heyvern wrote:Rhoel wrote:BTW, What time zone are you on - I'm GMT+7.
Can I assume those weird posts that appear to be some sort of bizarre "russian" type language are spam? Those weird characters and stuff. I've seen them vanish in the past so I guess they are spam.
-vern
Usually you can tell by the website link. There is a nice facility you can use if you are in doubt. AT the bottom of a thread, on the left hand side, there are 4 buttons: The second on in is the @Move topic@ button. Click that and a groovy little dialogue box pops up and lets you move the topic to "Misc chit chat" for example. Sometimes there are spam messages which are not promoting cheap drugs porn and other forms of dodge entertaiments, but posting on a political topic like the War in Iraq. Whilst they are spam, they can be interesting enough to keep, but in the right area. Before I discovered the button, I just deleted them since they were not relevant to the Discuss Moho section.
You can also edit a post - if someone posted something which contained a valid post but used a very offensive word, then the tools are there to mod the word so its more acceptable. I haven't needed to do that yet. The only time I have done a content edit was to correct a broke weblink, inserting a
.com where a
,com had previously been. It saved a string of messages saying the like was broke.
Moving and editing posts is rare, but it can be necessary - I have only moved two messages since being a Mod. If I have to mod a post, I tag it with a message to say - "This message has been moderated", "message moved from ", or words to that effect. That way, the orignal poster cannot complaint that someone changed thier posts anonymously.
Generally though, a moderators job is very clear cut - if its spam, it goes.
The politics and code of conduct is up to eForntier and Mike to resolve (as was demonstrated this week with a highly personnal but strong view of AS's performance).
If I'm really unsure about a borderline post, I leave it. Sometimes another moderator or Admin will know what to do with it.
Rhoel.
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off-topic: In England you can buy a luncheon meat called Spam. The mad mischief-maker inside me got the better and I send a can by snail mail to a German programmer friend in Germany. It was later reported that after the postman had dragged him from his bed at some ungodly hour of the morning, his wife was perplexed by laughter coming from the hallway: The can now sits pride of honour on top of his PC at company HQ.
He still has the mahogany toilet seat I gave him the previous Christmas.
He really isn't going to like this years Christmas present either - I just know it.
And I try so hard to please .
