How long is the wait?

[Purple Dragon]

Where is my post that I submitted two days ago? How long is the wait? I hope it was not censored by reps from 中宣部.

[imron]

I hope it was not censored by reps from 中宣部.

No, but it was deleted by admin.  One line posts from new members with little more than a link to a youtube video typically don't pass the moderation queue.

[Purple Dragon]

Deleted?! The post I wrote was about a short history of Chinese music and being open minded with Chinese songs. That was a lot more than a link to Youtube. How else can a forum member contribute?

[imron]

The one I saw from you (and deleted) had one sentence containing a very brief introduction and a link to a youtube video.  I'm not sure if you made other posts that were deleted by another moderator.

 

How else can a forum member contribute?

In order to reduce spam, first posts by new members that say little more than 'check out this link' have a difficult time making it past moderation.

 

It's best to keep linking to a minimum until you've got a number of posts under your belt.  If you stick around, you'll hopefully start to appreciate the relative lack of link spam going on.

[Zbigniew]

I'm a mod on a language forum (for a different language) that gets more traffic than this one. We dropped pre-moderation for new members some time ago as we were spending more time conciliating people and explaining why their posts didn't appear immediately than we were simply dumping spam. Feedback also strongly suggested that bona fide newcomers were being turned off the forum by the draconianism of pre-moderation continued beyond the first post.
 

My third submitted post has not yet been approved since I submitted it yesterday. If its failure to make it through is simply down to an admin oversight then that's understandable. If, on the other hand, there's something intrinsically objectionable about it please could someone say what exactly, so that I can avoid falling foul of the T & C's of posting in the future.

[roddy]

Appreciated, but we still save time and annoyance overall I think - while I obviously don't have any figures to compare, I suspect Chinese-focused sites end up with more spam because there are a simply ridiculous number of start-up schools, apps, websites, youtube channels, etc, with no idea of how to reach customers other than sending interns out on copy and paste missions.

 

I do think we've been quite a bit slower than usual this last month or so though, so apologies to anyone who's had to wait. I've been snowed under with work and I don't think Imron's been around as much as usual either. Things should be a bit smoother now. I've just emptied the mod queue, so if a post still hasn't appeared drop us a line at admin@... and let us know what it was...

[imron]

Yeah, I've been snowed under with work as we'll, so the mod-queue has been slower than usual the last couple of months.

I agree with Roddy about spam. I'd much rather deal with the occasional query about a missing post than have several reports daily about spam posts and threads that needed deletion. The former is a clear winner in terms of reduced effort and a cleaner forums.

[Zbigniew]

Thanks for your replies, Roddy and imron.

It was wrong of me to make deductions about your likely spam levels simply from the activity level on the forum. You may well get a disproportionately large amount precisely because the forum's topic is Chinese, as you say. Sorry for not considering this.

[roddy]

I don't know, maybe we don't. Like I say, I don't have figures on this, and I do realise the current arrangement could be discouraging for new users. However it's also the case that regular members seem to appreciate the lack of spam on on here, and that we get a lot of spam like posts (over-enthusiastic English practicers posting multiple language exchange request, school marketing staff convinced that their copy and pasted spiel is relevant to every topic with 'school' in the title, people who are much more excited about their Youtube video than anyone else is ever going to be, etc) which we don't really want, but that aren't going to trigger the automatic spam filters. 

 

Anyway, you're now a fully-empowered member - enjoy the site!

[hannafit]

Can the mods get on approving my posts? I'm a CSC scholarship winner and would like to take part in the conversation..thank you!

[JustinBrown]

Coming to this forum late, but I too haven't had my post approved, I did have one link on it, but it was a source link, the rest was text and pictures. Will they notify me if they delete/censor it?

[imron]

In general we don't notify people, but are usually happy to respond if people ask.

 

I don't see a post like you described in the moderation queue so I'd say it didn't make it.  If you're a new poster saying little more than 'check out my blog' or 'check out this link' and/or then quote copiously from the source, it will probably just get deleted.  We are generally stricter with new members than we are with regular members.

 

Feel free to PM me something similar to what you posted and I could probably tell you why it didn't make it.  Although I didn't delete it, the Admin team have pretty similar standards as to what will pass.

 

The main reason we don't really notify people is that over the years we've found that many of these sorts of posts come from people who are not interested in participating in the forums so it's rarely worth our time to try and contact/communicate with people who come in, drop a link, then leave with no intention of really trying to engage with people here.

 

Will they notify me if they delete/censor it?

Moderation is not censorship

 

If you stick around, you'll likely come to appreciate the relative lack of spam on these forums.

[roddy]

If I remember correctly it looked like a copy and paste of a blog article?

[JustinBrown]

Okay thanks for the info. And it was a copy paste of a blog article, but I took the link out the second time. I don't need to promote my blog, but I thought the article itself would be interesting to people on the forum, and we could get some discussions going about it. 

[roddy]

It's not (entirely) about whether you're promoting the blog or not - we approve a fair number of 'look at my blog' posts. But generally the community responds better to material that's been written for and is addressed to, the community, rather than something that was written elsewhere and has been pasted in here as an afterthought. As a recent example, this guy.

 

My go-to analogy is that you're walking into a room where people are already having a range of conversations. You can either join in conversations and maybe start your own, or you can put an advert on the wall and leave. 

[JustinBrown]

Good grief, this is ridiculous. There is a fine line between moderating spam and just straight up being anal. I'm done with this blog.

[陳德聰]

Is there no way to automate the process so admins can just click a checkbox with one of the, say, 4 most common reasons for deletion and have a message sent to the poster? "Your recent post titled '...' was deleted because it ..., we suggest you ... and try again. Thanks!" or something to that effect? I'm not forum savvy so I don't know if that is even possible.

[James3]

Go moderators!  Personally, I've been on sites where spammy posts are interspersed with good content...and it gets tiresome, wading through the spam. I come here practically everyday to see what's new, and I appreciate it being pretty much spam free.

 

I think the rules of any good forum are pretty well known: 1. Create an account, 2. Read posts and find one that interests you. 3. Make a meaningful comment on the post. 4. Rinse and repeat  5. This gets your trust built up, where you're a known commodity. 6. Begin to post original content.  Trying to short cut these steps, and skip the "gaining trust" stage, will probably get your posts moderated on any worthwhile site.  That's my 2 cents.

[imron]

Good grief, this is ridiculous. There is a fine line between moderating spam and just straight up being anal.

 

So you admit that your post was just a copy and paste from your blog, and somehow we're the ones being ridiculous for not wanting duplicate content?

 

Generally speaking we prefer to have original content as the main focus of discussion (that's what people come here for) and ask that people link to external content they wish to discuss.  As a new user you're in a catch-22 about posting links, but see what James3 mentioned above about how to fix that.

 

Another thing to consider is that one of the keys to good writing is 'know your audience'.  The way a blog is written and the way a forums post is written are actually quite different - one is talking at people, one is talking with people.  If you expect to just copy and paste from something you've written elsewhere and have it work, well, you'll find it probably doesn't and will draw the ire of the community (it has happened in the past with others).

 

@James3, you're pretty much spot on.  Becoming part of a community is the best way to participate in a community driven site.

[roddy]

陳德聰, honestly 9 times out of 10 we don't want people trying again. "Sorry, your 17 posts titled '1,200Y a month teaching job, white females only' were not approved, please crawl back under your stone" would be more like it.