Pandemic, megathreads and moderation

College Confidential Community
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If memory serves me correctly, the mods have ASKED posters to report posts that seem to violate the TOS -not just the spam ones (those tend to show up early in the morning) , the ones that are selling stuff, the ones that are in another language, etc. but ones that are inflammatory, political, namecalling or what have you. The mods have repeatedly said they do not read every thread, so bringing something to their attention is helpful to them. Whether or not they (the mods) choose to act on any reported post is up to them, but at least it lets them take a look at it. They have preferred that posters report something rather than try to address it in the thread, because that usually just leads to things getting to be a bigger problem to address. Unless something has changed, that’s been their request.

IIRC, the mods had sorta divvied up which forums they were the primary moderators on, but now there seem to be so many forums and so few mods, it seems to be a massive, if not possibly unwieldy undertaking.

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Not exactly on topic but hopefully helpful- you can “dismiss” those pinned topics using the icon that looks like a gear. They’ll still come back up to the top if there are new posts.

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I’ve been here since August 2007. I’m not a frequent poster, but I read Parent Cafe almost every day. It’s the only place I’ve really found that has a wide variety of topics discussed by people in all walks of life all over the country. I miss the first virus thread. I don’t have time to hunt down 100 sites daily just to see what is going on all over the world.

If you look at the Financial Aid forums, questions are answered by people whose kids have been out of school for years. Same with many/most of the other forums. Do you want this to be a site of ask a question, get an answer and the thread is done? No one really gets helped by those if there are a variety of applicable opinions and experiences to be shared. That would be a shame.

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I’ve been hanging around here since 2008, just reading and absorbing information when my two oldest were looking at colleges. I didn’t make an account until after my second had made his decision, and that was as a “Thanks, everyone, and here’s what I’ve learned” post. I didn’t bother posting any questions with my third because I didn’t feel the need. So almost ALL of my posts have been in the parent forum and the parent cafe.

I haven’t visited anywhere outside of those two places in years.

I read every post in the original TatinG/DosChicos Covid thread. It was the best single place source of information I could find anywhere. And in between the informative posts were some less helpful ones. I knew exactly who was baiting who, and who was debating who on that thread and I didn’t care.

“Keep on scrolling, keep on scrolling” was my mantra. (Oh THAT guy again… sheesh, we know! We know how you feel about XYZ!) But those posts weren’t hurting anyone. Thise posts were like the two people at a party off in the corner arguing endlessly. I ignored them and moved on to the next posts for the information I wanted.

The day that thread was closed was the last time I logged into CC until tonight, when I came to see if another Covid thread had been started.

I enjoy CC. I have appreciated the moderation that kept political opinions to a minimum here. I have appreciated CC as a source of excellent information on a wide variety of topics. I have loved getting to know virtual friends here.

I have recommended parent cafe threads to real life friends dealing with particular personal or family issues. I have brought people to the cafe.

I don’t appreciate the somewhat condescending tone I’m reading here, on this thread, tonight. I think the OP should read, very carefully, what is being said here. There are amazing people here who you should not want to lose just because you have a particular vision of what the entire focus of CC should be.

I for one am only here for the cafe. I’d be sad to lose it, and I would have no reason to return to CC without it.

You very nearly lost me when you closed the first Covid thread.

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And therefore certain posters felt deputized and went all out with it!

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I wonder what would happen to the forum if every old geezer like myself is sent to the dump. Granted, I don’t post much outside of the cafe, but many old timers still do, and we all serve as a collective glue for the rest of the forum. Parents who wander in to ask a single question stick around and keep providing valuable advice to newcomers… it is chain reaction of sorts. Do not discount old timers easily - even if we are mostly yakking about things non-college, we are not a waste of cyberspace. However, if the owners want to re-brand the forum as a site for HS students to chat about college with their peers, good luck then.

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A sub-forum was closed years ago, mostly due to complaints from people who had a hard time seeing that others had different opinions on some matters. Moderation since has been more along the lines of “if you’ve a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” While I’ve no idea as to where the bulk of the complaints come from, I know that I’ve never reported a post to be offensive to me. Seen quite a few I didn’t agree with but…

… my dad told me many times, for a number of my formative years: “Except for another one, no-one likes a whiner.”

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I agree with @cinnamon1212 , there is a risk that the OP may make another grave mistake by thinking he has insight into how to “improve” CC and the organization of the threads. I was interested to read in the responses here how many others have also resorted to just looking at “Latest Posts” since the disastrous upgrade. I look at that, search to see if there’s anything new on my kid’s school or on the parents’ thread for his HS class, and that’s about it. The fact that the current setup is not great does not, however, mean the members will welcome another overhaul to match the OP’s view of what the forums should look like. Without the forums, CC would be just another college search site, and not a particularly good one, and the forums only work to attract new viewers because the current members are willing to share their expertise and experience. The range and depth of knowledge among the members is staggering, and the owners and administrators would do well to listen to them and respect their views.

I have also noticed that @MaineLonghorn is now one of only a few active moderators. Thank you for your hard work, I can imagine it’s quite a burden in these difficult times. We seem to have lost @skieurope , one of the other mods active on the threads I read, and there are probably others. It’s a shame.

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None of us oppose moderation of forums like this. However, like regulations of commercial enterprises, moderation needs to be based on a set of simple, easy to understand and well articulated principles, rather than the ToS few posters read. These principles could be very broad but there should be as few of them as possible. I also support the relaxation of certain rules/principles for some designated subforums.

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I too noticed @skieurope absence and hope it’s not related to real life covid stuff.

It simply isn’t fair that @MaineLonghorn does way more than her fair share of moderating. It’s why i personally think we should have a politics esque forum specifically for covid where moderation is minimal if there at all.

The site overhaul was done by someone who had not spent time on the board and it was extremely apparent. There were a lot of longtime members who left after that upgrade, to the detriment of the whole site - not just the cafe. I’d hate to see similar mistakes made now.

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@eastcoascrazy Your post made me lol about 'oh there is that one going on again about x,y,z, we know already! So true! And I am sure I could be one of those who people felt that way about! :slight_smile:

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I’m quite certain I’ve never reported someone for an opinion I don’t like but I have reported plenty of posts. Usually it’s spammers or people trying to sell something but just yesterday I reported someone who called another poster (IIRC) a “fat loser” and made fun of her husband’s disability.

Maybe I’ve seen more of this stuff because I’ve been on CC at odd hours and was on the site at a few junctures when spammers flooded the site briefly. I don’t know if some people are over-reporting, but certainly not everyone reporting posts is doing it to go on a power trip.

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Once again,

We haven’t seen this.

What we do see is people complaining about moderation on the public forums and then when I check their profiles find they’ve never reported a single post.

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I was told that by two other moderators- several years apart. Glad it hasn’t been your experience!

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I wonder where the leadership is now. To allow a fairly new employee to start a thread and proceed to insult posters and make condescending comments, link game theory. Very puzzling. I do wonder where this is all heading. Stay safe!

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By the way, we DO rely on reports to help moderate the site. There’s no way we can even scratch the surface in reading posts every day. We appreciate users who point out posts that don’t follow the Terms of Service. We get some spurious reports but they are a small minority.

If someone abuses the report feature, they receive a warning.

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Lots of good opinions here. I’ll add mine.

I think the most distinguishing feature of CC is forum moderation. I found the site when DD was looking at schools about five years ago and was so pleased to see such a kind, helpful community. In stark comparison to much of blogworld, CC’s forums are topical, useful, and fairly free of contention, whether political, religious, or otherwise. This is largely due to the terms of service and moderation, in my opinion. Moderators do a pretty good job keeping the car between the ditches, and I would much rather have them than not.

Our family used CC to navigate the complex and arcane business of college search and selection for our two children. Now that we have accomplished that task, I hope to stay around a while so that I provide some help to others. I’m an infrequent poster, fairly limited in my ability to help, but enjoy the intelligent conversations in all the forums.

While interesting, the original Covid forum became disheartening. I really enjoyed @doschicos news feed, but the political innuendo and back and forth became too much for me. I didn’t realize before that thread that there was an “ignore” feature, never had felt like that was neccessary before. Before the thread was shut down I had blocked several long time posters whose comments I had enjoyed for several years. I felt like I was on Reddit at times.

There are plenty of places on the web for unmoderated discussion. I have concerns that an unmoderated Parents Forum would lead to trouble in the CC family and would prefer not make exceptions to the terms of service.

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I might be mistaken but… I’ve always thought the TOS precluded public mention of moderation?

Probably time I read them again.

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I just went back and reread the post #1 of this thread. You should all do that.

Edited a lot to just leave the first sentence. I think that’s the most important to do after all the comments on both sides.

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I know there are lots of differing opinions here. I just want to say…Jon opened this discussion to get opinions…and there have been precious few times when the members have been asked. I would suggest we try to offer some help.

Here is my idea. And it’s ok if everyone hates it.

Set up a subforum for the Covid threads that are in the Parent Cafe. Leave the others where they are on the college info forums. In the new Covid subforum, include any threads in the Parent Cafe, and others can be added there as well.

I would suggest letting the posters self moderate that sub forum

When this Covid 19 situation hopefully reduces, or goes away, the subforum will just fade away…unless it’s needed again if there is a second wave (which I hope won’t happen).

There are tons of subforums here with tons of helpful information…many with both new and old posters.

And the rest of the Parent Cafe can continue to be our fun social hour…which we all enjoy.