OpenUru.org

semplerfi wrote:So would a little QC (quality control) and QA (quality assurance) monitoring go a long way in preventing issues from manifesting be considered a “Best Practice” in general for most applications?

I don't see why it shouldn't be part of "Best Practice". I'm in favour of that.

mszv wrote:I'm not saying that everyone is going to be happy with any decision Cyan makes.

Whenever you have a range of views, someone will be dissatisfied with the outcome. The people making the decision just have to happy with the way they made that decision.

semplerfi, your points on quality control are well taken. I would like to see a separate thread on just that. I believe that would move the discussion of the important issue to a less situational context. As you brought it up a good point I think it fitting you create the opening post and link to it from this thread.

mszv, I agree something is going on. What I think is not apparent to most fans is the levels at which things are happening. Within Cyan circles there is much more information than moderators and fans can access. Tidbits, off hand comments, slips phrasing, and other context setting comments come out of that group. We can smell the smoke but not see the fire. We know there is a fire. While all levels can acknowledge the fire they cannot say who started it, what’s burning or how it will be put out. All we know for certain from comments and tidbits is information is incomplete and in several posts being misrepresented. Unfortunately those that could reveal information to correct misinformation are not allowed to. Fans do not have the information they need to make a fair and rational decision.

Also, the matter of removing a moderator or not is not a decision in which the fans get to participate. They can certainly contribute information and opinion. The owners and administrators are the decision makers. Respect for the fans/members would seem to require management to make some explanation of their action in such an issue.

Knowing information is incomplete is part of why we want this discussion held to a discussion of the methods, ideas, and thoughts about how to avoid and handle such issues in a nonspecific situation. While examples are helpful, focusing on a single case leads to situational thinking and ethics.

If one chooses to read the Enough thread at MOUL, an interesting exercise is to look at the posters, consider their position, then click on their profile button and look up their posts. There is a Find All Member’s Posts… search link. Read through those and note the nature of their posts. That is not a quick exercise. I think it is very revealing. Remember. Posts have been removed, so there is a skew to the …nicer… side.

This brings up the idea of… If moderator quality control is good, what about forum member quality control? That answer is not a topic for discussion in this thread. If one wants to go there... please start a new thread.

One other point in addition to Nalates' (since, if it's not clear, her method of fact-finding will find some posters there are not as charitable towards Cyan as I am) is to consider that many members have a long history with Cyan and don't like the way the community has been managed (or not). While this likely has an effect on their opinions, you overcompensate for this at your peril. Find the facts, to be sure, but don't use potential bias as an excuse to be deaf to concerns. The loudest concerns are often trying only to be heard and acknowledged.

Nalates wrote:As you brought it up a good point I think it fitting you create the opening post and link to it from this thread.

Sure, I would be glad to.

I am not sure where in the forum structure to place the post. Would some one please assist me in the placement of a thread on the “Importance of QA & QC as a Best Practice”?

In the same subforum as this thread: Standards for discussion and debate.

I agree with Dot...

The plan is to take what we gain from these discussions and create a wiki article that has the extracted 'wisdom' gained as rules, guidelines, examples and definitions. The forum will retain the through process of how we came by our content.

Whilyam wrote:[...] While this likely has an effect on their opinions, you overcompensate for this at your peril. Find the facts, to be sure, but don't use potential bias as an excuse to be deaf to concerns. The loudest concerns are often trying only to be heard and acknowledged.

That is a fair and valid observation. It is always difficult to measure the strength and validity of a claim or counter-claim in these circumstances. One of the issues, I guess, is whether the vocal faction represents a majority or minority of the user base, and I think that's always going to be hard to judge - a lot of people won't make their feelings felt either way. Is that good or bad? I don't know, but I'd probably tend towards seeing it as "bad" (or at least "not good" if you appreciate the subtle difference).

Where I'm going on this is the often quoted terms like "vocal minority" and "silent majority" - these are slightly prejudiced terms because they are really cover for a lack of information that may either support or contradict an argument, when the fact is that no-one really knows how much support any position really has.

As an arbitrary (and possibly pointless) exercise, I took a contentious thread from another forum (I moderate 4 forums and administer 2 so I've plenty to choose from ) with around 140 posts: Within that were some 30 different posters, 12 of whom supported the OPs argument, 6 opposed it, 4 or 5 looked to be entirely neutral and queried for more information and the rest found bits on both sides that they could agree with. There are roughly 600 active users on the forum. So what does it tell you? Well frankly, not as much as I'd hoped - only 3% expressed a definite opinion either way and 95% of people didn't post on the subject - the "Silent Majority". Why they remain silent is a key question, but one that will remain unanswered: Lack of knowledge of the subject? No particular opinion? Didn't read the thread? Didn't understand the thread? Felt their view had been covered by someone else's post? etc. These are people who do post regularly, so it's not that they're shy. Make of it what you will, or not. "There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics"

Whereas with Uru I see it as a vocal-but-silenced majority (of those who care to post).

Mac_Fife wrote:Where I'm going on this is the often quoted terms like "vocal minority" and "silent majority" - these are slightly prejudiced terms because they are really cover for a lack of information that may either support or contradict an argument, when the fact is that no-one really knows how much support any position really has.

And this should be the standard for debate and discussion. If the relevant population is current and potential Uru users, the people who post in the MOUL forum is (probably) a hopelessly biased sample of that population; the people who post with strong opinions in a few threads that argue about non-game aspects of Uru is (probably) even more biased. Any assertion about the representativeness of a particular view is unprovable without access to some sort of list of current and potential Uru users, a means for drawing a random sample from that list, and a means for analyzing non-response bias if a survey is actually conducted. Polls make matters even worse, because they have the veneer of legitimacy but in fact have none, other than accurately representing the opinions of the people who respond.

That being said, whether a view represents a majority may be less important than whether it represents a significant number, majority or not. Clearly, the issue of moderation in the MOUL forum passes this test.

Nalates wrote:I agree with Dot...

The plan is to take what we gain from these discussions and create a wiki article that has the extracted 'wisdom' gained as rules, guidelines, examples and definitions. The forum will retain the through process of how we came by our content.

Thank you for your Recommenations Dot & Nalates.

Importance of QA & QC as a Best Practice thread.