Moderator Action Sticky 2017

Submitted by Seth on

New offseason, new sticky, because these get cumbrously long.

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READ THIS FIRST:

http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/mgoboard-faq

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What this thread is for: It's an ad-hoc way of tracking what threads and comments get removed. Mods that remove a thread should post the title here with a brief reason as to why the thread is gone.

Don't comment in this thread unless you have to: if you leave an irrelevant comment in this thread it will be deleted (see: "cumbrously long").

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Things we will moderate so hard that if we were the government you’d probably have a 1st Amendment case but we’re not so shaddup about your freedom of speech this ain’t no democracy it’s just a message board run by people who believe in democracy.

  1. Politics. Don’t you get enough of this everywhere else?
     
    How moderation looks from our end.
  2. Noise. We ask our moderators to try really hard not to censor ideas, but we do control noise. If you’re getting a substantial amount of downvotes we’ll look to see if you’re posting an unpopular opinion that you can support. If you can’t support it politely and rationally, or if you don’t acknowledge the holes in your argument, it’s noise.
  3. Useless content from other sites. There are a lot of sites feeding a lot of Michigan content out there, and a lot of that is good stuff. But more than ever these days a lot of it is just stuff which tries to tickle your fancy or make you mad about something. 247, WTKA always get the benefit of the doubt.
  4. The Drew Sharp Memorial Don’t Feed the Professional Trolls Rule. Pete Finebaum has taken the place of the late Sharp. Valenti and Chatsports are the other two on the ban list. By the time you have enough points to post an article you should know that some people make a living off of trying to get the legions of Michigan fans angry enough to click.
  5. Bewbs and general misogyny/objectifying of women. We tried one year of this and our female readership shot up after being really low. This means it’s a good rule: however much you enjoy cutting loose with the guys, we have tens of thousands of readers it drives away.

Hall of Stickies Past:

The first, the second, the third. the fourth. The fifth. The sixth.

Great Moments in Moderation:

You Only Live Twice

February 10th, 2018 at 11:28 PM ^

On balance, Bolivia is better than the banhammer.  No more ability to create threads and upvote own garbage.

Boliva (10K to 10M negative points) alerts the MGoBoard that the Mods have taken action. I would imagine this is less labor intensive for Mods than deleting accounts that get recreated instantly due to someone having an agenda and apparently no life whatsoever.

 

You Only Live Thrice

February 11th, 2018 at 4:43 PM ^

For the second time I’ve been falsely accused of being someone else. Lsa you have a horriblly weak ego and are really the only loser dumb enough to do this for free. Go watch your my little pony dvd collection and take a break from this board

UM2k1

February 12th, 2018 at 3:30 PM ^

Get rid of this thread - it has "suprisingly" become a political fight:

http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ot-michigan-hosted-pederastic-kinship-pedophilia-seminar-last-friday

and the poster - doubled down on his terrible post, by blaming everyone complaining about it for liking paedophelia?!?!?:

http://mgoblog.com/users/domingerson

 

Also, if you're inclined, there is some pretty vicious political name calling going on as well.

Seth

February 13th, 2018 at 9:41 AM ^

Left the thread alive overnight to hopefully catch any more instances of the ad popping up. Honestly apologize to anyone for whom it touched it political nerve; I really had no idea anyone on this side of the Atlantic had a difference of opinion on Polish politics.

rob f

February 16th, 2018 at 8:30 PM ^

some Bolivia time for posting excessive spoof threads and other nonsense threads that amount to nothing but "hey, look at me!" foolishness. Right now there are no less than 5 different threads posting hypothetical 2018 W-L records. The first is being negbombed heavily and the 2nd, while over-the-top optimistic, has gathered a ton of upvotes. I get it. But the other 3 spoof threads that follow? Of what good are they if they push more-deserving threads off the front page?

LSAClassOf2000

February 22nd, 2018 at 11:35 AM ^

Mod question: Why wasn't the Billy Graham thread nuked?

It was sort of nuked - it was locked. The reasoning was fairly simple here:

Famous, yes, so the news aspect of this stays.

Locked because of virtually all the conversation that could (and did) happen because of what this man is famous for. 

Result - you have been informed that Billy Graham died. On to the next thread. 

LSAClassOf2000

March 1st, 2018 at 8:36 AM ^

Belein the 9th Highest Paid Coach

I don't think this got the response that the OP had hoped. I get that it was an attempt at satire, but.....you know what happens when you attempt things sometimes....

LSAClassOf2000

March 3rd, 2018 at 8:04 PM ^

Prayers for Mo Hurst

THere's already a thread - although the victory this afternoon made it fall from the first page - so post any updates you might have there and I can move it to the top of the first page.

Alton

March 6th, 2018 at 9:59 AM ^

From the OP:  "The Drew Sharp Memorial Don’t Feed the Professional Trolls Rule. Pete Finebaum has taken the place of the late Sharp. Valenti and Chatsports are the other two on the ban list. "

There is a Valenti thread today; the sooner nuked the better IMO.

Milk

March 8th, 2018 at 3:55 PM ^

"Luckily morons like you are beginning to self-identify. Hopefully by the end of my lifetime you're such a small minority we won't even have to bother with shaming you.  Until then, as long as you keep bringing out your regressive idiocy, we'll be standing right here to point out your inadequacies and idiocy.

Now, go take your red pill, watch your infowars videos, and fuck all the way off."

 

http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ot-first-ever-female-head-coach-division-1-…

codeBLUE11

March 13th, 2018 at 5:53 PM ^

Difficult one, but I think the thread served its purpose. OP was able to apologize and get some stuff off his chest and the community was there to support him in a moment of weakness. Hopefully he saw our comments and knows that he's not alone. 

Section 1.8

March 16th, 2018 at 9:28 AM ^

http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/engler-fights-limit-scope-new-sexual-abuse-…

Now, Seth; I don't expect you to agree with me, and I very much expect your moderators to say that "We never claimed to have NO politics, just some limits.  And yeah, most of us agree on some general political things..."

But dayum; the Engler/MSU comments have jumped the MGoShark.

Using the MGoTest, "Can you tell from the coment how that commenter voted in the last election?", yeah I can tell.

Now, as a defense-side litigator who has practiced in the heyday of Michigan tort reform law, few people know better than I, about what Engler meant to tort reform in this state.  And how those efforts made Engler public enemy number one among the plaintiffs' bar.  Which is really political. (And how Engler beat Geofrey Fieger like a rented mule in the 1998 gubernatorial election.)  And how Engler's remarkable success as a tort reformer propelled him to the leadership of the National Association of Manufacturers.   I understand the political animus toward Engler in some quarters.  I am not at all surprised, to see that political animus expressed.  I am not one bit surprised to see that animus mixed in with Sparty-hatred and a lemon twist, in an MGoCocktail on the MGoBoard.

One thing I'd say, to anyone with a brain no matter what Michigan university they attended: if you are going to treat colleges like defendants, they are going to act like defendants.  They will hire lawyers, they will file motions, they will utilize the statute of limitations which is, like, the law, and they will contact their excess insurance carriers and report claims and do what the insurer asks them to do.

All I'm saying is that this was a thread that was as political as it was nasty.  Not that I would have taken it down if I were a mod.  For my part, I'd have left it up, if people were interested in a good, hard, tough-minded debate about the issue that the OP raised.  But it would of course be political.  For my part, the topics that I would remove from the MGoBoard are posts about the Pistons, or NFL fantasy teams, or craft beers.  In contrast, the sometimes-inevitable mix of intercollegiate athletics would seem to be well within the MGoWheelhouse.  What better place to hash it out, when there is a legit Michigan angle?  Problem is, that on the rare occasions when the MGoBoard accomodates those discussions, it's a one-sided hivemind.  As I have learned.  The hard way.

I will close, Seth, with what I have always said to you.  The NO POLITICS rule was never my rule.  It's an MGoRule.  And you guys are free to enforce it, or not.  In fact, since it is your blog, you can enforce the rule in any selective way you want.  Fair, or unfair; consistent or inconsistent or whatever.  I'm just observing what is there.

Seth

March 19th, 2018 at 4:42 PM ^

It's highly weird that you think tort reform is the reason so many people hate Engler--as if half our readership wasn't 11 years old or younger when he was the governor. You and I remember things like when the taxpayers of Michigan had to cover a $100 million class action lawsuit because Engler tried to help cover up serial rapes in prisons. But I bet much of the readership knows him only as the defiant, tone-deaf interim president of MSU who is proving himself every day to have been the worst possible choice for a school reeling from a sexual assault scandal in its athletic department.

How much of that is political? It can be interpreted as such, but unlike the tort crap, Engler's record of obstructing rape investigations is highly relevant to his position as president at second biggest (and most present) rival. Michigan State hired a guy known for circling the wagons on institional rape to circle the wagons while they get meteored for institutionally enabling the worst serial rapist in American history. There's no way to keep that guy off our boards when he's making news because he is the president of Michigan State. There's no way to hide his political alignment because a big part of why they chose him was his political allies in power at the state level and his political experience. It's not possible to hide the fact that the monsters are consistently coming from one side of the political divide anymore than it is for us to hide the fact that the insta-moral outrage contingent is coming from the other. We live in the real world, and we're doing the best we can to provide a place for engrossing and intelligent conversation on Michigan things on the message board on the internet that exists.

I haven't been around to moderate much because I've been dealing with a major health issue and it's all I can do to keep the actual site running and the money coming in. I have full faith that our volunteer mods are doing the best job they can to moderate by our expectations, which include making this site a place that the vast majority of Michigan fans can come to expecting not to have to get into a political debate. However we all know super-political people on the internet can turn into snowflakes whenever their political beilefs are under threat, and who see politics in everything, and I don't think we should use them as a barometer. Engler is fair game--using him to paint broad strokes about his party or his political agenda while in office 20 years ago is obviously not. I trust our mods will keep it that way.

Seth

March 19th, 2018 at 2:57 PM ^

One of those things where you really have to be well known around here before you can post a go fund me for a personal tragedy.

Seth

March 19th, 2018 at 5:49 PM ^

Having listened to it I am thinking about amending our No Valenti rule to "No Valenti on Michigan" because sometimes a "MAKE PLAYS!" bit of schadenfreude is well worth our time and it's just his trolling of Michigan that I hate. But it's still supporting Valenti. What say you?