Other Fintech Forum Moderation

I too wrote to Alan about threads being chopped up, CC continuing conversations in locked threads and PG/SS derailing threads. I honestly have gotten to the point where I don’t think Alan actually exists. All I ever got was “We’re aware of the issue and we’re looking into it” On the one occasion he did reply it had Richards style all over it.

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My suspicions that Alan is some not-very-sophisticated AI continue. :laughing:

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Oh this I noticed a few times. Thread gets locked, but then someone from the CC (even hours later) pops a post in with their take on the topic as some sort of universal truth we’re supposed to accept

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Yes, that has been a recent development that is simply infuriating. CC always “getting the last word in” regardless of how wrong they are (and they are not infallible by any stretch).

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I am he. But then again, I would say that! I’m having a personality crisis just thinking about it.

Anyone for a chocolate hobnob?

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If individuals were being targeted maybe they’ve got the police involved… 🤷

Exactly how bad was this trolling? I think I missed a doozy.

They’ve never shut the forum for a week…

The trolling was fake accounts and bringing up old posts blah blah. It was hardly earth shattering and was fairly tame compared to other areas of the internet.

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If there was targeting of individuals outside of the forum we wouldn’t know.

Worst I’ve ever seen with Monzo.

In addition to reviving 5 year old threads and posting nonsense,

I suspect the bigger issue here is less to do with how much of it there was and how long it lasted, and more to do with the fact that a user had gone on there seeking support and exposed personal details. The trolls took advantage of that to the extent it could be considered doxing. But they were being smart about it. Replying to users and then deleting their replies before moderators could react or I could flag.

You can easily deal with that without having to lock down the forum though :thinking:

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I didn’t see any of this but I thought that threads were automatically closed 6/12 months after the last reply… so it shouldn’t have been possible?

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Once you let the dust settle and banned anyone that needs banning, I don’t see what changes between opening it on Monday morning vs next Monday morning.

Much more drastic changes are coming. Maybe all our posts will have to be approved before they are shown. That’ll be fun!

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That would be drastic, though I could imagine and be in favour of this happening for new users. It’ll screen out those posting personal info expecting support, which protects their data, and it can be a way to vet known malicious IPs, though that could come with the it’s own issues.

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Your post has not been approved as it goes against the views of those in the Coral Crew

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I did not see that. I wrote down what I witnessed here 2 days ago:

You can easily speculate too

They tried this before and it didn’t work.

Also when Revolut did this is it basically killed their community

I’m absolutely not suggesting that at all, and I’m not specifically talking about Monzo.

This thread is, as far as I’m aware, about the general approach to Fintech Forum moderation - and I clearly gave examples which weren’t related to Monzo.

I’m not here to defend Monzo, and I’m not here to comment on specific people’s circumstances. I mostly post on the community over there in a completely unofficial capacity and I was there as a community member (and an active one at that) for a long time before I worked at Monzo so I have an experience of both sides of the coin.

Any community is about more than the terms and conditions though isn’t it - there are some things which are specifically called out as being both acceptable and unacceptable (in any T&Cs) but the general ethos and approach of any forum is decided by the moderators and the moderation guidelines.

As a Monzo specific example - we’ve recently had multiple posts about accounts being closed, often with 62 days notice. We can’t and won’t comment on that. The email we send customers notifying them about that explicitly states that and the community therefore isn’t an approach place to discuss it. That’s not explicitly called out in the code of conduct, but it’s part of being a bank.

Again - if people are unhappy with that on any forum then there are plenty of alternatives in any world.

In any environment people get upset when a post gets deleted - that’s the right of any community moderation team. Just because it isn’t specifically “not allowed” doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.

I’m also a member of a forum which has recently been taken over and has a new management team. The old moderators have all been “sacked” and they’ve launched an amnesty to allow all previously banned users to signup/reactivate their approach.

Their previously policies could only be described as draconian (there were around 8,000 banned members!!) but since the amnesty the place has taken a turn for the worse and is now basically a online playground for trolls.

Sure, if the community is for something like this which is discussion around a specific idea, concept or theme. That doesn’t necessarily equate to a forum run by a commercial entity where there may be different purposes at bay, one of which likely includes protecting a brand image.

Of course, as a company develops and changes over time so does their brand and activity around that.

I think some people want the community to be something it isn’t, and maybe hark back to the olden days (some times with rose tinted glasses) and there’s nothing wrong with that. But that isn’t going to happen. Maybe this place can replace that.

What you’re always going to have though is those that feel like they can say whatever they want and that they have the right to do that, and those who find the way some people represent themselves as offensive. Moderation is about trying to find the right balance abs that isn’t easy. Often the middle ground just results in both sides of the debate taking offence and being unhappy!