Managing forum toxicity and negativity

[owl sees all]

13 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

I agree with @Morch numerous times actually but you admitted yourself you've been suspended 12 times 

 

Well I don't want any more. Would be unlucky 13 for me. And I'd be kicked off.

 

I'm seriously thinking of removing you from my Xmas well-wishing list Brian.

[Bkk Brian]

1 minute ago, owl sees all said:

 

Well I don't want any more. Would be unlucky 13 for me. And I'd be kicked off.

 

I'm seriously thinking of removing you from my Xmas well-wishing list Brian.

I've never received and Xmas well-wishing before, makes no difference....lol

 

But hey, you do add value to the forum in other ways, your diary is awesome and you should concentrate on that rather than conspiracy nonsense

[george]

3 hours ago, MrPancake said:

I think moderation is fantastic now.

There is none.

People interact based on affinities.

Of course you'll still find the usual thought police telling you want you can and can't say or think.

But overall, it's much better when people are free to be who they are.

Pretty weird not to get banned for trivial reasons anymore...

I bet it must be a relief for mods too btw.

It's so peaceful now...

 

 

Thank you, @MrPancake

 

Yes, in the last three or so months it's been a big change. Nearly no bans, nearly no suspensions, and the whole forum seems to be a much friendlier place these days. (we still immediately ban members for lese majeste, threats, porn and some other serious stuff though).

 

I'm really trying hard to fix what needs to be fixed. at ASEAN NOW.

 

I founded this community in November 2002, then it's name was thaivisa.com, and hey boy times has changed. I've been back here to help out for a year+ now, and are happy to hear your suggestions and ideas. But please forget the past and look forward, we are doing much better now, the traffic and unique visitors per day is increasing. Our our daily newsletter subscriber base is increasing. yes, shameful promotion of our newsletter, largest in the Kingdom.😎

 

Don't we all want to make this a better place?

 

John Doe or anyone can start a Facebook group and be their own Admin, but I believe the forum model works better. And we as a forum is definitively not dead. We are growing. 

 

What's your take? 

 

And thank you all member guys for all the content you provide every day. 🙏🏼

Without you we would not exist.

 

USG = User Generated Content.

[eisfeld]

46 minutes ago, novacova said:

Misinformation, conspiracy. It’s an ambiguous phenomenon these days. There has been misinformation disseminated on this site and reinforced as truth by the mods. The idea of censoring opinions is the epitome of fascism. Just because a “reputable news source” states something as true doesn’t necessarily make it so, especially anything that is remotely political. So tell me, who is the author of truth?! Unfiltered history, and as for the current era it’s going to be a few years, maybe a generation or two.

 

The admins and mods decide what is acceptable content on this forum. They don't just go delete content that might just barely be maybe not 100% true or maybe just barely pulling someones leg. They from what I've whitnessed delete gross violations of the rules. When you said censoring opinions is the epitome of fascism that's just a generalization and extreme point of view. There simply are in a balanced society expressions that are not ok. I can't go and say it's my opinion that novacova is an evil person that likes to touch kids. It would be an outright lie and there is nothing bad about removing such a post. Same goes for claiming things that are flat out wrong and might be harmful to others if they believed what they read. Interaction and communication between humans can't be a free for all. Modern society has established rules that we live by to prevent total chaos. It's ok to doubt and question stuff from reputable sources. It's not ok to spread completely bogus misinformation. It's a core concept for a working society. But it's a balancing act where to draw the line and enforcement wont ever be 100% correct. That's life.

[bob smith]

dear oh dear.

 

25 pages of nothing but whinge whinge whinge.

worse than a table full of old women down the bingo hall!

 

it's an anonymous forum for god sake, it's a bit of fun to brighten up what would otherwise be a boring day in Thailand.

Stop taking yourselves so bleedin serious!!

 

Grow a pair fellas, aseannow is NOT the be all and end all!

Edited November 14, 2023 by bob smith

[MangoKorat]

41 minutes ago, alex8912 said:

You have referred to someone " scoring points " in two posts now. Why do you equate name calling with " scoring points"? You seem to contradict yourself. 

Making personal remarks and name callling in a reply is it seems, in the vast majority of cases used to appear to be 'funny' or an attempt at self ingratiation - 'point scoring' rather than actually contributing to the thread or disagreeing with it.  Where is the contradiction?

 

There is actually a section on this site where moderation is, I believe, more relaxed and where the subject matter may be a little more 'risque'.  Those who wish to use that section are, I believe, welcome to go there.  For the rest of us, who wish to make people aware of something or obtain some information, the slagging, name calling and pointless replies simply become tiresome.  I have dropped out of threads before because I have lost interest due to such behaviour - I know for a fact that others have too.

 

I am well aware of what may be considered 'over moderation' - you may note that in the thread that first drew the term 'drama queen' I talked about a situation where I have complained about what I consider to be 'over moderation'. I agree that its also a reason that some leave the site - I know some of them and I believe I have also raised that in a post.

 

I agree that some people seem to be able to 'get away' with posting things that others cannot -  an example of that has also formed part of my discussions with the administration here.

 

I think this particular matter is exhausted now.

 

 

 

 

[farmerjo]

57 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

I've never received and Xmas well-wishing before, makes no difference....lol

 

But hey, you do add value to the forum in other ways, your diary is awesome and you should concentrate on that rather than conspiracy nonsense

That's pretty harsh on our beloved Owl.

Nothing like being an eggspert on all matters.

[george]

Forgot one thing:

 

We as a website has a goal (very much) to be indexed and ranked high in Google search results. That means higher traffic (and increased ad revenue) and a lot of NEW visitors to this forum. Much behind the scenes is SEO, Search engine Optimization, and that's a part of what I'm doing here. I'm a forum nerd and love GA4 and growth!

 

But hey, be honest now! How well are we treating the newbies that sign up? Are we scaring them away? Shouldn't we say "Hi and welcome! "at least when a newbie makes his very first post here.

 

Shame on you! Some of you are not treating newbies with respect. How can we change that?

 

(Just try to be a bit nicer to our new members maybe?)

 

I'm driving a lot of traffic to this community via social media, via Google SERP's,  and ASEAN NOW currently have around 40k unique visitors per day, (sometimes double that traffic if any breaking news event), total page views around 110k per day. This site is huge. Huge traffic. Traffic and ad revenue pay our bills. Not much profit, but wtf?

 

How can we get new members to create new topics or engage more? (with being nicer?...)

 

 

🙏🏼

 

 

 

[bob smith]

6 minutes ago, george said:

How can we get new members to create new topics or engage more? (with being nicer?...)

I think stopping banning them for 'trolling by emoticon' would be a good start.

 

That's the way things were done in the past.

 

Talk about petty!

[Morch]

10 minutes ago, george said:

Forgot one thing:

 

We as a website has a goal (very much) to be indexed and ranked high in Google search results. That means higher traffic (and increased ad revenue) and a lot of NEW visitors to this forum. Much behind the scenes is SEO, Search engine Optimization, and that's a part of what I'm doing here. I'm a forum nerd and love GA4 and growth!

 

But hey, be honest now! How well are we treating the newbies that sign up? Are we scaring them away? Shouldn't we say "Hi and welcome! "at least when a newbie makes his very first post here.

 

Shame on you! Some of you are not treating newbies with respect. How can we change that?

 

(Just try to be a bit nicer to our new members maybe?)

 

I'm driving a lot of traffic to this community via social media, via Google SERP's,  and ASEAN NOW currently have around 40k unique visitors per day, (sometimes double that traffic if any breaking news event), total page views around 110k per day. This site is huge. Huge traffic. Traffic and ad revenue pay our bills. Not much profit, but wtf?

 

How can we get new members to create new topics or engage more? (with being nicer?...)

 

 

🙏🏼

 

 

 

 

For me, this goes back to the issue of many useless topics being opened by a certain group of posters, and others(?) imitating them.So nowadays, I see a headline, and almost always check who opened it, date of joining, post count. Way too many times I don't bother to open the topic itself, as it seems like a clone of the aforementioned trend. So even if it was legit, I wouldn't know and wouldn't answer.

 

This related to another thing - you say 'new' posters, but seems like many are actually old faces returned, or accounts that were dormant or whatever. I can't speak for others, but I don't exactly feel the same about them - they're not 'newbies'.

[bignok]

41 minutes ago, bob smith said:

dear oh dear.

 

25 pages of nothing but whinge whinge whinge.

worse than a table full of old women down the bingo hall!

 

it's an anonymous forum for god sake, it's a bit of fun to brighten up what would otherwise be a boring day in Thailand.

Stop taking yourselves so bleedin serious!!

 

Grow a pair fellas, aseannow is NOT the be all and end all!

Yes but some of us maybe female

[farmerjo]

If your having a clean out but let the deadwood remain,nothing will change.

[bob smith]

2 minutes ago, bignok said:

Yes but some of us maybe female

I never see the girls causing any bother here, only the blokes!

[bignok]

4 minutes ago, bob smith said:

I never see the girls causing any bother here, only the blokes!

God bless

[george]

Just now, bob smith said:

I think stopping banning them for 'trolling by emoticon' would be a good start.

 

That's the way things were done in the past.

 

Talk about petty!

Agree! Such old practice is not allowed anymore. Period.

 

I'm proud of our Moderators! They are doing a fantastic task. Not paid. There is guidelines for the moderators as well:

"The best way to remove toxic content, and content that HURT our Google indexing and ranking, is to simply delete any toxic post". We just delete inflammatory, toxic posts if a post gets too many hits on the report button. Algo.

 

Mods don't need to warn the member, no need to suspend him, no need to make a moderator announcement "I have removed this naughty post as it's in breach of the community guidelines, blah blah"). No need. Just delete if it's not suitable for people and search engine crawlers.

 

Let the discussion just flow with a minimum of moderation. But if you choose to behave like a serial a$$hole, you will be removed by manual action, or the algo will flag you for review.

 

Is my ideas crazy or how should we handle toxic posts?

 

 

[george]

14 minutes ago, Morch said:

 

For me, this goes back to the issue of many useless topics being opened by a certain group of posters, and others(?) imitating them.So nowadays, I see a headline, and almost always check who opened it, date of joining, post count. Way too many times I don't bother to open the topic itself, as it seems like a clone of the aforementioned trend. So even if it was legit, I wouldn't know and wouldn't answer.

 

This related to another thing - you say 'new' posters, but seems like many are actually old faces returned, or accounts that were dormant or whatever. I can't speak for others, but I don't exactly feel the same about them - they're not 'newbies'.

 

We have a lot of old posters returning. Google Analytics tells me that.

 

Welcome back, guys!

[bob smith]

6 minutes ago, george said:

Agree! Such old practice is not allowed anymore. Period.

 

I'm proud of our Moderators! They are doing a fantastic task. Not paid. There is guidelines for the moderators as well:

"The best way to remove toxic content, and content that HURT our Google indexing and ranking, is to simply delete any toxic post". We just delete inflammatory, toxic posts if a post gets too many hits on the report button. Algo.

 

Mods don't need to warn the member, no need to suspend him, no need to make a moderator announcement "I have removed this naughty post as it's in breach of the community guidelines, blah blah"). No need. Just delete if it's not suitable for people and search engine crawlers.

 

Let the discussion just flow with a minimum of moderation. But if you choose to behave like a serial a$$hole, you will be removed by manual action, or the algo will flag you for review.

 

Is my ideas crazy or how should we handle toxic posts?

 

 

Sounds great to me! That’s how it should be.

 

may I ask why mods behaved this way in the past? Where they told to be that petty or did they just interpret the forum rules as they saw fit?

Edited November 14, 2023 by bob smith

[george]

4 minutes ago, bob smith said:

Sounds great to me! That’s how it should be.

 

may I ask why mods behaved this way in the past? Where they told to be that petty or did they just interpret the forum rules as they saw fit?

There was no clear guidelines for the mods. Now we have clear guidelines for the mods.

 

[Lee65]

1 hour ago, george said:

What's your take? 

 

 

AN seems better to me now.  I quit it for quite a long time for the express reason of overzealous moderation.  I found myself self-censoring and that irritation actually made me more negative as I tried to twist my writing into what would escape what I considered to be ridiculous censorship.

 

One other thing that astounded me: one's posts could at any time be deleted without warning, explanation, or notification to the author.  IOW, even something one might have spent some time and thought on might just be disappeared at any time at the whim of a moderator - and the author would ne no wiser.  It made me reluctant to write my best stuff.   Could this arrangement be modified?

[Yellowtail]

I don't like that posts are deleted/hidden except for porn and legal issues.

 

 

[bignok]

On 11/13/2023 at 6:01 PM, Yellowtail said:

To do a good job moderating on a board like this seem like a very difficult task to me. 

Easy.just delete off topic useless comments.

[Yellowtail]

4 minutes ago, bignok said:

Easy.just delete off topic useless comments.

But that is pretty subjective, and a mountain of work. I can think of morons hat go back forth for pages that add nothing to the topic. 

 

The off-topic call gets pretty narrow sometimes, and it's supposed to be a friendly discussion. If the topic is cheap hotels in Pattaya, who's to say what's cheap? 

[MrPancake]

14 minutes ago, george said:

What's your take?

 

Standalone forums - especially niche forums - are going to be harder and harder to grow. Communities these days are build on (or with the help of) social platforms. Dismissing Facebook, Twitch or Discord just because anyone can manage a page, a channel or a server is a mistake imo.

 

As far as I know what matters to build a successful community is reach and engagement. Scaling your reach via this forum alone is gonna be tough af imo. Usually this is done by combining marketing campaigns, social medias and a solid ecosystem of partners. As for engagement it's all about content. AN is a forum, it's also a news feed, it could be a white label shop, a video feed, some sort of occasional live stream...

 

That said, my take isn't worth much as I have no idea where you wanna go with this website from here on :))

[MangoKorat]

1 hour ago, george said:

Shouldn't we say "Hi and welcome! "at least when a newbie makes his very first post here.

Some sites do that and I've never liked it. Some make it compulsory to post in the 'welcome' section before being allowed to enter fully.

 

I do think though, that a lot of potential 'newbies' will be put off when they see the squabbling and ridiculing that goes on.  They will no doubt have seen it elsewhere and don't want more.

 

A lot of people I suspect, will join this site for information only, the trick is how to engage them so they stay. If they see the same old same old, I think that many will 'wash & go'.

 

You will no doubt have stats that tell you how many people join, do you also have stats that tell you how many people haven't visited in a long time?

[SpaceKadet]

Well, George, I'm sure you have noticed that this forum has gone through a downhill trend since you were running it as Thai Visa. There are a lot of new members that simply do not have that helpful mentality we had 20 years ago. But  let's be clear, it's all in the name of progress and profits. Toxic and venomous comments create more drama, and more excitement for the casual browser. Therefore more clicks and more ad exposure. Imagine what Orange County Choppers series would be without the vitriol and the constant infighting. Would there ever be a season2?

[MangoKorat]

1 hour ago, george said:

Mods don't need to warn the member, no need to suspend him, no need to make a moderator announcement "I have removed this naughty post as it's in breach of the community guidelines, blah blah"). No need. Just delete if it's not suitable for people and search engine crawlers.

So what is the position now with off topic posting?  Let's say someone posts 'off topic' and members reply to that off topic post - should the original 'off topic' post be removed and all replies to it?

[MangoKorat]

11 minutes ago, SpaceKadet said:

Well, George, I'm sure you have noticed that this forum has gone through a downhill trend since you were running it as Thai Visa. There are a lot of new members that simply do not have that helpful mentality we had 20 years ago. But  let's be clear, it's all in the name of progress and profits. Toxic and venomous comments create more drama, and more excitement for the casual browser. Therefore more clicks and more ad exposure. Imagine what Orange County Choppers series would be without the vitriol and the constant infighting. Would there ever be a season2?

Hmmm, you have a point.  Maybe I've been a little naive about the purpose of this forum?

 

Whilst I realise that it is a business and as such wants to be profitable, I thought it also operated with the intention of providing community benefit.

 

All this talk of clicks, analytics, usg etc. etc. has opened my eyes - not sure if that's good or bad.

Edited November 14, 2023 by MangoKorat

[george]

13 minutes ago, MangoKorat said:

Hmmm, you have a point.  Maybe I've been a little naive about the purpose of this forum?

 

Whilst I realise that it is a business and as such wants to be profitable, I thought it also operated with the intention of providing community benefit.

 

All this talk of clicks, analytics, usg etc. etc. has opened my eyes - not sure if that's good or bad.

 

Important metrics. If you don't understand or have no idea who your website visitors are, or their general demographics, you can't grow. You are fcked. Simple.

[MangoKorat]

3 minutes ago, george said:

 

Important metrics. If you don't understand or have no idea who your website visitors are, or their general demographics, you can't grow. You are fcked. Simple.

That much I understand George and please don't take it as criticism but its the emphasis that's being put on the business side of it that's side swiped me. I've probably relied on the community aspect way too much.

 

Still, its a great source of information, I think I'll stick to that in the future.

[Morch]

2 hours ago, george said:

 

We have a lot of old posters returning. Google Analytics tells me that.

 

Welcome back, guys!

 

Again, don't know about others - my experience is that the place if more of troll fest than it ever was, fine for the lounge/pub/whatever, annoying on most other parts (news/visas/info). Not complaining about the moderator team, but seems that the new policy requires a more hands on attention, and that there's a certain lack of hands. 

 

I've been a member of this forum for years. Every now and then I take a 'break'. Sometimes it's due to stuff unrelated to the forum, sometimes it is. What I do notice is that each 'break' gets longer (last one was about two years). Given it's possible to lurk offline, read the news, benefit from all them fountain of knowledge (no sarcasm, some great advice and information on here), the motivation to deal with the stuff mentioned earlier is limited.

 

In some ways the change is an improvement, on others - underwhelming.