Let's Have a Civil Discussion about Mod Discretion

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Fenris

Also, to be fair, I don't think synk has ever made one.

Just me!

Now that you mention it, I think you may be correct.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

It's all I'm ever good at, Sifright
IT'S ALL I CAN EVER DO

I was cursed with Snakepostitis at a young age, I tell you
CURSED WITH THE ANCIENT DISEASE

Cursed you say...

I suppose this calls for a good old fashioned medieval exercisim! Some one go fetch an Altar boy so he can bring a hand drill.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

things

*shrug*
OK, maybe I read too much the post. I know you care a lot about this place and many of us who post here, so I'll admit I likely assumed some things behind the words that perhaps weren't there. Fair enough.

Still, the part of your argument seemed to be that there should be more concrete descriptions of what is and isn't "cool" to do here, making the rule of Law more prevalent than the rule of Man. And in a social context like an Internet forum, that's nigh impossible to ever truly achieve. It's always an ongoing balance between a reasonably-vague outline and specific minutiae of detail with respect to wording overall rules on a forum. So as I read you're post there was a little bit of "Dude, what the fuck can we do that we didn't, or at least thought we did, to try to approach a more optimal setting?" And if I kicked back because of that when it sounds like I shouldn't have, all right, my bad I guess?

I do get that you weren't really calling anyone a bad person and all that. I do.


Also, my post was solely with respect to the ban. That your post meant to cover both it and Fenris perhaps means my response was not wholly complete due to how I limited my own scope.

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

...Also, I love that my effort to be brutally honest in the interests of full disclosure (and because, to be frank, it seemed somewhat unfair for me to criticize others without ever flashing that magnifying glass on myself) resulted in an implicit ban-threat.

I re-wrote that sentence a couple times to attempt to reduce any feeling that it was an implicit "threat". My actual intent was to show that I believe it's important for us to be willing to go back and re-assess posts if anyone has issue with them. After giving a brief justification for why a ban was handed out here again, I think it's only fair to take what you're saying about folks "getting away with it" seriously and be open to that kind of discussion as well. It was also (poorly?) done with a little light-heartedness behind it to attempt to balance the use of "annoyed", as I'm not sittin' here all "Man that Snake guy comes back and already starts rubbing me the wrong way."

[Seil]

This thread had shiney post

Originally Posted by Shiney

From an admin's perspective, I'm occasionally frustrated when I see you wade into an argument and happily join in without considering the very fact that doing so as a mod/admin intimidates others because you have Authority and have the potential to abuse that. However I don't see you abuse it because I haven't seen anyone punished who hasn't broken the rules. I do think you should step back if you are getting into a heated argument, even if you may feel you are in the right or justified in your position, simply because of this leadership role here.

Originally Posted by Whatsits

I think you need to work on not letting your frustrations and/or problems with one person spill over into what things, and how, you say to another person who happens to agree with them and just further a conflict.

Or avoid Noncon outright.

Originally Posted by Whosits

And frankly, you and Noncon are like the Tacoma Narrows; it's a bad situation waiting to happen. When I see you two interact what I'm reminded of is the time that shiney and Fifthfiend happened. Without assigning any moral weight or relative responsibility, I think we can all agree that that incident wasn't a bright and glorious moment in our history.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

GSo as I read you're post there was a little bit of "Dude, what the fuck can we do that we didn't, or at least think we did, to try to approach a more optimal setting?" And if I kicked back because of that when it sounds like I shouldn't have, all right, my bad I guess?

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

...But, yeah, that probably won't happen. And the Rule of Law has its own pitfalls, that I've kind of glossed over, but that merit mentioning as reasons that this probably won't happen.

I think I was fairly evenhanded about the likelihood that the Rule of Law 'ideal' that I talked up throughout most of my post was, in fact, unreasonable to apply as a practical matter.
Having said that, I'll concede that phrasing the 'compromise' solution as something the Mods should do "at the very least, and if nothing else" was poor wording.

I still think that a 'Rule of Law' system would ideally work better -- even if the explicit context of these forums -- but remember, I'm a lawyer. I'm always going to have that personal bias, and my solutions will often look to the Rule of Law as the ideal exemplar of "the way things should be" because that's what Law School has drilled into my head for three years.

I still believe the system I advocated has its merits, and I'd still argue for it passionately if I felt there was a chance in hell of it being supported. Insofar as it almost certainly won't happen, I'm not like, angry over it failing or anything. It essentially constitutes a personal recommendation that I thought would at least conjure up some discussion, and it served that purpose well, if nothing else.

What I personally think I botched most was the first and last sentences -- I was trying to be humorous with some half-serious, half-joshin' "Don't ban me, oh Mod overlords!" humor and it just doesn't flow well with the serious and complimentary tone in the rest of the post.

[MSperoni]

It seems to me that a mod ought to either not get into discussions that may take heated turns or immediately check out of discussions when they do, or have some rule that makes it so no one can get banned for arguing in political/social/news threads unless it is unequivocally warranted (or perhaps a mod that participates in a thread has their banning powers revoked for that thread, and if anyone is going to get banned it has to be up to another mod's discretion). When you involve yourself in a social debate about serious things that people are passionate about you are going to end up pissing someone off because it's very easy to do. Or you will get pissed off, and that might lead you to pissing off someone else (that's why I stick primarily to the entertainment threads -- and even they aren't exactly safe from getting people angry, but it's a different kind of anger there).

I mean, if I were a mod, and a dick, I could easily goad someone into getting themselves banned. We all know what buttons to push. Not that any of the mods here would do that, but you know how EASY it is to get someone (especially someone like Liz) angry to the point where they start lobbing ban worthy insults. Serious threads make people passionate, after all. NPF could always get rid of serious discussion threads, but that doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.

Sometimes a person can't help getting involved in a discussion, but I think a mod has to consider what they're discussing and the turns it could take and avoid at all costs adding fuel to the fire (if you can't avoid the fire outright).

(All that is easier said than done, though).

I hesitated to offer my opinion here, because I didn't know if it was my place or not, but I had those two cents and felt I ought to share 'em...And maybe what I typed has already been typed and discussed, I dunno.

[synkr0nized]

Neither Fenris nor shiney were involved in the thread prior.

What you're posting isn't necessarilly wrong, nor is it a bad idea, but it's not really applicable here.

[Bells]

since i was the one that created the thread, allow me to say this... specially since i never wanted anyone to be banned for it.

1- It not like it used to be, in the past we had a "serious" part of the forums where every rule was tighter to prevent bitchfighting. So much to the fact that some people would actively avoid that section of the forums to prevent the chance of loosing their cool and getting banned in a heated momment. Now, we have a "serious" tag for Topics. Not the same, but since there has been talking in this topic about "precedents" and "History"... i just wanted to point out that on these subjects, mods are extra-moddy ... i'm used to the concept of that, and ok with it. Don't know if it works the same for the others...

2- On Liz's anger... i felt trolled. I felt like someone was picking a fight with slim reasons. I said some stupid bullshit on a moment where i spoked my mind without thinking properly through... there were about a thousand ways to convey the same ideas on better ways, i just didn't think of those. So i apologized and took a step back even though i never really thought my general concepts or wrong or even being challenged or assaulted. Even by Liz.

But Liz, on that moment and everything after that, from my point of view... was Knife-twisting.

One thing the mods here do that i really appreciate is that they never forbid conversation or freedom to speak. They moderate. They pay attention to the conversation ,and more often than not, if things get too hot they ask people to step outside and take a breather before coming back. To me, that's reasonable 100% of the time.

Was it done in a dickish tone? Perhaps. Fenris is not the most subtle of beings when moderating, but hardly unfair or abusive...

My thoughts is that, if in a heated discussion you have to delete something someone said (even yourself)... don't. Edit the post to remove the content and replace it with an explanation as to why it was removed. Just deleting can easily be wrongly seen as being evasive, provocative or sleazy... Removing a post on proper reasoning, if done right, is just proper modding.

[Gregness]

Hey, so, look at the General Discussion forum living up to its description!

So, just some isolated thoughts on the whole situation (if not the incident in particular).

Liz tends to get extremely worked up about certain topics. (frankly, she needs a thicker skin)

This passion tends to lead her to be very abrasive.

For my part, it seems like a solid fraction of the posters here walk on eggshells around her to avoid arguing with her.

She seems like a nice enough person, but none of that makes for healthy communication and, by extension, healthy communities.

Now, for Snake's suggestions (and I did read the whole thing), it's probably unreasonable to expect that much to change, and I don't even think I want it to. In fact, one of my favorite things about this place is that it's a little rough around the edges. We can curse and heckle and be raunchy with each other in good fun and most of us know where the line is. It feels like a bunch of college buddies hanging out. In my mind, there's not really a need for an ironclad set of rules.

What we might benefit from is that any time someone is up for a permanent ban, we open a thread in the forum related stuff section discussing the evidence at hand (offending posts, number of repeat offenses, etc.) and let the community weigh in on it. The final decision is still up to the mod team, but this way if, for example, we all thought Liz's contributions outweighed her occasional (extreme) jerkitude, we can have a place to say so.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Gregness

What we might benefit from is that any time someone is up for a permanent ban, we open a thread in the forum related stuff section discussing the evidence at hand (offending posts, number of repeat offenses, etc.) and let the community weigh in on it. The final decision is still up to the mod team, but this way if, for example, we all thought Liz's contributions outweighed her occasional (extreme) jerkitude, we can have a place to say so.

No, that sounds absolutely awful. I actually prefer the current system we have where we ban someone and if someone gets butthurt about it they can make a thread after the fact. The committee making these decisions is big and full of enough internal disagreement as it is, thank you very much.