As a follow-up to my previously already locked post on the subject of censorship, given that I never criticize without also offering an alternative that I consider significantly better, and being fully aware that this constitutes unsolicited advice because the site decided to act defensively instead of asking me for suggestions, I still decided to make a positive contribution by presenting moderation suggestions based on my own experience dealing with the worst of the Internet as a founder and moderator of a medium-sized programming channel on IRC eons ago.
One of the subjects that I touched on the locked thread was the lack of transparency in decision making, which as I explained enables moderation abuse by preventing accountability even if unintentionally, and the other subject that I touched was the antagonization and polarization of the community resulting from a moderation approach focused entirely on punishing undesired behavior instead of rewarding desired behavior. It is my understanding that few might have understood what I meant, which in my opinion is perfectly natural because my empirical observation tells me that very few people dare thinking outside the box, but in my opinion and experience there is definitely at least one way to tackle moderation positively, and the purpose of this post is explain what it is, let the community debate its merits, and also present their own complementary or alternative ideas that the site's administration can draw inspiration from if they truly intend to address any of the problems that I raised on the other thread.
Moderation isn't an easy job, and not everyone is psychologically fit for it, as it requires the ability to empathize with others which most people seem totally incapable of doing. A competent moderator capable of acting as a conflict mediator by chiming in and stating their unbiased opinion from an outsider's perspective, while at the same time demonstrating the ability to judge the situation from the perspective of every party involved, can do wonders to find a common ground of agreement and compromise that anyone acting in good faith can accept, reserving their punishment abilities only to the cases in which bad faith is clearly demonstrated. This requires being open to ask questions to all the parties involved, and making sure that those parties recognize the empathy before moving to public judgment. This encourages good behavior by rewarding good faith with understanding, prevents against divisive sentiments like us against them by clearing barriers of opacity between the community and its administrators, and makes moderators less likely to be targeted by projecting themselves in a position of servitude instead of authority.
This is already a compromise, because I am personally of the opinion that moderation should simply not exist, and that every user should instead have the ability to influence the curation of the content that they see on the site, with useful contributions being cited and promoted along with content produced by the site itself, but that would require a lot of change so I think that the empathizing moderation approach that I already suggested is the most realistic option at this point.
Comments
New management, come and moderate me
Dear João,
Who cares about the perfect moderation? This is a specific website with a specific mission. it’s neither Aristotle’s Lyceum or a Greek agora, for us to argue if our freedom of speech is violated whenever one of our comments is deleted or a topic is locked.
Still, maybe if the moderators on this website had normal full-time jobs and got paid for it, they could in fact get into the depths you are asking. Since they are not however, this won’t happen.
Just be polite, be kind and think before writing and all will be good. I’m sure, that since most of us are grown-ups, we can figure out easily enough when something we are about to write is going to trigger one of our fellows, or an intervention from the moderators. to give you an example, I give this topic one day of existence at most. In fact, this comment, probably just cut it’s already meager lifetime to 12 hours, since it will both trigger you and the moderators heartless me.
Agreed with @Panais
I'm in agreement with Panais here. Perfect moderation is more than likely not going to happen on this site. These folks are doing this as a labor of love, not as a full-time job. If you want them to moderate better, start paying them and giving them a reason to do so.
can we let this thread die already
Why keep bringing this up? If you’re that unhappy with the site, don’t use it.
This is not what we want new users seeing when they come to the site!
How about you just go away!
Do us all a favor, Yours truly, rock musician!
Just disagree agreeably, surely?
I'm not sure why this seems to be beyond most folk. I'm all for disagreement and, indeed, robust and vociferous disagreement; but that can be done agreeably, can't it? For example, was it really necessary for this post to contain so many generalisations about how limited most people's cognitive abilities are, and so on? It was laced with condescension with the byproduct of detracting entirely from what, in other circumstances, might have been considered a legitimate poitn. Oh well, at least Tesco Finest Mince Pies are only £1.50 for six.
Perfect
Only if there were no humans involve. Remove the humans and you will have it. Long live cats.
Correction
Tesco finest mince pies are £1.50 for six but only if you have a club card. Bingo bought two boxes earlier for the christmas tea being held at Bingo Towers tonight, plus two boxes of Mr Kipling's Christmas cake slices. NO discount on the latter. Now, I defy anyone to pick a fight with me over the contents of this contribution. If you say it's orf-topic I won't listen. I used an IOS app to make the purchases, after all.
Why?
If the previous post was locked, the discussion was meant to end. Why start yet another topic on the same subject? If you don't like how Applevis is run, you're free to not use it. It's not your site, therefore how it's moderated isn't up to you. This is just getting obnoxious.
That Rudyard, he does a lot!
Writer, probably in the British army, now he makes Christmas cakes too? Man! For a guy who's not alive anymore, he sure gets around.
@Brooke...
Well said indeed. The amount of headshaking I'm doing over this entire topic is unreal. Surprised my cranium's atop my neck. :Dstill
re: moderation suggestions?
Here's the thing. You or I may not like something about the way AV is moderated. I personally think, for example, that the rules about even light swearing smack of the stereotype of blind people being naive about such things. But use of the site is not a right. It's a privilege. And if I wish to avail myself of that privilege, then I need to abide by the rules they have in place, pure and simple. And if I don't abide by those rules, then I should face any forthcoming consequences w/o whining that I've been unjustly treated. That's what being grown up is all about. Moderating is a thankless job in the best of circumstances. A large site w/a diverse audience such as this scarcely qualifies as that. A diverse site is going to have very diverse opinions. I tend to use the word firetruck, for example, in situations that have nothing to do w/either fire or trucks. But I won't do it here because it's their site, it's against the rules, I'm using the site at their behest, and I need therefore to respect their wishes. That just isn't that hard to do, folks. Neither is refraining from personal attacks. It's actually quite simple.
I think if you have a problem w/the way AV is moderated, the polite thing to do is approach the moderators first if it's really a pain point. Since I'm not in a situation where I absolutely positively must use the word firetruck in a context where neither fires nor trucks exist, I'm not going to do that. Failure to respect their rules, IMO, bespeaks a great deal of entitlement. & I like what Mark twain said about that. "The world doesn't owe anyone anything. It was here first."
Thanks AV, BME, & everyone who makes the site possible & available to all.
You’re welcome to leave or perhaps start your own site
None of us are being made to use this site. Anyone who doesn’t agree with how it’s being run is welcome to share their views within reason but it doesn’t mean they will always be acted upon. As someone else said, there are perhaps valid points within the original post, but unfortunately they were overwhelmed by what I think were quite offensive comments about the intellect of others using this site. Here’s the top tip, if you want to win over the audience and have them support your views, perhaps don’t try to alienate them from the outset. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from starting another site if they are unhappy with this one, but I suspect nothing will come close to the shear quality and amount of content available on here. I for one am extremely grateful so keep up the great work developers, moderators, and everyone else involved.
I agree with Peter
I agree with peter. Another point is this really what we want new people seeing? It makes us look terrible. There issues that should be taken up privately with the mods and not in a public post.
Addressing the criticism
Don't know, since that's not what I'm suggesting, and my stance has always been against the kind of excessive hands-on moderation that is practiced here, because to me censorship is never the right option.
I'm merely suggesting improvements, not perfect moderation, and I even mentioned that on the original post when I said that my suggestion is already a compromise.
Same advice applies to you. If you don't like a thread, don't read it and especially don't bump it with comments...
Not only did you miss the fact that I'm not generalizing precisely because I included expressions like "most", "very few", "seems", and "empirical observation" in my post, which all together imply a scope limited to particular cases and lack of proper research, but you even managed to contradict yourself in your accusation of generalization by using one of those terms yourself. Considering that, from previous threads, I understand that you are a lawyer, I have to wonder whether your comment was motivated by bad faith or just incompetence, because your inclusion of nonsense right after your allegation of generalization in the same paragraph coupled with your professional background makes it quite hard to come up with excuses to rule out bad faith in your argument.
What's the problem with starting a thread to debate suggestions that I consider relevant? The previous thread mentioned a problem that I perceived and decided to share, I know exactly why it got locked but will keep that information to myself, and this one contains suggestions to address problems like the one I mentioned, so I really fail to understand the reason why people feel so offended by any of this given that you can simply ignore the subject altogether and read or post to the threads that are actually relevant to you. It is precisely this intolerance towards different opinions that I stand against, and the people telling me to just go away without moderation intervention are demonstrating my point perfectly, because I'm perfectly sure that if I made a comment with a totally inoffensive innuendo my comment would be gone very quickly, but personal attacks and demonstrations of intolerance like those are perfectly tolerated here, so the proactivity promised in the last comment to the other thread is not even being practiced yet.
You seem to be confusing rules with their enforcement, and claiming that I'm objecting to the former when I am, in fact, objecting to the latter. You also imply, without knowledge, that I did not try to bring this up privately with the moderators, which I actually did on several occasions without much of a reaction on their behalf, and also mentioned that more than once on the locked thread. Lastly, you imply that I am complaining about the moderation of my own comments when the entirety of the locked thread was centered around the nuking of other threads that were not started by me and whose deletion wasn't even aimed at me in particular, and where the only times I mentioned the deletion of my own comments were to highlight the inconsistent nature of the moderation on this site.
Can you quote those "quite offensive comments about the intellect of others using this site" that you talk about?
And exactly what makes you think that I did not take this privately with the site's administration? You couldn't tell either way, but that hasn't stopped you from implying certainty in that comment!
Topic Now Closed
Hi all,
We initially were not going to respond to this thread, as we believe the likelihood for further productive dialog on this topic is low. It is clear that there are some in our community whom will just not agree with our position; and as much as we wish it weren't so, that is the reality and that is okay.
At the same time, because facts matter, I wanted to provide clarity on a couple points that have come up:
João, it is clear that you are very unhappy with our policies. At the same time, at the end of the day, our rules are what they are and we have made multiple good-faith attempts to thoroughly and thoughtfully respond to your concerns. The closure of the first thread was not an invitation for you to create a new one to keep the conversation going; it was our attempt to thoughtfully bring a discussion that had run its course to a close, before the next cycle started again. While we recognize your experience and contributions to our community, continually posting unfactual allegations and complaints about issues that have already been thoroughly addressed is disruptive to site operations and, if continued, will be evaluated against our rule prohibiting trolling behavior.
This topic is now closed, and any further posts about this matter will be considered as 'trolling' and will be subject to removal. Thank you to everyone for your understanding.