I just refreshed the main page and see there, lots of topics I had already clicked were back to their highlighted gray selves. This is, at least to me, a tad annoying, since the highlights kinda disturb the flow, and also confusing, as the board highlights things that I've read before.

Also: If people want to know which posts they have seen, why don't they look at the color of the link? If it's been clicked on, they've seen the post.

I like this system we have right now, but since I use an EMail alert to find things to post on rather than going onto the Board itself, I haven't seen the problems you mentioned.

Still, I really don't think I have the power to change anything- I must be something of a loner here, after two failed Permission attempts.

In general, I'm glad that we’ve switched back to... whatever the proper name for ‘not bump’ mode is on the Board. The highlighting new posts to old threads thing sounds like a good idea for easily picking out which older threads are still active. Having long threads be bumped up to the top of the front page actually discouraged me from posting a couple of times.

As for the stuff about Mods, before I go any further I just want to say that I haven’t participated in an online community like this before, so there may be simple, obvious, solutions to some of what I'm about to say, that I just don’t know about. Having said that, there are a couple of things concerning the practicality of implementing a Mod system, that I think need to be considered by people that know about this kind of stuff, so I wanted to make sure it had been highlighted.

Personally, I'm not sure if we do need Mods or not, but a large part of that comes from not being in a moderated community before so having nothing to compare our current state to. However, it does seem as if most of the people that know more about this think that something needs to be done (and I have a possible alternative that I’ll get to later in this post), so I’d be prepared to trust their judgement on this matter.

Can the Mods have anonymity? (Note that this is a separate topic to should they have anonymity, which is something that has already had the pros and cons of discussed a fair bit).

If we do decide to go for anonymous Mods, how would we actually give them that anonymity? Even if they’re posting under a group name, won’t their IP address show up on the post, allowing them to be identified by anyone that takes the time to compare it with other posts? Also, if PGs are to give up their status as a PG in order to become a Mod (as has been suggested before by... someone, I forget who), won’t that be kind of a giveaway?

This point leads neatly on to...

Who do we use for Mods?

If we are going to have Mods introduced, the idea of having a rotating group does sounds like a good one to me, as it should avoid people burning out. Realistically, there are only 2 methods I can think of for the fair selection of Mods, either everyone’s name gets put into a hat and an appropriate number (whatever that may be) are selected at random, or we have some kind of vote system.

With 1, no-one could be accused of trying to grab power for themselves, which may help alleviate any fears of the new authority being A Bad Thing. But we could easily end up with people that just aren’t suitable/capable of, or even interested in, whatever we end up deciding the Mods are needed for (in terms of their specific powers, abilities and limitations).

With 2, as has already been mentioned by a couple of other people, chances are that the same sort of people are going to be voted in each time. If we’re looking for people that are around the Board often, and are well respected in the community etc. (not to mention that people are always going to think of the more high profile Boarders first, simply because they are more high profile), then to me it looks like we’d be picking Mods from the same pool of people as the PGs get selected from. That’s fine if there are enough of those people out there to fill the quota for both PGs and Mods, but what happens if there isn’t? (I don’t know how many PGs there normally are at any one time, how many Mods people think would be appropriate, or how that compares to the number of oldbies).

Personally, I would think that the PGs and Mods should be different people, just because I imagine that the PGs have enough on their plates already simply by being PGs. I think July, VM and Neshomeh have all said words to that effect regarding this already.

As a possible alternative to Mods

It seems to me that most (most, not all) of the things people are saying the Mods are needed for concern the behaviour of newbies (people telling badfic authors that their story/Sue has been ‘reported’ to the PPC as if we're some kind of fanon-police, conversation spamming, joining up for the chance to bash authors etc.). That being the case, I would like to offer an alternative to an official Mod system: resurrect the ‘Little Sibling / Big Sibling’ idea.

Now, I haven’t seen this in action, and have only read about it on the Wiki, so I might be wrong about what it was there for, but it seems to me like it might work. As I understand it, the idea is that an older Boarder offers to act as a sort of mentor for a newbie, and guide them through at first to make sure they’ve understood everything.

If the Sibling thing gets promoted a bit more (maybe move it further up the Guides/FAQs, put a reminder in the top banner etc.), then we might find that more newbies ask for one, in which case they’ll be able to get direct help when it comes to things like Board, and general PPC, etiquette. Most of that could potentially be handled through private e-mail or something, so it wouldn’t even clutter up the Board. If someone doesn’t ask for a Sibling, but then goes off with a bit of unacceptable behaviour, they could be given one to set them straight. This would work a bit like a warning from a Mod, but would possibly be a bit more constructive in that at the same time as being given the warning, they’re also being given direct access to someone that can help them avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

As a side note, while I didn’t ask for a Big Sibling myself when I joined up, if someone had made the offer, I’d have probably taken them up on it.

Big Siblings wouldn’t have any actual authority (in terms of special powers/abilities), and they’d only be acting on their individual Little Siblings, so we wouldn’t have to worry about how adding authority would influence other peoples’ interactions with them.

Virtually everyone on the Board, that isn't a newbie, should be capable of acting as a Big Sibling, which should take the pressure of the relatively few people that are currently trying to take care of it. Big Siblings could also have Even Older Siblings, chosen from the PGs, long term Big Siblings, and other general long term Boarders, that would be there to give them support and advice (and a quick line to the PGs / Nameless Admin if a newbie persistently and wilfully ignores their advice).

Also, if I'm right about how this’ll work with a few levels of siblingness, it might help with another topic that Neshomeh has brought up recently, which is that of newbie integration and newbie/oldbie interaction within the community. I’ll be honest, I am slightly nervous about posting to oldbies, but whether they’re Permission Givers or not doesn’t make any difference to me. It’s not the level of authority that they have which makes me nervous about talking to them, it’s just the fact that they’ve been around for some much longer than me. The more I talk to them, the less it bothers me. Assuming that this holds true for other people too, then encouraging communication between the generations of Boarders may help crossing those divides.

So, what do people think? Was any of that useful or did I just completely miss the point?

Set out as responses to specific things people have raised, but generally applicable anyway.

Tomash's Link: I don't feel this applies to the PPC, for one specific reason: we already have a mechanism in place whereby egregious offenders can be banned. The Nameless Admin, when the Board makes its feelings clear, can ban an IP. This has happened before, but usually to trolls - because when people act up, the Board as a whole does unite against them, if it feels the need. If just one person, or half a dozen people, have a problem with a newcomer... well, that's their problem, not the Board's.

nakkel's Italics: I disagree that 'self-moderation simply will not happen in an internet community', for the simple reason that it, uh, does. Right here. We have never met a problem that could not be resolved by the community acting together, or by the Nameless Admin IP-banning - and those are trolls, by and large. There is not such a problem now. The PPC Board can and does self-moderate. Also, uh:

The fact we needed to have more complicated, precise rules of conduct attests to this. Apparently, the old rules weren't specific enough, which is code for "nobody could tell what they should or shouldn't do based on simple observation and common sense".

As the person who suggested rewriting the Constitution, no, that is not why we did it. We did it for two reasons: first, that the old Constitution was Board-focussed and LotR-heavy, both of which are no longer appropriate. Secondly, because (bluntly) I was fed up with all the 'How dare you post a new badfic outside the thread!' posts, and by way of compromise wanted to put it into the Constitution so that people would hopefully not need telling. The third type of alteration is the addition of definitions for various terms - 'troll', 'plagiarism' - which came about because of a very specific incident where someone claimed rewriting a video as their own work wasn't plagiarising because, er, something. I do not believe the community as a whole needed the definitions in, and they were originally simply Wiki links - but for completeness they are in there.

Neshomeh's second post: Well, the Wiki is irrelevant to the discussion of Board moderators, since July responded there in her capacity as an Admin, but I understand her point. However, as I think Vixenmage pointed out, the reason July never gets a break is that July never takes a break. At the top of the second page of the Board, I find her responding to three ThArcanist posts in less than half an hour each - in one case, 2 minutes. And more generally - most of the things that she's responding to are either not generally seen as issues (posting a badfic outside the long badfic thread which she wanted to shut down anyway), or are going to get responded to.

Telling people to read Legendary Badfics will get you told off - that's two separate posts recently - whether or not the insanely vigilant JulyFlame says something. A permission request five minutes after joining will get turned down or ignored. Etcetera etcetera. One post that might have gone unnoticed is the one where someone reviewed a story to say that they were reporting it to the PPC, and yes, July (or whoever it was) was right to say something - but even if she hadn't, even if no-one had noticed that particular review (since it wasn't mentioned specifically on-Board), it would either be a one-off, or the poster would do it again, and pretty soon they would have been told not to. As mentioned in my comment on nakkel's post, we do that self-moderating thing. And the PPC has managed ten years without descending into a flame-generator.

A note on badfic posting: And specifically on the fact that people seem to feel a burning need to post every badfic they find, and often to claim it for PPCing as soon as they start... um, did anyone ever read the Board header? Because until very recently it started with this:

Welcome, Assassins and all other supporters of the Continuum Protection Initiative! Here is the place to report new offenders in need of smiting, or celebrate the acquisition of yet another target. (Or just to natter on...we're not picky!)

Yes, according to the header, the sole purpose of the Board is to post and claim badfics. And the link to the Constitution was kind of thrown in offhand, what with the long ramble about wikis and IRCs. Hopefully the new version is a bit more to the point.

Techno-Dann's Questions: Are very good ones. These questions:

What situations are mods going to address, and what powers (both technical and soft) are they going to need to have to do so? You say "We need proper authority", but what does proper authority look like?

I would like to see these answered by more than one person. I think that the various proposals have focussed very much on how to select mods, without actually coming down on what they're for. Ultimately, if people feel (as I do) that mods are unnecessary, it doesn't matter if they're randomised, rotating, secret or chosen personally by the Sunflower Official - they're still a bad idea.

But, since that's not very helpful, I'll make a proposal of my own. As a reply.

hS

The thread in question.

I feel it is important enough and connected to this that we should be able to get to it quickly, now that the first few pages of the board kinda look terrible and dire and like why we switched to bump mode in the first place.

I agree that we have some pretty big problems at the moment. I don't think anyone will be surprised that I feel that way, I'm pretty open about that.

I am in favor of seeing what we could do with a new Board design, before we make a choice about moving or not. We should at least consider alternatives to what we have now.

Bumping threads is, as so many have already noted, not working for us. That's fine. Maybe we can try hS's discovery of an option that highlights new posts. I think that one sounds like it could be a winner, and it looks to have some support right now.

As for mods, I am in favor of the idea of having them. I believe that this community is cautious enough about the idea that we will create rules, checks and balances to avoid any of the issues that have been brought up so far. In fact, let me go ahead and throw out a potential idea. To prevent any one person from gaining too much power/authority, I think you should not be able to be both a PG and a Mod on the Board. If you are a PG and you want to be a mod instead, then you can opt to lose your PG status if you were voted to be a mod. I know some people would prefer one over the other. Nesh, for instance, would prefer to stay a PG in a case like this. PGs could be like the DAs in the chat, with a new ability to overturn any punishment a mod deals out.

Just an idea. Maybe you like it, maybe you prefer Neshomeh's rotating nameless mods idea, maybe you have something that you would like to suggest. The point is, as I recently said to a friend, the fear that if you do X then Y might happen, means that you are watching for Y to happen, and you are not likely to let it.

We are a group of intelligent, mature people. We can make this happen. I have faith in the group. With people like July working to fix the problems as they arise, and people like VM watching the watchmen, I think we can make it work. I also think the group as a whole would be better off for it.

-Phobos

I quite agree. The problem is, we need to be careful with admins.

I know hatred of authority is juvenile and all that, but I've had some roleplay groups I really loved die, just because of one moronic, control-freak, jerk of an admin.

Which is one of the reasons I returned last month, or the month before, and haven't really been seen since. Bumping I'm indifferent to, though I can see how it stretches out arguments and threads which really should die.

As to the separate board idea... I have less support for that, but I can see where it's a good idea.

And the Mods getting banhammer powers? Yes, I can definitely agree with that, especially after the link Tomash posted, which expressed my thoughts and feelings on the subject much more clearly than I can. I've come back, and regretted doing so...

Authority doesn't always mean a bad thing. The Agents have the Sunflower Official to answer to, and our community should have someone to answer to when it gets really bad. Being a Mod with the banhammer doesn't mean we're going to enter a Big Brother period, but it can help weed out the Derps from the people who are genuinely here to have intelligent discussion.

I agreee that we need some sort of moderation to deal with out-of-control threads abe newbies who don't listen. Nesh's "rotating mods" idea sounds good to me, and I support it. I've also come accross this link, which is relevant to this discussion.

On the subject of a new Board, I support Dann's "seperation of post and view" idea. I like the threaded, all posts on one page model, but I realize that not everyone does, which is why that should be a per-user option. I'm willing to help with the coding (I'd need to learn Rails, though). Here's my new Board wish/idea list:

• Authentication that isn't broken. OpenID would probably work well for this.


• Support for both subforumites and not-subforumites. One way to this would be for each post to have a "tag", like "Permission Requests", "New Missions", "Random Silliness" etc. . People who want subforums could "Browse by Tag" and the others could "Browse by Creation Date". This would also, for example, let the PGs check for new Permission Requests just by checking on the appropriate tag.


• Threaded conversations like we have now (possibly with the ability to flatten if desired).


• Protection from malicious HTML.

It seems the standard depiction of authority here on the board is off tyrannical despots going completely off the rails the second they're given power and reducing the community to a grey, lifeless wasteland. It's tiring and frankly, I think it's rather juvenile.

Self-moderation simply will not happen in an internet community; Anonymity puts paid to the concept. The fact we needed to have more complicated, precise rules of conduct attests to this. Apparently, the old rules weren't specific enough, which is code for "nobody could tell what they should or shouldn't do based on simple observation and common sense". The anonymity inherent in internet use basically means that people are quicker to act on their impulses and less likely to consider what they're doing. Removing moderation from this is akin to a body acting without a head.

Most communities get by perfectly fine with less-than-stellar moderators, and clearly we're putting a lot of thought into who is moderating. It doesn't matter which way the mods want to do it, I believe this community will have no problem with the mods it chooses. The moderation will almost certainly be lax regardless; it just helps to have the safeguards in place instead of assuming you won't need them.

As for the board design, I prefer non-bump and I don't mind the current design, but I do prefer phpBB. Either way, it doesn't bother me since I'm mostly on the IRC.

Finally, I believe the community could do with a little less of the "be nice to everyone all the time" attitude, but then again I'm a curmudgeonly Scot and it's in my blood.

I've been, in my own small way, been tooting the horn of needing "proper authority" around here for a while now. I think there should be a small but trusted set of moderators (that can have rotating duties if they prefer it that way). I think we're looking at the authority angle at the wrong way. It almost seems like people feel like the so-called venerated oldbies (PGs, etc.) can't be trusted at all to run things without twenty different regulations and by-laws breathing down their necks. This comes off as bizarre to me. Most forums putter along with moderators who were almost virtually grabbed off the street or are just buddies with the admin.

Our community is incredibly strong in many ways, and we should have a bit more faith in that. And like I replied to Makari, we are not making people Kings or Queens of the PPC here; if the moderators got out of hand, there'd be Consequences. But they should be able to close threads when they get out of hand, they should be able to ban people from posting - temporarily or permanently - etc.

I think moving to phpBB would be great. I don't think we have enough volume to warrant separate subfora though.

Okay, yeah. Mods with power. Great, and, it throws the structure on its head.

My interpretation of the reason we don't have mods has always been to keep people on an equal footing. I can understand why they might look like a necessity -- maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but they sure look like it right now -- however, half the point of a moderator is that they are respected more than the other users because of the powers they wield, yeah? Not because of who they are. Because of what they can do to you if you step out of line.

Isn't that exactly what we were trying to avoid? My take had always been that we were trying to encourage a feeling of equality, regardless of chronological presence. (though the oldbies do have a certain, hm. Veneration, I suppose? All of us are human and fallible.) I realize PGs are also kind of a thing in that respect, but hey, we have stealth PGs, sort of.

I dunno. When I go into a conversation with someone I perceive as a peer rather than someone I perceive as above me on the status chain, the results are going to be completely different. In fact, in the latter situation it's unlikely to get me to engage at all. Maybe I'm just a special kind of shy, since I haven't noticed many other people doing so. In fact, I think many of the people here would be fine with it, charge brightly ahead with a smile, though correct me if I'm wrong.

I find official moderators a bit intimidating and not conducive to an open environment, but maybe I just know too many places where the moderation got out of hand, and maybe we could use people with 'official' authority to tell us to listen to each other instead of the people we know as friends. Because that always works, right?

On the subject of the Board, I think I'm probably alone in that I like this method. I can actually tell what's new. O_O This is novel. Yes, some threads are getting lost in the kerfuffle, but threads were always getting lost in the kerfuffle, and at least this way we have the capability to un-lose them.

My two bits. Please let me know if there's a point you want clarified or I phrased something too ambiguously.

I'm all for turning off bump mode, but it's not going to solve all our problems. Rather than really long out-of-control threads, we'll be back to asking people not to spam new threads. I think I prefer that problem to this one, but let's not kid ourselves that everything was perfect before bump mode—somebody said something to that effect, and it's just not true.

I would like to see Dann's board up and running, too, but failing that, I would be okay with moving at this point. Something like the St. Dymphna's Academy board does have a feature that lets you view the 100 most recent posts, so if you want to view everything not separated into subfora, that's entirely possible.

I'm also in favor of mods, but I've been trying to discuss my feelings about this controversy for hours without being able to keep from descending into frustrated ranting, so that's all I can safely say right now.

~Neshomeh

While I do agree with most people that the bump system needs to go, I don't think that it's necessary to move to a whole diferent site. As far as mods, I think that the Nameless Admins would be good enough,so long as one person isn't running the entire thing. I'll admit, we need a bit more order than we have now, but the PPC has never been a very structured organization. Also, I like the fact that everything is in the same place, that way I can see everything that's going on without having to to a seperate page for things like new missions or badfic threads.

I agree with the consensus below that the bump mode has to die but I'm a little wary of the other suggestions. I've never used a phpBB style forum so I don't exactly know what it's like but the idea of mods seems unnecessary to me. We don't need anyone to rule over anyone else if everyone would just stick to the Constitution. Along with that is the point that hS brought up, while compartmentalizing the posts would make them easier to find, people would end up sticking to one type of post and never branch out. So yes we need some revisions but we don't have to completely reconstruct the Board.

I think a change might be needed. It would be easier to get around, and we would be able to see previous posts and be able to edit posts, in case we put out one with a mispelling.

I myself am in favour of moving to a new forum, because I'm more used to forums like that (Wesnoth's, TvTropes', etc). I also think that it's easier to find what you're looking for when everything has its place.
Last but not least, moving to a forum would make RPing much, much easier; I know that from experience. To me, at least, RPing in a linear thread makes more sense and is easier to follow than RPing in a Board (which I find confusing. Who's responding to who, exactly?).

The bumping new threads to the top was annoying/confusing me, do I'd support turning it off.

I like the idea of going to a new Board. A system like proboards or whatever seems like it would work. (eg I was part of July's Mary Sue Academy RP, which from memory was built on and as I recall it handled heaps of posts and nattering without getting too confusing.)

Elcalion

Seriously. I only suggested it as a brief experiment to see if, as people kept claiming, it would Solve All Our Problems (which at that point were limited to... hmm, lots of newbie threads, and too many badfic threads). At this point, posting your badfic to a previous thread/to the Unclaimed Badfic List is in the Constitution - I enshrined it in the sharding Constitution, guys - so we have an actual justification for asking people not to do it. And, you know what? People tend to listen.

We do not need mods. The Nameless Admin does just fine as it is - power without authority, acting on Board consensus. I have seen nothing to make me believe people need to be constantly hounded to get them to stand in line and play nice - because the PPC isn't a place for standing in line. It's a place for wild free-thinking madness.

hS

PS: Article 11 of the Constitution says it's okay to ask questions (but that we may point you at the Wiki). Article 6 says be nice when telling people things you already know. So can we, rather than just throwing out Wiki links, give useful answers as well? The Wiki isn't a complete store of knowledge, you know. If no one on the Board knows things that aren't on the Wiki, it's a sad, sad day. ~hS

The main thing that needs to happen is getting rid of the bump system. The main reason why convo-posting is a problem is because the bump system forces us to watch a conversation that may or may not have anything to do with this. The same thing with out-of-control threads. They're less of a problem if they get shoved off the front page by time.

I don't think we need a new board, or moderators, or whatever. Before the bump thing came along, I think we were just fine self-regulating.

...to a point. I really like the way the GitP board is set up, as they have active moderators (chosen from board veterans), and have posts organized by page. They limit threads to 50 pages, and just add new ones. Unfortunately, the way the posts work prevents one from just scrolling past a less relevant topic.

TL; DR, I like this board, but think it could be better.

I whole-heartedly agree with changing back from bump to . . . whatever the old way was called. Chronological? It's too hard to keep track of where particular posts wind up when I try to find them again. And yes, discussions that should have petered out long ago keep going.

(I want to say this. The badfic thread? Very little actual discussion. It's mostly "Oh it's so bad my eyes are hurting." Can't we find something more interesting to talk about concerning a badfic than that? Discuss why it goes against canon? Creative ways to handle a mission in it?)

I'm a bit more neutral about switching to the newer type of discussion board. I don't think we should go there quite yet. Let's try going back to the non-bump mode and see how things go.

On the topic of moderators: I know at least some PPCers are uncomfortable with the idea. Would it strictly be necessary to have such on the newer type of board? Or could we get by with the Nameless Admin situation we have now, with someone only intervening to delete troll and spam posts?

Since it seems we're discussing multiple things, let's try to break them out and look at them individually.

Firstly, bump mode seems to not be working. One advantage to the old way is that threads are killed perforce by the progress of time. I am of the opinion that we should go back to it.

Secondly, layout issues. While I can understand the appeal of having everything neatly divided into sections, there is also appeal to having everything together - there are no subfora for people to disappear into and never poke their heads into the larger community. I, for one, am a fan of the current thread structure, too, where replies can be made to any post far more easily than the perforce-linear nature of PHPbb and similar.

I've been designing a Board replacement where the layout of the board is independent of the posts - I can see a layout that looks like the current one, while Pieguy can see PHPBB-esque subfora and linear threads. Or subfora and branching threads, or a single blog-like page where every thread's first post is listed in its entirety, with a little "77 replies!" link at the bottom to get into the conversation. It's quite possible - I'd like to think that I've gotten the design close to right, and flexible enough to make creating new views easy.

Thirdly, moderation. I have two questions concerning mods. What situations are mods going to address, and what powers (both technical and soft) are they going to need to have to do so? You say "We need proper authority", but what does proper authority look like?

A new Board will definitely help clean up the sprawl we have now.

We'll need to hold Mod elections if we do go through with this though.

The Board as it is has a lot of weight and tradition behind it, but the system is just too outdated. If we switched to an IPB/phpBB/SMF-based Board, with different subfora and what have you, it would make things a lot cleaner and easier and more manageable.

I've been in favour of this for a while; I think it needs to happen.

I... almost completely disagree. (Anyone surprised? Anyone?)

I think if we get rid of the bump system (please please please, we tried it, all it does is keep things alive forever, please can we let it die), that will solve a lot of this problem. Like... most of it.

And then we can talk about the rest.

--VM, who remains in favor of modless anarchy, at least on the internet... at least, on this corner of it