More moderation needed

Just remember..... sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never hurt you.

lol that reminds me of an episode of the young ones where rick said that to vyvian , and vivian agreed and hit rick with a plank 

i will see if i can find the clip ,,,,,,cool found it 

Wow, I've got an inbox message:

Dear Spielkalb

We've taken action on one of the Abuse reports that you submitted. (To respect the privacy of our members, we don't specify usernames. Our response may have included warning the member, restricting their activity, or even closing the account.)

You can review our Community Policies here https://www.chess.com/legal/community.

Thank you for helping Chess.com stay fun and friendly!

Thank you very much,
Chess.com Support
support@chess.com

The last report about an abuse of the forums was three days ago. Meanwhile, one of the forum moderators dealt with the issue.  It's good to know they take actions, but three days is quite a long response time. 

I'd prefer better cheat detection to be honest. Come on guys , nobody plays a 50 move rapidplay game with 99.4% accuracy.

Anyway ....back to the moderation complaint.

I do know that the current head of the moderator group has worked on processes to improve things, and it's my understanding that there's work being done to make the processes better and add additional tools. For example, the site has added upvote/downvote on posts, which is currently in beta. My understanding is that process will eventually tie in to a way for support, and maybe moderators, to pinpoint problem posts.

Hmm yes, I've seen this upvote/downvote stuff in beta. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of it because it only doubles a function we already have with the React smiley. If that will "eventually tie in to a way for support", okay.  In my opinion this upvote/downvote thing on its own is a waste of space and developing time because I can't see any benefits or positive impact on the community.  

A simple "report" button would be much more effective regarding the issue the OP raised, I suppose. 

Upvote/downvote ties into the filtering option, so members could choose to hide downvoted content that hits some threshold, which reactions don't do. When I initially tested, a negative balance was enough to hide the post from the relevance sort. I assume that will be tweaked some 

There theoretically will be some threshold where an automatic process will be started so staff can look at those posts that garner a lot of downvotes more critically, to see if there's something wrong.

Okay, that's an interesting approach, thanks for your explanations! From this respective it might be a good tool in order of community management. Of course, this only makes sense if some staff members would engage into the community more often than we experience now.  

The filter option is another thing. I'm not sure about what to make of it, so I give it the benefit of a doubt.

It's funny, about a year ago I actually thought the moderation was too harsh. Now people are complaining about the opposite!

I was only suggesting it was too slow. Not whether it was too harsh or not. I have no opinion on that matter. 

Good to see some suggestions getting thrown around. I like the report function and upvoting and downvoting can definitely work too. I do have to say though that I find it a rather weak argument that more moderators would not be very cost efficient or that a different ticketing system would be too expensive. Chess.com is a company that IS making money with all the membership plans out there. And probably with their online shows and merchandise as well. There are so many forums out there that do not have a commercial plan to make a profit and they do manage to have enough mods around to keep things civil. Chess.com has the same responsibility and more means to take that responsibility too. This is of course not to say that I expect more of volunteers, I expect more of the company that runs this site.

Upvote/downvote is useless for moderation as it conveys opinion on content. Posts "Nepo plays badly", or "The Catalan is a poor opening", or "You should not study openings below grandmaster level" may harvest downvotes, but need no moderation.

A button 'report this post' would be useful to signal concern to moderators.
Such a button could also speed up response: moderators should look first at a post with 10 reports and last at a post with 1 report.

If a downvote threshold is met, then based on my understanding of how the feature would work, is that it would be flagged in a queue to be looked at. The person looking at it can quickly determine if it's just people hating in a post or if there's an actual issue to be moderated.

So in practice, it works like a report button. Not saying things won't change, just that appears to be the route being taken.

#33
Example: "The French is a bad defence" 7 downvotes.
"You are a moron and an a$$hole for saying so" 5 upvotes.

Wow you are a volunteer! Thanks for all the work you do man, they should definitely pay you!

Hi all, 

I hope you are keeping well. 

Please rest assured that your concerns and feedback is noted. Martin has made most of the replies already that I would have wanted to point out also. 

I can't go into specifics but please be assured that we are currently working at adapting and improving in this area both in terms of internal workflow and by product design. 

We really do value your feedback and while I want to be able to reassure you there are plans in place  I would also like to encourage your continued feedback going forward.

Thanks

Regards

KB

My main issue with posts that are so over the top horrible is that they will get locked, but not removed.  I have to open a ticket and ask why is this still visible??? 

It does get deleted, but with the usual excuse of "They must have missed it".

Hello! How are you?

my experience of moderatorsat cc in forum is good generally , kobra bytes , ive treat fairly and even on the odd occasion when its been unfair , ive seen how a decision can and has been reversed , 

you lot do a good job in my eyes , i as a thanks will try to keep your workload down 

Thanks everyone, Martin has answered well but we try our best and always try going through as many threads as we can.

Keep up the ideas and keep the forums clean and tidy. 👍

A dozen or so years ago when the idea of up-down votes was first floated, it was a bad idea. Today it's even a worse idea.   It's just an easy implementation.