Moderator Guidelines and Contributor Rules

[Cebion]

Nice! I'm more excited every day. Next step would be to see who submitted and how the current change status is for the current title and what others Mods have written about it. Keep up the good work @jason

[CADScott]

The new rejection reason is great, works very well! One more suggestion, I was wondering whether there might be the possibility of having the option to skip a moderation. There are some that I have found that I just cannot be sure of the data, and would like to continue on with other items. Perhaps we could have a limited amount of skips per day or something, to stop everyone skipping the hard ones!

[Jason Carr]

I plan to keep contributions and moderations anonymous, at least during the moderation process, primarily so that it doesn't turn into a popularity contest. The results of the moderation shouldn't change based on who submitted the change. I'm torn on showing past rejection reasons for moderators. On the one hand, it might help someone to see something that they didn't realize, but on the other hand, it's likely to make a lot of moderators lazy and defeat the purpose of the multiple moderations. "Oh, Cebion rejected it, it must be crap." Skipping moderations does seem like a good idea; I like your idea for a certain number you can skip @CADScott. Probably not priority, but I agree, a good thing to add at some point. :)

[CADScott]

I definitely agree that the moderations and contributions should remain anonymous, and I also think that we should not be able to see the reasons for rejection until after the item has completed moderation. If moderators can see others reasons, then it will sway our opinions and make people less likely to check information themselves. Perhaps if an item is rejected for addition to the database then the person who submitted it could get some sort of notification or list with all the reasons (Anonymous of course!) that would allow them to resubmit the correct info.

[hubz]

I second skipping, that would be great for the reasons listed above :) Also moderating has sped up dramatically, so thanks for that Jason! Takes much less time now.

[Jason Carr]

Thank you both. I'm with you @CADScott. Rejection reasons are already shown to the original contributor on the Changes Status page, but only after the change has been completely rejected.

[SentaiBrad]

Being anonymous for who made the approval or rejection brings no accountability to the moderator. I understand the other reasons, but there needs to be accountability.

[Cebion]

That's why we're discussing it here. We're still at the beginning but many challenges lay ahead :D @CADScott I really like the idea of skipping titles, I do sometimes wish to moderate games when I'm on the go. So when a new title change comes I can't do these because they take time to look all the infos up. But single entries are perfectly fine to look up on the go =) At first agree with you, that we don't need to see the rejections reasons from other mods too make the moderation process as accurate as possible. BUT we need to make a line here. We want to optimize the moderation process and make the jobs for the mods easier. The submitters already have their reasons for rejections and only need their comments upon submitting then its done. From the Moderator site it's not quite that easy. We DO need insight about moderations. And I agree there with @Sentai Sure I don't care who made the moderation before me but in the long term we need quality assurance in some kind or another. Also at the moment I get an item in my queue and I don't know wether other mods have questions about it or not. If yes maybe we could answer questions and the items goes back to the beginning of the queue etc. I mean we had the troubles with some submitters who had a really good will and then made a mistake which they didn't think mattered that much but we were clueless of who it was. @Jason I think to make the moderation process fast and accurate we need a mix of all the good stuff. Maybe: An item comes in I do see a) The current Status of the Item how much it has been rejected or accepted but not by whom. b) Comments or Questions by other mods. I'd really like to have an option to escalate certain item when I see something the other mods missed, so it won't be approved with false data. Finally one thing that bothers me with the new game entries is that I can't reject single items within the new game. Sure I can accept it with 1-2 wrong data fields. But after I accept it doesn't mean the other mods will and I'd have to remember the names and come back later to make the changes. And that ain't efficency. Again @Jason @Sentai and the rest. Thanks for all the good work I really like working with you!

[CADScott]

SentaiBrad said Being anonymous for who made the approval or rejection brings no accountability to the moderator. I understand the other reasons, but there needs to be accountability.

While I agree that there needs to be accountability, giving submitters the names of people who rejected their submissions seems like a very bad idea! It would not take long for someone to get upset that a certain moderator has rejected a few of the their submissions and that leaves the moderators open to personal abuse. Also, we all make mistakes, and I could see people getting irate if I say rejected some Fanart and they did not like the reason. Accountability should always come from a person or group higher than the person being held accountable, not from the users of a system. The requirement of having 3 approvals on all changes is a form of accountability, and users should be able to raise concerns with yourself or Jason, and you can then look at the issue and ensure that the moderators are doing their job properly. I certainly would not feel very comfortable knowing everyone of my rejections is being seen by the person who submitted the change. Anonymity gives us the power to make rational decisions that are better for the data in the database, rather than having to concern ourselves with pissed off submitters.

[SentaiBrad]

Well let me first say I never disagreed with the reasons, I got them, I was just making sure we also didn't lose sight of that. Also yea, Jason and I can see everything done on the server, we own it afterall. Part of me isn't bothered by someone knowing that though, maybe because it's already apart of my job. My thought was that if the mod knew the user could know that it would raise the quality of the moderation's a bit. Truthfully we do have a bit of a problem where users and mod's alike aren't reading the Guidelines, that's something we have to figure out but my thought was it would weed out the ones who didn't. I still agree though, I get why it makes you and others uncomfortable though.

[Jason Carr]

Thank you all. I will guarantee that moderation will always be anonymous, at least to the submitter. That is absolutely not going to change for the reasons that @CADScott brought up. That said, we can certainly still entertain the concept of sharing previous moderations during the moderation process; I definitely do still see the benefit of that. I like the idea of escalations too, @Cebion. :)

[FistyDollars]

SentaiBrad said I would like to remind everyone to try and follow the Guidelines as best as possible. I requested the deletion of two image with nudity and someone rejected those. Those need to be accepted.

Just had a similar issue when I was going through the arcade flyers for some "Adult" arcade games and flagging anything with nudity for deletion - 0 approvals, 2 rejections so far, and I assume that the deletion will be rejected. I don't personally even agree with the nudity policy, but if it's the policy, I'll do my damnedest to make sure it's enforced; but I can't do that if other mods don't follow the rules. We really need to have the ability to leave comments when requesting deletion of content.

[SentaiBrad]

Moderation reasons are in, I am unsure if deletion reasons are in. That's the rule until we have proper parental controls.

[Cebion]

FistyDollars That's why I talked about Quality Insurance. Clicking accept to get as many moderations as possible is not good moderating. I nave seen your request. Visible bare breast, it is very clear to me. Not even bad visibilty. I mean I accept girls in bikinis but this is to much =)

[SentaiBrad]

I made a small update to the Guidelines yesterday, it was a small change. See if you can even find it. :P

[Cebion]

FistyDollars said

SentaiBrad said I would like to remind everyone to try and follow the Guidelines as best as possible. I requested the deletion of two image with nudity and someone rejected those. Those need to be accepted.

Just had a similar issue when I was going through the arcade flyers for some "Adult" arcade games and flagging anything with nudity for deletion - 0 approvals, 2 rejections so far, and I assume that the deletion will be rejected. I don't personally even agree with the nudity policy, but if it's the policy, I'll do my damnedest to make sure it's enforced; but I can't do that if other mods don't follow the rules. We really need to have the ability to leave comments when requesting deletion of content.

And again... I marked 2 Nude images for deletion The Joy of Sex & Miss World '96 Joy of Sex has 2 approved 2 rejections and Miss World 96 1 approval 3 rejections... @Sentai I think you added the merging of systems =)

[SentaiBrad]

I don't add anything, it's all Jason. If something happens that's all Jason. Until we have proper parental controls Jason and I will need to manually delete the nudity. Being a moderator means you guys need to follow the guidelines, and a portion of you are not. We know who rejects and accepts what.

[Cebion]

SentaiBrad said I don't add anything, it's all Jason. If something happens that's all Jason. Until we have proper parental controls Jason and I will need to manually delete the nudity. Being a moderator means you guys need to follow the guidelines, and a portion of you are not. We know who rejects and accepts what.

I meant in the guidelines :D

[SentaiBrad]

Ah yea. I will edit that to be more concrete when that feature gets implemented.

[Ruester]

SentaiBrad said I don't add anything, it's all Jason. If something happens that's all Jason. Until we have proper parental controls Jason and I will need to manually delete the nudity. Being a moderator means you guys need to follow the guidelines, and a portion of you are not. We know who rejects and accepts what.

I accidentally accepted a couple box images w/nudity. It kind of surprised me and I though they were for deletion until I notice on one it was to add it, My bad. I have been better at catching it, I just wanted to get past the picture quickly.