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Bob Dobbs
Quibuz


No offence to you or anyone, but since when do mods receive training? For if they did, there wouldn't be so many discrepancies between their verdicts on certain types of contents of reported posts/treads. I often had to direct a moderator to the specific text in the R&G or ToS and even to the PG. So as far as i know there is no training given to moderators whatsoever. I think their qualifications are "show proof of breathing for at least 18 years", "the amount of posts made by them in the forums" and "the amount of reports they made before becoming a moderator". I think that in many cases the greeterfellow from wallmart has better qualifications than some of the moderators on this site.


Since the first Mod on Gaia, but you prefer being a sour pickle about it.

http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/featured-announcements/apply-to-become-a-gaia-moderator/t.30631407/?login_success=1359781741

Quote:

We have divided the areas of the website that require support and member services and named leaders to each of these areas. These leaders will be building a group of responsible moderators under their direction and will ensure their realm of responsibility is covered. Each team will have a specialty that they will concentrate on, which will provide Gaia with total coverage from Minigames to PM’s.

Moderators will have strict quality prerequisites to meet, and will be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure maximum education and fairness. Discipline amongst our ranks and adherence to our refined Terms of Service (Still under construction) will maximize our relationships with our members. A new Help Center will one day replace our Rules and Guidelines page to provide even more information.

A complete and built-from-the-ground-up training center and team has been feverishly working on defining in hard terms what it is to be a Gaia moderator, what is expected of you and how to perform in this volunteer role. There will be a laundry list of curriculum and training staff to ensure maximum throughput for our newly announced public moderator induction process.


If you continue to think that Gaia just willy nilly chooses anyone with a pulse, that is a personal problem you, on your own, will have to wrestle with.


The semi-broken url that you direct to leads to a thread dating back in 2007. It's about (give or take a few months) 5.5 years ago since that was put on this site, yet plans like "accepting applications of those under the age of 18" still hasn't been put in effect. So based on your reply I have to say okay.. you proof that the point i made is not valid. The greeterfellow of wallmart is (when i validate your post for its contributing worth) far overqualified to be a mod on this site.
Lazarus Larkin
Quibuz
Lazarus Larkin
La Dame de Glace

Curiously,you seem to be the only one--so far--who has missed the myriad nude drops and solicitations, invitations to partake in drugs, and sexually explicit discussions in the Chatterbox and GD threads.


...those are all against the rules and reportable though.


that's the issue... such threads can easily be prevented from being posted in the first place by checking them for certain words. And it seems that some (if not most) moderators display a double standard when it comes to interpreting such materials when they are reported.


I totally disagree with that. There's pretty much no subject on Gaia that's utterly taboo in every context, and making mods approve every post would just be ridiculous.


i never suggested that mods should approve every post. That can (and should) be an automated process, just like when you are replying too quickly and get a warning that you should slow down. Replace such a warning by "you are using undesired language, are you sure you want to post this?" with a yes or no option. A good programmer could even make it so that such threads would appear on a (separate) list for moderators to check if it contains a certain percentage of undesired language. That doesn't take much programming effort and shouldn't affect the system in a negative way. As a matter of fact.... it will make the tasks of moderators easier. For then the post maker has been warned in advance and can be dealt with accordingly.

Salty Pirate

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That would never work. People would just ignore them and post it all anyway. sweatdrop
Lazarus Larkin
That would never work. People would just ignore them and post it all anyway. sweatdrop


exactly, but then they can't claim they weren't aware. So they were informed and can be dealt with accordingly. Higher punishments like perma-bans would be more likely to be given then. An d that would make gaia a better place for all young teens. Did you ever notice that thos who are repeating violators are all (or at least most of them) above the age of 20???? Why don't they go to some other site on teh internet instead of posting inapprpriate stuff on a site mainly tageted at younger teens?? I can't think of any reasonable explanation, than it is to disrupt the enjoyment of many.

Salty Pirate

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It wouldn't do a SINGLE THING. Just a warning that there are words that might potentially be bannable if used in certain ways is really, really pointless.
@ Lazarus Larkin .... I have a life lesson for you:

Before claiming someone's suggestions for improvement will not work ...
User Image
... and then suggest better ideas of improvement.
How does your suggestion for a notice when a user posts a certain word handle context? I mean, the word "p***s" in a general sense isn't against the ToS, nor is it when it's used when discussing a legitimate subject that isn't against the ToS that might involve such a term to be used. Of course, using "p***s" for other situations such as cybering or when a user may be using it when offering or requesting sexually explicit material is a completely different story and I would agree it wouldn't be allowed.

In the end, it all comes down to context, and it always will. Not all situations are as black and white as some people make them out to be. This could also be said for how moderators deal with reports, I would imagine. I don't see a user receiving a warning for simply saying "p***s" unless the context it is being used in is something that breaks the rules.

You also mentioned this:

Quote:
basically harrasses me for creating a "false report" when reporting similar materials


While, of course, it's not my place to question what happened since I don't know the whole story, I just find it odd you state a moderator "basically harassed" you for creating a "false report." Without knowing the whole story, I'm limited in what I can give on the subject but that just doesn't seem right. Was it harassment or was it simply the moderator educating you on what the situation you reported was and how your report against it wasn't valid?
Wapanese Weeaboo
While, of course, it's not my place to question what happened since I don't know the whole story, I just find it odd you state a moderator "basically harassed" you for creating a "false report." Without knowing the whole story, I'm limited in what I can give on the subject but that just doesn't seem right. Was it harassment or was it simply the moderator educating you on what the situation you reported was and how your report against it wasn't valid?


It was through a pm sent by a site moderator. It clearly states that this particular moderator has noticed that I have a tendency to report any thread, post, or signature with the word "sex" or "p***s" in it. Which is not true at all. I normally only report explicit graphic materials posted in the forums. And there are a lot. In the past weeks i must have reported over 20 threads containing pornographic images. However this time i reported someone's signature as i wanted to make a point that certain repeating violators of the ToS and R&G circumvent the optional gaia wordcensors, by putting spaces in certain words. And this particular moderator tries to convince me in an unfriendly manner not to make similar reports again. In a similar case (also involving the use of certain words in a signature to bypass censors), which was handled by a different moderator, I was thanked for helping to keep the site safe for kids. Which underlines the double standard some moderators seem to have.
I created this thread to gather enough information about opinions of other gaians concerning this topic. Based on that information i might take further steps that may involve, but not limits nor excludes contacting gaia staff and/or management. I prefer not to digress too much on that at this point in time. I am willing to explain my motives though.

In the past 7 years i have seen changes in gaiaonline's and gaians attitudes towards eachother. Many of my the people i knew from then left gaia as it (and i loosely quote) "gaia has losts its appeal as it has become too much part of the commercial industry. It has lost the joyfull, warm, welcome feeling it used to bring."
It is a fact that the given number of people being online on the site has gone down drastically. If anyone likes to contest that.... just take a look at the following information:

The gaiaonline main forum site as of the moment of creating this reply:
Who is Online? - 7111 users. (5836 visible, 1142 hidden, 133 guests).

Gaia has 2,116,349,584 articles posted with 26,844,083 registered users.

Most users ever online was 77,655 on Mon Nov 08, 2010 1:31 am



The gaiaonline main forum site as documented by the web archive on june 29, 2007:
Who is Online? - 65699 users. (58782 visible, 3844 hidden, 3073 guests).

Gaia has 1,074,609,046 articles posted with 8,081,368 registered users.

Most users ever online was 86,738 on Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:00 pm


For your information... i picked a random date out of available data for comparison.

The amount of registered user accounts has increased a lot, but that is no surprise. Such an increase can easily be explained by the following reasons:
  • there is no means of deleting an account on gaia
  • over time a population growns
  • many gaians have multiple (mule) accounts next to their "main" account.


Surprisingly the amount of articles posted has merely doubled in value. Over that time with such a large amount of users one would expect a lot more articles to be posted. A possible reason for that can be that non-public accessible parts of the forums (like closed event forums) are not included anymore.

Times mentioned in both observations can't be compared as I do not live in the same timezone as where the internet archive index bots reside. Nonetheless, back in 2007 one could get similar results at any given time of the day. Whether it was in the middle of the night or during the day, there were always more than 50,000 unique visitors online.

What i find striking is that at this moment there are 7,111 unique users online. On june 29, 2007 that were 65,699 unique users.
Possible reasons for that are:
  • gaia has lost contact with the original targetgroup. It has seized to be the warm, tight, loyal community it used to be.
  • gaiaonline has become too much of a marketing thing. In recent years gaiaonline has become more and more focussed on making profit, than investing in what their targetgroups really wanted. An example of that is the announcement last year made by certain developers that zOMG! (which has been gaiaonline's spearhead for a long time) would be discontinued. This hasn't happend yet, but that can only be contributed to the amount of concerned posts made by many zOMG!players
  • due to above reasons a lot of gaians have moved on to other website communities.


If this trend continues gaiaonline will seize to exist within a few years. Of course the marketing department of gaiaonline (which is larger than the game maintenance/developing department) will prevent that from happening. However, it is likely that more and more institutes (like the OpenDNS systems, parental control software, schools, libraries, campuses, etcetera) will block access to the site as it clearly is not the PG-13 site it claims to be and therefore is not "safe for (young) teens". Let us all put some effort into this and make this site safe for everyone.
For anyone who thinks that the comparison in my previous post may give a distorted view....

The gaiaonline main forum site as on the time of this reply:
Who is Online? - 5527 users. (4545 visible, 866 hidden, 116 guests).

Gaia has 2,116,353,788 articles posted with 26,844,180 registered users.

Most users ever online was 77,655 on Mon Nov 08, 2010 1:31 am



The gaiaonline main forum site as documented by the web archive on sept. 25, 2007:
Who is Online? - 77022 users. (64439 visible, 3642 hidden, 8941 guests).

Gaia has 1,160,962,519 articles posted with 9,444,671 registered users.

Most users ever online was 102,092 on Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:54 am


According to the Internet Archive, gaiaonline had 77,022 unique visitors online AND the most unique users online to that date was 102,092 !!! An amount of unique visitors that gaiaonline will never see again if sticks to this course.

Obsessive Man-Lover

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Quibuz
No offence to you or anyone, but since when do mods receive training? For if they did, there wouldn't be so many discrepancies between their verdicts on certain types of contents of reported posts/treads. I often had to direct a moderator to the specific text in the R&G or ToS and even to the PG. So as far as i know there is no training given to moderators whatsoever. I think their qualifications are "show proof of breathing for at least 18 years", "the amount of posts made by them in the forums" and "the amount of reports they made before becoming a moderator". I think that in many cases the greeterfellow from wallmart has better qualifications than some of the moderators on this site.
Moderators are given training after having their applications accepted (and Gaia certainly don't accept every user who applies and meets the requirements to be eligible). I was given Forum Assistant training for a few weeks and all I do is move misplaced threads. I don't know where you got the information that there's no moderator training.

Omnipresent Loiterer

Gaia is a private entity. Their rules can really mean anything, but they make an age restriciton at 13 (much like facebook) to avoid having to get the okay to forcibly censor all of its users.

Other than that, there's no "definition" and the area for mods is as grey as what qualifies as a noise complaint or disorderly conduct by a cop.

Personally, I treat Gaia like a public forum as if it were real life. I don't hold my tongue for teenagers who may be listening. If their parents don't want them to hear/know about it, they really shouldn't be on the internet alone as much as they shouldn't be sent out in public alone.

Honestly I'd rather kids learn about pot, naked people and cursing here than go and try it all first hand.
Pugnacious Banana
Quibuz
No offence to you or anyone, but since when do mods receive training? For if they did, there wouldn't be so many discrepancies between their verdicts on certain types of contents of reported posts/treads. I often had to direct a moderator to the specific text in the R&G or ToS and even to the PG. So as far as i know there is no training given to moderators whatsoever. I think their qualifications are "show proof of breathing for at least 18 years", "the amount of posts made by them in the forums" and "the amount of reports they made before becoming a moderator". I think that in many cases the greeterfellow from wallmart has better qualifications than some of the moderators on this site.
Moderators are given training after having their applications accepted (and Gaia certainly don't accept every user who applies and meets the requirements to be eligible). I was given Forum Assistant training for a few weeks and all I do is move misplaced threads. I don't know where you got the information that there's no moderator training.


i got that info from a former moderator.
dakki-dono
Gaia is a private entity. Their rules can really mean anything, but they make an age restriciton at 13 (much like facebook) to avoid having to get the okay to forcibly censor all of its users.

Other than that, there's no "definition" and the area for mods is as grey as what qualifies as a noise complaint or disorderly conduct by a cop.

Personally, I treat Gaia like a public forum as if it were real life. I don't hold my tongue for teenagers who may be listening. If their parents don't want them to hear/know about it, they really shouldn't be on the internet alone as much as they shouldn't be sent out in public alone.

Honestly I'd rather kids learn about pot, naked people and cursing here than go and try it all first hand.


fyi: the minimum,age restriction of 13 is because of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), which is a United States federal law.

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