5tevie
Newbie
Maybe I shouldn't post about other forums but I wanted a good rant so here goes.
As you may or may not know, eBay has discussion forums for its members. These forums are split into various sections with some being specifically for things like Books, Motors etc and some are for any kind of off-eBay chat. I use the latter kind, mainly the Round Table forum.
Now, as you can imagine, eBay has sites all over the world and many forums on each site. This makes moderation tricky to say the least so what eBay has done is hire the services of a company called Liveworld to do the moderation for them. Now, Liveworld don't actually read the posts as a first line of defence against wrong doers. Liveworld depends on other forum users clicking on a "Report" button which appears on every post. The report button is unanimous so nobody on the forum knows who pressed it.
That's where the trouble starts.
The guidelines for what is allowed and what isn't allowed on the forums is known as the BUP (Board Usage Policy) and it is worded in such a way that even posting a smilie face can get you in trouble. If you post anything that breaks the rules of the BUP and get reported, this can have 1 of 2 results. One is that the report is ignored because the Liveworld rep doesn't consider the post to have broken the rules. On the other hand, the Liveworld rep can remove your post and issue you with a warning. If you get 3 warnings you get banned for a week. Get another warning and you get banned for 30 days. After that, you get banned for life.
People say, it's just a forum and there are plenty of others around, but those folk are missing the point. I have been on that forum since 20th of March 2001. It's my PC's Home page and I read and post there every single day.
So just imagine this scenario. Some guy gets a ban for posting porn. He has no idea who pressed the report button on him but he blames any or all of the regulars so goes back over the last 2 weeks of posts and reports every post made by 15 or so posters. Does Liveworld stop and think, "Mmmmm, Maybe this is some kind of malicious reporting". ....... No, they just either issue slaps or ignore depending on the actual post. Now, bearing in mind that there is this thing now about staying on topic, you can get a warning for just saying something like, "Hi Bren. How's your back since the op?"
Oh, and get this. It is a verified fact that one rule laid down by eBay when the contract was given to Liveworld was that under no circumstances should Liveworld enter into any kind of discussion with eBay members. So that means that when you write a long post to the Round Table forum, maybe as long as this post, if somebody clicks the report button and a Liveworld employee checks the post and finds fault with it, what happens is this ..... You get an e-mail from Liveworld and this e-mail has a bit saying that you broke a rule followed by your post IN FULL. then follows something along the lines of .... This post has been removed because we do not allow profanity, vulgarity, hate speech, disruptive, or hostile comments, interpersonal disputes or threats of violence in a post.
Here's the kicker. There is no indication as to which part of your post broke a rule. How difficult would it be, when copy/pasting the post into the e-mail, to just highlight the naughty bit? This would achieve 2 things that have caused an awful lot of concern. It would prove beyond doubt that the Liveworld employee had actually read the post as opposed to just issuing the warning. Plus, it would tell you exactly where you had gone wrong and maybe give grounds to dispute the warning with a forum manager who has the power to over-ride any slaps if he/she feels that a warning was uncalled for.
Rant over ...... for now.
As you may or may not know, eBay has discussion forums for its members. These forums are split into various sections with some being specifically for things like Books, Motors etc and some are for any kind of off-eBay chat. I use the latter kind, mainly the Round Table forum.
Now, as you can imagine, eBay has sites all over the world and many forums on each site. This makes moderation tricky to say the least so what eBay has done is hire the services of a company called Liveworld to do the moderation for them. Now, Liveworld don't actually read the posts as a first line of defence against wrong doers. Liveworld depends on other forum users clicking on a "Report" button which appears on every post. The report button is unanimous so nobody on the forum knows who pressed it.
That's where the trouble starts.
The guidelines for what is allowed and what isn't allowed on the forums is known as the BUP (Board Usage Policy) and it is worded in such a way that even posting a smilie face can get you in trouble. If you post anything that breaks the rules of the BUP and get reported, this can have 1 of 2 results. One is that the report is ignored because the Liveworld rep doesn't consider the post to have broken the rules. On the other hand, the Liveworld rep can remove your post and issue you with a warning. If you get 3 warnings you get banned for a week. Get another warning and you get banned for 30 days. After that, you get banned for life.
People say, it's just a forum and there are plenty of others around, but those folk are missing the point. I have been on that forum since 20th of March 2001. It's my PC's Home page and I read and post there every single day.
So just imagine this scenario. Some guy gets a ban for posting porn. He has no idea who pressed the report button on him but he blames any or all of the regulars so goes back over the last 2 weeks of posts and reports every post made by 15 or so posters. Does Liveworld stop and think, "Mmmmm, Maybe this is some kind of malicious reporting". ....... No, they just either issue slaps or ignore depending on the actual post. Now, bearing in mind that there is this thing now about staying on topic, you can get a warning for just saying something like, "Hi Bren. How's your back since the op?"
Oh, and get this. It is a verified fact that one rule laid down by eBay when the contract was given to Liveworld was that under no circumstances should Liveworld enter into any kind of discussion with eBay members. So that means that when you write a long post to the Round Table forum, maybe as long as this post, if somebody clicks the report button and a Liveworld employee checks the post and finds fault with it, what happens is this ..... You get an e-mail from Liveworld and this e-mail has a bit saying that you broke a rule followed by your post IN FULL. then follows something along the lines of .... This post has been removed because we do not allow profanity, vulgarity, hate speech, disruptive, or hostile comments, interpersonal disputes or threats of violence in a post.
Here's the kicker. There is no indication as to which part of your post broke a rule. How difficult would it be, when copy/pasting the post into the e-mail, to just highlight the naughty bit? This would achieve 2 things that have caused an awful lot of concern. It would prove beyond doubt that the Liveworld employee had actually read the post as opposed to just issuing the warning. Plus, it would tell you exactly where you had gone wrong and maybe give grounds to dispute the warning with a forum manager who has the power to over-ride any slaps if he/she feels that a warning was uncalled for.
Rant over ...... for now.
