Moderation: how do I complain?

Jim --

Really.

You obviously love to debate and argue.

No poster is impressed with debating skills. They just want answers to their questions.

You can't respond this way time and time again, and then get upset with others:

• Anyone with half a brain realises that, as it's been mentioned in around a dozen threads already.

• Jeez why does every idiot have to say the blindingly obvious around here.)

• BTW Lex, FCP X = Final Cut Pro X. Again, absolutely nothing to do with this discussion, just sock account trolling; so respond only if you want to waste your own time.)

• Yawn.You really don't get that this is a "branch" from the original discussion do you: ie. you're question is in the FIRST BRANCH, this thread is the SECOND BRANCH. Yeah, I forget; having opinions on how something works = "mac hating", as you call it. Rather silly thing to say. Just because you blindly use what's offered to you without ever questioning it's validity, doesn't mean others have to. So please stop telling other users what to think, thank you.

Just as predicted... So you can't be bothered to do the leg work yourself

Sorry to say that your responses are perfect examples of trolling. You know it, and we know it. Enough, already. The other guy you're so upset about seems to be, also.

The whole point of these boards is to HELP people with Mac problems.

I have a feeling Mikey is jimthing returning after he up and got hisself banned. Just signed up today. Seems pretty transparent to me.

hmmmmmm.

Except for a slightly harmless lighthearted joke about brain's which babowa got on his high-horse about rather than having a sense of humour, Jimthing made perfectly valid points in the second one about babowa's comments being untrue to list the email address everyone was having problems about.

This is what he said to me:

Anyone with half a brain realises that, as it's been mentioned in around a dozen threads already.

I do have a sense of humor. There is nothing humrous in being called an idiot or lacking part of my brain. It is offensive at best. It is also in violation of the ToU which, apparently, neither you nor the OP have bothered to read:

Be polite. Everyone should feel comfortable reading Submissions and participating in discussions. Apple will not tolerate flames or other inappropriate statements, material, or links. Most often, a "flame" is simply a statement that is taunting and thus arbitrarily inflammatory. However, this also includes those which are libelous, defamatory, indecent, harmful, harassing, intimidating, threatening, hateful, objectionable, discriminatory, abusive, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or offensive in a sexual, racial, cultural, or ethnic context.

The entire ToU can be read here:

https://discussions.apple.com/static/apple/tutorial/tou.html

It also contains explanations regarding Apple's policies of removing posts.

Lastly, as already mentioned, no moderators have participated here. We are not moderators. We are users volunteering our time to help.

Hey, genius. Can you point to me where one moderator has posted here? Just one.

There aren't any posts from the moderators here.

Yes, I read every thread by each person in the TRIM thread, I also read the thread that Babawowa referred to here where your vaunted reporter was rude in several posts. Was the other guy a jerk? Sure, had no problem with that at all. But did you read the exchange between the two of them here in the Apple Discussions Forum? Both totally out of line. As I said, going back and reading threads from each of them they deserve each other. And the other threads by your reporter did not include the guy that was involved in the TRIM thread. And I found others where he was just a big of a jerk.

I don't doubt that while jimthing earned a warning letter I would not doubt at all that jpcwa, who likes to post facts without backing them up and speculate (wait, I already said that earlier), has earned himself at least a 14 day ban. Why do I think that? Because he hasn't been back to continue posting on this. And if you think any of his comments to Barbara in that thread were acceptable under the Terms of Use here, that all of us agreed to, you are certainly in the wrong place. He didn't make one valid point in that entire thread and he was exceptionally rude in doing so.

This is an Apple, Inc. site. Apple has employees here who moderate the site. They do all the removing/editing of posts and discipline, such as warning letters and banishments. If you cannot accept that there are many, many other sites you can go to for posting that have much more relaxed rules. Perhaps you would be more comfortable there.

OK, your not the mods - then how can one respond to the actual mods then? ie. why are you lot responding to the og poster rather than the actual mods in the first place.

Now your being just as rude as your claiming jimthing was: "Mikey is jimthing returning after he up and got hisself banned." - no I'm not. Actually, I never bothered to use the site before because I knew it has a reputation for censorship, and proper discussions are governed by Apple's rules which ban any kind of dissension. I happened to be casually following the TRIM forum, and I only I signed-up to comment because I noticed half the thread had highly annoyingly disappeared for unknown reasons, leaving the bad troll's in place. And on clicking through to the other posts of jimthing, found this one, where I felt the commentary was being unfair by ganging-up on the user, selectively picking apart all their previous posts, in order to discourage any talk there may have been bad moderation.

And you all are picking the slightly flippant comments he made in some of his posts, obviously completely ignoring the ones that were perfectly valid, so anyone is going to look bad under that spotlight.

I suggest all of you have made equally flippant comments on here if I bothered to scan your posting histories, so that's a completely unfair thing to do.

Here's an example of one quoted by Bee above, that is out of context:

BTW Lex, FCP X = Final Cut Pro X. Again, absolutely nothing to do with this discussion, just sock account trolling; so respond only if you want to waste your own time.)

That was a response to a previous off-topic comment from another user. Jimthing was actually telling the user Lex what the term meant, and saying it was off-topic; nothing wrong with that.

And as for the TRIM forum - again, so much has been wrongly deleted from the thread, from not just jimthing's but also others posts, and it was certainly not them that were in the wrong here, but rather this jpcwa annoying troll. Jimthing and the others, were trying NOT to engage the guy, but he instead insisted on pulling everyone else's words apart. Yet his posts stayed, their's got removed. Hardly good moderation.

And also, I understand this is Apple Inc's site, and this is the exact reason I would expect them to have a fair system in place for dealing with bad moderation decisions. Like this one, where the perfectly valid (talking about legal software) posts that were of use to other users, were wrongly entirely removed, leaving the crud ones from this jpcwa guy.

Slightly flippant? Calling people dumb, telling people to come back when they have something worthwhile to say, calling people idiots is "slightly flippant to you? And yes I did notice you skipped all the very rude comments and only quoted the most innocuous one. No one is defending the other guy. He has probably been banned. But jimthing decided to jump in with him and got a warning.

So this episode is done, the editing is over, they have taken their action. They will not debate it with you. If that does not meet your needs, you disagree with their assessment as to whether what was posted is legal (and it doesn't matter whether you, jimthing, what's his name, or I think it is legal, it is up to Apples employees here to make that determination. Not just legal, but meets the ToU) then move on. There is no due process, appeals court or anything else her.

...still picking those comments out of context, then. And failing to admit that anyone would look bad under a spotlight when all their most negative comments (which on technical forums, people are often pretty annoyed with their technical issues, so often can get flippant to those that add nothing to the issue) get taken out from the others that are valid. If someone did the same to your past comments, you'd look just as bad too, and you wouldn't like it, so why subject others to it.

Anyway, censorship on these forums is certainly rampant, without any kind of communication method with the staff doing it; hence proper discussions here are largely a waste of time. This is why I, and many other Mac users, don't waste our time here, preferring other forums where censorship is not needed, and so everyone can express themselves without being "offended" all the time.

If you have such a strong dislike of what you see as rampant censorship here you would probably do much better to stick to those other forums you so clearly prefer. You will be happier and, judging by your recent contributions, I doubt you will be missed here.

On the other hand you may want to re-read the Terms of Use with which you agreed when you signed up. You may then understand that these forums are solely for posting technical support questions and answers - and doing so in a polite manner.

The allegations of censorship which you make are probably based on reports of posts which have been deleted because they contain criticism, speculation, comments on Apple policy, polls, flames, venting, spam or other comments contrary to Terms of Use. Like it or not those are the rules, and it’s those rules with their narrow focus on questions and answers which have made this become what is probably the best place to go to get courteous, painstaking, expert help with your problems.

From my observations over a number of years moderation here is generally both light and reasonable. However moderation is more art than science and will often offend someone who feels they have been unjustly treated. The threads being debated here got badly out of hand due mainly to unacceptable posts from two people with a few others sniping from the edges. Moderators could have taken the easy way out and deleted the thread, instead they appear to have tried to remove the worst excesses and leave a reasonably coherent thread. That is not an easy thing to do (and I speak from experience as a moderator on a busy international forum elsewhere) and the result is likely to be far from perfect.

I especially don't like how even those who didn't follow the conversation involved, still chime-in with comments about what they DIDN'T actually see, as half the posts were removed by the mods. A la, 'I didn't see the actual discussion, but yeah it's all the reporters fault not the troll's, yeah, let's all shoot the messenger together, rather than deal with the message! And all the while pat each other on the back confirming just how perfect each of us are, as we never say anything wrong here do we.' Vitriolic stuff that make you all look really bad and unfair.

Seems like the only reason half the people answering posts here, is to get their points level increased, so they can think they are somehow high and mighty, and can then be judgmental against other users, selectively picking through their posts to make them out to be ALL bad, skimming over mentioning any of the good things they did.

Oh, how very fair and unbiased, like these forums in general then.

It doesn't take seeing the conversation to be able to disapprove of someone's current behavior. Now, Jim, you want to push it further and see if you can get your new alias banned, too? I haven't reported any of the posts in this thread to the mods yet, but it's not too late, and you're crossing the line.

I did read them all, even before they were removed. I never seriously thought I would get my point level raised in this or the first thread in this forum. And it isn't a bank balance, with debits and credits, if you violate the Terms of Use you are subject to penalties. I don't care how many nuns you helped across the street, if you murder someone you are going to go to jail.

I never said jimthing was "ALL bad", I said some of his posts (actually a large percentage) were rude and violated the ToU (and for that matter were judgemental and "high and mighty"). And I tried to give him tips for participating here. That was it. If he has now been banned along with the other party then after their temporary ban they can try again. To be honest I doubt either of them will have learned anything and they will just earn a permanent ban. If they are smart people they will figure out this is not the place for them and move on to someplace else to post.

mikey macs wrote:

Seems like the only reason half the people answering posts here, is to get their points level increased, so they can think they are somehow high and mighty

Well at least we now know why you keep posting in this thread - you're after increasing your points level!

Due to your ignorance of how these forums work you appear not to know that only an OP can award points. You are the only respondent that jimthing is likely to reward in that way given that the other seven of us have been unsympathetic to him or expressed criticism of his actions.

Perhaps you are the one being vitriolic and judgmental.

jimthing wrote:

(What makes me angry, is that my very questioning the moderation and the troll a number of times in the thread, got those posts just removed without any *reasoning*, then resulted in me getting a threat of banning for having the nerve to want a response. This seems completely unjust, as a legitimate user trying to fight a troll ruining a whole thread.)

You can't fight trolls by responding to them. The word "troll" is used because of the similarity to trolling a baited line behind a fishing boat, not because of any similarity to a mythical figure. The bait is the provocative comment; gullible users that respond to it are the catch the troller hopes to haul in. Thus, the expression, "Don't feed the trolls."

To participate in these forums, you must agree to abide by its published Terms of Use. Responding to trolls in any way other than to dispute an inaccurate statement made about a technical issue (that is an acceptable issue as defined in the "Submissions" section) would violate these terms. That means any comments about the person making the disputed statement are violations & may be removed or edited by the moderators if deemed sufficiently disruptive to a legitimate technical discussion.

Moreover, the moderators have absolute authority in determining what to remove or who to take action against, & may do so for any reason they see fit. This is clearly explained in the last clause of the ToU:

"Apple reserves the right to delete any Submission, or take action against any account, at any time, for any reason."

You agreed to be subject to these limitations when you signed up to post in these forums. If you no longer find this acceptable, then your only recourse is not to post here anymore.