Improving ASR as a member/moderator

[Sokel]

Audibility is the most debated subject around here.
What we have along the decades as short of an agreement is the Pro audio's 0.1% THD+N.

This has shifted to a staggering 0.0002% THD+N these days as an absolute threshold (but even that seems not enough for some who imply differences even between -120dB THD+N DACs! )

Consensus would be hard.

 

[solderdude]

The 'getting banned from ASR' is seen as a badge of honor at 'more subjective forums' so they can brag about how silly 'Amir and his minions' are and how little they know about audio. These are intentional trolls.

Banning those folks is doing them a favor.

Then there are the 'unknowingly misinformed' that make all kinds of statements based on personal observations and 'info' they got from certain sites.
They will defend their opinion but are not trolling deliberately.

Hard to discern if the intention is to troll or just being misinformed.
Banning them does not benefit anyone and merely continues the misinformation out there instead of providing 'an alternate and more technical viewpoint'.

 

[RickS]

The 'getting banned from ASR' is seen as a badge of honor at 'more subjective forums' so they can brag about how silly 'Amir and his minions' are and how little they know about audio. These are intentional trolls.

Banning those folks is doing them a favor.

Banning those folks does us all a favor. What would you suggest be done otherwise? If you search on banned from Audio Science Review, you will find some (many older) posts but there are not many. Notably few for as long as ASR has been around. Seems more of a badge of dishonor and would make wonder more about the individual's trustworthiness if they tout. Of course, context matters as does validity. In some cases, bans are claimed but may have just been temporary or simply a misrepresentation.

Then there are the 'unknowingly misinformed' that make all kinds of statements based on personal observations and 'info' they got from certain sites.
They will defend their opinion but are not trolling deliberately.

Hard to discern if the intention is to troll or just being misinformed.
Banning them does not benefit anyone and merely continues the misinformation out there instead of providing 'an alternate and more technical viewpoint'.

I have been working on how to identify those who might have more unique opinions. If have banned anyone showing potential, would be a sad day for me (and ASR). However, some may be very frustrated or caught me on a bad day. In this case, would hope they would appeal to Amir. Yes, this assumes that these individuals act fairly rationally. If not, admittedly they may unfortunately get profiled with the more unsavory types.

Am pretty comfortable with our approach of only banning the truly obnoxious or irrational. If they do not have some respect for ASR and its members, admittedly will be more difficult to allow a disruptive member to remain. Those who show willingness to work through issues have the opportunity to remain members. This is because we do not otherwise ban someone before being warned or interacting with them to work through initial rough spots.

Aside from some more formal probationary member screening, not sure what else could be done. You seem to suggest that we should not ban the misinformed and would hope that this is already supported. However, many more subjective members want to post opinion incessantly and that gets major pushback from the more objective-oriented members. Drowning in the sea of objectivity, some resort to lobbying in one or more threads. The worst of this activity gets labeled as trolling.

I do think we might improve new member integration with some mandatory screening or orientation. Few initially read the Terms and Rules (I didn’t). All too often, am dealing with a report on a new member that barges into a thread that they did not bother to read and expects their first post to be taken as readily credible. Members have usually engaged and try to correct long before I arrive on the scene. If not some better orientation, then as Amir has requested, may need our existing members to be more tolerant. Am open to other ideas.

 

[Mnyb]

Cant anyone "read the room" anymore ? is it a lost art ? why pile up subjective impressions on the " sound of a DAC " in any tread at ASR ?

 

[Mart68]

Cant anyone "read the room" anymore ? is it a lost art ? why pile up subjective impressions on the " sound of a DAC " in any tread at ASR ?

Because that's the way almost all other audio forums work and some don't differentiate. So if they find a thread about 'Superdac 2000' they will join to post their impressions 'It's a significant step up from the 1000 I had previously' etc - it's essentially just learned behaviour.

 

[JPA]

Banning those folks does us all a favor. What would you suggest be done otherwise? If you search on banned from Audio Science Review, you will find some (many older) posts but there are not many. Notably few for as long as ASR has been around. Seems more of a badge of dishonor and would make wonder more about the individual's trustworthiness if they tout. Of course, context matters as does validity. In some cases, bans are claimed but may have been temporary or simply a misrepresentation.



I have been working on how to identify those who might have more unique opinions. If have banned anyone showing potential, would be a sad day for me. However, some may be very frustrated or caught me on a bad day. In this case, would hope they would appeal to Amir. Yes, this assumes that these individuals act fairly rationally. If not, admittedly they may unfortunately get profiled with the more unsavory types.

Am pretty comfortable with our approach of only banning the truly obnoxious or irrational. If they do not have some respect for ASR and its members, admittedly will be more difficult to allow a disruptive member to remain. Those who show willingness to work through issues have the opportunity to remain members. This is because we do not otherwise ban someone before being warned or interacting with them to work through initial rough spots.

Aside from some more formal probationary member screening, not sure what else could be done. You seem to suggest that we should not ban the misinformed and would hope that this is already supported. However, many more subjective members want to post opinion incessantly and that gets major pushback from the more objective-oriented members. Drowning in the sea of objectivity, some resort to lobbying in one or more threads. The worst of this activity gets labeled as trolling.

I do think we might improve new member integration with some mandatory screening or orientation. Few initially read the Terms and Rules (I didn’t). All too often, am dealing with a report on a new member that barges into a thread that they did not bother to read and expects their first post to be taken as readily credible. Members have usually engaged and try to correct long before I arrive on the scene. If not some better orientation, then as Amir has requested, may need our existing members to be more tolerant. Am open to other ideas.

Does the forum software have the ability to display the number of times a member has been put on someone's ignore list? I have a hunch that displaying those numbers might reduce some of the trolling.

 

[tineared]

Overall, I think the forum runs quite smoothly. The community handles trolls pretty well. It's that occasional spam that can be irritating...

 

[solderdude]

Banning those folks does us all a favor. What would you suggest be done otherwise? If you search on banned from Audio Science Review, you will find some (many older) posts but there are not many. Notably few for as long as ASR has been around. Seems more of a badge of dishonor and would make wonder more about the individual's trustworthiness if they tout. Of course, context matters as does validity. In some cases, bans are claimed but may have been temporary or simply a misrepresentation.



I have been working on how to identify those who might have more unique opinions. If have banned anyone showing potential, would be a sad day for me. However, some may be very frustrated or caught me on a bad day. In this case, would hope they would appeal to Amir. Yes, this assumes that these individuals act fairly rationally. If not, admittedly they may unfortunately get profiled with the more unsavory types.

Am pretty comfortable with our approach of only banning the truly obnoxious or irrational. If they do not have some respect for ASR and its members, admittedly will be more difficult to allow a disruptive member to remain. Those who show willingness to work through issues have the opportunity to remain members. This is because we do not otherwise ban someone before being warned or interacting with them to work through initial rough spots.

Aside from some more formal probationary member screening, not sure what else could be done. You seem to suggest that we should not ban the misinformed and would hope that this is already supported. However, many more subjective members want to post opinion incessantly and that gets major pushback from the more objective-oriented members. Drowning in the sea of objectivity, some resort to lobbying in one or more threads. The worst of this activity gets labeled as trolling.

I do think we might improve new member integration with some mandatory screening or orientation. Few initially read the Terms and Rules (I didn’t). All too often, am dealing with a report on a new member that barges into a thread that they did not bother to read and expects their first post to be taken as readily credible. Members have usually engaged and try to correct long before I arrive on the scene. If not some better orientation, then as Amir has requested, may need our existing members to be more tolerant. Am open to other ideas.

My post was not criticism...

Just saying that some come on here just to get banned and stir the pot.
I have nothing against banning those folks... on the contrary.

As for the 'ill informed' .. yep.. tough call to say which person is simply misinformed and which are/turn into trolls.
In any case ... addressing the misinformation they are spreading is important even if just trolling.

Let's just say I am glad it is not my job and feel that in the majority of 'bannings' it seems to have been appropriate in mpov.

 

[RickS]

Does the forum software have the ability to display the number of times a member has been put on someone's ignore list? I have a hunch that displaying those numbers might reduce some of the trolling.

Not for moderator consumption and know Amir was not in favor of public negative indicators.

Like counts tend to give some indication, but unless extreme, can just be about style or popularity and not whether a member is trolling.

 

[mhardy6647]

I've noticed an upswing in membership on a couple of forums I frequent, driven (I think) by some advertising-related aggravation at another popular, fairly broad-based audio forum. Some dissatisfaction there led to a diaspora (or is that diasporum?) of sorts, with some of that forum's attitude rather suddenly popping up on forums of rather different constitution.

This is just my typically long-winded way of saying it may be one of those things that's just going around, and natural selection, in time, will prune the less-than-successful mutations.

Editorially: I am still kind of beumsed by the notion of different sounding DACs... to say nothing of rolling op-amps.

 

[respice finem]

Not for moderator consumption and know Amir was not in favor of public negative indicators.

Like counts tend to give some indication, but unless extreme, can just be about style or popularity and not whether a member is trolling.

Publishing ignorelist counts could IMHO backfire, with trolls ignorelisting every objectivist, in order to manipulate the statistics.
Trolls live off being fed, so not feeding them by not replying is probably the best "policy".

 

[mglobe]

A few sort of random comments:

Ignore is your friend, and the troll’s enemy. It’s difficult to refrain from replying to them, and I have been guilty of feeding trolls at times. But seriously, ignoring folks that annoy you, and staying out of threads that you don’t think are worthy of being here will be healthy for all of us and for the forum. And it will make the mods work a bit easier.

The folks that should and most often do get banned are the ones that are truly obnoxious and mean spirited. Disagreeing with the forum’s conventional wisdom isn’t even close to being ban worthy. Not being civil on the other hand should be worthy of a ban even if you’re defending one of the very many luminaries here.

I don’t always succeed at this, but most of the time I stop to think why am I about to post a and how can what I want to say help me understand something better and/or make a true contribution to the conversation.

 

[Multicore]

Thank you Rick, I find the "ignore" feature to be a very handy filter for a level of personal intolerance.

Right. While I believe in engaging in good faith and with respect even when you have suspicions, that has to have its limit. When the interlocutor demonstrates bad faith to your satisfaction it's no use to try to win the argument or have the last word or get in a few good digs. Actually it can be worse than useless because it brings the overall SNR down. So when you reach that limit, stop talking and ignore.

 

[Multicore]

Overall, I think the forum runs quite smoothly. The community handles trolls pretty well.

I agree. Thanks to Rick and Amir and everyone who demonstrates and encourages healthy authoring and critical skills and doesn't go winding others up.

It's that occasional spam that can be irritating...

Spams are very infrequent, afaict.

 

[tineared]

I agree. Thanks to Rick and Amir and everyone who demonstrates and encourages healthy authoring and critical skills doesn't go winding others up.


Spams are very infrequent, afaict.

Which is why I added some to my post...

 

[Audionaut]

Ignore is your friend, and the troll’s enemy.

Yes, but the opposite happens regularly on ASR.

For example, someone with a lot of experience goes to great lengths to give someone a very well-founded answer to a question—and no one responds, not even the person who asked the question.

In contrast, someone comes into a thread and writes: I can hear a difference between my top DACs, and it's only because of you and your immature measurements that you wooden-eared people can't hear it – the next 5 pages and undivided attention are guaranteed.

 

[mhardy6647]

In contrast, someone comes into a thread and writes: I can hear a difference between my top DACs, and it's only because of you and your immature measurements that you wooden-eared people can't hear it – the next 5 pages and undivided attention are guaranteed.

It's sort of the old newspaperperson's credo, isn't it?

If it bleeds, it leads.

and/or as Crack the Sky's John Palumbo remarks to the audience in their Live at Recher Theater (1999) album (and I paraphrase vigorously):

A live concert's like a car race. You don't go to a car race to watch the cars go round and round in circles. You go to see a crash, right? Live concerts are the same way. You go to see the band f*$k up!

I was looking around for the original quip/clip, but couldn't find it quickly (and I am lazy, as y'all know) -- and way too lazy to dig out the album and transcribe it.

EDIT: well... for better or worse, I tracked it down. I'd blame my muddled recollection of the content on drugs, but I was high on life alone by the time that the above-mentioned album came out.
PS Crack the Sky were/are great.

I, for better or worse, love watching the train wreck threads (depending on topic, though, I must admit).

 

[Multicore]

Yes, but the opposite happens regularly on ASR.

For example, someone with a lot of experience goes to great lengths to give someone a very well-founded answer to a question—and no one responds, not even the person who asked the question.

In contrast, someone comes into a thread and writes: I can hear a difference between my top DACs, and it's only because of you and your immature measurements that you wooden-eared people can't hear it – the next 5 pages and undivided attention are guaranteed.

So these are areas of potential improvement, which makes it worth having the conversation about it.

In the first example (while it may be regular I haven't seen it often) the author of the reply may eventually learn to be more succinct. It's an internet forum so the chances of being ignored goes up with the length of the text. tl;dr. I'm not always good at brevity but I value it.

The second, yes, it's quite common. There are some ways to gently educate people on this so maybe we can have a positive impact. Many of the noisiest ones doing that stuff are "new converts" so maybe they can receive guidance too.

 

[MAB]

In the first example (while it may be regular I haven't seen it often) the author of the reply may eventually learn to be more succinct. It's an internet forum so the chances of being ignored goes up with the length of the text. tl;dr. I'm not always good at brevity but I value it.

Many of the rando questions have no succinct answer. I think that is often by design.
Most of us aren't gifted with the ability to communicate science, math, and engineering principles briefly. Not many are.
I am pretty sure the 5 pages of run-on that occurs is by people who didn't take the time to read the post irrespective of the length.

We have walls-of-text of subjective posting here too. I used to read these out of courtesy to the poster if I intended to respond. I admit, I tend to ignore some of the overly verbose stuff these days. But if someone posts something with an explanation, I read it.

I definitely read your posts, even if they are long.

 

[mhardy6647]

Long is OK -- but paragraphs are a really good idea.