Technical Issues

Hey folks, Just to give you all a heads up: we have been experiencing some technical issues on the Answers section. We are working on this and hope to restore all functions as soon as possible.   Sorry about all the hiccups of late!   Admin

Technical Issues – Day 2

Hey folks,

Just to give you all a heads up: we’re still experiencing some technical issues on the main site. Today, the comments on articles and news have stopped displaying properly. Many comments have simply disappeared. We are working on this and hope to restore all comments as soon as possible.

Sorry about all the hiccups of late!

Admin

Technical Issues

Hi Folks,

We apologize for the recent spate of technical issues on the Answers section. As of yet, we’re not quite sure what has been causing the section to go offline but please bear with us as we try to work out the kinks and find ways to prevent further disruptions to the section. In the meantime, we ask you to continue to observe the rules of the forum and refrain from posting sensitive content.

If you are aware of any issues or bugs please don’t hesitate to contact us at answer@echinacities.com

Thanks for your patience and continued support!

Admin

A message to our Answers community

Dear Answers community,

In 2008 a little, unknown website went online just before the Olympics. It’s intention? To become an indispensible guide for tourists and expats on travel, entertainment, practical tips, jobs and everything that a newbie to China should know. The people running it? A bunch of passionate expats.

A few years ago, the website got a new addition: Answers. Our little bundle of joy was our first attempt at allowing our vibrant and vocal community to have a platform to interact and share useful info on life in China. We watched it grown fondly and took pride in the fact that it became a go-to place for discussing, debating and learning about China.

Five years on and we are still proud parents of what we achieved. We greatly appreciate all the guests and users who come to our site. We also appreciate our critics. It was users’ feedback that prompted us to establish an interactive Answers section in the first place. Many of the critiques we get are justified and we have learned and improved a great deal because of them.

However, some allegations against this website go too far and have the potential to greatly damage our credibility and reputation; in particular unwarranted allegations that we “harmonize” posts and collaborate with the government. eChinacities.com has always been a privately run website with no affiliation to the Chinese government. However, we have a set of guidelines in the Answers section for a reason: to keep it a friendly place and to protect our asses from being shut down by forces beyond our control. Each website operating in China has to do what it has to do to keep operating. Yes, we delete sensitive posts that could put us out of business and are not ashamed to admit it. But we don’t, as some have alleged, “harmonize” posts for the view they express, whether pro and anti-China or anything else.

We do not take such unwarranted accusations lightly, especially when our reputation is on the line. We hope you can understand our concerns and our reasons for taking action against users who try to damage the repute of our website.

As a site with very intelligent, opinionated members, we are well aware that we cannot appease all and apologize to those who’ve taken offence by our actions. However, we ask you all to take some time to understand our stance on the matter. But most of all, we want you to continue enjoying this site.

Please feel free to send us your opinions, feedback or suggestions on answer@echinacities.com

Admin, eChinacities.com

A few words on teacher unions and wumaos...

Good morning to all,

Following on from what was posted last night about various users (and this website) belonging to or being influenced by various teaching unions or wumao associations, I just want to clear the air about this ongoing issue to prevent it from reoccurring in the future.

eChinacities has never had any affiliation with any teaching unions or recruiters. As I’m sure many of you know, we have a strict policy against spam and have records of various users that in the past have appeared under different aliases to promote their agencies (be it legal or illegal) and defame other users or institutions. Such users are dealt with according to our community guidelines.

Regarding the wumao thing – we are by no means under any pressure by any authorities to slant the apparent “angle” of the forum to a more “pro China” stance or whatever. As mentioned above, we have strict guidelines which includes the deletion of posting certain “sensitive” issues (you know what I’m talking about) and also, anything deemed abusive or racist, be it pro or anti China (or anything for that matter) will be deleted according to our guidelines and users will be sent warnings or will be banned if necessary. We hardly need to remind y’all that this is a privately-owned foreign website with no affiliation to the Chinese government, so of course we have to watch our asses so that the site doesn’t get shut down.

So there you have it dear readers. All we’ve ever wanted is for people to use this Answers section as a place to find information and connect to the community. We hope you respect that and refrain from causing any trouble and giving the mods unnecessary headaches.

Peace and love to you all! 

Scams Scams Scams!

Hi folks,

I'm going to lock all of the related threads in a second, as I'm really tired of this situation trumping the actual purpose of this board (you know, to ask and answer questions about China), but I'd like to clear a few things up first.

Traveler is not and never has been a moderator on this forum. In fact, he had nothing to do with this  affair until about a month or so back when an associate of the group in question apparently sent him a PM trying recruit him to scheme against me and this board. Traveler was nice enough to inform me of this situation, which is about the same time he went on the public offensive here.

This situation actually goes back quite a long time.

I first started noticing strange posting patterns for a couple of websites last September when I first started moderating the board. After a little digging, I discovered that the users who were supporting these websites on the forum and name-dropping them on old posts about "foreigners getting scammed" all in fact originated from the same group of IP addresses (and some were even linked to email addresses containing the website's name in it).

As this is a shady way to promote a website (one that claims to help expose scams here no less), and we have a strict policy against advertising/spamming on the board, I promptly banned the dozen or so users that were part of it and deleted all of the advertising posts. 

Soon after, this person/people returned with new user accounts (and new websites), doing the same thing as before. I continued to ban them, even going so far as to update the community guidelines for the website, specifically to address this covert method of promoting their interests. (http://answers.echinacities.com/help/profanity#help2) 

Fast forward 8-9 months later and this person/people are still trying to tarnish my own credibility as a moderator and now apparently Traveler as well... all while continuing to subversively promote their own websites on the board.

For the longest time, I thought the best course of action was to simply ban and delete, so you folks wouldn't have to get caught up in all of this nonsense, but their continued pestering has made it so this is no longer possible, and I decided to let some of the posts stay up (most noticeably, Traveler's and crimochina's recent few posts).

This has had the unintended consequence that Traveler has become something of a martyr for the cause of exposing these groups, which a number of you now seem to hold against him. While I cannot personally attest to what Traveler has or has not done during his time in China, as I don't know him any better than you folks do, I must say that the fact that associates of these websites (who have been subversively trying to advertise here for the better part of a year) are the ones wielding these allegations is doing nothing to convince me of any wrong doing on Traveler's part. 

My time as a moderator on this board has been one long learning experience. Maybe I could have handled this situation better, making it public earlier perhaps. But I've tried my best to maintain the board as a tool for asking and answering questions about China, not for publicly exposing troublesome users with ulterior motives.

-Admin

Re: the Report Abuse links

Hey folks,

Just to let you all know, the "Report Abuse" function is not currently working on the Answers board. While we work on fixing the issue, please send any such reports to me via PM or directly to answer@echinacities.com.

Please include the web address of the question, the user/answer that you are reporting and why you are reporting it.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

-Admin Pig

Just another day at the office...

I always love coming to work in the morning to find that the Answers board has exploded into a fit of mass hysteria while I was asleep!

So what can be done about the dreaded Wu Maos, eh? In short—not much. Since this board was created, certain users have assigned the pejorative label “Wu Mao” to other users whose posts, opinions or attitude they disagreed with, demanding that they be banned immediately. Were some of these people actually Wu Maos? Who knows, the Internet is still mostly anonymous (in all likelihood, probably, as TIC). But Wu Mao is really just the Chinese version of a “troll” (albeit with a financial incentive), and the act of trolling is certainly not exclusive to China. Unintended or not, users who repeatedly accuse other users of being Wu Maos, or post incredibly derogatory remarks against the country we all live in as a sort of “revenge” often times end up looking like trolls themselves. From a moderator’s perspective, this whole situation is a really slippery slope, which can sometimes be settled in private mediation, but oftentimes requires difficult decisions to be made. This is not something that is taken lightly, but it is also not something that can simply be resolved with at the drop of a hat. Users who continually violate the Answers board guidelines will be dealt with according to the listed warning & banning procedures in a timely manner. While I continue doing my best to moderate these difficult situations, I ask that all users maintain a respectful and productive tone on the Answers board, which most of you thankfully already do.

So that’s the broad overview, here’s some more specific points I’d like to add:

I didn’t think that this needed to be said, but apparently it does so here it goes: talking to me aggressively or threatening me/eChinacities in a PM is a great way to get me not to like you. Threats and personal attacks of this nature will be dealt with the same way they are for user-to-user incidents according to the Answers guidelines: warning and/or possible banning.

Not cool: posting Private Messages on the board. What’s the point of having this feature if you’re just going to post it in public? From here on out, doing so will net you an automatic temporary ban of 3 days. Look for it in the Answers guidelines shortly.

Also not cool: subverting my role here as board moderator. If you have a problem with another user, talk to me about it in private. Don’t go out and try to play moderator yourself, it’s incredibly annoying. This board is a public space for asking and answering questions about being an expat in China. It’s not a place to conduct your own witch-hunts.

Finally:

Some of you have been gracious enough to point out that this whole forum moderation business carries a fair amount of “grey area” with it. I do my best to be fair and partial, but every once in a while something’s bound to come along and throw a monkey wrench into the established system. Thanks for your understanding while we try to work the kinks out.  

Question: What time is it?

Answer: It's OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)  time!

Hi All,

In a small bid to make the Answers board more pleasant-looking, from now on we'll be paying closer attention to editing/fixing vague/non-question titles so that they're more "question-like". We ask that you all also do you're part to ensure that users can know at a glance what exactly you're asking. No biggie.

Ex: "Really, the People's Daily? Seriously?" was just changed to "Kim Jong Un Sexiest Man Alive: Really, the People's Daily? Seriously?"

-BD

Here are your updated Answers guidelines

Hi there folks,

As I mentioned in a notice last week, we are currently in the process of updating the FAQ for the Answers board. Key portions of this update address:

1) Prohibiting the use of multiple accounts to prevent ill-intentioned users from manipulating the board

2) Refining of the “Community Guidelines” section to better define what kinds of posts are subject to removal

3) Adding a new “Warning and Banning Guidelines” section, to clearly explain the steps taken when a user is “temporarily banned” or “permanently banned” from the Answers board.

While minor changes may be made to these guidelines in the future, from here on out, these are the rules that we’re playing by. Expect the full update for the FAQ to go live sometime in the next week or so.

You folks are what make this community so unique and great, and your feedback is always taken into consideration! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to send me a private message or email answer@echinacities.com.  With no further ado, here are the updated guidelines:

Can I use multiple accounts?

To prevent manipulation and exploitation of the Answers section, use of multiple user accounts is no longer allowed. If multiple “active” accounts are discovered on the same unique IP address, the holder of these accounts will be contacted and asked to choose one account to keep; all others will be blocked. In the event that you are contacted for this issue, but do not use multiple accounts (i.e. public Wi-Fi, VPN), please let us know.

Community Guidelines

Profanity

Please refrain from bashing, insulting or otherwise berating people asking or answering questions. The purpose of this platform is to assist, not abuse one another. With that purpose in mind, being courteous and respectful will earn you polite responses from those around you. Vulgar language, disruptive behavior and rants will be removed. Overtly racial comments about either Chinese or foreigners will not be tolerated and should be reported if the moderator doesn’t deal with it first. Users who engage in such posting will be dealt with according to the Warning and Banning guidelines.

Advertising and Spamming

Advertisements of any kind are not allowed. Any questions or answers whose sole aim is to plug a business or promote a product will be removed. This includes:

1)     Posting “camouflaged advertisement” answers on a series of old, related questions (“Hey there! I had this problem too, but I can help you! Check out this website: www.####.com or call my cell: ### #### ####”).

2)     Posting a web link, email, Tel # or other direct information about a company or service in your “Signature”, “About Me or “Interests” fields.

3)     Posting specific, personalized questions asking users to help you find a job in China. Broad questions are acceptable (“How do you find a teaching job in Guangzhou?”); specific questions are not (“I want to work in finance in Guangzhou, do you know anyone in the industry?”) Please consult the eChinacities Jobs section instead.

4)     Any other such content deemed blatant advertising by the moderators and/or reported by users.

Those caught advertising will be dealt with according to the Warning and Banning guidelines. Those caught spamming will be given a single warning; the second offense will result in a permanent ban.

Illegal sites and sensitive discussions

Questions or comments relating to illegal activity, such as pornography, drugs, etc. are subject to deletion and may lead to a ban from our site. Please also refrain from engaging in overtly political and sensitive discussions, which, in addition to you, could also get us in trouble.

Warning and Banning Guidelines

In order to keep the Answers board a friendly and helpful place, users whose posts violate the Community Guidelines will receive a warning via email for each infraction. Warning and banning will be handled according to the following “3-2-1” system:

1)     Three warnings against a user during a one-month period of time will result in a temporary three-day ban, after which the ban will be lifted.

2)     Two more warnings will result in a temporary two-week ban, after which the ban will be lifted.

3)     One more will result in either a one-month or permanent ban, decided on by the moderators.

In the case of a permanent ban, after three months have passed, banned users may submit an appeal to answer@echinacities.com to re-join the community on “parole”, which will be decided on a case-by-case basis. If after re-joining the community the user receives one additional warning, then their permanent ban will be reinstated, permanently.

Updated guidelines pending

Greetings Answers users,

I am here to inform you all that an updated version of the answers guidelines will be posted in the next few days. In the meantime, I would like to quickly point out a few key updates to the guidelines. Note: the final guidelines are subject to change, but here's the gist of it:

SPAM

Users who posts spam will have their content deleted and will be subject to banning. "Spam" includes (but is not limited to) repeated plugs for companies or services via weblinks, email addresses or phone numbers. If such content is included in a user's "signature", they will be asked to remove it. Should they not remove it, or should they continue posting spam, they will be permanently banned.

PERSONAL ATTACKS

Users who post personal attacks against other users will have their content deleted and will be subject to temporary banning. If after the temporary banning, the user continues to post personal attacks against others, they will be permanently banned. 

REGISTERING NEW USER ACCOUNT AFTER BEING BANNED

Users who are banned and register new user accounts to continue participating on the board will have their new user accounts banned immediately.

While I am not happy to be implementing such aggressive new guidelines, I believe that the 99% of users on this board who are not violating any of these guidelines will agree with me that they have become necessary. 

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about these new guidelines, feel free to send me a private message.

-BD

...Is it geting a bit stuffy in here?

Greetings everyone,

The past few weeks on the Answers board have seen quite a few…tense...exchanges between users. As many of you have already pointed out in your posts, questions posed as outside observations on Chinese culture and/or expat cultures, if not checked, can quickly devolve into a series of heated arguments over “who’s racist” and “what is acceptable to say” here. The unfortunate nature of such arguments, is that they more often than not become self-fulfilling prophecies (as several of you have also pointed out), and end with so many vast generalizations made about peoples and cultures, that the “If I had a nickel for every…” person would be stupendously wealthy.

I am here to reaffirm the primary purposes of the Answers board: for users, both expat and Chinese, to get together to talk about China-related topics, in a friendly, and civil manner. A fair amount of griping and criticizing will no doubt remain, but let’s at least try to do it in a positive and productive manner.

I have no interest in taking sides with “who’s right”, or going after “who’s wrong”. Nor do I particularly enjoy reading through every single post with the weighty decision of “does this need to be deleted?” on my shoulders. I do not blame single individuals for the recent outbursts of negativity, and perhaps I am a partially to blame for not acting sooner. I believe that a good moderator is “neither seen nor heard”, but I must make exceptions to this rule in times like these. 

All I ask is that we all try to stay respectful on the Answers board. Our opinions may differ, and occasionally we may have a “slip of the tongue”, but a basic respect for others is what (hopefully) differentiates us from the many other uncivilized message boards, blogs and forums lurking about the dark corners of the Internet.

Your loving moderator,

Business/Big Dog