From the Support and Moderation Board (staff-only)

Quote:

That was a reference to this post -
http://www.yabbforum.com/community/YaBB.pl?num=1343690018#9

Tea-Master also made some very good suggestions about what constitutes a good support environment.
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S0 -

With many thanks to everyone (particularly xnoddyx and Tea-Master) that got me thinking about this, I have added a variety of new Categories/Boards to a 'Members' section.

I set the 'bar' to 'Junior Member' (50 posts), after using the Member List sorted on Post Count to see who might be left out.

Right now there are TWO Member Sections -

The Lounge - with Discussion Boards, plus a couple of additions that are popular on YaBB Forums I run personally.

Area 51 - A place for Boards on data, integration, engineering and thoughts on bigger, better "YaBB's".  It will probably also get a 'virtualization' board, perhaps also one on server administration.  Its NOT a support board - its a 'how-to' place.

There are several huge benefits (as I see it)...

1. It focuses the forum on its two real missions - Providing Support for YaBB, and helping to tell the YaBB 'story'.  The best way to see what I mean is to logout, and view it as a 'Guest' (which is what I did before I turned off Maintenance Mode.)  Its a pure support forum now.

2. It provides an area where people who are truly interested in YaBB, but are not 'staff' can post their ideas and comments without the possibility of search engines indexing them. It also reduces my need for a moderation/posting policy.  You still cannot make ad-hominem attacks or defame people - period/full stop.

3.  Final Benefit -  This also cuts off one of the favorite places for 'Hu-bot' (paid poster) Spammers to post on YaBBforum.com.

Thanks

I would generally be against restricting any part of YaBB to new members, or less active ones, partly because it cuts down on a public forum's transparency, but mainly because it's yet another restrictive way to operate a public forum.

However, I really appreciate the good intentions of this kind of restriction. So the positive spin I'll put on it personally is that this area of the forum would kind of be like a staff only area with extra members who aren't actually on the staff.

If as it now seems this forum will moderate with reasoned actions versus threats of probation, and subsequent banishment, I think over time people will come back to participate. They will no longer fear posting something that will get them in trouble.

New members who post will feel more respected, which will give them the encouragement to be an active participant in YaBB's community.

JonB wrote on Aug 4^th, 2012 at 4:40pm:

As for the privilege of participation, let's not conveniently forget why it is that this idea came to be, and that is, it's a design to limit or stop altogether any criticism of YaBB. This of course can be a positive; not a negative, which is another reason I'm tentatively supporting it.

Mind you, it's not a matter of if, or when, but it's a matter of time when in fact one or more new members will criticize YaBB for one thing or another simply because there may be a problem.

As such, to move such criticism over to an area of YaBB that only allows those who are privileged enough to participate would effectively delete those posts, which of course would be ugly censorship. YaBB's community at large won't understand the well intentioned reasons for this, and the forum community at large will continue to see YaBB as an unfriendly place.

The real solution to manage criticism of YaBB is to fix whatever problems are reported, or at least explain with sincerity that said problems are being worked on, and will hopefully result in a timely fix.

xnoddyx wrote on Aug 4^th, 2012 at 7:11pm:

Let's not conveniently forget that posts in Praise and Feedback have been deleted for no valid reason (even in the Talk It Up section posts have been deleted in the same unprofessional way).

But that was then ... very recently ... and this is now. Let's see if YaBB has actually gotten past this. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I'm always trusting that it will; get past it that is.

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What happens in the effectively sealed off portion of The Lounge directly affects YaBB, arguably much more than anywhere else with the exception of staff only areas, and email trees.

It's what I would call an inconvenient truth.  

Nonetheless, I still support this means of moderation as long as new members, and existing members can post what they want about YaBB, good or bad. I simply pointed out that I hope threats of probation and subsequent banishment are now part of YaBB's past. There are better ways to handle "negative" posts.

In practice throughout YaBB's existence, what's happened is that relatively small groups of members who become YaBB's leadership end up operating this forum as if it's their own private forum.

As such, anything that doesn't conform to their small world view ends up being trashed; sometimes literally, and that's included the banning of otherwise good, and well intentioned members of YaBB's community at large. Even some of YaBB's most ardent supporters have left in disgust.

So to date, whenever things have changed, the more they've stayed the same. The only real difference is that the names of YaBB's leadership have changed from time to time.

What's fascinating to me is that some of YaBB's current leadership are the very ones who have vociferated their own frustrations about YaBB, and quite harshly I might add. Not here, but in other YaBB forums.

Interestingly, as it's been publicly stated, these same people haven't wanted to post their negative comments in this forum because they didn't want to be branded as a troublemaker (I've paraphrased).

In any case, the only way that YaBB will change for the best is when a group of leaders come along who realize that YaBB needs to operate this forum as a public forum versus a private one. Unfortunately, only the most talented of professionals know how to do this, and they are obviously hard to find.

What happens here doesn't stay here. What happens here in this forum, even when attempts are made to hide various comments from the general public, is a mirror on how YaBB itself operates as an open source project.

Think about it. Please. Really think about it.