General Website Queries: 2018 Onward

Just a thought, but the 24-hour limit on editing posts may have been introduced to deter flame-starters, who attempted to erase their tracks. Do we have many of them, now?

Part of me prefers every footprint to remain but I am often ashamed of my literals, from donkeys' years ago! :curt:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Just a thought, but the 24-hour limit on editing posts may have been introduced to deter flame-starters, who attempted to erase their tracks. Do we have many of them, now?

Part of me prefers every footprint to remain but I am often ashamed of my literals, from donkeys' years ago! :curt:
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I'm afraid it will not be changing at the moment but if there is something you are desperate to change just drop a PM to a mod.
 
I would also greatly appreciate it if any edits made to historic posts, by moderators, on whatever grounds, could be notified to the poster.

Revisions made by the poster are dated on the post, anyway. Revisions made by moderators are not notified to the poster, however, when they occur. I wish I could say I was confident that what I wrote is what now appears, to defend or apologize for as seems right.

It is a matter of courtesy, first, before we get into rewriting history territory. :curt:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I would also greatly appreciate it if any edits made to historic posts, by moderators, on whatever grounds, could be notified to the poster.

Revisions made by the poster are dated on the post, anyway. Revisions made by moderators are not notified to the poster, however, when they occur. I wish I could say I was confident that what I wrote is what now appears, to defend or apologize for as seems right.

It is a matter of courtesy, first, before we get into rewriting history territory. :curt:
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As far as I'm aware the only historic revisions that are done are simply when a link is dead and an archived version is put in place, that's one of the reasons we don't like links without any text, it can then be potentially impossible to put the relevant information back in.
 
This is just a curiosity question.

How do the postings in the 'The Re-Rail-The-De-Rails Thread (Relocated Tangents)' get to be there? Thanks.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I would also greatly appreciate it if any edits made to historic posts, by moderators, on whatever grounds, could be notified to the poster.

Revisions made by the poster are dated on the post, anyway. Revisions made by moderators are not notified to the poster, however, when they occur. I wish I could say I was confident that what I wrote is what now appears, to defend or apologize for as seems right.

It is a matter of courtesy, first, before we get into rewriting history territory. :curt:
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James, a few things in addition to what Gordon has said:

A) We have an option to 'edit silently' or 'leave an edit marker' each time we edit any post, but there's no universal setting for this. The default is to 'leave a marker', but (personally) I prefer not to for 'technical edits' (fixing broken elements) because it's unnattractive. This is imperfect. I will do my best to remember to 'leave markers' in future for non-technical edits.

B) When a post is edited but not removed, we NEVER add material, we only remove. If it's there, the poster whose name it is under put it there. The only exceptions are for 'A'. We might add words like 'Link' or 'Full Article'. I confess that cutting bits can change the context slightly. The other day, somebody posted an interesting and Fortean article, but one phrase at the very start was couched in politically charged language. We simply cut the phrase to retain the article.

C) Each post has a 'history' attached and we can review previous versions of it. If a member asks, we will tell them whether their post has been edited or not. 99% of posts on the board have not been edited.

D) Minor point: the majority of edits are made very soon after the post appears. There's one of us online at most times. Historical edits are usually under 'A'.

E) Thread Titles are an exception to all of the above. Since we 'curate' the board in order to keep the archive active, we very often tweak these. And when threads are merged or cut, the original title is lost. We think this is a significant net gain, however.

F) Personally, and as an addendum, I really can't imagine our needing to mess with your own posts, James. If it's happened, I can't see or recall it. Please PM us under 'C'.
 
Some years ago, a single word in one of my posts "bloke" was changed to "man"... I could see no reason for it then, and I can see no reason for it now. I was not notified of the change, and I have no idea who did it, or why. So I can understand doubts about posts really being "as written ".
 
SimonBurchell said:
Some years ago, a single word in one of my posts "bloke" was changed to "man"... I could see no reason for it then, and I can see no reason for it now. I was not notified of the change, and I have no idea who did it, or why. So I can understand doubts about posts really being "as written ".
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No idea why--possibly a mistake.

I've accidentally deleted some words when editing for format and retyped them from memory in the past.

If you can find the post, I will investigate.

Edit: more generally, you just going to have to trust the moderators. With access to the controls, we could do any number of highly dishonest things and make it untraceable, but we don't.

Ask about: try @ramonmercado and @Frideswide, who have both done stints on the staff in the past.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Some years ago, a single word in one of my posts "bloke" was changed to "man"... I could see no reason for it then, and I can see no reason for it now. I was not notified of the change, and I have no idea who did it, or why. So I can understand doubts about posts really being "as written ".
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I started trying to find the post you refer to, but our logs are only extant from Dec 2014 and we have 86,094 entries for various moderation actions since then.

You're going to have to give me a clue.
 
Yithian said:
I started trying to find the post you refer to, but our logs are only extant from Dec 2014 and we have 86,094 entries for various moderation actions since then.

You're going to have to give me a clue.
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That's a challenge! I'll see if I can remember what I was blathering on about all those years ago!
 
stu neville said:
Yeah, that'd be the only possible reason why. It's not a sub that any mod would ever make in the usual run of things. Did you query at the time?
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Surely, that comes under the heading of 'Total Recall' then?
 
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Last week found the moderation team very busy offline, so not all reports were addressed within the usual timespan.

As a result, two threads in particular ran well beyond the bounds that the forum permits in the area of politics and culture/religious strife. The theads on Mass-Stabbings and (one which was derailled to discuss) Riots are now locked.

We've previously run 'commentary threads' here on periods of civil unrest without too much trouble, but this time the news updates and anecdotes have been drowned out by arguments over Islam, immigration, the far-right and racial politics, none of which we wish to host.

Thank you for all those who contacted us recently. We're working our way through your messages.
 
Yithian said:
Last week found the moderation team very busy offline, so not all reports were addressed in the usual timespan.

As a result, two threads in particular ran well beyond the bounds that the forum permits in the area of politics and culture/religious strife. The theads on Mass-Stabbings and (one which was derailled to discuss) Riots are now locked.

We've previously run 'commentary threads' here on periods of civil unrest without too much trouble, but this time the news updates and anecdotes have drowned out by arguments over Islam, immigration and the far-right and racial politics, none of which we wish to host.

Thank you for all those who contacted us recently. We're working our way through your messages.
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As well as being locked if a thread is too far gone to be recoverable it will be deleted. This board is for Fortean discussion, we are not saying anything about the importance or otherwise of these and various other topics simply trying to keep things on track, posters help in doing this by posting about Forteana is much appreciated.
 
On Saturday I suggested that off topic posts be moved.

The posts from here onwards https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/mass-stabbings-multiple-stabbings.56293/post-2363701 on the Mass Stabbings / Multiple Stabbings Thread have strayed into the conspiracy, online disinformation area. Perhaps some of them could be moved to https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...lueprints-shaping-post-terror-planning.71363/ and that thread renamed.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...move-merge-requests.4301/page-62#post-2364604
 
Yithian said:
Last week found the moderation team very busy offline, so not all reports were addressed in the usual timespan.

As a result, two threads in particular ran well beyond the bounds that the forum permits in the area of politics and culture/religious strife. The theads on Mass-Stabbings and (one which was derailled to discuss) Riots are now locked.

We've previously run 'commentary threads' here on periods of civil unrest without too much trouble, but this time the news updates and anecdotes have drowned out by arguments over Islam, immigration and the far-right and racial politics, none of which we wish to host.

Thank you for all those who contacted us recently. We're working our way through your messages.
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Hi Yith.
I'm sure you've seen the chat between myself and Ramon yesterday regarding the PM's statement about "misleading" information being posted on social media.
My thoughts were that one person's misleading is another person's speculation or conspiracy theory, which constitutes very common material here.
Given the current situation, will the PM's statement require a modification to any of your guidelines?
 
ramonmercado said:
On Saturday I suggested that off topic posts be moved.

The posts from here onwards https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/mass-stabbings-multiple-stabbings.56293/post-2363701 on the Mass Stabbings / Multiple Stabbings Thread have strayed into the conspiracy, online disinformation area. Perhaps some of them could be moved to https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...lueprints-shaping-post-terror-planning.71363/ and that thread renamed.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...move-merge-requests.4301/page-62#post-2364604
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We're not convinced this is worth the candle.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Hi Yith.
I'm sure you've seen the chat between myself and Ramon yesterday regarding the PM's statement about "misleading" information being posted on social media.
My thoughts were that one person's misleading is another person's speculation or conspiracy theory, which constitutes very common material here.
Given the current situation, will the PM's statement require a modification to any of your guidelines?
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Likewise, we don't think any of this is sufficiently Fortean to warrant the effort.

Misleading information from an elected politician on social media?

If that's the standard for shade beneath our Fortean umbrella, we're doomed.
 
Yithian said:
Likewise, we don't think any of this is sufficiently Fortean to warrant the effort.

Misleading information from an elected politician on social media?

If that's the standard for shade beneath our Fortean umbrella, we're doomed.
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Citius, Altius, Fortius! or to put it another way, forever. . . Up-Up-and away!​

1722961285173.png
:yeahthat:
 
Horsa said:
I thought that meant higher, faster, stronger but obviously I must be wrong. Silly me! Lol.
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It does . . . referring to 'Forteana,' generally speaking of course! :) (Quite apart from that - it seemed like a good Idea at the time!)
 
Yithian said:
Likewise, we don't think any of this is sufficiently Fortean to warrant the effort.

Misleading information from an elected politician on social media?

If that's the standard for shade beneath our Fortean umbrella, we're doomed.
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I wasn't trying to raise any particularly Fortean point. nor did I have any elected politician in mind (apart from the PM!).
I just honestly thought it was worth flagging up to you mods that the UK government, in its reaction to the civil unrest, appears to be gunning for any speculative and potentially inflammatory posts that are made on social media (which obviously includes this forum).
 
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blessmycottonsocks said:
I wasn't trying to raise any particularly Fortean point. nor did I have any elected politician in mind (apart from the PM!).
I just honestly thought it was worth flagging up to you mods that the UK government, in its reaction to the civil unrest, appears to be gunning for any speculative and potentially inflammatory posts that are made on social media (which obviously includes this forum).
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MI5 always keep an eye on the discussions here.
 
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