Moderator Action Sticky 2024
Hello National Champions. New sticky for a new year.
Please don't post on here unless it's for Moderator Actions because they get cumbrously long. Long threads get deleted.
Want the rules of the board? READ THE FAQ: http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/mgoboard-faq
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Sharing Trolls Counts as Trolling: Sometimes desperately lazy outlets hire trolls, or trolls who are good at social media build enough of a following, that they become a headache for us, spreading hate or falsehoods. Because having them repeated on our site can directly harm us, if you're on the message board you should be aware that posting something from them could get you banned. They are:
- SirYacht/Chat Sports/James Yoder - Fake news merchant who likes to make up plausible rumors or report non-sure things to get a false scoop.
- Any local Spartan media when they talk about Michigan. Unless they're yelling "MAKE PLAYS!"
- Rainer Sabin: Finebaum wannabe hired by the Freep to troll Michigan fans.
- Tony Garcia: Same deal. Sparty the Freep hired to be a troll. If he's posting news you can probably find the same from Angelique and others.
- Steve Deace: Curiously well-funded white supremacist radio host who's got such a small Michigan following you can safely assume anyone posting positively about him is Deace and ban him again. Creates lots of burner accounts to promote himself. Booted by Maven for advocating lynching.
- Barstool: People who took the freedom of young internet too seriously because really what they wanted to do the whole time was propagate bad ideas. This one's a soft ban. No beef, but we are on opposite ends of the fan vibe, so if it's being posted there it's unlikely to be welcome here and vice versa.
WHY WAS MY THREAD DELETED? Read this: http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/mgoboard-faq
WHY IS MY ACCOUNT LOCKED? Read this: http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/mgoboard-faq
WHAT IS THE APPEAL PROCESS? Post here (start a new account if you were banned).
WHAT IS SEA LIONING? LMGTFY: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea-lioning
Don't comment in this thread unless you have to: If you leave an irrelevant comment in this thread it will be deleted.
Hall of Stickies Past: For those who love to get lost in the meta. The first, the second, the third. the fourth. The fifth. The sixth. The seventh. The eighth. The ninth. The tenth. The eleventh. The twelfth. The thirteenth. The fourteenth. The fifteenth.
Clemson & Florida St. joining the B1G in ‘25
Please stop interrupting my first vacation in 6 years for April Fools jokes. Another was taken down at the subject's request fyi. What may seem funny to the board becomes very not funny when people see MGo as a source of misinformation, or see the same about themselves.
Hey! Enjoy the vacay. Let (or, if needed, empower) the mods handle the silliness? Delegating is good! 😉
Mods, the "add media" button disappeared - at least from Chrome for me - when posting new content which means we can no longer show a full Twitter post and can only post a link. Any reason why that went away or is there a new way to do it now? It was super easy before.
Edit: It appears it was the "Media Embed" button that looked like a newspaper with a plus sign on it. That has disappeared for some reason. Has anyone else noticed this?
It's been gone for a while now. I think about two months or so.
So we're supposed to post website issues here and not start a new post? Ignoring website issues seems to say the mods didn't read this.
Oh I read it. But LSU had already answered your comment by then. And TBH, I haven't spent nearly as much time as usual on the board over the last several days, due to the passing and funeral service of an elderly loved one.
I'm sorry to hear about your loved one Rob. I was more curious as to if the button was broken or intentionally removed not how long it has been missing. I honestly thought Blue was trolling and didn't realize he was as mod.
I’m not a mod, but just thought I could answer your question. Not sure what about my response made you think I was trolling.
Rob: sorry for your loss. Sending my thoughts your way.
Boymton / Boynton
"Out cry after President Ono sends e-mail severly restricting protesters rights (with any input from staff or students)"
While the thread above actually veered back into a good outcome, there's this comment in there by badandboujee:
"If jews weren't big UM donors, Ono wouldn't be doing this."
This entire, ill advised, purely political thread, needs to go.
The thread is becoming uncivil, but I also find it amusing that a thread discussing the merits/definitions of free speech & protest is about to be censored.
And that’s hardly the only offending comment. Many people proudly showing off their ignorance and biases like a peacock in heat.
Needs to be nuked for the poor spelling alone IMO.
My favorite part of that comment was the “I’ll probably be called an anti-Semite now.”
Gee, I wonder why. And he knew that would be the outcome and still typed it out and hit send anyway…
Out cry after President Ono sends e-mail severly restricting protesters rights (with any input from staff or students)
There is no bloody way I am sifting through that shit. I have, however, locked it and left the post with the link if people wish to peruse it in silent contemplation.
The only thing for which those threads are generally useful is for discovering things about people that one might consider utterly appalling.
I have altered the title and removed the OP's editorializing as well.
That post doesn’t belong on this board and should just be nuked.
In the now deleted comments, the OP actually was convinced they were wrong about Ono’s email.
Nuke the thread.
Edit: Thanks for removing the editorializing.
Can you just start bolivia'ing anyone who starts up with politics in these threads? There are 5-10 users who should know better in that thread blatantly breaking the no politics rule, and most of them break this rule often and fuck up threads.
I don't know why it's so hard for them to simply not comment politics rather than turning this board into dogshit and making more work for mods. They're either too stupid to know any better or don't give a shit and actively enjoy fucking up these forums. Either way, they should be gone.
One of the pitfalls of this being a sports-centric blog whose rooting interests are attached to a public institution is that public institutions and their primary decision-makers will occasionally at least find themselves on the fringes of local, state and even national politics because of the various things in which they are involved, usually through research and investment. Further, some of these people are in fact elected to the positions they hold. To that end, it's difficult to stop everything, but yes, there are some habitual shit-starters.
The other problem is that the University is itself on-topic here, so we are likely to get stories like this posted on occasion. I guess my advice to any prospective OP would be to at least refrain from editorializing and just summarize what is in fact said. That will at least increase the chances of a post being locked but being allowed to remain as opposed to entire posts being deemed unsalvageable in their entirety, as this one nearly was.
As for the comments themselves, yeah, they can be unhidden and reviewed as easily as they are hidden, so I hope people who believe they must be heard no matter the human cost keep this in mind.
Seems like a no politics rule should just be a no politics rule, whether it involves the university or not.
The other question is going to be this though - "what is political?"
You can make anything political. I can make my own ding-dong political if I cared to come up with a bizarre enough argument. Would it be a very good argument? Obviously not, but in theory I could muddy the waters enough that someone would take my side on an issue that really doesn't need sides.
So, is the university attempting policy (I'll use "attempting", because admittedly, I find it problematic) itself political? Not really. Can people use the inspiration for this policy to make the argument political? They already have, of course. We can talk about the merits of a policy without politics, but this one is more difficult because of what the University used as its basis for need.
To me, that means it essentially sits on the outer edge of the line around here, but obviously, this is a policy interpretation. Obviously, certain topics are clearly out of bounds - we aren't here to talk foreign policy, and if that's all it was, then the post wouldn't be there either.
This isn't a blog about general M school policy(ies). It's a blog about sports. M sports or sports in general. This link is not on the edge, it's past any edge relating to the topic of (M) sports.
From the site's FAQ page:
ONTOPIC
- Anything Michigan sports related
- Anything related to other Big Ten teams or upcoming opponents
- Stuff about the blog itself
- University of Michigan topics that don't relate to sports
I am not trying to be difficult here, of course, but I am interpreting that last bullet point. That's been essentially in place since 2009. If we need to talk about the finer details of it, I am all ears, but that's what I am basing it on.
I don't think you're trying to do anything other than what you think is right. Zero doubt.
But. I do think that you're opening the door to truly awful posts and blog image problems when you let stand post/links like this one. Nothing good can come from repeating the link here. Or letting it stand.
Edit/add:
"Why do we moderate? Politics. Don’t you get enough of this everywhere else? NOTE: Writers (not mods) can get away with politics because you have the option of punishing us for it by not supporting the site. We have this rule so readers don't set each other off, because we don't want you leaving for something some message boarder said."
As I said, I am open to discuss a clearer guideline in the future. Doing so probably would make for a net improvement in user experience. Of course, I am also an unpaid volunteer and have been so since March 2013 when I agreed to do this, so my opinion literally means nothing to anyone anyway.
I see what you're saying, but I also believe that it is not for me to craft any one particular image of anything by the strategic deletion or superfluous addition of certain things. I've been accused of it before, but it is never the intention. At the same time, there is a discussion on what constitutes "the line" that the management (which is not me) might want to have perhaps since there are some admittedly vague terms being used.
Understood (and thanks much for your efforts). Sounds like you, Brian, Rob, and Seth need to grab a quiet meal someplace and talk things through.
Be well.
The board rules which have been in place since 2009 have said anything related to UofM is on topic. It seems that policy has worked fine for a long time. LSA killed a thread but kept the post where users crossed the line. Also, as LSA said, many topics can be and have been politicized which were never before political. LSA killed it simply without a lot of effort. Why do you feel it necessary to keep arguing your points that change is needed and create more work for LSA to keep responding. And now you want an owners and management meeting.
I don’t really see an issue with politics being brought up as it impacts the university or sports as long as it’s being presented in an informative way from a neutral perspective.
The issue with politcal topics, especially in a message board setting, is that it always turns into a shitstorm of misinformation and name-calling from both sides. Which is obviously why the rule exists here in the first place
This is purely political and not sports related in any way whatsoever. Come on.
Agreed. I understand the need to occasionally mention local and state politics when it relates to the University. However, there's no need to debate the Palestine-Israel war here. Everyone on both sides of the debate in that thread deserves a ticket to Bolivia.
I don’t envy the mods on their role. With that someone here mentioned an automatic 2-day ban for bringing up anything politics related. Enough to be annoying, but not overly punitive. I thought that was a good idea.
LSA appreciate all of the MODS and your volunteer work.
Agree that the comments need to be removed.
However the article itself is a political statement with the intention of bias. Leaving the article link is a bias in and of itself.
A brief statement of removal of all comments, the link to the article and expressing an intolerance for political statements would be an appropriate expression of neutrality.
However because of the political sentiments expressed on this board in the past by the boards founder the appearance of progressive bias since that time is consistently more allowed to be seen. Although your own political views are not being expressed you are allowing others to be evident until the article is removed.
The Guardian leans left. If you can’t tolerate news from a spectrum of sources, that’s a you problem (the generic you, not you specifically). Find another article that presents the issue from a central or right-leaning perspective. Read as much as you feel necessary to form your own opinion based on multiple sources. BTW, that’s what college should be teaching students to do. Adding links is not a moderator’s job. If you don’t like The Guardian, find another source. Don’t eliminate (or censor) a news source because they don’t align with you politically, unless they are purely propaganda, in which case, I agree don’t consult them for news. Even then, it is valuable to understand what propaganda is being fed to the masses.
I applaud the decision to leave the thread up while locking it and hiding the comments. I would not have known about this issue otherwise, or at least as soon as I did. I didn’t get a chance to read the comments before they were hidden. Comments about how UofM is handling on-campus protests are on-topic. Comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are off-topic. People who try to determine Blog policy should really just consult the Blog policy.
These are great points.
I will add that there is a difference between a legitimate news organization with an independent editorial board and independent (public, trust, or similar) ownership like the Guradian vs other media which may look like a news organization but isn’t. So I would add that simply finding another article isn’t enough.
This particular Guardian article at first seemed a little biased, but after looking through it again, there is no opinion added, they do present the University’s side as well, and they point out the University is rethinking the policy after getting more input.
Even after the lock and edit? I see no point to giving any visibility to a political Guardian article that has zero connection to Michigan sports. Why leave any trace of it posted here?
Seriously, does not belong here, especially given the fact that other way more germane sports posts have gotten treated more harshly.
These are usually allowed to remain so that it is not posted again by an unwary poster.
Maybe there is an article solely focused on the university's policy which would allow for more rational discussion, but that is unlikely given the genesis of the proposed policy.
IMO school policy is a relevant topic to discuss, particularly for those with ties to the university. If you are not interested in school policy, you can always decline to read about it or engage in the topic. Crazy idea, I know.
I think leaving that Guardian article is just as bad as the comments. Remove the biased article.
or just post the email. Not the editorial regarding the email.
What specifically is political about the article? They identify a number of positions with regard to whether or not free speech is ok at all venues, report those positions from different sources, that Ono may have put out a plan too hastily, and that he is reconsidering the policy. It seems you just don’t like the reporting of some information that you disagree with.
Banned BlueRude for peppering the eclipse thread with the boob eclipse. 13-year account with no track record of this, so they may penitently petition for a Boliviation instead. But need to stop them from posting boobs immediately.
Banned badandboujee, who may indeed be called an anti-semite now.
Regarding the rest of that thread, the decision of whether it's politics or on-topic has to be made on a case-by-case basis. I may have come down differently but I stand by the mods on how they handled that one.
Speaking in terms of moderation policy, it isn't feasible anymore to ban everything that everyone thinks is "politics" anymore, because what's considered political is now itself much more of a political battlefield. Americans are engaging with extremism much more than when we set the policies for this message board*, and a tentpole strategy of any kind of extremism in a democracy is to code more and more things in our daily lives as political, thus decreasing the potential for people who live different lives to agree they hate the extremists more than each other.
I'll give you a recent example from moderation: About a year ago a reader posted that they're rooting for a mostly white non-Michigan WBB team over a mostly Black one. Another user said they agreed because Iowa is more "wholesome." A user responded to that saying they think "wholesome" meant "white." And off we go: now your WBB fandoms are politically coded. Individually, this happens all the time, and we're not going to change that nor do we want to. But where do you draw the line? If you delete just the user who called out the word choice of "wholesome" you ignore that this is a reasonable interpretation of the comment. If you delete the "wholesome" reply too you, it could be reasonably interpreted that you're validating the racist interpretation of the comment. If you delete the OP rooting for Iowa over South Carolina, you're validating the idea that Iowa vs South Carolina WBB is politically coded. Answer: I deleted the "wholesome" comment (along with everything that came of it) because however it was meant it was going to illicit a racist interpretation. I then reviewed the posting history of the "wholesome" person, found nothing remotely racially coded, and let it be at that. There's a ton of subjectivity in that process, and that subjectivity is subject to my biases and my knowledge, both of which I am going to be extremely conscious of. It's also going to mean we get people mad that I went too far or didn't go far enough, based on their own biases and knowledge. Clearly whatever I did was going to piss off someone. But I don't think anyone can argue what I did wasn't in the best interest of the message board.
As I've said before, we're not going to adhere to meaningless policy minutiae at the expense of common sense. If you embrace ideas like "This group of people deserve to die" and want that idea treated the same way as "This group of people deserve to play sports" it's not going to happen that way. The more your politics veer away from facts, morality, and patriotism, the more you're going to find your ideas unwelcome among the vast majority of people you're communicating with on this board, and therefore less welcome in a digital space where the goal is for a community to have a good experience while communicating. Intent can matter, but it's not going to matter more than outcome. If that falls short of your ideal of a free exchange of ideas, perhaps consider the effect on that market if it were to stop caring about the quality of the goods.
*No, not equally on both sides; if you've convinced yourself otherwise I strongly recommend you do what badandboujee above didn't, and keep that stupid wrong opinion to yourself.
I missed the comment above and would have banned him if I had seen it. Apologies for that.
As for the rest, thank you for ringing in on this. I realize what I did might have been a bit ham-handed, but was going for an interpretation of "on topic" and I might have been too late that time.
Getting a persistent "The requested page not found" error when I press the "Your active threads" link?
Starting getting this message after the website seemingly crashed earlier today, then it briefly flashed an internal database error message.
April 11th, 2024 at 10:33 AM ^
It wasn't a crash--we pushed an update yesterday. But we forgot to QA active threads and I noticed it just this morning as well. Devs are aware now.
April 11th, 2024 at 10:57 AM ^
The new box for typing comments/post is very frustrating on mobile (Android phone, Google Chrome). Not sure if due to phone's autocorrect, but typing out words has the cursor jumping, words autofilling or repeating when simply typing one letter, and just general strange behavior. Very irritating and was never like this before the April 10 update. Took 5min to get this correctly typed when previously would take 30sec.
(Also posted in bug sticky).
Did some comments get deleted out of the OJ thread, or a user get banned (and thus his comments deleted)? I ask because I was part of a sub-conversation re the website design/HUEL that's not there anymore (the original top-level comment is still there, but a series of sub-comments are gone). Not that I really care one way or the other, but the thought of comments being deleted because they were critical of HUEL and the website redesign strikes me as something that Ace would do, but the current writers/mods not so much...
That was me. I removed a post that was slandering an important business partner. It was late, the thread was already out of hand, and I was too furious to respond to it without over-responding. Sorry for not posting it here; I had to stop at that point or I was going to start banning people for piling on. This is a company that saved our blog. I doubt three companies in the world had the patience and competence to do what they did, let alone care enough about this place to do it in a way that we could afford it. And they're still doing it.
Being critical doesn't get you banned, and being wrong won't usually get you banned either. But that thread went WAY over the line--well into slander--without anyone having the first clue what they were talking about, or showing even a modicum of curiosity. I'm not hosting that.
The old WYSIWYG editor was depreciated and we installed the latest one, which has more features that pushed other features to a dropdown. If you want to post an image, click the damn three dots in the upper right. If you don't like the design, take it up with the Drupal community. And if you want a helpful response, instead of damaging the site maybe just ask.
Loving how the Media Button allows for easy Tweet embeds.
Although it appears that image hosting, either directly through the "Folder" button. Or by doing a hardcode HTML on the source page. Are not working.
Is this a known bug?
Tested twice here above. Any attempt causes the board to autoedit the image code to just "img" with < > around it, from full code, with no subsequent unique code/text.
Here's a screencap about what the backend looks like...
Image uploads no longer work