Kirk's utility is increasing in the number of people who visit this site, as is evidenced by the astonishing energy he's put into programming it, and he's not going to do anything to drive the romans away. This will continue to be a place for undergrads and redditors to take a s**t and point at it and laugh.
Kirk, please think about passing EJMR on to someone else
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Fact: This is the No1 web-page for Econ/fin Phd's and it should be maintained properly, and it should live.
Solution:
a)Only registered members can start the topic
b) Moderators should be Phd's/Phd students
c) As Kirk probably depends on number of hits and has a (quality vs. visits) trade off , donations button can be established -
Kirk can't police the mods: he's anonymous from them in order to protect himself legally. There are extremely minimal reputation and identity devices in order for anyone to do any informal policing and social control. And establishing a formal hierarchy and order of things is almost impossible. Defection therefore remains incredibly cheap, and there is a lot of it.
As much gossip and backbiting as there is in the world, and as functional as it might be in limited measure, there's a reason that there are extraordinary moral injunctions against it prescribed in just about every major world religion from thousands of years ago.
This place was designed to give license and freedom to people for social defection, with the idea in mind that such a situation reveals their true preferences and beliefs about states of the world. Well, apparently when you do so, people reveal their preference to sit around all day and struggle to establish institutions even when doing so is technologically impossible.This, a million times. Everyone no gooding this is under the delusion that an anonymous forum can be moderated as well as a normal forum, which is just ridiculous.
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Well, a lot ask for stricter modding and I'm fine with that. In fact just delete anything mildly trolling and I wouldn't say no.
But lots of us do like to see some off topic threads mainly to decompress a bit so mods might end up doing some collateral damage. That is why I was saying to have an "unfunny trolling" forum and have mods aggressively shipping threads that way.
But why don't we just say, extremely aggressive modding if a thread in an off topic thread is offensive (for example "Christian law on rape") and keep the zero tolerance in every other forum.
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You know, the internet isn't the only place in society that post adolescents select into with the expressed purpose of violating normal social courtesies in order to demonstrate their independence to themselves and one another. The rest of the free world just gets smashed to undo social and reputational sanctions. This place is a frat house for aspies. And you all are shocked that people continue to puke in the sink and not clean it up.
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Hi OP,
Thanks for your post. Just to address your points
The quality of EJMR has suffered a stunning downfall since the AEAs
This happens every year. This year's job market on EJMR was widely viewed as the best ever. Unfortunately this makes the off-season drop off more severe and you will see topics like yours every year around May/June/July. I've been adding features to try and improve the situation like POTW and auto indexed latest research from NBER. More features like this will come.
A rogue mod is tolerated
Not anymore. With improved transparency of deletions we haven't had a valid complaint about over-moderation in a while. If any rogue moderation without good explanation is caught in future it will result in the mod being let go.
Mentally ill trolls dominate
This is the main issue that is dragging discussion down. It is hard for the mods as when we delete this posts in the serious discussions there will inevitably be a lot of backlash and a surge in attacks about mods being biased etc.
Complaints are ignored
Which complaints do you refer to? Complaints come from users asking for more moderation and others for less moderation. We strike a balance, and users who don't like off-topic are able to filter it out.
Hope this helps OP.
Best
Kirk -
Do you want harsher moderation in off topic? Anyone reading, pls good/no good my post accordingly. I want to see what EJMR wants
This is my first post in this thread. I've kept one view my whole time since participating here, which was long before you showed up : Kirk stop catering to trolls. Cater to the sites audience. I think this means strict moderation, but I don't intend to define what I would do. I expect I'd get 100 no goods, but my feeling is it would get rid of all non-economists (essentially make the site as boring as possible).
Quit deferring to the sites collective opinion : It means undergrad trolls, autoadmit users and other non-economists have equal say with economist. Make the best judgement you mods can from feed back and construct a CONSISTENT mod policy with the sites audience in mind.
Most of the problems/complaints against mods boil down to consistency, or rather inconsistency with mod policy. One example is kirk deleted reminder, which I am agnostic with. What I dislike is the fact that his rational is that the forum should be comfortable to females who participate are active part of this profession. Thats fine and dandy kirk, but what about race baiting towards Asians (especiallly Indians). They are active part of this site and profession. Why is that okay to poast race baiting trolls about them? If the rational is anything goes then every single misogynistic thread should be allowed as. Define the rules clearly Kirk.
-A very drunk LeftardHi Leftard,
Always good to hear your opinion, and I do like how you yourself are consistent.
For the race baiting we can use the bot to take care of it in a consistent fashion. If you would help me construct a list of keywords that you see and think should be auto deleted it would go a long way to improve the situation.
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One thing to consider is Kirk's positives. His maturity and integrity regarding legal requests, anonymity, dealing with all of this information, responding in a civil and reasoned manner have to count for something.
His dedication to paying for the site, making it faster, adding new features, trying to keep people happy etc. is admirable.
I can't think of a single forum where people don't complain about modding, and given that this is an anonymous forum coupled with the fact that the users themselves are contradictory and unspecific in their complaints, I think Kirk has done very well.
I for one would be greatly concerned about passing over all of this responsibility and personal data to someone else.
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One thing to consider is Kirk's positives. His maturity and integrity regarding legal requests, anonymity, dealing with all of this information, responding in a civil and reasoned manner have to count for something.
His dedication to paying for the site, making it faster, adding new features, trying to keep people happy etc. is admirable.
I can't think of a single forum where people don't complain about modding, and given that this is an anonymous forum coupled with the fact that the users themselves are contradictory and unspecific in their complaints, I think Kirk has done very well.
I for one would be greatly concerned about passing over all of this responsibility and personal data to someone else.+1
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One thing to consider is Kirk's positives. His maturity and integrity regarding legal requests, anonymity, dealing with all of this information, responding in a civil and reasoned manner have to count for something.
His dedication to paying for the site, making it faster, adding new features, trying to keep people happy etc. is admirable.
I can't think of a single forum where people don't complain about modding, and given that this is an anonymous forum coupled with the fact that the users themselves are contradictory and unspecific in their complaints, I think Kirk has done very well.
I for one would be greatly concerned about passing over all of this responsibility and personal data to someone else.
gioded
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