Moderation and the environment here

[anon40790172]

Thank you very much, that’s quite a long post with a lot of points to address.

@Team_2E16

I’m not sure I entirely disagree with deleting the original post, as I have no idea of the merits of what was alleged. Be that as it may, I personally believe that freedom of speech is a very important principle, which when violated has a ‘chilling effect’. I’ve sat on my opinion on this for a while now, as I believe in thinking before I speak.

This was quite a post indeed. We explained in the topic why we did it. I made a reply this morning explaining why we couldn’t let the topic open for everyone to view. Not that I like it, but we really had a discussion about it and agreed this was the best to do. I agree on the freedom of speech, I wouldn’t put time and energy in this forum when it was run by people with a different view then that. or maybe I would just to bring in the freedom as far as I could. You are very welcome by the way with your post, because this gives us a very clear view on what people think about the forum and moderation.

@Team_2E16

Be that as it may, the fact is that if the rules become so restrictive that enough people simply leave, the forum wouldn’t achieve it’s goals and indeed wouldn’t succeed at all. So what I am really discussing here is not whether ‘freedom of speech’ is protected per se, but whether the moderators are striking an appropriate balance between freedom of speech and moderation.

I agree, we have almost 2000 members on this forum and everybody should be open to talk whatever they want in the right categories. We have 3748 topics on this forum and 50003 posts. I know for a fact that we don’t touch over 99.99% of all posts. But please understand that not everything is black or white. We spend most time talking about Flags or requests in the grey-area. This is the hard part and it’s harder than I thought it would be. And with that many topics and posts, if only 1% got flagged or debated, we would end up with 37 topics and 500 posts that need attention and discussion. That’s over 20 posts a month (in the last 2 years) so just under 1 a day. And I think we’re even under that. weeks go by where I only move 1 topic to the right category and for the rest just read the forum like anybody else.

@Team_2E16

But things changed. Over time, I noticed a few things occurring:

1. Mods taking sides in heated discussions when moderation wasn’t the issue

Not to wave away anything you said, but please, really please use the Flag option when you notice something like that. Nobody (except for mods) see your Flag like a little red alert. It works like magic, all mods notice when we come online and it automatically starts a PM where we discuss the issue.

@Team_2E16

Basically, the moderator in question differed in their opinions from the commenting member, and felt the need (nay the RIGHT!?!) to spend time policing how they should speak. Honestly, I’ve never seen this anywhere else, and I hope I never see it again. It seems to me insulting and condescending to treat another adult in that way, at least in the way it was handled at the time. I see no problem in people suggesting others how they might make their argument/s more clearly and less emotively, but this was well beyond that. (It is important to note that this was limited to a very small number of moderators)

Again immediately Flag the reply by the mod so we know that you view the reply this way. We won’t blame you if you are right or wrong. We have set topics/replies back. We did an un-split after we split a topic, we even put topics back to the category chosen by the OP when they make a strong case for it saying we made a mistake. Again, not everything is black and white but we really need to know where people disagree with us. Just point us exactly to that point and we always reply.

@Team_2E16

I want to make another comment on 1) and 2) combined. In my opinion, there is a level of political bias displayed by one or more of the resident moderators. I see no problem there, in and of itself. I also see no problem in moderators taking part in the discussion, and holding views that are contrary to my own. However, there is a reason we ask, say, judges in court to put aside their political beliefs when judging a case

We are just volunteers and we are members/readers/posters on the forum as well. I personally not gonna hide any political view when I want to express it. The great thing about this forum is we actually allow topics in “Off-topic” to talk politics, views, religion or whatever. We almost don’t moderate at all in Off-topic. People can go off-topic in off-topic as far as they want. When I reply to an issue I always ask myself: Would we (or I) act the same when it was some other user? And when I get into a sort of personal thing I let other mods decide.

@Team_2E16

It starts to seem that those of us who hold contrary views to moderators on this side of the fence are less than welcome here, and our views count for less. In the cases here that I am thinking of, it seems to me that particular moderator/s have taken ‘political offense’ to some of the views expressed here, and then have used expansive interpretations of the guidelines to try to undermine that speech. I can’t prove that, but I think it’s pretty clear.

I’m quite shocked to hear this because this really shouldn’t be the way moderation works. We should not have politics rule a decision one way or the other. You say it’s pretty clear, well I don’t know where that happened. But when you experience a reply that way, again Flag it.

@Team_2E16

One further point, though, might be that some of the mods here are veritable cheerleaders for MaidSafe, and seem to take the position that certain criticisms (such as the roadmap issue) should not continue. I disagree. Criticism creates momentum for change. I understand the FUD issue, though. People should not be allowed to needlessly spread FUD in these comments. I just think that there could be a less, say, dismissive approach to these concerns. If we care about the project, we don’t want people dropping off in their support because of FUD. So when someone raises an issue, even if it is FUD, I believe that it would help the project greatly if the complaint was responded to in a way that helped to allay the concerns of others who may agree with it, and may be swayed by the original complaint.

Is this about the latest Dev-update? Feel free to link to that point so we can discuss it here.

@Team_2E16

The sum total of all of this is that I, and I assume some others (as I have noticed names disappearing over time), no longer feel positive about engaging in discussion on this forum. I feel like I have to be unreasonably careful about what I say and how I say it, I feel like I have to be very narrow in my discussion in terms of the off-topic issue (even though I strongly believe that some of these issues are extremely important to the development of the main Safe project and other side-projects), and I feel like there is a politically/ideologically-based skew on this forum in regards to certain acts of moderation. I have frequented many politically charged forums, where opposing views were not ridiculed or ignored, but encouraged, in the name of logical argumentation and the marketplace of ideas. I feel far less comfortable here than I do in those places, even though the discussion there was often heated far beyond the point that we observe here.

This is no fun to hear. I think we are quite strict when it comes to swearing or personal attacks, but for the most part, as I experience it, we have a very open forum. When people ask a question, most of the time under an hour they have several replies. When they want to talk politics, they’re allowed to open a topic in Off-topic. I don’t know that many technical forums where these topics are allowed. I follow other projects on Reddit and when I get critical, my posts are voted down or just removed. On this forum we have some heat in a number of topics. Just look at all the topics in META about moderation not being democratic and what more. With other projects your not even allowed to bring that issue up, they just delete your reply.

@Team_2E16

To those who would tell me “If you don’t like the way the forum is run, then start your own”, you have effectively said that my view doesn’t count for anything here, and this effectively means that you are not listening to a portion of the community that frequents, or wishes to frequent, this site.

Guilty! I did think I made that point several times. But not after replying in depth to the points made by the user. If you look at META you see a lot of mods have put a lot of time and effort in explaining what we do and why/how we do it. But again, your views are very welcome.

Next to what you feel I really hope you will stay on this forum and enjoy the discussions etc. When you leave because you feel the way you feel we miss the points you make and I would love to see you Flag all these replies/topics where mods are not doing the right thing. I promise we always reply, no matter if it’s 3 Flags a week. Just let us know where the pain is so we can focus on each one of them when they appear.

Again, thanks for taking the time to point all these things out. It’s appreciated.