I do think it would be helpful for mods to explain why decisions were made. The one time I was modded on 2+2 I was very frustrated in that I could not get an explanation of why I was modded and the other person (who I felt started the fight) was not modded.
Not saying every decision has to be justified, but there should be some way for a poster to get an explanation if requested.
Sorry if I mischaracterized anyone. I guess that was a little spicy of a post.
It just feels like an easy conclusion to reach, that no matter what our human mods do, someone is going to find issue with it.
The mods could probably defuse it a little by explaining more, but I also understand why they wouldnāt. Because even that explanation will be nitpicked. It just feels like itās always something.
This is exactly why I never wanted to mod here - just feels like a constant no-win situation weāve put them in.
The idea of having a mix of mods from across the UP political spectrum and across the globe is so that instead of taking unilateral action they can discuss what action to take when itās not clear, as well as giving 24 hour cover against spam attacks etc.
No oneās going to expect someone new to modding to be pitch perfect, especially from the off. I guarantee you that people here will gve them much more latitude with iffy decisions than people with decades of modding behind them.
Itās not about you. Itās a general question. Iāve never met someone complaining about bias in moderation who thought themselves to be biased, no matter how outlandish their claims about moderation are.
If youāre talking about your fuck you vs. his fuck you, I already answered. Deleting the post and apologizing is a big distinction. If this is about the anti-vaxx thing, itās because moderation is really hard, and that not everything gets reviewed for moderation.
Itās easy and obvious to ban someone for calling another person a āfucking idiot.ā Thereās no situation where that is important enough to use that particular terminology. But there are a lot of ways to call someone a fucking idiot without that exact language, so where is the line? Itās not clear, certainly by our community standards. Harder still, letās say one poster calls another a liar. Thatās definitely a personal attack, but itās also necessary to allow it, because what if the poster in question is actually lying and making a mockery of the community with bad faith bullshit? Does it make sense to ban the accuser just for pointing out the obvious? Of course not. But what if itās not obvious who is correct, the liar or the accuser? Well, that can require a whole lot of reading and work that mods donāt really want to do for every petty slapfight. Itās easier to do nothing than to try to do the right thing, and even putting in work to try to do the right thing will bring about more work and headache, the inevitable accusations of bias and poor judgment from the person you decide to ban, because no one is the villain in their own story.
You know where the real mod bias is? Itās not directed at particular posters. The real mod bias is towards doing nothing except in unambiguous cases. Things that are too complicated or involve too much backstory or that arenāt flagged or that the one mod whoās around just doesnāt have time to deal with right now get ignored.
I get you 100%. I only pushed back, because if our underlying base assumption is that others have unreasonable expectations, then it can cloud how we perceive what they are communicating with us.
I agree in principle but it can become tedious and make the moderator job even less appealing. Especially if it doesnāt end after:
instead goes on:
or
and that can go on for a while.
I think mods should be transparent, but at the same time, I donāt think thereās an obligation to explain every action to posters like they are five.
Certain posters need to accept that perhaps they are going to be modded more harshly because of recidivism. I think that microbet declaring that participants in a feud were going to be punished for stuff that non-participants would be allowed to do was exactly the sort of modding that situation called for.
I donāt even consider that an insult(*). āFuck you/offā is a vulgar way to say āI donāt like youā or āYou annoyed meā which to me is different than calling someone stupid, a liar, an asshole or immoral.
(*) I still think it should be discouraged or moderated depending on the circumstances because it increases toxicity in the forum.
Would you consider, instead of telling someone to go fuck themselves in a post after they insult you, to flag their post and use the post report reason to tell the mods you think the person is a motherfucker?
I feel like I am arguing in bad faith when I mimic the attitude that I respect someoneās intelligence and opinions when I actually donāt.
I think itās a pretty good solution. Iām not going to ban someone for making a personal attack in a post flag that the target will never see, and then you also get the mods to review the attack that set you off.
0% chance at this being true.
I donāt have a sense of posting histories for a lot of people here because I prefer to engage with viewpoints and ideas, not individual posters, so I donāt remember who said what. If someone says something that I want to respond to, then I respond regardless of who said it or even if I think they are arguing in good faith, but I do tend to have a lot of snark and condescension in me.
I canāt say I really have any regrets. The kerfluffle went down when I was asleep. I reviewed the posts that were flagged after I woke up, and they seemed like open-and-shut cases. The anti-vaxx post clovis made wasnāt flagged, so itās likely no mod bothered to scrutinize it.
āBut what about that other guy you did nothing about!ā is pretty hollow evidence of bias against you (as opposed to their well-established bias in favor of doing nothing) when mods cannot be reasonably to expected to read every post with scrutiny for personal attacks, especially when the post in question wasnāt even flagged.
I would support a policy of mods only modding flagged posts by default, especially in threads they are participating in. But I would also like for mods to declare certain disputes to be zones for stricter moderation, where they will be more proactive and not wait for posts to be flagged in the hopes of nipping bad behavior in the bud.
If drafted to be a mod (please donāt draft me), this is the philosophy I would use because Iām not wellnamed and Iām not going to micromanage the forum and if you make me micromanage some petty feud, Iām going to be cranky about it.
May I suggest this one more time or can someone explain why this is a bad idea?
While we are trying to work all this out why not close other threads and focus the discussion into one thread? May I also suggest that thread be only for serious discussion of how we create new rules. No jokes, trolling, fights etc. All of that gets excised.
Why is this a bad idea?
You might hurt someoneās feelings?? BTW how is your sub-committee going?
Never formed to my knowledge. 
I closed the beetlejuice thread. It was well beyond serious discussion.
I disagree that we should be limited to serious discussion only.