Birkal
We have the technology.
I know this thread is considerably late in the Policy Review cycle for CAP 20, but it's something that has been on the back of my mind for quite some time. Our current policy for thread hogging varies significantly from stage to stage of the CAP Process. Our most lax rules are found in the competitive stages, particularly during Concept Assessment and all Movepool Discussion threads. In those stages, deleting posts is not only at moderator discretion, but even slanted towards the scope of competitive CAP moderators. On the other hand, our flavor submissions have the most stringent of thread hogging rules, most notably the Art Submissions thread, where we have extremely limiting guidelines on post timing and post content.
This can get frustrating for both moderators and contributors, naturally. So as a Policy Review Committee, we need to consider what we value most. As a community project, we want everyone's contribution to have equal opportunity to be seen/read. Threadhoggers infringe on that, knowingly or unknowingly. Therefore, what rules are reasonable to manage threadhogging?
I have a few proposals here for us to consider. Remember, the goal here is to make sure everyone's contributions are visible. The amount of work required by moderators or what "feels right" may not actually be our best selection.
So what do you think? Again, please respond to the bolded questions above before siding with an option. Thanks for your time!
This can get frustrating for both moderators and contributors, naturally. So as a Policy Review Committee, we need to consider what we value most. As a community project, we want everyone's contribution to have equal opportunity to be seen/read. Threadhoggers infringe on that, knowingly or unknowingly. Therefore, what rules are reasonable to manage threadhogging?
I have a few proposals here for us to consider. Remember, the goal here is to make sure everyone's contributions are visible. The amount of work required by moderators or what "feels right" may not actually be our best selection.
1) Relax the posting rules on flavor threads (particularly Art Submissions), but still maintain threadhogging rules. With this, I propose we set a 48 hour limit on all posters in flavor threads. If you have something new to post, edit it into your original post. Otherwise, take a chill pill and wait out the remaining hours. This would be much more simplistic and easy to understand, yet still impose some hard limits for moderators to utilize.
2) Remove posting restrictions entirely and leave the management of threadhogging up to the moderators. This option would open us up to accusations of bias, but it is a more consistent way of managing threadhogging. Be cautioned that threadhogging could still occur when a moderator is not online (although I suppose this could still happen in Option 1). It frees posters while instituting a gray area of interpretation for moderators.
3) Tighten the posting restrictions on competitive stages. Currently, most of our competitive stages are moderated at the discretion of the moderators and the topic leaders. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it may inadvertently cause threadhogging and derail a discussion. Topic leaders may also have different definitions of what constitutes as threadhogging, which can result in butting heads with the CAP moderation team.
4) Some other proposal that I haven't listed here. There are a lot of ways we could solve this problem.
2) Remove posting restrictions entirely and leave the management of threadhogging up to the moderators. This option would open us up to accusations of bias, but it is a more consistent way of managing threadhogging. Be cautioned that threadhogging could still occur when a moderator is not online (although I suppose this could still happen in Option 1). It frees posters while instituting a gray area of interpretation for moderators.
3) Tighten the posting restrictions on competitive stages. Currently, most of our competitive stages are moderated at the discretion of the moderators and the topic leaders. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it may inadvertently cause threadhogging and derail a discussion. Topic leaders may also have different definitions of what constitutes as threadhogging, which can result in butting heads with the CAP moderation team.
4) Some other proposal that I haven't listed here. There are a lot of ways we could solve this problem.
So what do you think? Again, please respond to the bolded questions above before siding with an option. Thanks for your time!