Thread 5116

What is the intended purpose of the QA board?

This sounds like a perfect question for the /qa/ board :P

I think that /qa/ should go soon. It was useful for the admin change, and some of the early things the board discussed were reasonable and have been implemented, but since then people keep demanding unreasonable things and spreading MSpaint tinfoil theories about moderation. There are no answers except an occasional interjection from hiro, which only serve to fuel even more unreasonable demands.

most of the threads and topics on /qa/ that are not unreasonable demands or calls to action against the moderation are threads that could easily exist on /b/, /r9k/, /s4s/, /trash/, /news/, etc. Any legitimate issue or reasonable discussion should still be taken up in Feedback. The ability for any user to argue over the legitimacy of a particular suggestion almost overwhelmingly coming in with no knowledge of the board/community that would benefit from the suggestion is simply not something that benefits the process of moderation and the way that we should make improvements onto the site.

Additionally, there is community to speak of that would be left treading water in the event of its deletion. Only a couple threads such as the general meta thread and the board tan thread would actually try to continue, and they can go to /trash/ or /i/ or /co/ in the case of the meta fanart threads.

>>5119
>Any legitimate issue or reasonable discussion should still be taken up in Feedback.
Submitting messages to feedback feels like putting a message into a bottle and throwing it into the incinerator. A little while before I became a janitor, I sent feedback through the box about a certain ban evader. My impression was that it "didn't take." Over the next three months I sent in another ten feedback reports (many with citations and evidence) about the same ban evader and even then the mods would occasionally warn people for reporting him, and I had no way of knowing if my messages were being being taken seriously by anyone.

I don't mean to complain about the previous staff or the way I was treated, but someone less autistic than me might have given up on the feedback box after the fifth time. I can't imagine that your average user takes it seriously. Granted, since I'm not able to read it it means I'm speaking from a position of complete and total ignorance of what people actually do or don't put in the feedback box - but I feel like the average 4chan user is at least as ignorant about the way things work as I am.

>The ability for any user to argue over the legitimacy of a particular suggestion almost overwhelmingly coming in with no knowledge of the board/community
If we didn't let people talk about things they knew very little about we'd have to ban everybody.

Though I guess people could still talk about meta in the /trash/.

>>5119
I personally think one of the issues is it's simply a bunch of screaming, praying, and tinfoiling in the vain hope someone up high answers them.

>>5121
Well, the feedback thing is a legitimate issue, and i'm not going to downplay that. If there were, say, a message that could say "thanks for telling us, we're aware of the problem" or something, that might be a start (even if the post doesn't deserve a response). because feedback should be encouraged. but that's something i don;t know much about what should be done.

But /qa/ is set up since moot left as being a place that no mod or janitor should answer the users' questions. It is NOT /q/, and unless someone decides to make it into /q/ again, or unless hiro decides to make it into his personal /q/ board or something, it is MISLEADING.

I don't know what hiro wants for it, or if he even thinks about it at all, but I just think that the board is misleading as a place to ask questions when we are prohibited from giving answers, and when there are a host of anons ready to give them the wrong answers, or to turn the blame into something totally ridiculous.

I have to agree about /qa/ being shut down outside of Admin Q&A's.

Hiro himself has asked users to talk on their respective boards when he's seen an issue to make sure that the whole board can weigh in on it.

I saw what /q/ became and I think meta boards deteriorate quickly. It is their nature. Meta discussion becomes arguments. Arguments become complaints. Complaints don't leave and just get worse.

4chan would never be able to answer every person's every question all the time with our staff. Not to mention there will be difference in opinion just between them. To have a constant board of questions, complaints, and issues just means a board that will just get more and more full.

The feedback is great for what our staff can handle. Preserving the meta for when staff can deal with it, instead of it 404'ing beforehand.

But with Q&A we have a meta board that gets more stale, unable to be satisfied. Closing it outside of Q&A sessions gives it reason, keeps it from becoming another random board without purpose. Staff answers at any moment like on /qa/ are lost by 99% of users, policies set that don't get seen. The Feedback page is instead left to be seen by anyone or linked at anytime. On Feedback, the rabble of meta that is problematic is weeded out, the users don't have to sift through waves of meaningless unsolvable complaints, already answered questions, and completely off topic threads. Continuing /qa/ continues problems.

>>5124
>Hiro himself has asked users to talk on their respective boards when he's seen an issue to make sure that the whole board can weigh in on it.
I thought metathreads were kill on sight for most boards.

Who is this thread directed towards? There are probably more direct ways to address Hiroyuki.

/qa/, from what I see, is simply 4chan meta discussion without the input of the staff. That's not necessarily a bad thing, even if it somehow results in conspiracy theories towards our competence or lack thereof. Does the board serve a purpose? I suppose perhaps no more so than any other board; I wasn't actually aware boards had to justify their existence in the first place. It seems to me that taking issue with a board because things you don't like are said there runs rather contrary to 4chan as a whole. /qa/ doesn't have to serve a function that's immediately useful to us -it doesn't need to be some sort of substitute for the feedback form (which I'm sure is bombarded 24/7 by so many submissions that simply reading them all must be a full-time task). I think it's important to have some perspective here: /qa/ isn't about us, even when it is. It's about the website we volunteer to serve and whether the discussion there is relevant to us, constructive towards our goals as volunteers, or outright hostile to us has no bearing on whether or not it has a right to exist or the purpose it serves.

Nevertheless, this discussion is as frivolous as /qa/ itself. We don't make decisions on which boards exist and we shouldn't have the power to do so.

>>5124
>Hiro himself has asked users to talk on their respective boards when he's seen an issue
Do you have a source for this. If you could dredge up the post in question from the archives it would actually be rather useful.

>>5126
SON YOU BETTER STOP RATTLING OFF RIGHT NOW BEFORE I SHOOT THAT DAMN FEDORA RIGHT OFF THAT BIG HEAD OF YOURS.

>>5126
https://desustorage.org/qa/thread/310926/#311793 here he asks to have meta in the affected board

https://desustorage.org/qa/thread/314830/#322303
here again

It seems to me like you weren't around for /q/ when it happened. Feedback was a direct result of /q/'s end state. Less complaining wars and more action with staff response posted and saved whenever taken.

>>5132
>Less complaining wars and more action with staff response posted and saved whenever taken.
There are ten staff responses in the whole of this last year and they're all clarifications; not a single one is a "staff action."

I'm sure the mods are taking action based on the feedback but all that action is taking place behind the curtain, unless there's a public response being made somewhere I don't know about.

>>5133
I don't think super many feedback inputs actually require a public response.

"yup spamming is still against the rules."
"no we're not deleting all the boards"
"no we're not banning tripfags"
ad infinitum