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Suggestion for Forum Moderation


theartist

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SUGGESTION for the forum section:  Allow individuals that start a thread, to be able to self-moderate that particular thread.

Rationale:  

  1. Currently, forum contributors have a very limited means of highlighting quality posts, or moderating the posts of others.  
  2. As the forum grows, inevitably it will draw the attention of individuals and contributors with varied interests and intent.
  3. Sometimes, purposeful troll activity can be subtle, and not easily discernible at first. 
  4. However, some of the new posters, coming from other areas of social media, may think it is quite normal behavior to try and inject humor (even base humor) into their posts, thinking it garners some type of approval with increased attention (whether good or bad).  Consequently, such newcomers, in that case, may not actually be trolls, but just woefully lacking a solid background in the basics of applied science, let alone understand the rigor required in the pursuit of scientific excellence.  
  5. In addition, there may be an acceptable view by the creators of this site (as well as myself), that it (might) be okay to possibly have a section of forum commenters inclined toward a 'lighter side', with less-serious science intent; for example, some newcomers may want to just discuss aurora, without getting lost in the details of the science behind them.  
  6. To summarize, we are each different, coming from different backgrounds, with different interests. All contributors, in humility, have the potential to learn something new, and contribute toward the pursuit of scientific understanding, if committed toward that goal.  However, it may not always be clear, particularly with a new poster, whether or not that is their aim, or whether they instead have underlying malicious intent.  

Suggested Solution:

  1. One solution to this dilemma, if possible, is to allow each forum user the ability to 'moderate' their own threads. By allowing each individual, whether new (a 'minor flare') or old (a 'major flare'), that starts a new thread the ability to 'block' (hide) a post on the thread they started (regardless of who posted to that thread), it allows those with different, but not necessarily malicious interests, to quickly separate themselves, thus allowing 'confusion' or 'misunderstanding' of an individual's intent to get cleared up, over time.  
  2. This is a humanitarian compromise, in contrast to implementing a more draconian policy of hastily, and possibly unfairly, completely removing an individual from the forum. 
  3. The site administrators appear to have extraordinary programming skills, so maybe they can implement something like I suggest.  

Thank you for your consideration.

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10 hours ago, theartist said:

By allowing each individual, whether new (a 'minor flare') or old (a 'major flare'), that starts a new thread the ability to 'block' (hide) a post on the thread they started (regardless of who posted to that thread)

To be clear here, I'm suggesting allowing the starter of a thread to be able to block any post to that thread, regardless of who posted it.  I don't think this capability would be abused by those that actually are wanting to positively contribute to the forum in a respectful manner.

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Every post can be reported by a member, we as administrators and moderators can then decide to hide/remove posts or take any other question. 

The forum has a reputation system for members, and thus far you could give neutral and positive reputation to users, not negative reputation. The members can then decide to like what they read in the topics and now (just added) what they dislike. The reputation system will let members see if a users has posted valuable content or not. Posts with enough positive reputation points are highlighted in the topic.

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Sander, those are improvements. My concern is driven by this scenario:  I think we very well could be on the cusp of ground-breaking discovery with regard to planetary alignments affecting solar activity, and the process of that discovery is happening on the spaceweatherlive.com forum.  I have done a lot of work into uncovering this discovery, and yet I know I'm just basically 'starting out', and haven't begun to scratch the surface, and many more human hours of work, eventually from multiple scientists, over years time, will need to go into unlocking this discovery.  So with any ground-breaking discovery, there is human resistance, from both informed and ignorant parties, obscuring and hindering the message, intelligently or ignorantly; both instances are counter to actually doing science.

Thanks for your consideration, and the work and effort you put into this site.

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