Change and Reform for the...Forum!

[joseph_lubnan]

Let me start by saying that I like the forum, and I thank the moderator and administration team for continuing to make it available for all of us.

The single biggest problem facing the forum in my opinion is that there isn't enough diversity of political opinions amongst current active members. Attracting members from all sides and of diverse opinions is critical to the health of the forum.

Here are few suggestions, that may help:

1. Control bullying in the forum. It discourages many readers and members from contributing, when they see bullying unchecked by the moderator team, because bullying doesn't always explicitly break forum rules.
2. Do not tolerate character assassination posts, and personal attacks posts.
3. Reduce the number of threads and posts overtly bashing and insulting your opponents, it discourages many followers of other parties from contributing. You certainly would never allow similar posts about your leadership or the opposition's leadership.
4. Reduce the level of "babying" of Hezbollah related issues, and Hezbollah supporters in the forum.
5. Allow threads to appear immediately, like regular posts. You can manage them later.

I will try to add more suggestions later, if I think of more...

[hhhh23]

Originally Posted by joseph_lubnan

Here are few suggestions, that may help:

1. Control bullying in the forum. It discourages many readers and members from contributing, when they see bullying unchecked by the moderator team, because bullying doesn't always explicitly break forum rules.
2. Do not tolerate character assassination posts, and personal attacks posts.
...

I agree with Joseph 100% on these two points. In fact, I am highly discouraged from posting, because in many times it ends up in one of two things:
1- either I am accused of being LF, blood eater or something of the sort, although I would be discussing a point.
2- or I get accused of having a mission to discredit FPM. Once a forumer replied to me by digging my first ever post to "prove" that I am someone with a mission to discredit FPM, although if he had really looked at my posts he would've known that I am closer to FPM than any other party. Starting from a nice discussion I ended up wasting my energy to defend my person.This discouraged me to pursue any discussion for a couple of weeks at that time.

I am not saying ALL forumers behave as such, on the contrary, I've had many fruitful and interesting discussions. But it takes one character assassination post to deviate the topic and end up discouraging the poster.

Knowing that I am an independent, closer to FPM than to LF, but I have some critics (in some posts), which usually end up with me trying to defend myself and my person.

I think the administration should delete and be very strict with character assassination posts and personal attacks. It should not be tolerated from anyone. If a moderator does it (I am not saying they do, I salute the moderators for their nice posts), he should be stripped of his moderation.

Please, do not tolerate any personal attacks or character assassination posts. When you do that, many people, like me will be more encouraged to post and discuss.

[GMAforGooD]

I totally agree with guys, many members are not posting in the forum due to the fact that they are being accused of being sided to a specific party knowing that they do not relate to that party in any way..however it is not only they have refrained from posting, they even stopped logging to the forum....
it is not always that if you are not Pro that party, than you are against him...

Originally Posted by hhhh23

I agree with Joseph 100% on these two points. In fact, I am highly discouraged from posting, because in many times it ends up in one of two things:
1- either I am accused of being LF, blood eater or something of the sort, although I would be discussing a point.
2- or I get accused of having a mission to discredit FPM. Once a forumer replied to me by digging my first ever post to "prove" that I am someone with a mission to discredit FPM, although if he had really looked at my posts he would've known that I am closer to FPM than any other party. Starting from a nice discussion I ended up wasting my energy to defend my person.This discouraged me to pursue any discussion for a couple of weeks at that time.

I am not saying ALL forumers behave as such, on the contrary, I've had many fruitful and interesting discussions. But it takes one character assassination post to deviate the topic and end up discouraging the poster.

Knowing that I am an independent, closer to FPM than to LF, but I have some critics (in some posts), which usually end up with me trying to defend myself and my person.

I think the administration should delete and be very strict with character assassination posts and personal attacks. It should not be tolerated from anyone. If a moderator does it (I am not saying they do, I salute the moderators for their nice posts), he should be stripped of his moderation.

Please, do not tolerate any personal attacks or character assassination posts. When you do that, many people, like me will be more encouraged to post and discuss.

[Lallous]

Originally Posted by Mar1K

Please keep this thread alive till after the elections, there's plenty to say

Speak now or be silent. We just ask you to be professional in your criticism and to transcend yourself from the small bickering you may ever got with any moderator.

Originally Posted by Greg Davis

A forum loses its essence when posts are deleted merely because a moderator politically disagrees with the posts contents. The Mod would just quote a forum rule , and that would be the end of it. Oddly enough, The same mod would write a simmilar post about his political foes, without realizing it.

Considering the fact that this is an FPM forum, one cannot be overly cincial if the forum management are biased toward the FPM and their allies, but I see no harm in appointing a non FPM moderator where questionable posts are referred to before deletion, or when FPM supporters break forum rules, and they just go unnoticed because they support the FPM.

Just a suggestion

Greg Davis,
Don’t you think there is a correlation between some members’ attitude and the number of posts deleted? I repeat it; it’s not about the post content as much as how it is put. For instance, chafic par example has no problem to get his point passed when you compare it with a third rank Abou Baha2 supporter who would probably get a delete We can take part of the blame but the members also should show some sign of cooperation. If you have any issue with a mod, please take it private and in case you really think the mod is bypassing his limits, take it to the head moderators which are Watani, John A and Lallous (me), Nadnoud as well for the community forums. You must really have a valuable and solid argument if not don’t bother. We could investigate if needed.

Originally Posted by Comrade Bassam

Great initiative indeed!

Many members will take care of the technical little stuff that relate to the daily management and member privileges...

I will speak of personal experience, especially being among the first members of the forum and having served, for a very long time, as staff member in practically all the various tasks available (political, community, moderation, board of trustees....etc).

The issue evoked over here has been, at several periods of time, the primary nightmare so I was focusing all my effort on the positive and negative factors of influence over that matter so here are my results:

1) The forum killer, par excellence, was specialization and division (of topics and of staff)! When the forum was concentrated in no more than two or three sections (political and non-political and news&articles), growth was exponential. Psychologically speaking, members who visit forums are, in general, global information seekers. In other terms, they are the ones who are to be targeted mainly. Also in other terms, they'd like to see the most interesting issues being brought up from different fields on their screen without having to go back and forth in different complicated pages. And in not to lose the specialized minds, a certain form of labeling (either with logos or colors or I donno what) could be used to classify threads (not group them) within a minimum number of screens (1 would be perfect).

It’s not viable. Maybe some restructuration with some of the forum, yes, but a complete merge for political threads and non political threads is out of the equation. We are looking maybe to bring back the Orange room forum along with a separate forum for the elections. The Orange room would have many hot threads about Lebanon generally without being necessarily related to politics. That’s what we wanted to have before, but it didn’t work that great. We’ll give it another shot.

2) The second forum killer was the orange theme. That was a desastrous choice. My close monitoring of members and topics dynamics at the time of theme change showed me clearly the way things changed in matter of members quality and in matter of topics quality. Both became, to any mind that refuses to be insulted in his intelligence... sorry for the word... DISGUSTING. Instead of being a place for true dialogue for all of us to be able to better make up our minds on different issues, it became a place of exposure of "nawar w tatar w 7awach el tayyar" (sorry for the word but you have to accept it if you really are looking for change and reform).
You cannot imagine the amount of repulsion to smart minds (even including the forum administration itself!) that this shift in forum philosophy (and don't believe it's just a matter of look!) created...

This is a bit far-fetched. Well we’re not looking not have “gemayelist” forum either. We are looking for a forum where everyone could have his share and these labels you have to members in unacceptable. It may be true the balance tipped a little, we are working out to adjust it. Linking that to the orange color is ridiculous as the GUI and code are extremely clean.

3) The forum has excellent potentials behind screens. I know that perfectly and I can list more than 100 super-minds just now without having to do big memory effort. What's good is that at least this potential is mostly preserved (we lost a good part of it and I'll list how in the coming points). So what we need is to be able to drive that potential from "behind screens" to "on keyboards"!
For that to happen, don't waste your time thinking of technical stuff!
The only channel is through human networking!
Forum staff, as well as forum lovers in general (and those are usually by far more effective than the whole staff, so those have to be preserved at any price!), should be like "mkhetir" on this board. They have to know how to build a huge network of relations with members. When these come here, they'll come for you and not for the colored electrons. This human networking allows the creation of a forum "elite". As you can notice, since quite some time, this category remained steady and even decreased. Elite renewal is a must or else the forum will grow old with its elite.
And in order to attract such people, you have to lead the example. For instance, many among this class of members made what the forum is due to their admiration to the effort exposed by X. Take this example and try to think about it in deep...

Good idea, but it doesn’t take any coordination from the administration or the moderation team. Everyone could have the initiative in their respective entourage especially among university students. So go ahead spread the word. You must be aware however that the situation isn’t what it was like some years ago. During the occupation, people were concerned to stay in touch whenever a move was done, the situation completely changed now.

Moreover, the forum staff should be like "moukhabarat" and know everything about every active member. This is not too hard with some effort and research and that should be a team as well as an individual kind of work.

What’s the aim of that!? How could that help us in increasing the forum’s activity?

4) The forum is not mainly a news source. News and information constitute support to the arguments of discussion indeed, but they're not what the forum is made for. Discussions and generation of ideas is what the forum is made for!
When the forum turned, with time and with specialization, a source of news, it got itself sinking in an ocean of competition, especially in the last couple of years with the news media revolution that occurred after the assassination of PM Hariri.
In order to get dragged to think, generate and post ideas, that potential behind screens needs to feel they're not just adding stupid news or adding great ideas that nobody will get to see because the clientelle is as stupid as the kind of news it comes to seek!
When the forum becomes a field of confrontation of ideas, trust me you will see a lot of great names coming back and the birth of new great ones as well!

Fair enough. You can’t dismiss the news part as an ignition for some ideas related threads. One formula alone won’t work. If we combine both, the result would be better. However, please go check how the ideas related threads end up, if it gets more then 10-15 replies, that’s beyond a hit.

5) Back to human networking... I'll tackle the issue of rules. Some moderators were unconsciously (even me included), in many periods and with many really good people, a pain in the a*s*s and pushed a lot of great minds away. Sometimes, we have to advance human intelligence over systematic work and that requires a lot of effort and a big spirit to attract critique in order to be able to improve and sense members feelings and attitudes towards staff behavior.

We focused on this point, that’s why the new moderators are usually members who kept low figure and are respected by all the members. It will help us decrease any conflict of interest between the members.

6) Professional and objective input is very important in the different threads being discussed. In times of absence of mass devotion, the staff has to interefere and provide that in order to maintain the forum alive, at least until a new wave of public devotion gets born. That was the idea behind my proposal once for the foundation of the research forum. Unfortunately, the idea was hijacked and turned away of its original purpose and that is what drove me to withdraw from the project.
The idea was to have a SECRET team of members that are close to the staff. Those would have a task to check on every thread and monitor the discussions. Wherever a good issue is brought up, a member of that team would go and do some research work on the matter and post the information he or she found in order to assist and improve the level of discussion (as that information could be thus used as support in argumentation). A SECRET section would be dedicated for that team in order to be able to easily coordinate their work and expose their outcomes. Unfortunately, the research forum that is there today is not anywhere close to the original idea.

Aside from the conspiracy scenario, (too much movies lately ), the staff will have more proactive role this time around. Unfortunately, very few want to dedicate themselves when it is time to take action, and look how numerous you are when the time for the tonzir part comes. It makes you wonder !

7) The forum gained its momentum from exclusivity. When the latter decreased, the forum momentum and work decreased as well... dramatically!
That exclusivity comes from the fact that the forum, due to the love it attracted, became a 24/24 team of more than 10,000 active national and international ground reporters.
Whenever everyone of us saw an ant moving around, we felt the rush and couldn't wait to find any internet connection (and sometimes it was too hard to find back then) to share the info with the fellow members.
Now why very few still feel that and not all the members? I will not answer that question but leave it for the staff to think of it alone...
When the forum gets back to its identity as "Generator of ideas" instead of a "News recycle bin", it will be back to fit our aspirations for it.
For example, the documents that CedarLb used to spend hours to work and post online to share with members, were just tremendous. Why this is not happening anymore? Also I will share my answer but will leave it for the staff to think of it and try to find their own answers like I found mine...

[/quote]
Look on how many answers CedarLb gets compared to a usual pissing contest thread. Whenever we have any attempt, it is born-killed by the members’ disdain. That doesn’t mean we won’t keep pushing on that in attempt that someday things may change.

Originally Posted by orange infection

- deleting too many posts and giving so much stupid reasons for these post might make a member stay out of a certain section to avoid some mods :p ......at least it happened with me for almost a year ,some mods here bimayzo between users , sometimes ppl start to joke in a certain thread (wich is not wrong) , so if someone else participated in that his post will be deleted while other posts will not be touched , that's mainly because the other member might be forum celebreties or known users

as for the forum being number one in the middle east , you are wrong my friend
the first forum in the middle east , at least the one i know about , is an arabic forum forum for softwares and warez :p , i am not advertising , just clearing a point
that forum is ranked "628" on alexa OMG .....
but anyway this forum is really great , the only reason why i don't nag about things is that it's tayyar's forum

Weasel words. Please check my reply to greg davis. Thanks for the clarification on the forum.

Originally Posted by taifoon

Good initiative shows a mature level of awareness, caring and the will to always want to improve.

However, I generally don't see a dramatic decline anywhere which is not part of a natural process on this kind of cyber clubs. Unlike other more specialized internet arenas, like for example motorcars, music or IT (NOT International Tribunal :) related forums, where one gets used to a constant flow of homogeneous activities, political forums in general are by nature mostly boring spaces for half-boring politic nerds who enjoy to participate in intellectual dueling over ideas, opinions and ideals. Not at a lebanese forum however, including FPM's, where the nature of such forum has been almost exclusively event driven, for the last 4 years.

At such forum, life is usually maintained by core members, but activity fluctuation is derived from what happens on a day by day basis, in the outside real world. Get an assassination, a Batrak statement or an exciting - or inciting- piece of news, and you'll notice a quick increase of forum activity. For now, forum activity spins around the elections, and naturally the number of people who find this issue of more or less interest will also be reflected in the members participation in the discussions.

I personally think it's a waste to overdo something in order to try to achieve what, by design, can not be done. We cannot overlook the nature of our current reality, it is a tense and fragile one, a troubled reality that constantly seeks to finally settle down on something less exciting than the news and risks of luring death and destruction .. The election preparation and campaigns are currently considered to be the center of this reality.

Another factor to not belittle is normal and plain fatigue. People, from all intellectual and partisan categories, get bored and tired from chewing our same lebanese gum, over and over again. Add to this different life engagements and other personal activities that affect members, and you get different engagement levels in the forum discussions..

Words of wisdom and straight to the point as usual Taifoon. We are aware of all that. That’s why we are looking to have something in PARALLEL that would keep us to have a certain flow regardless of the usual events driven activity. We know that elections are ahead and the activity would reach another peak, but we must also plan further.

I still do have a couple of points I'd like to share on this subject:

A Forum is a public place for anyone to voice an opinion and have others discuss it. In order for this forum to flourish even more, I believe we need to (re)attract as many FPM opponents and other non-FPM, non partisan, non-lebanese folks, as is possible. Diversity of opinions is mandatory for this.

Consequently, comes the level of discussions/posts & replies. I noticed that all-too-sarcastic and/or disrespectful replies -even when they are within the boundaries of forum rules- may repel many of those people and I have promised myself that from now on, I personally will try to suppress such cheap and non constructive urge in order to gradually tame it and get rid of it. Good valid arguments always win in the long run, even against the hardest nut, because they work more smoothly on both the conscience and the subconscience of an opponent. Hard, disrespectful words only repel, scare off and push away those with different opinions.

Very good point. I’ll answer it below as it has been repeated several times.

Originally Posted by General my General!

I very much agree with Tai regarding quality of some replies. It is often very insulting to waste time reading sectarian swearing and smart*** one-liners. Those who can hold rational discussion are known, although on rare occasions perhaps any of us is tempted to swing away.

I have myself questioned some posters about this, and interestingly some people post things they do not believe in, just to provoke or give the other side a 'taste of their own medicine'. But that in itself lowers the quality of the forum, as well as the impression of FPMers to the outside world, since the overwhelming majority of visitors read rather than post.

A few years ago, I would tell anyone to go check the FPM forum, and compare it to the other Lebanese political forums, just as a glimpse to the quality of FPMer thinking and principles. I don't know if this is just my impression, but the forum was at a peak in 2005-2006, then had a dip for a bit when a lot of new members bashed too often in 2007, but since then things seem to have improved a lot. Still, clamping down on regular bashers is a constant need.

Cheers!

The point is the forum was heavily centered on some key members who now can’t afford much more time for the forum or maybe disabused. We are working to have a new generation of these members who would continue the same path. The peaks as Tai said were because of the events we witnessed, July war, May 7, Doha, etc.

Originally Posted by joseph_lubnan

Let me start by saying that I like the forum, and I thank the moderator and administration team for continuing to make it available for all of us.

The single biggest problem facing the forum in my opinion is that there isn't enough diversity of political opinions amongst current active members. Attracting members from all sides and of diverse opinions is critical to the health of the forum.

Here are few suggestions, that may help:

1. Control bullying in the forum. It discourages many readers and members from contributing, when they see bullying unchecked by the moderator team, because bullying doesn't always explicitly break forum rules.
2. Do not tolerate character assassination posts, and personal attacks posts.
3. Reduce the number of threads and posts overtly bashing and insulting your opponents, it discourages many followers of other parties from contributing. You certainly would never allow similar posts about your leadership or the opposition's leadership.
4. Reduce the level of "babying" of Hezbollah related issues, and Hezbollah supporters in the forum.
5. Allow threads to appear immediately, like regular posts. You can manage them later.

I will try to add more suggestions later, if I think of more...

1-2 : We got the message. I guess we will straighten our policy a bit more. Looking forward a change soon enough.
3 : This remains FPM’s forum and not a ‘centrist’ forum. We will just make sure as said before to have no mzayadeh in these posts. Things would eventually change in a whole new way after the elections. Till then, we will make sure to set it to acceptable levels.
4 : Oh well, we would appreciate your efforts too in that concern to not overdo it in the counterpart. Belittling something or empowering it remains subjective to everyone.
5 : No for the simple fact that he current formula is working fine and the threads approval remains quite fast. We don’t want to have an idiot spamming the political forum in case a moderator isn’t online.

Originally Posted by hhhh23

I agree with Joseph 100% on these two points. In fact, I am highly discouraged from posting, because in many times it ends up in one of two things:
1- either I am accused of being LF, blood eater or something of the sort, although I would be discussing a point.
2- or I get accused of having a mission to discredit FPM. Once a forumer replied to me by digging my first ever post to "prove" that I am someone with a mission to discredit FPM, although if he had really looked at my posts he would've known that I am closer to FPM than any other party. Starting from a nice discussion I ended up wasting my energy to defend my person.This discouraged me to pursue any discussion for a couple of weeks at that time.

I am not saying ALL forumers behave as such, on the contrary, I've had many fruitful and interesting discussions. But it takes one character assassination post to deviate the topic and end up discouraging the poster.

Knowing that I am an independent, closer to FPM than to LF, but I have some critics (in some posts), which usually end up with me trying to defend myself and my person.

I think the administration should delete and be very strict with character assassination posts and personal attacks. It should not be tolerated from anyone. If a moderator does it (I am not saying they do, I salute the moderators for their nice posts), he should be stripped of his moderation.

Please, do not tolerate any personal attacks or character assassination posts. When you do that, many people, like me will be more encouraged to post and discuss.

Originally Posted by GMAforGooD

I totally agree with guys, many members are not posting in the forum due to the fact that they are being accused of being sided to a specific party knowing that they do not relate to that party in any way..however it is not only they have refrained from posting, they even stopped logging to the forum....
it is not always that if you are not Pro that party, than you are against him...

I will answer you both as well as Taifoon in this post. The problem we have now is that some members got too used to each other and formed like an inner circle so any new member can’t penetrate with ease. We give you our word to correct this issue. It’s not a matter of being pro-FPM or pro-LF, everyone is welcome. We hope that moderators will be more dedicated and have a bigger interventionist role. As for you as members, keep posting so we could notice the clash and we promise you to be stricter this time around.


Thank you all for your answers. It is a pleasure to answer your doubts.

[Mar1K]

Originally Posted by Lallous

Speak now or be silent. We just ask you to be professional in your criticism and to transcend yourself from the small bickering you may ever got with any moderator.

See, to start with your tone,

1-just because you have a mod tag you believe you can talk to me with that tone. You criticize the Syrians and you do the same. Hypocracy at it's best.

2- Deleting posts for the sake of deleting should stop, even though HA and FPM are allying, we still feel that some of you "elli 3ala shkeltak ba3don 3al2anin bel tayfeh" do not like us on the form and they ban us with a reason "you need a break".

3- We have nothing personal against a mod or anyone, but when we feel that we are being targeted we will speak out, Unfortunately our posts do get deleted "because its our jazma or nothing"... such a democracy

4- You call yourself a patriotic citizen and you open your Forum for Israelis to join "dont give me the **** that technically you can't ban them cause ill give you their entire IP range and a manual on how to ban them and how to stop proxies too"

more to come... wara l elections

[Lallous]

Originally Posted by Mar1K

See, to start with your tone,

1-just because you have a mod tag you believe you can talk to me with that tone. You criticize the Syrians and you do the same. Hypocracy at it's best.

2- Deleting posts for the sake of deleting should stop, even though HA and FPM are allying, we still feel that some of you "elli 3ala shkeltak ba3don 3al2anin bel tayfeh" do not like us on the form and they ban us with a reason "you need a break".

3- We have nothing personal against a mod or anyone, but when we feel that we are being targeted we will speak out, Unfortunately our posts do get deleted "because its our jazma or nothing"... such a democracy

4- You call yourself a patriotic citizen and you open your Forum for Israelis to join "dont give me the **** that technically you can't ban them cause ill give you their entire IP range and a manual on how to ban them and how to stop proxies too"

more to come... wara l elections

Sorry to sound a bit harsh, but you just ignited it when you said plenty to say, bass after elections, what kind of feedback is that ?

Dude this is FPM's forum and not HA's forum. I hope you do understand we can't do adopt the same propagandist attitude as a pure HA's forum. Regardless of that, you have no say in the political decisions made behind this forum. You represent yourself and avoid speaking on behalf HA's members. Most of them don't share your concern as much you try to portray it.

I guess your main concern is Israelis on the forum. Well, there is no problem as long as they respect the forum rules. Look how much they get attacked anyways and this only result in weakening their position once they are exposed. So instead of living in denial, counter their arguments as the opposing POV is by far greatest in terms of number. And please stop taking each single issue at heart.

[Red Phoenix]

Lallous, what happened to the archived threads from the locked old lfpm forum ?

i can't find them here anymore, i remember that there was a section for them.

[Lallous]

Originally Posted by Red Phoenix

Lallous, what happened to the archived threads from the locked old lfpm forum ?

i can't find them here anymore, i remember that there was a section for them.

It is still there scattered in different forums and mostly in the Orange room forum. The best way to search the old threads is through google.

site:forum.tayyar.org KEYWORDS

If you encounter any links with lfpm.org/forum/**** when you check the threads, just change it to forum.tayyar.org, it will redirect you to the initial thread.

[Dark Angel]

I will keep this very simple and short.
1- When active users are picked to become moderators, it will affect their contribution to the forum.
2- Moderators’ interaction should be kept at a bare minimum; users should not feel their presence.
3- Keep the forum liberal, everything goes, except cussing, flaming and bad words; and these are the only conditions where moderators should interfere.
4- Discard all the rules.
5- Threads should be started right away, what’s the difference between a new thread and a regular post? Why don’t new posts get delayed before acquiring approval?
6- Good posters should feel that their contribution is appreciated and they should be encouraged.

[Frisbeetarian]

I demand that some moderators keep awake during the wee hours of the morning to entertain me and respond to my blabber.