I'm curious how quickly threads get locked down once a moderator steps in. For a thread I started, the mod issued the first warning at 8:35am and the thread got locked at 1:10pm--a little more than four hours. I can't blame the mod because there were a lot of misbehaving folks that I'd rather not have had in the thread.

As a follow-up question, has a thread ever not been locked after a mod finds it necessary to step in? My bet is that this has never happened. So, why bother threatening to lock the thread? Just do it and eliminate the last round of insults. It'll irritate the snipers sitting on the sidelines waiting to sneak in the last word.

I have two suggestions to minimize these problems:

1. Give mods a means to block troublemakers from posting additional comments on a thread where they are misbehaving. They can post in other threads, but not the one they're blocked out of. All moderators need is a link at the bottom of a post (where it says [quote] [print] [save]) for [block]. "Block" removes the comment and stops that poster from making any further comments in the thread. Maybe there needs to be a check box to indicate why the block is occurring for bad behavior or off-topic. I don't think a reason is needed. Most people will figure out why they got blocked from a thread.

2. Give the thread starter that capability and save the moderators some time. After all, why should the person who started the thread have to see it shut down before getting all the answers just because some kids can't play nice together? The person that starts a thread is going to monitor it more closely than moderators.

The current system only encourages bad behavior once a moderator steps in. The volume of inappropriate comments spiked after that point. Some people have obsessive compulsive behavior and can't seem to avoid reading threads that irritate them and all they want is for those threads to go away so that they don't have to look at them anymore. Since the thread is going to get banned anyway, why not get some last nasty comments in before the thread gets locked--and speed up the process at the same time.

This allows threads, that ought not be terribly controversial, be discussed sanely by sane people instead of being hijacked by individuals who are way too emotionally involved in something that shouldn't have that kind of emotional attachment.

I've never liked punishments that get applied to everybody. Punishing good and bad people equally doesn’t dissuade bad behavior or sponsor good behavior. In practice, it mostly rewards bad behavior by getting threads locked--which is often the goal. For some people, it's almost a game of seeing how much they can get away with. Since it's not their thread, they're often not even vested in what happens to the thread. What's the upside to the posters that weren't causing trouble in the thread? The overall effect makes forums less friendly.

Personally, I like option 2. I doubt mods want the extra work of option 1. Moderators still have the power to overrule anything the thread starter does including blocking an overly abusive thread starter or locking the thread starter out of their own thread. All other forum rules still apply, so the usual list of forbidden controversial topics still hold.

When I was a mod, it all depended on many factors and I've no doubt the same applies now.

Moderators have lives away from here and can't always be on hand when something kicks off, which is why it's always best to see who is online and if nobody for the forum is available, contact another staff member.

Sometimes, a word of warning is all it takes.  I've done such myself and not needed to lock the thread.  Again, the human factor comes into play and some mods may let a thread continue for longer than others.  It is always a judgement call, since the staff realize everyone here is human and try to act accordingly.  Keep in mind there may also be communication behind the scenes that isn't posted in the forum, and that can also have the desired effect.  It's not always about threats, warnings or bans, either; sometimes, a simple appeal to reason makes all the difference.

I can't say I care much for your option 2 because it's open to abuse.  I know for a damn fact I'd abuse it, even though I believe myself to be a basically fair and reasonable person.  Still, it's an interesting point.  :) 

To avoid having a thread locked, don't give it a provocative title. But if you have a reason to do so, respond to the posters with some facts, background or explanation. A Hit and Run tactic usually gets the thread locked

"I can't say I care much for your option 2 because it's open to abuse. I know for a damn fact I'd abuse it, even though I believe myself to be a basically fair and reasonable person."

I pretty much agree with that.  It would probably lead to a new level of silliness - you put one of mine in the hospital, I'll put two of yours in the morgue etc., with the moderators having to referee even more. Giving the moderators thread blocking capability might be good.

yes, some threads here have warnings, but just fall off the page.  no need to lock them.  maybe the mods do something behind the scenes to defuse the anger we often see in these threads.

2 days, 13 hours, 27 minutes and 52 seconds.

Based off what I see here in the poser forum the main mod I see, basicwiz is to leaniant of out of line posters and their attitudes. I see a handful of posters that run rampant in most of the locked threads and seem to enjoy getting in as much of their opinion despite any warnings before it is locked down. It's as if they run the forum, not the mod.

I don't agree with locking it first and foremost, rather a warning towards specific users so they know it is them that are being the troublemakers and a temp ban if it continues if the software allows, at least that is what we do on a couple of forums I mod in a gaming community. I also feel that deleting posts should not be done unless in extreme cases and when at that point, you could probably just delete the thread.

I don't agree with your option two either since some thread starters are instigating/stirring the pot/trolling on purpose, whatever you want to call it.

To answer your question, there is no set time between warning and locking.

The reason why there may be considerable time between a warning and locking has to do with the fact that Mods and Coords seek advice from one another. I may be a little uncertain what to do with a thread, and I will post a message in the coordinators forum asking my colleagues what they think. if I decide to do this, it may take several hours to get enough feedback to factor their advice into my decission.

There is great deal I could tell you about the process, but most of it is boring to anyone not involved with the administration of this place. In the end , it is all judgement calls, and those of us who make the calls do our best to be reasonable and fair.

(What was it lmckensie said about a Moderator's job being "herding cats"?)

Quote - Based off what I see here in the poser forum the main mod I see, basicwiz is to leaniant of out of line posters and their attitudes. I see a handful of posters that run rampant in most of the locked threads and seem to enjoy getting in as much of their opinion despite any warnings before it is locked down. It's as if they run the forum, not the mod.

Rest assured, my patience is getting shorter and shorter, Michael. I suppose my attempts to be fair do result in too much slack for the disruptive element, but I choose that over the style of moderation at some other forums.

I'll try to do better in the future.

You do a very good job in my opinion Basicwiz. Thank you!

Personally I think it's great when a thread with a deliberately provocative, controversial title, such as "why does American chocolate taste bad, not like British chocolate?" or "is Nestlé killing British chocolate?" can self moderate...

...good things and interesting discussion can often flow still, I think. Sometimes, often off the original topic, granted.

But the bottom line is, it's the moderators' call... and I doubt there's too much general surprise when certain threads... with certain titles... end up provoking more abusively passionate arguments... or straight forward trolling / baiting behaviour, and get locked?

Unfortunately, most of us LOVE what we are doing.

We have a Passion.

It not only is a hobby, it is a Passion.

And in "passion" there are "strong" opinions.
Its a lot like "love".

@ I think the mods here do a pretty good job of keeping it clean.

Thank you for that.

As well as being members, we are also "guests" in this forum so there is an assumed requirement that we behave as guests would in someone else's home. I follow this rule of thumb if I'm in someone's house, restrauant, country or board. I have seen real and negative consequences resulting from combative/ill-considered comments on boards which usually snow-ball rapidly.

And the host has every right to quickly nip them in the bud, the sooner the better IMO - "Yeah, wrong attitude. you're not bringing that trash into my house."

Quote - (What was it lmckensie said about a Moderator's job being "herding cats"?)

All you need is a good laser toy.  Piece of cake after that!

threads here get locked because the mods are incredibly lenient on a handful of people who have made a career out of cross-forum/platform shit-disturbing and trolling.  most make their 'home' in other communities and just moonlight here to stir up shit. if mods started handing out forum timeouts instead youd see a lot fewer locked threads.

'oh, this is your eighth troll post this weekend? may i present you with a 24 hour all-expense paid vacation from Renderosity.'

...but personally i think it would be more amusing to just 'llama' them:  for xx hours every forum post, comment and PM they send - regardless of the text content - goes through as Oorgle (the angry sound a llama makes when it cannot communicate with humans).
imagine the hilarity when they go to bitch at a mod for giving them a timeout and their PM goes through as Oorgle Oorgle Oorgle :)

after being llama'd x amount of times during a given period of time, their avatar is automatically replaced with a llama, they become a 'perma llama' and may never speak again :D

I was smurfing around here last night.
Walking and looking without a goal. Smurfing.

You have the Poser forum gang
You have the DAZ forum gang
Both pretty verbal, and "hot" in each fight. => Locked.
The battleground is right here in the Poser forum.
Rarely, extremely rare, in the DAZ forum.

And you have the Galleries gangs.

And you know what?
The forum gangs and the galleries gangs, rarely go on a date with each other.

2 completely different populations.

As if one lived in the east, and the other in the west, and an ocean filled with love in between.

Quite funny actually.
I went to bed with a smile.

Quote - threads here get locked because the mods are incredibly lenient on a handful of people who have made a career out of cross-forum/platform shit-disturbing and trolling.  most make their 'home' in other communities and just moonlight here to stir up shit. if mods started handing out forum timeouts instead youd see a lot fewer locked threads.

'oh, this is your eighth troll post this weekend? may i present you with a 24 hour all-expense paid vacation from Renderosity.'

...but personally i think it would be more amusing to just 'llama' them:  for xx hours every forum post, comment and PM they send - regardless of the text content - goes through as Oorgle (the angry sound a llama makes when it cannot communicate with humans).
imagine the hilarity when they go to bitch at a mod for giving them a timeout and their PM goes through as Oorgle Oorgle Oorgle :)

after being llama'd x amount of times during a given period of time, their avatar is automatically replaced with a llama, they become a 'perma llama' and may never speak again :D

There it is in a nutshell!  AMEN!

I bet basicwiz would give his right arm for the llama mod capabilities!

Right arm with no hope of ever wearing a prosthesis!!!!

Quote - I can't say I care much for your option 2 because it's open to abuse.  I know for a damn fact I'd abuse it, even though I believe myself to be a basically fair and reasonable person.  Still, it's an interesting point.  :) 

At your very most abusive, how badly could you abuse the right to moderate your own post? What specific dangers are there and what would be the effect to the tone of the forum? At a general level, it's always a little unnerving to give people power. It's one of the reasons why democracies are scary. If you trust people to be responsible enough to initiate posts and comment on posts, letting them moderate their own posts isn't the most frightening thing in the world.

In real world forums, the person speaking not only has the right to moderate what is discussed, but is expected to be responsible for keeping order. A person pulling together a meeting chooses who should and should not be invited. The person holding the floor is supposed to keep the meeting on topic and cut down on side conversations that are disrupting the flow of the meeting. What I'm suggesting is giving the topic starter the same responsibility to keep the thread on topic that a speaker would have in real life.

The worst abuse I can imagine is people that don't like each other will start locking each other out of their respective threads. On a surface level, that's not friendly. From a forum level, that will cut down on fights. Separating two people that don't like each other isn't always a bad thing. I'd imagine that most of the moderators can name two people here (not looking for any specifics) that clearly don't like each other. When those two people comment on the same post, there's a better than average chance that there will be some heated exchanges. Letting them block each other is common on social networking sites.It helps keep the peace.

Contrary opinions might be stifled. This isn't a political or religious forum. This is a software forum, so there shouldn't be that many topics that are controversial. Allowing topic starters to moderate their own topics is not the same thing as allowing them to control the entire forum. A view being blocked from a thread can be a new thread. The majority of threads here aren't controversial and won't receive much if any moderation from the thread starter.  It takes time to moderate a topic, so the general preference will be to not moderate until it's necessary.

There will be complaints--especially at the beginning, about overly heavy handed moderating by a thread starter. A hundred people will have a hundred different styles. Tell the complainers to start their own posts and then they can moderate what's said in their threads. Let's just accept that thread starters have the most active interest in what is said in their threads. In the long run, the greatest volume of complaints won't be against overly moderated threads, but against those that aren't. Some posters won't bother policing their threads and those are the ones where arguments will have time to fester. Since infighting will not be tolerated in most threads, the ones that do occur will be that much more noticeable.

Under the current system moderation occurs after the riot is in full swing. Give thread starters a means to police their own threads and there will be less riots.

Besides, how often do we open a thread that sounds interesting only to see that it has wandered so far off the original subject that it was a waste of time wading through the side conversations? Sometimes the thread starter tries to get back to the original topic, but others are wrapped in the peripheral trains of thougjht. A forum moderator won't step in as long as the post is civil. The topic starter currently has no means to keep things on track.

I want to state up front that I'm not mad or upset by this thread. I just can't think of another way to state what needs to be stated as an official of Renderosity. So here goes.

I can put all this to rest very easily.

The software does not support either option, and I promise you the programmers have other fish they are going to fry first.

Moderation is what it is, and is unlikely to change anytime soon.

I'm not meaning to be terse or curt about this, but the ideas in the thread just are not doable here and now. Discussing them is an academic persuit. Do as you please.

(But I REALLY liked the idea about the llamas!)

Quote - threads here get locked because the mods are incredibly lenient on a handful of people who have made a career out of cross-forum/platform shit-disturbing and trolling.  most make their 'home' in other communities and just moonlight here to stir up shit. if mods started handing out forum timeouts instead youd see a lot fewer locked threads.

'oh, this is your eighth troll post this weekend? may i present you with a 24 hour all-expense paid vacation from Renderosity.'

...but personally i think it would be more amusing to just 'llama' them:  for xx hours every forum post, comment and PM they send - regardless of the text content - goes through as Oorgle (the angry sound a llama makes when it cannot communicate with humans).
imagine the hilarity when they go to bitch at a mod for giving them a timeout and their PM goes through as Oorgle Oorgle Oorgle :)

after being llama'd x amount of times during a given period of time, their avatar is automatically replaced with a llama, they become a 'perma llama' and may never speak again :D

Well said, Gabriel. Getting a thead locked is how some deal with views they don't agree with on any Forum. However, the Moderators time is valuable, too, so that needs to be taken into consideration.  The thread that the OP refers to was interesting, but had pretty much run its course, IMHO.

BTW, This morning I had to deal with a spammer that got into a model train forum that I run;  Some detective work showed they had set up at least three login names; hopefully I got them all. It takes time.....

Quote - I want to state up front that I'm not mad or upset by this thread. I just can't think of another way to state what needs to be stated as an official of Renderosity. So here goes.

I can put all this to rest very easily.

The software does not support either option, and I promise you the programmers have other fish they are going to fry first.

Moderation is what it is, and is unlikely to change anytime soon.

I'm not meaning to be terse or curt about this, but the ideas in the thread just are not doable here and now. Discussing them is an academic persuit. Do as you please.

(But I REALLY liked the idea about the llamas!)

Well, I do hope you realize that I wasn't complaining about moderation by my participation in this thread. 

I like the llama idea too. 

But, I do think, overall, moderation here is excellent.  I really like the idea of "give 'em enough rope to hang themselves" moderation. 

I think in principle the notion sounds like a good one. Of the OP moderating their own thread.

But the issue is maybe when someone starts a thread, with a particular agenda foremost in their mind?

Or put it another way, perhaps starts a thread to enforce their point, rather than to ask a question or encourage discussion or (healthy) debate?

Then OP thread moderation wouldn't necessarily be so healthy, or democratic, perhaps.

I guess there'd still be overall moderation, by forum mods, though... so I guess that'd be countered for to some extent... other than the issue of potentially even more delayed response... if forum moderators are actually trying to fairly assess the OP's motives, as opposed to just respond to clear argumentative or abusive behaviour?

Quote - Well, I do hope you realize that I wasn't complaining about moderation by my participation in this thread.  I like the llama idea too. 

But, I do think, overall, moderation here is excellent.  I really like the idea of "give 'em enough rope to hang themselves" moderation. 

You're fine. No offense taken (to anyone's post.)

And yes... that IS my style of moderation. I tend to let the threads go as long as I do to let the problem children show their "true colors" before I lock it down. Hopefully, at some point, they'll see how others perceive them without my having to issue warnings. I will say this... I've watched enough threads now that I may start shortening the leashes a bit. It takes time to learn the lay of the land and who is who.

On the idea of letting the OP's moderate their threads, I have ABSOLUTELY no problem with an OP posting requests in the thread that individuals return to the original subject of the thread.

As to behavior issues, I would prefer that the OP send me or one of the other coords a note about behavior issues so that we can counsel privately with the offenders.

I try to self moderate these days for, although I am fairly new to the forum, I am beginning to recognise the usual suspects who become become very personal when a thread is not going going they way they would like.  Altimately they always seem to get the thread locked.  These days as soon as I see these names I take no futher part in the thread and do not read any further.  I can guess where it is going, pretty much, and I do not think that it does the web site or the Poser World any good at all.

Some may see this as me putting my head in the sand, but passionate as I am about my hobby, I do it to enjoy it, not see someone go out of their way create ill feeling amongst other posters. 

You did good, Basicwiz.

Really, three or more times I started to write the "Really?! I thought this was a PLEASANT place" post, but I always stopped and sighed, knowing it wouldn't get through to the ones it needed to get through to.

The discussion, up to a certain point, was interesting and informative to one who hasn't been 'in the know' in the community for, like, ever.

I will applaud you and offer you hot tea for the fabulous job you do, because....for the most part, this forum actually IS a very pleasant place and I like to while away time here (and learn!) when I am able, even if I don't post all that much.

I agree with the others, basic - your methods are appreciated here.

Thanks. I sincerely appreciate the kind words.

The greatest tool that a forum user has in helping with moderation is the willingness to report abuse to a moderator or coordinator when it first begins. If I have a mailbox full of complaints about a particular situation, it makes my job SO SIMPLE when it comes time to call the offender on his/her behavior. If the good users would become proactive, then there would be no problem managing those who choose to make personal attacks or throw hand gernades into otherwise productive discussions.

If everyone waits for me to make the calls on my own, then there is the perception that I am doing nothing. That is not what's going on... I'm building my case to decide what the appropriate action is. Proactive users give me the evidence that it's not just me being offended by something far more quickly.

There is a secondary issue that was underscored today when several users sitemailed me about a thread publicizing a Warez site. It might have been several hours befoere I ran across the thread on my own. As it was, we were able to remove the links and ban the user within a few minutes time. This is the power that the individual users have to help manage the forum. It is why the "Report Abuse Here" link is at the bottom of every post I make.

I always appreciate sitemail from forum users. Never be shy to contact me if you have an issue.

Quote -> Quote -(What was it lmckensie said about a Moderator's job being "herding cats"?)

 

All you need is a good laser toy.  Piece of cake after that!

LMAO!!!  Too true!

First off, Baiscwiz is doing a bang up job overall and - given the amount of traffic this forum gets - I don't think anyone could do better.  

This is a great forum to post in but - being completely honest - it's a fucking horrible one to moderate.  First because it has so much traffic and second because yes, it does attract a number of outright loonies.  There is always a balancing act between keeping things moving or killing something stone dead.  Too much moderation and you get a lifeless, no fun forum which eventually withers and dies.  Too little and the weeds grow and choke the life out anyhow.  

Nobody's perfect - believe it or not, even I'm imperfect - and sometimes mods don't get it right first time, every time. 

As for how I'd abuse the ability to lock people out of threads, there's a list of people I'd lock the fuck right out of my threads, no matter what.  That's unfair because these particular people aren't always complete idiots, not always trolling and sometimes actually have something interesting to say.  

Keep in mind these particular idiots don't bother me, really.  In the great scheme of things they're just a bit of untidiness I could do without.  It irks me to see potentially interesting threads get derailed (and often locked/removed) by the actions of certain parties.

And no, I'm not telling you who they are, not even in a PM.  

Ok Sam, calm down now, lol.

Well said thou. :)

On another note, Basicwiz does an excellent job here.

I like the Llama idea too... trouble is the temptation to get llamaed to see what happened would be really, really strong! :biggrin:

Quote - I like the Llama idea too... trouble is the temptation to get llamaed to see what happened would be really, really strong! :biggrin:

Not for me but I'd probably have a good laugh at the results of someone else's folly.  :) 

BasicWiz, I think you've struck a pretty good balance. There are a few times I wish something would be locked sooner. There are also a few I wish had been left to percolate a bit longer, so, you're doing good as far as I'm concerned.

People come and go. My personal less than favorite list has always remained at about 2-3 names. The cast changes but the number stays about the same. As Sam said, even those sometimes say something I can agree with or even applaud. I always try to acknowledge those.

Most folks here are really pretty nice, better than many forums I've seen. I get Vilters comment about passion - on an intellectual level. Not being an artist though I find it hard to understand sometimes, especially with regard to technology etc. Passion about art, that makes sense. Blood feuds over software or corporations, not so much. OTOH, if it were politics or religion, I might be equally passionate.

I once said that we really don't need to read some of these threads. If you've been here long enough, you can read the names and predict what the person is going to say about a particular topic. You also know when two opponents have entered the ring and people start to pull out the virtual popcorn. Sometimes, it ends quickly, after a couple of 'I know you are, but what am I(s).' Somtimes it settles down when one gladiator leaves the arena. I prefer leaning toward blocking later. IMO, If you think a thread should be locked, notify a moderator and leave if you don't want to read anymore. If it does get locked, you haven't missed anything right? Frankly, I can read around the idiocy if there's anything left. The danger of not locking soon enough is that the fighting leaves a bad impression for newcomers (but so do locked threads), and the longer it goes, the more likely that even people with somewhat better self-control or sense may eventually get drawn in as well. There's no magic formula. I'd love the ability to filter posters on a per-thread basis. That way, when I saw that X was starting something with Y, I could simply filter them both out, and not even have to skip past them. I'd want to do it per-thread because X and Y may be perfectly pleasant on another topic or one without the other. Not gonna happen, I know.

I'm well aware that website changes aren't very likely to happen--especially when there are free human solutions. Changes start with a suggestion. The suggestion I offered doesn't have a lot of traction, so it's not going to happen. I've been a moderator on another site's forum and it's one of those usually thankless jobs where the prefernce is to not intervene in discussions.

Interestingly, Wikipedia uses an even more open form of moderation to run an encyclopedia where anybody can alter any input by anybody else. It remains one of my first sources to look up information on a subject even though I'm well aware that there is always the potential for bad information to be in it. Overall, people are trying to make the encyclopedia informative. The people with specific agendas, or an intent to abuse the system by being mischievous, are a thankful minority.  Since there is always the potential for abuse, Wikipedia isn't my only source of information, but it's usually one of the best starting places.

Wikipedia is a good example of how giving users a little more authority isn't necessarily a bad idea.

Wikipedia is a good example of how giving users a little more authority isn't necessarily a bad idea.

True, though the premise of Wikipedia is providing factual information. People generally aren't fighting over what year Poser came out, or who created it. It's the opinions, heresay, conspiracy theories etc. AFAIK, Wikipedia discourages opinions in favor of facts. If you weeded out opinions here, you'd lose most of the content. Ideally, it could be more self-regulating I suppose but I'm not sure that wouldn't require a degree of uniformity/conformity that would end up detracting from the whole exercise. The occasional ruckus is going to require the bouncer in any establishment - such is life.

Wikipedia has fights and vandalism. If you look at the top of any page, there are a number of tabs. The Talk tab is for discussions of the content in the entry. View History is a computerized listing of all changes made to the entry. It's sort of a giant Undo list where changes can be reverted back to what they were originally. The person making the change is supposed to document the reason for the change, but most people making changes don't bother doing that. There are options for each change to see what the entry looked like before and after the change.

Looking at the Talk tab under Poser, somebody had to remove an addition that a user posted saying that a girl was a poser. There's a discussion about the validity of adding a link for Apollo Maximus. Somebody added a link for their web comic. A claim was made that 90% of illustrations with human figures are Poser. This section only documents the changes that somebody took the time to document. The discussions here aren't very heated, but Wikipedia also has articles on religion and politics and they sometimes have to be locked down till emotions run their course.

Any time a suggestion is made to give people more responsibilities, everybody ponders the worse that can happen. The worse abuse listed, if thread posters moderated their own threads, was that they would automatically block a set group of posters all the time. I don't see individual blocking of the most abrasive personalities an issue. Anybody getting blocked more than they like will have to eventually consider that maybe their posting style is too confrontational and they should change it. As far as having uniformity/conformity rules for posters to moderate their threads, I kind of accept that hundreds of people are going to do it hundreds of different ways, from zero post regulation to an overly control-freak level of thread moderation. The majority would fall into minimal interference with posts made. Too many rules is often more dangerous than too few.

An example of a site that has made itself nearly obsolete by having too many rules, visit the Open Directory Project.
http://www.dmoz.org/
Most people have never heard of it. Their goals are great: to create a human index of the content on the web, but their rules are so fastidious that they tend to drive out the editors that they sorely need to keep the site current. Considering the primary use of the site is by search engines, that value the human ranking or algorithmic ranking, the obsessive compulsive need to have very complicated rules for titles and descriptions became silly. I was surprised to see that the Poser entry now has an editor, but that editor hasn't done anything with the category in over a year. That means links are at least a year old, no new ones have been added in that time, and the Smith-Micro link for Poser isn't at the top of the page.

You're still comparing apples to oranges, no matter how you rephrase it.  Wikipedia and the Poser forum are two different beasts, despite both being on the web.

It's kind of like looking at the statistics of last year's riots in the UK and only considering book stores.  From that, you'd conclude minimal damage and looting actually took place, whereas the reality is book stores were just about the only ones not looted and trashed.

The matter of allowing people to block certain posters from their own threads amounts to banning by stealth.  You should consider the point that if anyone really needs banning, it's up to the staff to deal with, not the forum users.

As for giving people more responsibilities, I for one don't want more responsibilities here.  I come here for fun and information; why the blue buggery should I be expected to police my own threads as well?  In any event, this place is not a democracy and nor should it be.  The remit here is completely different from Wikipedia; this is a sales and advertising driven site, like it or not.  Part of the business model includes having a forum or two, most likely for the point of generating sales.  To that end, the forums have to be as friendly and inclusive as possible, which negates any positives your idea of banning by stealth may have.

I could go on about the consequences of giving people more responsibilities in a wider context but since politics are verboten here, I won't.  :) 

Some folks here who contribute a lot but are rude as hell to anyone who questions them... these folks posts will never be locked. Just any post deviating from that thread will be deleted. The thread itself will live on forever.

Posts created by folks who aren't in the clique and cause intrigue... like the Genesis vs market outcomes thread... have little value to the forum mods and will be stopped when mods get bored with it.... regardless if any real discussion was being made.

Posts that ARE completely without any use to anythng other than to say hey I'm from X country and this post has zero to do with anything about Poser... will be kept alive until the cows come home because (a) its no threat to Renderosity's sales and (b) who is going to troll that kind of dumbass thread?

edit to check all the rated R warnings

Whether a thread is dumbass, as you so eloquently put it, is entirely the opinion of the reader. I believe that OT threads which enable people to get to know each other as people beyond their specific talents and knowledge about 3d are useful in building a sense of community and in creating bonds that enable us to forgive those who may appear rude elsewhere. And they do it perhaps because sometimes those people feel just a little bit more like friends than mere forum members or perhaps because we become more aware of their particular foibles and style of conversation. For this reason, OT threads help prevent pointless arguments that arise out feelings of indignation and offense and permit a faster resolution of conflicts that do occur. I do not believe you get the same opportunities in threads that stay strictly "on topic".

But hey, you're quite entitled to your opinion, and totally free not to read such threads.

FWIW, I thought your post was funny, Coleman.  Also true in some respects but not in all cases, all the time.  

I've posted a fair number of OT threads but, in my defense, I've posted plenty of on topic things and, where possible, do my best to help out with other users' questions.

I remember a few years ago this forum tried to be a lot more on topic.  IIRC, it almost rolled over and died. 

Well, to be fair, I thought Coleman's post (not just the cat) was funny, and, ahem, utterly true.

But I don't particularly want to participate in a forum that's nothing but Poser technical questions and the endless stream of newbies with precisely the same installation problems -- unless we're allowed to allay our boredom by being vengefully rude to the newbies, that is. On topic is quite often far more dumbass than off topic, in that respect.

My comment about the OT thread was bad form - my apologies for that.

I should know better than to post replies when in a testy mood.

Apology accepted and appreciated. Thank you for that.