

speedchase wrote:On second thought, maybe the moderators should moderate.

Yes, let the moderators moderate... With the understanding that they should defer to the journalist, and that while in other threads the OP should just ignore tedious thread derailments and abandon the thread if necessary, in study journals we handle things Florida-style

I don't usually read study journals, but I think that the should work as it already is. If the person thinks something is off topic, ask people to move it elsewhere. If it doesn't happen, use the report button.