Ways to improve Catholic Answers Forums moderating

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In principle, the moderators could detect such activity if it is coordinated through CAF Private Messaging. However, there are other channels of communication. I once heard of members of another Catholic-oriented forum coordinating an effort to get someone banned here at CAF. šŸ™
 
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From what I see, the moderating is quite fair. I will say nothing is free , and everytime I log in now I get an ad to become a patron. I do know that only one account is allowed per IP which basically means here in Australia that only one CAF account is available per household, given we are usually on NBN and its one IP account and shared throughout the household.
I would like to see a change there so individual Household members can each have a private account other household members cannot share.

Apart from that, I am enjoying CAF and attempting not to come across too harshly or where I could be misconstrued, using Australianisms that would not go down well in another country.
 
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People always claim there are cliques of evil flaggers, but the mods only permanban someone here for a repeated violation of the rules. Everyone I see being banned for about the last six months has either been outright rude or disruptive, or has posted here with an agenda of discussing one topic or repeatedly bashing the Church over one topic, or has been banned before and made a new account to come back and repeat the bad behavior. A clique doesnā€™t force someone to violate rules on here, people do it themselves.
 
As long as weā€™re weighing in, Iā€™d also like to see more transparent, public facing moderation. Too often, posts just disappear into the ether, and itā€™s not always clear what the issue was. Thereā€™s also the case of posts that are borderline; maybe a public warning would be more effective.

I think a moderator posting in the thread to go ā€œhey dude, youā€™re getting a little too heated here. Relax or youā€™re gonna get a time out.ā€ would be way more effective in terms of educating the community on where the line is than posts simply disappearing without explanation.
 
If something seems to be amiss with a sophisticated approach as described in the last few posts, alert a moderator to this. That would seem to be the way to handle this.

I know, there use to be and still may be a mention of the tactic of ā€œswarmingā€, a whole lot of people come in.

This is a very popular forum then, Iā€™ve never seen another forum that has had to worry about these things. Maybe one of the other so-called ā€œCatholic Forumsā€, I have seen those, I have Never been a member.

And for my 2 cents, I have had posts edited. Fine, fine with me then. I have no problems with the way this is all run. I know, it was as strict as an old Catholic elementary school years ago.
 
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That used to be the case. The moderators would pop in, give a direction like ā€œplease remain charitableā€ ā€œplease remain on topicā€.
 
F_Marturana said:
That used to be the case. The moderators would pop in, give a direction like ā€œplease remain charitableā€ ā€œplease remain on topicā€.
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I realize itā€™s time consuming and there are only so many mods. It might be good to deputize a few long-time, level headed volunteer posters who can act as sort of junior mods with the power to give three day suspensions or something.
 
While this has been suggested before and Iā€™ve heard that CAF is considering it, I can see a lot of risk in it for the community member who is no doubt going to be participating here as well as being a volunteer mod. If I support CITH in my comments, and then as a volunteer mod I punish someone who is COTT-only because he incited animosity towards clergy, was just plain rude, etc, he will go crying to management that I am biased against him. Iā€™ve already had people harass me via PM because I publicly called them out on some nasty or wrong post, I can just imagine what would happen if Iā€™d actually suspended them.

It would make sense for volunteer mods to at least have the ability to hide blatantly offensive or inappropriate threads (like graphic sex stuff) or mute obvious troll or ā€œdisturbed posterā€ accounts that are making multiple inappropriate threads or posts, so they donā€™t disrupt the forum for hours till the official mod shows up.
 
Jeanne_S said:
Most posts are auto moderated .This has been a big issue since the format changed a few years ago.
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No, they arent. The human mod makes decisions to delete or edit a post or to suspend someone or to just issue a warning.

The only auto feature I still see here is that threads will lock automatically if the thread or its posts get enough flags from users
 
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The change to this format was supposed to make the forum self-moderating. The former moderators were let go.

I think if deputy moderators were necessary, maybe invite the old moderating squad back.
 
There is an ignore feature.

You set it up under your preferences, then choose users. Then you can choose to mute or ignore a user.
 
We have an ignore feature here. You can use it against any user you wish.

As for you being against moderation, this isnā€™t Reddit, itā€™s a privately owned website that, I presume, has the approval of its diocese to use the word Catholic and is supposed to drive traffic to the main CA site. Iā€™m sure they donā€™t want it full of trolls, people ranting about the Pope and the bishops, people trashing the Catholic Church or expressing hate for Catholics, people accusing priests of pedophilia and all kinds of other stuff, people posting graphic sexual stuff, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, misogyny, mentally ill people making mentally disturbed posts, tons of unapproved private ā€œpropheciesā€, and dozens of scrupulous people worried about going to Hell because they ate a cookie at 2 am. Not to mention good old nasty name calling over politics.

The mods see and deal with the above on a daily basis.

Itā€™s not realistic to expect or want a totally unmoderated forum here. You can always go start one of your own and see what you get.
 
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I completely disagree with you wanting this forum to discuss unapproved prophecies. These are not even considered worthy of belief by the Church. This forum focuses upon apologetics and actual Church teaching, not what someone who may not even be Catholic, or may be a Catholic not in good standing with his bishop, or may have schizophrenia, claims Jesus told him.

If this stuff is allowed on the forum, then someone coming here who doesnā€™t know much about Catholicism is going to get confused as to what Catholics actually believe vs. What some unapproved revelation allegedly said.

Thereā€™s plenty of other forums and social media where you can discuss that stuff all day. Iā€™m very relieved that we dont have to wade through it here. The approved revelations get complex enough.
 
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I have seen some comments in here that mods tend to edit posts when itā€™s generally fine but you have just included one or two lines that break forum rules, and they take them out.

This isnā€™t always the case. In some cases mods actually rewrite what you have written in a way they see fit, and I donā€™t think itā€™s okay to rewrite someone elseā€™s post on a forum, no matter how good your intentions. Taking a line out and then making it clear you did, is one thing, rewriting something is another. This is an infringement if you ask me.
 
Edited to take out offensive words, or inappropriate comments, yes. We are not free to use obscenities or be uncharitable on this Catholic forum. No one has the right to speak using lies or innuendo about the clergy or the pope. There are rules.

Do you think it should be ā€œanything goes?ā€
 
It might be interesting to have ONE new sub-forum without any flagging or moderation. Of course this is my private idea, and very likely it will never happen. But one can dream šŸ™‚
 
What would be the purpose of that on a Catholic forum? Itā€™s bad enough on this moderated forum sometimes. Why would we want an unmoderated forum? There are plenty of them out there on the internet already.
 
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It has nothing to do with dissent. It has to do with speaking in a polite, truthful and civilized manner.
 
Two wrongs donā€™t make a right. As Catholics we should hold ourselves to a higher standard.
 
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