Moderation

Here's my experience with senseless / ridiculous moderation...

Teila: "I agree with BurnImage’s stance on the matter - If you’re doing street photography that’s predicated on a lot of action (protesters and their violent interaction with police, etc..) as opposed to more static shots, you may want to give up a smidgen of image quality for more capable/quicker autofocusing and much higher frame rate."

MODERATOR:: "FYI your recent post in the medium format forum was deleted for its political content. Please stick to photographic subjects.

(as if photographing people rioting, marching, protesting hasn't been a mainstay in reportage photography for decades)

MODERATOR:: "This is a photographic website. Please avoid off-topic political statements and stick to photography. Thank you.

(Since when did reportage/documentation photography become "off-topic" in the discussion of what cameras are most ideal for a particular task?)

(Date -May 18, 2022 at 22:54 UTC)

Less than 15 days later, DPreview publishes an article on June 3, 2022:
"Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Nick Ut reflects on the day he captured the iconic image known as 'Terror of War' and 'Napalm Girl'

So, I get "moderated" for making an obvious photography-relevant comment that using fast focusing cameras may be worth taking a small hit on image quality in order to get the shot, etc.. yet, some moderator somehow thinks that the mere mention of "protesters and their violent interactions with police, etc.." even as a street photography/reportage/journalistic e-x-a-m-p-l-e in the context of how a photographer can benefit with the right photographic tool, constitutes getting "political". That's like someone mentioning Grand Canyon and 8x10 view cameras in the context of getting the most detail, and some moderator accusing the person of "delving into environmental politics" by the mere mention of a canyon.

…. but an article by DPreview depicting a photograph of a girl in the midst of war, physically affected by napalm is somehow kittens, rainbows and baby’s breath and not political, even when the Vietnam War was entrenched in American politics. Absolutely ridiculous moderation.

Adding insult, the moderation refused to tell me what exactly triggered the deletion of what I thought was a rather benign post. That's like giving someone a fine, without telling them exactly what they did wrong.

I've never been banned at any time, anywhere on the internet. My 17 years of posting on DPreview was factual, non-inflammatory and well-grounded.
While I do not mind moderation, I strongly feel that moderation needs to be done by reasonably intelligent adults who can easily comprehend the concept of situational context and relevance. Most of the moderators that I encountered on DPreview did a splendid job.

It is an impressive thing that this is a conversation topic and that people are putting their minds together to broker a solution that stands on good reason. Bravo.

Looking forward to the successes of this site.

Yes, a long list of carefully defined rules will not cover every possibility, but a long list of carefully defined rules will definitely cover many, many more possibilities and scenarios than a blanket single rule of "Be Nice".

Moderation = Censorship = controlling what people can talk about.

These are slippery slopes.

IMO, we need to err on the side of freedom of speech and expression.

Spam is usually not a problem in closed forums like this.

Nothing wrong with flamewars.

Personal insults are difficult as I have observed different people have different feelings about what is a personal insult. Maybe if many people report a post as insulting then its okay to act on it, but not because some moderator thinks they know best.

Political and religious agendas are again problematic; mostly they are like spam, so it is unusual to see a lot of it in closed forums dedicated to photography.

I am not keen on people with special moderation powers; all people who think they know what is best and want to decide for others are dangerous. If readers complain about something that's fair, and so if a post got complaints from a large number of people (> 20 maybe) that could merit action.

You have to remember that for years DPreview didn't have moderation and everything was fine. I can't remember when they started moderation, probably after Amazon acquired it. Corporations like Amazon have to enforce moderation due to issues they can get into. And usually its to protect the Corporation not us.

Neither is censorship per se. Moderation is censorship. On the other hand, you may argue that some censorship is good.

With a free site I accept whatever moderation the Bonzen wish to apply. If it gets too frustrating/ludicrous I just stop showing up.

It's not like there are money or health consequences involved.

@Dibyendu
Moderation at dpreview was introduced in the fall of 2012

Moderation - as applied to a forum is to guide in a way to prevent excesses and extremes and to keep a discussion on the original topic in a civil manner. One of the common issues with DPR was at some point the discussion was off significantly off topic and the original intent was lost. The Mods would for the most part would do a good job keeping the threads on track but some would still end up in the weeds. Moderation is not censorship. DPR was owned and funded by Amazon. We hear all sorts of "freedom of speech" arguments against moderation. However, there is little justification applied to privately owned corporations. Amazon could dictate the terms and conditions of the use of their DPR forums because they owned them. The same here, the owner of the site can set the terms and conditions of the use. If one cannot abide by the set terms and conditions, then they should go elsewhere.

That's your choice. But it's upending to think you're living in Norway or Sweden or Canada, and all of a sudden you end up under the rules of North Korea.

And on the no money, no health consequences thingy, fellows such as Jim Kasson, anotherMike, Horshack, Ilya Borg, Bobn2 for that matter (though we didn't overlap in many threads),contributed a lot of time, a lot of knowledge, many hours of posting to DPR. So there is other things involved that benefitted DPReview.

Not sure why you think that. I've been a member and (occasional) moderator on a number of closed forums. All of them have had spam posts to varying degrees.

Yes there is. Flamewars drive away the majority of users who can't be bothered wading through all the bile and don't want to find themselves a target of it.

If flamewars are left to run wild, before long the only people still participating will be the trolls.

It doesn't have to be as hard as you're making it sound.

Criticism should be directed at ideas/opinions and disputable 'facts', not at people. Mostly, it is pretty clear when that line is being crossed.

Any forum with a membership of several thousand or more is likely to occasionally see threads veering off topic and getting mired into the weeds, including political and/or religious views. It happened periodically at DPR, so there's no reason to assume it won't happen here too.

Realistically, whether they're called moderators or not, having people who have admin privileges and run the site is unavoidable.

Ideally, their actions should be transparent, rules should be clear and applied consistently and there should be as little intervention as possible. But I don't think we should kid ourselves about the need for some guardrails.

I don't think going off topic is a federal crime. Some times the "off topic" is more interesting than the original thread. Such as, in a thread like "is the D700 still relevant in 2023." You're entitled to your opinion, but your opinion doesn't bode well, if adopted, in creating a nice forum après DPReview. Things go off, things come back on. It's not North Korea.

I was a little surprised that no one took court action against Amazon. Also over the mental angst over the site being closed. There was a joke in a small town that I had lived in, that when a tavern burned down, 23 men were left homeless. (or some number) Same is happening with DPReview being shut down.

Court action against Amazon, why? Because they decided to close a website that does not represent any revenue to them?

Well, compare that to the wikipedia definition of censorship:

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient."

With the exception of some moderators, it surely gave them a bit of personal enjoyment. 😎

Shortly after the Sony A1 was launched, I started a thread in the EOS R forum basically saying that in most respects my R5 was as good as or better than the Sony which was $2,500 more expensive. Now, you may or may not agree with me 😁, but nobody was able to dispute it and/or convince me otherwise, because the thread was summarily deleted. When I asked for a reason, I was told that it was in the wrong forum because I wasn't discussing EOS R cameras!! (But remember it was deleted, not moved to the Sony forum.)

I used to moderate a very busy and successful forum (not a photography one) so I know what a thankless task it can be. But this decision was ludicrous, and I had no recourse. What's more, other threads making basically the same point appeared in the following days and were not deleted or locked, but if I had started another I would have run the risk of a ban for disrespecting the moderator's decision. Well, for the record I have no respect for the moderator in question, due to this and at least one more incident which I won't bore you all with. It's heartening to learn from some of the comments in this thread that I'm not alone!