From my knowledge of the other mods, this is the attitude of all mods. Doesn’t mean we succeed all the time unfortunately.
The flag is your friend and is an important feature of the forum software.
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You cannot directly do it with this forum software. But of course as a community you can get a forum friend to flag for you and not mention your forum name.
But really don’t be afraid to do so, because as you say this forum is a bit like a family and as mods we have to “live” here too. Consideration of others is a very important aspect of a family and if we looked down on a genuine complaint of our actions as mods then we fail being family members.
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You can PM that mod as well. Even without a Flag or a message to moderators or whatever. Just PM and say: “Hi, I’ve seen some mod actions done by you over the last few months and I want to talk about it”. This happened before and I can’t imagine we have mods that have a problem with that. Actually I think it’s the opposite.
Well, that’s not the case. If someone shows up making all these claims about how we as moderators suck we don’t ban someone. It happened in a topic over the last days and we took quite some heat. And that’s ok. There was some very strong debate here in META over the last few months as well but we never banned someone for just having an opinion and stick by it.
Yes, we started this in a kind of way. There are 2 points to that, 1) When someone is mad about something and goes over the line a bit, why would we share that with the whole forum? We had a ban for 24H for a person that got really mad and gave us a really hard time by stepping over the line. One day later everything was fine and I really don’t feel the need to post anything about that here in META. We all get mad sometimes and a cool-off is just fine. No need to put someone’s name out here. 2) That’s my second point as well, when people get listed as being banned, and we tell why, it’s open for the whole forum to see. We have to think about that. My opinion is, that when the ban is over we start again from 0. That means that member has no tag to it’s name saying: “This one was banned for this reason”. Stuff to think about.
I would like to say that the number of bans is extremely low and when we do there have been hours of time in it trying to fix it a different way. From just one mod that tries it through PM to a warning on forehand that things are getting close to a ban. If I remember well, we’ve had 4 bans in total now. Except from spam-accounts. We had a lot of these.
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You want to be a mod don’t you?
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If that is the case @Team_2E16, you certainly have my vote.
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First, I apologise for writing ‘have in fact’, rather than ‘seem to have’ in that quote. That’s closer to my opinion, as I cannot see inside your heads to determine exactly what reasons you all have for deciding on a ban. However, the full quote reads (important points highlighted and edit made to ‘have in fact’):
I think if you read the revised quote and take into account my next sentence, you will see what I actually meant. I’ve carefully read some of the @Al_Kafir exchanges and I’ve got to say:
- He has some important points
- He goes about it the wrong way sometimes, perhaps often
- Give people enough rope and they’ll hang themselves
I’m only pointing out here that you are kind of falling into a public-perception trap when you ban someone for doggedly pushing an opinion. (I believe you guys call this ‘opinion spamming’) Again, I’m not sure I entirely disagree with you here anyway, because in a general conversation in real-life, I would walk away from them at this point. A ban, I’m not so sure is the right path, though. Conversations need to go both ways in order to even be regarded as a conversation, and parties sometimes have to ‘agree to disagree’. But he was indeed making some important points, also.
What I see when I read these exchanges between the mods and @Al_Kafir is a breakdown in communication, despite attempts by some to bridge the gap. What I see is that he feels slighted, disenfranchised and has lost respect for your opinions, for whatever reason. What I see from the mods is frustration and dismay and some measure of defensiveness. I wonder whether things could be handled differently.
I also see that perhaps other people (non-mods) need to be approaching him and trying to help him learn to communicate in other ways that are more conducive to getting him to where he wants to go. He would have to be open to hearing this, but I think the fact is that he has a problem with authority being unaccountable.
His argument amounts to: “Unaccountable authority is unacceptable”.
Your argument amounts to: “We make ourselves accountable”. I don’t think this is a satisfactory counter-argument, however true it actually is. It’s basically saying “Just trust us”.
I think he is undoubtedly at times disruptive. But in this argument, IMO, he is bang on the money. I believe you when you say or imply that the mods are good-hearted, responsible, approachable people that will ‘self-moderate’. But your methods are not transparent (what moderators anywhere are?) and so his accusations, in the public eye, can carry some weight. Not many people are happy when the police decide whether or not to charge themselves with breaking the law.
Yes, this conversation is proof of that (though I’m far from claiming that you suck), and I respect you and @neo personally for turning up to give your opinion and tell your side of the story.
I read through that, and it kind of comes across as, well, your side only. Yes, you are trying to justify your position, which is the correct thing to do. Yes, you were probably right on that. But the fact is that when a person justifies their actions, they necessarily give only their point of view. Given, @Al_Kafir had given his point of view above, so it’s not all one way. I think in that particular case, heck, it might have looked better if you had simply listed the reasons he was banned and then had a sequential list of links to the full threads these issues occurred in, so people can make up their own mind. I only say this because I’m trying to look at it both ways, and (even though I think you weren’t at all trying to do this) it is possible that some people can read what you posted there, and see it as cherry-picking. Again, I don’t think you were doing this, but it could (and clearly sometimes does, that’s partly why we’re here right now) come across that way.
I agree. Without their permission, and if nobody finds it controversial, I see no need to do it. I get your point about people needing to cool off, and I agree that listing ‘offenses’ could be taken as ‘naming and shaming’, too.
No need to think about it; I agree. I would only advocate a timeline if the member continued to contest the ban (publicly, after the ban is lifted), and/or if the ban was controversial among other members of the forum.
Agreed, my original post was very little about banning and very much about ‘conversation-shaping’ by mods.
OK, so I feel the need to make a few simple points, as I feel the conversation has kind of side-tracked to issues that I wasn’t overly concerned about in the first place.
- Being asked to confront/converse with an authority figure about their decision-making processes is something that may work for some, but not others. The intimidation factor is very relevant, and the dynamics of the individuals involved may make any conversation/criticism seem risky (mainly for the member, and in perception or fact).
- I think the core of my original post was asking this question: To what extent do mods have a mandate to tell people how to speak? It is my opinion that (some) mod actions have gone too far in the past on this, and I think it has a subtle effect on the conversation here.
Solutions?
- I don’t think adding another layer of bureaucracy is either practical, or helpful (like an ‘Internal Affairs’ department for the forum). Anyway, who watches the watchers? So perhaps we could have representatives drawn from among the membership, who could mediate between members with grievances and the moderators. They would have to be respected, trusted, and commit to taking an impartial stance at the outset. They would review the threads, claims and decisions made, and offer an opinion. They would have no other powers or privileges, other than, with all parties permission, the ability to request to view the PM backchat that has gone on. They would also have to have avoided taking a position publicly on the topic prior to the mediation. It would be voluntary on all counts, and other interested members would be able to offer their opinion on whether the mediator was making a fair appraisal of the situation.
This would
a) help the member to feel listened to, outside the so-called ‘inner clique’ of the moderators,
b) hopefully provide a fair-minded non-mod view of the moderators’ decisions and so take some of the strain out of the moderator/member relationship,
c) provide a non-situationally-entangled viewpoint of the incidents that had occurred, and
d) provide for the general membership to feel as if they have an impartial place to go if they clash with mods,
e) provide a ‘blow-off’ valve outlet for members to release some of the energy they have pent up, and mods to do the same.
And finally, and importantly,
f) this person’s job would be to raise their hand privately to the mods when they noticed anything they were uncomfortable with, and would, after attempting to deal with it in private with the mod/s concerned, bring it to the members’ attention if necessary.
I think this achieves what you were suggesting in the way of PM’ing the mods when concerned, but the person doing it would then have a little license in being able to feel like they had a ‘right’ to question the mods in this way. It would still allow people who feel comfortable PM’ing the mods to do so, while it provides a mechanism for those who find it difficult to speak up, to anonymously do so if they wished (as there would be no way to tell if the mediator had been approached by the member or had noticed the mod action by themselves).
Think of a student council member in a university. The mediator’s mission would not be to simply advocate for the members, however. It would be to try to bridge the gap, and, in a friendly way, try to help obstinate members see better pathways for getting what they want, try to help misunderstood members get their point across healthily, while also helping mods to achieve what they want, to minimise time spent on minor disputes and bent noses.
This could be done via PM, or, since I am aware that mods potentially have the ability to read PMs (not saying or implying this would ever happen), members and the mediator could converse via email or something else private. Mediation between mods and members could occur on Slack on a special ‘mediation’ channel, or it could be done in public here, depending on what the parties preferred.
Understanding is always the key, so if the ‘people’ had someone who understood both sides, perhaps there is a way to bridge the gap. The advantage of this idea is that it is voluntary only, there are no extra powers that need to be granted, it would hopefully actually reduce the moderators’ workload in endless arguments, while attempting to help both sides reach a closer understanding of what’s really going on, in the text and the subtext.
Hell, no! I’m genetically and psychologically programmed to have a distaste for exercising authority over others myself, and besides, who would want the stress?
I appreciate this very much (and your vote, too, @polpolrene). It’s an honour to be considered in that way. As I say above, I have a certain distaste for exercising authority myself, and frankly, I think the mods have a tough job. I think the balance between fair and unfair is often very fine, and then there is the concept of ‘doing things for the greater good’ which allows some to make decisions which infringe upon the few, to improve the lot of the many (not saying it happens here. Necessarily).
As a final comment, I feel that many of the problems here could eventually be boiled down to misunderstandings and misperception, even the ones I have raised. We have a lack of information (as not everybody who judges a situation has time to, or the desire to, read all of the context), we have the perception of authority, we have trollish or troll behaviour twisting the narrative, we have noses out of joint, we have (at least the perception of) crusades by both members and mods etc etc etc.
In my mind, the source of the problem really lies in individual ego and willingness to understand each other; to speak, but also to listen. We are indeed all human here, and I have seen both mods and members fall prey to ‘bee-under-their-bonnet-syndrome’, IMO.
NOTE: I am not suggesting myself for the ‘mediator’ role above. If that was to be the case, I would need to see enough of the members (who are concerned about these issues. People who never clash with mods don’t have a problem, and so don’t have a position, really) actually nominating me for the role. I would never deign to nominate myself. And I also feel that I am perhaps not well-known enough, and thus not well-trusted enough, for members (I’m talking about those with grievances) to see me as anything other than another extension of the mod ‘group’ anyway.
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Yes I agree. Here’s a topic where me and another mod agreed on several points with his ideas. Again, it’s not black or white. Even with certain people. I agreed with several things open and public. I even had some nice PM’s with AK before this story started.
Making a topic about moderation in META and update it on a daily basis with the same and/or new points and insights is really not a problem. The problem lies when people (talking general here) use a topic about self_encryption to criticize moderation while these same points were made in different topics by that same person already. I think you indeed would agree if you could see some “incidents” come by on our Slack channel. As a user of this forum you miss like 75% of that. And that’s ok. But a lot of people their opinion would change if they would know all the details I think. Although we have a lot of easy time as well. Weeks go by without big interventions.
I agree, and we never banned someone for just spamming opinion, a little trolling, cursing in a topic, or just starting a personal fight here on the forum. There need to be a lot of incidents like that. Not just 1.
I don’t know. That’s like pointing a finger saying, you are not good at something and we can help you to learn. Even if it was someone from the community I would be surprised if he would listen. I think I wouldn’t!
Yes, this is what happend in a sentence. I see us (mods) just like the volunteers at your local tennis club. 1 is behind the bar, another is cleaning up some terrain, another one takes care of accounting. There’s no democracy at these places, no voting for new members, no clear protocols for everything they do. It’s more like; this is one of my friends and he would like to be a volunteer as well. The others talk to him, take him/her in and he/she becomes part of the team. If you really want things to be accountable with all protocols for all possible situations, we as a team would have to spend hours a day on this forum. So I was asked to join, I did and saw we didn’t had Forum Guidelines or anything. So I made a draft, others joined in a Google Drive document and after a few days we put it on the forum and finalized it. Was that democratic? No, but we made it public, wrote about it in the Forum Updates and we also talked about new mods being added. We didn’t have any objection (not a single PM to moderators or a reply in these topics) to these at all. That’s why I always make the point that we indeed represent the community and that we have their support. But I can really understand when people want to see things different. I really do. But we really need to see a proposal or anything, otherwise what should we do?
The links were there, but maybe we indeed should just point to the FG and say, wasn’t in line because of this and that. But I think we actually did it almost in that way. And when we just made the points, then we might have questions about what exact part of the post was not in line with the FG. We made that quite clear in this way I think. And cherry picking, I don’t know. I can’t image if people look at the discussions and think woow, that’s 1 side just bashing the others. 2 parties clearly involved here. But as I said earlier, I think after a certain amount of time, just start at 0 and maybe remove posts like that. But that’s just my opinion so far and before we know it there’s a storm about why we are removing topics and replies out of META 
.
Ohw you just made my day. Ross from Maidsafe joined the mods on Slack today as he’s trying to have one feet in the community and one at Troon. we talked about creating new topics for bug-report etc. I was thinking the same thing after the discussion we had. I would personally love to have one member added to mods on the forum and Slack without being a mod. Just to watch what we do, what issues we have to solve and whether or not we are modding the right way. It would also satisfy the needs of a number of folks that want more transparency and insight in our little club. I’ll write a proposal for that and sent it to moderators. I will copy you in if you like. Same for having a mediator as you say, this person could do both. Would probably fill the request from @Safety1st as well. One could just PM the intermediate instead of flagging a mod directly. Although Flagging is still possible as well.
Thanks for the reply again. I’ll give it a thought and maybe put it out here without asking other mods as well. If I leave my color away I’m just a community member isn’t it ;-)?
Edit: I send you a PM. Maybe we can come up with something together and see if people like it.
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Absolutely part of my point here. That’s why I think that sort of stuff is a ‘perception problem’. And not every (or even many) forum users have the want or need to go read everything in order to understand the whole picture. Which I think adds weight to a ‘mediator’-type role, where both sides can be aired to this person, and they could take the time to do so.
I think it could be done in a right way, or a wrong way. If somebody approaches someone else and says “Your communication is wrong. This is what you should do”, then no, I wouldn’t react well either. But if somebody approaches them and says “It seems to me like you think they aren’t understanding where you’re coming from? Can I help?”, then I think the response might be a little different.
The fact is that you aren’t in these roles, though, in your capacity as moderators (though you do analogous things as well). You’re more like the bouncers at the door of the bar, or security for the club, at least from the view of the members. And I’m not a fan of ‘democratising’ this forum, or any forum. As I stated in my OP, I believe you have the right to run it the way you wish. My goal was more to facilitate a greater understanding on both sides and reduce any underlying tensions, that people may not even realise exists.
In a sense, this is true. But as you pointed out, as a user, I miss 75% of the big picture. I didn’t see the FG proposal myself. I did see the original ‘election’ of moderators, which I was fine with. To claim a mandate based upon lack of opposition in this case is shaky, as most people may not have even been fully aware of the issues. Kind of like voter apathy, I guess. Even so, this is kind of besides the point anyway because again, the point is not to make the ‘government’ here more responsive to the members by requiring voting or any such thing; it’s to alert you guys to my, and possibly others’ concerns, and allow you to do with that what you will. McDonalds has every right to keep selling burgers people don’t like, but when people stop buying them, they would be wise to figure out why (an imperfect analogy, as the mods aren’t paid, and the forum isn’t a money-making venture, so some fundamentals change. But you get the point. I am concerned with, as you are, the forum’s, community’s and project’s success).
Very important point, and true.
Yeah, I really don’t think you were. But I worry about certain people’s perceptions, or ability to point at things like that and twist them. I’ve seen it happen on healthy forums before, and just think that people need to be deprived of as many opportunities to do this as possible.
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I’ve only read about 1% of the conversation here (It’s a lot, really a lot 
). Just want to say thanks to @Team_2E16 for starting the topic and the discussion about moderation. I’ll read more about this tomorrow and will give my opinion as well.
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Didn’t really know where would be a good place to post this, but I just wanted to add something to this closed topic, so I’m putting it here:
Continuing the discussion from Safex random comments and speculation thread:
Just wanted to note that I guess there’s nothing stopping the real owner of the account from making comments and telling people if an admin is impersonating them,
so there really shouldn’t be anything to worry about in terms of this on this forum If I understand correctly. Should be an easily-mitigated attack vector
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