Forum Moderation Techniques

[mdwh2]

mikeymike wrote:
I just read that thread.  After the first couple/few pages, there was so little useful/accurate content that it is very unlikely that the original poster would have found it of any use.  I didn't lock it, but I would have done.

So because you guessed that one person might find it of little use, you'd decide you'd stop it for everyone? Whatever happened to not reading threads which don't interest you?

We have to look at *why* things such as arguments or going off-topic cause a problem. One problem that I can see is that it means the original topic may be lost in the noise, if people might still want to discuss it - but hang on, if the thread's locked, then no one can post on the original topic at all!

The only other reasoning I can see is that people don't want apparentely pointless threads clogging up the thread index - so my suggestion would be to move the thread to another forum perhaps? Maybe Talk About, or perhaps there should be a forum for any topic which might be deemed as pointless by the moderators, but people clearly still want to discuss.

Are there other problems that I have missed?

[mdwh2]

mikeymike wrote:
I think I can decide what is helpful for someone or not when mud is just being slung for three pages on end.

Except you evidently can't always do this successfully, otherwise this thread wouldn't exist.

If you think that would be useful to anyone, why don't you take up moderating elsewhere and see how well your ideas on the subject do for you.  I'll continue to trust my judgement and liase with the other AO staff.

The point isn't that moderators are expected to know magically which threads are useful, and which should be locked - the whole argument is that threads *shouldn't* be locked (or at least, only if there are issues of legality, say, but that's not in issue here).

And anyway, it would hardly be the end of the world, if I locked a thread, and the original poster requested that I unlock it because they were finding the discussion useful!

And if a thread participant requested also?

[mdwh2]

Argo wrote:
If a topic gets locked, nothing is stoping anyone from starting a new one. Just hope something is learned from the previous topic.

I'm glad to see this said - in the past, I've wanted to reply to some point in a locked thread I've been following, and unsure whether I'd get jumped on for starting it in a new thread.

However, surely this gives the problem that a locked thread could end up multiplying in several new threads (I saw this happen once), which surely clogs up things more so, and wouldn't it be better to keep it to a single thread? Oh well, I don't really mind as long as we can continue the discussion in a new thread, but was just a thought.