Forum Moderation

[Mike Naberezny]

For many years, Garth Wilson and I have moderated this forum together. In this post I'm announcing that I'm giving Garth Wilson more autonomy to moderate the forum. I don't think this will be much of a change and most people probably think Garth already had this.

The main form of moderation that the forum needs is the removal of spambot user accounts and spam messages. Despite having reasonable measures such as a CAPTCHA, "prove you are human" questions, and even some custom code, the amount of spam we receive is unbelievable. This goes mostly unnoticed because for over a decade, Garth has checked the forum multiple times a day and immediately dealt with any spam issues. Garth's work on this has been heroic and I hope you'll leave a comment in this thread thanking him for it.

The other form of moderation that the forum sometimes needs involves issues with members. Although the forum generally gets along well, there are sometimes issues. These can be off-topic posts, posts that others report or object to, one-liners that insult or don't add any value, profanity, harassment, discrimination, and those sorts of things. Whenever we have such an issue, Garth and I email privately to discuss it, then we either talk with the poster(s) or, less often, delete the problematic content.

Lately, I am not using the forum daily, as I have been busy with work and also some (gasp) non-6502 hobby projects like my car. I still read often but Garth sometimes has to wait several days to hear back from me, and it's happened a couple of times that a situation has gotten worse because of this delay. Garth has therefore asked me if he may moderate these non-spam issues without me and I have agreed. Since we almost always come to quick agreement on issues anyway, it wasn't a horribly difficult decision.

You should expect no significant changes in moderation. If there is some issue and you receive a message from Garth, please respect his decision out of respect for the role and the enormous effort Garth has put in over the years on the forum. Please continue to have fun on the forum, stay on topic (electronics!), and be respectful and understanding to others.

[BigEd]

Thanks Mike - and thanks Garth!

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Doesn’t seem like it, but 6502.org has been online for some 23 years.  In Internet terms, that’s an eon.  Hats off to Mike and Garth for keeping this ship sails-up and on course.

[JimBoyd]

Garth, thank you for all your hard work moderating the forum and thank you Mike for the forum.

[GARTHWILSON]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Doesn’t seem like it, but 6502.org has been online for some 23 years.

Yep, 24 it looks like, including the original forum on Delphi which Mike later migrated to here with phpBB software.  We've definitely had a few bumps along the road, but it's nice to see how the forum continues to increase in expertise, and apparently even in traffic now many years after the 6502 was thought to be dead.  The worst time was years ago when I was having to ban and kick out more than two dozen spammers per day and clean up their voluminous vandalism.  It got to where it was taking far more time than I could give it.  At about the same time, spammers pretty much destroyed the 6502ag Yahoo Group (which Phil Pemberton has since migrated to groups.io, but the old posts have not been transferred, meaning that if you want to read them, you have to have kept all the old emails, or ask someone who has them, since it was a listserv).  Seeing what happened to 6502ag made me determined not to let that happen here.  Fortunately, Mike's efforts with the captcha and other measures to keep 6502.org spammers out has cut the spam to just a trickle.

My avatar BTW was chosen by Mike when he made me moderator.  He took one of the cartoons in my 6502 interrupts primer and cropped it to just that portion, which gave me a good laugh.

What started the email exchange Mike is talking about above was that I was asking for clarification on my boundaries as moderator, what he wanted me to do in certain types of situations, not particularly asking for more authority.  I just want to make sure I do it the way he wants, and not be my own ambassador.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

GARTHWILSON wrote:

I just want to make sure I do it the way he wants, and not be my own ambassador.

Be sure to ask for a raise. 

[barnacle]

Having been a moderator and administrator on another close-focussed forum, I appreciate Garth's problems and his and Mike's efforts in keeping this forum helpful and readable (and apologise for my own lapses into off-topicness from time to time).

Thanks guys.

Is this a fair place to ask how this forum is funded, and whether a small donation might be acceptable?

Neil

[Mike Naberezny]

Quote:

Is this a fair place to ask how this forum is funded, and whether a small donation might be acceptable?

6502.org has been fortunate to have a few sponsors over the years. Very early on, the website was hosted for free on nyx.net, and when we outgrew that, we received free hosting on buzz.chisp.net. When we required even more resources, Ross Archer generously paid for hosting for several years. I eventually took over and have funded it for the last 15 years or so.

As has been mentioned, 6502.org is well over twenty years old now. A couple of years ago, as I was reflecting on this, I started putting the code for the non-forum parts of the website on GitHub. I’m not planning on going anywhere, but I thought it would be a good idea to try and make it a little more independent of me. Similarly, I mentioned a while back that I also have specific instructions for the forum, just in case. There are full daily backups and a couple of people who know they will be contacted.

In the same spirit of making the site a little more independent of me, it’s possible that the site may accept donations sometime in the future. I very much appreciate offers of donations, but the site is not accepting donations at the moment. If we do accept donations at some point, there will be an announcement and a link somewhere.

[sburrow]

Yes, thank you Garth, for all the work you put into the forum, into your primer, and into individual emails. I am thankful for this spam-free and welcoming haven on the internet.

Chad

[barnacle]

Thanks for the clarification, Mike. It's something that I've thought about for a while; this is a very good and useful resource.

Neil

[and3rson]

Dropping by to thank Mike & Garth for running this place since I was, like, 9.

I've never ran any communities this large (not even close), but still I know how much effort it takes to make sure things go smooth, even with smaller forums.

Thanks for keeping 6502.org alive in the age of anti-social networks.

[SamCoVT]

Kudos to both Mike and Garth! This site has been an excellent resource and I've learned so much by reading about other people's projects as well as discussing my own work. I never really thought much about spam on this site, which is a testament to how well Mike and Garth have been managing things - especially when you look at virtually any other bulletin-board like site on the interwebs these days.
Thanks!

[cbmeeks]

I for one welcome our new 6502 overlords. Lol

Congrats Garth!

[fachat]

Many many thanks to Mike and Garth for making this forum this great place for 6502 enthusiasts, and a valuable collection of information as it is now!

[kakemoms]

Thank you both for the great work you do.