[meteorite-list] Three Strikes and You're Out

From: Fred Bieler <fcb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:43:26 -0500
Message-ID: <000001ca2126$d90e5730$8b2b0590$_at_com>

One of the things my telescope business, Astronomics, allows me to do is own
the astronomy oriented forum at www.cloudynights.com. This is the largest,
and we believe the friendliest, astronomical forum site on the internet and
the official world-wide forums of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy.
We have over 33,000 registered users (some of whom are list members here).
When I checked a few minutes ago, we had 368 registered users online in the
middle of the day and a substantial number of anonymous users.

Granted, Cloudy Nights has a lot of volunteer moderators who monitor the
various fora full time and keep things civil, which is not something that
can be done here because of the small size of the meteorite community, but
there are a few things that might be worth considering.

The basic Cloudy Nights Terms of Service are as follow:
?Simply put, the following behavior is expected from users:
* Play Nice
* Share
* Be Polite
* Be Honest
* Respect other members & the administrators and moderators who are working
to keep this board a useful resource.
Above all, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.?

If you want to see the full Cloudy Nights Terms of Service, here?s a link:
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/233117/page
/0/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1.

If a Cloudy Nights user violates the TOS, the moderators can give the user a
warning strike and delete objectionable posts or portions of the post with
the concurrence of the other moderators. Next violation, another warning and
a second strike. Third strike, and it?s like baseball, you?re out (at least
for a while to give you time to cool off).

The moderators vote to give the user a three-day timeout (where the user
can?t post to the fora or reply to fora comments for three days). After a
three-day timeout, continued violations of the TOS result in another timeout
of three days or longer, while violations after multiple timeouts leading to
bans up to and including one for life. The moderators and administrators
invariably have extended discussions about the penalties out of view of the
general users before deciding on any of these steps.
?
While it is unlikely that this meteorite forum has enough members to allow
it to become a fully moderated forum like Cloudy Nights, Art might find it
worthwhile to consider applying the CN three strikes rule himself when it
comes to the flame wars and other uncivil emails that sometimes seem to far
outnumber the useful emails. When large numbers of list members complain
about the flame wars and the other members? failure to play nice, and some
leave the forum for good because all they find is post after post kvetching
and beating a dead horse, it might be time for the owner to apply a little
gentle pressure on the offending members in an effort to retain the members
who are being offended, rather than let them drift away. I?d rather lose a
few bad apples than have them put the entire orchard at risk.

Fred Bieler
Astronomics/Christophers, Ltd./Cloudy Nights
www.astronomics.com
800.422.7876



Fred Bieler
Astronomics/Christophers, Ltd./Better View Desired
www.astronomics.com
800.422.7876
Received on Wed 19 Aug 2009 07:43:26 PM PDT