Permaban offences

LOL! God yes, and it almost ruined the forum completely. Its a shame we had to do away with it as one of the candidates is the rosetta stone for any young budding comedian.

Like Miss Vicky and Tongo said, yes it was allowed and did cause numerous problems.

The thing is, you can take 10 people discussing politics on a board and half can do it peacefully...but there's always a few who have to be belligerent, obstinate and always have to be right! And that's what caused problems.

I've seen too many friends falling out over political discussions on other boards and people becoming enemies. Thank goodness we don't talk politics/religion/social hot topics here anymore.

I didn't realise about religion being included also (or didn't remember)

So, I take it is OK to say such-and-such film is a "faith movie" but nothing more than that?

Debating pros/cons of religion is out. But saying, I enjoy Christian movies, or movies of faith, etc is fine. (as far as I remember that is, I don't want to speak directly for Yoda I'm just going off his post about rule changes)


EDIT: It's best to read Yoda's own post here, and probably read the entire thread.
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...ighlight=rules

Not only was it allowed, it was kind of encouraged. The ethos in the early days was "just roll with the punches." It was about having lots of arguments but then being able to move on from them, rather than become obsessed or bitter or whatever. And for a long time it (mostly) worked. But the world's different now, and I also have less time to devote to such things (and, with more experience, perhaps less patience and more confidence that when I think I see X, it probably is X and I don't need to obsess over the < 1% chance I'm jumping to conclusions), so the rules had to change, too.

Yep. As much as I'd like to just let people say whatever, the question itself is something I need to answer, in great detail and with ample explanation, basically any time it's asked. Failure to do so would be conspicuous.

I won't pretend it's definitive, or that I can be objective. But I will say that I have a lot of receipts. I don't like divulging the ugly details (it leads to gossip, among other things), but when I have shared specifics with people, they've almost always expressed surprise at how bad things actually were, and usually end up being shocked I didn't take action earlier.

Yep, completely true. But it's not clear that this is a bug, rather than a feature. In a sense that's the point of moderation, to create a survivorship bias. To strain out anyone who finds the ruleset intolerable. Forum rules are specifically there to attract and keep a certain type of user, conducive to a certain atmosphere, and by implication, that means weeding out anyone incompatible with that. This leaves the question of when/whether people are banned who didn't need to be, but between unbanning people who've literally threatened my life and providing supporting evidence basically any time I'm asked, I think I've setup the best guard rails I can, within reason.

--

One thing I will say about the frequency of "BANNED" in old threads is that it's frequency is not really a product of an unreasonable (or even unusual) number of bannings, but is down to three things:

First, because we've been open for over 24 years. This isn't unprecedented, but it's 99.9th percentile stuff.

Second, because we've had several extremely prolific posters banned (some, as indicated earlier, by their own request).

Third, because we're pretty diligent about closing duplicate threads and linking to old ones, whereas most forums do the exact opposite: lock old threads and/or warn people not to bump them.

So I'm skeptical that we ban more members than any well-moderated forum. But unlike most of them we don't churn through threads and members the same way, effectively burying anything that didn't happen recently, more chat room than forum. Our whole history is on display. And that transparency paradoxically breeds more trust and more distrust, depending on how observant or charitable the person making the judgment is. It provides plenty of ammunition to someone with an axe to grind (to mix weapon metaphors), but it should also provide a lot of reassurance to anyone with an open mind.

"No Politics" is shorthand for any highly contentious issue outside of film. There's something similar to this written on the Rules page.

It's necessarily case-by-case. Referencing contentious issues is sometimes unavoidable when films pertain to them, but in my experience they almost never devolve into bitter flame wars if the people discussing them stick to the actual film, rather than just using the film as a jumping off point to discuss the issue separate from its depiction.

i think i know who to blame

Noooooo we can't "blame Canada" for this one!

definitely not

It would be well to offer forum rules, post links to useful resources, and, at most, disclose what you're trying to do in moderating. At the point, however, that you feel compelled to weigh in and say words to the effect, "Actually, I'm quite good..." you're making an unforced error. If you have to insist you "are," this only raises suspicion that you "aren't." You don't get to give yourself your own nickname. You don't get to write your own eulogy. It's sus to write your own Yelp reviews. Leave the reviews to your officially satisfied customers. Citizen and Co. are good enforcers in this regard. Let them sing your praises as you thrice refuse a crown on the Lupercal. We're both agreed that survivor bias only helps you in this regard. Your best bet is to remain mostly at the perimeter. If you enter the pen and wrestle the pig, you'll only get muddy.

Um, no Corax. It isn’t anything like that.
And this discussion is strangely starting to sound a bit of an indictment, or a rebuke, against Yoda and his moderation.

There's a Rules page, linked from the footer of every single page on this site, that lists the basic rules, giving special elaboration for (and top billing to) the least intuitive one ("No Politics"). But it's my experience that people don't even read things that I (literally) put in big red text at the top of pages, so I've resigned myself to just explaining it a lot.

I don't consider this an error. If someone's thinking is so simplistic that they see me arguing for a thing as evidence that the thing is not so, I'm not sure I care much about their opinion. Because while arguing firmly and consistently is certainly something people do when they're trying to deceive you, it's also something people do when they're telling the truth about something important.

But it's not sus to respond to a negative Yelp review with "actually, you didn't tell us to cook your steak that way, here's video of what you actually said."

They're good for basic testimonials, but not for specifics. You yourself said earlier that the existence of this thread was "an implicit criticism which demands a reply." Parts of what's being discussed, only I have direct knowledge of. When things like impartiality are directly challenged (or even just respectfully questioned), I have to be available and verbose.

Oink oink. I think it's a fantasy to believe you can do hands-on moderation for any period of time without getting "muddy."

And best bet for what purpose? Maybe the "PR" you alluded to earlier, but I don't particularly care if I look cool, or seem desperate to people who view the world through the lens of a high schooler, or whatever. I'm not running for Class President. I'm the Principal.

I'm right in thinking that Yoda is the only mod/admin on here currently, right?

Are any other current users former mod/admins? Just out of curiosity really.

Sedai is one.

I think Sedai and Yoda are the only ones now. I remember when there were many.


Im truth though, and this is a very "big brother" idea (no not the tv show), but should a mod be a mod openly? Why not an Undercover Mod. That way people dont know when theyre trolling with fire.
You like that one? I just made that up

How do you know Yoda hasn’t already had and implemented that idea?

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Letterboxd

Way to give yourself away dude.

That's a crazy idea, I'd never think of that

Now that I read this, I'm staying off this thread (and maybe giving up drinking).