In a trivial sense, yes, moderation is doing things about things the mods don’t like. I don’t like sexism, and I don’t like thread hijacks, and I do things about them, and what to do may vary somewhat on a case by case basis. But you will note that the actions the mods have taken have essentially always been in accordance with the written and ratified standards of the community. What we’re discussing here is literally the opposite of what you find so ominous. We’re talking about adopting community standards that would guide mod decisions, not empowering arbitrary whimsy.
Discerning between levels of personal attacks isn’t so much a power grab as reading the room. Most instances of a poster telling another to fuck off, something that is impolite but not a statement about the intelligence or character of the person who would fuck off, don’t get moderated or even flagged by community members for mod review, and as such, I think our standard should note that such attacks may be discouraged but aren’t going to be subject to moderation unless it rises to the level of spam or a sustained operation of abuse. On the other hand, waging a campaign to accuse a community member of being a fraud or a faker is a serious assault on a reputation that should be moderated if false or unsupported. Where exactly the line is between those two cases is difficult and even undesirable to define precisely, as attempts to do so allow bad actors to color just inside the lines while maximizing how big a jerk they can be. In contrast, empowering the mods to use their discretion lets us take care of obviously problematic attack crusades that aren’t really covered by our other rules, and we’re accountable to the community when doing so.
Coming from you with our history this post is also aggressive and hostile and shows about as much human compassion as the boiler plate it is. If this is your idea of de-escalation it isn’t effective.
I actually thought it was fine if it’s applied across the board to everyone.
Basically what some mods want unsurprisingly is 2+2 style rules here, which is naturally a recipe for 2+2 inconsistent mod behaviour favouring their pals and a moderation thread full of people complaining.
Make no mistake, despite what’s been said it’s a mod power grab to protect their mates and preserve their privilege.
“Hey guys despite all the evidence, and statements from the mods, what is really going on here is a deep conspiracy to hold down a certain subset of posters who have not been modded in the past at all!”
This is absurd. The mods are ambivalent at best about being mods.
The reason it seems like there’s a big clique against you is that you’ve been a dick to a whole bunch of posters. When it seems like everyone is a jerk, maybe that means you’re actually the jerk?
No dude, that’s clearly not true. One even requested to become a mod when this forum was first set up, and all this time later he’s still a mod despite the original idea to have revolving mods. Some people just like/need the status and/or get off on the power trip.
Power is much better held in the hands of the reluctant than the enthusiastic.
This is obviously a very reasonable post. By your choice of examples I continue to get the impression that you think what happened recently was completely one sided, at least in so far as moderation of personal attacks would go. Ultimately us disagreeing shouldn’t mean much and it’s the forum’s opinion that should count for moderation’s sake when the rule exists. I now think you just agree there, which was mostly what my last post was about.
It’s easy to also agree that a blanket ban is unenforceable and that action would likely ‘need’ to be taken that couldn’t be first discussed by the forum. I do still think that asking people to make judgements between personal attacks the way you describe will inevitably lead to partiality based on just poster preference, so if we’re to have the rule that remains inevitable.
It was a difficult post because kerowo and I had a big fight around the founding of this site. What actually happened there is that I thought Jal’s post was really borderline and wasn’t going to say anything, but felt if I said something to kerowo it could not be just kerowo - so I ended up with the copypasta. I guess I should have made unique posts.
I applaud the attempts at deescalation and hope others will try to do the same. It may not always succeed, or maybe not ever succeed, but it seems worth a try.
I don’t agree that the mods are biased very often. I think they are doing a great job most of the time. My only quibble is that jman wasn’t temp banned with the rest. He was as bad as anyone else in the whole mess, and maybe even worse because of all the boomer memes. I’m not sure why he escaped attention if not because he is part of the “old boys” club.
I imagine the real problem with cuse/jal/jman/fidget is that they want something they simply can’t get from this forum and the problem isn’t going to be solved until they come to terms with that.