Have you ever been to an unmoderated board?
 

I ask this because I have stumbled upon two different boards that had been abandoned of all moderation for one reason or another. Because of this there were constant mob scenes of flaming people unfairly and a lack of a community feel. It was awful.

My favorite thing about this board is the heavy moderation. It makes me feel safe.


TFP ----> :icare: <---- Me

Yeah, it's truly disgusting.

The poor spelling, the utter stupidity...I really can't stand it.

There's some fine examples at IMDB. It's plumb full of fucktards.

I'm not talking about spelling, and I'm not sure I understand your post either. Who are IMDB?

internet movie database http://imdb.com

Unmoderated forums are fun in certain ways, but not in other. As long as the registration is moderated in a way that people don't just use like 50 names to say random crap. Like shoutboxes for instance: total waste of space unless you have a complicated registration with verification for it, else the shoutbox just turns into one dude spamming "gfeubaorbeao" over and over again.

The Yahoo! News boards are probably the worst example of this. Each news story has an associated message board. No matter what the story is about, the discussion invariably degenerates into a racial or religious fight, or predictable talk radio style "liberal vs. neo-con" bickering.

At the other end of the spectrum, I myself started a board with virtually no moderating, and it worked well because the members were invited by myself or people I knew pretty well. The terms of service made it clear that any stupidity would be rewarded with immediate arbitrary banning without warning nor reprieve.

Most people are inherently jackasses. In normal social circumstances, there are checks and balances that prevent most people from being abusive to others. Face to face confrontations, knowing that you can't hide who you are, and other social pressures generally keep people in line.

Give them the cloak of anonimity, and suddenly those checks and balances disappear. The only thing you can do is weed out those posters who abuse that anonimity by means of (good) moderators. That's why I will never go to an unmoderated board. Some people claim unmoderated boards are better because you have the freedom to say what you want with no restrictions. I see it, however, as anarchy over a wire.

Penny Arcade summed it all up nicely with this comic .

Maybe I'm the only one who notices unmoderated boards are often plagued with bad spelling. I've always thought it was a characteristic of an unmoderated board but maybe not.

I probably haven't been to enough to make a fair answer.

Amen to that. This is exactly what I'm talking about, and yeah, it's like Lord of the Flies or something.

I have a rather strong opinion on this...

Spend some time over on Slate -- the moderating Nazis sucked the life out of that place. Moderating RUINED that forum, it used to be interesting, good people, fun, and enjoyable place, but the fun-sucking, arrogant moderators just killed it. I haven't been back there for a while, so it may have either improved, or just fellinto the ocean, I frankly stopped caring, over moderation is a bad thing.

With the right people, boards can moderate themselves, when baiters show up, and those are the ones who cause the most trouble, spouting garbage, if their posts get ignored, then eventually, the baiter will move on elsewhere, or they get the message pretty quick and settle down and join in.

If you want to see a good example of the horrors of zero moderation, check out the message board on fuckedcompany.

The anti-semintism, racism, misogyny, vulgarity and garden variety stupidity defy description.

I've been to one or two boards that acts like it's unmoderated. Mods are reluctant to clean up useless threads, delete multiple threads about the same topic, joins the flame war....ughh....

i used to visit those kind of boards. didn't participate, just visit. then i found this one, and have been here ever since.
but what's even worse than totally unmoderated boards are poorly moderated ones. at least with unmodded boards you kinda know what you're getting into. poorly modded boards give the illusion that the mods will step up and do something in case something goes awry, only for you to find out that the mods are just as bad, if not worse, than the other members.

That's kind of what I'm talking about. The board had a mod, but he stopped doing his job because he hated everyone. He just lets people get abused and stomped on, and does nothing. Meanwhile, tech problems go by unhandled as well, so you basically have a board that is falling apart at the seams. It just sucks because I got ganged up on by some really mean people, and was sexually harassed, and nothing was done. I can't tell you how much that hurts. The worst part is that it’s my favorite band’s board.

What's even worse than unmoderated boards are those flame boards where the administrator is the rudest, most disrespectful one of the bunch, and the moderators, although they do their jobs well in most respects, are afraid to stand up to the admin when he or she engages in behavior that is destructive to the community.

Well thanks for the vote of confidence everyone. I feel like the TFP is good about preserving it's own maturity. When someone steps up who is a complete dickwad, they're usually pointed out faster than it took them to write their post.

I visit a couple of forums where the mods never lock/edit/delete threads, and I love those forums. Total freedom of speech. I hate censorship.. It really annoys me when I see a thread locked, especially when I didn't get a chance to reply. Oh well.

I'm not talking about freedom of speech. I'm talking about blatant abuse and harassment. People shouldn't be "free" to do that, behind a screen or not.

I post daily on a completely unmoderated board. To tell the absolute truth, its more of a homely feel than the TFP for me at least. Why? Examples...

TFP has so many people that you couldnt possibly feel like you know everyone. (This is a good thing in the fact that theres tons of people who have knowledge here)(Bad because of the reason I said)

The other board, has probably 90 people who post regularly or semi regularly. I can tell you that I know what most of them will say about certain subjects.

Flamewars? Yes they happen. Horrible unfair injustice? Not really, more funny to read than anything. *if you can't take a flame get off the internet*

People who are complete and utter retards? If 90 people flamed the fuck out of every single thingyou said... that would probably weed out the retards eh?

Got something that you wanna post? Might be borderline rule breaker? Errr... wait a second.. No rules. No bans. (Unless your completely... utterly.... amazingly.... fucking stupid.

**The Big One**

Someone just posted something about *X* subject. It's the dumbest thing, you've ever heard in your entire life, the person should just die and help humanity.

Well then, Now you can tell them. "Dude, your probably the dumbest individual I've ever seen in my life, If Darwin wasnt currently working up plans to obliterate you from the face of the planet, I would do it myself."

Then you can chuckle as he posts another completely retarded post about how gay/noob/dumb/loser/nerd/never had sex with a girl kind of person you are! :)

I like unmoderated boards, I can just vent on them as much as I want.

Oh God, I peeked at that place a while back. Sooo bad. The kind of garbage I could imagine Beavis and Butthead posting.

This place is what I'm used to. Starting here and just visiting some of those sites is like getting on a plane and touring a failed third world state. It's *interesting* but you're thankful for your passport and return ticket.

Here's the deal between moderated vs unmoderated. Unmoderated can work well, but ONLY on a small board. I like a bigger board with a wide range of thoughts and ideas like TFP - but with a certain number of active participants that you still feel somewhat close knit. I'd say I feel like I know the personality in some general sense of about 50 to 100 people here. Thing to keep in mind is just that it takes more active participation on your own part to notice these things as well. The bigger the board, the more participation necessary to gain the community feeling, that's all.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Slashdot as an unmoderated forum. Sure, it's not *quite* a forum, and it's not *technically* unmoderated, but it basically is. It's a real exercise in stupidity if you try to read Slashdot comments with a threshold of -1. Of course, if you read with a threshold of, say, 3, you can weed out most of the bad and see mostly good. Hence why I still bother reading comments to some Slashdot stories.

I haven't experienced it. I have been to a few where the mods didn't do much... but this here is like a family.

The funny thing is...is the first site I've ever been too like this. It was recommended by a friend and I've never been anywhere else!

I was on a board for a very long time like the one Pinkie described and thankfully one of its members pointed me here last year. I will admit TFP was kind of a culture shock and I was afraid to post much for a long time cause I was scared I'd fuck up lol.

My boards are moderated to a point...no flaming, but we do get a person now and then that the board as a whole feels they should "take down a notch" but they do it without calling them names. My biggest thing was on a private board I ran every fucking thread turned into a discussion of the one of the posters physical attributes and most of the other women got really sick of it, but since we're all friends that hang out and party they got mad at me when I tried to make rules and pulled a mutiny on me lol

I have the greatest respect for TFP its admins and mods and the atmosphere they create.

Errr well, the place is called fuckedcompany did you really expect your grandma on there talking about knitting and ginger snaps?

Mr. Sticky, I was too.

Shani, I've sorta nervous about that too. ;)

Strange Famous, They are fine until a mob of angry people gang up on you for your beliefs and try to humiliate and harass you to the point of leaving. I usually have seen this behaviour in jealous females.

WonderWench, hahaha, Nooo thank you. I've seen those kind of boards too. They are just ridiculous.

Menoman, I totally disagree with you. If someone says something I don't like, I either turn the other cheek, or tell them I disagree in a respectful manner. I think that kind of “beehive” mentality is counterproductive and a waste of time. I also think that being mean a cruel for the sake of FUN is completely pathetic and useless. To each his or her own though.

When people gang up on me I just go into my "Canibus" persona :)

That's an interesting perspective. I've never been to a poorly moderated discussion board, but at the same time, it never crossed my mind that a board could be poorly moderated.

Oh well, something else to avoid in this world.

I was an admin of a fairly large board(30,000+ users) then the owner took on another admin, who was made an admin because he was hosting the site as well.

he's the antithesis of moderation here. couldn't stop talking about fisting assholes and the like. long standing members and mods would PM me saying they couldn't stand the dude, but the owner didn't wanna hear it, he was blinded by saving money and pushing his business forward.

more power to 'em, but I don't admin over there anymore, got real lame real fast. TFP is one of few boards that I'll browse and participate in on a regular basis. Nice job over here.

I used to post on a board that had almost no moderation. At times it was unbearable.

Were any of you that were on unbearable boards ever on The Regular Guys board? ewww even typing it makes me shudder

I ran away from the suckiest board of them all. People were free to harass and abuse people to the left and right and it was viewed as okay and alright.

It sucked ass.

Awhile ago I was pretty active in the Usenet which is practically unmoderated. While there are a lot of groups that are pure hell there are also a lot of groups that actually work quite good with some sort of "selfmoderation".

fuckedcompany was the first forum I ever went to. I remember the first thread I read the first page wasn't too bad, not too much flaming. Then after a while it turned into guys saying stupid stuff like"IMGONNA KILL U CUZ IM SUCHA BADASS MUTHERFUKER N U R GAY U FAG", to which someone else would reply "UR A FAG U HOMO ILL RUN U OVER WITH MY BIG TRUCK CUZ IM A BADASS"

After reading that for about two minutes I left, never to return.

Wow, Crazybill, that sounds more like an AOL chat room full of 13 year olds than an adult-oriented message board.

The old fatbabies forums were an unmoderated hell hole. While it was funny for a while it just usually degenerated into you're gay! or Eiger is a fag! Brilliant.

What about Genmay??? Those guys are pretty crazy.

It's funny, when I saw this imdb sprang straight into my head and it was mentioned in the first three replies.

That site sounds like the perfect internet site; a different board for each movie, where you can analyse and discuss indiviudal movies with loads of other fans around the world.

Instead we get:
"Man that was the worst movie ever made. That director is an idiot. All copies of this movie should be burned"

"Fuck you, you ignorant fuck"

"Fuck you dickwad"

etc.

Such a crying shame.



Admitedly you can go overboard with moderation, and it becomes blatant consorship, and that's no fun.

What you really want is moderators with the attidue of "it's not what you say, its how you say it", and that's what we have here on tfp, which is why it just plain rules so much! :thumbsup:

Thats the fun of unmoderation :)

To each his own though like Pinkie said. Some people can't handle it or they think they are above it. But deep down, every single person posting on these boards at some point or another wants to tell someone to fuck off and die in fire.

I'm agreeing! :D *Feels safe*