Should Simple be Suspended

Adminnemooseus is in charge of appointing and disappointing moderators. I'm not familiar with your posts here, we probably contribute to different threads, but if Adminnemooseus, from what he's read by you, thinks you'd make a good moderator, that is up to him. If your time here has been too brief to form an opinion he could wait until more time has passed, or he could give you a trial period as moderator.--Percy

Hi, all!After Simple's last reply to me (Message 187 of the Fossil sorting for simple thread), what were becoming serious doubts about whether Simple would ever turn the corner and begin discussing issues meaningfully now feel confirmed.Some members believed from outset that Simple was a troll, but my definition of a troll is one who's sole purpose is to frustrate and annoy, and while Simple is certainly doing that, he *does* seems sincerly interested in discussing the issues. I feel that his true problem is that he is poorly equipped both in terms of scientific knowledge and analytical thinking, and so I wanted to give him a chance to demonstrate even just the most modest improvement, or even just an awareness, perhaps, that his approach is inadequate. I engaged Simple in discussion and patiently explained the evidence behind current thinking over and over again. Several others made similar attempts.The result has been no change in Simple's behavior. If anything he's backslipping. Other moderators have already taken notice, he's already been suspended once, but before taking action this time I thought I would submit the question to the membership about what should be done. I invite comments from both sides of the debate. Relevant questions, and certainly not a complete list:

• Should we continue to engage Simple in the threads just as we already are?
• Would it be helpful if even fewer members engaged in dialogue with Simple?
• Would a different approach be helpful? Which one or ones?
• Would an Admin feature that could limit a member to n posts/day (easily done) be helpful?
• Are there any other board features that might prove helpful if they were made available?
• Would a mere casting out to the hinterlands (Free For All) be the recommended course?
• Is suspension the right course?

--PercyPS - Apologies to The Sound of Music

Here's a proposal:

1. Implement forum-by-forum privileges under the control of board administration. By default, privileges for all forums are on for every member.
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2. Add a new forum, name to be decided. Unlike Free For All it would be moderated, but only to provide feedback, and not so much by administrators and moderators, but more by those participating in the discussions. Name ideas:
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   Training Ground
   Minor Leagues
   Preseason
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3. Restrict Simple to the new forum and Free For All. Of course, he would also retain access to Suggestions, Practice Makes Perfect, etc.

I *do* carefully consider all feedback, and it is much appreciated. I likely won't make any changes we decide upon till the weekend, so Simple will have at least a few more days of unrestricted access.--Percy[This message has been edited by Percy, 02-11-2004]

Please keep the feedback and suggestions coming. To comment on just a couple things:

1. I like the idea of restricting a "debater in training" to just a thread or two. This still exposes the board to the danger of the thread equivalent of runaway subduction (meaning a very high post/minute rate), but everyone is different, and not all "debaters in training" would exhibit this behavior. And we need multiple tools in our toolbox.
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2. There is another similar tool which could be implemented which could limit a "debater in training" to a certain wait period between posts (easy to do), or to a certain post rate (probably easy to do, but I'd have to check a couple things to make sure).
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3. The idea of not listing the "training" threads with the other threads is a good one, but raises the question of where they would be listed. Wouldn't it be sufficient that they're listed with the training forum's name in the forum name column?

--Percy

I might have mentioned this once or twice in passing in other threads, but one of my long term plans (but hopefully this year) is to introduce a message rating system. The ratings members assign to messages would be roled up into a rating for each member. Sliding below a certain rating level would carry some automatic restrictions.There's a lot of issues here. For example, one disgruntled person could go around assigning a zero rating to every post from someone he's unhappy with (even posts that say, "See you when you get back", and so forth), so there would have to be some automated statistical analysis of the voting to detect and exclude anomalies like this. And it would have to be solid and reliable - we couldn't allow maintenance of member ratings to become an administrative headache.There should also be a horizon. Is it fair and does it make sense to include ratings from, say, over a year ago? As we've observed here, some people improve, and some people decline.--Percy

Programmers? That's programmers with an "s"? Wow!I've had nibbles of programming help from NosyNed and Joz (I think), but nothing's come through yet. I like your ideas a lot, but couldn't tell from them if you also have a software background. But if you do and you're interested in implementing some of your ideas, let me know.--Percy