TassieTiger wrote:Blackened - I agree with 99% of exactly what you’ve said above - but surely, you have to concur that in this day and age, in a political / off topic arena, things will get said that fall into a grey area...as you yourself have quoted above, have your say, if ppl don’t agree then get over it. This statement in itself leads to exactly whAt happened in the covid thread - 2 ppl having their say...
I acknowledge there are grey areas, of course. At some point though, action has to be taken.
I realise that a lot of what happens with moderation isn't actual seen by members, and this can lead to the appearance of arbitrary decisions or favouritism.
As I've said before though, just because at the time you read it you see a reasonably orderly topic, doesn't mean we haven't already deleted 50 problematic replies from it.
You may see a thread "disappear", when in fact there have been dozen of minor adjustments made prior to this. We're certainly not in a rush to delete or lock topics, sometimes that's just were we end up after many interventions which members don't see.
Honestly, I can't remember the specifics of the topic now that it's gone but in regards to "2 people having their say". This is fine, and if people had their say and wrapped it up I'm sure the topic could have stayed.
It's the second round of zero-value argumentative posts that are the problem, then the rebuttals, then the next rebuttals, then the next...
This can lead to 10 posts of content, and 30 post of arguments with no actual additional information. Just an attempt to force someone else to share a view, then berating them out of frustration when they can't be swayed. This, will we not allow.
At the end of the day mate, there is no perfect solution, and I certainly don't claim that we get it 100% right every time. The reality is in any conflict one person wanted to say it, one person thinks it's inappropriate. Whatever action/lack of action we take, someone is going to feed hard done by.
I won't repeat it, as I'm sure it's been made abundantly clear the type of behaviour we expect from members here. I can only continue to encourage this, and intervene when things fall outside of what is expected, for whatever reason it happens.
With a view to minimising interference though, I honestly can't stress enough how beneficial reporting a potentially problematic post really is. I know people have a (in my opinion, strange) reluctance to report posts, but this isn't pre-school, you're not 'dobbing', and it's not about 'standing up for yourself' by pushing on with an argument instead.
Many topics could have been saved if people had opted to use the report tool provided instead of choosing start/continue an argument which went on to consume the topic, ultimately resulting in it being locked/deleted.
The sooner something is brought to our attention, the sooner problem members can be warned/banned and larger problems/actions avoided.