community site issue - moderators

[aqyera]

This is a complaint to Ebay Canada about site moderators.

Sometimes their application of board guidelines is far fetched and some of them are mistaking their job of moderators with that of a babysitters. We are not 5yr old kids. Lately they started scrutinizing topicality of particular replies, which is yet another all time low. Is this some kind of new community culture originating from Ebay Management or it's just moderators going a bit out of line? I am asking, because I would like to know if we should continue volunteering our time to Ebay Community site or we should move out.

[pocomocomputing]

The moderators are there to keep posts within a topic on-topic and not to degenerate into personal disputes. The times I have seen the moderators step in and post a comment that a topic is going off topic. Once or twice a topic was closed because it was going badly off-topic with personal disputes.

If you read the community guidelines, you will see that they are enforcing eBay community guidelines.

It is not the moderators that are going out of line but the some posters with some of their comments.

eBay forums are not an open social forums with no rules. I would rather have these forums with some moderation and enforcement of rules that the old forums of years ago where there were personal attacks and personal disputes.

[pierrelebel]

Interesting question.

We do not live in a perfect world.

If we compare how Lithium monitors the discussion boards with LiveWorld, Lithium wins hands down.

Yes, it does take some time getting used to how the staff at Lithium interact with users and how threads and posts with some offending information are edited instead of being pulled.  This is a huge improvement.

That being said, the new monitors come in without baggage. They do not know which poster was a regular "scufflaw", constantly ignoring rules, policies and warnings ("pinkslaps" in the old days). 

I do not know if they understand that many users post using two or many posting IDs.

All in all I thing we are better served today than we were five months ago by LiveWorld.

Those who expect eBay's discussion boards to be a "free for all" where everything goes without censure should look for other forums. 

[aqyera]

Unfortunately that is not my opinion.

This board is over-moderated and if members do no like it, they simply leave, so it's no surprise most voices in this thread are from those liking being babysited, because those are only voices left. There is about 10-20 regulars on this board, some practically live here, plus occasional flyby who comes, whines about GSP and nevers comes back.

There were couple people in eBay Cafee I liked to read and some of them do not show up anymore and there do not seem to be any new regulars coming in. So despite guys above liking the board as it is, as board becomes deserted and regulars get more dominant, I appeal to management to pull the stats and see. This board is becoming stale and boring and I am positive it's because of moderators.

If the point of this board existence is to be private club for the 10 regulars, please excuse my intrusion.

[pierrelebel]

"as board becomes deserted..."

That is correct.  And what caused that situation? 

The lack of involvement by LiveWorld monitors. Most regulars from five or ten years ago gave up when LiveWorld did not get involved and stopped some of the nonsense that was going on, caused by a few unhappy trolls.

Where are those posters today?  Many seem to have moved to Facebook and other online media.  They are missed here.

The current monitoring by Lithium is not the problem.  The lack of consistent and competent monitoring by LiveWorld was.

The rules and policy have not changed in fifteen years.  They are not the problem.