For transparency - chalo

[E-HP]

Note that it's not infrequent that some newbies get flustered by a purely fact based response that doesn't include coddling language. Consider this post was flagged as demeaning and a complaint filed.

controller power for light kit

The molex on the left is what I believe to be a power connector from the controller. The molex on the right is the power connector from the light kit. How do I confirm this and which color wires are - +. From the controller it's red/black and from the light kit it's yellow/black I can change the...

endless-sphere.com

 

[neptronix]

I forget unseen specifics but Amberwolf temporarily quit over that message because there was a spate of newbies being mean to him, plus some personal things going on, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I had to replace him with 4 people in a hurry. We are lucky he came back.

Personally i consider it very rude but not normally bannable. The exception is If amberwolf has a bad time here, our entire moderator team has a bad time and so do the members since he helps so many newbies and helps so much with moderation.

So yes, amberwolf is special and you found and example where our moderation can be inconsistent in the other direction. I give you a point.

 

[E-HP]

I forget unseen specifics but Amberwolf temporarily quit over that message because there was a spate of newbies being mean to him, plus some personal things going on, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I had to replace him with 4 people in a hurry.

Personally i consider it very rude but not normally bannable. The exception is If amberwolf has a bad time here, our entire moderator team has a bad time and so do the members since he helps so many newbies and helps so much with moderation.

So yes, amberwolf is special and you found and example where our moderation can be inconsistent in the other direction. I give you a point.

He gets dumped on for providing too thorough of a response (which makes the thread a lot more useful as a reference later). From newbies, they feel he's being too technical, from the semi-experienced newbies, they feel offended by his thoroughness, since they already know it all (when they don't) and feel their knowledge needs to be respected.

How to install turn signals for dummies

I have exactly the same flasher, but when I connect it to my HobbyKing led strip (http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=14289), it doesn't work at all. Any idea why?

endless-sphere.com

I probably should have been banned for the caffeine comment.
If you like helping people, the forum is a rewarding place to do so, until it's not.

 

[neptronix]

I see how amberwolf responses can be hard to read sometimes.
And sometimes he can grate on people but it's not intentional or overt and constant. It's just the output of a non-neurotypical brain.


We don't want to ban anyone for minor transgressions. That's way too much.
It's more of a case of how many people you piss off, how intensely, and how frequently. Another factor is if you derail a lot of threads - in this case i consider that a transgression because you are negatively impacting the experience of everyone reading the post. I don't like these two things if they become a frequent pattern.

I am a lot more likely to pull the trigger on a new person causing trouble immediately versus one that's been here for a while.
I would say if i could go back in time, i'd give that guy a warning and not ban him. That was a rage ban from the HR side and not fair.

 

[mxlemming]

I wish you would moderate based on accuracy. I find chalo abrasive and a dinosaur but he's right more often than not.

The internet is full of nonsense. I don't see that we should be sensitive to people that blunder into things insisting they know what they're doing. There's no shortage of people who think that because they can weld and use an impact wrench they're qualified and able to wire up sensitive electronics.

In my field of work i suffer every bloody day from people who think because they read on a forum xyz that i don't know what I'm talking about and they can do some cleverly retarded thing that breaks their stuff which they then declare defective...

Chalo is a dick but for most of what I've seen he's not wrong and not out to deceive.

 

[mxlemming]

I'll add that when the original thread linked on page 1 of this appears to be about someone making garbage out of garbage, chalo would have to really work hard to be polluting the knowledge pool significantly...

 

[E-HP]

I wish you would moderate based on accuracy. I find chalo abrasive and a dinosaur but he's right more often than not.

The internet is full of nonsense. I don't see that we should be sensitive to people that blunder into things insisting they know what they're doing. There's no shortage of people who think that because they can weld and use an impact wrench they're qualified and able to wire up sensitive electronics.

In my field of work i suffer every bloody day from people who think because they read on a forum xyz that i don't know what I'm talking about and they can do some cleverly retarded thing that breaks their stuff which they then declare defective...

Chalo is a dick but for most of what I've seen he's not wrong and not out to deceive.

A lot of times an idea is so dumb, I want to just call it out for safety reasons. I may spend a several minutes trying to figure out how to point that out tactfully, but then, thankfully, Chalo comes to the rescue. Sometimes you spend time looking for a scalpel, when you really need an axe.

 

[mxlemming]

Every few months I get someone coming at me with "i need more volts to get more starting torque". The internet confirms this hypothesis.

Of course if you have a 7 ohm motor and feed it 24V then 48V will give you far more torque. But scale that to a 72V lipo pack and a motor with 4milliohms and that logic just increases the ferocity of your fire.

But this and similar come at me over and over.

I learned aged 12 that if i pulled the rubber out of my rockshox indy forks and replaced them with the garden gate springs 2 things happened... 1) my parents got pissed off and 2) the forks got more travel. Let's not pretend i added to the pool of knowledge with that discovery.

 

[neptronix]

The posts being referenced is one of the mild examples and the reason he was banned for that is because he just got off a ban for worse than that and i told him to come back with a better attitude and stop being rude to new people and i didn't see effort in listening to my requests.

I think civility, signal to noise ratio, and accuracy should all take equal weight. I would personally prefer to reduce the civility portion but i am a neuro-atypical person. But in reality it's not the correct thing to do things the way that would work only for me. This forum is super diverse actually, in mentality and environment. It can't be a full nerdocracy.

I agree that bad ideas should be shot down totally. I'd say, do your best to not greatly insult the poster while doing so. If you do, don't do it again and again and again and ignore me every time i tell you to stop.

Chalo never gets in trouble with me for correcting someone a bit harshly. We hope that smart people continue doing that. What grinds the gears is when he cross associates the poster with an unfavorable segment of society for liking the kinds of vehicles or things they do. He does this a lot recently, and it is a tricky way around the ad hominem rule that still deeply insults the poster.

In fact lately we have had people walking away from the forum due to rudeness like this, not only from chalo, but also another member. For me it is a sign that we're tolerating some bullying that we might not want to in the future.

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask someone to stop doing that to new members. I don't think this level of gatekeeping type behavior belongs here. ES is a teaching hospital and R&D lab, not an exclusive club for certain types of cool kids. We were all noobs once.

 

[PaPaSteve]

The definition of a genius is : a person who makes the most mistakes in the least amount of time.
This statement assumes the person learns from mistakes and makes the necessary changes to produce positive results.
If said person keeps making the same mistakes time after time and makes no changes then this is the opposite condition of a genius.
True intelligence requires personal growth, admitting when a mistake was made and learning the art of a meaningful apology.
Knowledge is not the same as intelligence.

Apology :
a written or spoken expression of one's regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, injured, or wronged another.

 

[mxlemming]

The posts being referenced is one of the mild examples and the reason he was banned for that is because he just got off a ban for worse than that and i told him to come back with a better attitude and stop being rude to new people and i didn't see effort in listening to my requests.

I think civility, signal to noise ratio, and accuracy should all take equal weight. I would personally prefer to reduce the civility portion but i am a neuro-atypical person. But in reality it's not the correct thing to do things the way that would work only for me. This forum is super diverse actually, in mentality and environment. It can't be a full nerdocracy.

I agree that bad ideas should be shot down totally. I'd say, do your best to not greatly insult the poster while doing so. If you do, don't do it again and again and again and ignore me every time i tell you to stop.

Chalo never gets in trouble with me for correcting someone a bit harshly. We hope that smart people continue doing that. What grinds the gears is when he cross associates the poster with an unfavorable segment of society for liking the kinds of vehicles or things they do. He does this a lot recently, and it is a tricky way around the ad hominem rule that still deeply insults the poster.

In fact lately we have had people walking away from the forum due to rudeness like this, not only from chalo, but also another member. For me it is a sign that we're tolerating some bullying that we might not want to in the future.

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask someone to stop doing that to new members. I don't think this level of gatekeeping type behavior belongs here. ES is a teaching hospital and R&D lab, not an exclusive club for certain types of cool kids. We were all noobs once.

I counter that there are 8 billion people in the world and about 1billion of them seem to have involvement with electric vehicles... and of those I estimate about 999990000 of them are incapable of innovating or increasing the knowledge pool... fine, we don't judge harshly people's ability... but a much larger set are able and love to pollute the knowledge base with nonsense. ES is regarded higher than the facebook forums, reddit... etc... because there is some sense of gatekeeping IMO. I am not on this forum because I love to chitchat... I am here because amidst the terabytes of junk there are a few gems and it was somewhere where I could bounce ideas on motor drives given I had... zero... friends or colleagues interested. To me the idea that inclusivity increases the value of this forum is moot, it would be very easy to fall back to the level of the average facebook user group by just letting it flood with noise, and then the value is... what exactly?

 

[raylo32]

This syndrome is especially bad on forums where one or more of the mods has grand poobah syndrome. But, thankfully, I have only come across that once or twice and definitely not here.

It's my impression that Chalo has "grand poobah syndrome". There is at least one long time poster on every online forum who is afflicted. There is no cure.

It's hard to ban sufferers of grand poobah syndrome because they tend to have a lot of niche topical knowledge, but it's also hard not to ban them because they definitely keep newer people from participating.

For as long as internet forums have been around, grand poobah syndrome has been a problem. There are no good solutions.

I've seen some forums embrace grand poobah syndrome by giving a special title to those who are afflicted with the disease. The title is basically a lighthearted disclaimer that lets newer participants know not to take abrasive posts from that poster too seriously. Problem is that we're openly discussing this in regards to singling one person out. So I'm not sure that a special label for Chalo in particular would be Kosher.

 

[neptronix]

You have a point, we need some degree of gatekeeping even though i'd like to shine the light far and wide.

I've been thinking this since the software we are running bends in the direction of being social media a little bit to be adapted to modern tastes. It's also not apparent by design that we are a DIY focused site and that's a missed opportunity to set the tone.

Things chalo likes to gatekeep on:

Thing	Intensity	Effect ( my opinion )
fat bikes	High	Bad
scooters with tiny wheels	High	Good ( deathtraps at high speed )
suspension forks	Medium	Whatever
disc brakes	Medium	Whatever
car owners	High	Bad/annoying
people with different political views	High	Bad
crappy prebuilt bikes	High	Good

What the forum should gatekeep on:

Thing	Intensity	Why
Intellectual integrity and correctness	High	Want the best quality information we can get, must throw out those with high BS factor to maintain it
Selling boring prebuilt stuff	Medium	Doesn't fit a DIY forum and invites spamageddon
Extreme closemindedness	High	Scares off people with interesting ideas, shuts down conversations
Jerkiness	Medium ( only punish the worst, ESers have unusually thick skin )	Chance of productive discussion ends when people are turned defensive
Insulting people for a lack of knowledge	Medium to high	Everyone is a noob once
Loud unrelated political activism or gang warfare	High	Creates way too many problems on an international and diverse forum, don't want to host or be known for hosting gang wars again
Scammers/exceptionally bad vendors	Extremely high	Literal cancer

This is essentially the stock settings for moderating this forum in 2010 plus some politics control and slightly lowering the threshold a little of what we consider too jerky.

The forums collective priorities don't line up too well with his and it's hard to think of him as a net positive in that aspect.

I think we would all agree that he is a net positive in knowledge contribution.


Guys i would like to thank you for a cool headed discussion on this difficult decision so far.
It's not a comfortable discussion to have but it has been productive.

 

[marty]

The forums collective priorities don't line up too well with his

Ya think maybe Nep's collective priorities don't line up with Chalo"s view of life in charts above?

Thing	Intensity	Effect ( my opinion )	Marty's opinion
fat bikes	High	Bad	Big tires + pedals = stupid
scooters with tiny wheels	High	Good ( deathtraps at high speed )	Fentanyl is cheaper.
suspension forks	Medium	Whatever	good & bad
disc brakes	Medium	Whatever	Rim brakes are fine.
car owners	High	Bad/annoying	Cars are worst thing to happen to humans since cave men.
people with different political views	High	Bad	Lets discus that.
crappy prebuilt bikes	High	Good	What do you want for $500?

I made a table! Copy Nep's chart with the [Toggle BB code] button.

 

[WaverlyCycles]

What's w/ the fatbike hate? They serve an important niche. No, they don't pedal well without assist. But they can fantastic.

20"x3" tires + geared hub motor + good sturdy frame + high practicality cargo racks and/or passenger capabilities = extremely stable to safely move heavy stuff & passengers.

I got an Electra Ponto Go for helping to get my girlfriend comfortable on a bike. She grew up in a part of SoCal where all the stroads make bikes impractical & unsafe, so she never learned how to ride as a kid. And when I first started trying to teach her how to ride, she was so afraid of traffic that she would panic fall if she was anywhere near traffic - even if using protected infrastructure.

She rode on the back of my Ponto Go for months, which was very sturdy & secure for her. The exposure therapy worked beautifully. Now she rides her own e-bike, including in traffic.

And now I'm building my ideal e-bike for daily use because the Ponto Go is obnoxious for just me! But I'm still keeping it around because it's great to take on trips. It's basically a sturdy tandem bike that's much easier to use.

A lot of bikes w/ similar geometry are used by smaller mothers to pick up their kids from school, get groceries, & whatnot. Wide 20 inch tires keep the center of gravity low enough that just about anybody can keep quite a bit of weight under safe control.

 

[The Toecutter]

Fentanyl is cheaper.

Around here, the zombies strung-out on fent loved stripping out those 15 mph e-scooters when they were around. They've figured out so many ways to steal parts from them that the companies renting them out have gone out of business! Back when I was broke trying to get my first velomobile build put together, the fennies peddling stolen parts were one of my potential candidates for getting cheap batteries, but I found a seller of used packs here and also batteryhookup.com instead.

 

[PaPaSteve]

I counter that there are 8 billion people in the world and about 1billion of them seem to have involvement with electric vehicles... and of those I estimate about 999990000 of them are incapable of innovating or increasing the knowledge pool... fine, we don't judge harshly people's ability... but a much larger set are able and love to pollute the knowledge base with nonsense. ES is regarded higher than the facebook forums, reddit... etc... because there is some sense of gatekeeping IMO. I am not on this forum because I love to chitchat... I am here because amidst the terabytes of junk there are a few gems and it was somewhere where I could bounce ideas on motor drives given I had... zero... friends or colleagues interested. To me the idea that inclusivity increases the value of this forum is moot, it would be very easy to fall back to the level of the average facebook user group by just letting it flood with noise, and then the value is... what exactly?

Completely in agreement.
ES is a great space for discussing, bouncing ideas whether it be electric, suspension, tires, chain lube or any other concept.
It is incumbent on each member to use their own filters to sort through some of the odd ideas that bare no sense.
These are the times to apply the "Bambi Rule".
Is it possible to imagine that some members have no self filtering tools ?
Because I value ES . . . I support the moderator to do what's required to reduce his work load and keep the peace.

 

[neptronix]

I'm the head of the moderators so i can't ignore anyone.
We have a lot of users lately who are new to using forums and they are not aware of how the ignore function works on here.

Even if you ignore someone you still experience a thread getting disrupted because someone didn't, and you also see their quotes in words, so there is no really ignoring anyone on this format.
It's different on social media because nothing is time ordered.

So this is really an achilles heel of forums.

I think someone who interrupts threads unnecessarily and often is a problem because of the type of format we have, and technology cannot solve the problem. This makes going through threads a lot more difficult, and often frustrating.

I read a lot of threads this year where we have pages of chalo rustling other people's jimmies and making the thread unproductive from the point of the view of the reader. It can sometimes take a lot of work to get a thread back to usefulness even after chalo is defused.

This is a real sin on a longform format and unfortunately needs to be controlled once we hit a certain point.

I don't want to praise hillhater too much but, he is an example of a loud contrarian on the website who:
- doesn't break the ad hominem rule or try to work around it, he will ruin the idea not the person
- if he goes over the top, and is asked to stop, he stops
- i think we've only heard one complaint about him in over a decade?
- like chalo, the guy sometimes has a point
- more of a 'come at me bro' kind of debater than a crusader

If Chalo was more like hillhater, i'd have no problem with him being on the website.
I don't think this is asking too much.

 

[James340]

You know he's reading this?Is this a intervention?people need answers not opinions. My opinion

 

[slaphappygamer]

Even if you ignore someone you still experience a thread getting disrupted because someone didn't, and you also see their quotes in words, so there is no really ignoring anyone on this format.

There is another forum I visit that you can not see anything from the ignored. In a thread, when the ignored are quoted, you simply see the window from the quotes reply and text that reads something like “you are ignoring this member, click here to view”. Not sure what engine they use though.

I don’t think anyone is trying to hide anything here. This is a very transparent thread. If I were in a mods shoes, I’d be racking my brain over an issue like this too. I could be wrong but, this might be one of the hardest decisions to make, as a mod. It’s a forever decision.

It’s great that Neptronix has this out in the open. This is how forums work. Gather input, ask questions, propose ideas and solutions. This is pretty similar to a build thread. Probably the best way to come to a sound conclusion. But it’s going to take some time.

 

[amberwolf]

There is another forum I visit that you can not see anything from the ignored. In a thread, when the ignored are quoted, you simply see the window from the quotes reply and text that reads something like “you are ignoring this member, click here to view”.

That's what happens here, too.

 

[slaphappygamer]

Yep. That’s the message I see too.

 

[chuyskywalker]

Gave him a ban last week for a long streak of rude behavior.

I've had disagreements with folks here, differences of opinions, and more. Chalo is the only member I've blocked or even remotely felt the need to block. I've found that my curiosity in clickin "[shows ignored member post]" is almost always rewarded with the knowledge that I made a good call in the blocking.

 

[ChapinB]

Maybe a slightly different perspective. Iv been crawling the forum for a decade, and Chalo's posts, more often than not, come off as a knowledgeable, direct answer. And I appreciate that. Often times it sparks a civil, but contradictory response - also appreciated. Or perhaps thats the mods making it civil in some cases. Obviously, with my limited pursuing, I dont see the day-to-day problems/spats, or all the removed posts and the work done by mods to make things coherent.

But having knowledge is no excuse for poor behavior or picking a fight. Even worse when it prevents the growth of a forum as a whole. Being a mod is an important task and time shouldnt be spent dreading conflict that is knowingly going to happen.

My primary home on another forum is extremely friendly and helpful, even to the 100 dull and repetitive questions that get asked constantly. It has a strong sense of community and belonging, and I can see here does as well. My home is growing and gaining people who care and know their craft well. Due to mods actions, consumer base or whatever, I havent a clue. Can that be said for here? Honestly, I dont know enough to speculate. I tend to only see only a few people regularly post on questions. And this is on a topic that is a rapidly growing - ebikes and alike- among the general population.

But the problem of one member remains. You have 3 pages of discussion on this ban alone, multiple bans/censorships/warnings in the past. Continuous warnings are an acceptance of poor behavior or delusional expectations. Dont do your forum a disservice by repeatedly accepting that poor behavior, regardless of said knowledge base or prior contribution. Its a hard decision after all his time and input, I can understand that. Stop shouldering a burden you know will return. Force a change.

 

[E-HP]

As I mentioned, I'm working on trying not to judge, and would prefer solutions that don't require making too many judgements. I also prefer that ES continues to accumulate more knowledge, regardless of these behavioral issues. I favor member preferences in order to place as much of the forum experience in the control of the member, while reducing administrative burden. I acknowledge that behavioral issues are not always in the member's own control, and could even be medical related, and finding a solution where they may still contribute, without offending others, would be the optimal and most inclusive solution.

Perhaps the technology is available to do something like this:

Create 3 parameters, 2 for use by members and 1 by admins. Each parameter contains 4 or 5 levels, TBD.

Parameters are all set to 1 when a new user joins. The member parameters can be changed based on their own preference.

The levels are all defined the same, but used for different purposes.

Level 1 represents a "G" rating (meant for all audiences; think Nickelodeon channel; Mr. Rogers)
Level 5 is "X" rated (like some of our friend on the no-no list)

Member -

• Parameter 1 - Based on preferences, members can set a tolerance level for the max level they would like to be exposed to.
• Parameter 2 - Based on preferences, member can set a parameter for the level they would like to be designated as, which may be higher than 1. This allows a member a member to avoid ruffling feathers of those that may be more sensitive (I'd probably set it at least to 2 for myself, to allow some PG rated humor, etc., and less coddling). This value can be changed upward, by admins if warranted. This preference will also set the floor for what the member sees from other members as well.

Admin -

• Parameter 2-prime - Based on behaviors, admins may change a level 1 to 2, 3, 4 or 5 if warranted. This may override a member's preference Parameter 2 upwards.

This system, for the admins, removes the anxiety over putting members on time out or other more drastic measures, while allowing users to be exposed to what they want to see, as well as allowing members to feel less restrained or restricted, wondering whether they may offend others. The member is fully in charge of what they see and what is seen by who, for their own posts. The system can't really be abused, since the parameters only affect the member's preferences. The member can change the parameters to be exposed to more or less, whenever they want. If you're in a crunchy mood, you may set your own parameter higher and still continue to contribute to the forum without worrying about offending folks with a lower tolerance. If there are complaints, the admins simply need to discuss, and change the level upwards, based on the agreed upon definitions of each level.