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Oh I believe that - but, again, wouldn't the CoRe Mods then have cause to act in accordance with our Values to correct that abusive behavior?
Similarly, the people weaponizing the appeals process will genuinely think that this mod is terrible and everything they do is bad and wrong and for the good of the community, they must be appealed, constantly, at every turn. And I don't think we want a system where people are punished for appeals, even spurious ones, because just because your appeal rationale is kinda derpy, whatever, you can't ban derp. So we need a way to balance the ability of people to have moderator decisions called into question without overloading the system.
And right now, some people appear to be calling for a system where everyone can appeal everything, and they have to be able to do it in the thread where the offense occurred, and the mods are required to respond, and this is going to be a fucking mess unless we rein it in. We seem to be going back to assuming the mods are the enemy of the people and they must be available for public flogging at any given moment. Versus assuming they're basically decent and well-meaning people who are volunteering to do a difficult job and maybe we should try to give them a little benefit of the doubt.
I find the idea that we need all this sunlight or else the mods will be a secret shadowy cabal kind of suspect. You're currently not allowed to litigate mod actions in-thread, and there isn't even a formal appeals process, and yet I'm pretty sure everyone knows everyone else's opinions on the mods we currently have. We are not a subtle people.
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What you are describing is undesirable user behavior. If the Mods are not empowered to correct undesirable behavior, or worse - are empowered but are unwilling, then the users will reclaim that power and do it themselves.
Mods should moderate or seek guidance from the Board.
at Core Return (as things are currently planned) any mod action that carries any weight already requires deliberation amongst the mod team, mods are selected by an elected board and ratified by users
there will be a place to discuss rules and suggest changes
i don't see how a public open forum for disputing mod actions is a further necessity or accomplish anything other than building acrimony
there absolutely should be a way for users to appeal serious actions, but i don't think this is the right way to do it
Yes we currently are operating under those rules. And there is a not small contingent of people who are asking for increased transparency and insight into moderator decisions. Those two facts are extremely related.
IMO, under ideal circumstances, the fact that moderator actions are peer reviewed will already act as a check on any acrimony, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't also be avenues to express disagreement or dissatisfaction with moderation action that doesn't meet the threshold for an appeal.
I'd argue part of the reason why we saw so many blow-ups about moderation action before we started planning the move to CoRe was because there was no meaningful route to appeal a moderation action; Tube would just tell you to suck it up, you'd be lucky to get a substantive response from Geebs at all, and that only left you with a direct appeal to the mod who took the action in the first place, which isn't ideal for a bunch of reasons.
I think increased transparency is good. I also think there should be balance. The ideas being proposed do not seem to be trying to strike a balance at all, but rather ensuring that every moderator action could turn into a public fight in the middle of any given thread.
Moderators can make mistakes or be unreasonable or require removal. This is true. Posters can be unreasonable jerkfaces who cause trouble. This is also true. Our system needs to take both these facts into account, and I feel that right now people are just focusing on the former.
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The new rules proposal explicitly calls this out as something not to do, and has gotten little pushback. People are seeking an area to do this. Not the middle of every thread. I don't know how I feel about it in total so I am mostly reading. I don't think this mischaracterization of a call for an increased level of transparency is helpful though.
i do agree there should be a means for appeal
i don't agree it should be a public thread
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That is part of how a healthy society functions. People need to be able to publicly dissent against things they view as problems.
Yes, it’s messy, but being messy doesn’t meant it’s something that needs to be prevented or hidden away or any other such thing.
Like the old system was really just opaque because we had no say. The new system is derived and run entirely based on community discussion on if it should be that way and it's a continuous process where everyone kind of fundamentally has a seat at that table to discuss any thing about governance, which should include appeals.
I get the sense that most of the people on these boards want that more than they want a model college campus filled with protesters.
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Trying to prevent people from talking about this will just have it boil over at some point, as has happened here on these forums in the last year+.
Frankly I can't think of a better place I've had in real life where I have been able to get together and have conversations with people I find interesting than my college campus
- they have to self select into the volunteer pool.
- followed by being chosen from that pool by the board.
- Followed by some sort of ratification by the community.
If someone is infracted in some tangible manner (actual points, a lengthy thread kick, being banned) and wants to dispute it, I agree they should have a method of doing so.
But what transparency are we really expecting an open thread to have? With the effort to have moderators act in a more neutral and professional manner, rather than working up their hottest zinger, presumably most such threads will boil down to “I have been moderated, I object”, and “you received an infraction/kick/etc for that post because it is not in alignment with CoRe Value A, and in turn broke rule 2 and 7”.
If that is not sufficient, and based on decades of experience, there will always be people for whom no answer will ever be sufficient, what then?
Presumably other moderators are involved and might provide feedback, but at the same time moderators are volunteers too, how appealing do we expect that position to be if the notion is that you might be called into an all hands on deck tribunal because someone got overheated in a thread?
At the end of the day, there will be people for whom no answer but capitulation will be acceptable, and for the forum to function there will be times that “we’re sorry you are unhappy with the outcome, but it remains” will be the answer.
I don’t see how having a SCOTF (a Supreme Court Of The Forums, if you will) is going to help, not that anyone has explicitly requested it but a desire to appeal has to have someone to appeal to, and it’s my understanding that the board intends to be very hands off when it comes to day to day running of said forums.
The notion that a bunch of forumers would join in critique of a given act of moderation strikes me as less about someone getting dinged for points unjustly, it’s sounding a lot more like a vote of no confidence in that moderator or moderators.
I freely concede that mistakes and misunderstandings will happen. That a path to clarify or rectify an oversight or overreaction is sensible. At the same time, just how often do we expect this to come up? Having a policy in place in the event of a rogue mod situation is fair, but if we need an entire forum of threads to go over every challenged bit of moderation, I’d consider that a failure state for CoRe in the first place, on at least one of three levels (board, mods, forumers).
I’m not saying we shouldn’t plan for potential issues, and I’m a big fan of contingency planning overall. Mods are fallible just like the rest of us, but we’ve already (by my understanding) set to have multiple mods looped into any major action, so if the others just rubber stamp everything, then both the board and members have failed at the first hurdle.
It kind of feels like we’re trying to increasingly engineer a system impervious to bad actors, which I recognize some might find hypocritical from a member who is fine with establishing a reasonable barrier to entry on newcomers. But these aren’t randoms of questionable intent, they’re fellow members, likely folks who have been here for years if not decades.
At some point you have to trust people, even if you don’t necessarily agree with everything they say or do 100%. If a mod (or several) are slacking or clearly playing favourites or whatnot, that’s up to the other mods to handle, or the board, or the members to call it out, sure. I don’t think having an open thread with external input over potentially every action taken.
I mean, we all accept there are limits, yes? If the goal was absolute transparency, then why not take it a step further and have the moderation subforum be viewable to members in full? Obviously without the option to post or react within them.
Although I imagine such a choice would abruptly make a CoRe Mod Discord become very popular.
I had a lot of great experiences in college, too. None of them involved me having a chat with my buddies about movies and some rando shoving a petition in my face.
If we want to maintain the community we have here, I think the last thing we want to do is lampshade all of the drama and strife.
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Even if we took the suggestion of having a place on the forums for it, and I am not saying we should or shouldn't just spit balling here, this would still be explicitly against the proposed forum rules people are not objecting to. You can have a wonderfully chill movie discussion while ignoring the protest happening on the other side of campus. More so since the new tools let you block out entire conversations and sections of the campus with ease. (Ignoring threads and subforums to make it less shrouded in metaphor)
I think having a process where in the abstract rules and moderation decisions and policies can be discussed, clarified, and changed if the community decides that's necessary. This has been promised and seems to be a key thing we'll have a CoRe.
However, I don't think that there is any value in publicly discussing and relitigating specific moderator actions. The impacted individual can appeal, the appeal process can play out, and that should be that. We don't need a peanut gallery saying 'yeah it was bullshit what happened to so and so' nor do we need the other peanut gallery saying 'actually that was great because so and so is a dick and deserved it'.
All that's going to happen if people are encouraged to openly discuss specific moderator grievances is things are going to end up blowing up into a massive shitshow like they did last spring.
We're electing a board, they as our representatives are nominating mods and we're ratifying those nominations. We have a process to appeal moderation decisions, we have a process to change rules and the moderation structures, and we have a process to remove mods if they are abusing their power. I don't think with all those new options inviting acrimonious public dumpster fires of threads because someone is pouting they got called out for breaking a rule serves any sort of purpose.
Yeah, the greatest conversation I ever had in my life occurred when I was trapped between the "ONE CHINA!" and the "FREE TIBET!" protesters.
No, wait, the other thing.
Like, I can't fathom how we could possibly want every instance of a mod exercising their democratically approved mod powers to rein in bad shit to be a golden opportunity to wallow in the bad shit.
Appeals and discussion of mod actions should absolutely not happen in the thread, because presumably that thread has a topic (of varying levels of strictness) and the topic is almost assuredly not "The Thing the Mod Just Did."
I think this is not accurate. If given the option to litigate mod actions in-thread, people will absolutely litigate mod actions in-thread, thereby turning every thread with mod actions into litigation of those mod actions for at least the short term.
We've already seen it happen here, when the, "Don't argue about mod decisions in the thread" rule was allowed to slacken over time. If it's embraced as a core component of what we want, it will be worse.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
This is where your premise falls apart. No one is discussing being able to do it in thread.
Edit: To be clear I am harping on that point hard because I would like to hear people's thoughts on other avenues for it. I personally don't think a method for public appeals will lead anywhere good even if given a separate section. I am just hoping we can discuss the actual proposal.
Arguing mod decisions happened her because there was no other option. There was no administrator above the mods and the mods were following rules created two decades ago. I don't think the appeals will be that big of a deal because CoRe isn't going to be PA. Everybody is involved in keeping the community alive, approving the rules, and approving the mods. It's not going to be treated like mods of old were who were appointed by Tube and were considered unfallible.
I don't remember any time on campus while in college that there were protests that made the whole school unusable. They just take up their small area to help spread awareness of an issue they're passionate about.
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If it's in-thread or if it's in a specific thread elsewhere to discuss the specific mod action it's going to be the same thing.
People saying the infraction was bullshit and people saying that it was deserved arguing with each other until the thread gets locked.
Then when the thread gets locked people will stew about it until there's another chance to be hostile to one another.
We can do it in a separate thread then. And it went super well when it happens last year and wasn't at all a huge shitshow.
I feel like we're coming dangerously close to relitigating things that happened in the past and bringing up old grudges here.
Could we all please try to focus on the proposal at hand and relate our discussion to the proposed rules and appeal policy that we're dealing with today?
No allowing anyone else to submit an appeal on behalf of another user. No public airing of grievances.
I'll vote for that, I'll abstain or vote against anything else.
I quoted someone who said they wanted to discuss it in the thread,* so ... ?
* They pitched it as, "People would only want to say ..." but I think we all know that the discussion, if allowed, would exceed that very quickly.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I felt like there were some people who were at least post-it-in-thread-curious, but if that's definitively been shut down and won't be happening, then cool, I'll drop it.
(I am still ride-or-die on not allowing people to appeal-by-proxy.)
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While I admit that I cannot, off the top of my head, think of an ideal appeal process, I do want to at least add an agreement with Chanus here about not wanting a popular vote for appealing mod actions.
I referenced it in another one of these CoRe threads, but when I was in school, I was pretty badly bullied by another kid who was pretty popular. The times that I felt the courage to actually report it, he just had his friends all lie about it and he was never punished. Even teachers that believed me couldn't do anything about it. So the idea that someone could basically become immune to the rules because they're popular makes me exceptionally uncomfortable.
While I'm not opposed to some kind of public aspect to an appeal (comments or whatnot), a flat 51%+ vote to get off scot free would be an absolute nightmare.
Since there are multiple options that render that concern moot (an appeal email address, possibly 'bans' are just a role that has almost no privileges outside the appeal system) is there anyone who is actually advocating for anyone to appeal moderator infractions on someone else's behalf, especially if the infracted person doesn't appeal it themselves?
I rarely find infractions questionable, but there are a bunch of thread kicks that I think are debatable. Although I also don't think that's going to be a problem since the new forums seem to have a bunch more tools for mods to control stuff so a thread kick of a couple hours when somebody is too heated is a lot less of a big deal.
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So instead we get exactly the situation here, where mods are able to banish users they don't like and the users are powerless to do anything about it. Oh sure, they can file an appeal to the mods, but why should they believe it will have any effect when the proceedings happen behind closed doors and can't be discussed publicly without being punished further? Putting aside that the people making the verdict are in the same group as those whose decision is being appealed while the user is just some face in the crowd.
A thread kick would be another thing that I think only the person who was kicked should get to appeal
Granted, the current mod team has been way better about explaining why certain actions get taken, and I assume that'll carry over to CoRe. But that doesn't mean I'd be happy with questions about moderation actions only being allowed behind closed doors or in specified venues.
I'm generally fine with it, though I'm not particularly hardline.
Here are some scenarios that I've been rotating in my head during this conversation where that would make sense:
- A person is infracted and sees it as unjust but is worried about retribution, so they don't appeal it.
- A person is infracted and is not terribly familiar with the CoC or appeal rules, so they don't realize that they have grounds/ability to appeal.
- Non-infraction/indirect moderator actions, stuff like closing threads. This is an action that affects everyone and also isn't directed at anyone, so I don't know how we'd want to handle appeals there.
- Bans, as discussed, are harder to appeal while you are banned. While we have alternate workarounds for this and I'm happy to continue using them, it's still an option and a valid use case.
You have GOT to stop making condescending remarks like this.