MTR

[english si]

In regard to Scott's post about moderation on this forum, I would not characterize it as overly aggressive.

I haven't really noticed much moderation here at all - a bit, but not much. Looking from the outside (in both cases), it a little bit tighter than where SABRE is in terms of moderation today. I was SABRE President for a year, Secretary the year before that, and off-topic forum moderation for a handful of months before that - a lot of moderation of moderators (especially when they say they will do one thing and then do another thing that is outside of the rules limiting powers - which it turns out they hadn't read - leading to a big in-fight lasting about 8 weeks and several resignations, including the Site Manager), not much moderation itself, but I can spot the stuff.

One thing I noticed in SABRE (and elsewhere) was knee-jerk heavy-handedness to deal with a problem that happened recently, but isn't happening now. I don't blame you, but there is a slightly-aggressive desire to make this not suffer the banality and troll problems of M.T.R. - SABRE doesn't have that that much (we tried to deal with certain banality heavy-handedly, then relaxed that, and tolerate a fairly low level of banality, random hijacking/bumping of threads and so on, that we used to step down on - instead the mods let forum members act as policemen then nip it in the bud if the discussion gets nasty after that)

SABRE started out as privately owned (much like AARoads is now), but eventually became a sort of constitutional democracy with checks and balances.  AARoads may not want to go down that road (our decision-making processes are often unwieldy, and the Philosopher King approach has good credentials--Plato, The Republic, all that), but one option might be to introduce an ombudsman, elected by board members at large, who would be able to review controversial moderating/banning decisions.

Ombudsman is the best way to play it, with the ability to be able to challenge mods/decisions via them. On a London Underground forum that I used to be a part of, the mods and I (and some others) got in an argument about heavy handed moderation, during which the chief admin called a sizeable amount of users something along the lines of "second class" for wanting to discuss certain legit topics - OK, some had done it the wrong way, so a 'play pen' (that I think was a low-level mod's term for it) was set up for those 'immature' (an admin's phrase) members that wanted to play in the realms of fantasy (which was mentioning anything more far off than funded improvements, or criticising those improvements by suggesting something else would be a better use of the money) rather than engage in 'proper' (chief admin's phrase) discussion - the people throwing couldn't see what was offensive about these terms, and complaining to the mods was out, as they were the mods. After a week's discussion, with no justification or apology that justified me not leaving, I could see no other course of action but to leave, which was something they supposedly didn't want.

This [locking threads] worked well, although we had to be alert for situations where a moderator became involved in a heated discussion and then locked the thread to shut up an opponent; obviously that is a glaring conflict of interest.

I had forgotten about that incident. Looking back, I'm surprised that didn't cause an admin war. I guess it wasn't deleting photos when you said you wouldn't a couple of hours before and in breach of the constitution that you hadn't read.

Locking threads, asking people to cool down - that's far better than deleting posts (unless said posts are duplicate).

[rickmastfan67]

Just curious: What's the average age of the moderators here?

Someone please correct me if I'm incorrect, but I believe the moderators fall into the age range of late teens to around 40.

But he wanted average age, so I'm thinking in the mid-20's would be average.

[aswnl]

While I would prefer one worldwide discussion forum on roads, the truth of the matter is that it likely won't happen.

There's a language barrier and that it'll be full of country cliques.

That's not gonna work as long as English will be the lingua franca on such a forum. It would mean every Anglosaxon would have an huge advance over people from elsewhere. Just try to interact with the French SARA-forum with just your school-French and you know why the rest of the world won't be charmed with a 'worldforum' only in English. Skyscrapercity has detailed threads in local languages, and more global in English, that's a strong feature.

[english si]

While I would prefer one worldwide discussion forum on roads, the truth of the matter is that it likely won't happen.

There's a language barrier and that it'll be full of country cliques.

That's not gonna work as long as English will be the lingua franca on such a forum. It would mean every Anglosaxon would have an huge advance over people from elsewhere. Just try to interact with the French SARA-forum with just your school-French and you know why the rest of the world won't be charmed with a 'worldforum' only in English. Skyscrapercity has detailed threads in local languages, and more global in English, that's a strong feature.

Exactly - there's a language barrier, and cliques form. Skyscraper City just puts all these cliques where it's hard for cross-interaction (due to language differences) in one place, and gives a place for those who speak English (well American - English tends to confuse some people) to somewhat cross the cliques. At least their massive image threads, while taking an age to load, are effectively in every language.

My (poor - I dropped it and continued only with German) school French does mean I can get the jist of SARA, and babelfish is a great help if I'm feeling lazy (though neither help with jargon and Bablefish translates place names, so I need to un-translate them). However I'm much better at the passive skill of reading, than the active skill of writing, and I would struggle to get a post together to say anything meaningful.

The French, of course, are overly proud of their language, and hate English, even if they can speak it they choose not to (especially in Paris) unless in an English-speaking place. A friend sometimes goes to Paris, and while having OK French, tries Afrikaans and then German (which are better than his French), before the French person reluctantly tries English to have a common language.