New Mod Tools, Brief Cloudflare Status Update

[Fidelas]

Seems like a neat tool and a good step forward, but my lack of confidence in large forums in general remains. Perhaps this is me looking back on the mid 2000s with rose-colored glasses, but it seems these days you have three options: remain hyper-content focused (e.g. a forum only about Indonesian basket weaving and nothing else), a highly-moderated and controlled "circlejerk" (e.g. ResetEra or other restrictive invite forums), or full-on anonymous cesspool. Since the majority of the "forum" is actually nested in chapter/series comments that are more akin to an Indonesian basket weaving forum than anything else, I have some faith, but I still worry that the majority of your headaches will continue to be "muh censorship!" coming from a minority of site users who are overly invested in the principle of being able to say things they never really expect to say, in a section of the site occupied by a small contingent of power-users using it as their personal chatroom.

That said, I haven't enjoyed general discussion forums since the mid 2000s, so I wish you the best of luck wrangling that beast. No sense associating my hobby of Mongolian woodblock print reading with stressful internet arguments.

From a UX perspective, it might be nice to be able to "expand" a moderated comment without having to go all the way to my settings to toggle the filter. Perhaps by clicking the little speech bubble in the top left. The toggle controls the default behavior, but this would be a per-comment override, in case a terrible sense of schadenfreude overcomes me and I want to see THIS USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST.

 

[Zephyrus]

@Fidelas
I've been part of all three kinds of forums and there's really no easy answer to the problems each one brings. I believe that the golden rule of "be civil" should be enough to guide people to post thoughtfully or, at the very least, respectfully, but alas, anonymity means an opportunity to be a jerk for a lot of people. I don't think it'll be a struggle to get people to realize that they can disagree with one another without being too ugly about it. Maybe I just have too much faith in the internet. :v

As for that toggle, I agree it would be useful. You could try making a thread in the suggestion forum or chatting with a dev about it.

 

[FireFish5000]

^{@Yautja posted:}
@firefish5000
Is that a nested quote? Jesus Christ that looks weird. I wonder how small it can get...

Nested quotes don't do anything formating wise ATM(other than inserting a newline before/after itself). I am using (sub/sup)script. They seem to nest indefinitely.

Here is a template for @Teasday style quotes, with my ugly nested quotes clumsily added.

[quote[s][/s]][sup[s][/s]]@[s][/s]Username posted:[[s][/s]/sup]
Some normal sized stuff in quotes
[sup[s][/s]][sub[s][/s]]@[[s][/s]url=https://mangadex.org/user/userId]NestedUsernamePreplacedInUrlBcWeDontNeedToNotifyThem[[s][/s]/url] posted:[[s][/s]/sub]
Some small things in sup since nested quotes don't do any formatting other than add newlines.[[s][/s]/sup]
Some normal sized things in quotes.[[s][/s]/quote]

Here is a template rendered

^{@Username posted:}
Some normal sized stuff in quotes
^{_{@NestedUsernamePreplacedInUrlBcWeDontNeedToNotifyThem posted:}
Some small things in sup since nested quotes don't do any formatting other than add newlines.}
Some normal sized things in quotes.

 

[Teasday]

Technically I use sub for my quotes, not sup.

[quote[s][/s]][sub[s][/s]][USER=30111]@firefish5000[/USER] posted:[/sub]

Stuff[/quote]

By the way, I have a userscript for my quote button, which I haven't implemented it on the site yet because it doesn't actually work perfectly and I don't want people complaining about a half-finished feature. There's some stuff us devs need to fix before I can properly get around to that.

 

[kronix]

@Zephyrus

I don't know why you feel the need to make such condescending comments towards me when I haven't done anything wrong. To be honest I am starting to see what the other members are questioning about you very clear with the remarks you make.

 

[Zephyrus]

@kronix
There is nothing condescending about disabusing you of the notion that we have an "understanding", as if we were in a gentleman's agreement to let you get away with trolling so long as you don't go too far.

 

[kronix]

@Zephyrus

I've made it quite clear that I know you are fully aware of the outrage that your posting style elicits and you revel in it. The *instant* you break a rule, you'll lose your commenting privileges for a long time.

Not just this time but there are other public comments like the above where you feel the need to discuss my private matters when it comes to "moderating" to the public for all to see. Very unprofessional in your part to discuss private matters regarding individuals to try and make yourself appear somewhat superior to the rest.

I am still here, because I don't anything wrong, and I will continue to be here from here onward because I do not make personal attacks like some people clearly love doing regardless of rules or not.

 

[Hidetsugu]

You know what you two? Just go get married already, you tsunderes. Sheesh.

Now - seriously. Someone of you should really just take the high road and stop trying to have the last word. And that is a good advice not only for forum arguments, trust me.

 

[Zephyrus]

@kronix
I have very little sympathy for you. You have done your utmost to be the most infamous poster on MD and mention as often as you can that even though you post absolutely vile things in manga comments, you're not personally attacking other posters.

The fact that you are attempting to play the victim is pitiful. I moderate *everyone* in public. You are no exception.

 

[kronix]

@Zephyrus oh wow a moderator personally attacking / harassing members of their community because you don't agree with the way I post comments? unfathomable.

And here I thought we were making progress in private messages, oh well.

You can continue to hate and harass me all you want, because it's clear nobody is going to do anything about you 🙂

 

[Pampatos]

Why is this website going slow these last days?

Regards.

 

[RexNemorensis]

You feed, you lose. The rule is simple.

 

[BestBoy]

How is some of this not currently breaking 5.2.1? Kronix initial comment is half a sentence about the new mod tools, and 3 paragraphs about a separate forum post, his "mutual understanding" with Zephyrus, and talking about how much people dislike his opinions.

 

[MuscleSpark]

Based and redpilled.
😘

 

[Anoon2323]

I'm getting logged out whenever the hour rolls over.

 

[Yautja]

@Pampatos
TL;DR: Cloudfare is dick & Apparently DDoS.

 

[Hounder]

@Zephyrus Here's a good question. The basic rule is "Be Civil:". Would purposely antagonizing people be considered not being civil?

 

[darkomantis]

@Arashi89 @Yautja

I remember when the DDos was first happened, I made a general statement on r/manga that companies and rival sites can ddos disruptive sites (i.e. Mangadex) for a variety of reasons. I was downvoted hard and told "hurr durr why would any organizations want to hurt cartoon comic website". As if Flickr nuking Lhscans image hosting accounts or ISPs slowing down internet speed to force customers to buy higher speed plans never happened.

I think a lot of people on a subconscious level are afraid to think of the possibility that companies have the ability to screw people/sites over just as rival sites do.

 

[drmchsr0]

@darkomantis

It's actually worse.

Cloudflare's and Paypal's payment processors are Visa et al. Assuming Cloudflare isn't aware or do not care that their services are being used by people who infringe copyright or deal with objectionable material, their payment processors ultimately control whose payments get processed. And it's THEIR opinions that matter in the end. The tech industry is becoming more and more dictatorial, but that's nothing new since corps in general behave like that.

Welcome to the cyberpunk future. Corps own you. And it's already here.

 

[Zephyrus]

@Hounder
I dunno. That's a bit of a slippery slope, if you ask me. How does a moderator judge when a poster is deliberately looking to bait other posters, genuinely holds that opinion, or both? I can't ban someone on the mere suspicion of being a troll.

Perhaps if it could be proved that the poster had a long history of intentionally antagonizing other posters, then maybe action could be taken.

@Bestboy
No action was taken in the thread and no one was arguing against said action. That rule exists to prevent users from harassing moderators. There is a difference between logically and respectfully arguing against an action (which, according to the rules, needs to be brought up in PM anyway) and becoming belligerent and accusing the moderator of being biased, abusing their power, etc., etc. I have enforced that rule exactly once. I don't want to give users the impression that I am stifling conversation if they are unhappy about something.