What if we allowed people to view their responses on questions that have been moderated?

That sounds like a really good idea, I like it a lot.

I’d love to see this, on a separate tab (like the Meta tab).

Many questions are moderated for being spam, or for trolling. Why give those “users” the benefit of having their questions remain? It seems to reward the wrong types of people. Now, the ones that are discarded for simple reasons like typos or bad titles, maybe, but I still think you are opening a proverbial Pandora’s box. We already get quite a few “Why was my Q moderated?”. Next we will see “Why was my Q moderated, and why isn’t my moderated Q up on the rejected/moderated tab?” I favor quality over quantity.

Why, if you still get lurve for the answer, do you have to see questions that have been moderated?

I vote no.

@Sarcasm Like the cesspool?

Not of interest to me, thanks. I also vote “no.”

That sounds good. I vote yes.

Can we also give the answers that have been given. Luvre if called for?

I think having your questions be hauled into moderation only adds to the fun and excitement here. Perhaps you could make a resale shop or adoption center for those questions that were asked but never successfully modified that someone can pick up and run with after a certain grace period.

I think you should use your classification system with respect to this. So some questions would be visible and others would not. I assume, that when the question has changed, people can start answering again?

It seems that when I have a question that goes to moderation. And, I make corrections and I usually do.
It never makes it back to the site.

Seems a bummer to put that time into it or have gotten involved with an answer for it to just disappear into the Fluther Triangle.

I don’t really see the point…if the question couldn’t be fixed, then obviously it isn’t fluther worthy.

Might be fun to have them displayed in a separate tab for a short period of time – say about a week – and then disposed of. Not sure if they need to be part of the permanent record. It is frustrating when you compose a “great” answer and then the question is modded off, but I’m willing to make that sacrifice for quality control.

(Or maybe we can have a “dumbest question of the day” tab?)

There will always be those who seek attention and exposure and will submit questions they know will be moderated just to secure that attention. I also imagine those who regularly take issue with the moderation process would use such an instrument to raise hell with the moderators. I believe you would lose some great moderators in very short order. I don’t vote no, but rather hell no. See ya…..Gary/wtf
PS: I admire the fact that you keep an open mind and asked the question, but I suggest you do not open a probable can of worms.

Sorry, sorry, I should be more clear—

The questions would be off the main page, and only visible to people who are following (or know the URL)—until it’s been through moderation, in which case it’s visible on the main page.

@andrew Would they still be indexed by Google? Do you really want someone’s first impression of the site be “y duz my gf h8 me?”

@andrew As long as people aren’t subjected to those questions on the front page, I can’t see why it’d be a problem. If you don’t want to see those Qs, unfollow.

@shilolo No.

@andrew Okay, so only if you had responded to it. Can any more responses be made?

@casheroo Nope. No one can comment.

No more parties?

Oh, this is an awesome idea. I know I’ve answered a ton of things that have gotten moderated and it’s crappy for my answers to just disappear.

I vote yes!

Like Michael, the first thing that came to my mind was Pandora’s Box. So I’ll change my metaphor to can of worms.
Another vote no.

Questions are moderated for different reasons, some of which are pretty obvious. Other questions that I wrote lengthy answers to disappeared, several times after I’d written my answer but before I could post it.
On the whole it will create more work for the moderation team to have to make another determination, marginal questions vs bad ones. I wouldn’t want to have all the modded questions archived. Probably better to let them die.

Do you really need to be cluttering up the server with all of that trash?

NO. This is coming from a position of a user, me, who has given some fantastic answers only to have them whisked away when the question was moderated.

I got over it.

Because there’s so much better trash to clutter it up with. (It truly scares me when I agree with @Blondesjon)!

After putting some more thought into after my initial response, I’m starting to think it might best to leave it as is. I mean, what’s the point of moderating a question if it doesn’t get removed?

@J0E The point would be to get it off of the front page.
Under the current system, if you get your thread modded (and it doesn’t pass moderator standards), all of those helpful replies you may have gotten are all gone to waste, and you didn’t have a chance to read them.

There’d be basically no change to the way things are right now—the only difference is that if you respond to something and the question is yanked, you can still see your response. Most people won’t see the question at all.

I think for a lot of new users it’s really unnerving to spend time writing a resopnse and then have it whisked away, into oblivion. Wouldn’t that make you less likely to want to participate?

Do you have stats on the proportion of questions that are modded off – never to return?

[Mod says]: Changed the title of the question since the details didn’t really explain what I was proposing.

@janbb Let me check. It averages between 15–20%.

15–20% of those that are modded never return? Or 15–20% of all questions are modded?

Never return. Sometimes as high as 30% per day. Actually, the more accurate description is that 15–20% of questions don’t make it out of moderation the same day.

That is, on a given day, 15–20% of the questions that were asked are not being displayed, either because they’re in moderation, or because they’ve been rejected by the moderation process.

Yikes! I feel really badly for the mods. I had no idea how much crap they were protecting us from.

Wow – that is high! Is there a way to mod questions before they are released to the site or would that be a nightmare?

I like this idea. I’ve put some real effort into responses that never saw the light of day once the Q went to moderation. I wish this weren’t so.

My only concern are the inflammatory, bitter Qs that get pulled. People will get to relive their grudges for posterity. But otherwise, I don’t see the harm. Perhaps a beta test will make sense.

@shilolo Howso relive? Is it because they know they can come back to see them?

As long as you don’t get to add to them afterwards I see no problem. You could even add a “Cemetery” tab (kinda like the “Meta” tab) or something along those lines for defunct threads…. those moderated or just closed down.

@Dr_C Exactly—See my comments above and in details.

By re-live, I mean, if a particularly virulent thread is removed, but you’ve posted on there (as have others), and it was heated, you might be more inclined to carry a grudge than if the thread disappeared altogether (especially if you could go back to it again and again; i.e. Oh, that andrew, he pissed me off SO MUCH). If the thread is gone, it becomes more of a “Out of sight, out of mind”.

@shilolo Heh. * shaking fist in the air *

Would this put a stop to secret modded thread parties? :(

I can understand why people ask, and I too have felt frustrated at being unable to see questions that were pulled (questions and answers), but I think we are better off keeping those questions from being displayed, for the very same reason that they were modded in the first place. Having things refuse to go away even when they should would make me feel less like participating.

People who learn to follow the guidelines won’t have this problem. And people who see a question that they know defies the guidelines can simply refrain from posting their most brilliant prose there.

I’m not in favor of requiring users of this site to master an ever-expanding webwork of Boolean operators. The more arcane, the less intuitive and the more discouraging to new and old users alike.

@Jeruba “Boolean operators” and “arcane” (sigh)

@janbb, lol. Is it too late to slip “nexus” in there instead of “webwork”? or shouldn’t I spend ‘em all in one place?

@Jeruba Better keep a few in reserve; even you might run dry some day, sweetie.

@Jeruba No major change, no vast network of boolean operators (much to my chagrin).

The change proposed: you go back to one of your answers on a question in moderation—instead of seeing, “This question is being moderated!”, you see a list of responses, but no place to write a new response.

@andrew So like how an archived thread looks?

@chels Exactly. Only it’s not visible on the main page.

Even the tiniest, most insignificant changes are resisted. I vote yes.

Hmmm. I vote no. I know what I wrote and if the question was pulled- who knows. I could have ended up answering a question that wasn’t the ‘real’ question they wanted because it was poorly worded.

poorly worded just like my answer. heh.

@andrew Well I think it’s a good idea. Lots of people seem hesitant or don’t want it, but who knows. Maybe they’ll enjoy it. It’s not like moderated threads are going to be taking over the homepage, so why not. I mean you don’t have to go and look at them if you don’t want to.

After reading through this entire thread, I vote no. Once a question disappears I tend to forget about it. The only time I think about it is when my answer has received lurve and it shows up on my lurve count. When it comes does to it, when composing an answer, the thought that the question might end up being modded never to return again doesn’t even enter my mind. I tend to agree with @shilolo‘s arguments about the potential issues.

Wait, so the only change is I’m gonna ba able to read the posts on my ghost lurve? Do lots of people spend time rereading their old posts?
“Ooh ooh! Remember when I wrote that one thing? That was great. I’d like to read that again so I can validate how cool I think I am.”
Get a life, people.

In general, I’m not in love with this idea. If I answer a question and it disappears, I wouldn’t mind being able to see my answer, on my profile page (listed with all my other answers). That way, my content isn’t lost, but the question is.

People who write trash questions can scar us with them forever. It gives a lot of power to trolls and run-of-the-mill troublemakers.

@Jeruba . . . hey. . .

@Blondesjon Nobody would ever say you’re a “run-of-the-mill” troublemaker!

The mod team generally doesn’t pull questions once there are more than a few responses, or if there are several thoughtful, well written answers. So it would only really be useful in a very limited number of situations.

If a question is rejected, the answers aren’t going to be useful to future users. It would only be useful for the authors of responses that appear on rejected questions.

While I can see that there may be a few instances where someone will wish they could still view a response they wrote on a rejected Q, I don’t get the impression that this happens very often. When it does, that user can always contact a mod, and we’d be glad to salvage the text of the response for them.

I don’t really see a huge need for this- so I’d be in favor of keeping censored questions off of Fluther completely.

I would be very concerned that the amount of bad questions would rise exponentially.

For many this will remove any incentive to post within our guidelines and in fact could even become a game of “Post fast and see how long it takes to get modded.”

We already play that game, @Dog! ..oh, oops, you didn’t hear it from me.

@Dog I agree. Some of us prefer to have our garbage discarded (or incinerated), while a small segment like the idea of dumpster diving.

Hrm—I guess I’m still not seeing the connection between allowing users who have commented on discussion to still see them, and ‘polluting the site’.

I think we’re all still pretty unclear about how you mean this to display, Andrew. Do you mean just that the answers will show up in your answers or that the modded thread itself shows up somewhere? We’re getting lost in the trees here somehow.

@janbb Okay this is just what I’m thinking it is, and I could be completely wrong. But, I have a list of questions that I’ve answered..I didn’t hide mine (I think thats an option) so maybe we could still access the question there? Because currently, if something gets modded and taken off, I can no longer go back to it at all, even if I got lurve for the response.

@andrew I think there should be a certain standard that allows questions to stay. We all know that the “penalty” of a sub-par, trolling, spamming question is damnation. Now, unless you plan on pre-screening every question (with a bot, or something), I would be concerned that people would submit poor questions knowing that they could get some answers/rewards for their effort as the Q would persist on some peoples’ pages in some sort of purgatory.

I could post a Q like “Who dat?” then quickly answer it. Assuming it is up on the site for a few minutes, I could get quite a few responses before it gets moderated, but I could still see those. The bar for questions could go down.

I think that only the asker should be able to see the modded question and answers.

I think @janbb is right: we don’t have a clear picture. I thought you were essentially saying that the only difference between a modded and an unmodded Q is that you can’t add responses to a modded one. Otherwise it is still on full display forever, for all to see. So we can never get rid of it and we can’t even counter it with comments. It’s locked and under glass. That sounds like giving bad Qs a permanent soapbox with no consequences, not even a fair drubbing from users. Too big a price to pay for the egos of a few whose words have unexpectedly lost their pemanence.

If that’s not it, then what?

I would need more information too.

I know it would not filter into Google but could be seen if someone sent the URL to someone.

Could lurve still be given/received? Could a person still get GA or GQ credit?

Would all questions be visible if one had the url? Even those written to defame another?
(I understand no further comment could be made)

@Jeruba No, questions will not be displayed on the main page that have been moderated. See http://www.fluther.com/disc/73160/what-if-we-allowed-people-to-view-their-responses-on-questions/#quip1131105
http://www.fluther.com/disc/73160/what-if-we-allowed-people-to-view-their-responses-on-questions/#quip1132130

@Dog No, nothing could be done on the page, I think. No GA/GQ while it’s in moderation. I suppose that people could send the links if they wanted. If that became a problem, we could deal with it.

Basically, here’s the issue I see: We, as old timers, usually have a pretty good sense of which questions are going to be moderated. But, there have been more than a few complaints about people putting in a lot of effort to questions that they don’t realize are likely to be pulled.

The issue is that those users now are hesitant to use the site because, to them, they answered, and now their answer is gone.

@andrew . . . What kind of impact do you think this will have on humanitarian efforts in Haiti?

I am able to lurve a question and answers that have been pushed to edit. Is this because I am special? :D

Regarding this issue- many of the detailed questions and responses fall under chatty or poll. Why not expand the rules for the meta area to accept those? That way they are not on the front page.
Dog ducks for cover

I read this Q and immediately thought “Noooooooooooo”. I find it interesting and relevant to note that every mod who has commented on this Q is against it too. Since most people have already voiced why its not a good idea, I’ll just give my vote of No.

Argggg, this changes essentially nothing!

Like @Ivan, I don’t see any good reason to oppose this change. Maybe I’m just dense, but I don’t see any way this would affect people who were never involved with the thread in the first place, and I don’t see how it creates more work for the mods.

And on the off chance that someone does offer a great answer to a crappy question, that person would still have the answer.

@petethepothead pointed out that threads with good answers tend not to be moderated. And I think this is not necessarily a good thing. Twice now I have gotten in trouble for mocking threads that should have been pulled in the first place but had enough good answers that they were left up. Really, the crap threads should have been pulled regardless of the answers. And this way, the good answers could be preserved without the crap questions polluting the place.

I still like my idea ^^ up there. Save the answers only. They could be viewed from the answer-er’s profile.

What @augustlan said.
btw this is totally not me sucking up

Andrew, darlin’, if this is something you want to do, then just do it. We trust you. you’ve never let us down before.

I saw what you said about the main page, thanks. But isn’t the “main page” just the main page?—what you see when you click home or log onto the site? How about all those still fully visible pages behind it, linked from the bottom? How about search results? How about links in people’s Questions lists and people’s Answer lists? How about “Questions for You’ and “Activity You’re Following’? If all you do is remove it from the home page—where nothing stays long anyway, because it gets pushed down in just a little while—then in effect it is staying alive and visible everywhere but among the most recent stuff. And that’s too much like “in perpetuity” for me.

When a question gets modded, that is tantamount to saying it should never have been here in the first place. So why in the world would we want to go to extra lengths to preserve it?