Alex, sort it out.

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Yeah, he is. We've had members do it, before (start other sites); and, the last one started, that I know-of, is now a ghost town----IIRC, people didn't even visit there, for 6 months.

The site upgrade was a process that took a very long time and a lot of planning. They just happened to leave before the migration which had already been scheduled.

With regards to Jacoby specifically, I don't want to talk in too many details because he isn't here to defend himself, but over the years he's accrued quite a lot of warnings and he's been making quite a few posts recently which have included personal attacks. For example, about a month ago he made a post in which he accused me of supporting terrorism. If I'd seen that sort of comment directed at another user then I would have banned the person who said it without hesitation. I only didn't because I didn't want to seem like I was abusing my position.

I only just realised that he'd been banned. He made a post attacking a group of people in very harsh terms, in a way which is explicitly against PPR's rules. On another day he'd have probably got away with it, but he was banned by our most experienced moderator who is also one of the best moderators I've ever worked with. She is very capable of being impartial and making good decisions, and she always pools judgement when she is unsure how to proceed in a complex case. While we certainly disagree sometimes (particularly on complex cases), I know she usually has better judgement than me, particularly when it comes to right-wing users. I am quite biased in favour of right-wing users but XFiles successfully maintains impartiality.

For whatever reasons Alex is now actively attending to this site. No need to boycott. Time to cooperate.

Man, I am such a soft touch

Agreed. Thanks again Alex for all your work.

not that it makes any difference what i feel but i have huge respect for Adamantium and find em to be excellent too. impartial, measured and mod-like...if there is such a thing lol

wow, that's pretty poor didn't even visit for 6 months? jeezus.

when you put it like that, i can definitely see why he was reluctant (my other half). i'd hoped to twist his arm and get a small NT sub-section ...guess i just continue to float the way i have been (no jokes about floaters pls lol)

I do not think to many if any new web forums are having much success these days. The forums that became dominent when forums were still a big phenomena are strugging themselves or have monopolized their niche by default.

As much as we like to consider ourselves different from the rest of the world, our herd mentality as a species and basic levels of vanity draw us to sites that are populated over those that are not.

We want to be exposed to new people, people we want to be accepted by, people who are popular, people we don't like in order to stick it to 'em. Heck, we just want to be noticed by lots of people. You don't get that on a startup forum. What you do get is a skeleton team and community dedicated to a cause, mission or set ideology which with enough determination will draw the crowds that bigger places like WrongPlanet does.

Boycotting WP solves nothing in this case and Alex has finally come out of the woodwork (I see you there, man, greeting the hot Scandinavian chicks in GTKEO, peeking in the women's forum ). So let's make an open dialogue!

Alex, I don't feel private comms or simply countering our problems with questions and assumptions is a viable option at this point given how many have tried. You seem to affirm this by telling people with one hand to PM you, then on the other saying the site gets 20,000 hits a day as if that means you get 20,000 emails a day which results in you struggling to respond in realistic timeframes. That along with questioning your userbase or narrowing down concerns to others' negativity or trolling shows avoidance and not a wish to tackle the issues. I fear stating such a criticism in the open for fear of being stalked on the forum, or banished from the site. So imagine how someone might feel if they did this privately without anyone else's knowledge. Thoughts might go through one's head about having the online equivalent of men in black suits dragging them into a van and them ending up on a milk carton. But I digress. So where do the problems that people moan about stem from?

A number of problems I see with the forum stem from the extreme version of what are perceived to be Western values and social justice infringing on impartial moderation. Pro conservative and trump threads are shut down, rather than the users disrupting them being moderated. A good case in point, mods seem to be using sock puppets that form a Strawman conservative of sexist as an opportunity to shut down a thread they don't like, instead of just banning or warning the users. Same goes for any thread where a woman claims to be attacked. A valid criticism is raised, they cry wolf, other user gets moderated or thread gets locked instead of the man and the woman arguing being given a "time out". While this happens less now, it happened a lot in 2012 and 2013. And, what about threads that challenge certain belief systems whether they are religious or political, especially when done so with undeniable articles of fact? They are magiced away from the boards and no mod owns up to it - your own response is that "it must be trolling", as if taking some sort of relief in factual evidence must be trolling! But of course! I think these sorts of things are what needs to stop.

People can put up with bugs on the forum, and to a degree....the spam. But in my mind what is bothersome is thought policing, followed by gaslighting from the very people policing the thought by telling them such things didn't happen or simply staying silent when they have no doubt read the feedback, questioning the very existence of such activity or even brow beating the people that challenge it as wearing tin foil hats or that it's because something was awry in the content..even if it doesn't impose on the guidelines of the forums. Gaslighting is very harmful to people on the spectrum as well as vulnerable people in society. This should not be happening on this place of all places, would you not agree? As of course, the original activity should not be happening.

I'm aware that being a moderator is a thankless job but I don't think such a comment begins to address the above, or justifies such behaviour as a perk of moderation. I also appreciate your life has moved on from 2004 and there are a lot of important engagements in it, that is perfectly reasonable and understandable. But what I see here is complacency, as if WP is too big to fail or be challenged by another "safe space" type arena as far as forums or resources go. It would go a long way to explaining the lack of attention to forum maintenance (though I must at least commend you've made a good effort with the filters this week and I hope it works to the best advantage of everyone).

To conclude my rant, I doubt I'll use any other site relating to AS, and that is also part of the problem. Even those who threaten to leave return here, or those banned try and find ways back onto the site. I doubt any of the above will be truly addressed until people begin to think "enough is enough". Secretly or not so secretly, everyone likes it here from what I gather. That is a testament to both the greatness of WP as much as it is detrimental to its improvement.

in truth, some good points and i totally agree with you and i also understood why my other half objected. i guess i just wanted somewhere where i may "fit".
this is a place of belonging for those on the spectrum and that's cool. it's great that it exists. albeit it's been neglected for too long and moderation is hit n miss...
for me, it's been helpful on the odd occasion when i have been struggling to make sense of something in my personal life (he's not the best talker lol)...it's just people like me fall into that grey area of not belonging anywhere really. neither my own side, nor yours.
i still pass thru and post where i feel i can contribute but, i'm aware i don't fully understand what it is to have AS and nor will i ever, really and truly, understand. maybe i should try and look for a support forum for NTs that are with HFAs instead.

anyway, fingers crossed, it would appear as tho alex is finally listening. useful, as many have much to say.

I don't think this is a remotely accurate portrayal.

The bolded section particularly confuses me. Taken literally, it would suggest that the worst conservatives are actually mods, creating fake accounts in order to make conservatives seem ridiculous and shut down conservative discussions. I'm not sure whether that's what you meant but there are several blatant holes in that theory.

Quite a lot of moderation goes on "behind closed doors" in the form of warnings. When a thread is locked because users are breaking the rules, the chances are that the users will also receive warnings. When a thread really has been derailed, and public posts by mods have not changed the tone, then locking it is the only real course of action left.

I don't systematically keep track of every occasion when another mod deletes a thread. Personally, I only delete spam and really outstanding rule breaks (threats, major abuse, piracy) but even that is rare. If mods are disappearing threads that don't break any rules regularly then that's a problem but I don't see any evidence that it is happening. Obviously gathering evidence would be hard but I strongly suspect this is a mountain being made out of a molehill. Perhaps the new spam filters will make it easier to tell when threads are deleted. But without actual evidence of wrongdoing it's impossible to take any action to correct the alleged wrongdoing.

I apologise it was badly worded. I'm not surprised you took it that way so let me rephrase it - mods see what are obvious sock puppets as opportunities to shut down debates they do not favour IMO rather than tackling the problems at their source (the perpetrators) and allowing debate to continue, heated or not. You claim a lot happens behind the scenes before it gets to such a stage and I have only your words to go on so I'll accept this as your statement but will choose to hold my own belief on the matter.

Re: The Paul Daniels thread effect - The problem you have is what evidence will you have that mods are disappearing threads if they can be even disappeared from the archive? You'd have no proof it was going on as much as we'd have no proof our posts even existed and it's proving extremely difficult to discuss disappearing threads as no one owns up to doing it and it's dismissed as a negative we must all instantly forget about. I won't go into this one in detail (settle down, Campin Cat!) but when mods are altering our threads and titles on threads they do not support, then doubling down on it and making claims about the validity of our own accounts of events, it's hard to have faith on this matter as well.

For the most part I see the mods doing a fine job. You're all human, the work is thankless and frankly I wouldn't wish it upon myself or others. I'll continue to uphold the belief that biases and complacency from the top-down do affect moderation and a trust issue between staff and community, though, because there have been a few examples in such a short span of time. FWIW, a couple of minor things noted recently (inc. filters and talking to us) are moving things in the right direction, so thanks alex and Walrus for chiming in. It's not without insight and appreciation.

The mods seem like they would have the best knowledge of sock puppetry, so I don't understand that part.

Agreed. However, my point was that a sock puppet could be used as a disingenuous pretext to close a thread, as alluded to by another person in this sub forum, and not understanding that does not necessarily mean it can't or doesn't happen.

Also, the way my first post was worded was awful on that part, so to get a better understanding of what I meant the post above yours is best for reference.

So, a conspiracy?

Ignoring known sock puppets en masse?

No jrjones. Exactly as I said it.
Using them as disingenuous pretexts to shut down political discourse that is not favoured.

If you're not sure what that means - here is an example of what it means, though not necessarily the reality of the situation: "Oh, I know that's a sock puppet trolling the thread with extreme versions of Conservative views. I could just ban them and clean up the topic, orrrrr, I could use this as an excuse to close the thread!"

But I'm guessing you knew what I meant, really, and am perplexed as why you have to query something so black and white even further. I like to think you're quite intelligible and knew what the words "disingenuous" and "pretext" would mean. I guess I could have said "false pretext", or simply "pretext" as the other two could be interpreted as double negatives.. but there you go.