Out with the Old and in with the New?

[Former Member]

Hi everyone and Happy New Year to all!

I retired about two and a half years ago and mostly stopped participating in the forums (mostly ABAP). A few months ago I was asked by my former employer to go back to work under a casual contract. I did that and also started participating in the forums again. I think it's a good way to sharpen some pretty rusty skills.

Anyway, I've noticed a few things have changed while I was away:

To me, the most noticeable change is that moderation seems to have changed. In the past, a moderator would decide on his or her own whether a post should be locked. When locked, the moderator would generally add a reply indicating who locked it and why. Now it seems (and I can be entirely wrong here - let me know if I am) that when a member flags a post, it immediately disappears from view. I suppose that a moderator then makes the final decision whether to keep it hidden or not. But the problem is that the post and replies simply disappear with no further feedback. This was a bit annoying to me when I took part in a conversation about calculating the number of months and days between two dates. I realize that date questions are generally basic and ought to be locked, but the point I was making was that date calculations are not always simple when you include months) and you have to be careful about the order of operations. You can get two different answers. But then the discussion moved beyond that when I suggested some OOP methods that give a better chance of getting the answer you actually want. Then another poster disagreed with me saying that the methods I suggested didn't help. Fair enough, but then the discussion disappeared without warning.

I've also noticed that there seem to be a lot more basic questions allowed and that some posts offer promises of points. On the other hand there do seem to be more "good" questions.

Sorry - this seems more of a rant than a question.

But am I off base?

Rob

[Jelena · Accepted solution]

Welcome back, Rob! I do miss finding the locked threads with your "closing remarks" on them, but as Matt pointed out, the volume has increased a lot. Also I wonder if more offenders than usual were able to sneak in while many of our SCN vigilantes were on a holiday break?

I'd agree that moderation "tightness" differs by space (sometimes a lot), but ABAP is usually kept pretty clean thanks to Matt and others. By the way, did you read his blog?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Jelena - I'm not back, really just visiting. I hadn't seen Matt's blog before, but read it just now. An excellent bit of writing.

Maybe I'm missing something else, but it seems to me that volume has actually decreased from a couple of years ago. Are there any statistics?

Rob

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Hi Rob,

it's good to see you're still here 🙂

IMHO the overall noise remained the same, it hasn't decreased at all. That's just my personal experience from the few spaces I haunt, though (FI-TV +ESS/MSS at the moment).

BTT: I know exactly what you mean. I usually use the normal moderation queue and then, indeed, the participants (if there were any) are left in the dark. Though, from time to time, I decide to put some heads on a pike and do it the old way (put down a post and lock the thread). The big "however", though, is, that these locked threads are washed away by new threads because there's no sticky option anymore (<in William Shatnner's Voice> hhhnnngggJIIIIIIIIVVVVE!), i.e. you always need new heads for the pikes. Jürgen's point is valid, no doubt, but if Mr. Do-the-needful is the one searching and find's a head on a pike, it might prevent another thread that needs to be rejected/hidden. That's wishful thinking, though, I guess ;-/

Cheers, Lukas

[Steffi_Warnecke · Accepted solution]

if Mr. Do-the-needful is the one searching

An oxymoron in the wild!

[matt · Accepted solution]

I'd do the needful if I had the authorisation to delete accounts...!

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

If you and/or Julius were given global mod rights, this would happen:

"Meanwhile, on SCN"

[JL23]

Hi Rob, saw your name already earlier, but wasn't sure that it was you.

2 alerts make a discussion automatically hidden. 1 alert hides it only from certain views, e.g. from the content page of a user, but the discussion is still visible in your personal content stream  and in the forums "recent activity" stream which is in the overview page of a forum.

If the moderator decides to reject the post, then it is gone from the surface, still the moderators of the space and the global moderator can see it.

The feedback is added in a note to the rejection  and is sent to the poster and to the person who alerted the moderator, not to the participants.

Locked questions still appear in the searches and annoy the real searchers on their way to the good answers. I personally only lock if the people ignore earlier rejections and re-post the basis questions.

When browsing some "old users" content I realize that a question posted today has about 2 to 3 times more views than questions posted a few years ago. And similar it is with number of posts, and the answers are coming quicker than ever. Almost impossible to reject a  basic question before the first reply was added. And almost impossible to read all questions to see such point offers and removing it, that requires a full time job.

[Former Member]

Thanks Jurgen, but the participants are still left in the dark. I do see your point about removing them from valid searches.

Rob

[matt]

It would be nice if all contributers got a message "Original post was rejected because:....". But I doubt we'll get that any time soon. It could be done manually, but time doesn't allow. I go through the ABAP forum a few times a day, each time reject around ten questions.

[Former Member]

Thanks Matt.

Rob