Chat needs better moderation

[Self-atari]

This is a throwaway acct bc I don’t want to piss off the popular ppl.

The almost constant off topic chat in the English chat is a problem. Each time I want to go to the chat to talk about baduk or read the recent conversation I feel like I’m interrupting the off topic chat thats happening and the real discussion gets scrolled away w/ nonsense. I’d like to petition the OGS staff to better moderate the English chat. Why even have an off topic room if the off topic always happens in the main room and then people dont feel comfortable talking in the main room bc its full of people playing RP?..

[teapoweredrobot]

A thought: go chat channel

I saw some people discussing it and I thought maybe it would be useful indeed to have go chat channel. Currently we don’t have any chat channels where we could discuss anything about go. English chat never talks about go. Help is about OGS features. Off topic is often politics. Maybe a channel where people could drop links to videos and such would be useful. Or maybe people could advertise their correspondence tournaments. Maybe daily tsumego. It would be slower than English chat, probably,…

Seems related to this

[Atorrante]

Welcome on OGS forums. Hope you enjoy your stay.

Agree with you. Not sure if this is only a task for the moderators. Members of this community also have the option to flag a post if it is off topic.

[Self-atari]

@Atorrante

Not sure if this is only a task for the moderators. Members of this community also have the option to flag a post if it is off topic.

I’m talking about the chat room, not the forums

[Atorrante]

Sorry, always mix these two up.
But on forums going off topic is also happening a lot.
Same problem, different channels.

[Self-atari]

I don’t care about the mild off topic that happens sometimes. thats understandable, but the roleplay games are too much and sometimes it gets too far off topic

[teapoweredrobot]

Maybe a role play chat channel is needed, like the games category in the forums…

[_KoBa]

Yeah… I can see what you mean…
I’m sorry.

[bugcat]

IMO the creation of an additional, explicitly Go-only channel is more appropriate than an attempt to alter the nature of the extant English chat, because doing that creates a massive timesink for the moderators.

I’m not a mod, though, so I’m not going to speak for them. It’s all very well to say “moderate chat”, but someone has to actually do it.

[benjito]

Agreed (I don’t use chat, so don’t take my opinion too seriously). Chats that have devolved into non-Go content probably don’t want to become Go-only channels.

A Go-only sub-channel in each lang (or at least the popular ones) seems like a nice idea though.

[smog山人]

I wouldn’t mind some moderation for chat, but, it has to be consistent. Right now the rule is; don’t disturb flow of chat, which seems to be fine with dealing firmly with clear spam, but it leaves some uncertainties.

If there was some clear rules I’d be happy to help enforce them by telling people what’s proper chat activity, but as it is now, it’s not clear what is a disturbance of flow of chat, and there’s therefore a danger that the rule may be enforced selectively.

I am much more for banning inflammatory subjects, and keeping chat clean from politics, religion, etc, than I am for limiting the innocent chat because it may seem chaotic.

[Eugene]

For the record, moderators deliberately leave #English to be “almost anything goes, as long as it is not grossly offensive (whatever that is taken to be by the moderators)”

because the community asked for that

I would be hard pressed to dig up threads and conversations about this, but some may remember the test case of “Vivian The Pirate”, which touched on this topic.

It’s my recollection that around this time it was established that the current way in which #English is used is what it the people there wanted, and change was unwelcome.

So what we have right now is there because it was requested.

Given that few of the actually chatters in #English seem to frequent the forums, it’s not clear to me how we would canvas a change, proactively.

I guess we have three regular denizens on record now as wanting it cleaned up (snakesss, loredude and smog)… maybe we could invite them to see if they can come up with a longer list that is compelling, and we announce the change and enforce it?

[Kosh]

I think it’s unreasonable to expect the volunteer mods to babysit chat. If English chat is being completely derailed by someone then the proper course seems to be to report that person using that function in their pop-up. A mod can then ask them to move their private conversation to pm or take whatever other action they think reasonable in the case of trolls.

Dare I say it, what’s really needed here is: “Chat needs better self-moderation.” but fortunately my vorlon encounter suit makes me ideally suited to hold my breath.

[Eugene]

While it’s good to be cautious about expectations of the moderation team, I think it’s equally important to note that the tenor of #English is not due to moderation capacity of capability, it is deliberately at the level it is right now, by choice.

I do think that if we were to change this policy, and ask all OT chat to move to #OffTopic, that this change would take hold substantially. Sure, we can’t policy with instant response chat, so some comments will sit there inappropriately for a while, but those commenters would be dealt with in due course…

[Eugene]

For the record: what the current denizens think:

[ 8:08]Eugene: So what would happen if we said “Right, you lot, take this conversation to #Off Topic, we want this channel to be about Go now”?

[ 8:08]FinrodFelagund: I was homeschooled, so I am baffled that they are bothering with schools until there’s a vaccine

[ 8:08]FinrodFelagund: Revolution. Cold steel and hot lead.

[ 8:08] Nabeshin : I would be sad because this channel would not have much discussion

[ 8:09]Eugene: (“we” in that case being you guys, or at least some of you)\

[ 8:09]Eugene: But #Off Topic would have the same?

[ 8:09] Nabeshin : Off topic would similarly not have much discussion because nobody goes in there

[ 8:09]FinrodFelagund: Seriously, I would also be sad, because the english community here would not feel the same.

[ 8:09]Eugene: Wouldn’t you all just move there?

[ 8:09] Nabeshin : People would just think nobody talks on OGS

[ 8:10]Shakes Fish At Sky: you cant force people to only talk about the proscribed subjects

[ 8:10]Shakes Fish At Sky: ffs

[ 8:10]Shakes Fish At Sky: this isnt china

[ 8:10]Eugene: Actually, you can

[ 8:10]FinrodFelagund: I personally equally enjoy go talk and general conversation.

[ 8:10]zone man: yes

[ 8:10] Nabeshin : Besides, I came here to get away from KGS-style draconian moderation tactics on main channels

[ 8:10]Shakes Fish At Sky: so do you think you should?

[ 8:10]zone man: please keep free speech

[ 8:10]zone man: lol this isnt china

[ 8:10]zone man: agreed

[ 8:10]Eugene: We can set the policy for conversations on OGS - we already do in fact, but the official policy in #English is “almost anything goes” at the moment

[ 8:11] Nabeshin : The answer is to make a special place that’s just for go conversation

[ 8:11] Nabeshin : Though you’ll likely find it will be a dead channel most of the time

[ 8:11]FinrodFelagund: Yeah, you have the right to make it whatever you want.

[ 8:11]Shakes Fish At Sky: I think it might do ok but I agrea with Nabeshin

[ 8:11]bigwizard: Has there been complaints about this channel not being Go related Eugene? i also like this channel being the way it is if my opinion counts for anything

[ 8:11]Eugene: Note: this question was prompted by snakess, loredude, Oren’s earliear conversation

[ 8:11] Nabeshin : Yeah someone posted on the forums

[ 8:11]Eugene: Just 15 minutes or so ago

[ 8:12]smog山人: one of the issues is that you’re automatically directed into the english chat, making it a catch-all room automatically

[ 8:12]Eugene: And here

[ 8:12] Nabeshin : They apparently were extremely upset that loredude was doing his RP stuff

[ 8:12]Eugene: Oh maybe it was smog山人 not Oren, oops

[ 8:12] Nabeshin : Personnally I think people need to stop giving a shit about things that don’t matter

[ 8:12]smog山人: I was more upset that he got reported for it xd

[ 8:12]zone man: well free speech comes with a price which is loredudes PR stuff

[ 8:12]smog山人: like, he wasn’t really breaking any rule

[ 8:13]smog山人: if there was a rule that he broke, I’d feel happy about him being reprimanded for it

[ 8:13]Eugene: He was breaking what the reporter wrongly thought was a rule, I think is the concusion

[ 8:13]Eugene: Or maybe he took things too far, come to think of it

[ 8:13]zone man: well in any case i am all for free speech as long as it is not offensive intentionally and hurtful

[ 8:13] Nabeshin : I suppose there may have been something I didn’t see

[ 8:13]Eugene: Because the policy is “almost anything goes”, there’s always a grey line about what almost is

[ 8:14]Eugene: It’s interesting: could I summarise that the immediate reaction here is almost fully negative to making a change?

[ 8:14]FinrodFelagund: I like the current mix of go and non-go discussion. I wouldn’t mind a go-only channel, but I think a rule that makes the two types of talk totally separate would end up decreasing all discussion.

[ 8:14]smog山人: well, in any case, I’d be happier to have specific topics that were off limit, like religion and politics etc, than i’d be with moderating what would be too eager chatting

[ 8:14]zone man: yes

[ 8:14] Nabeshin : I’d vote “hell no” if this were a democracy

[ 8:14]zone man: we want the English to stay as is

[ 8:14]Eugene: In contrast to the opinions posted here: chat needs-better-moderation

[ 8:14]smog山人: it’s really hard to tell the difference between someone who is breaking rules and someone who is just unpopular and ends up getting reported for it

[ 8:14]zone man: yes agree with smog山人

[ 8:15]zone man: keep English as is

[ 8:15]zone man: Free speech

[ 8:15]Eugene: Ultimately that will always be a problem somewhere - #English or #Off Topic. There’s always a grey line that a mod is there to make the call on

[ 8:15]zone man: no hate but free speech

[ 8:15]Stealthsilent1: Im with nebeshin

[ 8:15]snakesss: hmmm, do the posts in that thread rly advocate a change? i feel like it is mostly the OP?

[ 8:15]Eugene: Free speech isn’t what you think it is zone man, but I’d hate to derail this conversation on that tangent

[ 8:16] Nabeshin : I will admit I do get annoyed when people don’t understand free speech

[ 8:16]snakesss: smog is saying “rules should be more clear” more than “moderation should be more active in chat” - i believe

[ 8:16]Stealthsilent1: Its these peoples problems for caring about annoying things and instead of telling people where to say something these people should just chill out.

[ 8:16]smog山人: yes, snek

[ 8:16]zone man: well im all for having us talk about anything anytime let me just put it this way

[ 8:16] Nabeshin : Honestly I don’t even think religion and politics should be off limits

[ 8:16] Nabeshin : We talk about those all the time and it’s fine

[ 8:17]Eugene: OK - well I will say that this is totally no suprise to me - the same sort of conclusion was reached a couple of years ago when this came up.

[ 8:17] Nabeshin : Just don’t be a shithead

[ 8:17] Nabeshin : Like that’s really the only rule

[ 8:17]Shakes Fish At Sky: does the american flag next to the english langauge mean nothing eugene

[ 8:17]Eugene: ^^^^ Nailed it

[ 8:17] Nabeshin : Doesn’t matter, free speech only means the government can’t come after you for what you say

[ 8:17]Eugene resists getting into that conversation while trying to deal with this one

[ 8:18] Nabeshin : Has absolutely zero to do with private organizations

[ 8:18]Eugene: Maybe it’s done aleady

[ 8:18]Eugene: OK thanks all

[loredude_Ω]

@Eugene

I guess we have three regular denizens on record now as wanting it cleaned up (snakesss, loredude and smog)… maybe we could invite them to see if they can come up with a longer list that is compelling, and we announce the change and enforce it?

i am more undecided as i really like off topic for reasons, and i think you may be misunderstanding what we were talking about earlier. its ok but this is just an fyi. also its just kind of a strange mess about the chats. i think its pretty good now but i can be convinced

[Eugene]

@loredude_Ω

nd i think you may be misunderstanding what we were talking about earlier

I guess that’s why I checked with the folk in there to make sure we were getting a clear message

[GreenyPickles]

The fact that the poster hardly ever uses chat either that or I’m just not there when they are makes me wonder why they even posted this

[loredude_Ω]

wasnt the poster a throwaway account? i have no idea why they made one but they did

[GreenyPickles]

It makes no since to me.