A suggestion: forum moderators should have mutual guidlines on penalties incurred

Boston

5starpool wrote: »

Obviously it wasn't meant to be helpful. It was conveying my amazement that it takes something this small to drive someone to stop posting on boards. Sorry for the confusion.

I could extend it to several more of the recent "I'm not posting on boards anymore" decisions by prominent posters, most of which are either for small reasons in the grand scheme of things, or else as a pointless protest because they think the spirit of the place is not what it was and not what they want it to be. I don't understand the need for announcements that you aren't posting anymore, just stop posting if you don't like it, same as anything else. This doesn't just apply to the lad in this thread btw.

How exactly do you keep a straight face? One wonders where all this wisdom was when your pals were leaving.

nesf

For what it's worth, I think turgon had a point and bonkey's infraction was a bit overzealous. I wouldn't have given it for instance.

*shrugs*

Tis only an infraction though, so I can't see why it'd generate just a little storm.

5starpool

Boston wrote: »

How exactly do you keep a straight face? One wonders where all this wisdom was when your pals were leaving.

Where did any of us say we were leaving boards? We made a stance that we would stop modding 1 particular forum at that point in time.

Good to see you are still watching as promised anyways Boston.

Boston

5starpool wrote: »

Where did any of us say we were leaving boards? We made a stance that we would stop modding 1 particular forum at that point in time.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

5starpool wrote: »

Good to see you are still watching as promised anyways Boston.

Yea, its my life.

Dudess

5starpool wrote: »

Obviously it wasn't meant to be helpful. It was conveying my amazement that it takes something this small to drive someone to stop posting on boards. Sorry for the confusion.

I could extend it to several more of the recent "I'm not posting on boards anymore" decisions by prominent posters, most of which are either for small reasons in the grand scheme of things, or else as a pointless protest because they think the spirit of the place is not what it was and not what they want it to be. I don't understand the need for announcements that you aren't posting anymore, just stop posting if you don't like it, same as anything else. This doesn't just apply to the lad in this thread btw.

Yeah, unless it's caused something bad to happen in someone's personal life, I don't understand taking the goings-on on a website so seriously as to never post there again.

Why not just distance yourself from the bad bits and concentrate on the positive? It's a huge site - there's plenty of good bits.

Rev. BlueJeans

The short and semi dismissive answer is: Because that wouldn't excite half as much attention *

I've seen it happen that people get so caught up in the goings on here, that they can't resist butting in at every opportunity (this forum is a good case in point, actually), and over a period of time, take any absence they might apply to themselves as having some kind of bearing on the site as a whole.

As you rightly say, this is a very big place, and runs through a wide spectrum of those who are here for the craic, to while away their work hours in as unproductive a way as they can get away with, to sell stuff (adverts), to talk ad nauseum about themselves for ten thousand posts of single sentences about what kind of hat they just bought, or what they're wearing to the hallowe'en party, to those went so far up the admins cyber-backsides it was hard to see where one started and the other finished, to those who take part in the many vibrant and beneficial special interest communities around here, and to those who are here out of a genuine sense of fostering a cluster of such communities they actually believe in and support.

Many people, as is human nature, stick to their own patches and areas that interest them. Nothing wrong with that, but it may help to understand why a seeming or actual slight on one forum may serve to drive someone away, without regard for the green faraway fields that some other forum may represent from an outside perspective.

*Not referring to Turgon here, he has a valid point-like so many other users who fall foul of a moderation decision, he has discovered that rightly or wrongly, the moderators word is mostly final, and an errant user ultimately relies on that moderators good graces in order to see a satisfactory conclusion. I can't remember the last time I saw an incumbent admin take a stance on anything that went against the run of play.

bonkey

nesf wrote: »

For what it's worth, I think turgon had a point

For what its worth, I think he had a point as well. The problem for me was the place and manner in which he chose to make his point.

Some people clearly think I overstepped the mark. Others don't. To be honest, thats not a discussion I'm inclined to have on Feedback, because I don't believe this forum is supposed to be about Monday morning quarterbacking specific decisions, and Turgon himself clarfied that I misunderstood his use of a specific example in starting this thread.

So getting back to the point at hand...

Should moderators have mutual guidelines? Absolutely. I believe that in any reasonably-functioning forum, they already do.

Should moderators consult with each other and reach some sort of unanimity before taking any action? Absolutely not. On a busy forum, that would - quite literally - be suicide.

So do we march in lockstep? No, we don't. Do we make sure that we're doing exactly what the others would do in our place? No, we don't. We don't, because such uniformity is, quite literally, unattainable at a functioning level.

What we have instead, are a series of checks and balances. As moderators, we should be open to discussing people's grievances with them. We should also be willing to discuss our actions with our fellow moderators. We have Helpdesk, where the Admins are effectively called in to mediate.

Thats the general issue. Thats the issue Turgon wanted to discuss here. For specific examples where someone believes the system has failed, there is a place and manner to deal with those. It would, I believe, be hypocritical of me to ignore that.

nesf

bonkey wrote: »

For what its worth, I think he had a point as well. The problem for me was the place and manner in which he chose to make his point.

Some people clearly think I overstepped the mark. Others don't. To be honest, thats not a discussion I'm inclined to have on Feedback, because I don't believe this forum is supposed to be about Monday morning quarterbacking specific decisions, and Turgon himself clarfied that I misunderstood his use of a specific example in starting this thread.

So getting back to the point at hand...

Should moderators have mutual guidelines? Absolutely. I believe that in any reasonably-functioning forum, they already do.

Should moderators consult with each other and reach some sort of unanimity before taking any action? Absolutely not. On a busy forum, that would - quite literally - be suicide.

So do we march in lockstep? No, we don't. Do we make sure that we're doing exactly what the others would do in our place? No, we don't. We don't, because such uniformity is, quite literally, unattainable at a functioning level.

What we have instead, are a series of checks and balances. As moderators, we should be open to discussing people's grievances with them. We should also be willing to discuss our actions with our fellow moderators. We have Helpdesk, where the Admins are effectively called in to mediate.

Thats the general issue. Thats the issue Turgon wanted to discuss here. For specific examples where someone believes the system has failed, there is a place and manner to deal with those. It would, I believe, be hypocritical of me to ignore that.

Well, as far as I am concerned, we have always tried to be somewhat consistent but it's blatantly obvious to any Politics regular that we make different calls to each other. Not huge variances but we all have different tolerances for various transgressions. We're human, we're not paid to do this, so eh, deal with it to be honest.

Scofflaw

I don't think it's possible to have entirely consistent moderation - as nesf says, we have different levels of tolerance for different transgressions both as individual mods and at different times, we may take a particular comment up differently (it's not as if posters have a limited stock of possible transgressions), and we may not even all consider such consistency entirely desirable in the first place.

I'd rather the guy stuck around. he's been a good contributor. And a small part of the respect for the guy that I have comes from a post about three months ago from him saying that he wasn't sure what the attitude of the Politics mods was towards him but that his aim on that particular forum has been to be a good contributor. Not for the doubt aspect but the explicit stating that bringing something useful to the table was important to him.

This contains the implicit explanation of why two users may wind up with different levels of infraction for the "same" offence. Let's take a case where one poster mildly insults another - the mod makes a judgement call on whether the poster is someone who is genuinely interested in making a contribution to the 'community', someone who accepts moderation, someone with a good record of civility. In the case of such a poster, I am likely to issue a warning.

If, on the other hand, the poster is clearly more interested in pursuing their own agenda than in contributing to the forum, and has insulted someone in the course of posting because they have questioned or opposed that agenda, then I'm probably going to issue an infraction.

If the insult comprises the whole point of the post, and the poster has either (a) not made any other contribution to the thread, or (b) made other similar contributions at the borderline of transgression (trash-talking, for example), then I might well ban them. If I genuinely feel that they'll probably never contribute anything other than sewer of consciousness trash, I might even ban them permanently.

I try to be reasonably consistent in my application of the above, but I certainly can't claim that it is necessarily a position that is entirely consistent with that of the other mods, and it's undoubtedly open to charges of 'favouritism', because I'm clearly inclined to treat more leniently those I think are making (or trying to make) a genuine contribution to the forum.

cordially,
Scofflaw