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Regarding Goober5000 & Moderation in Political Discussion

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Axem:
To the HLP Community,

We understand recent events involving a locked and deleted thread and the actions of the staff have been frustrating and difficult for everyone.  We want to thank you for your patience while the administrators and global moderators resolved this issue.  Moderating staff have the obligation to act impartially in their duties and to bring in other staff when they cannot.  Clearly this rule was violated in the recently deleted thread in Political Discussions, and this has understandably led to hard feelings.  This is not a situation where platitudes are appropriate, and we are announcing the following measures and changes, effective immediately:

1.  All active staff have reaffirmed the commitment that they will not moderate disputes they are involved in, period.
2.  Staff, like all members of the community will be expected to use the Report Post function to handle disputes with other members or moderation of issues in which they are directly involved.  As we have a relatively small number of staff and - in Political Discussions in particular - we can often have many actively in a discussion, staff will be permitted to temporarily lock threads until other impartial moderators can respond to reports.  ALL staff have committed to the principle that their influence should be to de-escalate disputes.
3.  Future community moderation in General Discussion and Political Discussion will be undertaken by a minimum of two staff working together in agreement.  This may result in more temporary locks as cool-down periods on highly charged issues while staff can respond.  No single person will have final say or act unilaterally.
4.  Staff are developing a more comprehensive guidance on what constitutes a personal attack.  This can be subjective, and that can clearly lead to issues.  More information on this measure will follow.
5.  With regard to the deleted thread, selected posts from the thread relevant to the original topic and subsequent discussion will be restored and the thread will be reopened for discussion.  A group of three staff not otherwise involved as participants in the thread will determine which posts are to be restored.  Due to personal schedules of the three staff involved, this may take a few days.
6.  Goober5000 will be separately posting an apology to the community regarding his actions in particular.
7.  Goober5000 will no longer be engaged in moderation duties in General Discussion and Political Discussion until otherwise specified.

Also we all apologize for the amount of time this has taken to get resolved.  What happened was a very serious issue and it was only right to not rush it or be done by just a few people.  We reached out to as many other staff members as we could to get their input and insight, and unfortunately everyone isn't as active or around as they used to be.  Having a clear consensus from the staff was very important to get this resolved.

Thank you.

Mobius:
I'm glad you've come to a balanced resolution to the issue by splitting it into a number of sub-issues and finding a detailed workaround for each one of them. No major revolutions involved in the process, and no more drama.

I'm also glad we have all finally realized how intrinsically "dangerous" GD/PD boards are on a forum trying to keep a 20 years old game alive.

 :yes:

Nightmare:
Sounds good to me :yes:

Phantom Hoover:
This is an enormous effort for a single purpose: protecting Goober’s pride and status. None of the other moderators have ever abused their powers this grievously, and none of these measures are necessary for any but Goober. None of this effort was expended to retain Rian, to retain Scotty, to retain anyone who may have silently left the community because of Goober’s openly misogynistic, white nationalist views being aired all over the place and defended by endless rules lawyering. None of this effort was expended to keep me sweet any of the several times I acted out, sometimes in laughably trivial ways*, and got punished for it; and I never asked for or expected it. No regular user would ever get such favourable treatment after such aggressively toxic behaviour.

There is exactly one solution here with any integrity, and you know what it is. It is not too late to take it.

*Goober once banned me from GenDisc for making a frank but accurate summary of a well-known Latin poem in a discussion. HLP: where discussing Catullus gets cracked down harder than making baseless legal threats at other members.

Phantom Hoover:
You have spent two weeks drawing up a convoluted seven point plan to solve something that isn’t a technical policy issue; it’s a personal issue, and that person is Goober. The admin team less Goober could do everything it needs to do without him and none of these drafted changes would be necessary because none of the other admins feel a desperate need to keep white nationalism from being defamed on this site. Goober’s actions have disqualified him from a leadership role, your response shows that other admins realise he is not worthy of leadership here, and yet you will bend over backwards to let him keep a badge.

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