Thread: WAB moderation

I know! Has anyone taken a look into Middle East And North Africa lately! Bit of sarcasm!

Anyways, ambidex, to get around this issue all ya gotta do is raise your point count a bit more and be a verified user! Hey we got verification every where in the world from everything financial to yeah.. LOL

Requesting possibly, if I may create a thread, or he may create a thread, in the off-topic post mind you, so that ambidex can submit possibly 500 or so mouse clicks of "Post Reply". ! Of course it should be deleted afterwards :P Thats the only solution I see if he wants to go the cheating route! But remember what they say in school, cheating doesn't make you learn a thing!

There seems to be some confusion, so here a more detailed explanation of the current policies WAB has on place:

New Users:
Complete new users who now join this board have to make 25 posts before they are able to open threads on their own. This was introduced recently to stop Bots flodding the board. Often users don't even notice them because we tend to quickly delete them (and those who do see them report them, making it easier for the staff to find), but every moderator only can take of WAB during their own free time, and usually have work and famlily matters to take care of which are far more important than any message board. Therefore we introduced this change for new users, which also helps to reduce the “Liechtenstein versus San Mario” kind of threads. Getting 25 posts is not really that much of a challenge and the spam has been reduced from several per day to a handful few per week.


The central and south asian section:

This section has a long and troubled history on this board. Once on of the most active sections, it often also turned usually into the most ugly one. This became that bad that WAB itself was ´the target of DDOs attacks because someone did not like what he read there. As a result for a time the whole section got closed and not any discussion of the matters found there was allowed. After a while we changed that policy and decided to re-introduce the section but this time with heavy restriction. When that board was first resurrected only staff members were allowed to open new threads freely. After this seemed to go well for a longer period of time we recently decided to lessen this restrictions a bit (to the current state) where now all senior members and professionals are able to post on their own.

So what you are currently seeing the in the Central and South Asian section is not a new assault on “posters right” but the slow return to a normalization in that section (which about a year ago did not even exist anymore due the flaming). Should the current trend continue and every, or at least most, posters in that section keep following the rules the restrictions will be slowly removed further, until they are all gone, or the flamewars return. Also I would like to point out once more that this kind of restriction are only found in this section of WAB. Everywhere else anyone can post freely.


On a final note, yes of course post counts alone are not are everything else than a good critera to judge which users are “valuable” members and who are trolls. The problem is, we just cannot judge every single new member and decide who gets promoted to “senior contributor”, WAB's active community is simply too large. The current system is not the best solution, but for the moment quite frankly the only one. What can be discussed is for example lowering the post-threshold for senior contributor or or maybe (big maybe) to allow single promotions of certain members regardless of post count if they are endorsed by a number of already established members. But please keep in mind that, except for the Central and South Asia section, there is hardly any difference in board privileges between senior contributors and regular members (more storage room for pms for example), AND we hope to be able to get rid of the restrictions in that section anyway at some point in the future.

Originally Posted by ambidex

Oh it’s bloody Indians and Pakistanis again. One can see the racist tone in your assertions and i am afraid if this the reason with this particular moderation issue i am raising.

There are many other sections (American politics) other than bloody subcontinent section where the discussion standards have gone down in drain many a times.

The point here is not that we aren't worried about WAB standards will go down but the point here is that moderation should be proactive not passive.

If People from other regions proudly have less volatile issue to discuss, the same unfortunately is not the case with Indians or Pakistani posters. Rather than acting like chickens, moderators should simply close the section and make this forum not so world affairs forum. All over sensitive members from other regions should refrain to lurk in if they cannot tolerate the discussion; if the sub-continent sections are going to stay in.

As far as earning post number is concern then any one can gain it doing coffee house chit chat at threads in large abundance here, not a big fuss.

Don't believe me? ask the mods - perhaps they are racists too. i am referring to specific events where things got out of hand to the point where the baord was subject to cyber attack. Indeed, I recall that the relevant forums were actually closed for a time. (ed: guess tarek got there while I was posting) I assume a decision was made that we would rather have civilized discussions on the topic than none at all. If this place is really such a terrible racist place to post then leave & take the chip on your shoulder with you. Hurling accusations of racism every time someone a shade lighter than you says something you disagree with (especially when it is a simple statement of fact) certainly isn't a way to convince people that you have an opinion worth hearing. It was old last time you did it & it is getting older by the day. No one is forcing you to post here.