Hard Light Productions Forums
Site Management => Site Support / Feedback => Topic started by: mjn.mixael on June 05, 2013, 01:51:16 am
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To be clear, I could care a less about most of the changes posted because they don't affect me, though I suspect that doing things anonomously and promising to discuss them in sekret won't solve some of the larger dramas we've had.
However, here's what does affect me and most of the boards on HLP. You said hosted projects can no longer moderate how they want and that they must adhere to the global rules. You gave a few passing examples, but I have no ideas what you expect of me on my boards... Especially since you guys came up with or are coming up with all those rules behind closed doors. The root problem from the last outburst that I recall still exists. There is a distinct lack of 'same pageness' with individual board moderators... Except now any higher up moderator can come in and do whatever under the guise of 'we talked about it'. I suppose it's a good thing I trust 1 or 2 of the ad mins :-) .
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Well the rules are basically the same as before. It's just that as a forum mod we don't want people breaking the basic HLP rules and then saying "My forum, my rules." The idea is to get everyone on the same page.
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Well the rules are basically the same as before. It's just that as a forum mod we don't want people breaking the basic HLP rules and then saying "My forum, my rules." The idea is to get everyone on the same page.
wasnt/isnt this the unwritten rule of forums anyhow? if they want to play "my forum, my rules" they can get off of hlp and make new ones.
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It wasn't unfortunately, which lead to all kinds of issues.
Mjn does bring up a good point about it not being crystal clear what a forum mod can and can't do so we'll see about getting some rules posted about that.
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Whenever possible, decisions will instead be taken after a moderator has consulted with one or more of their peers and agreed on whether or not there has been an infraction, how severe it is, and what should be done about it.
Are forum moderators included in this 'peer category'? Cause I happen to remember a certain semi recent incident with a global mod just going "whatever, I do what I want because I feel like I'm more important that you are" and completely bypassing this whole consulting and PMing part. Are these changes made to prevent that from happening again?
Is this system in place to provide more consistency between admins and global moderators?
I really want to focus on the high-level takeaway about systemic dysfunction here. Do you guys understand that, right now, the best way for a problem to be fixed on a project board - really, on any board - with a minimum of fuss and drama is to send a few quiet PMs and pray to god that no global moderator, admin, or HLP functionary gets involved? Because if they do, everybody knows there will be at least a mid-sized explosion and a lot of interpersonal tension (as we see here).
We have a system that makes problems harder to deal with the more the system is engaged. The incentive structure right now is set up such that the best move for project boards with a problem is to try to avoid that problem being passed to 'higher rank' (as Goober puts it).
HLP is first and foremost a pipeline for the development and delivery of content, remember? If content creators cannot work because people are obsessed with the jurisdiction of their spaceships forum badge, that is a serious problem. What can we do to fix that?
Are these changes made to adress this issue? (reading through them im leaning to no)
However, here's what does affect me and most of the boards on HLP. You said hosted projects can no longer moderate how they want and that they must adhere to the global rules. You gave a few passing examples, but I have no ideas what you expect of me on my boards... Especially since you guys came up with or are coming up with all those rules behind closed doors. The root problem from the last outburst that I recall still exists. There is a distinct lack of 'same pageness' with individual board moderators... Except now any higher up moderator can come in and do whatever under the guise of 'we talked about it'. I suppose it's a good thing I trust 1 or 2 of the ad mins :-) .
This concerns me too.
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I think the idea here is that there will be no more hit-and-run moderation by anyone, be they Global or Board moderators. The last problem occurred because two people with board-control powers made two separate decisions, clashed, and because this is HLP, an awful lot of drama followed for what should have taken a short, intelligent conversation.
I'm pretty removed from it all now, I don't have time to moderate and am, strictly speaking, resigned, however, my own thought is that maybe having that conversation before taking action might just cut down on the drama.
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More conversation by mods and admins is definitely good. I'm a little miffed that there are at least two separate chunks of rules aimed at keeping me muzzled, but hey, at least there are some for Lorric.
An official policy that there will be no consistency between punishments will provide grounds for real frustration. I already feel like I'm at risk of a ban for posting in good faith on several topics I'm interested in. The new rules mean that I need to make sure all edge cases are reported so I can understand when action is going to be taken and when it isn't. Is that the intent here? It does at least seem to jive with the request for more reports. Are posts by moderators safe to emulate? Can I insult someone as long as a moderator's used the same wording?
Why is there no formal rule about moderating discussions you're participating in? What kind of recourse do we have when a thread ends up locked while a couple moderators complain about how dreadful everything is?
Unfortunately I think these rules are going to push forum discussion farther along in a direction it's previously tended to go: threads dominated by stubborn, underinformed people who can repeat the same points over and over again no matter what they're told, leading to frustration, irritation, page after page of posts trying to cover the same ground, and (under these new rules) a lot of recrimination for the people most likely to bring substance to a thread. A set of forum rules that sees MP-Ryan banned and Liberator left posting is not a set of forum rules that will provide an interesting culture.
There's also one huge, inherent flaw with the moderation system as it is right now: it rewards sniping. Let's say the issue in question is India vs. Pakistan and it's something a ton of forum members care about. It's easy to slip in a line or two aside about this issue in a place where it doesn't necessarily belong. It's difficult to reply to this point without creating a derail or being accused of soapboxing. This creates incentives for political and personal statements to be made obliquely where they can't be safely or productively engaged.
I'm a member of a number of forums with really, really successful moderation and a culture of agreeable collaboration. They're a lot bigger than HLP, which may have something to do with it, but the tone at the top is also much different - there's no attempt to run moderation by a set of comprehensive rules, and the focus of the moderation team is much less on by-the-line-item enforcement and much more on ensuring that discussion is substantive and interesting. If users post a lot and contribute little, they get banned. Part of my impatience with posting on HLP lies in this difference - the pretense of impartiality and legalism is, I think, actively opposed to successful forums moderation.
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What is the point of giving forum moderators the ability to moderate at all if they will not be included in the discussions that appear to be the desired root of all moderation decisions? It says hosted projects mods are keeping their powers, after all, but that they will not be allowed to participate in such things.
It clearly has use perhaps in internals, but then restrict the powers to internals if that's so valuable.
More seriously, the reason to adopt this system seems to sit with the fact that existing moderators and admins are not trusted to perform these tasks as appropriate already. There is a much simpler and more effective solution to that problem: get new ones. If you have to codify some of this stuff, like the need to recuse yourself from moderating discussion you participate in, the need to engage in discussion before banning, the need to actually inform people that others have been banned (and should be unbanned at a certain date), you have in a real sense already lost.
I share Battuta's concerns on the health of the forum in general, but I'd like to also elaborate on one particular point further. We've gone through several iterations of the problem Batts refers to using Liberator and the moderation has not and does not appear interested in developing an effective reply to it, only allowing it to continue until finally the collective level of forum annoyance causes any thread with that poster in it to devolve into seething rage. High Max, Trashman on his bad days, Kazan, etc. Lorric is on the same road. A majority of problems revolve around such users. Yet HLP is completely uninterested in addressing them as a source of problems, only the individual problems. This is a serious issue because the individual problems frequently don't involve the source, but people reacting to the source.
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(http://images.t-nation.com/forum_images/d/3/d30dd_ORIG-Popcorn_02_Stephen_Colbert.gif)
User was issued a warning for this post. Post adds nothing to the discussion, and is liable to provoke additional drama.
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As I pointed out on IRC, the changes to the guidelines are what you really should be looking at before commenting. High Max for instance wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes with the "HLP is not your blog. HLP is not your Twitter feed." guideline enforced. And even if he got past that, "If you can't shape your thinking into anything coherent, don't post." would clobber him.
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More conversation by mods and admins is definitely good. I'm a little miffed that there are at least two separate chunks of rules aimed at keeping me muzzled, but hey, at least there are some for Lorric.
I wonder what those are that will keep you muzzled.
As for me, yes, I've noticed. But I like the changes very much.
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If you can't shape your thinking into anything coherent, don't post." would clobber him.
Does that mean we're banning wouter, or anyone using Google Translate.
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Lorric is on the same road.
No. Only a very few individuals have taken an unhealthy interest in me.
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I suppose it's a good thing I trust 1 or 2 of the ad mins :-) .
/me checks the memberlist.
You could trust more of them. They've been running this place for the past decade (except rev, who manages the hardware if I remember it right, and Zacam, who got it a few years back).
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Nngh, Hammer's no longer an admin... :blah:
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What is the point of giving forum moderators the ability to moderate at all if they will not be included in the discussions that appear to be the desired root of all moderation decisions? It says hosted projects mods are keeping their powers, after all, but that they will not be allowed to participate in such things.
It clearly has use perhaps in internals, but then restrict the powers to internals if that's so valuable.
It's because a few members think of HLP as a military hierarchy in which they can dickwave their e-power around instead of seeing what things really are. A community forum about a 10+ old spaceship game. I mean hell, look at Goober's view on things:
I want to make one thing clear. Moderating responsibility is delegated on HLP. Project leaders have discretion over their projects, and are encouraged to manage them as they see fit. But Global Moderators, by definition, outrank standard moderators. If a global moderator and a moderator have a conflict, the global moderator takes precedence. In the same way, if an admin and a global moderator have a conflict, the admin takes precedence. A project leader does not have veto power over a global moderator, even within his own project. Although we encourage global moderators to let project moderators handle their problems, if a global moderator sees a problem, he is within his authority to step in.
Goober's idea of a healthy community is to put some people above other people.
But then there is Zacam who has a sane view on things:
Okay, so yes, Global Moderators are supposed to have a more "Global" consciousness of the Forum at large in terms of the over all behaviours and atmosphere for the board at large. Bully for them. That doesn't make them any more or less "Right" when dealing in an already actively moderated area that should grant them ANY exclusivity to their power to "out rank" somebody.
Because a community is not about Rank and Seniority. That's Military. Community is about collaboration and commonality. And discussion regarding that can often be flavorful and colorful and not without its issue, sure. But that is to be expected.
As I said above, there is no consistency and these supposed new 'better' rules don't really provide much clarity either. And my questions about them remain unanswered.
More seriously, the reason to adopt this system seems to sit with the fact that existing moderators and admins are not trusted to perform these tasks as appropriate already. There is a much simpler and more effective solution to that problem: get new ones. If you have to codify some of this stuff, like the need to recuse yourself from moderating discussion you participate in, the need to engage in discussion before banning, the need to actually inform people that others have been banned (and should be unbanned at a certain date), you have in a real sense already lost.
I for one don't trust most of the existing moderators and admins to perform these tasks appropriately. The years spend here have sort of bruised my confidence.
I share Battuta's concerns on the health of the forum in general, but I'd like to also elaborate on one particular point further. We've gone through several iterations of the problem Batts refers to using Liberator and the moderation has not and does not appear interested in developing an effective reply to it, only allowing it to continue until finally the collective level of forum annoyance causes any thread with that poster in it to devolve into seething rage. High Max, Trashman on his bad days, Kazan, etc. Lorric is on the same road. A majority of problems revolve around such users. Yet HLP is completely uninterested in addressing them as a source of problems, only the individual problems. This is a serious issue because the individual problems frequently don't involve the source, but people reacting to the source.
There is also the problem that when there are certain members that are just being a constant source of negativity there is nothing that is being done or under these rules can be done. Since you 'can't take matters into your own hand'. It's okay for certain people to continue being venomous but since there isn't any clear cut rule being violate there is nothing to really use the report button for. If you call them out on such behavior you are actually in violation of the 'no backseat moderating' rule and get punished instead.
/me checks the memberlist.
You could trust more of them. They've been running this place for the past decade
'Running' the place but barely involved with what is going on with the modding scene. At least Fury had the sense to 'step down' when he realized he just didn't had the same level of involvement as he did before.
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There is also the problem that when there are certain members that are just being a constant source of negativity there is nothing that is being done or under these rules can be done. Since you 'can't take matters into your own hand'. It's okay for certain people to continue being venomous but since there isn't any clear cut rule being violate there is nothing to really use the report button for. If you call them out on such behavior you are actually in violation of the 'no backseat moderating' rule and get punished instead.
Hmmm, that's a good point...
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High Max for instance wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes with the "HLP is not your blog. HLP is not your Twitter feed." guideline enforced. And even if he got past that, "If you can't shape your thinking into anything coherent, don't post." would clobber him.
You have a very different memory of High Max. He could shape his thinking into something coherent. It was typically wrong and often repulsive, but it was coherent enough that it could be (pointlessly) engaged with and related to the topic at hand.
See also Trashman, Liberator, and Lorric in GenDisc right now. Threads do not descend into the pit of hell because these people post like it's a blog or twitter feed or their posting is incoherent. It's because people get immensely frustrated with them.
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High Max for instance wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes with the "HLP is not your blog. HLP is not your Twitter feed." guideline enforced. And even if he got past that, "If you can't shape your thinking into anything coherent, don't post." would clobber him.
You have a very different memory of High Max. He could shape his thinking into something coherent. It was typically wrong and often repulsive, but it was coherent enough that it could be (pointlessly) engaged with and related to the topic at hand.
See also Trashman, Liberator, and Lorric in GenDisc right now. Threads do not descend into the pit of hell because these people post like it's a blog or twitter feed or their posting is incoherent. It's because people get immensely frustrated with them.
Oh, I'm so sorry that I have a mind of my own and won't fit into the box you want to put me in.
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High Max for instance wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes with the "HLP is not your blog. HLP is not your Twitter feed." guideline enforced. And even if he got past that, "If you can't shape your thinking into anything coherent, don't post." would clobber him.
You have a very different memory of High Max. He could shape his thinking into something coherent. It was typically wrong and often repulsive, but it was coherent enough that it could be (pointlessly) engaged with and related to the topic at hand.
See also Trashman, Liberator, and Lorric in GenDisc right now. Threads do not descend into the pit of hell because these people post like it's a blog or twitter feed or their posting is incoherent. It's because people get immensely frustrated with them.
Oh, I'm so sorry that I have a mind of my own and won't fit into the box you want to put me in.
This is not the thread for that. Take it elsewhere.
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You have a very different memory of High Max. He could shape his thinking into something coherent. It was typically wrong and often repulsive, but it was coherent enough that it could be (pointlessly) engaged with and related to the topic at hand.
See also Trashman, Liberator, and Lorric in GenDisc right now. Threads do not descend into the pit of hell because these people post like it's a blog or twitter feed or their posting is incoherent. It's because people get immensely frustrated with them.
High Max's posts were frequently off-topic stream of consciousness style posts often about his own life, set off by whatever buzzword was in the topic at hand.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter which of the guidelines you think he'd fall foul of. High Max was one of the individuals everyone had in mind when writing these guidelines. They were specifically designed to deal with people like him. Do you honestly think anyone wants someone like him back?
What you're doing in pointing out exactly why you think the guidelines wouldn't apply to High Max, is actually close to the kind of behaviour that has tied the admins hands when dealing with people like him. Although he was a great example of the sort of person no one wanted on HLP, he never really broke the rules. And because he never broke the rules, no one wanted to ban him, precisely because it would cause stupid forum drama from the people who would complain that the admins exceeded their authority by banning a user simply because they didn't like him. And people would do something very similar to what you're doing by starting an argument about how he didn't break any of the rules.
In the end he was banned for stupid **** like deleting posts. Twice. When no one could complain that he didn't deserve it.
The whole reason for the new guidelines is because we want to establish that a pattern of behaviour can get you in trouble even if no individual post is bad enough to get you thrown out. The problem with chastising someone for a pattern of behaviour is that it swiftly results in the person turning around and saying "I never posted anything bad enough to deserve a ban! User y does the same thing! Mod X has a vendetta against me!" and a whole other litany of whining as they try to absolve themselves of guilt.
Basically if you're repeatedly causing forum issues, you're in danger of it causing you issues. That can be from several things including general nastiness, soapboxing or dragging every interesting thread down to the idiot level you feel comfortable at. The guidelines don't cover every single way you can do that. But they don't need to. We've already said we'll send a PM to someone who is causing enough of a problem.
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We have another High Max, but you do give me some confidence that the gears are at least in motion.
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There are some good concerns being raised here, and I'd like to take a stab at addressing a few of them, as my take on what we're trying to do here. Just in general, if it turns out that some of the specific points of this new initiative wind up causing issues themselves, I think we should be able to look at them as open to revision as necessary.
However, here's what does affect me and most of the boards on HLP. You said hosted projects can no longer moderate how they want and that they must adhere to the global rules. You gave a few passing examples, but I have no ideas what you expect of me on my boards... Especially since you guys came up with or are coming up with all those rules behind closed doors. The root problem from the last outburst that I recall still exists. There is a distinct lack of 'same pageness' with individual board moderators... Except now any higher up moderator can come in and do whatever under the guise of 'we talked about it'. I suppose it's a good thing I trust 1 or 2 of the ad mins :-) .
It's my understanding that we're going to be removing most of the ordinary folder mod positions, since they don't have access to the moderation back-end, and they're largely redundant anyway: most of the global mods/admins are reading most of those folders on a daily basis. In turn, I think we'll be adding a few additional global mods, which should more than make up for things. Of course project leaders will still exist, but with the understanding that they're subject to the same overall moderation guidelines as the rest of the forums are. We're in the process of cooking up something more formal regarding what those guidelines are, so hopefully that will help clear up any additional uncertainty.
As far as project leaders in general go, this is just my personal take on things, but I see them as ideally serving the same role that I have on another forum where I'm active. The position there is tied to individual folders, and those who hold it basically act as caretakers or promoters of those folders: we can change the announcements section, add folder-wide polls, sticky threads, and move/lock threads under limited circumstances. When it comes to actual moderation, though, we can't take any action on our own, but just report the post to the forum mods like everyone else. I think a similar policy would work well on HLP, in that project leaders shouldn't really be dealing with the whole issue of disciplining trouble users: just use the report feature, and let the mods/admins clean things up. I won't deny that there have been issues with this in the past, but I think this new system should alleviate those.
Are forum moderators included in this 'peer category'? Cause I happen to remember a certain semi recent incident with a global mod just going "whatever, I do what I want because I feel like I'm more important that you are" and completely bypassing this whole consulting and PMing part. Are these changes made to prevent that from happening again?
Is this system in place to provide more consistency between admins and global moderators?
One of the main purposes of all of this is to make sure that admins and global moderators are on the same page when there's action that needs to be taken against a particular user. We're making a conscious effort to keep track of what actions are taken against users, and to have more than one voice chime in when action such as warning/monkeying is a possibility. If there's any reason why we feel like we can't make a good call on a certain case, whether because we're part of the thread ourselves or else have some history with the poster, we won't be making the call on it (honestly that's something that most of us have been wary of doing well before now). And we'll make sure to have multiple voices chime in before we handle any situations that aren't so clear-cut. This ties in with the use of the Hammer of Justice account for mod actions: it emphasizes that these aren't individual decisions.
An official policy that there will be no consistency between punishments will provide grounds for real frustration. I already feel like I'm at risk of a ban for posting in good faith on several topics I'm interested in. The new rules mean that I need to make sure all edge cases are reported so I can understand when action is going to be taken and when it isn't. Is that the intent here? It does at least seem to jive with the request for more reports. Are posts by moderators safe to emulate? Can I insult someone as long as a moderator's used the same wording?
I don't think the idea here is that there won't be consistency between punishments; if you got that impression from the guidelines, maybe that section could use a rewrite. If you have two users with similar history and breaking similar rules, they should be receiving pretty much the same consequences. What we're trying to avoid are those cases where someone receives a certain punishment and then complains, "But User X did the same thing, and they weren't warned for it!" There should always be consideration for a user's individual posting history, and just because there's no visible action taken against someone, that doesn't mean they haven't received a PM from the mods warning then about the action...in other words, individual circumstances will always apply. As for the rest of this, I don't think most of the good-faith posts I've seen you make are a real problem, though I think that reporting is always the best option, and that going forward some of the more general comments you've felt the need to make won't be necessary. And in an ideal world, no one should be insulting anyone else, regardless of position (though I can't say I've been innocent of it myself :nervous:); I think we'll all be making a point to watch what we say in the future.
Why is there no formal rule about moderating discussions you're participating in? What kind of recourse do we have when a thread ends up locked while a couple moderators complain about how dreadful everything is?
We do have a stipulation now that we won't be involved in the decision process for threads that we're actively engaged in (unless it's extremely blatant stuff like splitting out a derail), and it's my understanding at least that we're going to strongly avoid trying to get the last word in. I know that I personally don't like to see promising threads wind up being locked because of the negative actions of a few posters.
Unfortunately I think these rules are going to push forum discussion farther along in a direction it's previously tended to go: threads dominated by stubborn, underinformed people who can repeat the same points over and over again no matter what they're told, leading to frustration, irritation, page after page of posts trying to cover the same ground, and (under these new rules) a lot of recrimination for the people most likely to bring substance to a thread. A set of forum rules that sees MP-Ryan banned and Liberator left posting is not a set of forum rules that will provide an interesting culture.
If certain users exhibit a pattern of behavior destructive to good discussions, regardless of whether or not an individual post of theirs breaks a certain rule, we're certainly going to take a serious look at them. As kara pointed out, these guidelines don't necessarily enumerate every single pattern of action that can land a person in trouble. I'd like to think that, collectively, we'll be able to step in when necessary and try to create an environment that fosters good discussion.
There's also one huge, inherent flaw with the moderation system as it is right now: it rewards sniping. Let's say the issue in question is India vs. Pakistan and it's something a ton of forum members care about. It's easy to slip in a line or two aside about this issue in a place where it doesn't necessarily belong. It's difficult to reply to this point without creating a derail or being accused of soapboxing. This creates incentives for political and personal statements to be made obliquely where they can't be safely or productively engaged.
If you see that happening, by all means report it. Off-topic posting is discouraged in general, but when it's done with the malicious intent of dragging another argument where it doesn't belong, that's a pretty clear-cut misstep.
(gonna split this here, because it's already getting crazy long)
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It's because a few members think of HLP as a military hierarchy in which they can dickwave their e-power around instead of seeing what things really are. A community forum about a 10+ old spaceship game...Because a community is not about Rank and Seniority. That's Military. Community is about collaboration and commonality. And discussion regarding that can often be flavorful and colorful and not without its issue, sure. But that is to be expected.
The thing is, pretty much every decently-sized forum out there has some level of hierarchy involved in running it, whether it's as formalized as it is here or not. You're always going to have moderators responsible for keeping the peace and such, and some sort of admin/owner above them setting the general policies and keeping things running; many forums also have some sort of position below mods with more limited responsibilities. Regardless of your personal feelings, under the old system, admins were above global mods, who were above folder mods, who were above ordinary users; that was literally the definition of their roles. We're simplifying things now by essentially eliminating normal folder mods, and making it clear that project leads need to follow the overall forum guidelines, and utilize the report feature appropriately. Being an admin or a global mod doesn't imply that we're "better" than some other poster, just that we have certain responsibilities that we uphold here.
I for one don't trust most of the existing moderators and admins to perform these tasks appropriately. The years spend here have sort of bruised my confidence.
I'm sorry you feel this way, but I hope you would at least give these new guidelines the benefit of the doubt, and see how things go moving forward.
There is also the problem that when there are certain members that are just being a constant source of negativity there is nothing that is being done or under these rules can be done. Since you 'can't take matters into your own hand'. It's okay for certain people to continue being venomous but since there isn't any clear cut rule being violate there is nothing to really use the report button for. If you call them out on such behavior you are actually in violation of the 'no backseat moderating' rule and get punished instead.
I'm kind of repeating myself and kara with this, but someone constantly acting in a negative fashion without justification would certainly be grounds for possible action taken against them. When in doubt, just hit Report, and we'll take a look at what's going on, and consider the poster's history. I think I can speak for everyone in saying that we're not blind to someone being a pain in the ass for no reason.
'Running' the place but barely involved with what is going on with the modding scene. At least Fury had the sense to 'step down' when he realized he just didn't had the same level of involvement as he did before.
See I strongly disagree with this sentiment, because it implies that those of us who aren't modders don't have anything to contribute here. I often get the impression that a lot of creative types can't appreciate this, but not everyone is capable of generating new content out of nothing; it's not a question of lacking certain technical skills, but of simply not being particularly creative in the first place. I don't have any spaceship designs in my head that I want to realize, or any stories that I want to tell via FRED. That's just not me. However, I greatly enjoying experiencing the creative efforts of other people and responding to them about what they make. Just because someone can't make a movie or a sculpture doesn't mean they can't be entertained by them and critique them. After all, if the only people around here were content creators, the only ones who would play your own creations would be other creators, which seems rather insular. I personally look on my role as global mod here as something that I myself can do to tangibly benefit the community by utilizing my own skill-set, and I feel as much a part of the community as anyone even without a list of accomplishments under my name.
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The problem is that moderation by the top-tier admins/moderators is handled differently within different projects. Someone being a dick on Wings of Dawn isn't going to get any real attention (or, at least, they haven't in the past) because none of the moderators or admins play or give a **** about Wings of Dawn.
The task of trying to get the community involved in each others' work in a real collaborative sense - advertising for other peoples' projects, drawing attention to things beyond 'I will use this in my mod, Gigacock of Shiva' - has basically fallen to Axem and, on occasion, myself. The admins and global moderators of this board are for a large part either not involved in FreeSpace or not involved in the current community beyond their own projects; I think BW and The_E are the sole exceptions, though I might be missing someone.
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Just because someone can't make a movie or a sculpture doesn't mean they can't be entertained by them and critique them. After all, if the only people around here were content creators, the only ones who would play your own creations would be other creators, which seems rather insular. I personally look on my role as global mod here as something that I myself can do to tangibly benefit the community by utilizing my own skill-set, and I feel as much a part of the community as anyone even without a list of accomplishments under my name.
I think even by the lesser standards of "engaged with the community as a whole" most of the existing structure would fail. There's little visible indication outside of Axem, BW, and The_E (and sometimes Goober, I'll give him that much) that most moderators/admins actually consume content that's coming out.
We used to joke about how Karaj was a respected authority on the workings of FRED, but had not released any missions since the VBB era. If you were to make that joke about some of the people who run the forum and replace "released missions" with "played missions and commented on them since the last Ransom release"...well, you begin to see why we might worry.
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Just because someone can't make a movie or a sculpture doesn't mean they can't be entertained by them and critique them. After all, if the only people around here were content creators, the only ones who would play your own creations would be other creators, which seems rather insular. I personally look on my role as global mod here as something that I myself can do to tangibly benefit the community by utilizing my own skill-set, and I feel as much a part of the community as anyone even without a list of accomplishments under my name.
I think even by the lesser standards of "engaged with the community as a whole" most of the existing structure would fail. There's little visible indication outside of Axem and The_E (and sometimes Goober, I'll give him that much) that most moderators/admins actually consume content that's coming out.
We used to joke about how Karaj was a respected authority on the workings of FRED, but had not released any missions since the VBB era. If you were to make that joke about some of the people who run the forum and replace "released missions" with "played missions and commented on them since the last Ransom release"...well, you begin to see why we might worry.
Um... hello? :blah: In the last little while (don't know the exact span of time) I've played (to one extent or another) Luyten Civil War, Shadow Genesis, Dimensional Eclipse, WiH Act 3, Mephistophele and Diaspora. Plus probably others I can't think of right now.
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Um... hello? :blah: In the last little while (don't know the exact span of time) I've played (to one extent or another) Luyten Civil War, Shadow Genesis, Dimensional Eclipse, WiH Act 3, Mephistophele and Diaspora. Plus probably others I can't think of right now.
My sincerest apologies, sir, I do recall your postings on at least three of those. I have no excuse and shall rectify the list.
EDIT: For the record I don't consider myself terribly good about this anymore either; there was a time when I was, but I haven't played Mephistophele or Luyten Civil War myself.
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The problem is that moderation by the top-tier admins/moderators is handled differently within different projects. Someone being a dick on Wings of Dawn isn't going to get any real attention (or, at least, they haven't in the past) because none of the moderators or admins play or give a **** about Wings of Dawn.
The changes mean that now it's more likely that people will say "I've not been following the thread, but X has been a dick in the same way in the past and it looks like he's being one here too"
Previously it was much too easy to simply pass the buck to someone else who did care about Wings of Dawn. Yes, that's partly due to the moderators not playing Wings of Dawn but I'd say it has more to do with Spoon's hostile reaction to anyone moderating him or his forum.
Which brings me to my next point actually.
I think part of the reason for the lower interaction with the forum is cause of all the forum drama. I can think of several moderators who don't interact with the community much any more because every time they do they become a target. You may have noticed that virtually all of the admins avoid Gen Dis. I'm probably the only one who posts there every day.
The tone of the community on this thread towards the moderation staff has been pretty hostile. It's hardly surprising that only a couple of moderators have bothered to comment on this thread so far. And it's hardly surprising that the moderators prefer to do their own thing rather than interact with the community.
That's one of the reasons behind going over to using The Hammer. Even if we tell people that it's not Goober who banned you, but the decision of several moderators, there are still people who will blame Goober. Hopefully removing that animosity will result in the moderators being more willing to interact with the community. But even if it results in them just blaming "The Man" for punishing them rather than holding a personal grudge against people who were just doing their job, it's progress.
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I suspect most people will just assume that Goober banned them (using the Hammer). Nobody thinks it's a real separate person.
I also wish you'd be kinder to Spoon. He put up with one of the most exasperating, hostile subforums entirely on his own with no support or even acknowledgment from HLP mods and admins for...months? More than a year? Years? And when global mods/admins did finally get involved in his forum, it was uniformly a really negative experience for him. Can you blame him for feeling some resentment there?
If the kind of posts Spoon had to deal with had been transplanted to ST:R or Diaspora they would've been cause for action. All Spoon could do was lock threads and attempt escalations that were ignored.
On the topic of general hostility towards mods: I think this is because moderation on HLP is not very effective. I know this is a harsh verdict, but again, I'm active in a couple really big communities where the mods and admins take much more active, much harsher roles - a week off for a 'tl;dr' is standard, a ban for a racist slur without any warnings pretty common - but although the community is far larger and more diverse, the mods and admins are more trusted and respected, discussions are of an enormously higher quality, aimless flamewars and stupid circlejerks unheard of, and everybody* just gets along admirably.
Some of this may be that the mods and admins do not generally get involved in discussions they're going to moderate, and don't moderate discussions they're involved in. Some of it may be that they're generally funny, good-natured, and confident - they take pains to keep their personal lives separate and private so we can, well, take them more or less seriously. (The exceptions have by now been mocked out of the house.) Mostly I think it's the fact that there's a clear, top-down focus not on rules enforcement but on cultivating content-rich, funny, easygoing discussions on interesting topics. That kind of proactive policy might work here.
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The problem is that moderation by the top-tier admins/moderators is handled differently within different projects. Someone being a dick on Wings of Dawn isn't going to get any real attention (or, at least, they haven't in the past) because none of the moderators or admins play or give a **** about Wings of Dawn.
I'll freely admit that WoD turned into a bad situation, and that it was a folder I've generally avoided since I haven't played it yet. (I have a pretty huge FS backlog, which I have trouble getting to because of the pretty huge Steam backlog...you get the idea.) There were a number of factors going on there, but I think one that bears mentioning is the fact that I can't remember seeing a single report from that folder for months. That button is there for a reason; we all get an e-mail when someone uses it. Even if I wasn't reading the folder, if I saw multiple reports coming in from it, I definitely would have taken a look. I didn't even know there were any issues going on there until the whole thing blew up publicly. Hopefully that's something that we can avoid repeating with this new initiative.
The task of trying to get the community involved in each others' work in a real collaborative sense - advertising for other peoples' projects, drawing attention to things beyond 'I will use this in my mod, Gigacock of Shiva' - has basically fallen to Axem and, on occasion, myself. The admins and global moderators of this board are for a large part either not involved in FreeSpace or not involved in the current community beyond their own projects; I think BW and The_E are the sole exceptions, though I might be missing someone.
You're right that this is something we need to work on, and Axem in particular deserves all the credit in the world for writing up these amazing newsletters. If I can get myself playing regularly again, I most definitely want to get involved in the feedback side of things, and hopefully pimp as much awesome stuff as I can. If you can think of anything specific beyond simply playing things that could happen on a mod/admin level, just say the word and I'll do my best to help out.
(also I would play the **** out of "Gigacock of Shiva")
Regarding some of your next post that snuck in ahead of me, when you refer to these other communities, are they more general or issue-oriented forums, or are they cases like ours that are primarily focused on a specific fandom? I mean I'm certainly not denying that a more hands-on approach can produce a better level of discussion (one of my other haunts makes this place look like a scholars' debate), but I have to wonder if that could work particularly well for us as a whole. Most folders here cover the FS series itself or the mods that have arisen from it, with many of them being primarily technical in nature. The only place we deal with the sort of discussions you're talking about are one or two folders down at the bottom of the forum index, which as kara mentioned many of the mods and admins don't even actively participate in anymore because of their traditionally toxic environment. (No, the irony of that self-perpetuating cycle doesn't escape me.) If you're proposing that we treat just GenDisc and Gaming with that level of control, that's something maybe worth considering, but I think a more hands-off approach is in keeping with the majority of our folders here.
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I suspect most people will just assume that Goober banned them (using the Hammer). Nobody thinks it's a real separate person.
The point is that no one will know it was Goober. If an admin posts using his own account, everyone blames the admin. If an admin posts using the Hammer, maybe you can guess who did it, maybe you can't. Add the fact that more than one person is responsible for the ban and you can't simply shoot the messenger any more.
I also wish you'd be kinder to Spoon. He put up with one of the most exasperating, hostile subforums entirely on his own with no support or even acknowledgment from HLP mods and admins for...months? More than a year? Years? And when global mods/admins did finally get involved in his forum, it was uniformly a really negative experience for him. Can you blame him for feeling some resentment there?
If the kind of posts Spoon had to deal with had been transplanted to ST:R or Diaspora they would've been cause for action. All Spoon could do was lock threads and attempt escalations that were ignored.
As has been pointed out before he didn't ask for help. You can't complain about having to do everything alone if you choose to do everything alone. The point of the changes are to discourage forum mods from trying to do it all themselves. I'm happy to discuss with Spoon how to better moderate the WoD forum and always have been. But if he wants to act resentful towards the moderators, that's only going to have a negative result for his forum. The point of the changes is to do things better. But that's a two way street. WoD's moderation issues are not all the fault of the HLP staff.
On the topic of general hostility towards mods: I think this is because moderation on HLP is not very effective. I know this is a harsh verdict, but again, I'm active in a couple really big communities where the mods and admins take much more active, much harsher roles - a week off for a 'tl;dr' is standard, a ban for a racist slur without any warnings pretty common - but although the community is far larger and more diverse, the mods and admins are more trusted and respected, discussions are of an enormously higher quality, aimless flamewars and stupid circlejerks unheard of, and everybody* just gets along admirably.
I'd quite happily hand out bans for that sort of behaviour but people get pissy about the mods being too draconian whenever we try.
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As has been pointed out before he didn't ask for help. You can't complain about having to do everything alone if you choose to do everything alone. The point of the changes are to discourage forum mods from trying to do it all themselves. I'm happy to discuss with Spoon how to better moderate the WoD forum and always have been. But if he wants to act resentful towards the moderators, that's only going to have a negative result for his forum. The point of the changes is to do things better. But that's a two way street. WoD's moderation issues are not all the fault of the HLP staff.
I think he may well have asked for help (the escalations I talked about before), but even so, it just doesn't seem to me that there was any incentive to do that. There was no policy in place to help him out, no sign that the allegedly global moderators were paying any attention to this weird mod they hadn't played, and no reason to believe they'd necessarily take him at his word about the need for action. When a global mod did eventually get involved the experience was not positive for Spoon - he was ignored and overridden, and, ironically, the actionable issue was one he'd suffered himself a few times with no higher intervention.
The issues may not all be the fault of the HLP staff, but acknowledging that they were in part the fault of the HLP staff couldn't hurt. I acknowledge that you've done that here to a degree.
In any case the WoD forum's issues are now to a significant degree all of HLP's issues, given the current problems with holding any kind of thread in GenDisc or Gaming Discussion.
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All I'm suggesting here is to maybe cut Spoon some slack if he wants to be suspicious of broader moderation. There are other reasonable and well-liked parties who can speak to this issue if they're so inclined.
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I suspect most people will just assume that Goober banned them (using the Hammer). Nobody thinks it's a real separate person.
Probably. And if anything at all happens in the WoD forum, Spoon will assume it was me even if it wasn't. That doesn't change the fact that the new policies mean that actions are being and will be taken based on consensus - actions wont be the result of a single mod's or admin's opinion/decision, but multiple opinions. If several of us agree that action needs to be taken, it will be taken. This process has already started working, and I expect we'll streamline it over the next few months.
You've also regularly brought up the fact that you're on several other forums with much stricter moderation. I'm sure that works great for them, but that's not how we work here, not least because we're a small community. We can't ban people for slight perceived provocations because, frankly, we would have lost some really good and/or really productive community members if we did that, yourself included most likely (as well as, top of my head, Cobra, Spoon, Topace, Trashman, NGTM-1R, MatththeGeek and probably dozens of others I can't think of straight up). Our focus here is producing content for FS. That has to be our priority, and if that means taking a less rigid approach to moderating than you seem to be advocating, then so be it. What we can instead do is try to make the moderating at least consistent, and the best way i know to do that is to aim for a consensus, so no one persons bad day or dislike for any individual member will result in over or underwhelming responses.
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User was issued a warning for this post. Post adds nothing to the discussion, and is liable to provoke additional drama.
I suspect this was done through the moderator warning system of SMF, which does exactly nothing to let the user in question know something was in fact done. If I hadn't noticed the edited post, I wouldn't have known either. I suggest you revise your guidelines to notify users.
At least Fury had the sense to 'step down' when he realized he just didn't had the same level of involvement as he did before.
Actually I stepped down because I got sick and tired of how HLP was managed. And yes, I did try to shake things up. Didn't work.
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I really appreciate it Battuta. But as demonstrated here and before this, its completely useless. Karajorma will continue being a tremendous jerk that will shift the blame solely onto me forever. While I only got negative **** from HLP 'staff' he was carving out this own nice little diaspora place with his admin powers. Everything that ever happened was my fault alone, nobody bothered to give a **** and because I didn't click the report button I am solely to blame. **** this **** and **** that retarded stick up the ass logic.
Yeah, I feel more than a little bit of resentment and I'm long done trying to argue about it since its pointless.
And now as a last final '**** you' the HLP has decided that having to deal with board moderators is too much of a hassle and they might aswell not exist. Cheers guys, really smooth.
Probably. And if anything at all happens in the WoD forum, Spoon will assume it was me even if it wasn't.
Stop being a dumbass, seriously.
You ****ed up once and you ****ed up badly. You refuse to admit that and will turn that **** around on me because your pride was hurt.
I'll freely admit that WoD turned into a bad situation, and that it was a folder I've generally avoided since I haven't played it yet.
Says ever admin and mod ever.
See I strongly disagree with this sentiment, because it implies that those of us who aren't modders don't have anything to contribute here. I often get the impression that a lot of creative types can't appreciate this, but not everyone is capable of generating new content out of nothing; it's not a question of lacking certain technical skills, but of simply not being particularly creative in the first place. I don't have any spaceship designs in my head that I want to realize, or any stories that I want to tell via FRED. That's just not me. However, I greatly enjoying experiencing the creative efforts of other people and responding to them about what they make. Just because someone can't make a movie or a sculpture doesn't mean they can't be entertained by them and critique them. After all, if the only people around here were content creators, the only ones who would play your own creations would be other creators, which seems rather insular. I personally look on my role as global mod here as something that I myself can do to tangibly benefit the community by utilizing my own skill-set, and I feel as much a part of the community as anyone even without a list of accomplishments under my name.
Well I don't really see you guys contributing much of anything. Why is it that Axem who is not only releasing tons of high quality stuff is also doing things on the board what one could consider to be the job of the people 'running' HLP (newsletter). I don't see any involvement here from admins or mods. There is absolutely zero drive to make HLP a fun place to be, coming from the staff.
Or does one have to be 'the creative type' to do things like that?
Yeah, I'm mad bro.
I'd be concerned about turning the whole staff against me, but its already clear that this is already the case. So I got nothing to lose there.
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I think even by the lesser standards of "engaged with the community as a whole" most of the existing structure would fail. There's little visible indication outside of Axem, BW, and The_E (and sometimes Goober, I'll give him that much) that most moderators/admins actually consume content that's coming out.
We used to joke about how Karaj was a respected authority on the workings of FRED, but had not released any missions since the VBB era. If you were to make that joke about some of the people who run the forum and replace "released missions" with "played missions and commented on them since the last Ransom release"...well, you begin to see why we might worry.
I already thought this was a concern some years ago and I was sort of miffed with the complete cold shoulder I got from the HLP staff since the release of WoD.
Things have not changed at all. Most of the HLP staff are a bunch of old members that are completely unmotivated to do, create or play anything.
Of course, if you ask Karajorma he'll tell that this isnt a bad thing at all! Because hurpdurp.
I'm sorry you feel this way, but I hope you would at least give these new guidelines the benefit of the doubt, and see how things go moving forward.
I'd give it any kind of benefit of a doubt if the staff would admit they ****ed up and would apologize for it. Promise to try to do better in the future and not **** me over for their mistakes.
These new guidelines and the reactions of the staff here are giving me anything but new confidence.
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You've also regularly brought up the fact that you're on several other forums with much stricter moderation. I'm sure that works great for them, but that's not how we work here, not least because we're a small community. We can't ban people for slight perceived provocations because, frankly, we would have lost some really good and/or really productive community members if we did that, yourself included most likely (as well as, top of my head, Cobra, Spoon, Topace, Trashman, NGTM-1R, MatththeGeek and probably dozens of others I can't think of straight up). Our focus here is producing content for FS. That has to be our priority, and if that means taking a less rigid approach to moderating than you seem to be advocating, then so be it. What we can instead do is try to make the moderating at least consistent, and the best way i know to do that is to aim for a consensus, so no one persons bad day or dislike for any individual member will result in over or underwhelming responses.
Being proactive about creating good discussions doesn't have to mean banning content creators at the drop of a hat. There are a lot of other tools available to you. And in some cases, well, the disruptive elements...clearly are not content creators.
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But in some cases they are. And I'm certainly not in favour of creating a two-tier system where the content creators are allowed to be more disruptive than other people.
As I've pointed out many times in the past, the same people who want the admins to do more to deal with troublemakers are often troublemakers themselves. And the first ones to create forum drama the second an admin decides to deal with them.
I'd give it any kind of benefit of a doubt if the staff would admit they ****ed up and would apologize for it. Promise to try to do better in the future and not **** me over for their mistakes.
These new guidelines and the reactions of the staff here are giving me anything but new confidence.
The entire point of these changes is to try to deal with the issues that came up in the past.
If you really want to make a change, you'd get down off that high horse and acknowledge that perhaps there were also some things you could have done better in order to not have ended up with the WoD forums being in such a mess. No one is saying the admins were blameless. If we were saying that we wouldn't be changing things. But acting like there's nothing you could do to improve the situation isn't going to help much.
You're actually doing a very good job of showing exactly why the admins gave WoD such a wide berth. Why on Earth would anyone on the admin staff want to interact with you in any way when this is the result of us trying to make HLP better? Why on Earth would I want to interact with you when you can't even be civil towards me?
So it's up to you. You can be part of the process or you can complain and moan about the past. But should the changes that occur without you bite you on the arse down the line, I doubt you'll get much sympathy over it.
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And I'm certainly not in favour of creating a two-tier system where the content creators are allowed to be more disruptive than other people.
Well you bloody should be. Not because people should be allowed to stir up more **** than others but because HLP should treasure content creators. Cause without them there would be no point to this site. Other wise I'd just be old grumpy&cynical men in GD.
I know you tend to forget this, because you aren't actually really involved in much at all.
And the first ones to create forum drama the second an admin decides to deal with them.
Probably because the way things are 'dealt' with are perceived to be unfair in the eyes of the one getting dealt with? The fact that consistency in dealing with things has been **** awful in the past?
The entire point of these changes is to try to deal with the issues that came up in the past.
Yeah and I know exactly in what kind of warped way.
When Black wolf ****ed up his moderating and started threating about how he would see all of my forum management rights revoked this was exactly because of the dumb hierarchial ideas that float around. He was in the wrong, his pride got hurt because he felt he was automatically in the right because he 'outranks me'.
These changes in the rules are there so to 'deal with these issues'. Translation: So global mods can 'legally' outveto everything because the rules says so.
Now I really ****ing hope I'm going to be proven wrong on that translation and that things will actually get resolved good and proper through communication and PM's but I have no faith in that left. Because in the end the staff remains the same old people who openly complain in a closed thread on how terrible everything is.
If you really want to make a change, you'd get down off that high horse and acknowledge that perhaps there were also some things you could have done better in order to not have ended up with the WoD forums being in such a mess. No one is saying the admins were blameless. If we were saying that we wouldn't be changing things. But acting like there's nothing you could do to improve the situation isn't going to help much.
You're the one acting like the staff are the ones that are blameless. That they were 'completely in their right to avoid doing their job in the WoD forum because clearly I am such a jerk'. Right?
No, YOU get off that highhorse. You are the most arrogant person on this forum so don't ****ing lecture others on that.
I'm more than willing to learn from mistakes and I've learned a lot good lessons from all of this. What I am not willing to do is see you on your high horse repeately pinning all the blame on me without a shred of willingness to admit wrongdoings yourself.
You're actually doing a very good job of showing exactly why the admins gave WoD such a wide berth. Why on Earth would anyone on the admin staff want to interact with you in any way when this is the result of us trying to make HLP better?
Oh geez, I don't know. Maybe because you are like a couple of years LATE? And I've had a lot of time of getting really cynical with HLP's bad moderating? And there is absolutely no remose whatsoever on the staff's part? The fact that you are ****ing blaming me for everything?
What do you expect? A ****ing medal and flowers from me? It's the **** like this that upsets me so much and this should be blindingly obvious to anyone with a shred of common sense and humanity. But you are so far removed from everything that you simply cannot grasp this simple concept. Don't try to sweep it all under the rug and tell me to get over it.
So it's up to you. You can be part of the process or you can complain and moan about the past. But should the changes that occur without you bite you on the arse down the line, I doubt you'll get much sympathy over it.
No its up to you. You guys prove that you actually understand what has gone wrong and is still going wrong right here in this thread. I can and will complain and moan about the past because I don't see that you guys have actually learned some real lessons out of it yet. Changing a few rules here and there in such a vague matter that people here that are only raising questions, is not promising at all.
Removing the relevance of board moderators without having any kind of real intention of having the staff actually get involved is just plain bad.
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Why on Earth would I want to interact with you when you can't even be civil towards me?
I'll answer this one point though.
And I'm certainly not in favour of creating a two-tier system where the content creators are allowed to be more disruptive than other people.
Well you bloody should be. Not because people should be allowed to stir up more **** than others but because HLP should treasure content creators.
Given that you've made long rants in the past about no one playing your content, what good is it to treasure the content creators if doing so drives away the people who use it?
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You're actually doing a very good job of showing exactly why the admins gave WoD such a wide berth. Why on Earth would anyone on the admin staff want to interact with you in any way when this is the result of us trying to make HLP better? Why on Earth would I want to interact with you when you can't even be civil towards me?
So it's up to you. You can be part of the process or you can complain and moan about the past. But should the changes that occur without you bite you on the arse down the line, I doubt you'll get much sympathy over it.
Come on, this is retroactive mythmaking. The admins gave WoD a wide berth simply because they didn't pay any attention to it. There was no reason for the admins to avoid the board at the time, no major issues or arguments; it simply did not get attention. The bad blood came well after that.
e: Seriously, on the Spoon issue...bear in mind that he suffered through at least one (more than one?) user who simply came into his forum to tell him how awful he was, how terrible everything he'd made was, and then pursued the grudge so far it actually led to a parody campaign.
How long would that kind of behavior have lasted in a subforum with active moderation or an admin on the project team? I really can't blame him for feeling like he was just thrown to the wolves. And then the first moment someone in his forum drops a nasty aside - and I agree it was nasty and unnecessary - about someone else's campaign, the whole thread gets locked! So it's not just that he was thrown to the wolves; people were paying enough attention to spot negativity. They just didn't do anything when the negativity was about Spoon.
Given that you've made long rants in the past about no one playing your content, what good is it to treasure the content creators if doing so drives away the people who use it?
This too seems really disingenuous to me. Spoon's major conflicts have been with another campaign designer (TopAce) and with the admins after a huge failure to communicate in his project board. More broadly than that, I don't think we've had any real drama outside of GenDisc and Gaming Disc since Mobius and, later, TopAce. I don't think you can make the claim that any content creators have been particularly disruptive to the user level of the community.
I'm really troubled by the way this feedback is being handled. Sure, Spoon's angry, but...it seems to me that the tone of these changes, and the tone of the reaction to the feedback, is too focused on reaction and covering. I'd focus on three points in particular:
- The effort to depersonalize mod/admin decisions
- The mournful refrain that pops up again and again: 'because it's HLP, there was drama'
- The confusion as to why many of the people calling for action against troublemakers are troublemakers
On point one - it shouldn't matter whether a decision can be connected to a particular admin. I understand the motivation behind action here, I don't think it's hugely objectionable, but I do think it's a bandage on the wrong wound. The admins shouldn't have to give a **** if people are mad about their decisions, because they should be making good decisions, decisions that lead to a more positive, functional climate. If they're not making those decisions, they should step down. I'm not saying the admins need to step down - I think they do a pretty decent job, all in all, though the global mod team is less effective. All I'm saying is that the end goal of moderation and admin action should be a civil, constructive tone, rather than a more effective system of punishment.
There is nothing essential to HLP, except possibly the color scheme, that creates drama. The problem is that mods and admins have been slow and inconsistent to act, and that the focus of the forum guidelines - then and now - gives neither guidance nor power to proactive moderation. The only person who's ever tried it was Unknown Target and holy **** was he bad at it. I hesitate to resort to the 'ounce of prevention' cliche, but, well, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Identifying problems early, taking gentle action (PMs, communication) with clear signposts to sort them out, and generally making sure that reasonable people can post without frustration will prevent drama. Waiting until everything's up at a boil and then coming down on everyone involved like a ton of bricks only creates bad blood and mistrust.
The entire forum starts to feel like a honeypot. Post about an issue? Get engaged with a topic? Ha ha, sucker! You'll have to deal with today's TrashMan or Liberator, today's freakout in Blue Planet about how Muslims are evil or tirade in Wings of Dawn about how this is GAIJIN FALSE ANIME or baffling misogynist in Diaspora telling you how to be a real man, and once you're angry at him, we'll ban you both!
That leads into my last point: if it feels like a large number of the most frequent posters - and I don't want to name the whole roster, but I'll happily include myself among them - are themselves troublemakers, consider this. if you're posting on a forum a lot, you're clearly engaged with it. You care about contributing to it, you get angry at its problems. When the forum mods and admins can't effectively solve those problems, they stop seeming like authorities who can be trusted or respected. Look at how many posts intelligent people - MP-Ryan, The_E or for instance - threw at Liberator before he got political prisonered, or at High Max before he finally got some time off. It rapidly begins to feel like the only way to contain these awful, awful posters, people who make the forums basically unreadable, is just to grind them into submission yourself.
It's not just a climate that seems to reward recrimination and punishment more than contribution and thought. It's a climate that incentivizes the thoughtful contributor to become an angry troll, because that's the only tool available to keep the unbearably bad posters in check.
I understand this thread is already full of attacks, that egos are involved on all sides, that it's really hard to swallow pride and back down. But please take this post as heartfelt feedback. I'll try to get someone who people see as a neutral positive party to read it over and back me up or caveat it.
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hahahaha I can't believe I'm invoking such a dumb, dumb example, but there's that story going around about alternative discipline in schools - sitting a kid down and asking 'What's wrong? You seem really keyed up. How can we make things better?' as opposed to slapping them with punishments.
Obviously this isn't going to work universally, but I feel like we spend so much time on jabs and ripostes - seriously, the entire admin and global mod team is scared of modding gendisc because people might be mean to them? - that a little more focus on communication wouldn't hurt. There are a lot of grudges and generally they seem to get worse, not better.
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e: Seriously, on the Spoon issue...bear in mind that he suffered through at least one (more than one?) user who simply came into his forum to tell him how awful he was, how terrible everything he'd made was, and then pursued the grudge so far it actually led to a parody campaign.
One of those.
One person who was talking openly about how to plan the kidnap and rape of one of his characters, and then went on to draw one of his characters bound and crying with rather insulting stuff scrawled on her skin. (Did I mention this person still posts on HLP regularly? It's Lorric.)
One person who came in and trolled badly a couple times but has been immensely helpful in promoting the mod since. (Hi Battuta.)
Three supportive people. (Sparda, Quanto, redsniper.)
One supportive person who can be kind of an asshole. (Me.)
Andrewofdoom and Droid, who I'm not really sure how to classify.
That was pretty much the regulars.
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Given that you've made long rants in the past about no one playing your content, what good is it to treasure the content creators if doing so drives away the people who use it?
Since this doesn't happen or has ever happened, its very good?
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hahahaha I can't believe I'm invoking such a dumb, dumb example, but there's that story going around about alternative discipline in schools - sitting a kid down and asking 'What's wrong? You seem really keyed up. How can we make things better?' as opposed to slapping them with punishments.
Obviously this isn't going to work universally, but I feel like we spend so much time on jabs and ripostes - seriously, the entire admin and global mod team is scared of modding gendisc because people might be mean to them? - that a little more focus on communication wouldn't hurt. There are a lot of grudges and generally they seem to get worse, not better.
hahahaha - this the style of approach I try to use with my kids, its very much "in favour" for child raising as a better discipline system than punishment-focused discipline (and in my experience, much harder to do, although that might also be a product of my own upbringing which was firmly in the punishment-focused camp) . Obviously a parent/child relationship is very different to a admin/mod/member relationship, but I really feel that this would a good. This isn't advocating a soft hands-off approach, because it takes a lot of persistence, focus & discipline to set the boundaries, enforce those boundaries, ignore the blowback & anger you *will* receive as a result, and then follow through with the consequences where behaviour does not improve. Focus on the education & they can (hopefully) be a productive member. Focus on the punishment and it just creates anger & resentment.
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Come on, this is retroactive mythmaking. The admins gave WoD a wide berth simply because they didn't pay any attention to it. There was no reason for the admins to avoid the board at the time, no major issues or arguments; it simply did not get attention. The bad blood came well after that.
I'm not saying Wings of Dawn was ignored because of Spoon's actions. I'm saying his actions made a bad situation worse. I'm saying his actions now are still making the situation worse because instead of trying to engage with the admins he'd rather complain about the past. It's a golden opportunity and he's blowing it.
e: Seriously, on the Spoon issue...bear in mind that he suffered through at least one (more than one?) user who simply came into his forum to tell him how awful he was, how terrible everything he'd made was, and then pursued the grudge so far it actually led to a parody campaign.
As is continually being pointed out, he bears part of the blame for that. As do all the regular posters who didn't report it. I've repeatedly said that the admins aren't blameless either. But if he wants to lay all the blame on the admins he is flat out wrong. And he's going to have exactly the same issues under the new system because with every single post he's making the admins want to interact with him less.
How long would that kind of behavior have lasted in a subforum with active moderation or an admin on the project team? I really can't blame him for feeling like he was just thrown to the wolves. And then the first moment someone in his forum drops a nasty aside - and I agree it was nasty and unnecessary - about someone else's campaign, the whole thread gets locked! So it's not just that he was thrown to the wolves; people were paying enough attention to spot negativity. They just didn't do anything when the negativity was about Spoon.
This is pretty much just as disingenuous as what you're complaining about. It could just as easily be that the first time someone bothers with Spoon's forum they happen across that post and took action. Or more likely it could be that for once someone pointed out that there was a post that was breaking HLP's rules.
This too seems really disingenuous to me. Spoon's major conflicts have been with another campaign designer (TopAce) and with the admins after a huge failure to communicate in his project board. More broadly than that, I don't think we've had any real drama outside of GenDisc and Gaming Disc since Mobius and, later, TopAce. I don't think you can make the claim that any content creators have been particularly disruptive to the user level of the community.
This tangent occurred as a result of your post about banning people for posting TL;DR etc and relates to your call for an increase in harsher measures for infractions. Are you telling me that there aren't content creators who wouldn't be affected by that? Are you honestly expecting me to believe that there wouldn't be fall out if we were to ban Spoon for the personal attacks he made earlier in the thread even though those are very clearly against the rules on HLP?
Any attempt at harsher moderation would drive people out of the community. My comments about a two-tier system relate to the fact that I have no interest in bringing in a system where actions are inconsistent because we don't want to ban content creators for the same actions we ban everyone else for. I'm dead set against doing that, and I can't see any reason why anyone sensible would be in favour of it.
All I'm saying is that the end goal of moderation and admin action should be a civil, constructive tone, rather than a more effective system of punishment.
I don't disagree with that. Which is why I keep stating that the guidelines are far more important than the new policy. Unfortunately all anyone wants to talk about is the new policy.
On point one - it shouldn't matter whether a decision can be connected to a particular admin. I understand the motivation behind action here, I don't think it's hugely objectionable, but I do think it's a bandage on the wrong wound. The admins shouldn't have to give a **** if people are mad about their decisions, because they should be making good decisions, decisions that lead to a more positive, functional climate. If they're not making those decisions, they should step down. I'm not saying the admins need to step down - I think they do a pretty decent job, all in all, though the global mod team is less effective.
I don't know if you've noticed that I'm one of the few admins who still posts in Gen Dis. Most of the other admins give it a wide berth because they're sick of the drama it causes and they're sick of the personal attacks they get when they deal with the drama. That doesn't mean that the others admins won't do their jobs when it comes to moderation, but it does mean that they interact with the forum much less than they would otherwise.
We're here on a thread about how to improve HLP for everyone and I'm the only admin posting, why? Cause no one else wants to turn up and have people like Spoon throw **** at them.
And then the same people causing the problem complain that the admins don't want to engage with them. Is that such a surprise? When Spoon claims I'm not a content provider do you think that makes me more likely to want to code Wings of Dawn features? When he calls me a jerk, does that make it more likely I'm going to do things to help him? Or does it make it more likely that I'm simply going to spend my time on Diaspora instead? Notice that many of the admins who are supposedly not proactive used to be much more active in the community.
When you're complaining that the person who wrote the original Freespace FAQ isn't active in the community, maybe you need to listen to him when he says why.
Identifying problems early, taking gentle action (PMs, communication) with clear signposts to sort them out, and generally making sure that reasonable people can post without frustration will prevent drama. Waiting until everything's up at a boil and then coming down on everyone involved like a ton of bricks only creates bad blood and mistrust.
A main reason for the guideline and policy changes was to point out that we would be sending PMs to disruptive members much earlier. I suggest you pull up the new guidelines and compare them against the old and see if you can't see a very large shift in tone as to what is considered actionable. Remember that you are talking to the same admin who came down on Trashman more than any other and who finally banned him and Liberator from Gen Dis. I would have done it sooner too but the simple fact is that the old rules didn't let me and every attempt to change the rules (such as this one) is greeted with more ****-flinging.
That leads into my last point: if it feels like a large number of the most frequent posters - and I don't want to name the whole roster, but I'll happily include myself among them - are themselves troublemakers, consider this. if you're posting on a forum a lot, you're clearly engaged with it. You care about contributing to it, you get angry at its problems. When the forum mods and admins can't effectively solve those problems, they stop seeming like authorities who can be trusted or respected. Look at how many posts intelligent people - MP-Ryan, The_E or for instance - threw at Liberator before he got political prisonered, or at High Max before he finally got some time off. It rapidly begins to feel like the only way to contain these awful, awful posters, people who make the forums basically unreadable, is just to grind them into submission yourself.
It's not just a climate that seems to reward recrimination and punishment more than contribution and thought. It's a climate that incentivizes the thoughtful contributor to become an angry troll, because that's the only tool available to keep the unbearably bad posters in check.
I understand this thread is already full of attacks, that egos are involved on all sides, that it's really hard to swallow pride and back down. But please take this post as heartfelt feedback. I'll try to get someone who people see as a neutral positive party to read it over and back me up or caveat it.
Actually I don't disagree with this point. I completely understand it, especially before I became an admin. But given that the whole point of the changes is to stop doing that sort of thing, why has the thread largely consisted of people complaining about the past rather than posting comments like this about how to make the future better?
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Do you see it as a comment about how to make the future better? That's an awful lot of line by line rebuttal for something I really wanted to be taken as heartfelt feedback and a gesture of rapport and understanding. :( I feel like you came at my post looking for the most combative interpretation possible.
The answer to your last question is that I don't think the current changes or the mindset behind them are going to make the future better. I spoke with The_E about this today and, while I'll leave him to share his own opinion, my conclusion was that the changes are turned about backwards. He pointed to the Penny Arcade forum rules as a really good example of what I'd like to see.
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As do all the regular posters who didn't report it.
You want to move boldly forward into the future and take suggestions on how to do so?
You can't do this.
You have assumed a responsibility for the maintenance and good order of these forums. Any failure in this is a failure of the administration and moderation and theirs alone. You people are the captain of this ship and if it runs aground it doesn't matter who's at the helm then and if you were asleep in your cabin, it's your responsibility it ran aground because you volunteered to take it.
If people aren't reporting, it's because they aren't aware the feature exists, because they don't see it produce results, because they don't desire admin or moderator intervention. These are problems that can only be addressed by action of the admins and mods.
You want to know why people are talking about the past; because of what you're doing now. Because the moderation and administration is disengaged and new rules won't help that. Because the rules don't matter without the personalities capable of enforcing them.
But also because the trajectory HLP rule changes have been on really isn't changing here. They've progress along a line, and promises have been made each time that a more active and early-acting administration and moderation will help, and frankly none of them really proved to be more than a passing bump to business as usual. I'm not being told anything I haven't heard in concept before, really. I think I have reason to be a bit cynical on that.
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A main reason for the guideline and policy changes was to point out that we would be sending PMs to disruptive members much earlier. I suggest you pull up the new guidelines and compare them against the old and see if you can't see a very large shift in tone as to what is considered actionable. Remember that you are talking to the same admin who came down on Trashman more than any other and who finally banned him and Liberator from Gen Dis. I would have done it sooner too but the simple fact is that the old rules didn't let me and every attempt to change the rules (such as this one) is greeted with more ****-flinging.
If it wasn't clear, I fully support changes in this direction, and I think it's a positive aspect to the new guidelines. I wish our feedback weren't being characterized as ****-flinging, though.
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Yours isn't. But I find it hard to not apply that term to Spoon's actions on this thread.
Do you see it as a comment about how to make the future better? That's an awful lot of line by line rebuttal for something I really wanted to be taken as heartfelt feedback and a gesture of rapport and understanding. :( I feel like you came at my post looking for the most combative interpretation possible.
I felt the second part of the post was fine. But the first part of the post ignored the issues which are still present and will continue to cause issues if they aren't resolved. Which is why I posted my feelings about them. It's not about being combative so much as not ignoring issues that will bite us on the arse if they are ignored.
He pointed to the Penny Arcade forum rules as a really good example of what I'd like to see.
Why?
I don't go to the Penny Arcade forum so I have to ask what it does right that we don't. I like that you're making suggestions about how to improve things. I don't want that to stop, but quite a few of the responses on this thread including my last post are about why we don't think some of them would work.
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I think Spoon has the right to be upset about the way he's been treated by the mods and administration, and that there needs to be some kind of formal apology or gesture - on both sides, sure - to really begin a thaw.
I'm not advocating different standards for content creators and ordinary users. The harsher measures I talked about upthread are often the form of one-week probations for minor offenses (tl;dr, hotlinking an image, using a meme or image macro). I don't know if they'd be a good fit here. But I'm happy to paste over the Penny Arcade rules and point out why The_E and I like them:
On Rules Lawyering
These rules are not complete and are not intended to be. These forums are privately owned and the administration reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time. The excuse “but there's no rule about it!” will never be accepted as an excuse for bad behaviour. It is expected that all users are intelligent and mature enough. While we strive to be fair in the moderation of these boards, said enforcement is subjective by its very nature. Please see the FAQ below for information on what to do if you feel you have been treated unfairly.
Don't Be A Dick
This is the most important rule of all and its influence is wide-ranging. These forums are at various times a haven for silliness, debate, discussion, humour, advice and various other forms of discourse. They are not, at any time, a haven for pricks. Forums that are welcoming to pricks exist and you are more than welcome to go and find one, but we are not interested in running one here.
These forums are restricted to ages 13+ and it is expected that all users, regardless of age, are able to act in a mature and respectful fashion. Users are expected to have a reasonable level of social intuition regarding what is and is not acceptable social behaviour, and you should avoid saying anything to someone on these forums that you would not be willing to say to them if they were a) standing in front of you b) considerably bigger than you and holding a club. Things that we are not interested in seeing include (but are not limited to)
Getting mad about videogames
Racial epithets of any kind regardless of context
Misogynist, misandrist, homophobic or transphobic behaviour or attitudes. “Pick up artists”, this includes you.
Posting gigantic images or gifs. Anything above 500kb should be linked to.
The decision on what is and is not considered Being A Dick is determined by the mod staff. The defense “but I don't think I was being a dick” is not an acceptable one, nor is “but I didn't mean to be a dick”. Your message is what you communicate, not what you intend. That said, we understand that there is room for misunderstanding and interpretation in this rule and moderation staff will be open to polite and reasonable messages explaining why you do not feel an interpretation of this rule was fair.
Remember that we do not owe you an internet forum and that this forum is almost entirely run by volunteers.
First of all, it clearly reserves the right to moderate any behavior that the moderators judge disruptive. There's no commitment to rules minutiae here, no situations where you can't ban High Max because he hasn't technically done anything wrong. This is a clause shared with other websites (SA for instance) that reserve the right to ban anyone at any time for no reason. It may sound bafflingly totalitarian, but it seems to work - perhaps due to the caliber of the staff, I don't know.
Second, a huge block of the rules here are just devoted to making it clear that a certain standard of civil discourse is expected. This covers things like being a total creep or taking everything too seriously. Most importantly, it creates an environment where the kind of poster we want to encourage (substantive, polite, reasonable grasp of social norms, your Swash or redsniper or niffiwan, doesn't have to put up with total asshats and so doesn't turn into a jerk.
This is really what I'm taking issue with about the current rules, and it's a qualm I think The_E might share - it's a set of prohibitions, a more and more exhaustive list of what not to do, rather than a proactive and flexible guide about what kind of posts will be rewarded and what kind of tone the forums as a whole should have. SomethingAwful has done an incredible job of setting a forumwide tone: almost everyone is polite, engaged, makes high-content posts, immediately calls out creepy behavior, stays on topic and even uses proper grammar and capitalization. This comes from the understanding that the moderation team actively gardens the forum culture towards this goal. I don't know if HLP could manage this without startling degrees of user attrition, but...at least it's an ideal to look towards.
If the best a poster can hope for is to squeak along surrounded by jerks until the jerks jerk too hard and get banned, well, that's a pretty brutish forums climate. Framing the forum rules as 'be this way' rather than 'don't be this way' is a sophomorically simple reversal, but I think it might be an important one.
I think this bit is silly so I'm splitting it off:
The Glorious Edict
The only insult that is permitted on this forum is “silly goose”. No other adjective may be added, you cannot call someone a “fat, stupid, silly goose”. The only exception to this is the moderation staff, who work hard for free and therefore can call you bastards whatever they so desire. We are aware that this is very unfair and consider it to be part of the fun.
Among the insults this covers (ie; all of them) is the insult “troll”. Accusing someone of trolling will be treated as an edict violation. If you call someone a troll and they are, then you are an idiot for doing what they want. If you call them an troll and they're not, then you are an arsehole for calling them names. Please use the report button if you have a problem with another user.
The Glorious Edict is not negotiable.
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Can we implement the silly goose rule? I love it.
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To add on to NGTM-1R's post...perhaps another reason why regular users don't report stuff is because they think it has already been reported. I remember getting chewed out by The E for reporting High Max's posts about a year after he got banned for those because I thought there was an oversight. I've been less trigger-happy with the Report to Moderator function ever since because it seemed the mods and admins clear things very quickly.
Can we implement the silly goose rule? I love it.
Would silly geese coexist with monkeys? :nervous:
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I think Spoon has the right to be upset about the way he's been treated by the mods and administration, and that there needs to be some kind of formal apology or gesture - on both sides, sure - to really begin a thaw.
I've pointed out repeatedly that the admins do bear part of the blame. Ball is in Spoon's court now.
I'm not advocating different standards for content creators and ordinary users. The harsher measures I talked about upthread are often the form of one-week probations for minor offenses (tl;dr, hotlinking an image, using a meme or image macro). I don't know if they'd be a good fit here.
I didn't think you were. But the point is that if we institute much harsher punishments, that sort of system would quite likely evolve on its own. Hell, you can see it on this very thread. Spoon didn't get banned for insulting behaviour and the main reason is precisely because he's involved in this discussion and we don't want him excluded from it. If someone else does it, their chance of getting banned is much higher.
So yeah, I don't think harsher punishments would work on HLP. We're too small a community and quite a few people are "Too big to ban" for minor infractions.
EDIT : DAMNIT! ****ing cloudflare shenanigans chopped off the second half of this post! I'll repost in a bit.
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First of all, it clearly reserves the right to moderate any behavior that the moderators judge disruptive. There's no commitment to rules minutiae here, no situations where you can't ban High Max because he hasn't technically done anything wrong. This is a clause shared with other websites (SA for instance) that reserve the right to ban anyone at any time for no reason. It may sound bafflingly totalitarian, but it seems to work - perhaps due to the caliber of the staff, I don't know.
I've repeatedly stated that HLP's first rule is "Don't be a dick" in the past. I've used those exact words and said that the admins will ban you if you are a dick. And every single time I've gotten complaints that it isn't enough. Some people seem to need what being a dick is spelled out for them.
Hell, at one point during the discussions about the new guidelines I did state that many of them could be replaced with "Don't Be a Dick."
Second, a huge block of the rules here are just devoted to making it clear that a certain standard of civil discourse is expected. This covers things like being a total creep or taking everything too seriously. Most importantly, it creates an environment where the kind of poster we want to encourage (substantive, polite, reasonable grasp of social norms, your Swash or redsniper or niffiwan, doesn't have to put up with total asshats and so doesn't turn into a jerk.
This is really what I'm taking issue with about the current rules, and it's a qualm I think The_E might share - it's a set of prohibitions, a more and more exhaustive list of what not to do, rather than a proactive and flexible guide about what kind of posts will be rewarded and what kind of tone the forums as a whole should have. SomethingAwful has done an incredible job of setting a forumwide tone: almost everyone is polite, engaged, makes high-content posts, immediately calls out creepy behavior, stays on topic and even uses proper grammar and capitalization. This comes from the understanding that the moderation team actively gardens the forum culture towards this goal. I don't know if HLP could manage this without startling degrees of user attrition, but...at least it's an ideal to look towards.
I honestly don't think that there is anything we could post today which would achieve that without losing lots of people and causing more forum drama. So the question is whether the new guidelines are a step towards that or not. I'm sure they could be improved but bear in mind that the intent of the guidelines is actually similar. The new stuff at the start about the purpose of HLP is meant to point out a lot of that.
If the best a poster can hope for is to squeak along surrounded by jerks until the jerks jerk too hard and get banned, well, that's a pretty brutish forums climate. Framing the forum rules as 'be this way' rather than 'don't be this way' is a sophomorically simple reversal, but I think it might be an important one.
Well one suggestion would be to move the positive stuff up to the top and only later go into the stuff that makes you a dick. Leading with
1) Be like Mr Rogers
2) Maintain a high signal to noise ratio
3) Try to make HLP a pleasant place
might help.
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I should probably mention that while I was in favour of these rules when they were discussed initially, the reaction we got here in this thread has convinced me that we went about it the wrong way, and that a leaner, more flexible set of rules would serve our purposes better than trying to build a catalog of infractions.
Also, while Kara's three rules are the obvious core thing we should strive towards, I have to ask, WHO IS MR ROGERS?
Yes, I know how to wiki, and I know who this is referring to, but I think that using pop culture references like that should be kept to a minimum when discussing things like this
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I think the problem with a leaner set of rules are things like Backseat moderating, stream of consciousness post and running your own karma system. All of those things are actionable and it can be easily explained why they are dickish things to be doing but don't really come under the heading of Don't Be A Dick.
If you are new to HLP, it's hard to know that posting InB4Lock will get you into trouble unless you're told that.
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Yes, and just like the PA forums have a list of thingsthey do not want to see, we can give a few hints as well. However, the emphasis should be on moderator discretion, a transparent appeals system, and Wheaton's Law, not a specific list of behaviours and punishments associated with them.
Now, I do realize that an appeals system is a multiedged sword, especially when it comes to issues where we ban people for nebulous things such as obnmoxious behaviour or zero-content posting, but we cannot put ourselves up as authority past fault or folly.
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I've pointed out repeatedly that the admins do bear part of the blame. Ball is in Spoon's court now.
This is like the ****tiest excuse for a 'apology' (if it is one at all? its hard to tell) I've seen.
If you expect me that this is in anyway shape or form sufficient for me to just say "oh geez, you are right! After all the snide ****ty remarks and blame shifting in this thread it's all up to me to just get over it and move on!". If you really believe that you really lack a basic understand on human interaction (and you do, you've repeatedly proven that).
As you may notice, I'm still rather pissed at how this issue is being treated and you seen adamant at trying to keep it that way. Due to your lack of empathy you just wanna vulcan it over and marginalize the beef I have. You are still actively dismissing the points Battuta bring up and ignore mine completely. Yet you think the ball is in my court?
Laughable.
I'm done here, I'll put you back on ignore.
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Karajorma apologizes by saying that it wasn't entirely Spoon's fault...
Spoon insults Karajorma repeatedly until he gets an apology...
What am I reading here.
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I'm not even saying the majority was Spoon's fault. But he really needs to understand that some of it was. We've been telling him to report issues for years.
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Spoon: You guys have some of the blame!
Kara: You have some of the blame too!
Spoon: Yeah, but you do too!
Kara: Likewise!
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I really don't know why both sides just can't say "You know what, you're right. We could have handled it better. We apologize for our part of the blame."
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Gotta love Kara's weird denial of a non-non-partial-apology. This looks like one of those things that will drag for years...
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The ironic part is 'who is to blame' and 'who should apologise for what' are completely irrelevant to the case at hand. It started out as a measured review of the new policies and some good ideas/views/suggestions. Seems to have turned into a pissing match because people love to chew over cud for years in this place.
If the system as it is now worked, they wouldn't be changing it, people have made it clear it doesn't work as it stands. If there's constructive and forthright discussion on going forwards from there, this thread could be a gold mine, but it won't.
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I really don't know why both sides just can't say "You know what, you're right. We could have handled it better. We apologize for our part of the blame."
What exactly do I need to apologize for? For HLP's staff poor moderating? Battuta's posts describe the situation pretty well.
I'm more then a little bit miffed at how instead of it getting properly acknowledged with a proper apology I get this ****ty ass blame game thrown at me.
The focus of Karajorma's posts have been "The part Spoon might be to blame for" instead of the "The part where HLP's staff has failed and will strive to do better". This whole change in the rules was about improving HLP moderating was it not? Acknowledging that things can be improved?
What I want out of the HLP staff right now is acknowledgment and a proper bloody apology. Then if there is still a need for that we can talk about what I could have done better (but as I already said, I already learned plenty of lessons out of the past few years.)
Karajorma apologizes by saying that it wasn't entirely Spoon's fault...
Spoon insults Karajorma repeatedly until he gets an apology...
What am I reading here.
A one line sentence that isn't even a proper apology in a series of posts that is otherwise just about playing the blame game. I'm the one who feels insulted the most here.
That's what you are reading here.
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The ironic part is 'who is to blame' and 'who should apologise for what' are completely irrelevant to the case at hand. It started out as a measured review of the new policies and some good ideas/views/suggestions. Seems to have turned into a pissing match because people love to chew over cud for years in this place.
If the system as it is now worked, they wouldn't be changing it, people have made it clear it doesn't work as it stands. If there's constructive and forthright discussion on going forwards from there, this thread could be a gold mine, but it won't.
Indeed.
I really don't know why both sides just can't say "You know what, you're right. We could have handled it better. We apologize for our part of the blame."
What exactly do I need to apologize for? For HLP's staff poor moderating? Battuta's posts describe the situation pretty well.
I'm more then a little bit miffed at how instead of it getting properly acknowledged with a proper apology I get this ****ty ass blame game thrown at me.
The focus of Karajorma's posts have been "The part Spoon might be to blame for" instead of the "The part where HLP's staff has failed and will strive to do better". This whole change in the rules was about improving HLP moderating was it not? Acknowledging that things can be improved?
What I want out of the HLP staff right now is acknowledgment and a proper bloody apology. Then if there is still a need for that we can talk about what I could have done better (but as I already said, I already learned plenty of lessons out of the past few years.)
Well, I will say that I agree that Karajorma, as an Admin, should be setting the example up front instead of continuing to play the blame game... If the mods and admins want a better HLP, one of the first steps has got to be to let go of pride, suck it up, and be the type of poster they want to see on the forums. If I didn't know any better.. what I'm getting from this back and forth is that it's perfectly fine to just keep going back and forth. If that's what Karajorma wants to convey, then, hell.. have at it! But I suspect that's not the kind of thing they are striving for with these changes.
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The ironic part is 'who is to blame' and 'who should apologise for what' are completely irrelevant to the case at hand. It started out as a measured review of the new policies and some good ideas/views/suggestions. Seems to have turned into a pissing match because people love to chew over cud for years in this place.
If the system as it is now worked, they wouldn't be changing it, people have made it clear it doesn't work as it stands. If there's constructive and forthright discussion on going forwards from there, this thread could be a gold mine, but it won't.
There's been plenty of forthright and constructive discussion. This kind of relentless pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Not about going forwards though, everyone is waiting for everyone else to apologize for the past like some kind of miniscule U.N General meeting.
I personally think if the Admin team didn't think it was unfortunate that it happened, or want things to improve, they wouldn't be throwing this set of rules out there and getting input. I think if Spoon didn't think it was unfortunate that it happened, or want things to improve, he wouldn't be in here arguing so adamantly. I think that is the best either is going to get from the other for now and it should rest at that.
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There has been a lot of substantive discussion about going forwards. Maybe not about the issue of Spoon vs. HLP Administration, but certainly about the rules and about the forum in general.
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Which is what the first paragraph of my post had stated, it started out constructive, but is being eaten up by this whole apology thing.
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I really don't know why both sides just can't say "You know what, you're right. We could have handled it better. We apologize for our part of the blame."
If it's really not clear enough from what I've said before, yeah, the admins ****ed up repeatedly when it came to way WoD's forums were handled. I'll freely admit it. The only reason I haven't asked for Spoon to be banned for his repeated personal attacks on this thread (and in fact spoke out against it when others wanted to) is precisely because I want him around so that we can resolve the issue. If I wanted to continue the problem, I'd have asked for him to be banned or simply recused myself and let the subsequent banning make things worse. But I'm not interested in that at all.
I've also tried to go into the reasons behind why the problems on WoD happened several times cause I feel that it is an issue that will happen again otherwise but it appears that I need to spell it out first that I do feel we ****ed up before anyone will listen to why it happened and try to do something about it. So fine.
We ****ed up. There are a number of things the HLP admins and myself personally could have done better when it came to dealing with Wings of Dawn (and several other issues down the years). Moderating on a board like HLP isn't easy as unlike the Penny Arcade boards or Something Awful. There is a lot more potential fallout from banning people or driving them away. An admin has to maintain a balance between coming down hard on people like High Max who are an unredeemable disruptive influence on the board and coming down too hard on people like Free Terran or Cobra who despite a terrible start ended up being reasonable board members. On Penny Arcade or Something Awful I suspect they simply don't care.
I've never felt that the mess on the WoD forum was entirely the fault of the admins and moderators but if in some way made Spoon's job harder, I'm happy to apologise to him for it. I honestly don't care if he apologises for his part. I just want to make sure that this mess doesn't happen again.
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Hello Karajorma and Spoon.
If I may, I’d like to try and resolve this unpleasant and clearly longstanding conflict between the two of you. Although Karajorma’s final post, which wasn’t there when I started, may help to resolve this conflict without me.
If you don’t want my help, then I’ll get out of your way, but please listen to what I have to say and keep in mind I am only trying to help if my arrival has offended you in any way.
I was not here when this happened. I know this for sure as the first months of my time on HLP were spent exclusively on the WoD board. So while this means I do not know the details, it does mean I can be neutral. I like both of you, so I will not be bias. And because I like both of you, I don’t like to see you hurting each other, and am motivated to help you.
Purely from looking at the posts flying back and forth, which I have just read through now, this is what I see. If I have represented either of your feelings wrong, I apologise, I am only trying to help, and it is likely I won’t get everything right, and may even make a complete mess of this. Here’s how I see it:
Spoon is very hurt. He feels that he was left isolated by the HLP staff and no one cared about his corner of HLP as he was left to contend with some serious issues on his board over a protracted period of time alone. And he feels boxed in when he does say anything, that he is told he should have said something by way of report button about these issues. And also, he has had only or nearly only negative experiences when mods and admins have come into his board. And now he is further distressed about being stripped of his local mod powers. So his feelings are hurt, and he is resentful and wary of at least some of the HLP staff, particularly Karajorma who he feels had the biggest hand in this. He is desperate for an apology from Karajorma, who he feels won’t apologise out of pride. Spoon also has issues with the way HLP is run.
Karajorma feels that he and the staff are trying to make amends for the mistakes of the past. He also feels that it’s unfair for all the blame to be placed on him and the admins when it seems they were oblivious to what was going on in the WoD forum. I think he may also feel that it was best to leave Spoon to it as Spoon as I have clearly seen, values his independence in the way he runs his board. He (Karajorma) seems willing to try and make amends, but is also wary of committing. He also seems to think it’s unfair that Spoon is trying to pin everything on him when he’s not the only staff member who was involved in this. Spoon’s insults sting as well.
I also get a strong feeling that both want the other to make the first move, the first real gesture at reconciliation. I think both are afraid to make the first move, that they won’t get what they want in return, that even perhaps the other person will simply use it as a stick to beat them over the head with and declare a kind of victory. I do feel though that reconciliation is possible.
I think Karajorma wants to put this behind him and move forward, and would even like Spoon to join him in moving forward. But Spoon needs this apology. Yes, needs. He’s not being petty, he doesn’t rather complain about the past than engage with the admins, the past is the reason why he can’t do it. He needs this resolution. I think that perhaps without it, and with his issues with staff in the past, he simply won’t be able to have enough faith to be able to do this. And also feels that if he does try to join the “process” as Karajorma puts it, it will be like him saying he’s okay with what happened in the past, giving Karajorma and the staff a free ride, and that is unacceptable to him. He needs the conflict resolved in order to move forward. Spoon seems to like aspects of the new rules, but doesn’t have faith that they’ll be carried out, though hopes to be proved wrong. That’s something.
Also something I think is the fact you are both creators of your own mods. I’m sure you could help each other and thus get along better through this common interest.
These are the two most hopeful posts from each individual I have:
SPOON: “Now I really ****ing hope I'm going to be proven wrong on that translation and that things will actually get resolved good and proper through communication and PM's but I have no faith in that left.”
SPOON: “I'd give it any kind of benefit of a doubt if the staff would admit they ****ed up and would apologize for it. Promise to try to do better in the future and not **** me over for their mistakes.”
KARAJORMA: “I'm not even saying the majority was Spoon's fault. But he really needs to understand that some of it was. We've been telling him to report issues for years.”
KARAJORMA: “If it's really not clear enough from what I've said before, yeah, the admins ****ed up repeatedly when it came to way WoD's forums were handled. I'll freely admit it. The only reason I haven't asked for Spoon to be banned for his repeated personal attacks on this thread (and in fact spoke out against it when others wanted to) is precisely because I want him around so that we can resolve the issue.”
…
“We ****ed up. There are a number of things the HLP admins and myself personally could have done better when it came to dealing with Wings of Dawn (and several other issues down the years).”
I have a possible solution. Changes can be made to what I am about to write, but I am going to draw up a kind of contract for you both to sign to resolve the conflict. I also expect you’ll both be wary of signing it first, so the solution to that is for both of you to PM me with that, and then if I get both of you to agree, I’ll drop the two PMs into the thread. Unless you want to just sign the contract in the thread. This is the fairest thing I can think of to resolve all issues:
I, Karajorma, am sorry that you Spoon were left to deal with the problems you had to deal with in isolation, and that the WoD board was largely ignored by the staff. I’m also sorry that you have had such bad experiences with the HLP staff and feel so hurt. I am sorry that you have felt like no one cares and the blame is being placed solely at your door. I genuinely want to make sure these mistakes never happen again and erase the bad feelings between us and am trying to implement changes to ensure this is the case. I want you to join me in this endeavour, your input would be most welcome. We can work towards this together. Just because the forum moderators are being removed doesn’t mean your say isn’t welcome.
I, Spoon, realise that I could have done more to help myself with the situation by using the report function, and thus that it is not all the fault of the admins, that what they don’t know about they can’t fix. I will use the function in future. I am sorry for singling you out so much when you’re not the only staff member. I am also sorry for calling you a jerk/dumbass, etc. I would also now like to move forward with you and work with you to ensure these mistakes never happen again and also for the betterment of the community of HLP as a whole.
We both figuratively shake each other’s hand and pledge to move forward.
Signed
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Oh my god. The irony slays me.
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Good thing someone prodded me about this post cause I would not have read it otherwise.
but it appears that I need to spell it out first that I do feel we ****ed up before anyone will listen to why it happened and try to do something about it. So fine.
Uhm yeah, you are dealing with humans here. Humans have these funny things called emotions.
I'll freely admit it. The only reason I haven't asked for Spoon to be banned for his repeated personal attacks on this thread (and in fact spoke out against it when others wanted to) is precisely because I want him around so that we can resolve the issue. If I wanted to continue the problem, I'd have asked for him to be banned or simply recused myself and let the subsequent banning make things worse. But I'm not interested in that at all.
It's concerning that apparantly the first thing some mods want to do is hit the BAN BAN BAN button. It shows that they clearly aren't reading what is going on or even give a **** if it gets resolved or not. Yeah I'm being super rude in this thread. So what? Not wanting to deal with someone who is angry over something you had a part in and just hitting the ban is the coward's way out.
So it's a good thing you realized that. Now I hope the rest of you mods also realize that.
As for the rest of your post, Thank you.
I don't think it had to take as long as it did but I'll take it.
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Yeah I'm being super rude in this thread. So what?
As I pointed out before, if you're being super rude, why I should I make any attempt to engage with you? Especially when we're making an effort to solve the issues you're complaining about. Especially when I've pointed out that your hostility was actually one of the main reasons I've not bothered with your forum in the past. You're not the only one who has emotions.
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I really really want to make it clear that the neglect of the Wings of Dawn forum predated any bad blood between Spoon and the administration, at least as far as I know. The issues in there with DarthWang, Lorric, and other posters who pretty much killed the forum stretch back quite a while, and I know Spoon would've appreciated help keeping them under control.
Unless there's some other hostility I don't know about.
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Oh hai, what's this subforum?
I actually read all of this thread just now, after reading the forum guidelines last night. There were three changes in particular that irked me:
Any attempts to belittle other forum members for not agreeing with you will be treated in much the same way as a direct personal attack. Yes, you may find it annoying if someone is posting an argument that shows that they don't understand the topic under discussion as well as you do, but it's worth remembering that since you probably aren't a world renowned expert in the subject, there could be someone as annoyed at you. If someone is ignorant, it is your job to enlighten them, not make fun of their ignorance.
For the purposes of the discussion that follows, I'm terming this "the tightrope."
HLP is not your soapbox. That isn't to say we can't have political discussions on HLP, just that you shouldn't drag an existing topic around to your particular pet peeve/hot button issue. Especially if that involves talking about something completely off-topic. Discussion of wider topics than the original post is fine if it happens organically, but if a topic mentions religion in passing, that doesn't mean it should become a full scale atheist rant about the evils of religion. If it mentions sexism a bit, it shouldn't become a discussion women's (or men's) rights. If someone mentions US politics, that isn't a reason to make it a discussion of US fiscal policy and the evils of the democrat party/republicans.
Likewise, "the morph"
Do not backseat moderate. HLP has an established set of moderation staff. If we wanted your opinion on which threads need to be closed, who needs to be banned, etc, we'd have asked you to join it already. We don't want to see mob rule here, so we don't want to see forum users arguing that threads should be locked or people punished for certain posts.
Finally, "the disapproving look."
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I'm a member of a few forums, one that has existed since 1998. It is not moderated. At all. People can, and do, post whatever they like. The moderation takes the form of community approval - there are respected forum members, there are less-respected members, and there were douchebags. The latter category is inevitably driven out. We have never banned anymore. It is an exceedingly small community, and it does have rules - there are subfolders, there are certain things that you cannot post, and there are people who are able to ban spam accounts and edit threads and so all sorts of "moderation," but the forum is not explicitly moderated. It has led to some absolutely epic flamewars over the years, but things inevitably cool down and return to status quo. And like I said - an active poster (not spam account) has never been banned.
I'm not advocating that approach to HLP. This place is too big and too diverse for that, but I think it's important to bear in mind.
I share the concern that the new guidelines are too prescriptive. As a number of you know I actually work in law enforcement, and by far the worst pieces of legislation I deal with are prescriptive. The best are the ones that are short and simply state what is absolutely not allowed, while all other behaviour is subject to social approval.
The tightrope, above, is one that a number of the more active (and I suggest, more valuable) people walk in in the Off-Topic area almost daily. It's tied to the disapproving look too. Some of the most effective moderation I've seen in my couple-decades of Internet use and BB/IRC/forum use in particular uses this - and I'm not saying to be nasty, but there is a lot of benefit in allowing forum users to self-moderate based on social rules. Official moderation really should only be used as a last resort, in my view. It's far better for someone to receive an explanation of why their behaviour is bad, be the subject of social ridicule for that behaviour, and hopefully correct it based on the experience of being smacked by the general membership than be scolded by a single moderator. Formal moderation should be used as an option of last resort, where a temp-ban (or, for egregious idiots, a permaban) is more appropriate. HLP does this to an extent already, and moderators like The E, Mongoose, and karajorma have tended to warn people off with consequences implied publicly, which often corrects the behaviour (and for the worst offenders, they've been subsequently banned anyway). I really don't like the prescriptive nature of the tightrope and the disapproving look -killing guidelines above - and not just because they could land me in hot water.
The morph concerns me for a different reason. A number of the most interesting and valuable GD discussions come out when a thread on one topic morphs into another. While I understand that we don't want soapboxes, I'm concerned that this guideline impedes natural drift. I have a personal vested interest in this one too, because I often precipitate some natural drift.
What I'd like to see is the tack that I've taken in other online communities and server moderation, which is essentially the following:
Rule 1: Don't be a douchebag.
Rule 2: See rule 1.
Rule 3: For the particularly obtuse, the definition of douchebag includes, but is not limited to, the following: racist language, homophobic language, attacks on a person's character (as opposed to post behaviour or content), linking or posting of illegal content, linking or posting to explicit content, spam, stream-of-consciousness/blog posting, or other consistently-obnoxious behaviour.
That's it. Violate Rule 3, which explicitly says the not-allowed things, and the result should be a temp-ban for a week, followed by a perma-ban for a second offense. That stuff is easy. Violate Rule 1, the more general-catch-all, and you start with a warning, then a temp-ban, then a perma-ban, depending on the nature, frequency, and severity of the behaviour. This allows you to ban the High Max / Liberator types on the forums quite quickly, and still reign in your more valuable posters who occasionally step out of line. And furthermore - all warnings, temp-bans, and perma-bans and their reasons should be public. That doesn't mean up for debate, that means public - bad behaviour should become deterrence.
Trying to write a massive rulebook on guidelines is an unforgiving, thankless exercise that will not only bite the moderation team in the ass, it'll bite some of the more intelligent-but-exasperated posters in the ass too.
One final complaint: Having been the subject of a recent temp ban, I can attest to the frustration of NOT BEING ABLE TO PM THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE. This is a problem. I creatively managed to use the report feature, but for Pete's sake, that's brutal (especially as it has a character limit). You need a proper appeals function/section, especially if you persist with the new prescriptive guidelines.
That's all. I cannot emphasize enough how bad the idea of a prescriptive (and LONG!) rule-set is.
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One final complaint: Having been the subject of a recent temp ban, I can attest to the frustration of NOT BEING ABLE TO PM THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE. This is a problem. I creatively managed to use the report feature, but for Pete's sake, that's brutal (especially as it has a character limit).
y u no IRC
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using the (barely advertised) irc channel as the venue administrative complaints is a horrible idea on more levels than i care to think of
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i'm just going to say that having rule #1 of how-to-not-be-a-dick-spelled-out be based on a reference to a 60s tv show starring a guy that died when i was 12 and hence never heard of before today is a bad idea if you want people to understand what you mean just saying
because even after wiki'ing it have no idea how the guy was like and **** me if i'm going to look up vods on a black and white tv show about current events yeaaars gone past as a reference on how to be nice yeah **** that
might want to pick a more revelenat, that's all (might not be possible- everyone's a dick nowadasy)
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yes; imo the rule's wording should be changed to "be like bob ross"
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using the (barely advertised) irc channel as the venue administrative complaints is a horrible idea on more levels than i care to think of
Ironically when I wasn't unmonkeyed (I think it was monkeyed, could have been banned) on time once it was suggested "get on IRC and complain about it" which strikes me as one of the stupidest things anyone who has been banned/monkeyed could possibly do and a good way to get my ban/monkey extended and not generate sympathy or get unbanned/unmonkeyed.
If HLP really wants to handle things more anonymously (although it strikes me that the use of a faceless administration and moderation is drifting closer to the monolithic evil empire image and it would be easier to dissent with that than with any particular person you might respect for their non-moderation contributions) then they're going to have to shift away from using IRC and its public nature for handling complaints at all.
(Hint if a moderator is not being respected for their non-moderation contributions to the community, or even their moderation contributions which is certainly what I respect Zacam for these days, something is probably a bit wrong.)
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i'm just going to say that having rule #1 of how-to-not-be-a-dick-spelled-out be based on a reference to a 60s tv show starring a guy that died when i was 12 and hence never heard of before today is a bad idea if you want people to understand what you mean just saying
because even after wiki'ing it have no idea how the guy was like and **** me if i'm going to look up vods on a black and white tv show about current events yeaaars gone past as a reference on how to be nice yeah **** that
might want to pick a more revelenat, that's all (might not be possible- everyone's a dick nowadasy)
I'm just going to cherry-pick this point in lieu of a whole backlog of discussion, but dude, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was on for decades. Like, from 1968 to 2001, give or take. Granted, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will get the reference, but a few generations of kids got to grow up with him. Plus, it kind of fits the PBS theme we have going around here, what with Snuffy and all. :p
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I'm just going to cherry-pick this point in lieu of a whole backlog of discussion, but dude, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was on for decades. Like, from 1968 to 2001, give or take. Granted, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will get the reference, but a few generations of kids got to grow up with him. Plus, it kind of fits the PBS theme we have going around here, what with Snuffy and all. :p
It was never on dutch television. (I have no idea who mister roger's is outside of one 'epic rap battle of history')
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I think a point (or points) that we need to take away from this situation and evolved conversation is this:
This obviously isn't working out as intended.
Bear in mind that this is just from my own perspective and may not address everything brought up here. If I miss touching on something, it's nothing personal, I'm still into my first cup of coffee
For the longest time (to my perception starting out as a regular member) Administration and Moderation just seemed to be a casual sort of deal. There have been issues, to be sure. There always will be when you have more than 2 human beings in any one place and we're far more diversified than that. But there never seemed to be the kinds of issues that we've been having lately.
Now, some of the issues seem to stem from A: entrenchment and B: entitlement. (I won't go about into which applies to whom, that wouldn't be constructive)
When the initial proposition of trying to create a "Common Page" came up, it all seemed like a really good idea. Maybe I didn't pay as much attention to the details specifically as I could have and as a result, abstracted it to a notion of what I -thought- it would turn out to being, which lead to a sense of being "okay" with the concept that was then presented. I can also see how it naturally could lead to then becoming highly defensive about reacting to the responses that have been given in regards to it. And then like a snowball, momentum makes it bigger and we have a mess on our hands.
And as tired as I am of there being messes, it doesn't do anything or any one any good if I choose to then react to it as "Great, another ****ing mess, isn't THIS just lovely" even if that IS a human reaction to give.
I'm already on record as saying that I don't think the right approach should involve more of an Authoritative stance when it comes to a Community. I'm more than willing and I have the choice however to see how well it can work before trying other options, regardless of my own personal stance. This isn't a compromise of who I am or of my nature, it just means that I can rationally see a need for allowing things to progress naturally and organically to their own conclusions and work on it from there.
I'm more invested (personally) in learning what works and what doesn't and in making mistakes (and apologizing for them in the right way) as a fundamental part of my own personal evolution. But it is a LOT easier to want to try and hold on to what is already established, to want to be right and to just say "This is the way of it, take it or **** off". It is a lot easier to deal with hostility by replying in kind.
I've worked Technical Support in addition to having to work through my own anger management issues as both a child and young adult. Fortunately, rather than taking the "lets medicate it out of you" route (which can still be viable, just wasn't in my case), I got to work through it by developing an understanding of what causes for it and developing the mechanics to help me step aside from it until I can look at it later. Working in technical support really helped with that, as when you pick up a phone and immediately have somebody absolutely SCREAMING at you, it is REALLY easy to default to the fact that they are screaming at YOU and therefor, YOU need to do something about it.
So, what does any of the above so far have to do with where we are right now? Well, let me refer back to:
A: entrenchment
B: entitlement
Yes, we need to have -something- that the community can be behind that lets people know who they can turn to and what we can do about things and when it becomes necessary for things to be done. Social urges of being a social creature wants control and structure in the face of chaos (and perversely the more of that you have, the more you'll generate the need for chaos).
So while I do think that the idea and the approach -as ideas- are still good and solid and necessary, I'd like to see more of a engagement with regards to what WOULD work, rather than a focus on tearing down or bring up what HASN'T worked or what people feel might be wrong about the existing idea.
We took it as a top level discussion and a top level collaboration to try and create this set up. As a result, it got created in a vacuum that allowed for both entitlement and entrenchment to take place. We took it as our responsibility to try and come up with something for the Community, which we did and we then presented to the Community. But we (I don't think) took into account that the community (in light of the whole reason behind WHY we did this in the first place) might not see it as more of an Authoritarian move of imposing a system in place, instead of as a "rough draft" seed for us to all collectively germinate and process and turn into a upheld Pearl.
Part of that may have been due the presentation of how it got put forth to the community. For something that would require Community involvement and acknowledgement and participation in, the feedback is as a reaction to it being (perceptually at the very least) as being now already "in effect" with no sense of having actually contributed anything towards it in a fashion that makes it tailor made for the very Community it is purportedly in place to support.
There have been throughout the posts a few wonderful examples of the right kind of feedback that we should take a look at. PA's and SA's guidelines have been pointed out as being a format that we can look at. So rather than trying to recreate a wheel in a void, I think there is merit in soliciting from the community the question of:
What do you see, in terms of other forums, as rule-sets or means that you feel would be potentially applicable to HLP that would allow for it to become the Community that you feel would provide the proper environment that will allow it to live up to the declared nature of its existence of "Bringing Modders Together"?
Now, I also need to acknowledge that: We cannot ignore our past. Serious things have taken place. We cannot blindly insist on "moving forward" to a resolution without taking even the slightest moments to actually acknowledge how we got to where we are. What few (public) apologies that have taken place have been grudgingly given and ALWAYS in the context of "but so are you!" or as an attempt to refute a point to prove a point.
The bottom line is NOT in being "right". The bottom line is: address the situation, even if it never gets resolved initially, it will eventually but only when it is properly acknowledged for what it is.
In Technical Support terms, this means: You say "sorry" to the angry caller for their issue, even when they are screaming at you, because god damn it, somebody had better be! You need to let go of the personal matter of not actually being at fault in this situation and still manage to deliver a sincere apology (and for ****s sake, one that you actually MEAN and can uphold) for them being angry before you can start working on the technical problem they are having. If you continue to insist on not being at fault, if you continue to assert that you don't deserve them screaming at you (and yes, we already know you don't, they'll eventually realize that too) you will NEVER get the actual fundamental technical problem resolved.
And I think by and large, that is one of the BIGGEST problems that we have going on here right now. People are screaming at each other. They all have valid points. They are all, in their own way, absolutely right in the position that they are coming from. But we're getting FAR too focused on who is actually MORE RIGHT than the other that we're not getting anywhere, and I would really like if it could stop for even just a moment please, because you are turning rather unhealthy shades of purple and I'm concerned you might have a heart attack.
Now, I don't know whether or not we should engage the conversation on the question above (in bold) within this thread or if we should have a new Topic of discussion regarding it. I'm leaning more in favor of the latter with the emphasis that the topic should start out with, and be purely contained to, the bold part directly and by itself.
In any case, my personal apologies for the mess and my lack of time to properly pay attention to it. Can we please start looking at how we can get this properly sorted now?
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What do you see, in terms of other forums, as rule-sets or means that you feel would be potentially applicable to HLP that would allow for it to become the Community that you feel would provide the proper environment that will allow it to live up to the declared nature of its existence of "Bringing Modders Together"?
Please see the last 5 paragraphs of this post (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84758.msg1693044#msg1693044) of mine for my feelings on the subject.
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The tightrope, above, is one that a number of the more active (and I suggest, more valuable) people walk in in the Off-Topic area almost daily. It's tied to the disapproving look too. Some of the most effective moderation I've seen in my couple-decades of Internet use and BB/IRC/forum use in particular uses this - and I'm not saying to be nasty, but there is a lot of benefit in allowing forum users to self-moderate based on social rules. Official moderation really should only be used as a last resort, in my view. It's far better for someone to receive an explanation of why their behaviour is bad, be the subject of social ridicule for that behaviour, and hopefully correct it based on the experience of being smacked by the general membership than be scolded by a single moderator. Formal moderation should be used as an option of last resort, where a temp-ban (or, for egregious idiots, a permaban) is more appropriate. HLP does this to an extent already, and moderators like The E, Mongoose, and karajorma have tended to warn people off with consequences implied publicly, which often corrects the behaviour (and for the worst offenders, they've been subsequently banned anyway). I really don't like the prescriptive nature of the tightrope and the disapproving look -killing guidelines above - and not just because they could land me in hot water.
I don't think I've ever seen a single post from you which would lead to either of those two causing you problems. But when it comes to letting the community moderate itself, quite frankly, I don't think we're ready.
Sure it's something to work towards, but I don't think it's something we can institute today. Maybe if everyone was a mature as you, sure.
You've pointed out that several moderators warn people publicly about their behaviour and I do agree that it is a good thing to do that, but you have no idea about the amount of **** we go through as a result of it. Even in cases where no one sensible should be arguing against the moderators decision.
I really don't feel having that **** sprayed all over the forums is a better solution. It's divisive. Minor arguments quickly split into factions arguing over who is right and who is wrong and then the admins have to come in and make a ruling over the issue, pissing off one faction or both.
The morph concerns me for a different reason. A number of the most interesting and valuable GD discussions come out when a thread on one topic morphs into another. While I understand that we don't want soapboxes, I'm concerned that this guideline impedes natural drift. I have a personal vested interest in this one too, because I often precipitate some natural drift.
I think you're assuming that this guideline is much more harsh than it's actually meant to be. It does quite clearly state that the topic can drift organically. The issue is not threads that morph. I can think of only two recent examples where it really needed to apply.
1) On a recent topic about a pair of religious parents who allowed their child to die because they believed their faith would cure him we had one person post, not to talk about the topic itself, but to use the mere fact that it was about religion to attack all religions. The thread rapidly went downhill following that.
2) The second occasion should be one you are much more familiar with. I'm referring to what I'll call the "*****" thread. As you are well aware, a thread about a very serious piece of misandry quickly mutated into a thread about the use of the word ***** and remained there despite calls from the moderation staff and the original poster to talk about the original topic.
I can't think of any other occasions in the last few months where this guideline would apply and I'm sure you understand why in those two occasions, something should be done about it.
What I'd like to see is the tack that I've taken in other online communities and server moderation, which is essentially the following:
Rule 1: Don't be a douchebag.
Rule 2: See rule 1.
Rule 3: For the particularly obtuse, the definition of douchebag includes, but is not limited to, the following: racist language, homophobic language, attacks on a person's character (as opposed to post behaviour or content), linking or posting of illegal content, linking or posting to explicit content, spam, stream-of-consciousness/blog posting, or other consistently-obnoxious behaviour.
That's it. Violate Rule 3, which explicitly says the not-allowed things, and the result should be a temp-ban for a week, followed by a perma-ban for a second offense. That stuff is easy. Violate Rule 1, the more general-catch-all, and you start with a warning, then a temp-ban, then a perma-ban, depending on the nature, frequency, and severity of the behaviour. This allows you to ban the High Max / Liberator types on the forums quite quickly, and still reign in your more valuable posters who occasionally step out of line. And furthermore - all warnings, temp-bans, and perma-bans and their reasons should be public. That doesn't mean up for debate, that means public - bad behaviour should become deterrence.
That's actually not too different from the post I made earlier. But since we get a lot of newbies on here who don't post much on other forums, I think we do need to explain some of the terms from Rule 3 better. And I think Be Nice is actually a far more important rule than Don't Be A Dick.
Trying to write a massive rulebook on guidelines is an unforgiving, thankless exercise that will not only bite the moderation team in the ass, it'll bite some of the more intelligent-but-exasperated posters in the ass too.
The guidelines were never meant to be a rulebook. For the most part they were just meant to point out a few of the new behaviours we'd be cracking down on harder and pointing out that the goal was to bring the community together rather than having them divided by petty squabbling. On reflection it might have been smarter to not post new guidelines and simply say that. But then we get posts saying that "You can't just say you'll be doing this more!. This should be part of the guidelines!"
As I've pointed out before, I'm quite happy to say no to that comment but I can point you to dozens of examples of people saying that sort of thing. I even vaguely remember that some of them came from people on this thread who are now saying the exact opposite. The long guidelines were mainly to appease those people who insist on having a long set of rules they can follow. If the community opinion has changed in favour of having a much simpler set of guidelines, I'm happy with that.
We can easily replace those three guidelines with the Don't Be A Dick from Rule 1.
One final complaint: Having been the subject of a recent temp ban, I can attest to the frustration of NOT BEING ABLE TO PM THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE. This is a problem. I creatively managed to use the report feature, but for Pete's sake, that's brutal (especially as it has a character limit). You need a proper appeals function/section, especially if you persist with the new prescriptive guidelines.
Yeah, I didn't realise the muted feature blocks PMs too, as soon as I did I reduced the warning level for you so that we could resolve the issue (I'm sure I've gotten PMs from people who were punished in some way, maybe just if they have their posts moderated). We'll definitely have to do something about that.
i'm just going to say that having rule #1 of how-to-not-be-a-dick-spelled-out be based on a reference to a 60s tv show starring a guy that died when i was 12 and hence never heard of before today is a bad idea if you want people to understand what you mean just saying
Mr Rogers is actually quite famous for being a wonderfully nice guy. Even though I never saw his show, even I've heard of him. This Cracked article (http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-moments-that-prove-mr.-rogers-was-greatest-american/) does a great job of explaining who he is.
But I agree we can use a better definition. I started to write one but ran out of time. I'll try again once I'm back from work.
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2) The second occasion should be one you are much more familiar with. I'm referring to what I'll call the "*****" thread. As you are well aware, a thread about a very serious piece of misandry quickly mutated into a thread about the use of the word ***** and remained there despite calls from the moderation staff and the original poster to talk about the original topic.
People who've spent a long time studying, discussing, and writing about this topic have a lot to say on the complexities of gender bias and the way it's constructed and performed. This was a case where I feel like the discussions should've been left alone; nobody had anything at all to say about the original topic.
Obviously I'm miffed here, but this is kind of what I'm concerned about. If the posts are substantive, well-thought-out, and saying something meaningful, let the topic drift. Calling this soapboxing doesn't make any sense to me. If the topic's about how upset we should be that a male rape victim's being mocked, maybe language used to mock male rape victims is fair game for the topic.
This was also one of those cases where there wasn't really enough communication to understand what was happening and why.
e: for tone
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When MP-Ryan has flat out asked people to stay on the original topic, don't you think it's very disrespectful towards him to ignore his wishes and plow on with the topic you care about?
See, this is why I worry that don't be a dick isn't enough. Even now you don't seem to see why ignoring the wishes of the OP is behaviour that falls under the heading of being a dick.
I call your behaviour on that thread soapboxing because you didn't care what MP-Ryan wanted to discuss, you had something important to talk about and you were damn well going to talk about it.
I'm sorry if you don't feel my explanation for why this behaviour was unaccepable was detailed enough. If you want to thrash this out on PM I'm more than happy to do so.
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I agree that that's a dick move*, and I wouldn't be comfortable going ahead with that as a unilateral thing. But wasn't there a lively discussion going on in the split thread? There was no intent to run that same discussion in the main thread; as I recall I was just really uncomfortable leaving the remark unflagged. I think it's important for people who are made uncomfortable by the forum's culture - whether these people are rape survivors or women accustomed to being belittled in environments like this - to know that they have advocates and allies, and I'm fundamentally bothered by the idea that this kind of advocacy, even if it's just a single post, would be marginalized while the original attack would be left to stand. Give 'em each a post and then split the rest.
On a broader level, again I think you're misconstruing what you should be doing as mods and admins here if you think there's a concern that some rule 'isn't enough'. You're a moderator (or an admin). Your job is to moderate and use your judgment, not to look wearily at a list of rules and wish you could do more. If someone's being a creep, give them a warning. If someone's ****ting up threads with dumb image macros and complaints about how terrible the threads are, warn them. Use the tools available to promote substantive discussion, and use your judgment to make these decisions. Don't get tangled up in an attempt to write exhaustive legislation, to borrow MP-Ryan's metaphor.
I would personally be pretty displeased if you took the stance that having a strong stance about rape culture in a thread about rape is 'soapboxing', and I would consider it a sign of mishandled moderation. But it wouldn't be because of the scope or nature of the powers exercised, some legalistic dispute with how you did it. I'd just think you made the wrong call.
I can see how the issue of subjectivity becomes a real problem here, and I know HLP just can't afford to attrit members and shrug it off. But I think there's been this repeated miscommunication in which 'more proaction, harsher punishments' is taken as a call for more bans. Think of the fabled broken windows theory of law enforcement, whether it works or not - attention to the small stuff, the tone of discussions and the attitude of the moderators towards their threads. When you wade through fifteen pages of a heated discussion, offering academic citations and real analysis, and it ends with some mod rolling their eyes and declaring that 'we're done here' or whatever, all that comes across is contempt for any kind of discussion at all. That's what I think needs to change.
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Mr Rogers was never on Australian TV as far as I know, bud I did find this on the cracked article. Spoon, this one's for you buddy.
http://youtu.be/yXEuEUQIP3Q?t=5m34s
Now, again, can I reiterate that we are a modding forum, with a focus on producing content for FS (as well as support and various other games based on the same engine, I know all that, it's peripheral to the point). A lot of the recommendation people are making are based on rules from discussion forums - in other words, forums where the primary focus is on interesting discussions about a variety of topics. Maybe they have a focus, maybe they don't, the point is that we are in a different category. A lot of these rules seem to work on the same principle that MP Ryan described - "Temp ban after one offence, Permanant ban after another".
We can't work like that. I've already given a very quick list of people who probably wouldn't be here under such a system who've made undeniable contributions to the modding work of the community. And believe me, that list would be significantly longer if we enforced a few peoples ideas about what constitutes an "offence" (based on some of the reported posts we see). And we definitely wont be going down the road where we have two sets of rules for people who actively mod and people who don't - even if that wasn't a horrendous double standard, that eliminates the possibility of anyone calming down and learning to mod.
My read of this thread is that "the community" (amorphous as that term really is) seems to want the impossible. On the one hand, we have people saying "No rules, just tell people don't be a dick! And then moderate and ban the people who are dicks. It's so simple!" And yet, on the other, we have people screaming at us about decisions we've made and I know - not suspect, not think, not expect - I know that that would be made 10 times worse if we were making decisions outside of the framework of a series of rules.
In short, you're angry at us for making decisions based on our best judgement, and encouraging us to change the system so that we rely solely on our best judgement.
What it seems to me that everyone really wants is to have a system wherein we make decisions based on your view of how the forum ought to be run - and we can't do that for each and every one of the couple of hundred plus active members that we have. Like I said, as a group, you seem to want the impossible.
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A lot of the recommendation people are making are based on rules from discussion forums - in other words, forums where the primary focus is on interesting discussions about a variety of topics. Maybe they have a focus, maybe they don't, the point is that we are in a different category.
This doesn't really follow. Any thread is going to be a discussion, regardless of whatever modding content exists in it. People post their thoughts on it, they discuss, because that's what forums do. Modding doesn't get done directly done through the forums unless people are sharing something back and forth via attachments, and even then they're probably discussing it as well. Encouraging them to be substantive remains in HLP's interests.
The whole ban tangent you launched into is...well see Battuta's post above your own for why it's not necessarily related at all.
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You're right, essentially - everything we do is discussion. But the problems people are worried about are primarily emerging as a result of discussions unrelated to modding, but the kind of heavy handed approach being advocated would see people banned from the entire forum, and like it or not, not being able to be part of HLP will inevitably decrease people's desire and ability to mod for FS. Which is exactly what we don't want to do.
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Alright, for whatever it might be worth I'd like to say something too.
Rules
As has been already said many times, the way how rules are laid out in PA and SA forums are from my point of view much better. They are laid out in a way that leaves administration and moderators sufficient flexibility to deal with different situations in different ways. Perhaps this leads to situations where more than one person commits same offence, but receives different punishment. It's still better than facing a situation where you are forced to adhere to an explicit list of infractions to dish out specific punishments.
What MP-Ryan posted earlier is good example how base rules could be handled. The less rules there are and the shorter said rules are, the better.
The Hammer of HLP Justice
I'm gonna say it bluntly, an admin or moderation when it comes to his or her job on these forums should not give a **** about what people say about your actions as long as you have acted impartially after taking good look at the situation at hand. If you cannot handle your job without being behind the Hammer, then perhaps this job is not for you. The whole idea of using singular moderation entity to represent all of administration and moderation is moronic. Moderation should be transparent. If you are afraid of your own actions and what consequences they may have after your moderation, then there's something seriously wrong. I don't think anyone expects admins and mods to be infallible in their decisions. You will mess up at times, nobody is going to hold a grudge over it, if you admit you were in the wrong and apologize. It shouldn't be that hard. If it is, then you're being a dick yourself.
As a matter of fact, I dislike how moderation is being discussed only among those "entitled". This again works against transparent moderation. Of course, you don't want everyone to butt in to the discussion, but allowing them to read would be better than nothing at all. Through transparency like this, even public gains better knowledge of how and why these decisions are made and what was involved in the situation. I believe transparent moderation has a lot more to offer than this behind the curtains act that is entrenched into HLP culture. As it is, these things in the past have been subject to discussion in IRC where they are also subject to serious misinformation and assumptions. And just as often than not, they may not be in the favor of moderation. Use of the Hammer would just make it all worse and I dread what it might turn into.
Board moderators
I believe I suggested several times in the past that non-hosted boards have their board moderators removed and instead those moderators worthy are promoted to global moderators. So in this part I like changes to moderation. I however do not like one bit about how this turned into hierarchical system where hosted project moderators are now beneath global moderators. This is especially worrisome if global moderators have a tendency to do "hit and run" moderation, where they make quick glimpse at the situation, make bad assumptions and step on hosted project moderators toes. This is not how this should work at all. This calls for transparency in moderation. Cooperate, converse, decide, transparently.
There's nothing wrong to subject hosted project moderators to same ground rules as all other moderators. The problem lies in this whole concept of "hierarchical authority" that global moderators have now been embraced with. This is clearly a slap in the face towards hosted project moderators as it messages that they aren't fit for the job of moderating their own boards.
Again, where's cooperation, conversation and transparency? Nowhere to be seen really.
Punishments
I believe it was MP-Ryan and NGTM-1R who mentioned they were banned without means for appeal. I do not know whether this happened when the "monkey" system was in place or not. But normally when someone is not capable of civil behavior in public boards, they are monkeyd either temporarily or permanently. This allows them to read the forums, use PM and still converse in private boards where they have access to, hence allowing nearly normal activity in any hosted project they might be member of. This is good and "monkeying" should be first and foremost means of punishment regardless of person if question, as this leaves PM's an open channel for appeals. Unfortunately, without transparent moderation even in the case of monkeying, you would have no channel for appeals. Not unless someone is keeping track of any PM's sent to the Hammer.
Bans, now there's the ultimate punishment that should be reserved for cases where appeals are flat out rejected. At least personally I feel like the monkey system worked well enough for HLP because of HLP's unique nature of preserving hosted project activity.
Administration
Admins are not infallible either and they make wrong decisions from time to time. In HLP's case though, that decision making is slower than snails and wrong decisions happens far too often. Not only that, but there's no transparency to actions of admins. Admins have kept their total authoritative ruling system where they are far and beyond common folk of this community, a stance that does not serve well being of the community in the least. Of course, admins should have the last word on matters when the situation calls it. But how often has a situation really called for it? There's no transparency to actions of admins, no accountability for being inefficient, in the wrong, a dick, or just plain unfit for the job.
How do we ensure that any single admin of HLP is actually fit for the job they signed up? It should be remembered that each admin was chosen for their unique skill set and specific job in mind. But never were they selected for betterment of the community. Admins were and probably still are terrible at managing such situations. Probably fearing that soon they might find themselves at the receiving end of such scrutiny. Right this second I could name two admins who should be outed for their lackluster performance. But it will never happen seeing as there's no accountability even within administration itself.
The community could see this if administration was transparent. But as it stands, the community at large is mostly clueless about internal workings (or lack thereof) of the HLP adminship.
As has been previously pointed out, it is the administration's responsibility to develop and make HLP a better place. Instead, they have instead opted for status quo year after year. We really haven't seen any real changes around here aside of occasional re-organization of the forum layout. The few admins that are actually active members of the community, have their eyes only towards their own projects. Not the community at large.
All issues pointed out in this topic are extremely valid. But at end of the day, let's ask ourselves the big question. Did we really had to have all these issues in the first place? All through these years, HLP administration have dealt with issues long after they appeared. It seems that not even once they have made any real strides towards eliminating the very source of the problem, inefficient administration, one that is not accountable to the very community they are supposed to serve. The word here being serve, not rule. This also seems to be a point of confusion among some of the admins.
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My read of this thread is that "the community" (amorphous as that term really is) seems to want the impossible. On the one hand, we have people saying "No rules, just tell people don't be a dick! And then moderate and ban the people who are dicks. It's so simple!" And yet, on the other, we have people screaming at us about decisions we've made and I know - not suspect, not think, not expect - I know that that would be made 10 times worse if we were making decisions outside of the framework of a series of rules.
In short, you're angry at us for making decisions based on our best judgement, and encouraging us to change the system so that we rely solely on our best judgement.
What it seems to me that everyone really wants is to have a system wherein we make decisions based on your view of how the forum ought to be run - and we can't do that for each and every one of the couple of hundred plus active members that we have. Like I said, as a group, you seem to want the impossible.
One thousand times this.
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As has been already said many times, the way how rules are laid out in PA and SA forums are from my point of view much better. They are laid out in a way that leaves administration and moderators sufficient flexibility to deal with different situations in different ways. Perhaps this leads to situations where more than one person commits same offence, but receives different punishment. It's still better than facing a situation where you are forced to adhere to an explicit list of infractions to dish out specific punishments.
What MP-Ryan posted earlier is good example how base rules could be handled. The less rules there are and the shorter said rules are, the better.
I don't think anyone here is implying that specific punishments will be tied to specific offenses, to the point where admins/mods have their hands tied by the rules. In fact pretty much the opposite has been stated: a poster's history and the exact circumstances involved are always going to be part of the equation, and they'll affect what sort of action is (or isn't) taken.
I'm gonna say it bluntly, an admin or moderation when it comes to his or her job on these forums should not give a **** about what people say about your actions as long as you have acted impartially after taking good look at the situation at hand. If you cannot handle your job without being behind the Hammer, then perhaps this job is not for you. The whole idea of using singular moderation entity to represent all of administration and moderation is moronic. Moderation should be transparent. If you are afraid of your own actions and what consequences they may have after your moderation, then there's something seriously wrong. I don't think anyone expects admins and mods to be infallible in their decisions. You will mess up at times, nobody is going to hold a grudge over it, if you admit you were in the wrong and apologize. It shouldn't be that hard. If it is, then you're being a dick yourself.
The point of the Hammer account isn't nearly so much for the peace of mind of the moderators as it is representative of the fact that moderation isn't meant to be the actions of one individual acting on his or her own whims. Anything beyond the level of a clear-cut spambot ban is going to have more than one person taking a look at it, and it's only if there's no substantial disagreement that action will be taken. It's not one moderator deciding to warn someone, but a few of us together, and that's where the Hammer idea comes into play.
As a matter of fact, I dislike how moderation is being discussed only among those "entitled". This again works against transparent moderation. Of course, you don't want everyone to butt in to the discussion, but allowing them to read would be better than nothing at all. Through transparency like this, even public gains better knowledge of how and why these decisions are made and what was involved in the situation. I believe transparent moderation has a lot more to offer than this behind the curtains act that is entrenched into HLP culture. As it is, these things in the past have been subject to discussion in IRC where they are also subject to serious misinformation and assumptions. And just as often than not, they may not be in the favor of moderation. Use of the Hammer would just make it all worse and I dread what it might turn into.
Isn't that exactly what we're doing right now? I mean if you want to say that this thread should have been presented as something like, "Here are some ideas for a revised moderation approach, what do you think?", then that's certainly valid. But there has already been feedback presented here that has affected how we're moving forward, and I expect that to continue. As far as moderation transparency in general goes, we're going to set up something of a "Thread of Shame" to list warnings/bans, so that people can see exactly what actions are being taken and why.
I believe I suggested several times in the past that non-hosted boards have their board moderators removed and instead those moderators worthy are promoted to global moderators. So in this part I like changes to moderation. I however do not like one bit about how this turned into hierarchical system where hosted project moderators are now beneath global moderators. This is especially worrisome if global moderators have a tendency to do "hit and run" moderation, where they make quick glimpse at the situation, make bad assumptions and step on hosted project moderators toes. This is not how this should work at all. This calls for transparency in moderation. Cooperate, converse, decide, transparently.
There's nothing wrong to subject hosted project moderators to same ground rules as all other moderators. The problem lies in this whole concept of "hierarchical authority" that global moderators have now been embraced with. This is clearly a slap in the face towards hosted project moderators as it messages that they aren't fit for the job of moderating their own boards.
Again, where's cooperation, conversation and transparency? Nowhere to be seen really.
As has already been stated, moderation decisions are going to be a joint effort from here on out, so there aren't going to be any of these kinds of "hit and run" decisions where one individual takes action in a hosted project thread. I will freely admit that this has happened in the past, and that it was wrong...and that's a big reason why these revisions are happening in the first place.
About the whole "hierarchy" thing, I guess I'm having a lot of trouble seeing why that's such a big issue for some people, not least of which because I've seen a similar system used on pretty much every forum I've been involved with. But looking past that, as a project leader, wouldn't dealing with people being dicks in your project board be pretty much the last thing you'd want to have to deal with on a daily basis? I mean, maybe it's just me, but I'd sure as hell want to be focused on the actual point of what I'm doing, showing off the content I've created and interacting with the people consuming it, not dealing with some idiot spouting flames all over the place. I'd want to report it, let the moderation staff deal with it, and have it taken out of my hair. At least from my understanding of it, the concept of projects being hosted on HLP was never meant to imply that the forum side of those project would represent individual fiefdoms: you get your own folder and the abilities to manage how content is presented there, but it's still a part of HLP as a whole, and so under the auspices of the people in charge of maintaining the site. The bottom line for me is that, if I as a project lead wanted full administrative control over my forum, I'd go ahead and make my own...otherwise, I'd stick to the fun part of my job, and leave the crap to those people who for some reason are willing to deal with said crap on a daily basis.
I believe it was MP-Ryan and NGTM-1R who mentioned they were banned without means for appeal. I do not know whether this happened when the "monkey" system was in place or not. But normally when someone is not capable of civil behavior in public boards, they are monkeyd either temporarily or permanently. This allows them to read the forums, use PM and still converse in private boards where they have access to, hence allowing nearly normal activity in any hosted project they might be member of. This is good and "monkeying" should be first and foremost means of punishment regardless of person if question, as this leaves PM's an open channel for appeals. Unfortunately, without transparent moderation even in the case of monkeying, you would have no channel for appeals. Not unless someone is keeping track of any PM's sent to the Hammer.
Bans, now there's the ultimate punishment that should be reserved for cases where appeals are flat out rejected. At least personally I feel like the monkey system worked well enough for HLP because of HLP's unique nature of preserving hosted project activity.
I think karajorma may have stated it before, but the "muting" option not allowing for PMs wasn't something we were aware of before that happened, and it certainly isn't the intended behavior. You're right that not having PMs as a recourse in that situation is a very bad thing, and it's something that will be fixed. If that means simply not using the "mute" option at all, then that'll be off the table.
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I don't think anyone here is implying that specific punishments will be tied to specific offenses, to the point where admins/mods have their hands tied by the rules. In fact pretty much the opposite has been stated: a poster's history and the exact circumstances involved are always going to be part of the equation, and they'll affect what sort of action is (or isn't) taken.
In practice that stance is good, trying to make it into a long list of explicit infraction rules probably won't work all that well in the long term. Which is the gist of what I gathered was supposed to happen.
The point of the Hammer account isn't nearly so much for the peace of mind of the moderators as it is representative of the fact that moderation isn't meant to be the actions of one individual acting on his or her own whims. Anything beyond the level of a clear-cut spambot ban is going to have more than one person taking a look at it, and it's only if there's no substantial disagreement that action will be taken. It's not one moderator deciding to warn someone, but a few of us together, and that's where the Hammer idea comes into play.
The only reason I am seeing a need for the Hammer is that we have moderators or administrators who are not enjoying trust of the community to do their job in fair manner. The only thing the Hammer does, is mask the problem, not solve it. This is further reinforced by the fact that these discussions concerning moderation are carried behind closed doors so to say. The general public, whom the moderators and administrators are supposed to serve, cannot make accurate opinions of the matters themselves. You can draw a comparison to most countries justice system where court proceedings are almost always public. Only in rare cases they are closed to media and all non-essential people.
Not only that, but from my point of view it seems like hosted project board moderators were forgotten in all of this. From where I stand, it looks like the Hammer is reserved for admins and global moderators. Hosted project moderators still had to just be themselves to moderate. Or did you expect that hosted project moderators are now prohibited to carry out any moderation action, but instead must always go through global moderator or admin and thusly the Hammer? That's real fair play guys, well done.
Isn't that exactly what we're doing right now? I mean if you want to say that this thread should have been presented as something like, "Here are some ideas for a revised moderation approach, what do you think?", then that's certainly valid. But there has already been feedback presented here that has affected how we're moving forward, and I expect that to continue. As far as moderation transparency in general goes, we're going to set up something of a "Thread of Shame" to list warnings/bans, so that people can see exactly what actions are being taken and why.
This topic was posted by mjn.mixael who read about these new changes in an announcement and who didn't like what he was reading. All feedback, all discussion is only now being carried out after the fact. I'd say this is a major blunder from global moderators and admins alike. And this is exactly why I wrote my last post's "Administration" part. There's no transparency to decision making nor accountability.
I think karajorma may have stated it before, but the "muting" option not allowing for PMs wasn't something we were aware of before that happened, and it certainly isn't the intended behavior. You're right that not having PMs as a recourse in that situation is a very bad thing, and it's something that will be fixed. If that means simply not using the "mute" option at all, then that'll be off the table.
And don't forget that the SMF warning system doesn't warn anything in by itself, leaving the warned person clueless unless he is specifically informed personally about it. Again pulling rugs from underneath the Hammer unless great care is taken to handle any PM's from and to the Hammer.
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And don't forget that the SMF warning system doesn't warn anything in by itself, leaving the warned person clueless unless he is specifically informed personally about it. Again pulling rugs from underneath the Hammer unless great care is taken to handle any PM's from and to the Hammer.
Not true, actually. Whoever warned you forgot to check the box, but it's standard practice to tell the board software to send a standard "You have been warned for this post" PM.
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My read of this thread is that "the community" (amorphous as that term really is) seems to want the impossible. On the one hand, we have people saying "No rules, just tell people don't be a dick! And then moderate and ban the people who are dicks. It's so simple!" And yet, on the other, we have people screaming at us about decisions we've made and I know - not suspect, not think, not expect - I know that that would be made 10 times worse if we were making decisions outside of the framework of a series of rules.
In short, you're angry at us for making decisions based on our best judgement, and encouraging us to change the system so that we rely solely on our best judgement.
What it seems to me that everyone really wants is to have a system wherein we make decisions based on your view of how the forum ought to be run - and we can't do that for each and every one of the couple of hundred plus active members that we have. Like I said, as a group, you seem to want the impossible.
One thousand times this.
While I do not know most of the moderation actions that may have played role in this, I'd still like to say a few words on the subject.
People are angry at moderators or administrators for carrying out unfair moderation. From previous posts it is also clear that "hit and run" moderation has also played a large role in this. Both are clear problems. You have devised a solution to properly communicate in these matters before carrying out any action and carrying them out in united front that poses as the Hammer.
There's just a few problems with this. Moderation by its very definition is acting on best judgment. There's no way around this and no matter how many of you discuss the matter, it is still being carried out on best judgment. There's just more people behind the judgment now, making moderation actions all that much slower. Meanwhile the people on both ends are left to their own devices until a decision is reached, which will take what, a day or two at best, a week at worst?
Does the community trust your decision making to be fair, just, impartial and swift? Will there be transparency in all of this? This doesn't change at all no matter how many people are behind the justification of moderation action. People are still going to be angry if they feel you didn't make the right decision. But since you do everything behind the Hammer, they lose every last sense of there being accountability for one's actions, even moderator's or admin's. But of course, where are my manners. We again forgot hosted project moderators, who are not entitled to work with the Hammer.
All the good intentions, but everything wrong with the way problem is being approached.
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Mr Rogers was never on Australian TV as far as I know, bud I did find this on the cracked article. Spoon, this one's for you buddy.
http://youtu.be/yXEuEUQIP3Q?t=5m34s
What a wimp.
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how can you say that
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With a keyboard. How else ?
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I had this idea while I was in sauna, so it's not very far thought idea but it's an idea nonetheless.
Does HLP really need totalitarian administration ruling the community? As HLP is uniquely community driven by the community itself and for the benefit of the very same community, wouldn't it make more sense if the community itself was in position to elect who are most qualified to be administrators? If anything, only the founders of HLP would have the final word for whatever happens here, but they are both long gone. Which ultimately leaves responsibility of the community's well being to none other than the community itself.
How about we have administrator elections to elect two administrators who we feel are the best qualified to represent the community as a whole and look after interests of the community. These elected administrators will then in turn select their own cabinet of talented people to fulfill very specific roles for which their own skill set is not enough.
This would address my previous concern of admins not having any accountability to the community they are supposed to serve, as well as give them a reason to actually do their job and do it well.
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uuuurgh, no, electing admins introduces a ton of bureaucratic overhead that would crush a small community like this. much better to make sure you have admins who will keep the quality of discussion high without pissing everyone off
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You forgot that administrator has a ton of other duties besides playing a moderator. Or at least should have. As is evidenced by current state, most of these duties have been neglected for years. Admins as it stands, have no accountability and thus they have zero need to actually do their jobs properly.
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Hello.
Having read the latest posts, I still basically agree with the current rules, and things which I would have argued about once they have been brought up are going to be fixed (thread of shame, not being PM silenced under a tempban)
But I have a suggestion for the Hammer. The current argument is the Hammer is to show a united front from the mods vs the hammer is, for want of a better word, cowardly.
It doesn't have to be one or the other. Perhaps when the Hammer falls, the account could list all the mods/admins that were involved with making the decision, and detail what the decision was made for. I do believe the exact reasons should be made public so that not only does the infringer see what they've done, but everyone else does too, so that they also can learn from it. And listing the involved parties means the mods/admins can't be accused of hiding behind the Hammer, because they're right there, they get to be united, and if the person punished wants to appeal, they know who made the call.
On the rules also, we seem to have a "better to have short rules than long rules" thing, but I don't see why we can't have both. They aren't hard and fast rules, just guidelines. So why not list out a long list? It's not as if they need to be rigid in nature, that's already been stated. Information is power, in this case for both mods and admins, and the posters. If the argument is that people don't want to read all that and want it kept simple, just put the kind of short guideline set desired at the top of the post and leave the long set intact underneath.
People are going to complain when they don't like something. But I wonder how many people like or are fine with what we have and simply haven't spoken? I'm the only person I believe who has simply expressed approval.
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It doesn't have to be one or the other. Perhaps when the Hammer falls, the account could list all the mods/admins that were involved with making the decision, and detail what the decision was made for. I do believe the exact reasons should be made public so that not only does the infringer see what they've done, but everyone else does too, so that they also can learn from it. And listing the involved parties means the mods/admins can't be accused of hiding behind the Hammer, because they're right there, they get to be united, and if the person punished wants to appeal, they know who made the call.
Isn't that exactly the point of the Thread of Shame.
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It doesn't have to be one or the other. Perhaps when the Hammer falls, the account could list all the mods/admins that were involved with making the decision, and detail what the decision was made for. I do believe the exact reasons should be made public so that not only does the infringer see what they've done, but everyone else does too, so that they also can learn from it. And listing the involved parties means the mods/admins can't be accused of hiding behind the Hammer, because they're right there, they get to be united, and if the person punished wants to appeal, they know who made the call.
Isn't that exactly the point of the Thread of Shame.
I would say that it needs to be in the thread it happened, so all the people who were involved can see it. A lot of people probably won't ever look at the thread of shame.
The thread of shame allows users to learn, and also see that people they want dealt with are being dealt with. Also, I once had a problem with Karajorma once when he banned two people, and just said bans had been handed out and I couldn't see what for, as all he said was bans had been handed out. It's the one MP-Ryan has complained about earlier in the thread. The thread os shame would eliminate this, as then I and anyone else could just go in there, although what I said earlier about usage of the Hammer would mean I wouldn't even have to go to the thread of shame.
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how can you say that
:drevil:
Does HLP really need totalitarian administration ruling the community? As HLP is uniquely community driven by the community itself and for the benefit of the very same community, wouldn't it make more sense if the community itself was in position to elect who are most qualified to be administrators? If anything, only the founders of HLP would have the final word for whatever happens here, but they are both long gone. Which ultimately leaves responsibility of the community's well being to none other than the community itself.
You forgot that administrator has a ton of other duties besides playing a moderator. Or at least should have. As is evidenced by current state, most of these duties have been neglected for years. Admins as it stands, have no accountability and thus they have zero need to actually do their jobs properly.
While I don't know about elections there is some truth here.
To repeat what I said earlier, why is that we only see Axem do things like newsletters? There's no activity from the staff when it comes to things outside of moderating. (excluding Zacam who's been hard at work keeping the bots away and the site up, but since that sort of happens behind the scenes it can be hard to see.)
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This would address my previous concern of admins not having any accountability to the community they are supposed to serve, as well as give them a reason to actually do their job and do it well.
So... The rules don't bother me that much since I'm not generally a trouble-maker, and I'm not all 100% against what was posted. That said, I think Fury captures my point best with all the references to sekret committees doing the work of single moderators. Committees take time and more transparency is better than less. The emphasis on secrecy in the New Rules did not set up, in my mind, a glowing trust of the moderation team. It started to do the latter... for moderators I have generally respected.
On that note, and on the note of the quoted. I will say that I pretty much rely on Zacam to be the accountability. He's proven to be the most impartial, most willing to listen, and most willing to discuss the matters with whomever. (In this case, the community.) I'd love more of that from the admins.. but there are few who fit that role.
I do hesitate to compare admin to admin.. because I don't have problems with any of them generally. I've just seen Zacam go above and beyond more times than once and I think he's a good example for the other admins to strive towards. If moderation happened as he does it, there would be no need to hide behind secrecy and The Hammer. Sometimes I don't agree with his decisions, but he's respectfully acknowledged that I have a differing opinion and we move on. On the topic of my original post... I think this is how moderation needs to be handled with Hosted Project mods. Very different from the 'We are taking over main moderation train, project mods get to follow us on the tracks, but they have to follow us how we tell them to.'
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My read of this thread is that "the community" (amorphous as that term really is) seems to want the impossible. On the one hand, we have people saying "No rules, just tell people don't be a dick! And then moderate and ban the people who are dicks. It's so simple!" And yet, on the other, we have people screaming at us about decisions we've made and I know - not suspect, not think, not expect - I know that that would be made 10 times worse if we were making decisions outside of the framework of a series of rules.
In short, you're angry at us for making decisions based on our best judgement, and encouraging us to change the system so that we rely solely on our best judgement.
What it seems to me that everyone really wants is to have a system wherein we make decisions based on your view of how the forum ought to be run - and we can't do that for each and every one of the couple of hundred plus active members that we have. Like I said, as a group, you seem to want the impossible.
One thousand times this.
I don't think so.
What I'm asking for, generally, is less moderation, and aimed at the problem children who are doing the egregiously-obnoxious things that annoy everyone.
Do I care if a thread gets derailed by substantive discussion (e.g. the '*****' discussion)? No. Do I care if it gets derailed by meme images? Yes. Do I care if someone acts like an asshole generally? No. Do I can if they use racist/homophobic language? A thousand times yes. You know what irks me most? Thread closure, instead of shutting down the children causing problems in it. Seriously, for every time a thread has been locked, it usually could have been resolved with 2-3 temp bans of a single-day duration to the problem kids, and let everyone else carry on.
Define a few - few, mind, a short list is all - of things that will instantly get you temp-banned. File the rest under a "good behaviour" guideline. Quit worrying about active moderation of good behaviour unless there is either (1) a report from a user, or (2) a consistent pattern of disruption, flaming, etc.
I've been a member of a lot of online communities. The best ones have either extremely lax moderation, and only of the truly worst offenders and posters, or extremely tight moderation. For HLP's size, I suggest the former is better. You'd be surprised at how well a community can self-moderate with articulate regular membership. The tone has to be set, though. We actually have precedent for this too... look how obnoxious FlamingCobra/Mamba/Reptile-of-the-day was when he first appeared. Can anyone actually show him being a problem recently? That wasn't the result of harsh moderation, that was the result of the articulate forum membership basically hammering him in a social context. I hope/suspect/pray that we may eventually manage the same thing with Lorric, rather than going the High Max / Liberator direction... at least, I hope so.
I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but lengthy guidelines are an exceptionally bad idea. I think the current version is way too prescriptive and simply going to cause further problems in the long run. Fury and Zacam seem to be touching well on what I'm getting at.
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On that note, and on the note of the quoted. I will say that I pretty much rely on Zacam to be the accountability. He's proven to be the most impartial, most willing to listen, and most willing to discuss the matters with whomever. (In this case, the community.) I'd love more of that from the admins.. but there are few who fit that role.
I do hesitate to compare admin to admin.. because I don't have problems with any of them generally. I've just seen Zacam go above and beyond more times than once and I think he's a good example for the other admins to strive towards. If moderation happened as he does it, there would be no need to hide behind secrecy and The Hammer. Sometimes I don't agree with his decisions, but he's respectfully acknowledged that I have a differing opinion and we move on. On the topic of my original post... I think this is how moderation needs to be handled with Hosted Project mods. Very different from the 'We are taking over main moderation train, project mods get to follow us on the tracks, but they have to follow us how we tell them to.'
+1 on this
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I'm happy to go with a shorter list. But I reserve the right to say "I told you so" if it doesn't work and we get drama from people who aren't newbies. :p
So... The rules don't bother me that much since I'm not generally a trouble-maker, and I'm not all 100% against what was posted. That said, I think Fury captures my point best with all the references to sekret committees doing the work of single moderators. Committees take time and more transparency is better than less.
This point seems to be causing issues so it's better to clarify things.
The point about actions not being unilateral does not mean that actions will be taken by polling all the moderators. It means that a moderator won't act without getting a second opinion. Most of the time there are at least a couple of mods online or within calling distance if a report is made. Having a moderator run his opinion past a couple of other people is not the same as having a committee decide everything and acts as a check and balance.
I don't see how that is somehow less transparent than a single admin simply banning someone and saying "X is banned for his actions on this thread" which is often the way of things. And I further don't see why all the transparency people are asking for can't appear on the Thread of Shame. It's not exactly hard to stick a link on the original thread and then have something like
"User X was given a 3 day ban for his actions on this thread. Personal attacks aimed at other users is unacceptable."
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Do I care if a thread gets derailed by substantive discussion (e.g. the '*****' discussion)? No. Do I care if it gets derailed by meme images? Yes. Do I care if someone acts like an asshole generally? No. Do I can if they use racist/homophobic language? A thousand times yes. You know what irks me most? Thread closure, instead of shutting down the children causing problems in it. Seriously, for every time a thread has been locked, it usually could have been resolved with 2-3 temp bans of a single-day duration to the problem kids, and let everyone else carry on.
It seems like this'd lead to situations where when a discussion turns septic, whoever's on the side the mods disagree with get banned, regardless of who was actually being an asshole.
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Not to mention most of the kids would simply ragequit HLP and the moderators would get the blame for it.
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And that is why moderators actively involved in a given thread should not be moderating it.
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And that is why moderators actively involved in a given thread should not be moderating it.
I assume you're replying to PhantomHoover. Cause that wouldn't help with the problem I mentioned.
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Indeed. Should have inserted quotes.
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What it seems to me that everyone really wants is to have a system wherein we make decisions based on your view of how the forum ought to be run - and we can't do that for each and every one of the couple of hundred plus active members that we have. Like I said, as a group, you seem to want the impossible.
One thousand times this.
God, what an incredibly depressing thing to read. After all this discussion, all these clear, coherent statements pointing in the same direction, this is what you've taken away?
Although MP-Ryan has already provided a really good response, let me try one more time to deal with the misapprehensions that seem to be driving things in circles.
"Temp ban after one offence, Permanant ban after another".
Your entire argument seems to be based on the notion that we are going to be working like this. Don't work like this. Nobody has asked for it. SA doesn't work like this. I doubt PA does either. Use the tools available. Give non-cumulative probations for small offenses. As MP-Ryan said, take smaller, proactive measures to keep threads working well. If people are problems in GenDisc, ban them from GenDisc instead of the whole forums.
You're right, essentially - everything we do is discussion. But the problems people are worried about are primarily emerging as a result of discussions unrelated to modding, but the kind of heavy handed approach being advocated would see people banned from the entire forum, and like it or not, not being able to be part of HLP will inevitably decrease people's desire and ability to mod for FS. Which is exactly what we don't want to do.
The degree of self-paralysis here is baffling. MP-Ryan has already explained why this doesn't have to happen.
I'm just going to quote his points because they represent what's been asked for across this whole discussion. Please let me know if you genuinely believe these are impossible:
What I'm asking for, generally, is less moderation, and aimed at the problem children who are doing the egregiously-obnoxious things that annoy everyone.
Lorric is still posting in GenDisc.
Do I care if a thread gets derailed by substantive discussion (e.g. the '*****' discussion)? No. Do I care if it gets derailed by meme images? Yes. Do I care if someone acts like an asshole generally? No. Do I can if they use racist/homophobic language? A thousand times yes. You know what irks me most? Thread closure, instead of shutting down the children causing problems in it. Seriously, for every time a thread has been locked, it usually could have been resolved with 2-3 temp bans of a single-day duration to the problem kids, and let everyone else carry on.
Probations work. Garden the discussion so the good stuff remains, don't just close it all down.
Define a few - few, mind, a short list is all - of things that will instantly get you temp-banned. File the rest under a "good behaviour" guideline. Quit worrying about active moderation of good behaviour unless there is either (1) a report from a user, or (2) a consistent pattern of disruption, flaming, etc.
You want good members, not just good posts. If a usually substantive and polite member's having a bad day, you don't need to come down on them like a ton of bricks. Communicate. If people ragequit HLP because they've received a week off from GenDisc, they're not here for the right reasons,
The notion that what's been asked here is somehow impossible is really the first piece of evidence I've seen that actual improvement may be impossible. The consensus has been so overwhelming. And yet a lot of the difficulty seems to come down to this:
In short, you're angry at us for making decisions based on our best judgement, and encouraging us to change the system so that we rely solely on our best judgement.
I hesitate to say it, but the problem may simply be that these judgments haven't always been very good. There's been action where no action seemed necessary, and total inaction where action was clearly overdue. What may help with this is:
Act sooner when a problem occurs, but with a softer hand. This allows a feedback cycle to develop, and it becomes clear whether escalation is appropriate.
Stop thinking of moderation as a system of locks and bans. Take less absolutist, more gradated action. A faceless warning without any room for dialogue is never as good as a warning with a PM.
Recognize that the forums have two distinct sectors which are going to require different approaches. GenDisc and Gaming Disc are very different from the rest and you can always make it clear that standards of substance and conduct are higher there.
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GenDisc and Gaming Disc are very different from the rest and you can always make it clear that standards of substance and conduct are higher there.
I can't overstate this. A lot of active modders around here would never think about approaching GD with a ten parsec footpole. I sure don't want and don't expect people to behave as ****tily in the main forums as they do in GenDerp.
On the other hand, I also don't expect that someone's bad behaviour in GD would make them unable to post on the main forum, especially if they're active modders (this has happened a few times to ttuta and this really sucked). You can tempban people from GD only, use that.
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I'm strongly beginning to suspect the very best thing this board could do for itself is to lose GD entirely and become a purely modding-focussed community, but that kind of decision is a major one and would have to be made not just by Admin, but by the forum as a whole.
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GenDisc and Gaming Disc are very different from the rest and you can always make it clear that standards of substance and conduct are higher there.
I can't overstate this. A lot of active modders around here would never think about approaching GD with a ten parsec footpole. I sure don't want and don't expect people to behave as ****tily in the main forums as they do in GenDerp.
On the other hand, I also don't expect that someone's bad behaviour in GD would make them unable to post on the main forum, especially if they're active modders (this has happened a few times to ttuta and this really sucked). You can tempban people from GD only, use that.
This is just your own complacent cynicism, trying to shut down any discussion. Sure, GD is often a ****hole; but that's not necessarily because it being a ****hole is a fundamental law of the universe that cannot be changed.
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I'm strongly beginning to suspect the very best thing this board could do for itself is to lose GD entirely and become a purely modding-focussed community, but that kind of decision is a major one and would have to be made not just by Admin, but by the forum as a whole.
I wouldn't want this. We have intelligent people capable of discussing wide variety of subjects. The real problem lies with moderation. I for one am no longer involved with FS modding. Losing either or both of the GD boards would mean there'd be nothing left for me here. But perhaps that's what you're after, get rid of the people who are not involved with FS anymore.
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Well, that'd include me if it did.
We really need to decide what the difference is between moderating in there and moderating other forums. If it is to be allowed to become a 'bear-pit', that might please some people, but you'd soon find it was inhabited only by the small percentage of the user base who actually enjoy that kind of thing and would just be avoided by everyone else, and anyone reading the Forum first would probably not hang around.
If there IS to be a difference between how GD is moderated compared to other Forums that difference needs to be clear to both the people using it AND the people moderating it. There is no way on Earth that project mods would tolerate some of what goes on in GD on their own boards, and that's well and good, but everyone has the attitude that GD is somehow different, yet nobody ever really explains in what way.
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Here are some substantive rules for a fairly functional politics/events discussion forum!
Do not whine about the debatability of a thread topic.
No cheerleading. No Parting shots. The easiest way to define cheerleading I suppose is acting like you're part of a team, cheering on your teammate or egging on the opponent. This also applies to comments along the lines of “oh, don’t bother arguing with - , they’re crazy” and the like. It's a judgment call so if there are any questions, feel free to contact one of the mods.
Do not close your threads. It is not YOUR thread and you can't end the debate unilaterally just because you want to.
No low-content or no-content posts. Posts that add nothing to the thread will be probated. Humor is content, horrible attempts at humor probably aren't.
Report posts, don't derail threads, and don't play mod. If you are confused about a rule, pm, IM, or email one of the mods. Do not try to start a discussion about the rules in the middle of a forum thread
Racism: Racist or discriminatory posts will get you banned. Trying to abuse this rule to get other people banned may not go well for you.
Tone: D&D has no requirement you treat all posts and viewpoints as equal, or even legitimate, but you are expected to keep a civil tone to maintain the ability to debate even extremely contentious topics. Gratutitous flaming and the like will land you on probation. Posts that are nothing but gratuitous flaming will land you on probation for a while.
Catch-all: ****ty posts are always against the rules, even if they ever-so-carefully avoid breaking an explicit rule. Don't even try to rules-lawyer. If you find yourself typing "but what rule, exactly, did I violate", it's this one. You violated this one. Close the PM/IM immediately, without sending it.
Things that will get your thread gassed:
i. Do not post threads or make posts for the sole purpose of flaming one country, group, side or position.
ii. Don't try to write your own rules for a thread.
iii. Don't start a thread that someone has to watch a youtube movie or the like to understand: nobody will watch it. Either transcribe it or find some other text-based substitute.
iv. Humor threads and other politics/philosophy based threads are fine even if they're not really for 'debating' or 'discussing'.
How to be a good D&D poster:
These are just a few things that help you get your point across well. Don't ****ing report people for violating these.
i. Do not post full articles unless you are the person that started the thread, unless they’re fairly short. Post the relevant quotes and a link as to not clutter up the thread.
ii. Always include a source for an article. If you're making some unusual or controverisal claim, try to find a source for it. Don't post a claim against somebody and walk away thinking that's enough - if you are challenged, back it up.
iii. Read the thread. If it shows that you just skipped to the end and jumped in, you're going to be sitting out.
iv. Don't be an idiot, or a pendantic idiot.
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I'm strongly beginning to suspect the very best thing this board could do for itself is to lose GD entirely and become a purely modding-focussed community, but that kind of decision is a major one and would have to be made not just by Admin, but by the forum as a whole.
Sacrificing a culture-building foundation for productivity?
How deliciously communist. :P
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You're right, essentially - everything we do is discussion. But the problems people are worried about are primarily emerging as a result of discussions unrelated to modding, but the kind of heavy handed approach being advocated would see people banned from the entire forum, and like it or not, not being able to be part of HLP will inevitably decrease people's desire and ability to mod for FS. Which is exactly what we don't want to do.
But I think there's been this repeated miscommunication in which 'more proaction, harsher punishments' is taken as a call for more bans.
The whole ban tangent you launched into is...well see Battuta's post above your own for why it's not necessarily related at all.
I shouldn't have to do this to a moderator.
I really shouldn't.
Like, if I have cause to do this to a moderator, I will seriously question their fitness to moderate because they are charged with a careful and thorough reading of postings to arrive at what is best for the board, and the fact I can and have done this means they have not done so.
But I'm going to reply to you like I resorted to replying to Lorric in his Manic Pixie Dream Girl thread because you're doing what he's doing; you're talking about something that people have already addressed. I'm just going to quote Battuta at you because Battuta already said your interpretation is wrong. I'm going to quote myself at you because I pointed that out.
Now it's a couple page back, why should I do this?
Because it's illustrative of a pattern. People, particularly you and Karaj, are not listening to reasonable concerns presented a reasonable way by non-moderators. They appear to not be reading the posts in question thoroughly because they do not want to listen to them. And this is deeply frightening, because it suggests that change is impossible.
EDIT: And in case it wasn't clear, because the argument that "we're going to permaban so many people and it'll ruin the forums!" was dead two pages ago because nobody ever asked for it in the first place and it was rejected by both sides that far back.
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Yeah, seriously. It's really dispiriting to see that misunderstanding pop up again directly after a post aimed at dispelling it.
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Because it's illustrative of a pattern. People, particularly you and Karaj, are not listening to reasonable concerns presented a reasonable way by non-moderators. They appear to not be reading the posts in question thoroughly because they do not want to listen to them. And this is deeply frightening, because it suggests that change is impossible.
I don't know if that's particularly fair - the early pages of this discussion were pretty openly hostile, and I think BW and kara are still approaching it from a defensive stance. They're reading our posts, I just don't know that they're approaching them as non-judgemental input (as they're intended) rather than an attack on the existing moderating team and the guidelines they've drafted (as they are not intended).
At any rate, most of the non-moderators (and some of the moderators) now giving input to this thread are saying essentially the same thing - fewer guidelines, a couple hard-and-fast rules, and earlier, softer, flexible intervention by the moderation staff is the right direction. A strict crime-and-punishment regime is neither what this board needs nor what we are advocating.
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Well, that'd include me if it did.
We really need to decide what the difference is between moderating in there and moderating other forums.
Indeed, and you can actually file all my input under the heading of "Off-Topic Moderation."
The off-topic forums ARE different beasts from the rest of the site, and should be moderated differently - although I'm not advocating the bear pit approach.
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Having seen, and been a part of, some pretty vicious stuff breaking out in FS Modding and Upgrades, I'm not remotely convinced of that.
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Mr Rogers is actually quite famous for being a wonderfully nice guy. Even though I never saw his show, even I've heard of him. This Cracked article (http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-moments-that-prove-mr.-rogers-was-greatest-american/) does a great job of explaining who he is.
But I agree we can use a better definition. I started to write one but ran out of time. I'll try again once I'm back from work.
Let's try this one.
1) Be nice.
This doesn't mean being polite (although that's certainly part of it). The games and mods here on HLP were made by people willing to give up massive amounts of their free time, often over the course of several years, in order to provide people with something to play. This can only happen when people are willing to be giving. Giving of their time to make games. Giving of the models, graphics and code they make. Giving of their expertise in teaching people how to do what they do. The worst community members just what they're given and then complain about what they were given for free. The best community members are the ones who are willing to give back. Even if you haven't got any game design skills you can still give back. You can still tell people what worked and what didn't. If you find a bug you can give up a few hours to help the person who spent years making the game you're playing ensure that the next person doesn't have the same problem.
This community lives or dies on ability of its members to be nice to each other, and for this reason, this is the number one rule on HLP.
God, what an incredibly depressing thing to read. After all this discussion, all these clear, coherent statements pointing in the same direction, this is what you've taken away?
Let me point to your last post as a great example of this. For 3 pages you've all complained about why prescriptive guidelines are a bad idea. And how the guidelines shouldn't be a series of bad behaviours. And for the most part I've understood your point and agreed with it.
And then you've posted a list of prescriptive guidelines, many of which are the same as the ones on the HLP list and everyone seemed to think they were fine. WTF!
But what I think you're forgetting is that this thread is not a representative sample of HLP users. With the exception of Lorric, probably everyone on this thread has been in the community for years. I don't see much thought being given to newbies to the community, especially those who aren't members of other forums.
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Those are clearly labeled as a set of rules for a discussion subforum like GD. What's more, one of them reads 'don't play rules lawyer'. It's completely in line with everything else I've said. WTF indeed.
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So prescriptive guidelines are okay for Gen Dis then?
I'm honestly completely confused by your last posts. They run completely counter to everything that has been said before. And do the other people who have been against them also agree with you? No one has said anything either way.
Are prescriptive guidelines okay if there are other guidelines too?
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But what I think you're forgetting is that this thread is not a representative sample of HLP users. With the exception of Lorric, probably everyone on this thread has been in the community for years. I don't see much thought being given to newbies to the community, especially those who aren't members of other forums.
I'm sorry... I'm trying not to be a complete negative Nancy... But this is just so ironic given how the rules were come up with in the first place... How can that even be an argument in the circumstance?
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OK, hang on, I'm kind of confused here: aren't the rules Battuta et al. proposing the prescriptive ones? That is, they prescribe what you should be doing on the forums rather than proscribing all the things you shouldn't be, like the proposed rules?
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OK, hang on, I'm kind of confused here: aren't the rules Battuta et al. proposing the prescriptive ones? That is, they prescribe what you should be doing on the forums rather than proscribing all the things you shouldn't be, like the proposed rules?
Batts' rules are what I would call prescriptive, as are the current guidelines. Typically they tell you how you should behave, versus how you shouldn't.
I prefer short prohibitive rules (the current guidelines have some features of prohibitive rules as well as prescriptive, but are IMHO way too long) to make it clear absolutely what is not tolerated, and then leave the rest to combined informal community moderation and formal admin moderation.
The focus on newbies probably isn't worthwhile anyway, and this is the primary reason I say short prohibitive rules are the better route: most newbies to any forum DO NOT READ THE GUIDELINES. You decrease the odds of them reading all the guidelines if they are long. I say this as someone who had never actually bothered to read the complete guideline set until very recently, so I have some experience in this matter :)
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I'm sorry... I'm trying not to be a complete negative Nancy... But this is just so ironic given how the rules were come up with in the first place... How can that even be an argument in the circumstance?
The difference is that when we came up with the rules, we were trying to think of newbies as well as the regulars. Battuta is saying that because everyone who posted on this thread is saying one thing, that's the view of the community. He's also assuming that's why Black Wolf and I are saying it's virtually impossible to do what the community want.
Instead it should be pretty obvious that it's actually the view of the small subset willing to post of the small cross section who bothered to read this thread and there's a very good possibility it doesn't represent the wider community.
The focus on newbies probably isn't worthwhile anyway, and this is the primary reason I say short prohibitive rules are the better route: most newbies to any forum DO NOT READ THE GUIDELINES. You decrease the odds of them reading all the guidelines if they are long. I say this as someone who had never actually bothered to read the complete guideline set until very recently, so I have some experience in this matter :)
Virtually no one reads the guidelines of their own volition. I could probably replace the guidelines with a post saying "I'll give $1000 to the first person with less than 10 posts who sends me a PM quoting this post" and never have to pay out.
The reason I mentioned newbies is that if someone gets into trouble it's nice to have something to point them at to keep them out of trouble. And that's where I feel a proscriptive list (admittedly with a more proactive start than the one we have) is useful.
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Oh for tucks sake.
Are you really pulling the "this discussion is not done by a representative sample of the population, therefore we can discard the results" card?
What chance for an actually constructive dialogue about this is there if that's your stance?
Sure, it's a minuscule minority of the board that has spoken up here. But that's not a good reason to pull the plug on the discussion, given that the only reason we're having it in the first place is that an even smaller subset of the forum population had a discussion about the rules.
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Not really a newbie (been here for almost 3 years wow), but I clearly don't post all that much. Usually on here reading every day though. I Have been following this thread, but didn't feel like wading in with all you heavy weights who have been around since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. That outa the way:
-I would prefer GD not be shut down. That would be like throwing out the baby with the bath water.
-I don't think that there should be separate rule sets for GD or any of the other sub-forums.
-In the case of GD, I rarely see any active moderation at all, when all it would take is some PMs or a mod/admin to step in and say "cool it guys". What usually happens is a thread gets locked. Eventually.
-It was said earlier that some of the admins/mods do not wade into GD due to fearing the reaction of their compatriots. This is not a good way for moderation to take place. If you do notlead because of how you will be thought of, then you should not have that authority. Being in authority can at times make you a lightning rod, but if you accept the position then that does not mean you can shirk the duties of the office.
-This therefore should change
-What I would like to see in rules/guidelines:
-A very short list of things that you cannot do "No racism, Sexism, Insults on character etc etc" Oh and add religion bashing to this list. It gets old and destroys useful topics
-A very short statement describing the way you should behave. You should not need to describe how to be nice. That should be known to everybody.
-A clause saying that anything not covered is still subject to rule by the admins/mods. Just because it isn't in the rules does not mean you can get away with it
-What I would like to see in behavior:
-Soft punishments. Not necessarily 3 strikes you are out policy (warning, temp ban, perma ban or something). Give people bans for ~24 hours for minor offenses (this should cover most
cases. A week for more egregious breaches of conduct. If there is a long string of behavior in one particular sub-forum, then ban them from that sub-forum. If they can't behave at all, anywhere, then completely ban them. The wall of shame idea is a good idea. Have it list who is banned, why, and how long the punishment period is.
-Use of the PM system to explain what the individual did wrong. This also means that the PM system needs to be accessible to people who have been banned.
-Active Moderation, particularly of GD
-Discontinuation of the use of the Hammer Account, while funny the first few times I saw it, reading the explanation behind its use in this thread makes me feel that it is bad. Mods/Admins should not hide behind that account, nor should they feel they have to. Mods/Admins should be trusted for their judgment and insight as well as their sense of fair play. They should be respected, and their decisions as well. They should not be be afraid to wade into a thread to do what needs to be done either. This is not to say that they are infallible, an appeal process is bothreasonable and fair.
-Moderators/Admins should be able to both participate in a thread and moderate it if need be. This requires them to remain level headed at most times. State when you are switching from just participating to laying down the law so to speak
those who have posted earlier are correct in that there has been consensus as to what should be changed moving forward, and that you are choosing not to see it. You can ignore almost the first 3 pages of this thread, maybe more, as backlash before it actually gets constructive.
On an additional note, I am curious as to Fury's statement for transparency on the part of the administration and competency/activity.
GRAR cloudflare issues and such make this only slightly less frustrating than taking my organic chem tests.
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Let's see about the latest posts...
The reason I mentioned newbies is that if someone gets into trouble it's nice to have something to point them at to keep them out of trouble. And that's where I feel a proscriptive list (admittedly with a more proactive start than the one we have) is useful.
I agree with this. This was useful to me. It's also a good tool for the mods. And you can have new mods too who it will be useful for. It's not about people not reading it in the first place, as they may never need to. But if they do, then it's there, and they can be directed to it.
Let's try this one.
1) Be nice.
This doesn't mean being polite (although that's certainly part of it). The games and mods here on HLP were made by people willing to give up massive amounts of their free time, often over the course of several years, in order to provide people with something to play. This can only happen when people are willing to be giving. Giving of their time to make games. Giving of the models, graphics and code they make. Giving of their expertise in teaching people how to do what they do. The worst community members just what they're given and then complain about what they were given for free. The best community members are the ones who are willing to give back. Even if you haven't got any game design skills you can still give back. You can still tell people what worked and what didn't. If you find a bug you can give up a few hours to help the person who spent years making the game you're playing ensure that the next person doesn't have the same problem.
This community lives or dies on ability of its members to be nice to each other, and for this reason, this is the number one rule on HLP.
And I very much like this, I would support it's insertion into the guidelines. I haven't seen Mr. Rogers, but I may well have a look sometime just to see why he is held up as a paragon of niceness. If he's really that nice, he could be left in the guidelines in a lighthearted way.
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For ****'s sake, Lorric, do you not realise that half the reason for this discussion is that you've been ruining threads in GD with your attitude of "well I know nothing whatsoever about anything outside of my comfy little box but I think you all need to hear my thoughts on the matter" and nobody's found a workable excuse to ban you yet? Would you please shut up, for once in your entire time in this forum, and actually let the grown-ups talk?
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I'm just...
Karaj, you genuinely seem like you Do Not Want To Do This, as you have resisted it in every possible way, and you're now inventing new (and kinda dubious, as The E pointed out) ways to resist it when you've run out. What is it that you find so objectionable about this that you fight it so hard?
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-Moderators/Admins should be able to both participate in a thread and moderate it if need be. This requires them to remain level headed at most times. State when you are switching from just participating to laying down the law so to speak
I agree with all of your post except this. There's far too much potential for accusation of bias if a mod moderates a thread they're participating in, regardless of if it's actually there or not. This would cause needless drama that could be easily avoided by having a noninvolved moderator take action. If, for example, The E were to take action against Lorric in the feminism thread for whatever reason (not making a statement, just an example), whilst I trust The E and know him to be a very good and fair moderator, there's the possibility that others may read it as a personal attack, and there would likely be backlash which, again, could be really easily avoided.
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I've said my piece as best as I can. Any questions people have about my points can be answered by rereading my posts in this thread. I don't see any particular difficulties with being newbie-friendly inherent in the suggestions made here.
I can't work on any modding-related stuff right now, and the discussion component of this forum is currently nonfunctional for reasons (a reason) that should be quite apparent from the last few posts. There hasn't been any apparent movement to fix it, and this thread seems to be getting a lot of pushback in spite of the fairly clear and coherent multipolar consensus here. Will anything be done in the near term to get the forums back into a state where we can have discussions? And I'm not talking about the CloudFlare issues here.
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I posted a new version of the first guideline based on the feedback and every single person on this thread except Lorric ignored it.
Are you really pulling the "this discussion is not done by a representative sample of the population, therefore we can discard the results" card?
Of course I'm not saying that. I did edit my post to better explain what I meant but cloudflare ate it.
Black Wolf posted (And I agreed) that sometimes it's very hard to give the community what they want cause they'll constantly say they want something and then complain when they get it. Past experience has shown me that often the same people who ask for a certain kind of moderation are the first ones to complain about it when it gets applied to them.
What I am saying is that we must remember that we don't even have a representative sample. So even if no one who posted on this thread does that (And I would be very disappointed if anyone did). There's a good chance we could do what people on this thread say is the best thing to do and then face a second ****storm from those people who didn't read this thread and completely disagree with what was done. While part of me would be tempted to say "**** 'em, they had their chance" I'm pretty sure that's the wrong attitude.
What I really don't want to happen is to thrash out a new set of rules on here and then have people come along and tear them apart too. I've seen far too many people reverse their position the second something is put into practice.
I pointed out Battuta's rule set for Gen Dis as a great example of this. It's a complete reversal of many of his earlier points. I'm honestly confused about how we can make a set of guidelines that do what he's been asking for earlier and what that list does. I honestly can't see why that list is a good idea and the one we currently have is a bad idea.
And the only explanation I've gotten is that the addition of a rule saying that rule lawyering isn't allowed somehow makes it okay. I really, really can't see how. :confused:
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For the love of God, it's an example of a rules set that works from another forum. I posted it so we could look at it and talk about it. If you can't see how it's compatible, give yourself a minute. :confused:
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If you think that's incompatible with my earlier points it means that I did not in any way get my earlier points across.
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I don't think it's just me. PhantomHoover was just as confused and MP-Ryan flat out stated that they were prescriptive, as are the current guidelines.
If you feel the rules would work, tell me why they are better than what we have now, cause I really don't understand and it appears I'm not the only one.
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MP-Ryan flat out stated that they were prescriptive
cause I really don't understand
These are not related issues. Why are you equating them?
Because, you know, MP-Ryan was actually supportive of the proposed rules change and appeared to understand it, so saying he's "confused" and "you are not the only one" is kinda disingenuous here.
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Are you guys just ****ing with me now? :confused:
Batts' rules are what I would call prescriptive, as are the current guidelines. Typically they tell you how you should behave, versus how you shouldn't.
I prefer short prohibitive rules (the current guidelines have some features of prohibitive rules as well as prescriptive, but are IMHO way too long) to make it clear absolutely what is not tolerated, and then leave the rest to combined informal community moderation and formal admin moderation.
Seems he's flat out stating he doesn't like the rule set Batt posted for Gen Dis. I agree with him on that, I don't like them either.
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Round and round we go... Let's just go back to one of the most level headed post on the topic...
I think a point (or points) that we need to take away from this situation and evolved conversation is this:
This obviously isn't working out as intended.
Bear in mind that this is just from my own perspective and may not address everything brought up here. If I miss touching on something, it's nothing personal, I'm still into my first cup of coffee
For the longest time (to my perception starting out as a regular member) Administration and Moderation just seemed to be a casual sort of deal. There have been issues, to be sure. There always will be when you have more than 2 human beings in any one place and we're far more diversified than that. But there never seemed to be the kinds of issues that we've been having lately.
Now, some of the issues seem to stem from A: entrenchment and B: entitlement. (I won't go about into which applies to whom, that wouldn't be constructive)
When the initial proposition of trying to create a "Common Page" came up, it all seemed like a really good idea. Maybe I didn't pay as much attention to the details specifically as I could have and as a result, abstracted it to a notion of what I -thought- it would turn out to being, which lead to a sense of being "okay" with the concept that was then presented. I can also see how it naturally could lead to then becoming highly defensive about reacting to the responses that have been given in regards to it. And then like a snowball, momentum makes it bigger and we have a mess on our hands.
And as tired as I am of there being messes, it doesn't do anything or any one any good if I choose to then react to it as "Great, another ****ing mess, isn't THIS just lovely" even if that IS a human reaction to give.
I'm already on record as saying that I don't think the right approach should involve more of an Authoritative stance when it comes to a Community. I'm more than willing and I have the choice however to see how well it can work before trying other options, regardless of my own personal stance. This isn't a compromise of who I am or of my nature, it just means that I can rationally see a need for allowing things to progress naturally and organically to their own conclusions and work on it from there.
I'm more invested (personally) in learning what works and what doesn't and in making mistakes (and apologizing for them in the right way) as a fundamental part of my own personal evolution. But it is a LOT easier to want to try and hold on to what is already established, to want to be right and to just say "This is the way of it, take it or **** off". It is a lot easier to deal with hostility by replying in kind.
I've worked Technical Support in addition to having to work through my own anger management issues as both a child and young adult. Fortunately, rather than taking the "lets medicate it out of you" route (which can still be viable, just wasn't in my case), I got to work through it by developing an understanding of what causes for it and developing the mechanics to help me step aside from it until I can look at it later. Working in technical support really helped with that, as when you pick up a phone and immediately have somebody absolutely SCREAMING at you, it is REALLY easy to default to the fact that they are screaming at YOU and therefor, YOU need to do something about it.
So, what does any of the above so far have to do with where we are right now? Well, let me refer back to:
A: entrenchment
B: entitlement
Yes, we need to have -something- that the community can be behind that lets people know who they can turn to and what we can do about things and when it becomes necessary for things to be done. Social urges of being a social creature wants control and structure in the face of chaos (and perversely the more of that you have, the more you'll generate the need for chaos).
So while I do think that the idea and the approach -as ideas- are still good and solid and necessary, I'd like to see more of a engagement with regards to what WOULD work, rather than a focus on tearing down or bring up what HASN'T worked or what people feel might be wrong about the existing idea.
We took it as a top level discussion and a top level collaboration to try and create this set up. As a result, it got created in a vacuum that allowed for both entitlement and entrenchment to take place. We took it as our responsibility to try and come up with something for the Community, which we did and we then presented to the Community. But we (I don't think) took into account that the community (in light of the whole reason behind WHY we did this in the first place) might not see it as more of an Authoritarian move of imposing a system in place, instead of as a "rough draft" seed for us to all collectively germinate and process and turn into a upheld Pearl.
Part of that may have been due the presentation of how it got put forth to the community. For something that would require Community involvement and acknowledgement and participation in, the feedback is as a reaction to it being (perceptually at the very least) as being now already "in effect" with no sense of having actually contributed anything towards it in a fashion that makes it tailor made for the very Community it is purportedly in place to support.
There have been throughout the posts a few wonderful examples of the right kind of feedback that we should take a look at. PA's and SA's guidelines have been pointed out as being a format that we can look at. So rather than trying to recreate a wheel in a void, I think there is merit in soliciting from the community the question of:
What do you see, in terms of other forums, as rule-sets or means that you feel would be potentially applicable to HLP that would allow for it to become the Community that you feel would provide the proper environment that will allow it to live up to the declared nature of its existence of "Bringing Modders Together"?
Now, I also need to acknowledge that: We cannot ignore our past. Serious things have taken place. We cannot blindly insist on "moving forward" to a resolution without taking even the slightest moments to actually acknowledge how we got to where we are. What few (public) apologies that have taken place have been grudgingly given and ALWAYS in the context of "but so are you!" or as an attempt to refute a point to prove a point.
The bottom line is NOT in being "right". The bottom line is: address the situation, even if it never gets resolved initially, it will eventually but only when it is properly acknowledged for what it is.
In Technical Support terms, this means: You say "sorry" to the angry caller for their issue, even when they are screaming at you, because god damn it, somebody had better be! You need to let go of the personal matter of not actually being at fault in this situation and still manage to deliver a sincere apology (and for ****s sake, one that you actually MEAN and can uphold) for them being angry before you can start working on the technical problem they are having. If you continue to insist on not being at fault, if you continue to assert that you don't deserve them screaming at you (and yes, we already know you don't, they'll eventually realize that too) you will NEVER get the actual fundamental technical problem resolved.
And I think by and large, that is one of the BIGGEST problems that we have going on here right now. People are screaming at each other. They all have valid points. They are all, in their own way, absolutely right in the position that they are coming from. But we're getting FAR too focused on who is actually MORE RIGHT than the other that we're not getting anywhere, and I would really like if it could stop for even just a moment please, because you are turning rather unhealthy shades of purple and I'm concerned you might have a heart attack.
Now, I don't know whether or not we should engage the conversation on the question above (in bold) within this thread or if we should have a new Topic of discussion regarding it. I'm leaning more in favor of the latter with the emphasis that the topic should start out with, and be purely contained to, the bold part directly and by itself.
In any case, my personal apologies for the mess and my lack of time to properly pay attention to it. Can we please start looking at how we can get this properly sorted now?
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Seems he's flat out stating he doesn't like the rule set Batt posted for Gen Dis. I agree with him on that, I don't like them either.
At any rate, most of the non-moderators (and some of the moderators) now giving input to this thread are saying essentially the same thing - fewer guidelines, a couple hard-and-fast rules, and earlier, softer, flexible intervention by the moderation staff is the right direction. A strict crime-and-punishment regime is neither what this board needs nor what we are advocating.
I am again resorting to the counter-Lorric tactic.
I should not have to be resorting to the counter-Lorric tactic.
The rules are examples, not proposals. Nobody has treated them as proposals.
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The miscommunication here is that someone thinks I posted a proposed set of rules for GenDisc. Can't type now
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Oh good grief. If hackers would quit making HLP impossible to load I could actually clear this up.
Batts' posted a suggestion for discussion, as far as I can tell. I like the spirit of the prohibitive items listed; I do not want to see further prescriptive rulesets adopted here.
Actually, kara's "be nice" suggestion wasn't all that bad and would be a step in the right direction (coupled with the deletion of the current guidelines), but needs refinement.
Let's try this:
The primary rule on HLP is simply "Be Nice." That doesn't mean you must always be in agreement, or even always be polite, but it does mean you have to be respectful of the person if not their views. This also means that racism, homophobic language, sexism, personal attacks, and harassment are behaviours that can earn you an immediate ban. All warnings, temporary restrictions, and bans are at the discretion of the moderating team, based on the "be nice" principle. HLP's moderators will strive to intervene early to correct unacceptable behaviour instead of resorting to immediate formal actions; if you are the subject of a warning, this is an opportunity to change your behaviour and learn from it.
The games and mods here on HLP were made by people willing to give up massive amounts of their free time, often over the course of several years, in order to provide people with something to play. This can only happen when people are willing to be giving. Giving of their time to make games. Giving of the models, graphics and code they make. Giving of their expertise in teaching people how to do what they do. The worst community members just what they're given and then complain about what they were given for free. The best community members are the ones who are willing to give back. Even if you haven't got any game design skills you can still give back. You can still tell people what worked and what didn't. If you find a bug you can give up a few hours to help the person who spent years making the game you're playing ensure that the next person doesn't have the same problem.
The discussion in the off-topic areas are also only productive because of members who also give up their free time to participate. HLP has many passionate and often highly-educated members. Please don't take our membership for granted. Making any areas of the forums hostile places, and especially the truly optional areas, will merely eliminate them.
This community lives or dies on ability of its members to be nice to each other, and for this reason, this is the only real rule on HLP.
Just a couple additions I thought were worthwhile.
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Well the plan was to make a couple of other rules if people liked the first one. But I'm fine with your version for the most part. I can always link to old guidelines if someone really needs things explained to them in more black and white terms.
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Well the plan was to make a couple of other rules if people liked the first one. But I'm fine with your version for the most part. I can always link to old guidelines if someone really needs things explained to them in more black and white terms.
That does seem like a good way to get the best of both worlds.
Oh and happy birthday Karajorma! :D
You've been up against it in this thread the last few days, so I truly wish you a happy one.
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For what it's worth, I've been following this thread too. I'd like to say first that I actually really do trust and respect the mods and admins here. I'm glad that Karajorma is engaging in this dialogue; it can't be easy to do, I'm sure, what with all these communication problems flying around.
I also like MP-Ryan's new proposed guidelines, and really appreciated Beskargam's post, he said a lot of what I'd been thinking as I read through this thread.
If I could add a couple of things though, it would be to edit the guidelines down just a bit for space, and to add a short list of non-obvious things that could garner a warning ("inb4" stuff, posting image macros instead of a post that contributes something, things like that). EDIT: Just noticed those are in there.
As for being able to moderate a thread that a mod is involved in, I'd say it was not a great idea to exclude that possibility entirely, but that it should naturally be reserved for things like splitting a topic if necessary, or emergency purging of posts/users in situations where taking the time to contact another mod(s) would lead to the thread falling apart and/or exploding before any action could be taken.
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Upon further thought, Scourge's idea is probably a better one regarding mod/admin impartiality
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Administration
Admins are not infallible either and they make wrong decisions from time to time. In HLP's case though, that decision making is slower than snails and wrong decisions happens far too often. Not only that, but there's no transparency to actions of admins. Admins have kept their total authoritative ruling system where they are far and beyond common folk of this community, a stance that does not serve well being of the community in the least. Of course, admins should have the last word on matters when the situation calls it. But how often has a situation really called for it? There's no transparency to actions of admins, no accountability for being inefficient, in the wrong, a dick, or just plain unfit for the job.
How do we ensure that any single admin of HLP is actually fit for the job they signed up? It should be remembered that each admin was chosen for their unique skill set and specific job in mind. But never were they selected for betterment of the community. Admins were and probably still are terrible at managing such situations. Probably fearing that soon they might find themselves at the receiving end of such scrutiny. Right this second I could name two admins who should be outed for their lackluster performance. But it will never happen seeing as there's no accountability even within administration itself.
The community could see this if administration was transparent. But as it stands, the community at large is mostly clueless about internal workings (or lack thereof) of the HLP adminship.
As has been previously pointed out, it is the administration's responsibility to develop and make HLP a better place. Instead, they have instead opted for status quo year after year. We really haven't seen any real changes around here aside of occasional re-organization of the forum layout. The few admins that are actually active members of the community, have their eyes only towards their own projects. Not the community at large.
All issues pointed out in this topic are extremely valid. But at end of the day, let's ask ourselves the big question. Did we really had to have all these issues in the first place? All through these years, HLP administration have dealt with issues long after they appeared. It seems that not even once they have made any real strides towards eliminating the very source of the problem, inefficient administration, one that is not accountable to the very community they are supposed to serve. The word here being serve, not rule. This also seems to be a point of confusion among some of the admins.
When can we expect admins to deal with these issues? Inside source reports that this has not even been discussed internally. When are admins going to stop treating HLP as if it was Blackwater Operations and instead treat it as if it was Diaspora?
HLP deserves better.
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Yes it does. Whether or not it will ever get it... we'll see.
Trying to be a force for the community isn't easy though. Everybody has their own ideas as to what that should mean, and that invariably leads to many arguments.
I know I've owed it to my self and the rest to "live up" to being an Administrator. Why I was picked is beyond me, but I did accept it and I'm not regretting that in the slightest.
I think it's a shame that this conversation died down and (while vocal) had but a few general participants on it. Because still nothing is generally resolved.
I'm personally more in favor of a more permissive short rule set that basically outlines following Wheatons Law, points out the -isms and warez/piracy as "don't even think about it" and focusing more on getting people on board with the idea that the very first disciplinary action should always be "communicate". And not just in some confab amongst ourselves, but with the people reporting the posts or issues and the people being reported.
If the issue is serious enough to really warrant more immediate action, well, there are lesser stages that can be taken rather than the drastic ones first.
Fury has added some salient points to this conversation, as have MP-Ryan, Battuta and The E (if I've missed anybody, my apologies).
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Why I was picked is beyond me, but I did accept it and I'm not regretting that in the slightest.
I campaigned for your selection as an admin because I knew from personal experience you had certain qualities other admins lacked. That you came with technical expertise required to maintain HLP was extremely lucky and even more luckier is that you essentially brought rev_posix with you. Made your selection as an admin a no-brainer. If anything, I am saddened that the administration seems to be exactly the way it was when I left it. Nothing has changed. Now I've watched from the sidelines for years and the emotion I can mostly associate with is shame.
Shame because I couldn't make a difference and correct the situation I described in my earlier post regarding administration. Shame because I gave up and left. Shame because I gave the ball to someone else who I knew would feel the same way I do without me having to nudge the person towards that end. But most of all, I resent the administration not realizing their own shortcomings at all and dealing with them properly. They've had years upon years to do some self-reflecting and failed to do anything about it. If I didn't know better, it almost seems as if they are more concerned about staying in power than actually acting in the best interests of the community.
Trying to be a force for the community isn't easy though. Everybody has their own ideas as to what that should mean, and that invariably leads to many arguments.
Very true. This is why I advocate transparency and accountability from administration and for their actions. They are not supposed to rule the community but serve the community. If we were drawing analogies here and assume that HLP was a modding project, they should treat members of the community as members of the project and not as people who play the finished product. Those would be the people who visit the community but are not exactly participating in it.
I think it's a shame that this conversation died down and (while vocal) had but a few general participants on it. Because still nothing is generally resolved.
Yes it is. While admins have done everything they do with best intentions in mind, far too often it has backfired on them. Perhaps they have begun to realize the error of their ways, as wishful thinking as it is. Unfortunately I haven't seen any indication that any other admin besides Zacam and karajorma are even following this topic.
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I think it mainly died down cause no one had objections to MP-Ryan's edit of my guidelines. If there continue to be no objections, I'll post them as the new guidelines in a few days.
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I've been lurking this thread, but I just wanted to jump ahead and agree with MP-Ryan's take on the matter. Fingers crossed that it may run a-ok!
Oh and thanks everyone for running and moderating this forum!
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Question. Will use of the Hammer account continue?
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Question. Will use of the Hammer account continue?
I would hope not, generally. The "intervene early" paradigm means a face is associated with a response, not a blanket account.
That said, I think the Hammer does have a place - where all options such as early intervention, warnings, and temp bans have failed over a period of time and the last resort of a permaban has to be enacted, using the Hammer makes sense - a single admin's name should not be tied to an action that is essentially a collectively-sought act by the community at large.
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The Hammer also has historical value! :V
But seriously now, I've read through this whole ****-fit and I think I like the direction it's going now. Catching problems early would be way better than the usual "wait for ****storm and then lock/ban" approach. I'm going to second Battuta's suggestion that the Something Awful forums are a good model for effective moderation. That is, idiocy and asshattery isn't tolerated, the mods have leeway to punish people who aren't technically breaking any rules, punishments and the reasons for them are publicly displayed. I don't think we can afford to be quite as draconian as they are given the size of HLP and that we don't want to drive away potential talent. That said, there's still no reason we have to suffer the assholes and morons of the world.
I'll be interested to see how this plays out.
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I finally caught up with this thread. I was away last weekend, which happened to be rather bad timing in regards to my ability to follow the developing controversy, but on the other hand, there is a certain advantage to being able to read the discussion without participating in it.
I want to first mention (at the risk of reopening a wound) the whole deal with Wings of Dawn. I'll naturally start off by being defensive: I, personally, was intrigued when Wings of Dawn came out, and although I didn't have much interest in playing it, I appreciated the effort put into it and the fact that it was a giant TC made basically single-handedly. So I took the lead on approving the Wings of Dawn forum and unleashing Spoon on his own board with moderator privileges and my compliments (and an internal board cheekily called Wings of Derp). And now for the concession: Apparently, Spoon had his hands full moderating Wings of Dawn for quite some time and without staff support, but I was completely unaware of this until the controversy with Black Wolf. Since there had never been an instance of another hosted project having serious moderation difficulties, it didn't occur to me to specifically check on Wings of Dawn. It was a black swan event. I'm not sure why Wings of Dawn is unique in this respect; maybe it has something to do with anime, I dunno. But the point is that if Spoon reported any posts or posted any support threads during this time period, I would have probably ignored them since I wasn't personally interested in the project. (And I think it's reasonable to keep up with certain projects more than others; I doubt any one person has played all, or even almost all, of the campaigns or hosted projects published by HLP.) So to the extent that Spoon requested help and I didn't provide the admin backup that he, as a hosted project moderator, is entitled to, I apologize.
Anyway, Karajorma and Zacam aren't the only ones to be paying attention to the thread; I too am very interested in this discussion. I do have some ideas on what we can do next; I was mulling over whether it would be a good idea to start a couple of new threads here, each devoted to discussing a particular prospective issue. (For example, one thread on how to use the Hammer and whether the admins should moderate in person and the ramifications; one thread on how precisely to elucidate Wheaton's Law; one thread on the appropriate use of moderator power, etc.)
One thing that people have been complaining about is that the new rules were drafted without any community input. That's not really true, at least from our perspective. We had a fairly lengthy discussion in the Global Moderator forum about the need for new rules and how to go about drafting them. Now some may cite this as an example of the HLP staff being insular, but really, the admins viewed it as opening up the rules process to community input, because previous rules had been drafted solely in the Administrator forum. Now obviously there are other perspectives in play, but the plus side to this thread is that we're able to hash those things out.
And I was as surprised as mjn.mixael to see Zacam make a very reasonable, thoughtful, and rational post (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84758.msg1693073#msg1693073) that went almost completely ignored. If you read through that page of the thread, there's heated discussion, Zacam's post, and then heated discussion resumes as if his post wasn't even there.
I'd like to propose that Zacam take the lead on drafting a new set of rules, whether that takes the form of a few simple bullet points or a more elaborate prescription. It may be based on consensus or community-submitted suggestions, but Zacam should be the one actually writing it.
Oh, and one final thing for now. In the Global Moderator discussion, we focused on the mechanics of the policy, the nuts and bolts of what and how. It occurred to me during that discussion that a rather large gap in our understanding of the situation is why. Many admins and global mods don't want to moderate Gen Disc because their decisions and actions have been fiercely challenged. Two global moderators felt burnt out and wanted to resign. On the other hand, many forum members see the HLP staff as aloof, uncaring, or arbitrary. Both sides get exasperated when talking with the other. There's a significant human factors part of the equation that's not being addressed very well.
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Anyway, Karajorma and Zacam aren't the only ones to be paying attention to the thread; I too am very interested in this discussion. I do have some ideas on what we can do next; I was mulling over whether it would be a good idea to start a couple of new threads here, each devoted to discussing a particular prospective issue. (For example, one thread on how to use the Hammer and whether the admins should moderate in person and the ramifications; one thread on how precisely to elucidate Wheaton's Law; one thread on the appropriate use of moderator power, etc.)
Sounds good to me. There seemed to be problems with information and points getting across with all of this in a big lump. Things were getting lost in the shuffle. But since some seperate topics have clearly emerged, opening up some new threads would probably be a good idea at this point and allow more focused, easier to access debate on each point.
An OP which states where the mods and admins currently stand on each subject would be a good way to start I think, so everyone is clear and there's no confusion on what points are being debated, and then the debates can proceed from there.
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There are a few people that have made very well thought out posts. Fury, Beskargam & MP-Ryan have quite decently made compelling singular posts in my opinion.
I'm not really sure that an assignment of any one individual for this process is strictly necessary, but I'll be more than happy to do my part. I got stalled out the last time, because rather like we've experienced, there is an issue where one can get focused more on the nuts and bolts of mechanics rather than a broader scope canvas.
Given that we've gotten some rather consecutive concerns aired and expectations and perceptions from members (regardless of "representative percentage") this should make the next stages of discussion a lot easier to work with.
I'll post what I come up with as a general topic in this board for us to start either additional discussion on, or collective acknowledgement that it's good to adopt.
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Just finished reading the entire thread. Interesting read. Anyways, just wanted to post (I hesitate to as it's really trivial): if you need niceness defined succinctly: Treat others the way you want to be treated. That belongs about 3 pages back, I know.
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Treat others the way you want to be treated.
I tend to find that definition tends to lead to lots of "Well I'd have been okay with that joke, he's just an uptight arsehole" from people with no empathy.
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Hmph, true, that. :nono:
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Recent events have me wondering how your proposals are coming, Zacam. Anything new?
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Perhaps it's merely my recent inclusion into the ranks of Global Mod, but I've seen a whooole lot more moderation occurring lately than I ever saw before.
Granted, I wasn't exactly an interested party before, but it sure seems like it.
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I concur. And its doing a good thing.
Mods/admins, thank you.
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Indeed. This doesn't seem to have been primarily one person, but rather a collective response to the threads in Site Support and Site Feedback. And there have been more Global Moderators doing stuff, both in commenting on the Reported Posts reports and in performing moderation actions, than admins. So I want to extend a particular thanks to our Global Moderator staff. :nod:
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Recent events have me wondering how your proposals are coming, Zacam. Anything new?
Nothing new at the moment in terms of publishable. But there will be a new topic to start it off, rather than to continue hashing this one out.
It'll start with a question, and my take on an answer to it. And we'll go from there. Sorry I haven't had as much time as I would like to adequately address this as directly as it deserves, but it is my #1 priority immediately following Life Events.