Feedback for moderation policy post

[Harmonixer]

I haven't bothered looking at this thread since my initial question was answered. Now that it's up to 14 pages at the time of this post I actually took the time to read all the posts.

 

I think this more or less cements my positive outlook on things to come. Having been in a lot of different communities lately, it's nice to see actual opinions being made and genuine efforts to promote growth are in force.

 

My 'main' forum is for lack of a better description, a hateful self deprivation exercise that leads to extremely hurtful personal attacks and a few e-celebs that spend all of their time trying to 'shit where they sleep', so to speak. It's really tiresome and the people who try to help make things better, aren't being helped by the mods properly. Slaps on the wrists and turning the other cheek and all that. It's a complete warzone every day and while there was really hard workers there are just as many that try to invalidate anything being done positively.

 

I won't lie tho, this is an incredibly entertaining read and I think as long as people continue to be honest and don't spend time ass-patting instead of addressing problems then we should continue to be just fine. Obviously it's not an overnight process and by no means is this suddenly going to be the best place ever, but I can say that I'm comfortable for once. That hasn't happened in a long time.

 

It's not perfect, but it will do. I think the potential here is strong, at the very least. As a long time lurker (A very long time) I think it's finally gotten to a point where people as a collective are figuring out how this is going to work.

 

Best of luck to the mods, I'll try to keep out of your hair and mind myself. I can't stand doing your job these days and I applaud you all for bothering in the first place.

[Zyrusticae]

I only got obliquely referenced three times? Damn guys, I thought I was a bigger problem than that.

Well, for one, even referencing other posters indirectly in a negative fashion is still against the rules, and secondly, I think a lot of folks are trusting in the moderation to do whatever needs to be done if they think you or I or anyone else will actually be a long-term problem.

 

I'm fairly certain at this point that, should the moderation take action against me, it will most likely be for something I did wrong. (For the record, shockingly enough, I have only received a single digit number of warnings over this account's entire lifetime. I, too, thought I would be/was a bigger problem than that.) I particularly appreciate that the moderation is going to be putting a proactive effort towards keeping things from getting out of hand in the first place, rather than cleaning things up after the fact.

 

On the other hand, it won't be easy. Especially when a lot of the aggression and misplaced anger comes from places outside of the forums themselves (because, yes, our real lives leak into our online personas all the time, and those stressors can dramatically affect how we decide to interact with others on the Internet). To really fix some of these issues before they arise, mods may have to play a bit of armchair psychologist, which has the potential to go awry should they not know what they're doing.

 

But I'm also sure they've discussed exactly this already, so I'll let the chips fall where they may. You folks have all my support, regardless. I'll just hope for the best.

[Alothia]

As a mod, I really appreciate all of the feedback we're getting.

 

My only bit of advice to people who are worried is to take a moment and step back from the keyboard if you're feeling particularly snarky. Seriously, that works wonders. Wait until you've calmed down, or think about what you're going to write...really think about it, before you post something.

[Zhavi]

The only thing I'm not really thrilled about is your reluctance to delete posts - I agree it's not something that should be used left right and center, but I have been involved in a flaming incident where the attackers posts did not get deleted afterwards.

When it comes to flaming, I don't think it's a great idea to leave the posts visible because it empowers and gives an incentive to do these things even more, in my opinion. People might be willing to risk it more if they know that at least the posts wont get removed. And for me, I'm always worried that someone is going to re-find the thread and pass judgement on me/my fc based on what the attacker said in those posts (which I obviously disagree with.).

I don't want to discuss the moderator action in my incident here so I'm trying to make it a bit unspecific, but I felt like I had to mention where those concerns came from. I hope that is okay.

 

Is that something you've thought about, or has it changed in any way with these new rules?

 

It depends on the flames in question. Personally, I feel we've been leaning a bit too much on deletion as of late, and that emboldens people because they feel they can do whatever they want since a mod will just clean things up later. It also eliminates our ability to publicly flag a post as having resulted in a warning (which we're going to try out and see how it goes). It undermines the concept of people standing by what they say. Finally, it spawns weird conspiracy theories about what clique is benefitting from the "censorship." So, for all those reasons, I really don't like deleting posts.

 

However, as I said, it depends on what's being said and why. For instance, racial slurs will get zapped, period. Posts that directly call someone out may or may not be, depending on exactly what's been said. Flame wars that happen inside another thread with good discussion will probably just be split off into a locked thread, with warnings flagged for reference.

 

If you want to talk about a specific thread, feel free to drop me a PM and we'll discuss it.

 

One thing that I like about the escapist is that for posts that aren't like super horrible but get the poster warned or banned, they don't delete but just hide the post. So, if you really want to read it you can read it, but if you don't it's hidden away behind a button that you need to click in order to see it. And then in red letters it just says 'user was warned/banned for this post'.

[Darien Cadell]

After reading this whole thing, it looks like the large concerns beyond minor clarifications are subjectivity and visibility of "wrongdoing". And I think those are perfectly sensible large concerns.

 

Subjectivity as a problem is addressed by there not being a single mod whose opinions are law, but a group of them to discuss problems instead, and by appeal being possible. Might it still be a problem? Yep. But then it comes down to that issue of trust.

 

Whether or not and how much offenses should be labeled and visible is always going to create problems. Whether it's too much visibility causing an us-against-them mentality, or too little causing accusations and conspiracy theories, I don't see how it can be perfected. Somewhere in the middle taking the least of all evils approach is probably best, and base it on what works for the community, but it's a difficult thing to experiment with. Trying out a system that doesn't work can do a lot of harm.

[Melkire]

As a mod, I really appreciate all of the feedback we're getting.

 

I'd like to echo this sentiment, as well.

 

The drive behind this effort turned out to be less "revamp the rules" and more "codify the rules so that we can be a little more standard across the board". The varying degrees of moderator action were in large part a consequence of not having said standards in place for what sort of violation required what type, degree, and/or severity of response. That resulted in surprises for users when moderaction action was taken against their posts, in some folks feeling unfairly treated relative to others, in individual reluctance on the part of staff to moderate the heavier issues without vetting it with their peers, and so on and so forth.

 

The new outline at least lets everyone, users and moderators both, know that "Behavior A is not acceptable and will result in Action X taken by staff".

 

That we're getting all this feedback from you (interspersed with concerns, but that was expected) is a good thing. It means we can revisit the outline as written if need be. It means that we have a better grasp on RPC community expectations for what is and isn't fair play on both the user's end and the staff's. It means we can better manage these forums in such ways as to foster informative discussions, constructive workshops, question-and-answer roundtables, and the like while curbing disruptions and aggressive behaviors that aren't conducive to such talks.

 

In short: love the feedback, it helps to hear from you all!