Discussion on reducing the trust level requirements of the Price & Trading topic

Hey @jm5 - sorry, just to clarify: I totally agree that community growth is a significant part of marketing :slight_smile: My point here was more that I’ve not been involved in this topic discussion historically before the @ mention so I didn’t want to be seen as speaking for MaidSafe at this stage - only starting to look at this area now but I wanted to reply. Like everyone, my focus is on helping the community continue to grow and obviously one of the key reasons for the progress made to date is that everything’s been built on the time put in and the respect afforded by everyone who’s participated so far.

You never should have nominated me. I never should have nominated other people. A front page poll should have been put to the community. As it should be now.

I do believe you are the only one that has ever been nominated by the community. Since then, all new moderators are nominated and approved within the moderator circle.

I had to do a Skype interview with @frabrunelle.

My mod appointment was questioned by other moderators because it was only approved by you and @frabrunelle.

You are the founding father, and you didn’t lay the correct groundwork. It is then questionable when you say

This isn’t true. @David (not Irvine) was the founding father (before me), and this is your opinion of ‘correct’, not a fact.

I’m also pretty sure I am not the only mod nominated by the community but we can disagree on that.

I don’t know what you mean by your appointment being questioned. What I was saying is that I don’t recall any moderator being questioned as to their suitability at the time that person was appointed. Obviously some have questioned the process, and I’m fine with that.

So I’ve no recollection of your appointment being questioned. I was asked if I had any ideas, I suggested you and said why. I don’t recall who we had then, but Francis was admin, represented Maidsafe, and was given that responsibility by Maidsafe. It was his decision AFAIK, and the process was nothing to do with me beyond responding when he asked if I had any suggestions. Over time the whole process evolved but I have never had the authority to approve or veto an appointment, and I stepped down after about a year.

Since replying above I’ve remembered that I made another nomination so, probably three suggestions in total - although this person declined. But like you he’s also on the list of people Jabba gave as so unhappy with the forum moderation that they left.

So of the three people I can recall nominating, two had strong and different views about moderation than I did and are among the six people Jabba mentioned as having been driven away by me and the clique I’m supposed to have been orchestrating.

The idea that I was setting up some kind of authoritarian clique is a fantasy.

I have advocated my views on moderation, but the fact those views largely coincide with the policy of the forum is not just down to me and my renowned charisma :blush:, or some superhuman ability to impose my will on this community. :wink:

It has though made me an easy target for some people’s disaffection. I probably also get more praise than is due from those who like things the way they are, so I’m not complaining, but I want to correct misleading and inaccurate portrayals of my authority and influence.

While I was a mod we regularly consulted the community and had lengthy discussions about moderation - all those discussions are there for anyone to go back and read. If the community had wanted big change, I would have accepted it. If there was agreement reached on something concrete I would have advocated for it, or if I didn’t think it feasible would have stepped aside for others to implement. But we never got to that stage as I’ve pointed out many times.

Those who want change must get the community, not the mods, to agree to something concrete, and the excuses given for not having done so are not valid (as I’ve explained above).

Instead they tell the mods how bad they are, without agreement on exactly what is to be done. Different suggestions come from here and there, but not something concrete that has been agreed by the community. This effectively ignores the community while pretending to advocate on its behalf, and the excuse for this is the system and the mods not allowing them to be heard. Catch 22 for moderators.

If you want a substantial change, it is up to you to do the hard work of writing a serious proposal with enough detail for the community to understand and debate, and the mods will I believe be happy to put that topic on the front page as it deserves. Once it has been debated, revise if necessary and put it to a vote. I’ve said this several times in the past, but nobody has done this.

You could start by setting out a formalised version of the process I’ve just described. I think it would pass easily, and then use that process to tackle moderation and anything else you want.

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My dear, if one insists that after 12 years it isn’t a good time, might I suggest there may well never be?

I’m waiting for someone else to complain that they didn’t see this conversation (because it was moved) here…away from people who actually care about the singular topic of price.

What is the average age of the users here? One would think it were 12 to the degree that it seems people must bow and make obeisance before the school teacher. Closed systems die. That is a fact of life. If an idea cannot survive in the wild, it is unfit. Moreover, if you release an animal that was raised in the safety of captivity to the wild, it will die. We know this for a fact. It is through the process of striving and fighting that we learn to adapt, survive and thrive.

I have to admit, I’ve been a fairly active member of the forum for 1.5 years but I think this is the first time I have ever visited Meta. Didn’t even know what it was for. The name, itself, is a turnoff for me. Don’t know what significance this is, I just thought I would throw it out there. I’m wondering how representative I am of the sub-2 year group in relation to these feelings.

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My comments here Comments on issues brought up in the Trust Level Price/Trading topic here on meta

Precisely.

Precisely x2.

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Wow, so much to read. I think by limiting the trust level on price topic will force new members to read around (getting to know about the project) before they mature into providing quality comments. I’m quite sure most common questions to ask already been answered in other threads. Consider Price topic as college level, first you’ve gotta finish high school first.

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@Sotros25 I think you’re taking the wrong landmark. You’re looking at time while I think you should pay attention to the status of the project. Everything has to be developed and compared to it, not simply time.
As I wrote previously, Maid is a revolutionary project that needs much more time than other project.
I think you can’t rush just cause 10 years have passed; You need to respect the development’s stage of the project. All in good time :wink:

On the other hand, I think @VaCrunch is right about the forum. Of course, lots of things could be managed better and there’s always the path to improve here too. I never understood too what is meta and what its role is

What in heaven are you talking about? Why would anyone need to do hard work? Discourse has tools readily available to get these sort of things done. In fact, @Josh created a poll, it is still up there above.

@Josh made a poll within a thread.
59 users voted on said poll in 1.5 days.

Said poll was shoved out of view into Meta
Since being moved (1.2 days ago) the poll has received 3 additional votes.

This system obviously doesn’t work. And as the poll has been declared biased by a mods opinion I expect no change.

And as @Team_2E16 has pointed out

There are many examples of this occurring over time. Mods developing a standard of proposals being approved by them before discussion. The mods are not the gateway to the community and they shouldn’t be.

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There is no way to please everyone Jabba. So if we follow the exact ideas of you and several others to put “forum talk” on the frontpage, a bunch of other people will disagree. That way we always see an active small group of people not liking what we do.

We have 6800 members now and a ban list that is quite small. All these people got more than one second chance to stop doing what got them on the radar of moderation. From physical threats to scamming our community with several accounts claiming they had “lost their private key please send me some MAID”.

I know you and some others don’t like it. I know several members left this forum because of us moving things to Meta and being too strict.

I honestly wonder how we are too strict?? Far over 99% of all members never got on our radar for any misdoing. Far over 99% never had any of their posts flagged. And we have maybe a dozen people banned (apart from the real weight loss spam accounts) on 6800 members.

Price and Trading
There wasn’t a ban on that topic. But every time MAID made a move new members jumped on this forum to yell and scream and make a load of personal attacks on the devs. I guess 8 out of 10 flags were from that topic because even the common visitors here got sick of it. We restricted the topic to TL2 and we saw an 80% dump in flags. It was a great decision.

We have a topic in #staff now where we’re discussing this topic due to the discussion here in Meta.

EDIT: Just want to add that I also see discussion on Bitcointalk forum for several tokens. It’s quite a mess, not well moderated including physical threats to people. yelling and screaming with swears all over the place.

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I’m referring to the work involved in putting together a concrete proposal. In this case Savage didn’t have to do any work, his proposal was very simple. But the issue I’m referring to is how you make such a process formalised.

We don’t have a formal process - and this is a recurring problem. Sometimes somebody puts up a poll and it gets some votes, so those in favour want it to be acted upon. That’s all logical in theory, but no democracy works without having a formal structure to ensure those votes are informed and that everyone gets the opportunity to understand, question and ultimately vote. So the mods are in a difficult position, either act on every poll or face accusations when they judge the poll has not met some unspecified standard.

I don’t think that’s a big deal wrt Savage’s proposal in the OP - I’ve said, I didn’t even vote, so I really don’t care whether it happens or not. Jabba and I were discussing the wider issue of how this forum is managed and the way change can happen in ways that reflect what the community wants.

That’s where the hard work I’m referring to lies. In coming up with a concrete proposal for:

  1. how a change process can be managed (fairly easy as I suggested in my previous post), but still not yet formalised, and

  2. how the forum itself should be managed: moderator selection, moderator powers and accountability mechanisms etc. I think the reason nobody has created a concrete proposal for that is that it is hard work - but if you or anyone who wants to change how that is done I’ll be happy to be proven wrong. Get to it! Let’s resolve this and we can all get off this frustrating hamster wheel without feeling the need to leave.

It’s the fact that we don’t have such processes that leads to these discussions every so often, so I think it would be good to have them if they can be made workable. The reason I never came up with such a program (voting on mods for example) was that I couldn’t think of a way to make that workable. It sounds simple, but making it robust from attack is very hard IMO. And nobody has yet come up with a concrete proposal and asked for it to be put to the community - the opportunity is there and always had been.

This doesn’t need to be a long drawn out discussion.

Yes, and a poll was made and thus far users wish to reduce the restrictions to TL1. Thus, what exactly is it that the moderators are discussing?

Yes, and they have 1,621,348 users. Which is what the point of the poll was. Are current restrictions preventing people from joining this community? But, it seems you don’t want that kind of growth because you have a fear of

off-topic sidenote: I am also wondering why if a community member wants to discuss the forum, it must be hidden away in Meta but if a mod wants to give an update it gets thrown on the front page under Community. Why the double-standard?

Even putting together a very simple proposal has a hard time with mods as this thread shows.

The mods seem to want to know how everything is going to go.

Just take it day by day, allow users to create polls, follow through with those polls, adjust, suggest ideas, keep everything out in the open, be accessible. Its called learning and growing together, it creates strength within the community, people protect each other, circle of trusts are formed. We can’t have everything laid out at once. (this to me is obvious stuff and feel silly for pointing it out but it seems time and time again you guys just don’t get it)

@Team_2E16 gave some good proposals here

If the community votes on a particular subject, lets use this thread as an example, to reduce restrictions on entering trading topic, and shit goes haywire, another poll just gets made to revert it back, what is the problem? No one can accuse the mods, they just followed the people, if the unspecified standard wasn’t in the poll that is not the mods fault and nor can they be accused of it.

But either way, this has gone on for too long. Keep discussing whatever you are discussing behind closed doors mods. I have been through this type of conversation before with you Mark and it gets very circular.

I will now patiently wait for a statement from the Maidsafe marketing team as to how they plan on solving this problem of mods stifling community growth. Perhaps they don’t see the necessity right now which imo is a mistake.

I realise what you are saying here, but my personal opinion is that is any part of maidsafe had influence here beyond respect and acceptance as a normal community member then we are in trouble as a community. MaidSafe should be seen for what they are, dedicated to getting Secure Access For All and the community run efforts must be left alone as much as possible. In today’s world we need to have an all out anything goes place and a moderated easy to read and get info without digging too much place.

I feel we can have both, so here where there is light moderation we have a place more like an echo chamber, granted, but we can get through a lot of info quickly. Then we have rediit/twitter and places like that for more open discussions, including trolls. So possibly it is good to have different channels that provide different approaches, so not all moderated and not all open. Then we stand a chance of pleasing more people.

The openness of this channel (discourse) should be quite rightly challenged and challenged often, that keeps it healthy. The mods job is pretty thankless and they really do take flak and often to go along with no reward and less free time that most. If we all realise the mods know they are between the rock and hard place then we will all get on better.

tl;dr Many channels offer many different approaches, lets use them all for our own comfort, wild west or eat coast regulations or anywhere in between. Difference is good, we should all love the fact the differences exist and we should not try and make everything the same in any way. As a small community we maybe don’t cover as much ground, but we are growing and I think strongly, we don’t seem to be caught in a hype cycle, but instead seem determined in our quest. That suits me, I always wish we were launched yesterday, but am never scared of the road in front either, I just know this is a road we have no choice but to travel. The world needs this and we need to be part of providing it, every last one of us.

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The discussion in this topic has been very helpful, even if there were some emotional posts.

Taking into account a number of aspects, like the poll results and the fact that gaining level 1 membership was increased (for access to invites for testnets) since the restrictions were placed on the P&T topic, the P&T topic will be changed to only requiring level 1 member status.

Also I proposed that a second P&T topic for other coins incl BTC be created on a trial basis. Other Coins - Price & Trading topic

The changes will be monitored and if the trolls and spamming starts up again then the decision will be reviewed.

The community has spoken and we’ve tried to provide a compromise between those who wish it to remain restricted to level 2 and those who wish for no restrictions. And considering many wanted level 1 restrictions, I personally feel that this should be satisfactory going forward.

NOTE: @frabrunelle will do the change in due course.

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Seems sensible to me, thanks @moderators for all the work you put in, and for keeping a steady hand when the topics get choppy.

And @jm5, I invite you to write your suggestion up as a topic that can be put to the community and a vote.

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This directly from Proboards.

“Before you open the doors to invite guests and prospective members to explore your new forum, the rules of engagement should be somewhat established. We say somewhat because they’ll probably change over time as others contribute to the management and growth of your community.”

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@dirvine I appreciate you replying and take everything into account you have said. I understand it may be a lot to ask of you to read through this. I feel you are missing this point

That is exactly part of the point. There is no difference on this forum, it is all swept under the rug.

A must read but to highlight my personal feelings

So it seems that us that see the absurdity are banished to

:wink:

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seemed to me @Team_2E16 did a pretty good job already so i just copied their proposals and put them here in Meta where nobody goes and if the mods approve they can move it to the front page.