Leah O'Connor is right

malmo wrote:

[quote]Premaster Cycle wrote:

unhinged rant

Honestly wtf? You have no business being a moderator if that is your response to a reasonable post that points out verified flaws in your moderation.

You basically proved their point with that response, that you don't actually try to fix things and get defensive instead.

therottingghost wrote:

malmo wrote:

[quote]Premaster Cycle wrote:

unhinged rant

Honestly wtf? You have no business being a moderator if that is your response to a reasonable post that points out verified flaws in your moderation.

You basically proved their point with that response, that you don't actually try to fix things and get defensive instead.

You're just chasing your own tail around in circles. Endlessly. Stop it. I've already responded to you. Take a deep breath. Go outside. Take a walk. Read a book. Do something healthy.

So answer me this.

Do you want every post you think is trash deleted ?

Tell me what is the problem. They have a report post function. They have a number you can call.

how are these message boards hindering women’s track and field? I’ll wait. Do you think___ athlete x____ didn’t make the USA team because “ those mean ppl on the message boards said something” Galen Rupp has been a target for 15 years and he won’t a medal at the Olympics. Ask Galen if all the nasty things that have been said hindered his ability.

You be better. See a post you don’t like. Report it. See a post that’s been up for a while and you think it crosses the line. Call.

In the meantime I’ll wait for your response on letsrun.com has hindered girls ability to run well.

Leah is 1000% right. This place can be really great but also really awful.

I'll answer the above question in two ways: The first is that people who do not have the training and skill-set to monitor message board forums are doing so. The employer offers no training and you have people not equipped to take on the complexities of issues like race and gender. Because of that, this website often leaves things up that should be down. This website does not combat bad information and is complicit in letting bad behavior continue or go unchecked. It has been said multiple times by me and others that staff needs to be sent to some trainings. You really only have white middle aged guys on payroll. No need to get defensive. It is what it is but that means they miss the mark in some areas, especially if they haven't been trained in those areas. This website makes money -- use some of that to help clean it up. They don't want to because they think they'll make less money if they're less controversial. I think they're wrong. I hope they reconsider.

The second thing I'll say is that a bunch of men should not be saying whether or not they think LRC is hindering T&F. You might not think so but several pro female athletes boycott this place. That's why this thread came up. If professional women won't visit this place, I think that's a problem and a hindrance to the sport. It's a reflection of this place.

POSTER: "report a post it doesn't work. You guys love leaving the racist stuff up for days."

MALMO: No we don't.

POSTER: Yes you do, look, here is a time you missed something 7-years ago! I don't have a more recent example, because turns out it doesn't happen very often. Still unforgivable.

What Malmo and I were trying to explain to you is that our moderation technology is better in 2019 than it was in 2012. So you telling us we need to do better now than we did 7-years ago is pointless because we already do. Tell us how we can do better in 2019. You and others have given some suggestions which is great. Showing an example from when moderation failed in 2012 doesn't prove a point about how the system works today.

I never said moderation was perfect, of course we can always do better. As Rojo cited, there are millions of posts on the boards. Occasionally things will slip through the cracks because 1) We don't see it ourselves and 2) No one reports it. One post in a 10+ page thread can easily go overlooked because no one bothered to hit the "report post" link. The accusation by the poster seemed to be that we see racist stuff and purposely leave it up. That just isn't true. The notion that we would purposely leave up the n-word is absurd. As Malmo explained, you will never see "1/1000th" of the crap that gets posted because he deletes it first.

therottingghost wrote:

malmo wrote:

If Leah is reading, I've always been against the crap that you speak of. Report the the offensive posts/threads. I've got a sledgehammer.

report a post it doesn't work. You guys love leaving the racist stuff up for days.

An entire thread showing blatantly racist Coevett posts that he even admitted to didn't even amount to a single day ban.

In fact I'm pretty sure you came out in his defense, as an example of someone that LRC needs to protect.

lol

He's right, I just reported his post and it is still up! Unbelievable that people can post things on here that have different views than me! Don't you know you're supposed to be protecting me from other people's words and ideas! I'm really bad at arguing against their ideas so it is just unfair that they get to say these things! They hurt my feelings! At least my college has safe spaces for people like me! Waaaaaaaaahhhh!!!!

Soprano wrote:

The accusation by the poster seemed to be that we see racist stuff and purposely leave it up. That just isn't true. The notion that we would purposely leave up the n-word is absurd. As Malmo explained, you will never see "1/1000th" of the crap that gets posted because he deletes it first.

False.

Many times mods IMMEDIATELY deleted a dozen threads directly pointing out a racist, reported thread and left the racist thread up all day. That's not an accident. Don't pretend it doesn't happen.

It is a very common occurrence and I sent you guys a half dozen recent examples of where this had CLEARLY happened and you did nothing. I posted an example on this thread. Deleted instantly

and you will delete this post in 10 seconds......why?

It's sort of heartening that distance running at least tries to hold itself to a higher standard than other sports. I mean the trash talk here is minor compared to the insults and attacks about other professional athletes.

I mean sure clean up LRC with better moderation.

therottingghost wrote:

Soprano wrote:

The accusation by the poster seemed to be that we see racist stuff and purposely leave it up. That just isn't true. The notion that we would purposely leave up the n-word is absurd. As Malmo explained, you will never see "1/1000th" of the crap that gets posted because he deletes it first.

False.

Many times mods IMMEDIATELY deleted a dozen threads directly pointing out a racist, reported thread and left the racist thread up all day. That's not an accident. Don't pretend it doesn't happen.

It is a very common occurrence and I sent you guys a half dozen recent examples of where this had CLEARLY happened and you did nothing. I posted an example on this thread. Deleted instantly

and you will delete this post in 10 seconds......why?

Stop it man. You've had your say. We've listened to you but you are wrong..Youve repeated yourself over and over and haven't added anything to the coversation. You're like a flat earther and nothing short of our membership cards to the KKK, Bilderberg Meeting, Bohemian Club and He-Nan Woman-Haters Club will satisfy you.

You have to accept the fact that 90 percent of the crap posted here is probably generated by less than 2 percent of the posters here. The prolific micro-minority is holding the rest of us hostage. By and large, the great majority of LRC posters are good people who just want to engage in conversations with like-minded track fans.

I'm serious. Take a deep breath, take a long walk, Do something productive. What you're doing here is not healthy.

Use the report post function.

Also, please quit reporting my response to you for deletion. It only diminishes what little empathy that could be had for you.

RunaroundCle wrote:

Just wait until she gets a real job she’ll quickly see that not everyone is going to be nice.

What a dumb post.

If someone in any "real job" ridiculed her appearance the way those LetsRun posts did, they would be fired.

This is not about being "nice." It is about not being abusive.

Think a bit.

malmo wrote:

Take a deep breath. Go outside. Take a walk. Read a book. Do something healthy.

Outstanding representation of current moderation.

FightFor15 wrote:

...people who do not have the training and skill-set to monitor message board forums are doing so. The employer offers no training and you have people not equipped to take on the complexities of issues like race and gender. Because of that, this website often leaves things up that should be down. This website does not combat bad information and is complicit in letting bad behavior continue or go unchecked. It has been said multiple times by me and others that staff needs to be sent to some trainings. You really only have white middle aged guys on payroll. No need to get defensive.

...several pro female athletes boycott this place. That's why this thread came up. If professional women won't visit this place, I think that's a problem and a hindrance to the sport. It's a reflection of this place.

Outstanding post.

Soprano wrote:

POSTER: Yes you do, look, here is a time you missed something 7-years ago! I don't have a more recent example, because turns out it doesn't happen very often. Still unforgivable.

That is not even remotely what I said.

Such contempt!

Good luck cleaning up your cesspool.

therottingghost wrote:

Many times mods IMMEDIATELY deleted a dozen threads directly pointing out a racist, reported thread and left the racist thread up all day. That's not an accident. Don't pretend it doesn't happen.

It is a very common occurrence and I sent you guys a half dozen recent examples of where this had CLEARLY happened and you did nothing. I posted an example on this thread. Deleted instantly

Yes, this has definitely happened in my time reading the boards. Though unless you took screenshots and it was in 2019, according to them it doesn't count.

But gosh, they really, really want to do better.

I agree with the mods regarding post reporting and deletion. Posts I've reported usually go away fairly quickly (depending on the time of day) and they are always responsive when I've emailed them suggestions over the years. I think they could be more aggressive with IP banning though. From the sounds of it, moderators can delete posts, but not ban. I think IP bans would slow down or cut off most of the garbage from getting there in the first place.

If you don’t like the a thread don’t read it bud it’s your choice to be on here. Start up your own website if you’re the smartest one of all

Premaster Cycle wrote:

therottingghost wrote:

Many times mods IMMEDIATELY deleted a dozen threads directly pointing out a racist, reported thread and left the racist thread up all day. That's not an accident. Don't pretend it doesn't happen.

It is a very common occurrence and I sent you guys a half dozen recent examples of where this had CLEARLY happened and you did nothing. I posted an example on this thread. Deleted instantly

Yes, this has definitely happened in my time reading the boards. Though unless you took screenshots and it was in 2019, according to them it doesn't count.

But gosh, they really, really want to do better.

The funny thing is that they were recent posts when i emailed them and got no response. I posted one link on this thread and it was promptly deleted.

But everything is fine, apparently, it's never happened since 2012!

Alapp wrote:

If you don’t like the a thread don’t read it bud it’s your choice to be on here. Start up your own website if you’re the smartest one of all

if you don't like people discussing the moderation policies, then don't read these posts, It's your choice to be on here.

If you want a site where people aren't allowed to discuss what could make the site better, then go start your own site.

I've been travelling a lot the last 2 days so I haven't commented yet.

1) I'm sorry Leah read what she did on the forums.

2) Just because youtube, facebook or twitter may (or may not) be worse doesn't mean we don't want to do a better job.

3) I think we have done a better job over the years.

4) Often we make moderation changes because of complaints. The poster above mentions Galen Rupp. He probably got more abuse on here than anyone in late 2000s. Some of it was very juvenile stuff, "GAYlen Rupp" people would post. At the NCAA indoors at Texas A&M when Rupp won his first NCAA track titles, both Alberto Salazar and Vin Lananna took me aside and ripped into me for how Galen was treated. I think I told Vin "we don't pre screen content. It's not like we can stop people from posting the words gay and rupp in the same post" But then after a day or two I realized we could actually do that. So for years you couldn't post the words Gay and Rupp in the same post. So you couldn't post about Tyson Gay and Galen Rupp in the same thread. We tried to be more proactive.

Now our moderation tools are better. We talked about some of this on this week's LetsRun.com Track Talk podcast which is out at link below.

We may start requiring registration for certain types of posts.

Having said that, I am a firm believer on anonymity on the internet. I think for certain topics you get information you would not get if people had to register or use a username. For example years ago, Alberto Salazar's lawyer wrote us demanding the names of people's ip addresses and email addresses for posts he felt were critical of Alberto. We have always said we would let drug discussion go on this site and thankfully it was anonymous because imagine if Alberto had been able to figure out who was posting about him how that would have been bad considering the power Nike had.

Or there was a thread on eating disorders and a person wrote in saying that another thread on LetsRun SAVED HER LIFE. She said she read a thread where people were discussing whether a pro she looked up to had an eating issue and that thread saved her life as she changed her outlook on eating, etc. That is amazingly powerful. Now this poster was sharing her very intimate story anonymously which was beneficial and I can only assume the original thread that changed her life was anonymous so I don't want to give up anonymity.

Plus I've seen how the worst offenders on here will set up proxy servers, etc to try and cause havoc despite being banned so I think they'll still try and cause trouble, but hopefully we keep getting better.

Podcast here: