can we ask about admin log here w/o getting threads locked?

NO SHIT.

Of course, "asking about" and "getting answers" are 2 different things.

It's very quiet in here.

why do you want it?

test

so we can see what and whom did what to what threads when things dissapear and shit goes down.

also we can see who is banned and not always have to ask "where chaki is he banned from the noise board."

chaki otm, this silent treatment re: admin log is sub-andrew at best

so we can see what and whom did what to what threads when things dissapear and shit goes down.
Why should users see this? "what" maybe, but why "whom"? I'm interested because I can't think of another forum with admin logs open to users.

If something's disappeared, the why is "because a mod deleted it" and the who is "a mod". Or is this a trust thing?

wow. thats kind of a dick answer. users should be able to see who deleted posts and why. ilx ran like this for years and it was a really great feature. why was it taken away? the posters obviously would like it back.

You're just saying the same thing again!
"Users should be able to see who deleted posts and why"
Why? (Beyond "ILX has always done it this way")

seriously dude, who are you to just come take over our board and take away features just because you want to? if you had a decent answer like "the software we run cannot possibly have an admin log" or whatever than fine.. but instead you ignore inquires, lock threads pertaining to admin logs, answer questions with other questions and give smart ass shitty answers like you just did.

xpost BECAUSE IF MY POST WAS DELETED WITH NO DISCUSSION I HAVE A RIGHT TO SEE WHO DID IT AND WHY.

OK, this is why nobody ever answers the queries about admin log!

In order:
who are you to just come take over our board
I'm the guy who it landed with by default because I got together some cash to try and buy hosting and then Andrew disappeared and I was left with a server on my kitchen table. It's not like I wanted the months of bullshit I went through with it.

take away features just because you want to
I didn't take it away -- it was never there. While we were moving the server, Keith started writing new code. It runs on a completely different system, and that includes the admin stuff. Everything here has to be specifically written into it -- nothing of old ILX was used. He hasn't written admin log in. I don't want to speak for him here, but I imagine that to persuade him to do it there's going to have to be a good reason why he should beyond "because". That's what I was asking for. I'm not taunting you about the lack of admin log, honestly.

xpost BECAUSE IF MY POST WAS DELETED WITH NO DISCUSSION I HAVE A RIGHT TO SEE WHO DID IT AND WHY.
What "right" is this? Sure you'd like it, but why do the mods -- and I'm not talking about me, because I try to never moderate beyond modreq stuff -- answer to you?

To explain "try to never moderate beyond modreq stuff" a bit more, when Andrew left we split up everything he used to do: Pash is now the top moderator, and he's in charge of all the people stuff, a code group was in charge of writing code, and I keep the server running and deal with sysadmin stuff. The code group went nowhere, but Keith turned up and started churning code out. He now runs that aspect.

k whatevs, dude. it's gone. fine. no biggy. next time something like this comes up i suggest you state why such as "i don't really think it's necessary" and lets discuss it rather than ignoreing the questions and locking the threads. it really comes off kind of cunty.

Yeh, I can see that, but I can also see why mods have been choosing to leave this Q well alone! I don't think there are actually any other ILX issues like it -- board-level admins was similar, but that's fixed now. I could imagine something similar if we brought in ads, I suppose.

not that we're going to, I hasten

Yeh, I can see that, but I can also see why mods have been choosing to leave this Q well alone!

Certainly, that's not quite the best way for an issue to resolve itself, is it?

well, it worked on the "robotic urls" complaints :)

yah the people wants the admin log give it to them

other features that have been far less agitated for have been implemented

the administrations responses have been strange and evasive - the answer is obv because mods dont really want to deal w/negative feedback

also its just a matter of understanding wahts going on like did my post get inadvertently swallowed or was it modddded away

a simple compromise would be to provide the noyce bord w/the powers what are our birthright

does stet realize hoe shady he looks by fighting this issue tooth and nail? what the fuck are you trying to hide?

As a sub-board admin, I would MUCH RATHER that an admin log was established so that I could act knowing that if others disagreed, they could voice an opinion over it. As it is, I've let a couple of fairly spammy things slide on IMM because I wasn't sure if I was over-reacting.

see like were i in charge id make the admin loggg

then if teh plebz got mad at me id vindictively mod the shit out of them and notate it as such on mod logg

see its best to flaunt yr power not hide behind it what fun is that

also id give nose bord powrz which are rightful theirs

Also, I think that locking/deleting the mod request threads was extrememly bad form, and led to a lot of the indignation some of us are feeling about this. Especially since we soulcn't see who was locking/deleting them because there isn't an admin log.

I think basically the issue is that up until pretty recently it's been rare that ppl have had issues with Pash et al.'s methods and so it's not a priority for Keith to build the feature in. Now that board admins can ban people it's probably worthwhile to reconsider the prioritization of the feature. Otherwise known as "hey look jw's a mod again"

Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Is it still the case that sub-board admins can create site-wide bans, or has that changed?

You guys just aren't as good at this squeaky wheel business as some of our other posters, I guess is what it comes down to

No I'm only banned from Noise

also the mod log is fun to see really

its site wide map of retardation

tons lolz in there

does stet realize hoe shady he looks by fighting this issue tooth and nail? what the fuck are you trying to hide?
This is the first time I've spoken on it, mostly because it isn't in my gift to change it, and I didn't decide not to have it.

I've been in two minds about it mostly -- it's certainly useful to see what's been done, but I gotta say a lot of the clamoring for it to come back (especially the "I WANT TO SEE WHO DID X" is coming from peeps who seem to love generating "negative feedback", so I'm not sure why Keith or anybody would volunteer for more of that.

also a list of mods is that anywhere

and is jon the only nose mod cause he works better w/a nice counter weight fyi

purely for more banning/unbanning hijixs

I believe sleep is his other mod and perhaps laurel but afaict jon's the only one who logs in as his mod user almost ever

make me nose mod plz

and i luv crikt

Actually that brings up a good point, the admin log at least let you see who was actively moderating on what boards, right now most users don't have any idea (tbh most of them don't give a shit either) who the mods are for what.

I gotta say a lot of the clamoring for it to come back (especially the "I WANT TO SEE WHO DID X" is coming from peeps who seem to love generating "negative feedback", so I'm not sure why Keith or anybody would volunteer for more of that.

Who, exactly? Me? Chaki? Grady? Anyone else on this thread? Unless I'm missing something, I don't get this persecution complex. In fact, I've gone out of my way to make it clear that it isn't because of mod distrust.

xpost

yah i never fukd w/a mod

now make me nose mod

and i love crkt

from upthread: the answer is obv because mods dont really want to deal w/negative feedback
So it's not like I'm alone in suspecting that the one of the drivers is so that people can bitch about modding. I really don't understand what it is about beyond mod distrust.

If there was a log that only other admins could see, that just listed what was done, would that solve the issue? Because everything else, apart from maybe seeing who is a mod on a given board (which would be useful, I admit) seems like mod distrust.

I really don't understand what it is about beyond mod distrust.

well there have been a number of other reasons given in this here thread right here - and uh why dont you trust us to see yr actions

and just because i suspect the mods dont want to deal w/feedback doesnt mean thats the motivation for wanting mod log

Actually, most other boards I've been to do list the mods. "Classic Hog Games, moderated by Razorgasm". That sort of thing.

This isn't a government where everything has to be open and there are checks and balances. I certainly don't remember voting for any of the mods. What next? Private mod forums for you all to discuss issues in an executive session? I probably don't want to know the answer to that.

And for what it's worth, I'm satisfied with stet's answer (it would have to be created from scratch and we don't want to do that right now.) The elusiveness bothered me a little, but know what? I've got nothing invested in ILX except for some minor ramblings on Billy Joel's superior songwriting.

well there have been a number of other reasons given in this here thread right here - and uh why dont you trust us to see yr actions

It's not my actions, btw, but uh why don't you trust your mods to mod?

And it doesn't seem to be about what actions happen, it's about "who" did them, and I don't see any justification for that at all. I understand the sense it made in ye noise days of yore, but they're gone, and the way the code works means they aren't coming back. Mods aren't posters with extra fuck-about powers any more.

and just because i suspect the mods dont want to deal w/feedback doesnt mean thats the motivation for wanting mod log
No, fair enough, but it at least means you know that bringing it back will generate negative feedback, and I don't see why volunteering peeps would opt in for extra grief.

xpost: yeh, we probably really should have a modlist.

why don't you trust your mods to mod?

why should i trust them? are they inherently trustworthy? is there say some system where i could get info that would let me decide on their trust worthiness?

I understand the sense it made in ye noise days of yore

this is kinda funny as jon is teh mod. also points to the point above. while i dont really have problems w/jon like many do, he is clearly not trust worthy. btw nose of yore was verging on some alltime interents brilliance. recognize.

is there say some system where i could get info that would let me decide on their trust worthiness?
Why yes! Use the board, and see if mods run rampant. If something you do disappears and you think it shouldn't have, ask about it on modreq! It shouldn't be like the old days where nutso mods spaz out -- every mod has been appointed or approved by Pash and should be trustworthy. TBH, there's very little modding goes on, certainly a lot less than in old ILX.

this is kinda funny as jon is teh mod. also points to the point above. while i dont really have problems w/jon like many do, he is clearly not trust worthy. btw nose of yore was verging on some alltime interents brilliance. recognize.
Yeh, I do recognize, but there is no way to allow it to be like it was and also keep the rest of the site secure.

Wait, when have my actions as moderator breached any sort of trust? I could have injected HOSTILE JAVASCRIPT (on olde ilx) to steal cookies and do all kinds of shit.

xpost, stet's point is right but all the holes I exploited didn't require moderator access!

se the board, and see if mods run rampant.

cant tell not paying good attention

just make me nose crkt mod and i leave u alone promise

haha jon no stopz plz

And it doesn't seem to be about what actions happen, it's about "who" did them, and I don't see any justification for that at all.

not just who but WHEN AND WHY.

Why yes! Use the board, and see if mods run rampant. If something you do disappears and you think it shouldn't have, ask about it on modreq!

oh yes! moedreq! such a helpful a system with the constant locking of threads!

BTW, it completely sucks that due the locked modreq threads, this discussion is taking place on a board that 99% of ILX doesn't look at/doesn't know exists.

yes the way pash and matt dc keep solving people's problems and then locking the threads afterwards really ruins the ebb and flow of the troubleshooting process. I mean obviously every thread title change request should have a lengthy discussion with illustrations in it somewhere

a cursory reading of plato should have told us that

site new answers =
http://i14.tinypic.com/4ktaxli.jpg
fyi

xp

also xxxxxxxxxxxxp way up thread:

just because other message boards lack admin log doesnt mean its a good reason for ILX to.

ILX is different from other message boards and thats why most regualrs are regulars.

i could understand ignoring this issue if ILX never had an admin log to begin with and a few of us thought it would be a great idea. but ILX DID have an admin log, it doesn't now, and any inquiries up till now as to wether its coming back have been ignored/locked/deleted.

and you wonder why there mighht be a question of trust?

also: please note that half the people asking for admin log ARE ADMINS.

xxxp:

yeah, at least leave a thread unlicked long enough for the requester to leave a "thank you"!

unlocked too.

not just who but WHEN AND WHY.
Are there any concrete examples of abuse here since nuILX? At all? It's a mostly entirely different set of mods, and I can't recall there being any complaints about modding. If there was to be a CONTROVERSIAL MOD EDIT, opening a thread on modreq would be a good way to get it dealt with/raise it, seriously.

oh yes! moedreq! such a helpful a system with the constant locking of threads!
The only threads that should really be locked are the "Fix X" "Fixed" ones. The others should be open, and I see that they are -- html parser, search fucked, bbcode fucked and so on. The Admin log ones are an abberation to that.

And, in fact, there's only me, keith and Pash who can edit the content of posts, so a controversial mod edit is incredibly unlikely -- the most mods can do is mark as deleted, and an undelete is v. easy.

Are there any concrete examples of abuse here since nuILX? At all?

Well, let me check the admin l.....oh wait, I get the joke now.

in communist russia cat kills curiosity

were humans we has a nature we want to know let us know

And actually, I think the locking/deleting of the "admin log" threads on modreq are a pretty good example of abuse of mod power, especially given that you seem to be admitting upthread that it was done in the hope that those of us with an opinion on it would just get discouraged and give up.

Well, let me check the admin l.....oh wait, I get the joke now.
Right, see, I'm increasingly thinking it's not great for there to be a big list of actions taken by mods so that they have to justify themselves on every thing they do. The action gets taken, someone queries it, the mod justifies themself, someone else comes along, goes "what's this?", the mod justifies themself, it goes on and on.

If there were hundreds of mod abuses going on, I could see the point, but there aren't. If there were, the users getting affected would be raising hell about it, but they aren't. Even if one mod did have a stroke or something, nothing is permanent, so raise it, another sane mod will fix it.

And actually, I think the locking/deleting of the "admin log" threads on modreq are a pretty good example of abuse of mod power, especially given that you seem to be admitting upthread that it was done in the hope that those of us with an opinion on it would just get discouraged and give up.
I'm not admitting anything like it, not seriously anyway! I didn't lock em, I can imagine why someone would have done it with that intention, but I Must Protest! came about as the place for this sort of meta chattery, and ModReq isn't that place so locking them there is understandable. This one stayed open, and I'm answering it best as I can.

And what difference would an admin log make to this "abuse" anyway?
Thread "why is there no admin log anyway" deleted by whoever ("not a mod request") at xx/yy/zz.

What would you do then?

reading modreq gives users a better idea of what flies and what doesnt. better than faq.

OTOH, we would have less of this:

A rogue moderator is editing messages with impunity

which would be a shame.

it's the lack of accountability that's unnerving. if mod req was more of an open place for discussing who is being banned and what posts are being deleted and why, we wouldn't be so pissed about the admin log, but you guys (i don't know who this shadowy "you guys" cabal is, no admin log or admin list, natch) cutting off discussion by locking threads without resolution just makes you look shady.

Yeh, I take that point -- and agree with it -- but there are no discussions being cut off by locking, apart from the one on admin log, which we're having now. Hardly anything I can see anywhere is being deleted -- and I check everything I do see, and I know the other mods do too.

As for bans, I don't know quite why they need discussed. If someone's being a dick, they get banned, and currently all the other mods get told about it too. Right now, the total ban list for the site is 3 people: Marissa, Mickey and Manalishi. Am0n's banned from mod request (for trolling it and bumping a ton of threads), and chaki and tombot are banned from Nose bord. That's it.

If a ban was unfair, I mean, it would either get stopped by one of the other mods (as happened with fezaffe) or someone would raise it on their behalf. I don't mean that mods should be able to ban with impunity, just that they shouldn't need to get everyone everywhere's permission firt.

hstencil is also banned from nose bored so thats not "it."

who are the other moderators for noize besides jon? are there any?

sorry, yes, he is too, I was doing that from memory. Also banned are seven spam email domains.

xp Just Jon. Pash approached a couple of others I think, but I don't know what happened.

I somehow failed to mention this suggestion upthread, but I, for one, don't really care about the "who" in an admin log, I'm far more interested in the "what" and "why". Presumably that might alleviate some of the concerns about mod sass or whatever.

Would a good compromise be to list the mods for each board and if something happened which you wanted to question, you'd know who to contact? Truthfully I never used the admin log other than for nosey curiosity. I've found asking mods direct questions to provide quick and satisfactory results. Granted that was when I knew exactly who the mods were (e.g. Teeny). But now I don't know anyone except stet, Keith and Pash.

yeah I think a mod list would be just as well. At least then you can make an educated guess as to who you have to start a bitch thread with on ILE

Personally speaking, I thought the administration log was a very cool idea and a good thing. I miss it on other boards I look at, TBH. I don't have real strong feelings about it either way, but I wouldd welcome it if it made a reappearance. If I've done some admin action or other I'm cool with explaining motive/reason etc, but I can't explain why other ppl have done stuff & don't ever want to speak for other people, which I guess could be seen as an argument pro-mod log in iteslf, perhaps.

FYI, anyway:
List of ilxor mods at present:
Sitewide:
Me
Teeny
Stet
Keith

Board mods:
I Love Music:
Ned
Matt DC
Jim "electricsound"

I Love Everything:
Ned
Jim "electricsound"
Matt DC

Mod Request forum:
Ned
Matt DC

1 pwn 3v3ryth1ng
roxy
esteban

Aeon Flux Top Level:
Barb E

All Noise Dude Summertime Fun Board and Pickle Bar
Jon

Ask A Drunk
Lynskey

Ask Chaki!
Chaki

Ask Dr Freud
nobody

De Subjectivisten
nobody

HTML playground
nobody

I Don't Mind Everything
St Kate

I Love AFL
nobody

I Love Baseball
gygax

I Love Books
nobody

I Love Cars
Spencer

I Love Comics
Leee

I Love Cooking
nobody

I Love Cricket
nobody

I Love Film
nobody

I Love Games
kingfish

I Love Hoops
nobody

I Love NFL
nobody

I Love WWE
ken c

I Make Music
john j
stevem (no idea how stevem wound up w/admin on a board he never posts to)

I Must Protest!
nobody

I Rate Everything
jergins

Idiot Thread Repository
nobody

Moderator Request Forum
nobody

net art
nobody

tapexchange
jergins

The Workshy Allstar Teadrinker's Society of North
nobody

NB that what "nobody" actually means is nobody other than site admins

Current bans are:
sitewide:
wagemann
mickey
marissa (various aliases)
various spam domains
manalishi is permabanned from ilm and ile

Am0n and dan i are banned from mod request (i have no idea why dan i got banned?)
stence, chaki and tombot are banned from noise board, presumably because they annoyed Jon.

w/r/t multiple admins on noise board, at present (I'm not 100% sure of this, stet will know better maybe) board admins are able to ban users from their boards, but are not able to unban. I don't have a particular problem w/multiple admins on the NB, but bear in mind a/it is NOT the same - no editiing of message text now, it's basically just delete/undelete message &/or thread and ban user from board... and mainly b/I'm quite happy to revoke any ban on request of the person who did the banning, but I'm not here all the time and if a bunch of you guys ban each other for lulz and I'm asleep, noise board is going to get awful quiet 'till I get back online!

All Noise Dude Summertime Fun Board and Pickle Bar
Jon

Remember that Twilight Zone where that freaky kid makes everybody do what he wants. . .

1 pwn 3v3ryth1ng
roxy
esteban

Remember the end of The Usual Suspects?

things would be so much better if it was just Pashmina in charge

THX very much for the mod listing and the thoughts, Pash.

thx very much for the transparency and lack of condescension

thx very much for haymon

i can't believe im actually missing andrew

stet it would be cool if you put half as much work into functionality as you do into making it jw-proof

otherwise good job
(and i was unaware of this thread until your reference of it)

why don't you trust your mods to mod?

...

FYI, anyway:
List of ilxor mods at present:

...

1 pwn 3v3ryth1ng
roxy
esteban

...

All Noise Dude Summertime Fun Board and Pickle Bar
jon

Yeh, ok, pwnt.

But, look, we don't have admin log right now, and getting it would take some doing. I doubt Keith will want to do the work -- and from what I know of the admin system, it'd be a hefty rewrite -- unless there's a really obvious and pressing need. So can we try the raise-shit-on-modreq thing for a bit, and if it doesn't feel like it's working and mods are suspected to be stepping out of line, we can revisit it? I'll make sure no discussion gets shut down without explanation, as far as I can.

I think you might be missing the point a little bit. For at least a vocal minority of ILX users, modreq is not equivalent to having a admin log, and as a result, seeing if a modreq board works isn't going to solve the problem. (This situation may have been exacerbated by having the issue pushed by continual silencing of the issue at hand.) I'm more than willing to have Keith address why the re-coding is a bitch, but this discussion shows why an admin log would be useful (for example, no-one seems to know why Dan I. was banned from modreq, modreq threads kept disappearing, and until this thread started, I had no idea that chaki was banned from noise board. If I had known about any of these things, I might have had the chance to ask for some sort of clarification/bitch about why X was locking admin log threads on modreq/give jon shit about banning chaki.) As it stands, these things are invisible, and I don't think that's good. Keeping in mind that I think that y'all (Pash, stet, keith) are good people from what I've seen (and actually, that includes JW as well), why not allow for some sort of civil discourse on this sort of thing aside from ill-informed modreq questions? It might be worth considering the fact that some of these issues (or similar ones) are more likely to clog up modreq as a result of not having an admin log.

Now, if Keith wants to weigh in on the fact that for whatever reason this is difficult/impossible (ref: mine and others multiple inquiries on whether it's a code based issue), fine. Still, offering up the answer of thinking that having a admin log is possibly more trouble than it's worth doesn't really hold water without something a little more concrete.

It might be worth considering the fact that some of these issues (or similar ones) are more likely to clog up modreq as a result of not having an admin log.
Well, if that does happen it's a concrete reason to have admin log, isn't it?

I'm not going to speak for Keith, but I can tell you that it's not impossible to have one, though it may be difficult. But the whole moderation system so far has been set up to be entirely anonymous -- I can't even tell who has done something -- which is a design decision he's made. I imagine, and this comes from some things he's said, that to get him to change his design, there's going to need to be more provable need for it than the complaints/hopes of a vocal few.

That's what I'm suggesting you try and get with the using modreq thing. If it doesn't work, there will be plenty of evidence for Keith why we need it, far beyond hypothetical abuses. If it does work, it'll be difficult to badger him for it. To take your examples above, Chaki is big enough to handle himself. If he wanted to complain about the ban, he's even got his own board to tell you/others about it. Dan I presumably knows why or can have a guess at why he was banned from ModReq. (On that, there's a deleted thread on modreq saying nothing but "search is worthless and you are dicks" by him, which I imagine got him the boot). If these guys aren't kicking up shit about what happened to them, why should you on their behalf?

Yes, lack of an admin log makes it difficult to keep track of the moderations, but what I'm saying is that there's no user so weak here that they can be bullied by a mod, except perhaps total noobs. Everyone who feels something wrong was done, either to them or to someone they know, can raise it on modreq, or another board, or can email someone they know who will. It's not as if any of us aren't going to correct any abuses asap, same as it always was.

The only functional difference is you're going to have to need the offended party to speak up first, you can't pre-emptively complain on their behalf -- but will that be a total disaster? Let's try it and see!

can i be I Must Protest mod

idiot thread rep too

[Edit for pre-tea sense]
-- stet, Saturday, June 9, 2007 2:37 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

But the whole moderation system so far has been set up to be entirely anonymous -- I can't even tell who has done something -- which is a design decision he's made.

what is the reasoning behind that?

If it doesn't work, there will be plenty of evidence for Keith why we need it, far beyond hypothetical abuses.

Mods, PLEASE can you delete this thread now that I have learnt my lesson the hard way:

Could whomever obliged Dr D in his polite request here please explain how not doing so for LJ isn't hypocrytical?
-- g®▲Ðұ, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:02 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

well pash is the only mod to express his reasons why and i doubt he zapped dr c's thread. it would be nice if the mod that did would explain the diff but i doubt thats going to happen.
-- chaki, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:08 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It wasn't me who deleted the Dr C thread in question and I wouldn't personally have done so. But the main reason I wasn't moved to oblige LJ's request upthread is a) it's his fault for being so astonishingly short-sighted and b) the original post is all over the fucking boards and probably saved on a couple of creeps' hard drives as well and I'm not seeking out every appearance of it.

Pash said he'd look into getting the original thread de-indexed, that should be enough really.
-- Matt DC, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:15 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

...

I'm not advocating zapping LJ's thread, I just think a mod in the NU-no-admin-log-era should have known they would have been opening a can of worms by fufilling a request w/o a discussion on it.

Is it because Dr. C is an otherwise responsible poster who couldn't have known his thread would end up the way it did? Is it because he asked nicely? Is it because the rep of non-ILXors was at stake? I never got to read it, it got zapped pretty fast.

If we're not getting admin log back, at least use this board to explain non-routine admin actions.
-- g®▲Ðұ, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:18 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

...

I've no idea, I never actually read the thread in question before it was deleted - sorry.
-- Matt DC, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:20 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

...

I do not know who deleted Dr C's thread. I tend towards deleting individual posts from threads, myself, and then only if there are some serious IRL circumstances for doing so.
...
-- Pashmina, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 1:38 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

...

I do not know who deleted Dr Cs thread
-- g®▲Ðұ, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 1:44 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

...

Grady, deleted threads are just flagged as deleted, it doesn't actually say who deleted it.
-- Pashmina, Tuesday, March 27, 2007 1:54 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

This is so incredibly frustrating.

So in order to get you to even consider having an admin log, we have to prove that people are abusing mod powers?

Like I've said before, I can't really give you admin log! I can only tell you why I think we could be able to get by without one, and what I imagine it would take for one to be made.

when/why did mickey get banned?

April, for racist trolling iirc. It was Pash that did it, I think, though that might be wrong.

Mickey got banned a couple of months ago, I think it was Matt who dropped the bar, but I'm not 100% on that. IIRC it was his behaviour on the VA tech shooting thread that went over the line.

i wd like to mod idiot thread repository plz

Rolling site-wide Admin Log in THIS thread

Leaving a note in the request thread or the thread where action was taken should be enough.

i'd like to think this would be enough for everybody but that is clearly not the case. ah well.

stevem (no idea how stevem wound up w/admin on a board he never posts to)

yeah this is weird. it was probably meant to be done for ILM but a mis-reading occurred.

can board bans be revoked by the site admins? if so i suppose this would lead to a tedious tennis match on Noise Board, with someone getting banned by board mod, then requesting to site admins to be unbanned, then getting re-banned and so on. but if you're banned from any ILX board for reasons other than severe disruption of that board/threads or severe "hate speech" then presumably you have good grounds to complain to site admins about this.

As for bans, I don't know quite why they need discussed. If someone's being a dick, they get banned, and currently all the other mods get told about it too. Right now, the total ban list for the site is 3 people: Marissa, Mickey and Manalishi. Am0n's banned from mod request (for trolling it and bumping a ton of threads),

Haha holy shit I banned all of those. I R king Nazi.

FWIW I am pro-admin log because I am pro-transparency and pro-people trusting the mods and not thinking we're a shadowy cabal. It makes an enomormous amount of sense to me to see who's been doing what, why the've been done, EASILY, on one page rather than having to trawl through dozens of ModReq threads. And so people can see how little moderation is actually done outside of requests.

I understand one of the original reasons for having the anonymous 'Charlie' mod was to stop posters getting paranoid about a particular mod hassling then. I reckon it's more likely to have the opposite effect.

I also don't think we should really be talking about the Noise Board here because it operates by and large under totally different rules from ILE/ILM. I know some mods disagree with me here but that's another debate.

Apologies for not saying anything beforehand, I didn't know this thread was here.

Right, see, I'm increasingly thinking it's not great for there to be a big list of actions taken by mods so that they have to justify themselves on every thing they do. The action gets taken, someone queries it, the mod justifies themself, someone else comes along, goes "what's this?", the mod justifies themself, it goes on and on.

This rarely happened in the old days other than the occasional Jon v Noodles or Esteban v Pashmina bunfight. And frankly, people can still go "what's this? Why have you done this?" and demand justification from the mod without there being an admin log.

if keith does set up an adming log i expect it will be purely on the basis that is helpful for moderators. pretty much every recent major mod action seems to have been declared on either the thread in question (locking) or the thread about it on MRB (inc banning people, fixing misinfo and whatnot) so readers are served in this respect. people saying 'i wouldn't even know that x had been banned' and similar, what do you care/what business is it of yours/what could you do about it anyway? but do bear that provocative question in the context that if you really cared you could find this information out thru means currently in operation on ILX as is.

Dude that's a load of threads to trawl through just to find out! What's wrong with having just one convenient page.

I also disagree with the idea that any admin log would be implemented purely because it's helpful for the mods. If so, why make it visible to non-admins at all? Personally, if a friend of mine, or someone I'd been corresponding with for some time, was suddenly banned from the main boards without a reason being given, it wouldn't be unreasonable for me to want to know why. Even if the reason in question was "he's a big racist and there were dozens of people calling out for him to be banned".

If Keith feels that he doesn't want to spend the time on it, or his ILX coding time would be better spelt working on something else, then fair enough. But I thought that was why we had an open-source code and other coders now?

Dude that's a load of threads to trawl through just to find out!

not really, I seem to know who has been controversially banned from what boards or whatever and which threads have been locked and why just by reading ILE, ILM, MRB and Noise.

If so, why make it visible to non-admins at all?

i should've said i can imagine keith setting one up for mods eyes only (which would amuse me a little).

better yet, have the admin log show only actions made by the mod looking at it.

If Keith feels that he doesn't want to spend the time on it, or his ILX coding time would be better spelt working on something else, then fair enough. But I thought that was why we had an open-source code and other coders now?

No, we have an open-source code because Keith chose an open-source licence so that others could help him out. I don't think there's enough realisation here of how indebted we are to Keith. Without his intervention, there's an incredibly slim chance of there being a working ILX right now. The old code was fucked, and the new code group had gone nowhere in two months.

I looked around for other packages we could use, and migrate the DB to, but there was nothing that would have done, mostly because we are a large site on a small computer. I asked Keith if he was interested in taking a look at it. We're incredibly fortunate that he took it on and started churning out code that's both incredibly fast and has a really low server load. To suggest that others could hack together features he wasn't interested in and we'd just slide them in past him is offensive. (That's not to say that help on ILX isn't wanted or appreciated, but it happens under his direction).

Admin log is a feature request, like the hundreds of others we have. Security implications aside, feature requests are assessed on two criteria:

1. Need
2. Ease of implementation -- will it take ages to code? will it be a big performance hit?

Admin log currently fails on both tests. If it is proven to be seriously needed, then (1) changes and it would be worth taking a look at. While (1) isn't proven, it's just a wishlist item, and there are better things to be doing.

Stet - I wasn't suggesting just sliding features past Keith if he's firmly against them. I was talking about things he had no real objection to, but just didn't consider them a top priority or a worthwhile use of his time at that point.

Oh right, I see. That's actually how things like the HTML conversion button came into being, but stuff like that sits on the "edge" of the code, whereas admin log and other deep features go to its heart, and changing them changes the overall design. Keith *has* to be the one that approves stuff like that.

Also:
And frankly, people can still go "what's this? Why have you done this?" and demand justification from the mod without there being an admin log.
Er, ding ding ding!

right but they don't automatically get it; instead their thread gets locked for reasons of 'national security' or whatever, reichstagfire.jpg, etc.

i want to be a noise mod. yang to jon's yin. i am trustworthy, kind, i was a boy scout and i briefly told my whole mormon troop i was gay so they'd leave me alone. then about half of them came out to me, and lots of awkwardness and backpeddling occured, so i should be a noise mod

MRB thread-locking partially enabled because of certain people repeatedly starting 'ban louis jagger' threads there perhaps.

stet how long did it take you to lock those 1000+ threads?

Keith did it with modern computer technologies, so easy peasy

;-)

All right, look, I can't deal with reading this whole thread but what no one has mentioned is that the old NB took an administrative fxn (the admin log) that was supposed to be for official uses and used selection mod powers to turn it into a whole other level of play, ie red or yellow carding people with joke explanations, thread-specific bans, editing their mesgs as a joke, replacing jpgs with other images, leaving messages in the log that weren't in the main text -- it was like meta noize bored, and it provided a different kind of opacity that would keep out people who hadn't been made mods or who couldn't be arsed to look it up.

So it's a way of doubling the fun & games while allowing the NB to be a little more selective about who gets all the jokes and who doesn't. Which I actually support, but it makes it hilarious to me that this thread is full of people going "WE WANT TRANSPARENCY, U R UNETHICAL 4 TAKING AWAY R DATA".

The only people asking for the admin log as far as I can see are: a) the people who like to fuck each other's, and other people's, stuff up for fun; b) the people who moan at any opportunity. OBVIOUSLY the idea of an admin log gives both these types of guys hard-ons.

The boards seem to be working at the moment for most of the posters, except for the folks in category a). That in itself would be a good argument for maintaining the status quo until there seems to be a real need for an admin log.

If the boards required more modding, I think there would be a good argument for anony-mods, since there are plenty of people who would be happy to mod if they didn't think they would pretty much be sticking their head over the parapet and asking for a shitload of grief from people in categories a) and b).

I for one welcome our new insect overlords.

The only people asking for the admin log as far as I can see are: a) the people who like to fuck each other's, and other people's, stuff up for fun; b) the people who moan at any opportunity. OBVIOUSLY the idea of an admin log gives both these types of guys hard-ons.

1) this is a shitty ad hominem argument
2) give examples. which is matt dc? which is john justen?
3) you are category b duh.

The boards seem to be working at the moment for most of the posters, except for the folks in category a). That in itself would be a good argument for maintaining the status quo until there seems to be a real need for an admin log.

they were working before our scots overlords took over as well, and the status quo then was: we had an admin log.

LOL! QED.

One argument that was put to me that I can sort of sympathise with is that there should be the ability to mod anonymously because, at some point in the future, we may well need it.

This has nothing to do with any of the regular posters and more to do with the possibility of having to deal with a particularly persistent and vindictive troll and/or complete nutter who then decides to, for example, bombard them with email viruses or slander them all over other parts of the internet. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't (and we've come close on a couple of occasions).

Should mods necessarily have full accountability when posters could use all manner of alternate logins, anonymous proxies and nastier shit in order to try and fuck them over? I don't really know what I think about that one.

What would the consensus be surrounding an admin log that tells people what's been done, when and for what reason, without necessarily saying by who? For me, the identity of the mod in question is less important than the others.

they were working before our scots overlords took over as well, and the status quo then was: we had an admin log.

They weren't working particularly well, remember. The one difference between now and then, and something that isn't really being taken into account, is that EVERY MOD ACTION IS REVERSABLE. Including thread deletions, bannings etc. Which would still be the case even if we still had some really capricious, unbalanced or vendetta-driven mods, which we don't any more.

I think you might be confusing "QED" with "OMG" or "WTF". I appreciate your attempts to reach beyond your vocabulary comfort zone, but try to keep it on the playing field.

xpost: Yeah, I'm thinking that an anon admin log would do everything I was looking to get out of it as well.

Another general though I had over the weekend - the FAQ would be a good location for the board admin list to live.

though thought

Yeh, I need to tidy up and unify the FAQs. I'll do that

I have nothing to add here other than I echo ghost rider's request to be made mod of some of the boards without mods; I have ILX mod experience, too!

did joe actually get mod powerz on ILCricket?

nevermind.

So it's a way of doubling the fun & games while allowing the NB to be a little more selective about who gets all the jokes and who doesn't.

if this doesn't convince keef to rebuild it nothing will!

Stet said: To suggest that others could hack together features he* wasn't interested in and we'd just slide them in past him is offensive.

* "he" being Keith

See, this I don't get. No-one here (except you) appointed Keith to do this. You've already admitted that you're only doing this because you defaulted into it by being the first guy to set up an account to raise the money. You've appointed one of your friends to do the coding stuff. It could have been anyone. As it is, it's someone who is undoubtedly very good at making this run without falling over, but doesn't really have a handle on what ILX is, does, and isn't, in comparison with other message boards.

Now I know and like you both plenty, and don't have a huge problem with most of what you're doing. But surely you can see that you've taken a massive board, er, on board and that people aren't entirely happy with being dictated to (we're doing this our way, and that's it) on what used to be a pretty transparent board.

Basically, why are you so scared of other people helping out and getting something back that people seem to feel strongly about? It's not an insult to Keith to want to help out. Some people might even feel that it's an insult to the users that they paid to get ILX back and instead are being told that they can just lump what they've been saddled with, which doesn't have some of the things that made it ILX. These things evidently matter to people.

(please again note that I like you both, and I'm grateful for all you've done. None of this is blanket criticism of any ILX mods or admins, but I can't honestly see a reasonable justification of why an admin log can't be implemented. If it's just that Keith doesn't want to/can't be bother/doesn't rate it very highly in order of priority/whatever, then fair enough, but I'd rather hear it from him, together with his own justification for why someone can't do it for him)

i don't think stet and keith are behaving any worse or differently than previous overlords inc noodles and andrew. you claim that they don't understand ILX but none of their critics really understands what running ILX actually involves on the technical side, and wouldn't until they were in that position themselves.

(I realise you've partially addressed this, but I just don't get why this all has to be run past Keith - surely you remember all the aggro when Graham started taking an "it's my board and I'll do what I want with it" thing. I sort of hoped we were past that sort of "it's my ball and you're not getting to play with it" stuff now)

erm, xpost :-)

we should elect a president.

In that, no, I don't understand the technical side. But I don't see how being a techy dude means that you get to shrug off any criticism levelled at the way you're implementing it.

The only comment I will make here is that it would be really nice for Keith to say something about this, as it seems that that is really what people are asking for at this point. Most people would be fine with the head coder saying "It's harder than it sounds, guys!" or "I haven't gotten to it yet because it's harder than it sounds!" or "I don't want to do it but maybe someone else could." or really anything.

Also, as a professional techie who makes a living implementing featureas asked for by a user community, you're mostly wrong in the way you're handling this, stet. The feature doesn't have to be implemented but an explanation as to why it won't be implemented without caveats and suppositions should be given, otherwise this argument will continue forever.

Also also, plz make me admin of I Love Film.

it's not even technical stuff really. note that only mods/admins came up with the 'but moderators need rights as well as users and that includes a degree of privacy less someone who disagrees with their actions starts abusing/slandering them (as has happened before) or worse. and users are allowed a degree of anonymity that mods are not which creates an unfair imbalance. it's a point if not a likely scenario (not that likelihood stopped complaints before).

WTF are you talking about? you've got tons of mods on this this thread advocating a transparent admin log.

re-read please.

Well, even just an anonymous "A.N. Other mod" marker alongside the explanation would work, I guess - no-one's objected to that suggestion, have they? Give the mods privacy (though if anyone can't handle justifying their mod action, then maybe they aren't the best mods?) by all means.

I think what's bothering me most is the feeling that ILX has been taken over and is being run by people not willing to take stuff on board from the people that make this board what it is, with nowt but a "but we've worked really hard!" blanket justification for actions taken.

even just an anonymous "A.N. Other mod" marker alongside the explanation would work, I guess - no-one's objected to that suggestion, have they?

this seems to defeat the purpose for those users desperate for admin log, as accountability (or at least greater convenience of) was cited as the main reason for restoring it.

ILX has been taken over and is being run by people not willing to take stuff on board from the people that make this board what it is, with nowt but a "but we've worked really hard!" blanket justification for actions taken.

how many suggestions (demands even) have they restored or introduced for first time? not enough for some people perhaps but are you really suggesting they've been completely un-co-operative most of the time?

from the people that make this board what it is

name and shame

yeah srsly make me and dan perry mods, i mean you let esteban be one

]users are allowed a degree of anonymity that mods are not which creates an unfair imbalance

yeah the mods are all highly googlable people like stet, pashmina, and teeny who are ripe for internet character assassination.

who would want to be a mod if you cant edit HTML?

No Steve, I'm not suggesting they've done nothing and are being un-co-operative. I've already said I'm grateful for many things done, not least saving ILX.

Re. anonymity for mods, I already disclaimered that mods should be accountable for their actions in an ideal world, but there was a suggestion of anonymous moderation upthread, and it seems a reasonable compromise. If there are a trustworthy and recognised bunch of mods, tknowing that one of them has done something and we know what it is and that it's been done by one of them, then that's OK by me (others' mileage may vary, obviously).

And people who make this board what it is, that'd be the users. Whoever they may be. Keith can write the best-coded most effective all-singing-all-dancing board in existence, but if people don't post on it because they aren't happy with the running/moderation, then what's the point of it?

i could declare threads nsfw with impunity

yeah the mods are all highly googlable people like stet, pashmina, and teeny who are ripe for internet character assassination.

-- That one guy that quit, Monday, 11 June 2007 22:06

that was another bad post by you which does not really acknowledge the point i was making correctly.

Keith can write the best-coded most effective all-singing-all-dancing board in existence, but if people don't post on it because they aren't happy with the running/moderation, then what's the point of it?

well there seems to have been an increase in new accounts over the last few months from what i heard so...

Can't you find some other board to be a dick to people on? We're trying to have a discussion over here, and you're being pointlessly boring and argumentative.

xpost

captain save a mod

xp

Also steve, you're one of the poll-haters - you can't stand up and mount a defence using the grounds that new features have been introduced that are more worthwhile than things that actually give a bit of transparency to the whole operation of the board, or are you just going to carry on doing a bit of half-arsed devil's advocacy until people can't be bothered arguing with you any more?

xpost, oh, ok, we're at that point already.

there is a weird disconnect between the "mods haven't been abusing privileges or doing anything controversial, why would anyone care what they are up to?" and "omg if there is an admin log the mods will be dragged over coals all over the internet for their actions" arguments. if mods aren't are just deleting spam and banning racist trolls why would they be worried that people would be angry with them, as opposed to thankful?

All right, look, I can't deal with reading this whole thread but what no one has mentioned is that the old NB took an administrative fxn (the admin log) that was supposed to be for official uses and used selection mod powers to turn it into a whole other level of play, ie red or yellow carding people with joke explanations, thread-specific bans, editing their mesgs as a joke, replacing jpgs with other images, leaving messages in the log that weren't in the main text -- it was like meta noize bored, and it provided a different kind of opacity that would keep out people who hadn't been made mods or who couldn't be arsed to look it up.

this is actually why i miss admin log the most and also my mod powerz

plz return mod powerz to noize bored

well there seems to have been an increase in new accounts over the last few months from what i heard so...

quality v quantity, btw. Though perhaps that's for the "has ILE gone down the dumper" thread.

(might also be partially due to lots of posters registering several accounts to get round the not-being-able-to-post-logged-out thing)

xxpost, yes, exactly, that's why I suggested that people not willing to be accountable for their mod actions might not be the best mods.

and users are allowed a degree of anonymity that mods are not which creates an unfair imbalance.

this argument is also really bogus, since the mods can see regular posters' ip addresses and the reverse is not true.

Can't you find some other board to be a dick to people on? We're trying to have a discussion over here, and you're being pointlessly boring and argumentative.

you're a funny guy. or was this addressed to that one guy that quit?

captain save a mod

you're a funny guy. captain save a...wait...it'll come...noise board fan who wants admin log for extra lollage accountability?

Also steve, you're one of the poll-haters - you can't stand up and mount a defence using the grounds that new features have been introduced that are more worthwhile than things that actually give a bit of transparency to the whole operation of the board, or are you just going to carry on doing a bit of half-arsed devil's advocacy until people can't be bothered arguing with you any more?

i'm not a poll-hater at all, i just think a lot of people's ideas for polls on ILM are poor like many others. and i'm not doing the other stuff you said i was either! i think some arguments for admin log are convincing but others are highly suspect.

OK, well here's my tuppence worth. Big post, covering a lot of stuff... Sorry.

On not answering before now: forgive me, but got a bit annoyed by the way some of this stuff was asked for (not by all of you). (That and being in London, and having food poisoning and stuff). This request wasn’t like other feature requests, which have on the whole, been asked for politely. Comments like "less broken bookmarks, more admin log", seem to be in one half of the sentence slagging off quit big pieces of work I've already done, and in another half making a request that I do more voluntary work. There have been additional similar comments and I didn't want to post whilst I was annoyed. Some of the comments made to Stet have annoyed me too, and in many ways the disrespect to other people who used to do this difficult job. I think they did a great job, including Andrew, Graham and anyone else. I do put a lot of time and effort into trying to make this as good as it can be, and I am also aware that as Churchill said: "you can't please all of the people, all of the time". This is inevitable. I do my best to let this stuff wash over me, but I’m only human, and it can get to me from time to time.

Specific point for you, Ailsa: you bring up the "paid for ILX" thing, as you have a couple of times before. Please don't take any of this the wrong way, but this always has the habit of getting on my nerves, because it implies that you think I, or others somehow owe you something, because they've paid a donation. However, I know you won't know the detail, so just so as you do, as far as I know, the money went on the computer alone. It didn't go on bandwidth costs, and it didn't go on Stet's time or my time, or Libcrypt's time or anyone else's. I don't want anything from ILX, ever, no thanks are necessary, no anything is necessary, but just to be clear that I don’t ‘owe’ anyone anything, if this were done commercially (in time alone, if not amount of code), then at my work's rates, the donations would have needed to have been at least 100 times what they were. If it were done on lines of code (sorry to sound like a twat, but the average programmer writes a lot less per day than I do), then it would have been more like 500 times. It's a bunch of work for sure.

Personally, I think I have probably spent around 400 hours’ work on ILX over the past seven or eight months, or one solid month, out of work, so I do think from my point of view that it is nice to have a good understanding of why things might have to be done, rather than just dropping everything whenever a user makes a request. You seem to have implied on a couple of occasions that I deliberately don't do stuff people want. All work I have done has been in response to users’ requests. Where it seems to have caused some friction is in trying to find the best compromise between the board actually working and getting back the features people want; and this takes time, and sometimes the compromise cannot be made. As far as I can see, most people are now happy with it; they weren't at first, but I was kind of forced into putting it in before it was ready. If there are things you think are missing, please let me know. Just for an example of the difficulty in judging what people see as important, clearly there are people who see admin log as more important than bookmarks; however, just shy of 1,000 people are currently using bookmarks, so I do think I guessed right here. Also, some features people ask for contradict things other people ask for - you complained about the size of the new answers page, and I made it bigger for you, but I am aware that I screwed over the guy who asked for it to be made smaller, so it would fit on to his mobile phone. I am aware it's a big site, with a lot of people wanting a lot of things from it, but it's a bloody tricky job trying to work out what people's priorities are. Someone volunteered to do this months ago, but they didn't actually do it. If you want to discuss this further some time, let’s do it in the pub, because it is a big subject, and being someone in the middle of it, I do think it’s a good bit more complicated than you think.

As regards admin log, yes it's a bunch of work, but it's not insurmountable, but the point Matt makes is my major concern (it came from me). No-one had discussed the rights of the moderators and I think it's extremely important that their rights are protected. I will not have on my conscience the situation Matt describes. This is really the clincher for me. Ailsa, you’re right that no-one has objected, but also, as far as I can see, only a couple have agreed. At the beginning of the thread, people are saying it’s basically because they want to get on the case of mods, which would suggest that having an anonymous admin log isn’t good enough. I don’t think that some of the moderators are using pseudonyms is good enough for privacy. Lots of people know their real names, as do others use their real names. IP addresses are irrelevant, as users are able to use anonymous proxies, if they want.

(As a small/jokey point, I have a bunch of time for you, John Justen on the grounds that in an argument about accountability, you're the only guy here posting with what appears to be your full real name!)

Stet’s point about code: I think all Stet is trying to point out here is not that I have some sort of iron grip on the code, which I don’t want to have, but just that code is an incredibly fragile beast, and if you don’t understand it, then it’s dead easy to make a mistake that suddenly makes it ‘poxy fule’, for want of a better term, all over the place. Some of you noticed I even managed to do this myself just a few days ago and the site was down for five hours. All he means is that it’s good that I understand how good others are at doing what they do, and maybe checking what they do before shoving it into production. It is a professional job, and you wouldn’t let a bloke from the street start doing a bit of brain surgery just because they fancied it.

Is this really the issue? Is it a case of noise board politics? Noticeably, most of the posters here are noise board people. What I was looking into, before this question came up, was an attempt to keep happy another big group of ILX users, which has significantly different requirements from the rest of ILX (as far as I can see, a much bigger group than those currently asking for admin log), that's the noise board. It's actually dead easy to give them back what they had, but basically impossible under the current setup, to stop it spilling over onto the rest of ILX, which isn't fair to them. However, it might be possible to set it up in such a way that noise board people are able to mess with HTML and make everyone admins and so on, with no impact on the rest of ILX. This is a whole load of work; months, probably, but I'm quite keen to do it, because it seems to be the biggest group of ILXors at the moment, who don't have what they once had.

massive xpost to Keith

See, this I don't get. No-one here (except you) appointed Keith to do this. You've already admitted that you're only doing this because you defaulted into it by being the first guy to set up an account to raise the money. You've appointed one of your friends to do the coding stuff. It could have been anyone.

This is a hundred kinds of wrong. I didn't appoint Keith, I *asked* him since we were in a very, very deep hole. It's not like there were hundreds of coders out there eager to have a bash at this. Remember the new code group? Know how many lines of code it wrote? none. None at all.

It couldn't have been anyone, not by a long shot.

As for this:

you can see that you've taken a massive board, er, on board and that people aren't entirely happy with being dictated to (we're doing this our way, and that's it) on what used to be a pretty transparent board.

Dictated to? I can see how it looks a bit like that, but this isn't a democracy. You know what the alternative to this project was? Andrew was proposing hiving off the archives into static pages and shutting ILX down. That was it. That was plan B.

I kept the old code limping along after we moved hosts, but to say it was overstretched is an incredible understatement. It's not wrong to say that without Keith, there'd be no running ILX today. (If any coders out there disagree, they've got a month to come out with something that can handle 1200 transactions a second, with a 4gb database, on a single machine serving peaks of four million hits a day.)

Also, as a professional techie who makes a living implementing features asked for by a user community, you're mostly wrong in the way you're handling this, stet. The feature doesn't have to be implemented but an explanation as to why it won't be implemented without caveats and suppositions should be given, otherwise this argument will continue forever.

I'm in a tricky position here. I can't implement the feature, and I don't want to speak for the guy who can. I can only say why we don't have it right now, and why I think we can live without it. As I've said above, the thing that would get it implemented is proven need.

I think what's bothering me most is the feeling that ILX has been taken over and is being run by people not willing to take stuff on board from the people that make this board what it is, with nowt but a "but we've worked really hard!" blanket justification for actions taken.

That goes against the grain of just about every feature that's been added so far, from -- on the posts, to xposts, to, in fact just about everything. They're all in response to user feedback. What it boils down to is that someone has to make decisions about what work is done, and that is either the peanut gallery or the people actually doing the work.

And people who make this board what it is, that'd be the users. Whoever they may be. Keith can write the best-coded most effective all-singing-all-dancing board in existence, but if people don't post on it because they aren't happy with the running/moderation, then what's the point of it?
ILX posts are roughly equivalent to this time last year, and are trending upwards, despite us being off-air for effectively two months and everyone having to re-register. Even that one guy that quit came back. If users were deserting ILX in droves because they couldn't see why Chaki was banned from Noise there'd be a point there, but, eh.

if not this i would probably be here arguing in favour plan B in the same way to be honest.

just joshing. love 2 all.

Thank god Keith talks sense.

XP God, shut up.

this argument is also really bogus, since the mods can see regular posters' ip addresses and the reverse is not true.

FWIW this isn't true - it used to be the case, but now it's only Site Admins who can see.

there is a weird disconnect between the "mods haven't been abusing privileges or doing anything controversial, why would anyone care what they are up to?" and "omg if there is an admin log the mods will be dragged over coals all over the internet for their actions" arguments. if mods aren't are just deleting spam and banning racist trolls why would they be worried that people would be angry with them, as opposed to thankful?

To be fair, the history of ILX is littered with cases of mods and admins, even the best ones like Pashmina, being hassled over pretty minor things (Calum, Esteban, etc etc). Personally I think being willing to put yourself in the line of fire of this sort of annoying but mostly harmless crap is part and parcel of being a mod which is partly why only certain posters should be allowed to do it. However, I can easily envisage some cases where things might have escalated offboard and got out of control if a particular poster had taken against one of the mods (AaronHz maybe, or whoever made that anonymous L0uis J4gger webpage).

However, it might be possible to set it up in such a way that noise board people are able to mess with HTML and make everyone admins and so on, with no impact on the rest of ILX. This is a whole load of work; months, probably, but I'm quite keen to do it, because it seems to be the biggest group of ILXors at the moment, who don't have what they once had.

!!!

I am aware that I screwed over the guy who asked for it to be made smaller, so it would fit on to his mobile phone.

lol

thanks for the thoughtful explination, Keith.

Sorry, that was a fit of pique on my part, up there. But you know, the N!B! is F!U!N! and the admin log was part of the fun for those who were a) modded, and b) interested. And Group A was pretty much everyone who bothered to put some time into reading posts and thinking past the gruffness or flippancy or wahtever and who showed a basic degree of intelligence and a tricksy sense of fun.

I think people feel funny about asking for a big important rights thing that requires coding and etc etc to be done just for their enjoyment, so there's a GIANT THREAD here full of security concerns and NOOOOOOOO THEY BE TAKIN MY HTML/TRANSPARENCY/RITE TO ANONYMANATEEE when the log was mostly just hilarious.

Also, not every sub-board is required to be equally accessible to every poster. Just FYI.

laurel what is problem (xposts)

I MEAN FOR GOD'S SAKE THEY LET ME ON THE NOIZE BORED AND I AM TOTALLY EARNEST AND BORING AND NEVER "GET" ANYTHING.

Laurel, this is kind of my point about "is this the real issue?"... I think you're right, and I think some of this just is down to noise board people wanting to have fun, and this is fine, of course. Regular ILXors for the most part, as far as I cal tell, don't give a toss about admin log.

Though, I'm not entirely sure who you're asking to shut up; I hope it's not Stet...

Thanks for that Keith. I hope I clarified everything I said with "it's nothing against you", and no offence, but I don't want to talk about this with you in the pub because I would like to continue to keep Keith Bloke in the Pub dissociated from Keith Coder Bloke. I know it's harder than it looks because other real life people have told me similar, but tbh, I don't care for discussing this in real life.

Sorry for bringing up the money thing, but I do think there's (rightly or wrongly) a sense of entitlement bubbling around. I *do* understand that it's paying for a computer and not the stuff that goes on it, FWIW. I can't remember if I actually even donated this time round - if I did, it was probably about a tenner because I wasn't working at the time, it was just a general point based on a couple of conversations I've had with a couple of folk. I might be extrapolating a bit too far, but it isn't just me that thinks this is an issue, even if I'm the only one that's said it. As I just said, it's not even really an issue for me and it might not be an issue for others any more. Just thought I'd throw it out there.

anyway, I have spent long enough on here being the kind of devil's advocate that I'm slagging Steve off for. Except I hope it worked because I wasn't being intentionally arsey, even though it seems like that - a lot of things have been answered in the last wee while, that I (and probably others) am grateful for, and I'm sorry I acted like a dick to get them answered. Thanks for clarification, lads (both of you since this has xposted with stet now), and I'm out of here now.

xxxpost, oh, it *is* just me that cares about transparency etc, the rest of it is the noize board looking for their lolz back. I take this shit too seriously. Never mind, I am having a completely fucking shitty day and I duly apologise for everything.

suggestion: if you guys are going to be super-strict as to what is and what is not appropriate for ModReq threads, maybe put a little link to this board at the top of ModReq new answers, with an explination/disclaimer.

because i dont think anyone knows what the hell this board is aside from a small percentage of posters who followed the bullying thread which spawned it.

also ralph.

it's funny tho this separate argument from 'admin log is essential for accountability purposes' to 'admin log for noise board is essential or at least highly desired for gaiety of that board' (really not the case with ILE or ILM i would say). i must admit i don't get the banning thing there tho - hstencil started a thread on ILE to complain about/question it so not sure where that fitted in with the joke but outside occasionally looking in of course.

and i can speak for myself, and i'm pretty sure chaki and jjusten that we were looking for a discussion like this and not a zing at the admins when we started those threads that were immediatley locked.

xp

i wasn't being devil's advocate just for the sake of it, just to make that clear.

it's funny tho this separate argument from 'admin log is essential for accountability purposes' to 'admin log for noise board is essential or at least highly desired for gaiety of that board' (really not the case with ILE or ILM i would say). i must admit i don't get the banning thing there tho - hstencil started a thread on ILE to complain about/question it so not sure where that fitted in with the joke but outside occasionally looking in of course.

-- blueski, Monday, June 11, 2007 1:16 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

it's funny tho this separate argument from 'admin log makes asmins vulnerable to harrasment oh noes!' to 'admin log is going to be a real pain in the ass to code'

But the whole moderation system so far has been set up to be entirely anonymous -- I can't even tell who has done something -- which is a design decision he's made.

what is the reasoning behind that?

-- gr8080, Saturday, June 9, 2007 8:29 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

it can be both yeah (xp)

suggestion: if you guys are going to be super-strict as to what is and what is not appropriate for ModReq threads, maybe put a little link to this board at the top of ModReq new answers, with an explination/disclaimer.

Something along the lines of "This board is for moderation requests", you mean! :)

I can do this too, I guess, but actually, it's a bit more work too. All the board pages are in fact the same page, and I'd need to implement something to customise a message for each board. I had thought of precisely the same thing, though, and it's not really a lot of work, that one. For info, there's nothing sinister about locking of threads on mod request, it's just to keep it for moderation requests. Am0n posted a bunch of pictures over a bunch of threads for fun. This just makes it harder to find legit mod requests on that board, and there are loads of boards where it's fine to post a bunch of pictures.

^^^honest question, looking for Keith's response.

xxp

I wish there was a way for non-coding-type people to be a bigger help to you, Keith, because it IS an enormous project just for lolz, even though I honor and revere those lolz like a proper Drinking-Partner-of-Noize. On the other hand, you will be a Hero.

Gr8080, just the same reasons as discussed above: anonymity. The LJ incident that Matt mentions was what bothered me intially.

Laurel, you mean the HTML and admins and so on? Yeah, I'm not entirely sure it can actually be done, but I'm looking into it. It might be possible, it might not be. Well, it is possible, but trying to see if it's possible without buying another server and hosting it somewhere else.

Fair enough Steve (re devil's advocate thingy), i just thought you were taking random things I'd said, out of context, to make my arguments look stupid.

When, to be fair, I was doing a good enough job of that on my own :-)

wrt locking admin req threads:

keith i understand the reasoning, but TBH, a request for an admin log isnt much different from a request for killfile, which turned into like a 300+ post thread and didnt get locked until the supergay.gif am0n apolcalypse.

see also: ban louis jagger.

just like NB, these are a part of what makes ILX be ILX.

also, i know that there's nothing sinister about locking threads but its fucking creepy! it really makes you guys look bad!

xpost: it would be a lot easier for us to do if noise had it's own domain. Using the ilxor.com domains means HOSTILE JAVASCRIPT can read cookies and potentially affect the other boards. Somebody buy no1z3.cx or summat.

Gr8080, just the same reasons as discussed above: anonymity. The LJ incident that Matt mentions was what bothered me intially.

as speculated way up thread by someone else, this might be having the opposite effect.

xpost: it would be a lot easier for us to do if noise had it's own domain. Using the ilxor.com domains means HOSTILE JAVASCRIPT can read cookies and potentially affect the other boards. Somebody buy no1z3.cx or summat.

-- stet, Monday, June 11, 2007 1:28 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

hypothetically, would there be a way to re-direct links to old nose threads?

also, i know that there's nothing sinister about locking threads but its fucking creepy! it really makes you guys look bad!

Sure, I know what you mean, but I do think it's reasonable for it to be kept reasonably clear of stuff to allow the mods to do a difficult, voluntary job more easily. I guess part of what this discussion is about is whether or not you see moderators as nazi overlords trying to crush your freedoms, or just a bunch of people volunteering their time to try and keep stuff running smoothly. It's certainly more like the latter IMO, but there will always be people who see it more like the former.

as speculated way up thread by someone else, this might be having the opposite effect.

It might do, but some people distrusting mods is to me, inevitable anyway, and also much less impact than someone losing their job over some internet nut job making a website about them slandering their character. I appreciate it's unlikely, and it's not going to be any of you, but close to this has happened, and it only has to happen once.

However, it might be possible to set it up in such a way that noise board people are able to mess with HTML and make everyone admins and so on, with no impact on the rest of ILX. This is a whole load of work; months, probably, but I'm quite keen to do it, because it seems to be the biggest group of ILXors at the moment, who don't have what they once had.

OMG HERO !!!

ps site new answers is the best

it would be a lot easier for us to do if noise had it's own domain. Using the ilxor.com domains means HOSTILE JAVASCRIPT can read cookies and potentially affect the other boards. Somebody buy no1z3.cx or summat.

just buying a domain would make this easier, that's it? really? cause...

No, it's a bunch harder than just buying a domain, I'm afraid, or I would have already done it.

yeah see

I guess part of what this discussion is about is whether or not you see moderators as nazi overlords trying to crush your freedoms, or just a bunch of people volunteering their time to try and keep stuff running smoothly.

well it was the latter but when sincere requests for discussion on an old ILX feature kept getting ignored/locked it started moving in the direction of the former...

:) :) :)

also: yes SITE NEW ANSWERS

BRILLIANT

LOVING IT

THANKING U

grady did you see koogs's greasemonkey script where you can choose which bordz u want to see in site new answers (aka kill ilm)?

fyi its here

now with "site new answers" i am in all bordz at once

there

i know that there's nothing sinister about locking threads but its fucking creepy! it really makes you guys look bad!

srsly? to who? u should've been around when ILM threads were getting locked willy nilly by rogue harv3ll, or me during No List November (altho i wouldn't have said these = 'creepy' behaviour either), oh wait u probably hate ILM anyway tho ja? nice cio shout btw

hypothetically, would there be a way to re-direct links to old nose threads?
There should be. I'm big on old links working. I'm talking about how we do this with Keith right now.

Joe -- no, the domain isn't all that's required, but a separate one is a must . Posisbly just noise.ilxor.com or noise.thehold.net or something, actually.

Though old links working is a bunch more... Just want you guys to understand that a separate noise board is a big piece of work that might not even be possible (except with buying different hardware & hosting). Please don't expect it any time soon, as it'll take time.

also, i really hate to split hairs here, but LJ was never a mod and any poster who is not 100% anonymous-- regardless of them being a mod or not-- is vulnerable to off-board harrasment because they pissed someone off in an ILX beef.

Indeed - but people did try to warn LJ, and he did have the option of not posting with his real name (as he is now). Mods are less capable of that, in that people tend to get to know them; get to know their names, and they're a much bigger target than your average poster. In a sense, if all the mods just completely anonymised their names though, you'd just have an anonymous log.

fair enough.

also:

wtf steve i love ILM.

i am eagerly anticipating the results of the 5th fav VU poll.

oh and to get too proud of the cio, i'm not that worked up.

i mainly did it as a rounabout way of drawing more attention to this thread.

*dont* get too proud

mod naems should appear as riddles in admin log

fair enough gr8dy

my god that poll got 36 votes.

admin log should have avatars in place of display names.

I post non-anonymously partially because I enjoy the sporting side of off-board harassment.

Also, part of the reason that there's a heavy noise board presence here is due to my posting this thread on the cio thread out of frustration early on. Just FYI.

Sorry, that was a fit of pique on my part, up there. But you know, the N!B! is F!U!N! and the admin log was part of the fun for those who were a) modded, and b) interested. And Group A was pretty much everyone who bothered to put some time into reading posts and thinking past the gruffness or flippancy or wahtever and who showed a basic degree of intelligence and a tricksy sense of fun.

Ooh, missed this. Was the "shut up" at me? Cos seriously, count me as no1z3 fan lurkr, and whatever I say about admin log shouldn't be taken as a hidden attack on nose borad at all.

also, can you re-write IRE so you can post w/o logging in?

thanking u.

GRADY HOW U OWN LIKE U OWN WEN U OWN LIKE U OWN

BEBE!@

I should mention that ever since I became a 1p3 mod (lol) and been given "access" to mark threads there work unsafe, I've really come to appreciate the work done to create ILX2 and the ongoing work to develop it. And I think it's easy to take this work for granted, which is why some people are frustrated about having some "features" from old school ILX missing.

Just my two cents, kthxbye.

^^^fake^^^

also ralph.

hihi

ralph!

loooooool:

don't forget to ban me here too, faggots.

-- like murderinging (modestmickey), Wednesday, January 3, 2007 5:01 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah the vigilant locking of ModReq threads after they've been dealt with is a good thing in my book, provided they're not something open-ended. I'd prefer it if people at least posted 'sorted' or something and let the person say thanks before the threads were locked though.

It's kind of annoying to have to trawl through a load of 'Ban L0uis J4gger!' style threads to get to the actual requests, especially if you're pressed for time. No matter how amusing the threads in question may be.

Can we just not rename this board 'Admin Discussion Forum' or something?

good lord, this thread, didn't see it until now. the reason i'm banned from noize bored is... uh, whut? i made a harmless joke at jon's expense on some ile thread that probably 2 people saw? i'm not really sure. i don't know why chaki's banned either.

now i'm not going to be one of those types that gives up the cry that jon is some kind of horrible monster - that's 2004, or maybe earlier, i can't remember, and that argument was boring then. i've got no problem with him, but i don't really see why stet/keith/whomever/shadowy cabal decided to give jon - or anyone else really - admin powers on noize bored now. when it was everybody is a mod days, as stated upthread, it was really fun and actions were cancelled out by reactions and blah-de-blah and no harm no foul. given that the nature of ilx had to change with the new code, those days are gone, sad tears of nostalgia.

but now, like, now i can't post to a bored where i used to post regularly, where some of my friends post exclusively, because i made a harmless joke. it's not the end of the world, i suppose, but it is kinda lame.

pash made jon mod becaue jon set up the NB, and every other recent board was having it's creator reinstated as mod i think.

well that was a great idea.

maybe site-wide admins could vet and veto all userbans across boards, but no doubt this conflicts with some boards/mods/users philosophies.

I don't really think it's any of our business who gets banned from the Noise Board.

who do you mean by 'our'? you're not a site-wide admin Matt. if anyone is banned from any board they should probably be able to protest to those responsible for the collection of boards (ILX) as a whole. user bans by one mod have been lifted by another mod (site-wide admins in each case afaik) in the past.

Sorry - didn't read that properly. I don't even think it's necessarily a site admin concern either really. Either Noise Board mods are allowed to ban people for whatever frivolous or petty reason they want, or they're not. Having Jon ostensibly moderate it and then requiring a Site Admin to step in every time there's a disagreement (ie about once a week at least) isn't really fair on the Site Admin is it? If it's that big a problem, have more dedicated Noise mods for balance, dozens of them if need be.

right, so make everyone admins again.

wouldn't work currently: board admins can only ban,not revoke

ah, so what can admins do now? edit posts, ban? can they still delete posts?

spelling is a big concern on the noize bored, of course.

board admins can:
(un)delete threads
(un)delete posts
mark threads NSFW
post as anonymous admin
view user info (IP address, other people using that IP)
and ban users from board

Having Jon ostensibly moderate it and then requiring a Site Admin to step in every time there's a disagreement (ie about once a week at least) isn't really fair on the Site Admin is it?

well it's not fair on the banned user either is it. Site Admins do actually have a responsibility in this respect I thought, surely it goes with the turf. i suppose you could make allowances based on individual board culture/philosophy as defined by their creators but having people start threads on other boards (other than MRB) to complain/question the decision would still be tiresome.

i got some shit from a couple of people for banning users in the past which left bad aftertaste so excuse my pursuit of the issue on that basis at least (esp. relative noobs).

all of these quibbles just highlight the increasing compromise both NB and rest of ILX have to deal with - one board requiring all this extra work, discussion etc. while all the others seem to get on fine without the same problems and demands. maybe it's all worth it tho.

It would be good if someone would take on programming a noise board, as it does strike me to be almost completely different to the rest of ILX, but no-one's volunteered as of yet. There would no doubt be a whole load of questions if they were to, though, if it were to coexist with the rest of ILX.

As for board admins revoking bans, it's just another thing on the long list of things to do. Hstencil, I sympathise with your position and I don't think it's fair, but I've kind of nothing to do with the noise board, and me interfering's probably not a good idea and wouldn't likely go down well. Pash would be your best bet.

No, no worries, stet; the "shut up" was to Steve, and I'm about to repeat it.

You seem to misunderstand the nb pretty thoroughly so I'm not going to get too worked up about that, but yeah, Matt & Keef & stet have it right -- banning & hijinx there are not really site-admin business unless something were to get really out of hand. It's too bad we can't have more admins because that's what helps it be self-policing, but at the very least the rest of us can zing, shun, or throw peanuts shells at Jon until he relents.

jon will code nose hes l33t lol

If he ever comes back from vision qwest.

Wot the f*k is dat man?!

lol spearit animals

What, going out and killing animals with a bow and arrow? Like Ted Nugent?

Although that is quite an image (in ref to jon), no.

http://www.ingrid-koivukangas.com/images/koivukangas_spirit_crow-1.jpg

u guys jon's spirit animal is... ?

http://www.purplemoon.com/Stickers/mermaid-gold.jpg

http://www.linsdomain.com/totems/pictures/ant.jpg

Ants are amazing.

jon's spirit animal, obv.:

http://www.myspaceus.net/graphics/glitter/12/tinkerbell-standing.jpg

Laurel u don't have to say 'shut up', just present your counter-argument. or do u really not think any of my points are valid in the wider ILX-as-whole context?

You seem to misunderstand the nb pretty thoroughly

what am i not understanding? that everything that ever happens on it is just a bit of fun and shouldn't be worried about? OK but u still have hstencil starting 'why was i banned' thread on ILE and other infiltration of NB biz onto other boards = annoying.

banning & hijinx there are not really site-admin business unless something were to get really out of hand.

who decides when it's out of hand?

It's too bad we can't have more admins because that's what helps it be self-policing

agree with this but why can't there be more admins - because nobody knows who should/wants to be an NB mod at this point?

I was going to say "the brocaine fairy" but you have surpassed my expectations, son. XP

Jon's spirit animal: http://www.wildlife-pictures-online.com/image-files/dung-beetle_8470_blog.jpg

http://www.siliconera.com/news/0701/katasushi.jpg

lil' sushi guy

Steve, remember the Noise Board was explicitly set up as a place where people could dick around and generally trash if they wanted to, in order to keep all that stuff off ILE as much as possible. And it worked up to a point. So to apply the same rules as we would across other boards seems absurd.

I know but that's pretty absurd to me, as is the current situation. We can agree to disagree tho fortunately. Whatever people think, banned people and admins can speak for themselves obv. but this shit was bugging me.

I guess you just don't like fun, do you?

believe dat if that helps u dude.

I have nothing to add except blueski doesn't hate fun, he is doing a good job at devil's advocate and I believe that transparency shouldn't be at the cost of people's privacy outside of ILX. This is not a personal project or any one person's board, I don't see why they should be in a position where they can be hounded for helping out the users of this board.

LOL @ Tinkerbell. (xposts)

I'm sorry I've been offline & haven't had anything to say w/r/t this so far. Today I've sold 3500 uk pounds worth of specialist bicycles to people all on my own, and shit is time-consuming. In the first 3 months of this trading year I've taken more money than I took in the whole of TY06/07. That's awesome, but it has eaten considerably into my internet time this year.

A couple of items & apologies for rushed nature of this:

I asked Keith to bulk lock all of the dead threads on the mod request forum as it was getting tiresome checking threads that had popped up only to see some lame rip on l0u1s j4gger or wtfe. I'm sorry, I should have posted up something to this effect after Keith did it.

w/r/t noise board, after Keith updated the code so that banning a user from a board didn't ban a user from the entire site, I added a moderator to each of the boards that seemed active where I could remember who was the board owner from the old server/code. I added Jon to the noise board because basically as far as I remember it's Jon's board, IE he started it off. I'm sure I remember him disempowering all the other mods at least once at some point in the past? I could have modded the noise board myself - I post/read there regularly, and like the people who post there, BUT, I don't feel at all comfortable stepping in on disputes & so on there because a big part of the NB is that there's a whole network of IRL social relationships going on that I'm not part of.

At the moment, adding a bunch of extra noise board mods wouldn't achieve anything w/r/t unbanning, because board-level moderators can only ban, not unban at present. Two solutions to this that I though of are:

1/ add a bunch of noise board regulars as admins, as it was before. I don't want to get into sorting out who's banned who, and why, so if I do this, I'm going to insist on blanket unbanning everybody from the noise board once a day w/no exceptions.

2/add another US-based site mod - someone who is a long term general ilxor who people trust & who posts on the NB. Mr Millar and/or Mr Justen are the people who immediately come to mind to me. Given the amount of traffic that comes in from the States, another US-based site mod would be a good and useful thing anyway, I think.

Any thoughts/suggestions etc gratefully received.

OK, back to work :-/

im currently banned, but i think thats fair enough, considering what happened

the idea of a cron job running every night just to unban all the noise bored ban-ees is totally awesome

cheers pash, agree with all u say, and kudos on the biz.

I feel like I should be posting ;_; but I only lurk on the noize board (also I really can't be a mod while at work anymore).

Ha, Dan I thought of you, but remember how steamed up you used to get when you were site mod. (If you do want to do it, great, seriously.)

Indeed! Come and join us getting steamed up.

steamed up anonymously

I'd be willing to do this, but I think that

A) The nightly unbanning thing might make a lot of sense
B) Consulting Jon on his thoughts re:noise would be a good idea
C) There might be a few ILXORS that would be uncomfortable w/"that crazy HSTNGS THRD/drunk dude that likes to post images and yell a lot" being a site-wide mod.

I'll be back here later, because I have to go buy a suit.

B) Consulting Jon on his thoughts re:noise would be a good idea

Yeah, I'm not going to do anything w/r/t noise board mods until I hear what Jon has to say about it, should have mentioned that also, sorry.

And you don't need a suit to be a mod.

Casual dress will be just fine.

I'm buying a Vespa

nightly unbanning for noise would only be until board mods can un-ban, right?

john - 2 buttons, skinny fyi

I already gave up being a mod for...what's that thing called? not Lent...oh yeah, "adulthood".

Ha, Dan I thought of you, but remember how steamed up you used to get when you were site mod. (If you do want to do it, great, seriously.)

I want to, but history and my previous parenthetical aside point towards me not being able to.

hey how do i unban someone? just getting used to my new mod powers over here. also the temporary ban check box - how long does that last?

so can u unban que thx

I'll unban him. Temporary bans last three days, IIRC.

thx dude

it ight be cool if mods had unban powrs maybe at least for those they banned

It's just another of those things to be done...

Keith, thanks for taking the time to respond to the stuff in this thread. I think this dialogue has assuaged some of the anxiety that was fueling the ill-will towards how features for the board were being implemented.

Is this a bad time/place to ask about individual board FAQs?

No, it's a good time. I asked the Schef ages ago about this, and then forgot. From what I can see, there aren't many boards that used this, beyond noise, ILNFL and the big two. Is there a huge demand for it? I can hive the old ones out into static pages -- would that be enough?

I'm planning to tidy the current FAQs up anyway, probably tonight.

inflfaq def must return

Just out of interest, at what point did the unban function stop working? It seemed to work absolutely fine that time when I accidentally banned half the board at once. This is a nu-nu-nu-code thing, I assume?

unban still works, it's just not available to board-level admins since the change to board-level banning. I think.

I rewrote the whole banning thing a few months ago and it didn't get done. Basically, because I forgot.

Keith, thanks for taking the time to respond to the stuff in this thread. I think this dialogue has assuaged some of the anxiety that was fueling the ill-will towards how features for the board were being implemented.

Dan, it's no problem. I have no issue discussing stuff with people when they're willing to be civil about it. I do think there's sometimes an issue with the fact that a lot of this stuff has been discussed lots, but it gets discussed all over the place, so only a few people see each installment of it. Kind of tricky to do anything much about it, I think.

would it be possible to implement the functionality of koogs' greasemonkey script for sitewide answers in a future user profile option? Because it is basically the best thing ever to be able to see everything except ILM all at once.

Yes, should be possible, but I think this thread contains about a year's worth of work, so far!

i made a post on nick's mortgages thread and it disappeared. i'm not going to start a modreq thread on it, but who's to say it wasn't deleted?

easier to be able to refer to an admin log.

i made a post on nick's mortgages thread and it disappeared. i'm not going to start a modreq thread on it, but who's to say it wasn't deleted?
I (or any other mod) am. There's no deleted posts in that thread.

lol why would a quitney post about the controversial and sensitive subject of mortgages be deleted?

No, it's a good time. I asked the Schef ages ago about this, and then forgot. From what I can see, there aren't many boards that used this, beyond noise, ILNFL and the big two. Is there a huge demand for it?

not massive, but it'd be nice. i wrote an IRE faq a long time ago and now with IREFAQ I'm curious to see it again

FWIW I just ate a handfull of Doritos.

hmm jergins, the IRE faq only says

"If yr annoying or rude, you run the risk of having yr posts deleted or altered. Sorry. Try and behave."

weird. ah! i bet it was the sandbox IRE faq. maybe. or i wrote it in a dream.

baned agane

Have done a new faq and a mod list. Haven't had time to put up the old board faqs, but have extracted them from the Mary Celeste-like bilge of old-ilx. Will sort them out 2mor

You listed "1 pwn 3v3ryth1ng" twice on the moderator list. Sorry, just that copy-editor instinct kicking in.

i deleted quitneys mortgage post by mistake. i hold hands up, human error etc

keep reaching for that spring onion

blueski, please visit us in nyc so i can not buy you a beer sometime.

he can pop round to holloway if he wants someone to not buy him a beer

lol why would a quitney post about the controversial and sensitive subject of mortgages be deleted?

-- blueski, Tuesday, June 12, 2007 11:57 PM (22 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I DON'T KNOW, WHY DID STALIN SEND PEOPLE TO THE GULAG?

it's pretty much the same thing.

Hey, sorry to be a pain in the ass, but if someone could revert my admin for IMM to my "John Justen" account from the "IMMmod" one that is currently attatched to it, that would be great.

I can live with the sort of awkward mod view instead of logging in and out of usernames, because I'm stupid and easily confused.

Also, I don't think we need a FAQ there, unless "Q: Can I play a bass through a guitar amp A: Yes, but you probably don't want to." becomes a necessary addition.

Heh, the current entry is "NO". I'll add you now.

Yeah, I was a harsher taskmaster at that point.

i think of the lack of admin log as not really stalinist, quitney, dont you think thats a bit hyperbolic?

if you'd compared more to Salazar, then i'd have agreed with you

that dude from '24'?

i dont know what that is

blueski, please visit us in nyc so i can not buy you a beer sometime.

-- sanskrit, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 19:07 (14 hours ago)

probably best that i buy the beer anyway, exchange rate lolz.

i miss a lot of the old ILX nyc ppl tho - good times.

exchange rate = too true

also:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/45/136126297_73f6eacf33.jpg

So, this just isn't going to happen, right?

A definite maybe.

the discussion seems to have resulted in this and this without ever really coming to a solid answer on admin log. but if keith's serious about those two, i'm sure admin log is possible.

jj: did they make you site admin?

No. I blame my recent poll abuse for my lack of advancement.

TOO SASSY FOR ADMIN.

How about this, then?

c===8

So much sand and so many centipedes in admin vaginas recently.

I apparently got banned from the moderator request board for insinuating that they were all a bunch of dicks! The nerve!

I haven't seen a single incident recently to imply that the moderators are all comedically inept.

hi this might still be a good idea.

just saying.

...

dude u just askin for a sniper bullet to the back of the head

STOP ROCKIN THE BOAT

not an admin log but in the admin menu on the sandbox there's now a way to review and revoke bans.

GOOD

let's get that here plz

http://www.kineticbaltimore.com/KSR/2003/MedRes/ImpossibleDream_Gutter2.jpg

impossible pream

what does my fream mean?

Dear Keith and Stet-

I honestly appreciate all the hard work but anonymous modding fucking sucks.

keith and stet: "shrug"

*shrug*

*nods*

also, when you get banned, no one - not even admins - can see who it was who enacted the ban.

-- gr8080, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 10:36 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

bump

you want banned?

srsly what

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/2013000.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF1934A2752006EF5F0ED5A6A0341151D5FAA5A5397277B4DC33E

srsly wtf Tombot.

lol @ sub-andrew at best!

stet is kind of a dick

;_;

can i get a penis crying ascii in here or do i need to make it myself?

(stet's not a dick)

i meant in this thread

heavy is the head that wears the crown

We have the chance to turn the pages over
We can write what we want to write
We gotta make ends meet, before we get much older
We're all someone's daughter
We're all someone's son
How long can we look at each other
Down the barrel of a gun?

You're the voice, try and understand it
Make a noise and make it clear
Oh-wo-wo-wo, oh-wo-wo-wo
We're not gonna sit in silence
We're not gonna live with fear
Oh-wo-wo-wo, oh-wo-wo-wo

This time, we know we all can stand together
With the power to be powerful
Believing we can make it better
We're all someone's daughter
We're all someone's son
How long can we look at each other
Down the barrel of a gun?

You're the voice, try and understand it
Make a noise and make it clear
Oh-wo-wo-wo, oh-wo-wo-wo
We're not gonna sit in silence
We're not gonna live with fear
Oh-wo-wo-wo, oh-wo-wo-wo

ooooh We're all someone's daughter
We're all someone's son
How long can we look at each other
Down the barrel of a gun?

You're the voice, try and understand it
Make a noise and make it clear
Oh-wo-wo-wo, oh-wo-wo-wo
We're not gonna sit in silence
We're not gonna live with fear
Oh-wo-wo-wo, oh-wo-wo-wo (X3)

We're not gonna sit in silence
We're not gonna live with fear

When I saw song lyrics quoted I thought Passantino revive.

farnsey lyrics no less. how transcontinental

sigh

OK, I know the ITR is a joke and all, but it would be great to know who unbanned bo jackson overdrive so i could let them know that i wasn't kidding about the permaban. in fairness, it's a stupid fuckoff board, so I understand, but given the limitations of subboard mod powers, I'd prefer to just have my mod status revoked if this is not possible to save irritation.

THX, not trying to be a dick, srsly.

NVRMND, Bo + I + rocking out with our collective cocks out might be amusing.

\m/

classici eminem thread revive today from BJO

also i almost posted 'ban fake bo jackson overdrive' on contrarian couplets thread after he posted some (more) suicidal shit but i thought better of it

\m/

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, January 12, 2008 4:44 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^this shit just reminds me of a fucked up camel toe

is it supposed to be a smile?

maybe if you're a horse

http://www.obamaforuspresident.com/ads%20jpg/yeswecan2.jpg

^^this shit just reminds me of a fucked up camel toe

-- J0rdan S., Saturday, January 12, 2008 10:59 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

is it supposed to be a smile?

-- J0rdan S., Saturday, January 12, 2008 10:59 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

maybe if you're a horse

-- J0rdan S., Saturday, January 12, 2008 10:59 AM

what the shit

Dear Keith and Stet-

I honestly appreciate all the hard work but anonymous modding fucking sucks.

-- gr8080, Friday, 19 October 2007 04:18 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

fucksake

Why should users see this? "what" maybe, but why "whom"? I'm interested because I can't think of another forum with admin logs open to users.

If something's disappeared, the why is "because a mod deleted it" and the who is "a mod". Or is this a trust thing?

-- stet, Thursday, June 7, 2007 7:26 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Link

hey i just thought of an example for "why"!!

lets imagine a hypothetical board on ILX that no one has been using for a long time. now, lets further imagine that a small group of people, none of whom have mod powers and none of whom have used the board in the past, begin using that board as a place to keep threads and posts that are unwelcome on other parts of ILX.

ok, now imagine that threads on that board begin to get locked seemingly randomly and arbitrarily. posts started on that board asking why threads were locked are met with deletion. this is odd behavior, because some of the locked threads are pretty innocuous and dont call anyone out by name.

now, given that the mod on this hypothetical board--a mod who hasnt used the board in months and maybe years--is refusing to post answers to what would seem to be fairly legitimate questions posed by posters who are actually using the board, wouldn't it make sense for there to be an admin log?

"who will do killy" is fairly legitimate? I think that board's mod might be trying to say that those threads and posts are unwelcome there too, even if it's not used for anything else at present.

Oh that was gershy, sorry.

I don't think anyone's gonna do gershy.

Perhaps if we had an admin log we could actually see what they were saying instead of trying to divine what they might be "trying to say"?

(for the record I think the "no admin log" thing is really bogus)

you can't force people to type deletion reasons, hoos. You just get (...) or (because).

you could make it a condition of being a mod.

My thread was a list of "best trolls of 2007" (and a subsequent thread called "yo" that asked why it was locked, which got deleted). I get that no one likes the meta stuff but no one except fucking max r and bo jackson overdrive was "called out." I'm not usually butthurt about shit like this, and I get why something like "Who Will Do Killy" was deleted but its fucking snake-y to delete and lock mostly innocuous threads without saying why.

it was a condition of being a mod in the old days, I remember Andrew specifically satating it when he added the admin log. Nevertheless, a whole load of admin actions were taken with the stated reason (....) or in one person's case on ILM, (get a sock) (bitch, don't test) (fuck off cunt) and so on.

Max, just repost the damn thing on IRE.

lol

Pash it's about the principle of the thing! I don't actually care who the best troll of 2007 was.

Besides everyone knows it was max r

john justen r still makes me lol

what the hell is Ethan doing on Noize?

Word is guys that the mods of a certain ILX FORUM may be throwing their doors open to meta joys.

TEEEEEAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM

where did you even get 'TEEEEEAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM' from anyway? first thing that comes to mind is Lord Percy in that Blackadder II ep where Edmund becomes Lord Chief Executioner

Rev he is putting CAPS in they ASSES, what?

http://cap-n-yo-ass.com/images/logos/bc-cnya.jpg

where did you even get 'TEEEEEAAAAAAAMMMMMMMM' from anyway? first thing that comes to mind is Lord Percy in that Blackadder II ep where Edmund becomes Lord Chief Executioner

-- blueski, Tuesday, 18 March 2008 19:49 (24 minutes ago) Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbAVKINRsgg

And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJUDoVsyjAU&feature=related

I have a couple of questions:

1) Who deleted Tom's birthday thread on ITR?
2) Why was the thread deleted?

1)http://www.cluedofan.com/fan_art/gstings/moutarde.jpg
2)http://www.cluedofan.com/fan_art/ian_janosko/WeaponCardCandlestick.jpg

who banned louis?

-- Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Tuesday, August 19, 2008 6:26 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
Delete Undelete Ban User User Info

check the admin log.

ba-ZING!

-- chicago kevin, Tuesday, August 19, 2008 6:27 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
Delete Undelete Ban User User Info