Lack of moderation of name-calling leads to the constant flaming.

[Cycklops]

The moderating here is incredibly inconsistent. I've seen multiple occasions where someone makes a well thought-out post, someone else responds by simply insulting the heck out of them, and the conversation then turns into a flame. The initial person who insults instead of discussing is the one who causes this.

But instead, the moderators seem to just ignore it, including reports, until the thread is completely ruined, and a lot of bad feelings are created amongst posters (which creates more flames), and then the moderators simply show up late and lock the thread, which actually doesn't discourage bad behavior since no one is notified of who went wrong.

This is accompanied by sporadic suspensions without warnings for the same behavior, which means that people can't adjust what they say or do accordingly.

This is very flawed and is a source of a lot of the problems here.

[Texas Chuck]

Do you have a specific subforum you are seeing this on? Or is this across all forums?

[Cycklops]

The General Board.

EDIT: Like this...

viewtopic.php?f=6&p=43865492#p43865492

This violates multiple forum rules about content-free posting and flaming. The type of thing that immediately messes up a thread. And it's just been sitting there totally untouched.

[tsherkin]

Right, so you need to understand that this is a 24-hour website with thousands of users and that the GB is the most active forum on here. There are so many threads and posts that it's effectively impossible for us to see everything, and not every mod you see in-thread is a GB mod. Plus, there are oodles of reports to sift through, so we don't always get to them.

You're not wrong, and this is a concern that we have ourselves. We've enlarged the mod team for the GB already and will likely do so again so we can improve coverage but right now, there's only so much we can do as a volunteer crew. We try our best, but things always sift through.

The best things you can do?

1) Keep using the report function

and

2) If you see some really counterproductive or offensive stuff that we haven't handled, PM one of the GB mods, like myself, and we'll have a look when we have a chance.

[Howard Mass]

Thanks for answering this Chuck Texas and tsherkin.

[Cycklops]

...and another example of threads being locked for no apparent reason.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1393134#start_here

Why am *I* being punished for someone else posting off-topic nonsense in the thread I started?

[tsherkin]

Thread was shut down because it wasn't going anywhere. No one was going to continue discussing that topic with any degree of serious approach. Since it wasn't generating good conversation and there were a potential boatload of warnings coming up, there was no need to leave it open.

[Howard Mass]

Thanks for answering this Chuck Texas and tsherkin.