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Moderating any online community is extremely difficult. Rules are generally guidelines and not always set in stone. So, this leaves things up to the discretion
by freditup 14y ago
Moderating any online community is extremely difficult. Rules are generally guidelines and not always set in stone. So, this leaves things up to the discretion of moderators. It can be quite difficult to determine if something is or is not within rules. Was this locking a mistake? Probably, but one question locked means nothing. Moderators always have to watch out for 'rules creep' where the rules are stretched just a little bit over and over again until they are virtually non-existent.
In the SO case, can the moderators be a bit strict sometimes? Sure, in my opinion. But I don't think this is indicative of any broad problem on SO.
- genwin 14y agoAgreed, except I think it's probably indicative of a broad problem on SO (I'm seeing it too much, and I've seen other forums ruined by it). I think what happens is, a mod becomes overly sensitive to controversy (difference of opinion in the answers). Having only one way to end the controversy, they incorrectly declare the question to be off-topic.
- mikescar 14y agoThis is not an example of a controversial issue. The consensus for years has been to store a path in the DB to a file resource, and if you store images in the DB you should have a really compelling, edge-case reason to do so.