Build a better forum

There’s been a lot of chat recently about what’s wrong with this forum. So let’s see if we can turn that into a positive and come up with how we would like a new forum to work. I’m not suggesting at this stage that I or anyone else will actually build such a forum. That might happen. But a lot of things would need to be agreed upon first before building a new forum would be worthwhile.

In my experience as a software and hardware engineer of many years, such a thing would not be trivial. It will take a lot of planning, discussion and thrashing out of ideas before we even put finger to keyboard. Figuring out what to build is often harder than building and testing it.

Let’s have positive ideas noted down here. Negatives are not welcome. Talk about what you want, not what you don’t want. Think about how your idea would actually work before you post so that we don’t have to wade through too many infeasible ideas.

I will start by saying that I think this current forum starts from a good place, with great volunteers and some good rules. Execution isn’t great, but that’s not the fault of the people running it. More, I suspect, the technology and those providing it. So I think the current principles and rules are sound and therefore let me start with some basic suggestions based on those. These are for discussion. They’re not absolutes.

1. Privacy first

Users may not disclose any personally identifying information. Accounts will be linked to an email address for practical reasons but this will not be displayed. A nickname will be shown instead. An avatar can be used but it cannot contain identifying imagery. Messages cannot contain phone numbers. Other media cannot be uploaded. No urls or other external  info. The forum is for discussion only. That might need some work, especially around urls. 

2. Moderation 

Full moderation destroys the immediacy of chat and isn’t welcome. The downside to that is that bad content will appear at some point. We probably need to use an automatic scoring system that flags accounts with markers which causes a human moderator to notified if a threshold is breached. The odd misdemeanour can pass without comment but regularly repeated triggers of the automated scanning requires the attention of a human. Accounts can be marked for pre-moderation if deemed necessary for a while, or even blocked as a severe penalty. 

3. Reputation

Lots of problem free posts together with likes can drive up a reputation score for each account. Perhaps a high reputation feeds into the moderation threshold. Perhaps it allows the use or urls etc. 

4. Right to be forgotten

Don’t keep discussions forever. Most stuff is just chat that can be destroyed after a few months and probably should be. Mods can be requested to lock an important discussion or make it sticky for a while or keep it indefinitely  

5. Keep it simple

Initially go for just a basic text chat. Markdown but no major formatting. Chat group categories for organisation. Other features can be added later. 

Let the specification begin!

  • I've been unable to access the forum for a while so apologies for the delay in responding. Having just got back to things, I can see that there's not been too many comments. Perhaps that's because I've not been driving the discussion, or perhaps it's because the list of features isn't so different from what we already have?

  • URLs are tricky because they can be dangerous and lead to users being taken to awful or dangerous sites. But there are also plenty of good people here who post honest help and we wouldn't want to stop that.

    So maybe the reputation mechanism works both positively and negatively. Users posting good content gain reputation and once that reaches a threshold they can also post URLS.

    The long terms good guys could therefore post URLS. Newbies and scammers/bots could not. Any good?

  • A filter to prevent automated accounts is definitely needed. With a bit of thought this can probably also be linked to the reputation mechanism I have mentioned for moderation. Therefore even if a bot manages to bypass the registration checks (like reCaptcha) they would fall foul of reputation score rules eventually, depending on content.

    There would also need to be a "flag as bot" option so that users can flag or vote accounts for the attention of the mods.

  • Fully agree. A PM facility would be needed. I think PM messages might need a longer period of time before being forgotten. Perhaps never forgotten?

  • Good points, ArchaeC. 

    Because moderation is labour intensive it's normal to have some level of automated process. But get this wrong, as this forum often does, and people are blocked for no good reason which causes arguably more stress than the content that moderation is trying to prevent.

    I think the idea of reputation might help with this. Each account starts with a base reputation score - give people the benefit of the doubt - and this score is reduced each time the auto-moderator is triggered by bad content. Once reputation drops to zero, the account is flagged for pre-moderation.

    Pre-moderation means that all posts from that user a first checked by a human and after a sufficient number of good postings, the reputation can be manually reset by a moderator. 

    Accounts would be given feedback as they lose reputation points - and crucially why they have lost points - so that they can self moderate. Negative scores would be "forgiven" over time so if people do learn and self moderate their output, their reputation will recover. Only persistent offenders end up being flagged for human intervention.

    It would be possible to "game' such a simple algorithm but I think a few extra checks and balances should make it a little more robust. The most important feature is that people don't just fall off a cliff edge - they are given clear feedback as to why their content is objectionable and can the opportunity to improve.

    For right to be forgotten, we would let old threads die out. Dead threads would vanish from view but remain available for recovery for a short period by moderators - say 6 months. After that they are destroyed. So they're really forgotten, for good.

    Some thought would need to be given as to how this affects data backup, but that can be handled.

    Moderators would be able to mark a thread as "keep" so that it doesn't die, if deemed useful. And users would be able to request a thread be kept. Maybe a simple voting system could be implemented, 1 vote per account, which triggers a thread to be kept if a threshold is reached.

  • Great idea - a mute facility - which prevents you from seeing posts from selected individuals. Presumably, if muted, a person should also be prevented from sending you messages. Essentially, and all their output would not appear to you, apart from a listing of muted people, so that you can find them to unmute them. It might also be necessary to include a "view anyway" button as a placeholder for muted text to make the flow of articles look normal.

  • I'd definately like the right to be forgotten, the idea of all the rubbish I come up with being available forever is scary, people might take me seriously! lol.

    This may seem like a negative to some, but I'd really like to be able to block some posters and not see thier posts, at the moment I just scroll past them, but it would be nice to have the choice not to have thier nonsense at all.

  • This spam filter is discrimminating against many legitimate users (and myself!) which is ridiculus. MY P.M''s are unuseable.

    Every day one member reaches out to me and apparently they can see that I've sent something but not read the messages.

    That's awful.

    I put a link in the 'list of things' thread for contacting NAS direct to complain.

    I haven't yet but may do so.

    I notice that your posts seem to be appearing here out of sequence so are possibly being moderated.

  • I realised I had not mentioned that each of the things above earns "points" that effectively rate how likely a post is to be spam - once you get above a certain threshold (3 I think) then it is automatically flagged.

    There appears to be another mechanism where if you are flagged twice in a certain period of time them you get put on the naughty step where all your posts are held for moderation.

    Most companies will not punlish these details as it just makes it easier for spammers to work within those guidelines.

  • Thank you for doing this Arise. You have made a good, positive start to the idea of a a new forum.

    I like the idea of 1. Privacy first and I agree that

    2. Moderation - of some form, is essential.  

    I haven’t the knowledge to suggest how this may be done effectively. I expect it is a philosophical argument over the rights of vulnerable people to protection from reading harmful material v. the right to post our choice of content freely. Is there a right or wrong answer? 

    4. Right to be forgotten would keep the forum fresh and easier to navigate for new people and I am in favour of that. Sometimes it can be hard for we autistic people to let go of something, so can old threads be accommodated in a separate section or would the forum become too messy?

  • I was admin on a forum run on the same platform Peter runs his forum on.. 

    We came under a directed spam attack where I was hacking them off the site in the hundreds. Handbag sellers in the main as I recall. 

    His only has a little bit of spam that has accrued over a while, because no-one uses it he does spam clearing intermittently.

    "Freecycle" (go look if you haev not) is a small effort that is huge entirely run by volunteers as I understand... It can be done.

    This spam filter is discrimminating against many legitimate users (and myself!) which is ridiculus. MY P.M''s are unuseable.

    Every day one member reaches out to me and apparently they can see that I've sent something but not read the messages.

    If Peter finds removing the spam on his forum onerous. I can help and whomp up a procedure that can be followed by someone else when I get banned, bored, or kark it.

  • If it's the spam filter, I don't understand why that can't be moderated

    It normally can be modified but it will depend on the options that were setup on the service contract under the new suppliers.

    I suspect that the cheapest option was used (since most cash will have gone on the upgrade to the site) which means there is a generic spam filter used that cannot be modified.

    It is more or less fit for purpose as it catches most spam (do you recall seeing much here recently?) but is overzealous in order to do this.

    A more agreeable option would be to pay for the upgrade to a customisable spam filter and pay to train staff on modifying it.

    Perhaps creating a list of actions that trigger the spam filter would be a good interim measure seeing as systemic change is not on the cards.

    From what I can see it looks like the following are triggers:

    1- posting links to known suspect sites

    2 - posting more than 3 links of any kind

    3 - editing a post within a certain time of its creation

    4 - including more than 3 images in a post

    5 - posting the same thing more than once in a certain time period

    6 - using multiple key words (typically ones that are auto censored)

    There will be other criteria but it would be good to confirm these and maybe get someone to post this as a new topic so it is easy to refer to.

    It may be fatalistic to look at accepting the current status quo but experience indicates things are unlikely to change here and alternatives are probably not viable long term.

  • Once we understand what triggers the auto-quaranteen mechanism then it should be a lot easier to avoid it, but I do hope NAS get around to eventually paying their IT company to do more work on it, but I kind of suspect they were dumped after the debacle of the upgrade recently, so there is nobody to do any work on the site.

    If it's the spam filter, I don't understand why that can't be modified - do you know about spam filters and the companies that provide them?

    This is a copy that Pixiefox posted of a reply from the Community Manager on this subject:

    I think that they are using a different spam filter than before the upgrade, but although I don't want to have the forum filled with spam I don't want established members to be constantly moderated either, and there doesn't seem to be any answer to how that can be resolved. Here's a copy of their email to me:
    "We would like to apologise that your posts went into the moderation queue. We had less moderation over the festive period which meant it may have taken a little longer for your posts to be approved by the moderation team. Thank you for your patience whislt the moderation team approved your post.  
    We are unsure why your posts were flagged by the spam filter. The spam filter is an external feature. We do not have control over the spam filter and what posts are picked up. One option would be to remove the spam filter, but this would mean a huge increase in spam on the community which would not be pleasant for users. .."
  • It's all rather complex isn't it.

    That's it in a nutshell - I do feel that while this site has its flaws, it is a much more sustainable solution that creating a splinter group on a different site that has more or less the same function.

    Without the same controls over impartiality, funding and liability (such as NAS are subject to) then I think any new site will be a bit of a time bomb waiting for whoever runs it to develop bias, run out of cash, run out of time to moderate it or have a meltdown/burnout and be unable to deal with it for a sustained period, leading to complaints of lack of moderation.

    Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

    Plus the history of threads here is a pretty good resource for research.

    Once we understand what triggers the auto-quaranteen mechanism then it should be a lot easier to avoid it, but I do hope NAS get around to eventually paying their IT company to do more work on it, but I kind of suspect they were dumped after the debacle of the upgrade recently, so there is nobody to do any work on the site.

    It will eventually change but untl then we need to do what we have done all our lives and endure the pain since the alternative is just a different sort of pain.

  • It would realistically cost to have it shown high up on the search results (this is a part of how search engimes make money) and would require someone with Search Engine Optimisation skills to keep it  up there.

    If the website were to host adverts then this could offset some of the costs, but I'm not sure how people here would raact to that.

    Thanks Iain.

    Yes, adverts wouldn't go down well with me - I tend to leave sites that have them and use an Ad Blocker.

    It's all rather complex isn't it.

  • Although if it's not linked to NAS how easily could it be found on a search engine?

    It would realistically cost to have it shown high up on the search results (this is a part of how search engimes make money) and would require someone with Search Engine Optimisation skills to keep it  up there.

    If the website were to host adverts then this could offset some of the costs, but I'm not sure how people here would raact to that.

  • Would there be an option to PM?

    I believe that's seen as quite valuable here.

  • These are two forums I know have been made since my time here, and sadly, they both appear to be inactive.

    By Ausomely Autistic:

    https://autopia.freeforums.net/

    By Peter:

    https://areyoualien.uk/phpBB3/index.php

    There appears to be a lot of spam on Peter's so then we get to the problematic question of spam filters.

    Vastly overactive here but on the Shutterstock forum they were underactive and eventually they just shut the forum down because they couldn't be bothered to pay someone to deal with the spam and generally moderate it.

  • No urls or other external  info. The forum is for discussion only. That might need some work, especially around urls

    I'm not keen on this.

    URLs are often given here by members to help others to sites that might help them (including NAS) but also mental healthcare.

    How can people be helped without being signposted?

    I see the forum as being similar to this - so some discussion, but also a place for giving assistance.

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