How a moderator can ruin a good site for users

[WhiteBlue]

I though I should just share this experience with the users here because I care about this site and have enjoyed it for a long time. Now I have no desire to go back here to share information and opinions with the many good users here because I detest the way my posts are being censured by one of the moderators.

I love a good dispute and I respect people who can make their point in a debate. And at the end of the day I'm quite happy to let everybody have their own opinion or change it depending of something new they learned.

Since some weeks that is not possible any more because we have a dictatorial moderator who thinks only his opinion is correct and who censors posts simply because he thinks they are wrong. I totally disagree with this practise.

Posts that are in accordance with the rules, are respectful with the other users and do not violate the rules for posting in particular threads (car development , race threads) should be protected against deleting and copy pasting to another place. That has always been the policy on this board.

Some time ago I had a disagreement over the value of internet betting odds as indicators of future expectations with this particular moderator. Instead of having a discussion about it he simply deleted most of my posts and shifted others to the betting odds thread.

Over the years I have read ten thousands of wacky opinions in team and general F1 threads here and nobody has ever deleted them. So why can one guy abuse his powers and destroy the experience for another senior user?

I'm not prepared to accept this kind of behaviour. So I ask the other users what they think of this practise. I have waited quite a long time to post this issue because frankly spoken I was too angry and may have forgotten my good manners with the bloke.

I'll come back and see what the admin and the users think of how the board should be run with regard to opinion protection. I will make my final decision then if I come back or stay away as long as the dictator rules.

Titel edited to avoid personal remark

[flynfrog]

buy your own site and you can post whatever you want.

[Jersey Tom]

IB4L

[canfan]

I'll take a dictatorial moderator over senseless drivel any day.

DB

[basrawi]

Well for me its simple

**IF** the post is **WITHIN** the rules, It should not be deleted or moved EVER. If they want to do that, they should change the rules first. So anyone posting will have a benchmark.

Trust me on this one (Or don't, no one really knows me) from experience i can say a forum with no followed rules is a sad rotten place.

[xpensive]

As much as I have argued with WB over the years, I'll have to agree with him on this one, after being a rather under-moderated forum it has clearly gone from one corner to the other, I even got a one week ban myself recently for arguing with him.

As for the technical moderation, that is simply non-xisting nowadays and having said that, the technical interest on the discussion board now seems to be more or less limited to image-aerodynamics and the odd idea for a novel valve-arrangement.

On the former, Harry and his dog can vocal his/hers ideas or opinions whatever they are, as long as he/she is able to memorize the catchwords of the day; vortexes, separation and stalling, sometimes even aided by an enthusiastic moderator.

Sadly enough, to me this once great forum is now reduced to an evening pastime in a hotelroom, still enjoy it though.

[bhall]

I just knew there was a reason why the forum seemed much more agreeable lately.

The problem (well, one of them anyway) is that you treat betting odds as if they're tea leaves from which meaningful information about future performance can be gleaned, and that is absolutely senseless.

McLaren are still seen as the team to beat followed by Red Bull. This seems to indicate that Red Bull are likely to fix their pace problem shortly.

Only a degenerate gambler would make the above statement and see nothing wrong with it. However, in the real world, we know that causality doesn't work that way.

As far as the "dictatorial moderator" goes, you should know that often the only thing standing in the way of me completely embarrassing you is the moderator you've now chosen to deride. In fact, I'd say the odds are pretty good that I'll get a PM from him regarding this very statement.

No one is obligated to be here. Stay gone if you don't like it.

[thisisatest]

it's easy for someone of "authority" get all power-happy, especially out here in the interwebz. i feel for you, WB. hell, i personally didnt mind almost half of what AUTO wrote, but im likely in the minority there... hopefully the moderators can moderate the moderator.

[banibhusan]

The subject of thread is significantly different from what the poll question is. Though it's not tolerable to have mods deleting posts randomly, however, posts that are not relevant to the so-called technical side of sport or posts that are based on information that doesn't correlate to any real world event, doesn't really belong here. I often see people complaining about lack of technical details in this forum, yet I fail to understand how is a post related to betting odds should be acceptable amongst technical debates. Betting odds are derived based on the likely performance of teams in the coming races, but it's not the other way around. You just can't say one team is likely to sort out their problems because they have a favourable odd.

In the end it clearly depends upon the mods and Steven to sort it out. I would suggest, if it's acceptable to have betting related discussions here, then we have better have a separate place for it. That would ensure an isolated environment for those who want to indulge into such a debate.

[marcush.]

Fact is:
Hordes of bright forum members have chosen to leave and the quality of thread content or even thread topics has dropped severely over the years.
I surely don´t agree with offensive posts and posts /threads gone completely out of control-off topic and silly personal pingpong matches.
I do not agree with a policy of filtering the forum for personal interest or aims of moderators even thogh I have never ever experienced any action onmy posts that were undeserved.

[myurr]

I voted "no", but it's a loaded question in the context of this thread. It doesn't address whether or not WB's original post was in fact within the rules and in the right thread, and if it was about betting odds in one of the technical threads then I'd side with the mod and say it probably had no place being there.

Fact is:
Hordes of bright forum members have chosen to leave and the quality of thread content or even thread topics has dropped severely over the years.
I surely don´t agree with offensive posts and posts /threads gone completely out of control-off topic and silly personal pingpong matches.
I do not agree with a policy of filtering the forum for personal interest or aims of moderators even thogh I have never ever experienced any action onmy posts that were undeserved.

The mods are in a catch 22 situation - the general quality of the posts on this forum have declined significantly over the last couple of years as its popularity has increased, which has 'driven out' some of the old guard. In an attempt to improve the quality of the forum heavy moderation is then introduced that in turn drives out more of the old guard.

Whereas previously I religiously checked this forum pretty much every day I now find myself drifting in and out of it, sometimes going through a phase over a few days of posting frequently and reading most threads and other times I get fed up with some of the fanboi rubbish that gets posted here and I end up not checking the forum for a couple of weeks.

I'm not one of the truly technical brigade so I have no doubt my contributions will not be missed anywhere near as much as some other members, but my feelings are probably reflective of many of those who are or would be missed.

It's a horrible situation for the mods to be in and I do not envy them in the slightest. Anyone who genuinely cares about this forum should at least acknowledge there is a problem that the mods are working on solving and offer them as much support and advice as possible, even if that sometimes means accepting they will occasionally get the balance wrong or make a mistake.

[Echo]

Could somebody name this bastard?

[bhall]

The subject of thread is significantly different from what the poll question is.

Yet, it's indicative of the logic some people rely upon here.

I've been very critical of the moderation in the past, but in this case I think it's completely warranted. Repeatedly citing betting odds to support technical ideas is no different than attributing such "insight" to the consultation of an oracle. They have no place in a technical discussion, because no one will ever learn something technical from them.

If you want to weed out the content that's driving people away, this is a good start.

[tok-tokkie]

I am with marcush & myurr.

What used to be a technically great site has been severly degraded by non technical people spouting gibberish as fact. There was an intention to introduce a post grading system - I hope it comes. There are 2 members whose (frequent) posts I always skip because they are complete drivel - and WB is not one of them.

[strad]

I myself have complained of the change to over moderation, but honestly of late he/they seem to have realized the need to back off a bit and perhaps have. But I've been mad enough to walk a couple of times and still don't think we need hall monitors and think that the occasional off topic remark harms nothing.
I would agree with the premise that over moderation can ruin a good site,,,,but I really don't think betting fits in very well with the technical site.