Ways to improve Catholic Answers Forums moderating

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I agree. One day, the patrons things come to this forum from nowhere. It is disturbing. Who wants to give money on sometimes opaque? And with the mandate to do it monthly?

On the contrary (at least in my country) when the Church do her annual donation campaign, we received letters with explanation of the buget, where the money goes in detail and where the money come from!

We also have the choice to do it by paycheck via bank transation, in one time or monthly. It has its importance.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
That’s for sure. The clergy don’t get much respect on here. It burns them out. I’m amazed we have any still posting here at all.
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Quite frankly, the way the clergy has been treated by the arm chair theologians and wannabe canon experts on here has been appalling.
 
It is a forum.
So normal hierarchy and respect that is excepted in the normal life interactions by faithfull to their clergy vanish.
We are all “users” with no more distinction at first side.
 
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Anicette said:
Some presents themselves as clergy member. But they are all anonymous posters (so we cannot be sure)
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So you’re saying that the clergy that have been here really aren’t members of the clergy at all? That’s a pretty bold accusation.
 
Anicette said:
Some presents themselves as clergy member. But they are all anonymous posters
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Anyone presenting here as a member of the clergy is vetted. Imposters have been suspended.

One individual claimed to work with exorcists and loudly complained how someone had emailed his Parish checking his credentials.
 
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With twenty forums and subforums, there must be at least a hundred active threads to be monitored at any one moment. That means a lot of work, and very tedious work most of the time, demanding a great deal of patience. I’ve noticed only two things about the moderating here that call for comment. One is that the system itself is constantly engaged in a kind of automated modding, either by blocking any posts containing taboo words, or by concealing or deleting posts that have attracted a certain number of flags. The taboo words thing can sometimes backfire, but it doesn’t cause any real inconvenience. Overflagging is a more serious issue, in my view. There seem to be a certain number of posters who see themselves as self-appointed censors, hunting for posts they can feel offended by, or at least mildly ruffled by, or maybe just opinions they disagree with, and not resting until they have fulfilled their daily quota of flags – twenty or fifty or two hundred flags a day, or whatever target they have set themselves. This is something I would like to see changed, though I’m not sure how it could reasonably be done. A suspension for overflagging, perhaps? But how could that be made to work without adding a further unreasonable burden to the mods’ work load, which is heavy enough already?

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the Catholic Answers website belongs to, and is operated by, the Diocese of San Diego. In other words, there is a bishop who is going to get angry telephone calls from his brother bishops if an unfavorable remark of any kind should happen to appear in the comments threads. I remember one instance, a few years ago, where a certain U.S. bishop’s name was mentioned in two different posts on the same thread. I think it was in Liturgy & Sacraments. The first time, nothing happened; but the second time, a day or two later, the offending post was deleted. The difference was that, the first time, the bishop’s name was misspelled, which suggests to me that CAF’s computers are programmed to catch references of this kind, as well, but a misplaced letter in the name meant that the post eluded the computer’s vigilance.
 
Actually it seems like there is a lot less automated modding these days than a couple years ago when a longtime good poster got a suspension for mentioning the nickname for Richard.

There are a good many dedicated regulars flagging a boatload of the bad stuff on here all day every day. In my experience, if it doesn’t get flagged, the moderators ignore it; they are pretty much just sorting through flags, they don’t watch threads or even vet new accounts.
 
BartholomewB said:
The other thing I wanted to mention is that the Catholic Answers website belongs to, and is operated by, the Diocese of San Diego.
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Just a clarification, unless something has changed recently, Catholic Answers is based in the Diocese of San Diego, but it is not operated by the bishop or the diocese in any official capacity. To my knowledge it is a privately held lay-run apostolate which operates with the permission of the bishop. It does not as such belong to the diocese, but as you say the bishop possibly does get angry communications when controversies arise.
 
I got blocked for adblock, on my primary computer. And the entire catholic dot com empire is white listed there.

Spare computer, no problem so far. But harder to use.
 
I had to recheck the forum rules. Rule 4 states, “Do not incite animosity towards anyone, especially the clergy.” I was looking to see if an exemption had been added, “…unless you happen to disagree with them, in which case feel free to unload your vitriol.”

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Sometimes I wonder why anyone at all posts here. For me, it’s something that fits into my schedule, and a subject that I enjoy talking about. I have small bits of time where I can sit down and digest a few thread. Maybe post a thing or two. And compared to other social media these forums at least have some rules of decency. I also like to bring a little humor to forums. It seems to be a good fit for me to spend some spare time.

What really makes me wonder about why some people (not you, or other clergy) post here is that they seem so serious about everything. And some people get bent out of shape so easily. So, I wonder why they are here if they get upset so easily. Social media doesn’t seem to be a good fit for some of the people who are on it.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
There are a good many dedicated regulars flagging a boatload of the bad stuff on here all day every day.
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How bad is “bad”? From time to time I’ve had the curiosity to open a few posts that have been concealed because of the number of flags. I would classify these posts in three categories:
  1. I can’t see what anyone could possibly find objectionable in the post. The flagging can only have been motivated by partisan sympathies, such as a Trump supporter flagging a pro-Biden post or vice versa, or OF vs. EF, etc.
  2. I can understand why some people wanted to flag it, but in my view the poster’s right to express his views ought to override the flaggers’ wish to silence him.
  3. I agree with the flagging. The post deserved to be flagged and needs to be removed.
The posts in the third category — the ones that, in my view, truly needed to be flagged — are only a minority of the flagged posts I’ve looked at.
 
BartholomewB said:
The posts in the third category — the ones that, in my view, truly needed to be flagged — are only a minority of the flagged posts I’ve looked at.
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I agree. I’ve flagged things very rarely, but some people throw them like confetti.
 
BartholomewB said:
How bad is “bad”? From time to time I’ve had the curiosity to open a few posts that have been concealed because of the number of flags.
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I don’t think the software has concealed posts for number of flags in a long time, like months. It does automatically lock the thread if too many flags are thrown in it.

Most flags are for very obvious violations of the rules, such as obvious trolling, posting material that’s way beyond PG, agenda posting by a new poster across several threads, the obvious return of a suspended poster (such as the lady who keeps making new accounts with almost the exact same name to post in multiple threads objecting to Mary being called “Mother of God”), blatant rudeness to other posters, blatant disrespect for Church teachings (such as the person who posted that transubstantiation is paganism and was trying to dissuade a person who was considering converting).

A lot of this stuff is gone within a short time after being flagged. Depending on how often you use the forum and whether you happen to be reading the threads where it goes on, you might not even see it.

We have endless discussions of flags on this forum because virtually everybody including myself has had posts removed that seemed unfairly removed and in some cases were unfairly removed (obvious example, all the ones that used to talk about a certain Mr. Van Dyke). However, unfair flags and removals are very definitely in the minority IMHO.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
And if “some people” didn’t throw flags, pretty soon the forum would look like a local park where litterbugs threw trash on the lawns and nobody ever picked it up.
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Without crossing any lines here, I’ve always been cautious about flagging because of the times I’ve seen people get banned for very minor stuff. It’s like living in a neighborhood where the cops are known to be very trigger happy. I’m going to be very reticent about calling them for noise violations and jaywalking.

Also, I wasn’t thinking of you, if that’s what you were thinking. But there are definitely posters who either incredibly easily offended and view even the mildest PG joke or reference as the equivalent of Caligula, or something throw a flag just because they disagree with the substance of the post.

I will say that the overzealous banning has calmed down quite a bit, though.
 
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