Fair enough. I hate the way we’ve set up moderation on this site. It’s a thankless, uncompensated chore of a job, but one best done with a light touch and an understanding that people don’t like being modded or temp banned without what they personally regard as solid justification.
But, so long as we have 6 month mod terms, pretty much everyone willing to mod is gonna have the opportunity, and that will inevitably lead to conflicts. I think I was game with the mod Wookie for life plan or whatever, but I’m not sure it was ever voted on or I vaguely remember people some vocal minority didn’t like Wookie as mod.
Maybe we should do it like CA does judges, have an initial vote and retention vote next that passes with 50% or at least go to 1 year terms.
Well, there would likely be fingerprints with a bunch of “lurker” accounts voting. The rule is that you as an individual get one vote. Even if we can’t tell who the culprit is, we could probably tell there is a culprit, and could then institute like a temporary 1 year or 2 year account rule to address the specific “work around.” I mean, the reason there are so many “exceptions” in law is that people keep trying to game systems, and the rules have to evolve.
No that’s literally what happened. People deleted their accounts, left, did not participate for x period of time depending on the poster, then came back under new accounts to vote.
Well there wasn’t very much conflict at all on this site when moderators didn’t really do anything. All the conflict started when cuse came in demanding that a few UK posters be banned or curtailed or I don’t remember exactly. Then things degenerated from there, with increasingly heavy handed moderation leading to more and more division, and ended up sorting posters based on how they’re being treated and targeted by moderation and demands for moderation. And the more aggressive the moderation, the worse the division. Culminating in cuse’s very aggressive and destructively divisive moderation the last few weeks.
To succinctly help illustrate this point, @anon38180840 will now ban me for two days for making this post.
I think at least some of these issues could be solved with more rules and regulations, but rules and regulations are kind of a pain. I don’t want to write them, though I’ve actually written terms of service for money and spend significant time reading them for work. Words on a page aren’t magic, people need to follow them with good will consistent with their purpose.
Basically, I see this site as requiring goodwill on the part of posters and also mods. While that usually works, this is a politics site, and politics are inherently contentious and personal and sometimes mod action is required, and sometimes there are spats that drag out in various ways. It’s not a simple situation to handle with bright-line rules, and UP has kind of avoided bright-line rules for the most part, but it does take people acting in good faith for it to work (and sometimes even people acting in good faith have holy wars). But I do think people just need to try to be a little chill given the stakes here, which are low but not that low. Even if you think someone is a jerk and the site would be better without them, you should avoid the opportunity to point that out on the regular.
Right. My point is the increasingly aggressive moderation has shredded goodwill in a way that’s irrevocable. Like MaxCuts is banned for two fucking months or something right now. What harm did he do to the site? None. His crime is not bending down to the super cop cuse on his power trip. What does this accomplish? Nothing that I can see except reinforce bad feelings and feed cuse rounder’s bloated ego.
100% agreed, but the issue here is that a loud minority faction believes exactly the opposite, and flies off the handle when facing any sort of consequence for their behavior. Create dozens of accounts and impersonate multiple people to troll? Their response is ‘what’s the harm?’ Go around posting a moderators real name or initials in threats to dox them? Their response is ‘well he let that information get public when he revealed he was doing well in a poker tournament!’
