Temporary Forum Closures (including DISCUSS RULES)

[constance]

Last week it was suggested that staff shut down CF and take a retreat to iron out policy and practice. This suggestion has a lot of merit. Instead of shutting down CF, we have decided to TEMPORARILY close down a few high-report forums so staff at all levels and on all teams can focus on issues which have been tabled due to lack of time. These temporary closures include the already closed Prophetic Ministries and Political Discussions. We will shortly be closing Discuss Rules. Other forum closures may be announced in the near future.

Regarding the TEMPORARY CLOSURE OF DISCUSS RULES, it’s our goal to reopen it by June 11. When it is re-opened, staff and the conciliators will work together to ensure that the threads remain informative, insightful, on track, and OPEN.

During this intentional downtime, Exec and Policy will be discussing the “Little Changes” proposed here in DR this month, the list of open items which Tall73 has compiled, some rule revisions, the approved ribbons, and other outstanding issues. The Support team will be working on Discuss Rules, the Debate team will be addressing the Political Discussions forum, and the Ministry team will be addressing the Prophetic Ministries forum.

This thread is being reopened to discuss the implementation of the renovated DR forum.

It is not for:
1) Criticism of the DR forum structure or the downtime
2) Personal attacks on members or staff.
3) Off-topic comments (including conspiracy theories)
4) Discussing the temporary shutdown of DR
5) Discussing the topics that staff is discussing while DR is shut down

This thread is for questions like (and these are questions I've heard already, not the scope of the questions that can be asked):
1) how is this going to work
2) what do I do if a post disappears
3) suggestions for how the conciliators and staff can work together
4) can I start a thread about anything
5) what about staff? are they subject to X?

Posts not contributing positively to this effort, or which break forum rules will be deleted and the poster may receive an FSB from this thread. Participation in this thread is optional. This thread may be closed if not productive.

 

[CaDan]

How hard and fast is the June 11 target date?

 

[constance]

I've never missed a deadline on my real life job.

I hope it is a very pessimistic date.
Honestly, it kinda depends on how well this thread goes.

 

[CaDan]

Who gets to make the decision to approve posts?

"Support Team" is too vague of an answer for my taste. Will it be moderators or supervisors or admins?

 

[meh]

Support Team. Tawny and I will probably do the most at the beginning as we train the team and all come together and work under the new format. And we and the Supervisors will work closely with our mods on all issues.

I will personally be checking the edit logs of all threads several times per day. I'm sure Tawny will as well and so will the rest of the team. If anyone besides Support staff is approving or even going through and unapproving posts we've already approved- we will know and it will be dealt with.

If you look over here:
http://www.christianforums.com/t5403327-testing.html

I've made a practice thread for the team already. There are several unapproved posts still waiting for approval. When I (or any mod) looks at the edit log for that thread, it shows who has approved a post and when, who has unapproved a post and when and who has deleted a post and when.

 

[Alice the Sister]

When it is re-opened, staff and the conciliators will work together to ensure that the threads remain informative, insightful, on track, and OPEN.

May we be given some insight as to what specifically you're doing to ensure threads remain informative, insightful, on track, and open? For instance, as you're making the new guidelines on how to successfully handle the reopening of certain forums, perhaps you could tell us what you've already established so we can all go over the issues, as a community?

 

[CaDan]

Support Team. Tawny and I will probably do the most at the beginning as we train the team and all come together and work under the new format. And we and the Supervisors will work closely with our mods on all issues.

I will personally be checking the edit logs of all threads several times per day. I'm sure Tawny will as well and so will the rest of the team. If anyone besides Support staff is approving or even going through and unapproving posts we've already approved- we will know and it will be dealt with.

What do you mean by "dealt with"?

 

[constance]

May we be given some insight as to what specifically you're doing to ensure threads remain informative, insightful, on track, and open? For instance, as you're making the new guidelines on how to successfully handle the reopening of certain forums, perhaps you could tell us what you've already established so we can all go over the issues, as a community?

I'm speaking only to Discuss Rules in this case.

Sure. It's a common complaint that people come into a thread and take it off topic or turn it into a flame war, and it gets closed.

In a moderated forum the mods can isolate a problem post before other people can react to it- there can't be a snowball effect.

Regarding the other forums, I don't know enough to suggest what should be done. Do you have suggestions?

 

[ravenscape]

Will the application Rule 3.8 be loosened in the new DR? If so, what will this look like?

 

[meh]

What do you mean by "dealt with"?

Disciplinary actions will be taken against anyone approving, unapproving or otherwise doing things to posts without Support Team authorization.

 

[Alice the Sister]

I'm speaking only to Discuss Rules in this case.

Sure. It's a common complaint that people come into a thread and take it off topic or turn it into a flame war, and it gets closed.

In a moderated forum the mods can isolate a problem post before other people can react to it- there can't be a snowball effect.

Regarding the other forums, I don't know enough to suggest what should be done. Do you have suggestions?

I guess I meant like a list of things you're working on, for DR or whatever. I'm not really in on all the details of what's going on here. All I can gather is that you're changing stuff. You should tell us the list of changes you plan on doing, and then we can build up from that. You know what I mean?

 

[constance]

Will the application Rule 3.8 be loosened in the new DR? If so, what will this look like?

There are not plans for this currently - we need to get the forum running well before we make too many changes.

After the forum has been running for a while and we've worked out the kinks and conciliators and staff are OK with it, I don't see why we can't talk about it.

 

[CaDan]

Will the default mode be to approve or disapprove posts? That is, will posts be approved unless there is a reason not to approve them or will posts only be approved is there is a reason to approve them?

 

[constance]

I guess I meant like a list of things you're working on, for DR or whatever. I'm not really in on all the details of what's going on here. All I can gather is that you're changing stuff. You should tell us the list of changes you plan on doing, and then we can build up from that. You know what I mean?

Sure.

We are working on the opening of the three forums,

this list:
http://www.christianforums.com/t519...t-answers-were-said-to-be-forthcoming-on.html

And this list:

http://www.christianforums.com/t5313129-little-things-big-difference-what-are-your-ideas.html

There are some other things, but the bulk of it is in those two lists.

 

[meh]

Will the default mode be to approve or disapprove posts? That is, will posts be approved unless there is a reason not to approve them or will posts only be approved is there is a reason to approve them?

The default mode will be to approve posts, and get them approved and on the board as quickly as we can get to them. The only reason a post would will not be approved as quickly as possible is if it contains a rule violation or a team member is unsure if there is a rule violation or not. In that case the team will discuss with an eye towards still getting the post on the board, whether deemed ok or after having an edit, as quickly as possible.

 

[TomUK]

Will the name of the forum be changed? Under the previous system i thought it was barely a discussion area and this new system will essentially stop discussion. I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing but i do think that the title of a forum should represent its purpose.

 

[TomUK]

Could i propose a third option rather than just aprove, disprove? I am worried in the potential abuse of the system whereby if one mod wants to arbitrarily slow down the DR then they simply need to forget to aprove or disprove posts for an hour or two. Perhaps a 'second opinion' button could be implemented which would mean that after reviewing a post a mod has to select one of the three options.

 

[TomUK]

Probably a silly question but does Erwin have time to implement such a system? He's been absent quite a lot recently with quite a few bugs left unfixed. I haven't got a clue about internet programming but it seems to me like it would be a pretty big job to code up. Is this technically realistic by the 11th?

 

[Timothy]

Probably a silly question but does Erwin have time to implement such a system? He's been absent quite a lot recently with quite a few bugs left unfixed. I haven't got a clue about internet programming but it seems to me like it would be a pretty big job to code up. Is this technically realistic by the 11th?

The answer is it's already coded into the system CF runs on, so anyone with access to the ability to add and edit forums (Only AngelAmidala at present, I believe) should be able to do this. I don't think Erwin even needs consulting. I believe Meh and AngelAmidala are already experimenting with how this is going to work (just from posts in this thread alone) so I think technically it could go into action within days.

Tim

 

[TomUK]

Cheers for your response, Timothy. Does that work as well for automatically moving unapproved posts to the conciliator forum?