RFC: Should mods have the ability to "contain" users?

[d2_e4]

It’s fine now tho. Used to be ripped apart.

[d2_e4]

Yeah, but dude, that is difficult because I am just here to troll ATF. Chatting with ideologues confers no interest to me.

[Jalfrezi]

@Marksman

Claiming it is instead group think among disparate moderators as the most likely cause is pretty far off the mark of reasonable assumptions.

Did you see otatop’s resignation post? I guess not.

[NotBruceZ]

Do some posters think that containment would be one of their powers if they became a mod and would it be a good idea to explicitly say it isn’t?

[j8i3h289dn3x7]

Do explicit rules matter? We have an explicit rule that moderators cannot resolve their own flags.

[Jalfrezi]

I found the post

@otatop

I have to admit that ■■■■■■■ is right and I’ve moderated some users more harshly than I would moderate others based on their perceived reputations as bad actors.

I banned(or silenced, can’t remember) churchill for what I perceived to be antivax posting that in retrospect was a misread on my end but either way he lost the ability to post here for two weeks because of a bad decision on my part.

I banned jalfrezi for two weeks for “neverending trolling of other users” that I couldn’t remember the context or reasoning behind and had to dig through his posts from that time frame to figure out what triggered the ban, and it certainly wasn’t something that would get anyone else 2 weeks off.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this and I don’t want people to bring up reasons why these were actually good decisions because of events that happened in 2019 or something but there’s definitely a problem that some posters get singled out as “bad” and then anything they do that confirms that “bad poster” idea is held against them. Similarly there are “good” users who can be shitty to people or make snide references to other people’s pasts and nothing happens to them because of course they’re a “good poster” and even if that post was shitty they probably didn’t really mean it, or their other posting is so good we can ignore the occasional shitty post, etc. etc.

I (another sentence starting with I, quite the megalomania going on here) don’t think any of the mods intentionally behave in this biased manner and we try to do our best to remain fair and neutral but we’re humans and we fail miserably at it all the time.

Anyway, since I became a mod there was a vote that mods should serve 6 month terms, and I’ll have been a mod for 6 months on the 18th, so I’ll also step down then instead of sticking around longer.

[microbet]

@mosdef,

I’m a little surprised to see your vote there. Would you care to elaborate? Is there anyone you’d like to see contained now? Do you view containment as a lesser form of punishment? Do you think all the mods would contain only people you thought should be contained? Do you think it would be easier to get contained than let out of containment or vice versa?

[mosdef]

The only time I don’t like the forum is when a poster latches on to a thread like a dog on a bone and will not lay off even when other people are saying the conversation isn’t productive anymore. Those times are rare but they are really obvious and I don’t think they should be that hard to police.

[cassette]

I’m not sure why containment would solve that, unless you think a particular person does that over and over.

[d2_e4]

That’s a great post

[mosdef]

My reading of the proposal is that containment could be implemented specifically to slow down these circumstances, and could be lifted later. Like the penalty box in hockey.

[microbet]

A mod is perfectly free right now to say “You’ve been monopolizing this thread and a lot of people don’t like it. If you post in this thread again in the next 24hrs, you’ll get a 24hr ban.”

[microbet]

I agree and the people who have posted about how scrolling is trivially easy and putting people on ignore is also trivially easy are wise and correct, but as greg wisely points out there, containment is a whole nother animal than temp bans or asking people to stop. It is dancing monkeys and it’s especially gross. Yuv has made the decent point that if it’s going to be like that, just perma someone (which I am also almost always against) instead of having the circus.

[NotBruceZ]

I think the heart of the matter is whether moderators’ job is to maximize productive conversation, then whether containment or exile are useful tools for that purpose.

Mods do spin off derails into their own threads. I don’t know whether this was just a derail that was segregated or if it was intended to be an actual containment thread as its title states.

A person can be smart, people are dumb: A Cactus containment thread

I never gave an opinion on his decision to carry an assault rifle to a protest. All I did was try to correct the false narratives flying around here by pointing out that Rittenhouse acted in self defense. Many took this reasonable (and legal) observation and disingenuously twisted it into a protracted attack on my sensibilities. When facts aren’t on your side, then attack the person; is the go-to debate strategy by many posters on this forum. So began the shifting of goal posts, putting words …

Given the history of this forum and where it comes from, I think there are some posters who believe that containment is an appropriate use of mod power. I can foresee someone trying to contain a poster during their turn as a mod, so I think it’s good to have this conversation before we have the crisis of someone actually trying to do that without a clear understanding of how the forum feels (and to have this discussion without having it influenced by the person being punished).

[mosdef]

@JohnnyTruant

Like @mosdef, what makes you think you can’t talk to me about your concerns? I already said I would be willing to take exchanges that last more than a few back and forths to a new thread to hash out.

I wasn’t talking about you specifically, it’s been a few different people at different points in different threads.

[mosdef]

I thought the idea around containment is that if someone wants to keep engaging then they can. Isn’t this exactly what we did with our trigger happy prickly plant poster?

[microbet]

I don’t know the details. I do think the thread titles for containment are gross, but those aren’t rules or even done by moderators necessarily. I don’t know this, but assuming goofy is right, Cactus is not contained in any meaningful sense. And extractions of subthreads is something that has always happened here and hasn’t been particularly controversial. If containment is something new, I would think it’s different than extracting something from a thread. And, you should consider the history and motivation of this thread right now…it’s evolved very clearly from a movement to kick JT out of the covid thread.

[microbet]

I’ll dial back to say it’s clearly inspired by posting by JT and responses to him in the covid thread. Yes, NBZ does like to start RFCs.

[whosnext]

Not kicking out, but surely in response to JT’s posting in the Covid thread.

Ponied by micro.

[NotBruceZ]

A poster who was not one of the usual suspects suggested the idea of a containment thread. I thought it would be good to have this discussion before anything came to a boiling point. Yes, I like RFCs and discussing meta and process.