On Forum Moderation

[IGotD-]

On Saturday, 19 October 2019 at 12:59:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> From the time I first visited the D newsgroups in 2003 until 
> now, it has always been an open forum. Heated discussions have 
> always popped up from time to time, but rarely has there been 
> the need to ban anyone. Since I joined the moderation team, 
> I've been following the loose policy that Walter has always 
> espoused, which is something along the lines of "maintain 
> professional decorum".
>
> Granted, certain posts can really stretch the boundaries of 
> "professional decorum", but I think that's perfectly fine. 
> We're all adults here and should be able to handle verbal barbs 
> now and again. Where the moderators draw the line is when the 
> verbal jousting turns nasty. We have deleted posts in such 
> cases, but again, that's quite rare.
>
> In my own opinion, what we should not start doing is banning 
> people simply for expressing displeasure with the language or 
> disagreement with its leadership. Yes, I understand that there 
> are a handful of people who seem to do nothing but spread 
> negativity and be contrarian. I disagree with almost everything 
> those guys post. But that *is not* a bannable offense, nor 
> should it be.
>
> I also don't want to be deleting negative posts just because 
> they're negative. Then we get into the business of deleting 
> replies that quote them, and maybe even losing some actual 
> useful signal in all the noise.
>
> If such posts bother you, then simply ignore them. Don't reply. 
> Even better, don't read any posts by that person at all. D is 
> not a religion and there's no need to get upset or take it 
> personally when someone comes here and says negative things 
> about it. Just keep on doing what you do and forget about it. 
> We as a community are not going to suffer from negative forum 
> posts unless we allow ourselves to suffer. And no, it's not 
> going to hurt us in the world at large. We've suffered worse on 
> reddit.
>
> If you do feel the need to reply to specific criticisms, make 
> sure you are in a proper state of mind before putting fingers 
> to keyboard so that you can keep it focused on the criticisms 
> and not take it personal.
>
> That said, it would be nice to have a means to lock a thread 
> that has become unproductive (I would have locked the feedback 
> thread by now). But we don't have that and we aren't going to 
> as long as we are backed by a newsgroup.

The best forums on the net seems to moderate the topic not the 
conduct so much unless it is outright illegal. However, in order 
to keep thread topics on topic I think there must be moderation 
of the topic so that the threads don't derail. I think that the D 
forum should try a similar approach. Moderators should also have 
the "break out thread" option, creating a new thread for someone 
who went OT but still has a interesting post.

If someone want to express the general hate for D for some 
reason, then they must create a thread for this and not infest an 
existing thread about some other technical issue. Some people 
have opinions about leadership and which direction D should take, 
they should be allowed to express their opinion but in a thread 
dedicated for that topic in particular.

I don't want a "sterile" forum, I can take a punch. People who 
can objectively argument in the subject are the winners and the 
ones who behave badly just degrade themselves anyway.