Could we have a 'Moderator Alert'

Dear Community Users,

Firstly, thank you Trainspotter for staring this thread, and also to everyone who has posted their feedback.

Myself and the Mods were very saddened and disappointed to see and read of the recent events that have occurred on the community. As mods we try to keep this forum a safe an positive place, and in this situation our mods took the most appropriate action that they saw fit at the time.  I can appreciate that some of you feel that we didn't react as quickly as we should have, and didn't take the appropriate action to ensure our community remains a safe a positive space, but please be assured we have taken on board your feedback, and will use this to help us moderate these type of situations better in the future.

I understand that the threads and posts that have been locked on the community are still visible. As the comments on these threads are very upsetting and negative, i will be deleting these threads and contacting those involved directly.

In the meantime, we value your suggestions about a 'moderator alert' function on the community. I will forward all of your suggestions to our Web team to see if there is any way we could add this function to our community.  In the meantime, if any of you would like to bring anything concerning e.g spamming, rule breaking or trolling to our attention, please email communitymanager@nas.org.uk.

Thank you all again for taking the time to share your thoughts, and i would like to apologise for any upset and disappointment that the recent events on the community may have caused.

Kind regards,

Ayshe Mod

thanks, that is the most hidden thing i have ever seen, why was it stuck up there in the header when it should be in the main page. It looks like I can edit my username at will....... BAD IDEA! I had that disabled on the forum I moderate because people can stir up a load of trouble and then dissapere, not good. If a user wants to change name they contact me and I make the change. But you do get to change your username on registration.

And oh yea, email notifications on this forum do not work! this place is a mess, it's not even easy to moderate this forum from a technical point of view. I wonder who the web developer is that thought they could do something as good as what several people have done over years of hard work for free.

This gets complicated. Real forums do have a user ignore function but you cannot fully seperate those members. This is why you need proactive moderation.

To set username go to your profile at top of page . Edit profile lets you set username 

Perhaps also a 'block person' so we can block a person who we know we do not share views with, so that they would not see our posts and we would not see theirs.

They probably would still show up in 'quotes' though when someone replied.  All these things are recommended for forums anyway by the guidelines to the Malicious Communications Act.

while we are talking about the stupid way this forum works can someone tell me how I set my own username. Honestly this thing is rubbish coupled with how slow the server is and the cofusion between my profile on the site and on the forum. Whoever produced this garbage should be sacked!

That is why swift intervention is required, it stops the thread going toxic. As a moderator getting reports you get a feel for how disruptive users are and be guided in future actions. If someone has been abit of a trouble maker but never crossed the line the day they do they get banned, but if a user has a good record and crosses a line they will get a bit of lee way. Or I may use temporary bans instead of permanent ones. Of course because i take active part in the forum I get to know many members. I got a flury of reports telling me to ban a member because he called someone a ***. I was surprised because i knew he was not the offensive type. A little digging revealed that he was refering to a person in a videa several posts back that refered to himself as a *** and i know the user in question is from the sort of country that does not know what a *** is or how offensive it is deemed because it's not a native speaking country. It did not take long to work it out and he often falls foul of not understanding western culture and I always give him the benefit of the doubt.

Yes indeed given that this is a forum for autistic people spelling it ut may help. On the forum i moderate we did end up having to spell up 3 basic rules because people used the lack of rules to break common sense. Ultimately it's moderators discretion.

I am of the opinion that they do need spelling out, simply because there are those who believe if is not there they can do what they want.  Probably something to do with 'social misunderstanding' and misunderstanding of social norms, of which all autistic people probably suffer to some extent else I don't believe they would get a diagnosis.  

I would like to see all the toxic threads deleted - I don't think anyone could pick them apart to make any sense of them - also, the triggers are on other threads - so creating a timeline of blame would be impossible.

these are basic online norms that many forums do not need to spell out but it can be helpful to do so.

This forum does not seem to have too much trouble but I am new. The problem I have is that when a report is made it needs to be dealt with swiftly. I know the mods are volunteers but I was purely a volunteer for many years befor I was offered money and that did not change anything. I could be out socially and get an email report. If i can i deal with it there and then as it saves a lot of headache the next day trying to reverse what is done.

there are a number of measures that i can use which I do not know if this forum has it:

Delete the offending post

Replace the offending post with a standard text to say that i deleted it but give no reason.

Edit the post by partly deleting content and perhaps put a note of my own about what was done and why

Ban the user temporarily (automatically expires)

Ban the user permanently

Just send the user a personal message and explain that they need to "not do that".

With the post the other day A user was quite offensive to another and nothing was done other than the posting of a mamby pamby plea 2 days later. If it was my forum I'd have removed the offending content along with any other relating posts in order to remove the issue and I'd have banned the user for a day or so to remind them that they may take part here but certain behaviours are not acceptable and if they continue a permanent ban could occur. I am flexible as a moderator and deal with users individually as I see fit so can cut people some space or be harsh if I know they have a bad history and I am wasting my time trying to give them space.

I agree, we need a more robust system to stop things getting out of hand like a few days ago.

The problem is mods are only human and cannot possible man the boards 24/7. 

I think a system that prioritises their responses that counts the number of alerts to a particluar thread might speed up the locking/deleting/censoring when things get badly out of control.

I have been thinking about what guidelines could be issued to prevent inappropriate posting.  Some suggestions would be::

- Just because a post has been made does not mean you have to comment on it.  If you have nothing useful to add, think about whether your comment will help the post.

- if someone is experiencing difficulties, a post which infers that they shouldn't be having that problem and it is 'their fault' does not help.  Offer help for a problem, not criticism of it.

- do not use someone elses post to talk exclusively about your problems, expecially if they go on at length.  Your post should relate to the original post, not take it over.

- do not accuse someone of not being autistic.  If they have been diagnosed, this is extremely offensive.  And if they haven't we are not qualified to make a diagnosis especially on what has been written.

- do not go off topic and hold an off topic conversation with other people on a thread that has been opened.  A bit of off topic is ok, holding lenghty off topic conversations is not.  This is disrespectful and loses the purpose of the original topic.  Start a different topic off instead.  Remember the original poster of a topic to some extent has ownership of that topic and if they respectfully say that a post is off topic and not helpful, walk away.

- be careful with 'banter' with people you don't know.  They may not understand or take offence.

- disagreeing with someone is ok.  Making personal insults about the disagreement is not.  Be aware that just because someone disagrees with you it is not bullying, it is that they may have a different point of view. 

- report all posts that are offensive.  We should have a zero tolerance to offensive posts.  Never fight back offensive posts with another offensive post.  If someone is being insulting, do not be insulting back.

- no trolling.  (followed by a definition of trolling)

There are probably a lot more, so has anyone else got any ideas for things that have been missed.  It might be said that 'rules' can get too long winded, but as recent posts have seen there are those who clearly have a disregard for good manners on the basis 'that is not in the rules'.

Disambiguating Cynosure said:

NAS (WebPM) often says <> 'We are still reading and listening and so please keep the suggestions coming'... and so, well, We are still doing that, Hmmmm...?

It's an NT thing, they always say they want feedback, it makes people feel better that they are being listened to. I prefer to see results.

As i stated in another thread I am really surprised at how bad this forum is. Sadly I suspect that due to the vanity of someone wanting a forum integrated into the website someone was paid a fortune to do a custom job or some code was imported to give a forum to a website but it is very limited and it's a sad situation because it's so easy to set up a forum on free software.

As for availability of moderators I do not buy it. Something is deeply wrong when it takes a moderator 2 days to intervine. As I explained I moderate an electronics forum, initially as a volunterr but now the site owner chucks me some money every month because he can afford it being a largish youtuber with a blog and the forum. If I get a report I act very quikly not two days later because these things just get worse if they are left.

The site software is indeed lacking a report function on each post which is a basic requirement and every free software has it.

As attractive as integrating a forum with your site is for vanity reasons it is much better to have a seperate software install that works and is free!

Greetings. This and similar requests do keep coming up. As I often say, a Moderator should be replying instead here, but meantime I offer this waffle...

The thing is, "Moderators" (As Mr OP knows, yet others reading might not yet know) are supposedly Volunteers (for NAS). And so they are not always available 'on call' all of the time or upon the straightaway. "Report as abusive" is the closest thing to an 'instant' button in this context.

Trainspotter said:

There should also be a sticky to explain what is acceptable and what is not.  Yes we have some rules, but these appear to be subject to interpretation and are flouted. 

Again, this is another thing which is constantly requested. Once there was an "Interruption Page" after signing in, yet this was removed, but it could have served as a page to Link to Rules and also to common questions... but it was deleted. All of this was discussed and requested upon previous pages.

NAS (WebPM) often says <> 'We are still reading and listening and so please keep the suggestions coming'... and so, well, We are still doing that, Hmmmm...?

I agree. We need to have something that could be a bit more open ended. It's not just abusive situations, it's concerns about the safety of the poster themselves.