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For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to join us.
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What about what I like to call the meddlesome priest issue. "Someone needs to do something about this. We all know what."
Unless you're the King of England or have a similar level of reach with your statements, I don't think asking openly for "something to happen" is actionable.
Well, this is kind of what I was talking about earlier. There is no real daylight between "Gavin Newsom is a shitty governor and I think he should be assassinated" and "Gavin Newsom is a shitty governor. Something needs to happen to him. We all know what."
I assume this will be handled under a "don't get cute about violating the rules" clause, but if everyone knows what you're talking about when you say something, it should be handled the same as if they'd actually said the thing. And yes, some people will say, "Oh, I know I was responding to the post about a failed assassination attempt on the president of Brazil, but I actually just meant someone needs to send Newsom a gift basket with a strongly worded message about respecting his constituency," and I don't think that should fly as cover.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
I'd argue that the only reason to say something in a vague way like "something should happen" is just trying to get around the rule. Otherwise our imaginary forumer would just say what they think it is that should be happening.
I have seen the idea floated of an appeals forum. I much prefer the idea of going to the appeals forum to publicly discuss a moderator action, rather than destroying the thread with the discussion. Presumably something public like that will be part of the appeals process.
But how should either of those be handled? There's obviously going to be nuance in the details, but this gives zero indication of a baseline for what normal moderation is expected to be like.
I don't like it, and it should have been done first.
I'm extremely reluctant to ratify a set of rules which provide no public avenue to discuss moderation. Don't discuss moderation actions in the thread is fine, but the only given avenues are PMs with the mods and a TBD appeals process. That's a huge, vaguely shaped hole. Can moderator decisions to not act be appealed? Who by in that case given no punishment was issued?
Maybe I'm worrying too much, but I see a big part of the current issues as being caused by the mods having effectively unchecked power to deal with the other users as they want. And it got to this point at least in part because publicly questioning moderation staff was punishable, stifling the ability for users to make effective cases that moderators were corrupt because there was no public record. That there was no one who would actually listen to complaints is being addressed, but at the end of the day the mods and board are still human, and can't know everything going on on the boards. Without a public record it's going to be very difficult to mount effective applications to remove moderators who are abusing their positions to protect their friends or castigate their enemies.
Yeah, if I had a problem with someone and then while at work or a bar said 'Someone should take care of them,' I'd say people would definitely be concerned. Especially if something happened to that person afterwards.
I mean, we have ably established here the idea that the message you communicate is at least as important as the message you intend to communicate. If you write something that reasonable people will see as a call to violence, consistency would require that we treat that as indistinguishable from someone just stating things plainly. In the same way that if I say something that someone finds offensive or insulting, decency would dictate that I apologize for the confusion and restate what I meant.
I can't tell if the reluctance to moderate euphemisms is that there may be ambiguity and false positives - in which case I would think the proper action is to ask the person to restate themselves in a way that a reasonable person would not see as a call to violence - or that we want people to be able to issue calls to violence, and the use of euphemisms allows us to do that - in which case, nah, not a fan.
And if the idea is that "I hope something happens to this person I don't like while they're walking past the gun store, wink wink" doesn't count as a call to violence, then, I mean, c'mon.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
Part of us choosing our moderators is empowering them to use these rules to help maintain the community they love.
There are ways to vent/push back/discuss decisions that are not clogging threats or abusing a mod publicly. Both things that have occurred in the last year. Mods are members of the community given the communities trust. And we should treat them with respect. And also part of this system is providing both oversight but more routes to discuss this without shitting up a thread.
A dedicated forum for that sort of public discussion is fine, but these rules don't provide for it. These rules establish that you may not discuss an action in the thread, but you may discuss them in private PMs with the mods or via an appeals process that doesn't exist.
Asking for ratification of these rules was premature, and I will not vote to ratify rules that do not protect public discussion of moderation decisions in some form.
I don't think discussing a mod action in a thread inherently "destroys" that thread - if it's having a negative effect then mods should step in but I think forbidding it outright is overly restrictive
maybe I missed it getting added in the first place but yeah don't love it, don't think I'll be voting yes in this case
I do get that the "TBD" part of the appeals process kinda sucks, but I have to imagine that's a public thing, just not where people are trying to talk about Spider-Man comics or whatever.
I don't think this is a ABSOLUTELY NO TALKING infractions for all sort of thing, which is where selecting good mods comes into play.
there are all kinds of discussion topics I personally don't think have ever had positive results, that's not a good enough reason to ban it outright
like I'm not about to pull out my pitchfork or anything, I just think a blanket ban on public discussion feels unnecessarily restrictive
Yeah, I think what people aren't considering is that if you explicitly allow "I don't like this decision," you also allow "No, I think it was good," and now the thread is arguing not just with the moderator, but also with the rest of the thread. And sure, you can say, "No, you're only allowed to say bad things about a moderator decision in the thread!" but that's a.) weird, and b.) won't actually stop the arguments, because people are people. So if we tell people they can only directly communicate with the moderator in a thread, c.) at what point does the moderator get to say "that's enough, we're done talking about it," and d.) if they don't, is the moderator going to hand out infractions to people who broke the rules in talking about breaking the rules, because that ain't going to end well, but e.) if the moderator doesn't provide consequences to people who break the rules about discussing breaking the rules, then those rules effectively don't exist, and so now there's not even a mechanism to steer this trainwreck back onto the rails.
If the idea is that one person says "I disagree with this ruling!" and then the moderator says, "Fair, but overruled," that everyone just accepts that and moves on, I think that's wildly optimistic. The only realistic approach is to just not let people litigate mod decisions in threads, and make sure to give them an explicit avenue to do that elsewhere.
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
To my knowledge no one has ever been raided for simply talking about emulation and ROMs, and I’m not sure what you mean by “how to type stuff”, but unless it’s instructing people “to download breath of the wild, go to your web browser and type in something that sounds like are oh em dee oh double-you en el oh ayy dee ess dot see oh em” or something similarly rules-skirting, you should be good.
I would imagine if you come up with some other similar grey area there, a mod may or may not ask you to knock it off and edit your post, depending on the context.
MHWilds ID: JF9LL8L3
I’m hoping I’ll be able to make or participate in a retro handhelds thread on coin return. It’s a neat little hobby space.
I only use them for Pico-8, I swear!
To be fair, explicit content with a minor is illegal in addition to being gross, so that's kind of an obvious one.
WE all know that this isn't a place for consensual porn. Will a new person who shows up to register know that?
Legos are cool, MOCs are cool, check me out on Rebrickable!
Well, this one's easy. Code of Conduct 13 prohibits activities that are likely to result in legal action against Coin Return.