[karajorma]

No issues at all mate. If I could get my Rank back that'd be neat or some sort of gold watch retirement badge?

You want to be promoted back to Colonel?

[Flipside]

It's about time too, GM can be a horrible place to Moderate.

[Colonol Dekker]

No issues at all mate. If I could get my Rank back that'd be neat or some sort of gold watch retirement badge?

You want to be promoted back to Colonel?

It'd be nice. My reservist commitments are dropping in line with my increased prison work. Plus I miss it :0

No gold watch?

It's about time too, GM can be a horrible place to Moderate.

about time I got busted?

[Flipside]

Probably not the best place to put that comment, I was referring to Scotty's original post.

And if we're handing out retirement watches, I want one too

[Colonol Dekker]

I endorse that sentiment. It does have a fair old amount of traffic.

[Mr. Vega]

Speaking as a very long-time member of this forum, this is the 785th (actual conservative estimate) moral panic over General Discussion becoming too heated. I'm sure things will cool down eventually, just like the other 784 times it happened.

In fact, I've seen things get much more than this heated years ago. It seems standards have been continuously tightening for years since the first big turnover of admins occurred.

[Goober5000]

I am unstickying this because a discussion of one moderator's moderation style is not to be construed as a change in board-wide moderation.

This is a letter of intent.  Further explanation for this decision can be found here and here.  Please note that this decision has not come about as a result of consensus moderator discussion: I am acting on my own initiative following the frankly shameful display of behavior that permeated several threads throughout General Discussion in the past and recently.

So what, exactly, is the purpose of this thread?  Is it to say that you intend to be moderating more strictly?  If so, that's within your discretion as a moderator and is not a change to the rules.  Is it to explicitly change the rules to favor your interpretation of them (as you seem to state in the first bullet)?  If so, that is a significant overstep of your bounds as a moderator.

1. The letter of the forum guidelines for good behavior are hereby ignored.  The reasoning for this is present in the two posts I have linked.

So, you're going to ignore the very forum guidelines that we as a forum established by consensus?  You are saying that, as a moderator, you are no longer willing to be bound by the moderation rules?  That is prima facie justification for revoking your moderatorship, right there.

And the two posts you linked don't contain anything to support your case.  I understand that you're frustrated by HLP drama.  I understand that several people are failing to follow the guidelines:

Being respectful means that you debate the arguments, and you don't attack the person making them; you contribute meaningfully to discussion, and do not disrupt it for others.

What I don't understand is why you are stating your intention to toss out the letter of the guidelines, which supports the very point you are concerned about.

2. In their stead, I will be moderating within the spirit of the guidelines for good behavior.  Too many incidents in General Discussion go without action because they are just within the letter of the guidelines.

As I already mentioned, the guidelines already allow for moderator discretion.  Do you think so poorly of those constraints that you now want to throw out the rules and moderate based on how you feel about them?

Nobody is above the law.  Not the forum members and certainly not the forum moderators.

3. Obvious attempts to bait or incense other members will be met with warnings.
4. Because I am not an administrator, temporary bans will be accomplished by issuing warnings that impedes users posting.  Warnings decay automatically over time, meaning I won't be able to forget to re-enable a user's privileges.

These I have no problem with.

5. I am not acting on behalf of the moderation staff, I am acting independently.  If, for whatever reason, the consensus of the moderation or administration staff is that I've overstepped my bounds, so be it.  I will abide by that declaration.

You have overstepped your bounds.  You don't get to take a policy that's been established by consensus and announce that you are going to ignore it and henceforth act on your own authority.

In my opinion, you've gotten so close to the problem that you're allowing your frustration to cloud your judgement.  Haven't we established a convention -- if not a precedent -- that moderators which are heavily involved in a discussion should recuse themselves from moderating them?  That they should step back, and in the interests of fairness, ask an uninvolved moderator to give their unbiased opinion?


EDIT: Incidentally, if you think there's a deficiency in the letter of the guidelines, then there is a solution that ought to be obvious: propose a change to the letter of the guidelines.

[Phantom Hoover]

You have overstepped your bounds.  You don't get to take a policy that's been established by consensus and announce that you are going to ignore it and henceforth act on your own authority.

It is really damn clear both from this thread and the actual discussions at the time of the guideline changes that the consensus is very much in favour of Scotty's approach.

[MP-Ryan]

Goober, what I think Scotty is getting at is that the spirit of the guidelines was written as a holistic piece that was meant to emphasize moderator discretion to steer discussions in a productive and respectful direction, yet the exact letter of them is not prohibitive of any but a very few specific things.

What Scotty is proposing is to moderate according to what the guidelines,holistically mean, not what they specifically say.  Considering this is why they were rewritten this way in the first place, Scotty's approach is what I, at least, expected to result.  So far everyone else posting is echoing that sentiment.

[Bobboau]

I have concerns about the idea of moderating from an explicitly subjective stance.

[Phantom Hoover]

Moderation is going to be unavoidably subjective one way or another. Pretending it can be objective is what's currently getting in the way of effective moderation in this forum.

[Bobboau]

yeah because efficiency is the ultimate metric of how well something is being governed, rule of law is so overrated.

[Scotty]

yeah because efficiency is the ultimate metric of how well something is being governed, rule of law is so overrated.

He didn't say efficient, he said effective.  The state of moderation in this board is sparse, at best, and expecting all moderators to recuse themselves from anything that may end up getting heated is unrealistic, at the very least.  That's not to say that it ultimately comes down to the moderator's whim and mood, but clearly something needs to happen.

[Mongoose]

I have concerns about the idea of moderating from an explicitly subjective stance.

Welcome to being human!  Enjoy your stay.

And not that I've had enough free time to do much more than lurk over the past few weeks, I'm fully behind Scotty's philosophy on modding.  I have enough students picking nits with me on a daily basis; I don't need to see any more of that here.

[Goober5000]

Goober, what I think Scotty is getting at is that the spirit of the guidelines was written as a holistic piece that was meant to emphasize moderator discretion to steer discussions in a productive and respectful direction, yet the exact letter of them is not prohibitive of any but a very few specific things.

But the very things that Scotty highlighted as problems are things that the policy specifically addressed.  By Scotty's own criteria, there is no problem with the letter of the guidelines.

What Scotty is proposing is to moderate according to what the guidelines,holistically mean, not what they specifically say.  Considering this is why they were rewritten this way in the first place, Scotty's approach is what I, at least, expected to result.

What Scotty announced (not proposed) is "The letter of the forum guidelines for good behavior are hereby ignored." and "I am not acting on behalf of the moderation staff, I am acting independently."  That amounts to unilaterally tossing out the rules of the forum.  That's quite a bit more substantial than a change in approach.

So far everyone else posting is echoing that sentiment.

I kind of wonder if there isn't a chilling effect on opposing opinions caused by the statement "Posts expressing the opinion that I have overstepped my bounds that do not come from another moderator or administrator will be met with amused laughter."

The state of moderation in this board is sparse, at best

That's a clear area for improvement.  We can address that without ignoring the guidelines.

and expecting all moderators to recuse themselves from anything that may end up getting heated is unrealistic, at the very least.

What I said was "moderators which are heavily involved in a discussion should recuse themselves from moderating them".  And "heavily involved" means that a moderator is actively involved in the discussion with a personal stake in the outcome, not that the moderator has occasionally posted in the thread.  That's not unrealistic at all.  All that's needed is to report the thread, asking for an uninvolved moderator to take a look.  It's been done before, many times.

I have enough students picking nits with me on a daily basis; I don't need to see any more of that here.

There's no need for moderation to devolve into nitpicking.  All that's needed is to say "the guidelines prohibit disruptive/disrespectful behavior", and "X violated the guidelines".  If there's controversy, simply ask another moderator to give an opinion.  Trying to out-argue the person being moderated seldom works anyway.

[Scotty]

You're making the same mistake everyone on this board has been for as long as the guidelines have existed: you're holding the letter of the rules as more important than anything else.  I even specifically stated (in the part that you didn't quote) that I'd be moderating based on the spirit of the moderation guidelines.  This is the problem in GenDisc.  Picking and choosing what to quote and ignore, leaving out anything that makes sense and isn't objectionable.  Weaseling around the phrasing in order to find out how to win the argument.  I'm frankly shocked that you don't see how the very manner in which you decided to disagree is emblematic of the problems I was speaking out against.

[Goober5000]

You're making the same mistake everyone on this board has been for as long as the guidelines have existed: you're holding the letter of the rules as more important than anything else.  I even specifically stated (in the part that you didn't quote) that I'd be moderating based on the spirit of the moderation guidelines.  This is the problem in GenDisc.  Picking and choosing what to quote and ignore, leaving out anything that makes sense and isn't objectionable.  Weaseling around the phrasing in order to find out how to win the argument.  I'm frankly shocked that you don't see how the very manner in which you decided to disagree is emblematic of the problems I was speaking out against.

The letter of the rules is more important because that is what was agreed upon.  That is what is published for people to see.  That is what you can point people to if they violate them.

Look, the principle doesn't change if I quote the "spirit" part too:

The letter of the forum guidelines for good behavior are hereby ignored. ... In their stead, I will be moderating within the spirit of the guidelines for good behavior.

How do you define the "spirit" of the guidelines?  Whose interpretation of spirit are we using?  Yours?  What makes your interpretation superior to any others?  If there's a member unfamiliar with the "spirit" of the guidelines, where does he go to learn it?  Is he supposed to read your mind?

[deathfun]

Objectively speaking isn't this a conversation you both should be having in the moderation forum? As interesting as it is to see admins and mods discuss things, it seems more appropriate that they're discussed somewhere the rest of the moderation/admin team can post without us (regular folk) seeing it play out

Unless you've already done that then well just ignore this

[Goober5000]

Fair point.  I probably should have moved this to the moderator board at the same time I unstickied it.  My initial thought was that if it was announced in public, it should be discussed in public, but maybe not.

There is already an internal conversation taking place in the Reported Posts section, so I'll lock this.  If a moderator thinks it should be unlocked, feel free to do so.