This topic is for members to comment on their experiences with the Community pro or con.
Please keep comments within the forum Guidelines.
I no longer reply to comments or post.. Time and time again Iāve met push back and rudeness.
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I value all my experiences within the community, I learn so much personally, and can see by the many posts looking for solutions about consumers issues that it is valued by others too.
I believe that the community forum is the pulse of CHOICE, it is a ready source of feedback through which the health of the organisation can be assessed.
Personal experiences can vary, depending on topics and posters, but on the whole I think itās a very healthy āspaceā.
Btw as a mod I can see the way spammers try very hard to get their ads posted on the forum, it seems to be a very desirable platform 
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I have often seen how quickly this sort of post is noticed and removed ā usually before I get a chance to report it. Well done, moderators! 
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Iāve found that if your viewpoint differs from a moderatorās, your post often gets removed and reported. I donāt bother sharing my experiences anymore.
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Moderators cannot act on personal likes or dislikes, when a post is flagged, a review follows based on the Community Guidelines:
Moderators do not review posts in advance, but are able to take several actions on posts, such as editing the title, moving it to a different topic or category, and flagging, hiding, or deleting it. Moderators are also able to send official warnings, or to silence (disallow posting) or suspend (disallow login) the accounts of people who violate the Community Guidelines or Terms of Service
Moderators have access to proactive options for guiding topic threads that become heated or veer off-topic. For example, moderators may use the wrench button under a post to add a forum Staff note such as āthis great conversation is veering off-topic, consider starting a new threadā or āthis discussion is approaching the boundaries of our Community Guidelinesāā¦.
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Note that aspect was the basis for this topic; a member seemed to have misunderstood the purpose of another topic.
In this topic all feedback is appreciated whether we agree or not regarding details and so long as comments here as well as in other topics (as @Gaby posted) abide by the Guidelines they are neither edited nor removed, and knowing membersā viewpoints is helpful to improve over-all moderation.
If any member feels their posts have been treated unfairly please first read the Guidelines or read them again to see if their post violates them. If anyone has a query they can contact any of us mods using our handles, eg @Philt, etc, to ask. Also note the mods are not watching every moment 24x7x365 but we try to be responsive as a group when something is noticed or flagged. Flagging gets our attention while sending to one of us individually will result in delays until we see it.
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Might be useful to add that the group of moderators on the Community Forum are supervised by our Community manager Brendan Mays who as the Head of Community and Social Media at CHOICE monitors online conversations.
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Reason no longer post here as worse than the Putin as far as dictators go. Couple here which think they own the place and have a conflicting opinion that is often not correct. Couple also that need professional treatment for their malfunctioning.
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Please take note:
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Overall I find CC a healthy environment, better than many. I welcome all opinions, health debate & donāt mind opposing view points. If something triggers me I generally try to have a deeper think about why & either respond with consideration OR just move onā¦ There are times I drop my subs to Choice but I always keep at least cursory tabs on whatās going on here..
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Who is PhilT? He is commenting on anything and everything - sometimes okay, sometimes weird. What is a āCommunity Elderā? I want Choice to moderate posts to whether they are legitimate or not and limit comments to maybe one per subject?
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@Mike24, I moved your post to this more germane topic.
I am one of the original Community members from 2016 and as you implied a regular participant, as well as one of the moderation team. Choice retired the āCommunity Elderā badge a few years ago but I elected to and have been allowed to keep it. As a generalisation an āelderā creates, leads, and oft time guides discussions in an informal manner.
Choice.community has guidelines for posting that the moderation team oversees. We try to keep exchanges respectful, civil, mostly on topic, and do our best to keep spammers off the community. As members all of us should challenge misinformation.
Adding new information and exchanging ideas is essential to any forum to keep topics interesting. Anyone is free to agree, disagree, or add related information as it appears in journals, the media, or a viewpoint so long as it can be substantiated from recognised trusted sources, and posts stay within the guidelines.
Please read prior posts in the topic for othersā viewpoints and be aware any member can filter out any other member via the āusers->ignoreā option in oneās profile, and can āmuteā topics (hide from their views) topic by topic.
If you are not accepting of this please contact @BrendanMays, our Choice staff sponsor for further dialogue by direct message. That can be done by clicking on his @reference and using the message function.
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It is possible that the forum software can be configured to do that but I am doubtful that it would be a good idea.
The forum software does give the poster a nudge if it looks as if there is a lot of posting back and forth between two posters in a given topic.
I think it would be fair to say that forum software sophistication has not yet reached the level where it can distinguish between productive discussion and unproductive discussion.
Thatās where human moderators come in. If you actually feel that someone is just being argumentative then it is open to you to flag a post for moderator attention (and in that flag you can briefly make your case why the post is inappropriate).
Essentially a limit of a maximum of one post per forum user per topic rules out any kind of conversation. That may not be what everyone wants. It certainly isnāt what I want.
As an illustration, if there is something in this post that you donāt understand and want to seek further clarification, or something in this post that I can see from your response that you have misunderstood ā¦ then a limit of one post per topic would prevent my providing that clarification in a second post. (I could hackaround that by editing my original post but that has its own downsides as well as its own forum software restrictions.)
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Some very good points - thank you.
I raised this matter when I noticed that a lot of posts on NBN speed (and the recent upgrade) really were individual, specific issues and had not much to do with the main issue (which is in my view the question whether NBN āforcesā everyone, even those who donāt need very high Mbps to pay more than they would have paid before for their 10/25/50Mbps. I do understand the point about āconversationā. I would love to have a quality conversation about any issue - not people venting their specific gripes. But even that, at times, can be helpful to get the full picture.
Thanks for you and PhilT to expand on this matter. I appreciate it.
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Keep on doing what you are doing Phil.
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