Google Group Tags... Notes on utility & moderation?

[TiddlyTweeter]

In another thread ...

Jeremy Ruston wrote:

* Pinning should never have been globally available. I appreciate the argument that no great harm was done, but it evidently created confusion as to who could see that a thread had been pinned

* We should agree on general rules for what threads might qualify for being pinned. To me, pinning would start with urgent announcements (e.g. if discovered a serious bug in a release and wanted to warn people to upgrade), important on-going informational threads like “Newbies start here”

Ciao Jeremy

In another thread we discussing user v. admin privileges re PINS. 

Here I want to ask about TAGS.

First I just want to check IF you are aware that at the moment any user can both add or delete TAGS on any post?

  +  In a way its v. good in that missing tags get added. 

   + Its good that an original author who has not added them may have them added by an enthusiastic user

  -  in another way its not ideal as these don't get documented and the numbers could get vast...

  -  I see no place user added tags get listed. 

For example, this post I gave tags: "question GoogleGroup tags" 

Tags have proved very useful for finding things here. But I'm not sure, without moderated addition, they are optimal.

Best wishes

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

for those on email only ...

---

[TonyM]

I will just restate what I said in the Other thread about pins modified to Google Tags

Bit of a storm in a tea cup

As far as I can see this has being the extent of GGTAGS in the last year or more so, with respect, I suggest education before restricting or dictating.

This is only my opinion but I have seen dozens of forums fail by the overzealous slippery slope arguments that gradually disable features, create moderator roles where none were necessary, all due to perceived only possibilities.

As soon as you remove member responsibility you stop them taking responsibility.

Please solve problems by education first, not reducing things to an imaginary lowest common denominator.

Sincerely
Tony

[Mark S.]

I could be wrong, but it looks like the feature has already been turned off. I did feel that the original list of tags was too broad.

[Jeremy Ruston]

I could be wrong, but it looks like the feature has already been turned off. I did feel that the original list of tags was too broad.

It sounds like tagging is classified under the same “moderation” permission that governs the ability to pin posts. 

We could revert the change, but perhaps the solution here is to appoint some more group managers. The top 10 posters according to Google Groups are below. Eric is already a group manager, but it might be good if maybe 3 or 4 of these people volunteered for the role.

• TonyM
• Mohammad
• TiddlyTweeter
• Mark S
• Arlen
• Eric
• A Gloom
• PMario
• (me)
• Jed (inmysocks)

See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/tiddlywiki

The group managers would:

• Help Eric with moderating posts flagged by Google as spam
• Pin and unpin threads
• Compile pinned anthology posts summarising important announcements and discussions
• And perhaps use whatever other useful moderation features may be lurking under the surface of Google Groups

It also seems like we need to be more transparent about the rules and conventions we’re following to manage the group. I’d suggest adding a tiddler to tiddlywiki.com in which we describe our approach (for example, guidelines about when to pin a thread, or a thread from last year where I posted about the need to criticise ideas rather than people). Perhaps we actually need two: one called “Moderation Policies” focusing on the role of group managers and one called “Code of Conduct” focusing on the standards of behaviour we expect from everyone in the group.

I’d welcome any advice/thoughts from people who have experience of other online communities. I’m sure we can do a better job overall, and I suspect more formal roles in the community will be a part of it.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

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[TonyM]

Jeremy

Happy to contribute. Personaly I prefer open as possible and close down only if necessary.

I have had substantial online community development experience.

If there must be moderators I recommend as soft touch as much as possible.

As I said before if you take away responsibility people tend to be less responsible.

If we have a team of moderators I suggest an independent private group so in rare occasions of issues and contention it can be discussed offline a little more frankly without accidently offending people.

Such a team should ultimately publish guidelines rather than laws. The more black and white the rules, the more complex rules need to be to avoid unforscean consequences or freeze out creative collaboration.

Regards
Tony

[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Mark

> Happy to contribute. Personaly I prefer open as possible and close down only if necessary.

I think we all do.

> I have had substantial online community development experience.

Great.

> If there must be moderators I recommend as soft touch as much as possible.

I think it’s more about being consistent, transparent and respectful. Effective moderation should be all but invisible.

> As I said before if you take away responsibility people tend to be less responsible.

I have a sense you’re getting at something here. If you’re talking about the recent change to moderation permissions, I think it’s clear that that was a mistake, but the main observation is that it caused confusion for users, and that’s why I changed it as soon as I discovered the problem.

> If we have a team of moderators I suggest an independent private group so in rare occasions of issues and contention it can be discussed offline a little more frankly without accidently offending people.

I’d much, much prefer not to have a private group. Transparency and openness are critical, we can’t sacrifice them to avoid accidentally offending people; we do that by being respectful and putting ourselves in the other persons shoes.

> Such a team should ultimately publish guidelines rather than laws. The more black and white the rules, the more complex rules need to be to avoid unforscean consequences or freeze out creative collaboration.

What would be the distinction between a guideline and a law?

Best wishes

Jeremy

>
> Regards
> Tony

>
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[TonyM]

Jeremy,

You are responding to my comments, Tony, Rather than Marks.

> If there must be moderators I recommend as soft touch as much as possible.

I think it’s more about being consistent, transparent and respectful. Effective moderation should be all but invisible.

That is in effect a "soft touch", encourage not enforce. 

Transparent also means always inform the person of an action and Ideally ask them to do it (which they learn from)

The exception to invisible is you can leave the request to do differently in the treads so others learn from them. 

> As I said before if you take away responsibility people tend to be less responsible.

I have a sense you’re getting at something here. If you’re talking about the recent change to moderation permissions, I think it’s clear that that was a mistake, but the main observation is that it caused confusion for users, and that’s why I changed it as soon as I discovered the problem.

No specific reference here, more a philosophical approach. I have seen forums moderation grow until no one is happy and it's an admin nightmare. Leave it open and promote behaviour change, not settings, where ever possible.

 

> If we have a team of moderators I suggest an independent private group so in rare occasions of issues and contention it can be discussed offline a little more frankly without accidentally offending people.

I’d much, much prefer not to have a private group. Transparency and openness are critical, we can’t sacrifice them to avoid accidentally offending people; we do that by being respectful and putting ourselves in the other persons shoes.

You choose, but my experience suggests this would allow "moderators" to ask questions or resolve differences between themselves without airing it unnecessarily. Perhaps an open Discus group or something. As soon as you have more than one moderator, better than expecting one to do it all, a unified approach needs to be negotiated. Debating this in the primary forum just confuses people if they search the forum to find out what "behaviour" is expected.

 

> Such a team should ultimately publish guidelines rather than laws. The more black and white the rules, the more complex rules need to be to avoid unforscean consequences or freeze out creative collaboration.

What would be the distinction between a guideline and a law?

A guide line says "please do not pin posts unless they are of a broad community interest and ensure you remove pins in a timely manner, if not an administrator may unpin it.

A Law says - you shall not pin posts and we won't allow you.

 

Regards

Tony

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Jeremy, TonyM & all.

Jeremy Ruston wrote:

It also seems like we need to be more transparent about the rules and conventions we’re following to manage the group. I’d suggest adding a tiddler to tiddlywiki.com in which we describe our approach (for example, guidelines about when to pin a thread, or a thread from last year where I posted about the need to criticise ideas rather than people). Perhaps we actually need two: one called “Moderation Policies” focusing on the role of group managers and one called “Code of Conduct” focusing on the standards of behaviour we expect from everyone in the group.

I’d welcome any advice/thoughts from people who have experience of other online communities. I’m sure we can do a better job overall, and I suspect more formal roles in the community will be a part of it.

I don't really have consistent time to be an admin here because I'm very busy already managing groups on Twitter & Telegram.

But there are few things over time I'd be happy to do. 

I need feedback to know if they might be worth the work and are wanted.

Given that this GG group is the "go-to" place for daily problem solving I do think that a few pinned threads could be helpful.

These would be in addition to guidance on usage & moderation. For instance ...

1 - a post explaining how to search this GG with examples;

2 - a "resources" thread, or resource posts, that collate/curate some of the major resources. 

An example I made for test purposes already is ... Resource: Mohammad's Wikis

           (In my experiment with Mohammad's wikis listing I wrote it in TW and worked out how to easily post it here so its visually nice.

But I'm not sure whether everyone on email would see the nice version? People using the digest might not?)

My thinking is that this GG is resource rich and occasional "overview" posts of them would be helpful!

This could also work as a way of developing materials for eventual listing in "mother" (tiddlywiki.com)

But I need a kind of agenda for it to know if it is worth the effort.

Best wishes

TT

 

[Jeremy Ruston]

Jeremy,

You are responding to my comments, Tony, Rather than Marks.

Doh! My apologies, I mistyped but had of course realised that it was you!

The fact is that we’ve had moderators quietly moderating the group since 2005, and I don’t think we’ve run into any problems in terms of lightness of touch.

The idea of expanding the pool of operators is to enable us to do more fairly specific things, like operating a practical, fair and transparent system for deciding which threads get pinned.

Best wishes

Jeremy

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[TiddlyTweeter]

A third item to add to the list I just sent ...

3 - a pinned thread of "showcase" TiddlyWiki

(We currently lack an adequate list of the rich wikis people have made with TW

             New users in particular would benefit from that)  

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

Jeremy & Eric

I just noticed that it appears a reader can no longer "close" a thread.

I assume that is a side effect of the recent changes in the admin system?

Quite often authors of threads request that (as it is not possible for the author of the thread to close it) it be closed when they got an answer that solves it.

Are moderators now going to look for that? It seemed to work fine before. 

Best wishes

Josiah

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[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Josiah

I just noticed that it appears a reader can no longer "close" a thread.

I assume that is a side effect of the recent changes in the admin system?

Quite often authors of threads request that (as it is not possible for the author of the thread to close it) it be closed when they got an answer that solves it.

Are moderators now going to look for that? It seemed to work fine before. 

As discussed above, the Google Groups permissions are not very granular. We’ve changed a single setting called “Moderation” and it appears to affect pinning, tagging, closing — pretty much everything except post.

Best wishes

Jeremy

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[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Jeremy

The issue on this is that it was a pretty routine issue closing threads on request previously. 

It helps in that readers then know you don't need to bother reading that thread.

Unless a moderator is reading everything it won't happen now.

I hope we can get to some kind of consensus on a way forward because right now it is less than optimal.

I appreciate there are issues on closing threads, pinning & tagging (most issues are on the latter I think, as its not fully clear what has gone on) but none of it was exactly a huge problem.

Best wishes

Josiah

Hi Josiah

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[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Josiah

Ciao Jeremy

The issue on this is that it was a pretty routine issue closing threads on request previously. 

It helps in that readers then know you don't need to bother reading that thread.

Unless a moderator is reading everything it won't happen now.

I hope we can get to some kind of consensus on a way forward because right now it is less than optimal.

I appreciate there are issues on closing threads, pinning & tagging (most issues are on the latter I think, as its not fully clear what has gone on) but none of it was exactly a huge problem.

As far as I can tell we have two options:

* Leave moderation functions open to everyone, which we know causes problems for users who don’t expect their actions to affect other users

* Restrict moderation functions to a group of moderators, which we know causes frustration for people who want to be able to do moderator-like things without being a moderator

Obviously, the latter approach is taken universally by online communities. We’re not trying to re-invent how online communities work (or at least not yet!), and so I don’t see a need to depart from what has worked for other communities.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

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[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Jeremy

I have a suggestion. A thought. It is based on the idea this group is pretty good at self-policing.

Allow people to do near anything BUT with a clear message up-top asking readers to indicate when something is not right.

I myself has asked "why is this thread pinned?" and the author took it down. That seemed adequate.

AND also make clear there are moderators who have absolute rights to remove tags, posts, pins or whatever. Without question.

So the rule is "be modest" or you will be cut back by consensus OR moderator.

That combination might work?

A complication is tagging. I don't actually know what tags have actually been used. 

I have added myself quite a lot.

There are more than a new post indicates are available. 

Its an area where being clear matters to make the most of search filtering.

That is partly about documenting them though (note: I can't find a simple way to find them all on GG).

Just thoughts

Josiah

Hi Josiah

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[Mark S.]

The problem is that random people were closing out things simply because they weren't interested in them. Probably they didn't realize that their actions had global implications.

For me, this makes reading harder. I see "closed", and then have to check again because I can't really trust the status.

Maybe there needs to be a pinned thread, "Ask a moderator to...", where people can suggest threads to be closed, items to be pinned. That way the moderators wouldn't have to read every thread to see what the status is.

[Mark S.]

Go to the main TiddlyWiki GG page. Over on the right hand side it says "tags". Click on the link and it will take you to a page with all of the tags displayed.

[TiddlyTweeter]

Mark S. wrote:

The problem is that random people were closing out things simply because they weren't interested in them. Probably they didn't realize that their actions had global implications.

I also think that on "closing" there is a simple "fat finger" issue. 

I have myself marked threads as closed by accident when they are still open. 

I think that is not uncommon.

 

For me, this makes reading harder. I see "closed", and then have to check again because I can't really trust the status.

Reluctantly agree.

My point was more where a thread author has asked for it explicitly to be closed.

TT 

[Mark S.]

On Monday, December 9, 2019 at 10:24:38 AM UTC-8, TiddlyTweeter wrote:

I also think that on "closing" there is a simple "fat finger" issue. 

I have myself marked threads as closed by accident when they are still open. 

You mean like on a tablet or touch screen? I don't think I could close it by accident on a standard desktop.

 

My point was more where a thread author has asked for it explicitly to be closed.

 

That's where the "ask a moderator" thread might be useful.

[TiddlyTweeter]

Mark S. wrote:

You mean like on a tablet or touch screen? I don't think I could close it by accident on a standard desktop.

I did it, as far as I can recall, only on the tablet.

TT 

[TonyM]

Jeremy,

I think there is a third option;

* Leave moderation functions open to everyone, and provide guidance and gentle encouragement when their actions affect other users

Fine, If this method failed (in my view unlikely), well take another approach. 

Ironically I did not know pins affected everyone, and I believe that is what triggered this whole discussion. Yet what I pinned possibly deserved it.

One of the strengths of this community from way back is we suggested people may want to search the group but not feel shy to ask questions. The result is I actively answer Questions. If we continue to emphasis this people will ask questions about pins and tags etc... and a Community FAQ should be enough. Every member of the group can guide other users if we understand our practices.

Regards

Tony

Hi Josiah

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[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Tony

* Leave moderation functions open to everyone, and provide guidance and gentle encouragement when their actions affect other users

My first concern is that people don’t read warnings. We’ve already got a bunch of important warnings at the top of the forum, the more we add the more we risk that users won’t bother to read any of it. So, end users will continue to be surprised that their actions affect other people.

Secondly, it will completely break the expectations of people who use other forums. Forums of this size always have moderators. I’ve said before we’re not trying to re-invent how open source communities function, we instead seek to learn what works for other similar communities.

Fine, If this method failed (in my view unlikely), well take another approach. 

Ironically I did not know pins affected everyone, and I believe that is what triggered this whole discussion. Yet what I pinned possibly deserved it.

I think that’s the problem right there. We can’t have everyone who thinks their posts are important pinning them. It’s an abuse of the way that forums work: the idea is that topics under heavy discussion rise to the top organically.

My personal opinion is that pinning shouldn’t be done for the our regular users, but rather to help provide signposts for new users, and perhaps rarely visiting users.

Examples of the threads I’d like to see pinned are:

* “Newbies start here”, a thread with the top post maintained by moderators

* “Announcements”, a rolling top post of brief announcements, linking to the original posts

Beyond that, I’d suggest it only be used for emergencies — e.g. a release with a bug so serious we want to prompt all users to upgrade.

Best wishes

Jeremy.

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[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mark S.

Thanks for that pointer to List of tags in this GG.

I am not sure if I'm dim overlooking it. I was looking for it when posting, not in the main console!

Thanks!

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

I had a look at the current tags. They are a bit of a mess.

There is overlap. Misspelling. One-offs that are redundant. Tags with too much specificity. A few really obscure ones.

Overall there are too many for a reference point IMO. 

I guess the issue is whether the tags list should be a finite moderated set or allowed to be a mashup?

The ones available when you create a post are the most important. Ad-hoc user created ones should not be on that list.

My feeling is for a core set of  moderated, but allow more that are not. I'm not sure if GG can do that balancing act?

Taggery that works to capture "all-but-only" effectively is a real art.

My 2 cents

TT

On Monday, 9 December 2019 19:23:47 UTC+1, Mark S. wrote:

[Mark S.]

In only two weeks (?) of de-moderation, the number of tags quadrupled.  That number is too large for easy selection, and there's no definition for any of them.

Worse, once you make and apply tags, there's no tool (unless in the moderator's kit) for making mass changes. So to fix "discusson", you have to find every post with that misspelling, and replace it. So it's kind of important not to have a lot of custom-designed, esoteric tags.

An in-between solution is that people could propose new tags in a thread. The thread would be discussed. A moderator would then add the tag, a different tag, or no tag depending on the outcome. Since it's added by the moderator, the tag will show up in the selection everyone sees. There could even be a tag "tag" so you could find these discussions (or discussons) about tags easily.

In this way the pool of tags could grow, and there would be a consensus of what the tags are intended for.

[TiddlyTweeter]

I agree. Particularly if its not possible in GG (which I suspect it is not) to have an orthodox set alongside a freelance set (but seperate).

It is also worth, perhaps, noting that the practical function of tags on GG might best be viewed in the context of search as, basically, FILTERS. 

They should not (most of them) be thought of as precision bullets. 

They have much utility to narrow searches, along with other search constructs, so search becomes more useful. 

But if they are too specific they don't add value.

My last 2 cents.

TT

[TonyM]

Jeremy,

If the guidelines are clear and transparent it does not need everyone to read them, regular posters know what is agreed and will promote the guidelines in the community.

Pinning is a great example, there was no standard set, so people did what they wanted. I for one thought it was a private pin only, as soon as I learned I unpinned, now I can advise others when the pin is inappropriate. Whenever this is done in the forum other onlookers learn what the standard is.

The people you listed including myself, the regular posters and repliers, are all that is needed to direct MOST cases of forum behaviour. If in the long run we can't control an area enough, fine try an lock it down.

Other forums have software and moderation features that people use because they are there, the misuse of these features is what kills "open forums".

Regards

Tony

Hi Tony

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[Jeremy Ruston]

Hi Tony

Are you still arguing that we should open up the group moderation settings again? The only rationale I’m hearing is that we can clear up any accidental moderation mistakes.

The primary reason that I’m not in favour of doing so is that it makes a poor experience for new or occasional users if they do something that they assumed to be private and find that it affects other people. I understand that you’re arguing that we can educate people, but I’ve argued below that people don’t read warnings (nor should they have to). Trying to educate people afterwards doesn’t work, because the user has already have the negative experience of their behaviour being called out by a moderator.

I’m very happy to continue to discuss it, but it would be helpful if you could  address the points that I’ve raised so far — in particular, I don’t think we should depart from the usual practices of open source communities by inventing our own way of doing things.

Best wishes

Jeremy

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