On Forum Moderation

[Claude]

Hello,

I also think forum moderation is too relaxed (though I wouldn't 
have said that 6 years ago).

I do not think it's pacifism that kills forums/newsgroup, but 
what I would rather call chaos or anarchy, so in other words, the 
lack of rules and lack of rule enforcement.

The D community gathers very skilled people. It's a thrilling 
experience to be part of that.

But it's sad to see every now and then threads like "Why D is 
dead" or "20 things D needs to be great", etc. It's sad because:
1- It's usually negative non-constructive criticism. It's often 
poorly formulated. It usually raises problems that have already 
been discussed.
2- It gives the impression that anyone can come up with its 
desiderata, and dump it on the forum expecting to be taken 
seriously.
3- Worse than that, it wastes the valuable time of some more 
experienced good-willed members who take the time to reply to 
that.

We can get more accurate and serious feedback via polls or some 
statistics.

Well yes, we are all adults, but there is a great difference 
between a 25-year old impatient guy who just came out of school 
and knows nothing about the industry (and it's not his fault, 
obviously) and a 60-year old dude who has hundreds of thousands 
of line of code behind him.

To say it bluntly, I find some guys show very little respect to D 
leadership (or other members) work. And, as we cannot change 
people (or judge them, in some philosophical sense), the D 
leadership should strengthen the moderation. It might be 
counter-intuitive, but to preserve peace, I reckon it's better to 
have clear rules (even if too much restrictive), at least 
everyone knows where are the boundaries, than no rules at all 
(which in fact is always the untold rules of the strongest within 
a false liberal paradise).

So I think D forums need better tools to do moderation:
- Allow to move threads.
- Kick/ban users.
- Have a visible pinned thread containing all the rules 
(netiquette etc) so it is obvious what is OK and what is not.
- And a "bad cop" moderator who will have to take on himself the 
mundane task of enforcing the rules and likely being detested for 
that (but that's part of the job, you have to be wise, fair and 
have some sense of irony).

Claude