Over the last couple of days, I have noticed that the number of rude and obscene comments in posts by some members (to fellow members) seems to have increased. I am not going to mention names, but this is very disheartening and I think the moderators need to clamp down on this, so that we get back to the business of helping people instead of seeing threads full of swear words and personal attacks. If the people who are not playing along nicely with everybody else and have been warned about their behaviour by the moderators , do not comply with the LQ rules then I think they should be excluded from posting on the site. What do others think?

I would note 2 things:
1. If members aren't reported, we often don't notice. I have noticed that reports are increasing, but I think that a part of the problem is that members try to deal with it themselves. This leads to flame wars and potential bannings for all involved.

2. We are fairly lenient at LQ and don't ban people on a first offence generally. I can think of a few productive members who had a rocky start.

All I would say to all members is that if you have a problem with another member or think they are breaking the rules, report them.

reddazz, just to reiterate what XavierP said, if you see something you think is questionable please do make sure to report it.

--jeremy

Ban the people who have no respect for others

WE don't just ban anyone for breaking a rule. Repeat offenders who are warned usually get banned. This is not like other forums, we do give chances on legitimate members. Only under certain circumstances do members get banned after 3 or less verbal warnings, either in the forums or private thru email.

I agree that people should not be banned for first time violations of the rules, its the repeat offenders that I was mainly concerned about. Anyway if more people are reporting such issues and they are getting resolved then thats fine.

Hi redazz,

I totally agree that there are a small number of members who really relish in personal attacks or who insult people (even without using swear words).

Somewhere the line has to be drawn between a positive criticism and a blatant insult. More often than not, I think that many people get away insulting others because they don't use foul language, but their intent is to denigrate and insult.

I think that we need more moderators who are exclusive to the General Forum because currently the current moderators are very hard-pressed to manage several different forums etc.

We also need to put an end to the neverending cycle of Windows vs. Linux or Linux-bashing threads. Ok, we welcome opinions here, but sometimes we can have too many topics covering the same subject over and over again and that is frustrating for the regular forum users to see the same old threads coming to the top of the forum all the time.

We need a clear policy for this, I believe to prevent this kind of neverending Linux vs. Windows trolling.

You can't do that much about some irritated people. Everything can't be moderated either. I have seen worse on a linux forum who had to close for a while.

Please remain calm there is not much too see or to think about...

A person who has no respect for others, has no respect for itself.
M. Cheeks , Facts of life, 01/06/2005,

Is the consensus that we need more mods in General?

--jeremy

Personally I don't think we do. There is always going to be the small amount of people that indirectly make fun of others without using harsh words and such, but to me, if we cracked down on every single incident in which it occurs, we're only going to be the police to others and not the members who help others find solutions/answers, etc.
Sure we have more privileges than regular members to try and keep the forums sane but I don't think the moderators should be looked upon to nit pick every single incident, that would get very tiresome and most likely burned out. And its hard to say at times if someone is truly joking or serious. I think at times when a member is a little more harsh to someone who's asked the same question that could have been found by searching posts within the hour is sometimes called for..

Just all depends on the situation really. But no, I don't think we seriously need more moderators in General. I see more reported posts elsewhere in the forums than in General nowadays.

Well it wouldn't hurt anyhow. Of course, I'm not blaming the current mods or anything, but everyone doesn't have time to spend at LQ.org and monitor the forums (which are getting busier by the day) and of course a lot of the mods have to do a lot of forums (including sub-forums).

More mods can help, but of course, it's your call ultimately whether you feel that it's all right as it is.

There are periods of "disturbance" if you can catch my meaning, but then I did notice sometimes it does take a lot of time for mods to respond to threads that spiral out of control (of course it happens) and of course some members take it upon themselves to "back-seat moderate" which inflames situations even more.

Admittedly a rare event, but it does happen from time to time. We also have a lot of useless Linux v Windows threads that refuse to keep dying in General (you know what I mean ) and these threads also need to be monitored more or simply closed keeping just a couple of topics for each open.

Not just the Linux vs. Foo threads, but the "my distribution can beat up your distribution" threads need to die a painful death as well.

As a moderator and a member of this forum, I would love to see the "versus" type threads or "which is better" or "which one should I use" type threads all dissappear as well, but that's in a perfect world.
Even with a team of moderators twice the size of what we have now, why keep wasted time trying to prevent what is always going to occur? To me, the obvious one's should get the occasional closing or relinked or merged to another existing thread, but trying to nab them all would be valuable time wasted to me.
Technically I became a member here to help others and answer questions and not spend my whole time trying to prevent the repeated questions. Sure I grab a few here and there but I see it being pointless to try and get all of them, its just not going to happen and members are always going to ask such questions or start such threads. And most of the time a majority of them either die off and are harmless, why bother, they aren't hurting anything, so its better to just let them be most of the time. Members who have been around long enough know to avoid them or even point the members to the existing threads, etc.

Yes. Although I've not really seen too many of these turn nasty. Yes there is one incident that I recall recently, but then I guess we Linux brothers and sisters generally tend to stick together

You're right. It's not the genuine repeat questions that I'm targetting but the trolls. You know, the one who starts off all the rants and not asks a question. It's amazing to see how much members still continue to feed these oft-repeated, totally useless threads...