I had asked elsewhere, but there may be the view that was not the correct location to ask.

You will see the screen shot of the search result.

I have read the “Forum information” thread and there is no link to the Avast Forum Moderation Policy.

Under the “Help” tab it seems all the links redirect to the Simple Machines website.

Where is the official Avast Forum Moderation Policy?

There isn’t specifically written here. We’re living without it for ~10 years

Where is the Avast Forum documentation that identifies the members that are moderators and what their specific roles are?

Most likely with Avast Software since this is their forum.

It can only be assumed from the use of the vocabulary most likely that you do not actually know what your duties are.

Could it be that we have witness to a second example of confusion within the moderator ranks as to what eaxctly the duties are of a moderator here?

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=97166.msg777793#msg777793

General Topics / Re: I Thought We Had Flags « by bob3160 on April 21, 2012, 02:25:47 PM »

@craigb

As far as I understand our jobs as Überevangelist,
Help others and police Spam and remove whenever possible.
Any other matters are up to the Mods and our role is to report such things to the Mods.

Could it be a community of over a quarter of a million people deserve more respect on a company support forum?

Ad hoc moderation using no set moderation policy is a system that can be abused.

And it’s bad for the company image.

Lastly, I asked some months ago whether a certain group of members here could see the registered members’ IP addresses and was, at that time, told they could not. I have since seen a contradiction posted by a member of that group, so I wish to ask the question in a slightly different manner:

Which members of which groups are able to record the IP address of a registered member?

If you can see it, you can record it. If there are no guidelines set for you by this company, then one reverts to civil law on the matter. Who has access to our IP addresses on this website’s forum(s)?

I normally avoid this type of post but… I am a moderator on another forum, where only the moderators know who is responsible for what. The Evangelists here are a hybrid, they can delete spam. That is it end of story. If you have any privacy concerns then my recommendation would be to turn your computer off… Unless you use an IP anonymiser then every website will know your IP.

This is a help forum run by experienced user volunteers. We are not paid, employed or in hock to the company. We do it to pay back for the free antivirus provided. If you have a paranoia about privacy then there are many forums where you can vent your spleen with like minded people. Here we have just one aim, to help people. Period

End of rant ;D

The only confusion is yours.
I know my job. If I didn’t, your arrogance would already have resulted in your ban from this forum.
I’ve already asked the Moderators to handle your apparent problems and/or misunderstandings.
Have a great day.

Your answer means that since your post of April 21, 2012 you have been given firm guidelines by this company stating in what manner you are to do your job?

And I asked who can see our IP addresses on this forum?

On a personal note, I take offense to a company representative serving in the capacity as a moderator for the company pasting labels upon me, as you just did. I view that as a a company statement that this company’s officials view my questions about the moderation policy and the persons involved in moderation for this company as arrogant.

And we now have one indication of the manner in which moderation is viewed by this company.

If a moderator thinks a registered member is arrogant in his/her views the registered member stands a chance of being banned by at least one member of the moderation team.

.

Your answer means that since your post of April 21, 2012 you have been given firm guidelines by this company stating in what manner you are to do your job?

If the question mark I used was an indication to anyone that I was not asking a question, I erred in using the question mark. I was not aware of the question mark being an indication of assumption.

I’ll rephrase the question from this:

Your answer means that since your post of April 21, 2012 you have been given firm guidelines by this company stating in what manner you are to do your job?

To this:

Have you received any specific guidelines from this company as to what your job is since you did that April 21, 2012 post?

I’ve already answered your question. You’re the one doing the assumptions.

This moderator states:

I know my job.

Does this company feel that their quarter-million member community has a right to know what his job is? And how he has been instructed to go about achieving the tasks assigned to him?

To correct your statement, I’m not a Moderator.
The only one asking the question you posed is you… not " their quarter-million member community".

This is one example of what can happen when you are not all working from the same page. Another “moderator” does not know he is not a “moderator”.

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=107408.msg853430#msg853430

avast! Free/Pro/Suite / Re: Avast Internet Security and IP « by Pondus on October 22, 2012, 05:04:02 PM »

i am not sure that a hacker can see your IP or not… but when you connect somwhere, like this forum
it is like using your phone…we (forum moderators) can see where you are calling frome

And your reference to me and the rest of the community will be excused as not being a statement from the company, but as your opinion. My question was directed to a person who can speak on company policy, and you are obviously not qualified to do that.

The Avast forums have been around for years, and have long had a reputation for helpfulness to users that in many cases has been the deciding factor, or at least one of the major factors, in a new user’s choice of avast over some other anti-malware product.

Sorry we can’t oblige you with a formal statement of our policies … as has already been pointed out a number of times, we’re here to help users, not to argue with them. If you insist on iron-clad rules, check out places like Wilders Security forums, if you’re not already familiar with them; it will be made quite clear to you there that they flatly prohibit discussing, let alone questioning, board policies. We’re fairly informal in comparison, and pretty obviously (to most of us, anyway) that works quite well for us.

Excuse me, are you speaking for the company?

And the question about who can see the IP addresses of the group identified on your board as “Registered Users” is still waiting for an answer.

Hi ManyQs,

A counter question. Why did you come here? You only react to posts and reactions of others. I want to hear from you. Be clear about this, please. What is your mission?

polonus

+1 polunus,

If you care to, you could choose to conduct yourself in a helpful and amiable manner, so as to best help other Avast! users in distress and difficulty.

So far, I am not seeing that good helpful attitude from you at all. You seem to think at times this forum should revolve and center itself around you. Sorry, but you speak for yourself and yourself only. I do not share your view here.

So, why are you here at all?

You are free to come and go as you please.

As for the IP address issue, one of the best ways to resolve that is to never connect to the internet. Also using an IP anonymizer proxy, or use a VM or sandboxed machine, would work too.

This is where the problems begin. We have a moderator asking for personal information. We have moderators, on whom is placed the authority to issues warnings backed up administratively with penalties, that are free to make editorial comment and then make moderation judgements on their own editorializing.

Regular members have no published guidelines here from the company upon which to know when one of these moderators’ posts are a warning or simply an editorial comment which carries no administrative authority, thus no penalties are levied based upon those posts.

We then have a situation where some of these individuals working outside the confines of an employee non-diclosure agreemnt have access to IP addresses which they can place with personal information posted here on this board and that is regulated under various data protection laws in various legal jurisdictions around the world and this is a company in the security business.

But instead of concern for the well-being of this company being posted above, we only see attempts at obfuscation and character assassination. As if the thinking is if we can hound ManyQs off the website all these issues will magically go away.

I don’t think you gentleman quite understand the seriousness of the situation here. Just wishing for something to not be doesn’t make it so. And it does not make any difference how many years the company has been operating like this. Somebody made note of 10 years. Data protection laws have been updated and revised in many legal jurisdictions around the world in just the last 5 years.

Now I am going to make one statement about one of the posts above and I want this to be clearly understood.

A moderator on this site has no legal right to ask me (a member in good standing in this community for seven years and until about 24 hours ago without any warnings or administrative actions against me to sully my reputation) — a moderator on this site has no legal right to ask me why I am here, and if I see that once again I will file a legal complaint against this company. There’s no place for that kind of business on a security company’s website and I’ll have no more of it directed at me. And I hope it will not be directed at any of my fellow community members.

But I am confident the company owners and/or executives will see to it that sort of behaviour doesn’t continue. I think we’ve had just about enough of that.

So let us summarize what we have so far, so we can get back on topic.

1… There is no Moderation Policy. Confirmed by an Avast employee.

2. Registered members here had no way, until this thread, of knowing that certain members here without the Avast logo attached to their User ID could issue warnings that carry weight with administrative authority here and that can be used to justify penalties and/or banning. Now we have that in this thread.

3. It still is not clear under what guidelines this group without identifying moderator badges operates. We have a post by one of them done on April 21st of this year that indicates confusion as to what their jobs are. Now we have a vague statement about now knowing “his” job. What exactly that means is not yet clear.

4. The issue of who can record IP addresses on this site has not been answered. It is clear that I cannot see the IP address of any other member on this website. That is clear. Who can see my IP address is not clear.