This thread reads like seeing a drunk angry guy outside a bar arguing with the bouncer.
“But show me the exact rule i broke!”
“But what about those guys!”
Like. Maybe hes right. Maybe hes not. Im just glad someone decided to kick him the fuck out.
As many others have said. Deciding who is a shitty poster who is bad for the community is not black and white and requires judgement. We delegate that judgement to mods, if they get it wrong too often, we can recall them.
Just make the decisions. Fewer shitty posters please.
Ok, but then don’t bitch about the people arguing one side of the matter (the side that won the vote!!!) and start temp banning them! WTF? I mean people are complaining that these people deserved to be banned because they wouldn’t let it go! This is bizzaro world. They were not arguing with themselves.
just spitballing here, but what if we made mod decisions anonymous? Like we have a dedicated modmin account that can take actions on people. That would at least lower the temperature a bit all around, wouldn’t it?
I would say the moderator is supposed to act in the best interests of the forum. But what are those interests? On a basic level, continued existence is one of the interests of the forum. Spam and trolling are things that threaten that existence, so one role of mods is to guard against such things.
In constitutional law, there is a debate between using bright-line rules or balancing tests to determine what is permissible. Since trolling often involves doing things that are technically permissible but morally dubious (or, to use the poker term, angle-shooting), bright-line rules are an ineffective way of dealing with trolls. Balancing tests and using human judgment into play are the most effective ways of dealing with trolls. We see this in places like Facebook, where reliance on automated moderation relying on developing rules to deal with bad content has not been able to curb right-wing nuttery sufficiently.
To have effective moderators, we need them to be more than simply umpires calling balls and strikes according to objective criteria. We need to give them guidelines for their actions, but those guidelines need the ability to evolve to deal with changing situations. We need to give them the power to enforce those guidelines, such as the ability to give people a time-out without putting it up to a vote. We need to protect the mods in a way that ensures they can do their job, but that doesn’t mean protecting them from all criticism.
Apologies for not participating this morning, I had real life things to attend.
This is true, and something we’ve been talking about amongst ourselves. There are several factors at play here.
We, as a community, decided on pure democracy/anarcho-communism (syndicalism?) as a way to run this place. Some of the mods agree with this fully and some are more skeptical, but because it was decided early on, that has stayed our hand. Despite what some folks claim, we do not want to appear dictatorial.
However, we all recognize that there is a line that needs to be drawn, but we are debating where to draw that line. the reasons WHY we are debating this are less anodyne than the reasons for having the debate at all.
We have found that when we do draw a line, we are whined at, complained about, trolled, and harassed to the point where we keep moving the line to avoid this problem. I freely admit that this may be the wrong approach.
As for my newfound friend @anon10387340, your recent exchange with @NotBruceZ about me is a clear demonstration of why I haven’t publicly commented on what you think I should comment on. There is literally no point. There is nothing I can ever say to satisfy you.
Eh, while I see the distinction I still think people should be allowed to express negative opinions of moderator actions even while acknowledging it’s a job they would not want to do.
It’s when people start crossing the line into abusive behavior that it’s a problem, and that would be a problem even if the perpetrator would love to be a mod.
Yeah, the guy that bumped a thankfully (once) dead thread got trolled. Do we want to ban that here? Come on, that has never been a banning offense.
And you are mischaracterizing my position. I never blamed it solely on wookie. I just said he is as at much fault as anybody else. And some of the bans that have been handed out to “the other side” are a joke.
How much lower would the temperature be if all mod identities were anonymous? Randomly select 15 people are deemed trustworthy enough to be moderators. From those 15, select 5 to be anonymous mods. Automatic ban if anyone admits to being a mod or not a mod.
I havnt read a lot of this thread to be honest but I think I get the gist.
It seems about 10 people are very interested in this stuff. If there is an appetite, I would be happy to coordinate a discussion among this group as to some forum rules and then post a few polls.
I know this was tried once without much success but I think we could use a little more structure and a few more rules. Not a ton but a few.
Any appetite for such a thing? Essentially a community committee. No mods allowed.
that puts me in a situation I’d rather not be in, tbh. but anonymity is not a horrible idea. I’m sure some would view it as trying to make moderation more opaque and not less, though.
Yeah you had to wait for NBZ to give you a false out before chiming in. And by the way, your post is patronizing to me. I would explain why that is problematic but would probably catch a ban for sexism. But lets just say what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander.
Got it. I’m such a monster for suggesting that you should recuse yourself from moderating a situation when you disagree with what the community decided, or resign.
would be interested in seeing this but would have to remit myself too
a lot of this just feels like shitposting to me. I challenge anyone complaining about the moderators or this site to try to be a force for change rather than just hurling stuff at the wall and hoping something will stick.
I haven’t really been all that active here for a couple months, but I try to read up on a couple threads about every other day or so. I’ve completely ignored any kind of drama/mod threads, but I read this OP and noticed 400+ replies in 6 hours (which I haven’t read), goddamn people. I had no idea UP had soured to the point where all moderators are up in arms. My subpar contribution is this grunch, and to say good luck. This place is great, I’d probably lean towards easier bans on idiots. (This is NOT a desire to be a mod. Not now, not ever.)
No, he just wants to use the fact that the word is not currently banned as a cudgel against people who want the c-word banned. It’s a pretty meanspirited word that you should avoid using, though.