Ask the Mods questions about the Forums!

[adsii1970]

2 hours ago, Dman979 said:

The probe.

"Ray, next time someone asks you if you're a god, say yes!"

[RocketMan-Explorer]

Sorry to bother you, mods, but I would like to know if it's possible to change my username (via staff action), or otherwise.

(The other option for me is to create a new account, but I'm not sure if that's permitted either.  Plus, I have 2 years of forum history on the Forums that I wouldn't like to lose for a new account.)

If it is possible to change my username, do I ask here, or in another thread? Or do I just send a moderator a PM?

[Vanamonde]

@RocketMan-Explorer, there's a thread for it, 

 

but asking here is fine, too. What do you want the new one to be? 

[VoidSquid]

A little venting and walking on thin ice...:

On the one hand, some discussions simple are not possible due to nowadays political correctness (no examples required, I think).

On the other hand, I see posts with an image like of a gun or a tank or another weapon and a text below like "kills all commies" (I've actually seen such posts in the forums here). Which is by my book, and in particular regarding political correctness, a clear call for murder.

Isn't that a bit hypocritical?

Sigh...

Edited December 10, 2019 by VoidSquid

[Vanamonde]

We can't see everything without help. If you see something which you think is a problem, hit the report button so we can look at it. 

[VoidSquid]

Will do, as discussed earlier. Makes no sense to report posts months ago, does it?

And it was, see first line of my original post, mainly about venting, which I did, and which, as I worded it, doesn't violate any TOS, I think.

[Geonovast]

38 minutes ago, VoidSquid said:

Makes no sense to report posts months ago, does it?

Age of the post doesn't matter.  If you think it's a problem, report it and we'll take a look at it.

[VoidSquid]

I think we're talking past each other here, on various aspects.

At any rate, thanks for  your time and energy reading and reacting to my little rant, appreciated  

[StrandedonEarth]

6 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

On the other hand, I see posts with an image like of a gun or a tank or another weapon and a text below like "kills all commies" (I've actually seen such posts in the forums here). Which is by my book, and in particular regarding political correctness, a clear call for murder.

Well, the one warning I got, well over four years ago now, was for something like that, although the thread was similar to (but I don't think it actually was) the Google Picture War thread. Probably some aircraft thread, since I had posted a pic of an AC-130 with a snippet based on a typical marching tune, which got snipped...

[Snark]

23 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

Isn't that a bit hypocritical?

No, not even slightly.  The concept of "hypocrisy" isn't even relevant here.  Because hypocrisy implies some sort of moral judgment, which isn't what we're doing.

First of all, please do bear in mind that we moderators don't actually SEE most stuff, unless someone tells us about it (i.e. files a report).  We're just a small handful of part-time volunteers, and it's not even vaguely possible for us to read everything that gets written here.  That's why we rely on reports.  You folks have a whole lot more eyes and ears than we do.  When we act on "problem posts", it's usually because someone reported it.

So, if you find yourself thinking "well, this is dumb... the moderators came down hard on A, but why are they allowing B?" ... just because nothing got done on B doesn't necessarily mean that we "allowed" it.  There's an excellent chance that we never saw it because nobody reported it.  So... when in doubt, report.  We'll have a look. 

Beyond that, though:

Bear in mind that the reasons for the forum rules are pragmatic, not idealistic.  For example, the reason why political content is strictly forbidden is that experience has shown that posting politics ALWAYS results in nasty flame wars, which in turn derails threads, devolves into name-calling and personal abuse, and in general causes an unholy mess in which everyone loses.  And that is not okay.

If the general population were capable of discussing politics without losing their cool, then it wouldn't be a problem and we wouldn't have to put it off-limits.  But that's just one of those "hot button" topics that can be relied on to always go off the rails, which is why it's not allowed here.

Mostly, moderators (and the forum rules) are reactive rather than proactive-- we wait until a problem actually happens before taking action.  After all, any topic could potentially result in a flame war... but most of them don't, most of the time.  It depends on who is participating in the discussion.  Most of the time, most people in the forums comport themselves as civil, mature adults, and can handle the discussion, so we generally act on the presumption that "folks here are grown-ups, let them talk about whatever they like until and unless it gets nasty."  As much as possible, we want users to be able to discuss things freely as mature adults-- we're "fire fighters" more than "police"-- so we have a strong "bias for inaction" and prefer, where possible, not to act on anything unless there's a clear need to do so.

Politics, however-- like religion-- is proactively banned just because experience has shown that it will always blow up.  No point in waiting until after the firestorm to clean up the damage, there.

If there's some particular subject or post that you, personally, find offensive, then by all means please report it and we'll have a look to see whether we think it needs action.  (Don't automatically assume that just because something happened months ago means it gets a free pass.)  Maybe we'll agree with you, maybe we won't-- it's case by case.

Please do bear in mind, however, that the way we make our decision isn't "could anyone be offended by this", since pretty much everything is offensive to somebody; if we did that, we'd have to ban all discussion completely.  Rather, it's a practical decision of whether we believe the content is potentially harmful to children, and/or is it causing (or very likely to cause) flame wars and forum meltdowns.

[The Minmus Derp]

That is very well written and makes a lot of sense. Also, religion should fall into the flame war category.

[Snark]

41 minutes ago, The Minmus Derp said:

Also, religion should fall into the flame war category.

Hey, that's a great idea!  Gosh, why didn't we think of that?

...Oh, wait:

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Politics, however-- like religion-- is proactively banned

[CatastrophicFailure]

21 minutes ago, Snark said:

Hey, that's a great idea!  Gosh, why didn't we think of that?

...Oh, wait:

Username checks out. 

[DAL59]

Did anyone else have the forums return an error for the last few hours?  What happened?

[Geonovast]

15 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Did anyone else have the forums return an error for the last few hours?  What happened?

It was broken.  Now it's not.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

16 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Did anyone else have the forums return an error for the last few hours?  What happened?

It was written: "table co-remembers is crashed".
Now the mods have heroically co-remembered all posts and restored them manually.

 

[adsii1970]

1 hour ago, DAL59 said:

Did anyone else have the forums return an error for the last few hours?  What happened?

Yes. @James Kerman clicked the "Don't Click This" forum thread. He found out what happens when super-moderators click the link.

[Ultimate Steve]

Yeah I was wondering what happened. Are you allowed to say anything about that or is it top secret code stuff?

[Geonovast]

2 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Yeah I was wondering what happened. Are you allowed to say anything about that or is it top secret code stuff?

It was broken.  Now it's not.

[Gargamel]

2 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Yeah I was wondering what happened

So are we. 

[Poodmund]

41 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

It was broken.  Now it's not.

To be fair to forum members, responses that like help no one and are unhelpful, especially when you're just repeating an unsubstantial phrase that you've posted just above. If moderators or staff are not at liberty to say, then just say that. It comes off that you're purposely trying to aggregate the forum member that has asked the question.

 

[Geonovast]

17 minutes ago, Poodmund said:

To be fair to forum members, responses that like help no one and are unhelpful, especially when you're just repeating an unsubstantial phrase that you've posted just above. If moderators or staff are not at liberty to say, then just say that. It comes off that you're purposely trying to aggregate the forum member that has asked the question.

 

My apologies, that was not my intent.  The comment was made in jest, but I see your point.

 

We do not know what happened.  It was broken, and now it's not is all I can say because it's all I know.

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Poodmund said:

To be fair to forum members, responses that like help no one and are unhelpful, especially when you're just repeating an unsubstantial phrase that you've posted just above. If moderators or staff are not at liberty to say, then just say that. It comes off that you're purposely trying to aggregate the forum member that has asked the question.

 

@Geonovast was just trying to channel his inner monosyllabic Vanamonde, but it takes years of study and potassium to reach that level of brevity. 

[The Minmus Derp]

I just read this conversation, and it's funny for some reason.

[jost]

2 hours ago, Geonovast said:

My apologies, that was not my intent.  The comment was made in jest, but I see your point.

 

We do not know what happened.  It was broken, and now it's not is all I can say because it's all I know.

Hm, the error message was "table co-remembers is crashed"

Since the forum propably uses a database for storing the content, account information of the users etc I would guess that one of the tables got somehow broken. Normal course of action would be to restore it from a backup.  Regarding "We do not know what happened. "? Does this include Squad? Did they just restore the database from backup or was there some kraken which just vanished after a few hours?