On a moderated board, is it possible for the moderator to delete individual posts rather than issue an outright ban?
Everyone has bad days, and often the most useless posts come from some of the most useful contributors, or typically useless contributors post occasional gems - not to mention the hopelessly boring spitting contests that arise from time to time.
It seems like it'd be useful for a moderator to have a simple means to separate the wheat from the chaff in order to maintain a certain continuity of on topic discussion. Or perhaps create a separate view of a board with a "moderator's choice" type option or something - sort of like an "ignore" view of a thread, but sifted for content by the moderator.
I'm not a big fan of censorship, but there are times when it gets very old to go to a board, click on a dozen posts, and find; 2 fishing trips, 1 ballgame, 1 formula for spaghetti, 7 Nah, Nah, na, na, Nahs (each with 4 recommends) and one post on the topic. The flip side might be the ability to view a moderated board in an unmoderated version where the moderator's perspective might be perceived as being excessively narrow.
Just some thoughts. There seems to be a lot of pros and cons between moderated and unmoderated. Unmoderated probably encourages wider general participation, where moderated might, but doesn't necessarily, encourage tighter adherence to on topic discussion. I suppose I'm wondering if some of the technology that goes into individual SI features might have broader applications on the whole moderated/unmoderated question. |
