Recently in the past few days we've had some cute gendisk dramas, with some members joyfully ignoring or stretching the forum rules in an high spirited manner. The end result is that very well known members such as Battuta, sigtau, Hades, Snail and Fury (and I might be missing someone here) have ended up monkeyed or
banned.
Later in the #Hard-light channel, some of them confirmed they have problems accessing key server functions, which is an impediment to work-flow in their own campaigns. Like Battuta said in the chatroom, this state of affairs is worrysome because very productive members of the HLP are being thrown out despite their awesome contributions to this community.
I'd add that it wasn't "despite", it was
*because*. Fury got himself a month's worth of ban because he ought to "lead by example" for being a "former admin". Battuta was monkeyed for two weeks for expressing himself somewhat badly in his self-deprecation.
Personally I understand the need to enforce rules. But clearly something's not working right here, and very productive people that do indeed invest so many time, effort and love into creating so much beauty, maintaining a game for so many years and still improving it, still continuing the stories, stretching the game dynamics and narratives to unprecedented levels.... are just being thrown out as
vandals.
So I propose something differentIn order to
(1) enforce the necessary rules and
(2) stop the current system of being banned or monkeyed for the first errors that some more strict moderators will find within a thread I propose that a more clear protocol to deal with these "out-of-lines" be put in place.
I propose the following protocol
as an example or blueprint, that I am quoting from another forum. One which, IMHO, works pretty damn ****ing well and no one ever complained about it in any venue whatsoever. I borrrow it from RationalSkepticism.org and it is well written.
Here:
Moderation
The consequences for breaching the Membership Agreement will be based on the seriousness of the offence, and this judgement will fall entirely on the moderators' discretion. The Moderation Team use a range of strategies to address breaches of the Membership Agreement. These include:
• Moderator Advice
• Warnings
• Suspensions
• Banning
When possible and when appropriate, Moderator Advice and Warnings will be issued publicly, usually in the thread where the breach occurs. The Moderation Team may also use private messages and emails if they feel it is more appropriate to do so.
Threads or posts that breach the Membership Agreement may be removed from view at the discretion of the Moderation Team.
2.2.1 Moderator Advice
Moderator Advice may be issued within Modnotes as general advice to all members or may be directed to particular members. If a member is given Moderator Advice they will be notified via PM and a record will be made on their profile. There is no minimum or maximum number of times a member may be issued Moderator Advice before a stronger action (such as a warning) is taken.
Unlike Warnings (see below), Moderator Advice does not accumulate to result in suspensions.
2.2.2 Warnings
In most instances, staff will advise posters to post according to the terms in the Member Agreement. If a poster ignores this advice then breaches of the Member Agreement may result in a Warning, which will remain active for 6 months.
When deciding whether to issue Moderator Advice or a Warning for a breach, the Moderation Team consider the:
• member’s posting history;
• history of previous Moderator Advice issued to the member;
• context of the breach; and
• severity of the breach.
2.2.3 Suspensions
If a poster accrues warnings, they will lead to suspensions as follows:
3rd active warning - 1 week suspension
4th active warning - 1 month suspension
5th active warning - 6 month suspension
After 6 months, the poster can return with a clean record but will have a probationary period of 6 months. During the probationary period, warnings will lead to suspensions as follows:
1st active warning - 1 week suspension + 1 month extension of probationary period
2nd active warning - 1 month suspension + 1 month extension of probationary period
3rd active warning - 1 year suspension + 1 year probationary period
2.2.4 Banning
Bans from the forum are permanent and are issued at the discretion of the Moderation Team for:
• Spammers (members who register to advertise or promote a business or to solicit anyone to buy or sell products or services without explicit permission and/or having a Supporting Vendor status with rationalskepticism.org.)
• Sockpuppet accounts (see below for further information)
• Trolls (members who the Moderation Team consider have registered with an intention to engage in trolling behaviour and/or whose forum posting history predominantly comprises trolling behaviour with relatively minimal constructive content).
• Members who have engaged in extremely inappropriate behaviour either on the Forum or via PM.
2.2.5 Consequences for registering a sockpuppet account
All sockpuppet accounts are banned upon detection. Registering a sockpuppet account will lead to suspensions or banning as follows, depending on the member status of the primary account holder:
• current member - 6 month suspension
• deactivated member - 6 month suspension from the time they request re-activation
• suspended member – extension of suspension by 6 months
Any member, whether current, deactivated or suspended, who creates a second sockpuppet account will be banned from the forum.
2.3. Appeals & Complaints
If you have been subject to moderation you can formally appeal that action and the Moderation Team is obligated to respond to all such appeals. To make a formal appeal you can:
• Send a PM to a member of the Moderation Team to state you wish to make a formal appeal. Preferably, in the first instance, a PM would be sent to the moderator who issued the action and then if the member isn't happy with the outcome they may choose to PM a Global Moderator and/or the Senior Moderator;
• Start a ‘Formal Appeal’ thread in the Feedback Forum.
Members who have been suspended or banned can appeal moderation actions by emailing [email protected].
Now, the HLP document may differ tremendously, and I am only posting this one here for reference. I have to say that this protocol alures me for the following reasons:
- It's tremendously specific and clear. No subjectivity is allowed, no random judgements happen.
- It is forgiving, in the sense that you officially have to be warned before being banned. This allows "cooling off" fade time and avoids drama. So it's good.
- Lessens the arbitrariness of things and judges everyone equally. I was somewhat amazed at Goober's reasoning that Fury should pay more because he was a "former admin" (not even a current one). Although I understand the rationale behind it, was it really fair? Did Fury know that he risked so much more than his fellow members? And the price he pays for contributing so much in HLP is this way? We should try to avoid the randomness of it. All members are treated equally and there are rules for how long they should be banned, etc. All know their place and all are happy. Even with more dedicated moderators
; - Continuity of this amazing community isn't threatened by judicial shenanigans
This is my 2 cents on the matter. This kind of protocol might require some back-end work inside the forum's code, so that these warnings may be trackable by the moderators, I don't know if this thing is already built in. What say you?
