vpFREE2 Forums

Why moderating forums are such a pain

In the last digest, there was a triple post reply regarding a very good trip
report. Each time the post repeated the complete text of the original trip
report which greatly expanded the digest but did not increase the quality of
the trip report fourfold.

Since the digests are text, all these emails don't take up much space on a
computer but I was thinking what a pain it would be to moderate this forum
due to repetition like this & due to the volume of posts.

Imagine what you have to do as a moderator.

You literally have to read ALL that is posted.

Even if it's a complete repetition of a prior post.

Because you have no idea if there are comments that are inserted.

Another habit that makes it difficult is when replies are indistinguishable
from the original post.

Who said what? Is this person arguing with him/herself?

As a reader, I can skip most of this as extraneous.

I can only imagine what Tom goes through & how much time it takes.

It takes only a few seconds to highlight the relevant material for your reply
(sometimes it's just the subject line, people) or place brackets in the right
places to indicate which part was the original post. All of this would make
your meaning clearer, avoid confusion and show some consideration. All right
I'll say it, pretty please with cream and sugar on it???

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

You forgot to mention that on top of all Tom does to moderate, he does a
lot to add value to the list, such as the database, the polls, and the
COW. All of these things make the list more interesting and valuable.
Thanks, Tom!

icroyals

···

-----Original Message-----
From: TedChee@aol.com [mailto:TedC…@…com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 6:17 AM
To: vpFREE@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [vpFREE] Why moderating forums are such a pain

[snip]

Imagine what you have to do as a moderator.

[snip]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]