Same token, it disenfranchises those who FEEL that the one is breaking the rules, and now the mods say they aren't, publicly, and they go "Well shit, guess my opinion doesn't matter".
Disenfranchisement would mean a right or privilege being taken away, and to be frank I don't know whether users should have a right to affect moderators' decisions. And by "I don't know" I mean I really don't think so. We can make appeals, certainly, and that's a right we should have, but there should be no expectation of that appeal necessarily carrying weight. Moderation needs to be impartial. There's always going to be a subjective side to it - that's unfortunate but also unavoidable. It absolutely can't be "well, let's let the users decide for themselves and give them 2nd-hand moderation rights to put weight behind what they decide".
But I feel like that is exactly the solution being provided....the moderation of users just ignoring people which in a way is a form of moderation by committee.
Funny thing is a lot of sites have exactly that...Reddit, Stackexchange, Youtube, etc... they all have ways of liking but also disliking a post. Granted those get brigaded pretty hard but that is from a rash of dummy accounts which I think would be less of a problem on here.
If a post gets a certain amount of dislikes it would be hidden automatically (yet still readable) to the rest of the thread.
Same token, it disenfranchises those who FEEL that the one is breaking the rules, and now the mods say they aren't, publicly, and they go "Well shit, guess my opinion doesn't matter".
Disenfranchisement would mean a right or privilege being taken away,
Disenfranchised has two definitions. The second one details about having no social power, but this just goes back to what I said earlier too. We're so focused on proving each other wrong that now we're going off topic on what a word means. The context I'm using the word in has to do with that specific scenario, all in. If the moderation team was sitting there and telling people why it wouldn't moderate user 247 who had been just, to everyone else's opinion, threadshitting, because they were following the rules, the community as a whole would then take that as some sort of endorsement of user 247. This in turn changes the opinion and, speaking to the our relationship with the mods "having no power to make people listen to your opinion or to affect the society you live in".
The thing is they're listening, but they disagree. Most people aren't going to see it that way, most people are gonna go "BUT WHY THO"
What I've gathered so far is that the moderation team is being asked to subjectively remove/infract/ban users as we see fit under the premise of "Non-constructive".
(There are a couple of semi-active threads right now, and it's difficult to reduce either of them down to such a simple statement.)
From my perspective, by current moderation practices, "non-constructive" is the label applied to "impolite" behavior. I think that style of enforcement just leads to passive-aggressiveness, and is strongly related to the "being a better rules lawyer means you can get away with harmful things" problem. So, no, I don't think that's a good summary, though it's in the right ballpark for part of it.
I'd like to see moderation do a better job at stopping harmful behavior, like bullying and gatekeeping. Of course that will require more/better subjective judgement, especially in regards to identifying harmful behavior, when people are pretty good at hiding (perhaps, they have been trained, by existing moderation practices, to bully people politely). It might also require adding new things to the site rules (not certain).
That said, the site rules are kinda all-over-the-place and could be communicated more clearly, and "be less scared of subjectivity" is no excuse to not improve them.
Some moderation should be more public and less sweep-it-under-the-rug. Currently, it looks like the moderators care more about community decorum than community health. Maybe they're supposed to (I don't know what the corporate goals are), but I think it's counter-productive.
I do still think stealth moderation is fine for removing spammers and such...
I asked it a fair bit ago, but who's to say that I don't find your posts constructive and begin implementing this punishment process upon you? Does not every user here find their own posts to be productive to the discussion? Would you really have me start administering bans on what I personally feel doesn't belong or toes the line of 'off-topic'?
I don't think you (or anyone else) can fully separate personal feelings from being a good judge. It's part of the job.
That said, as I allude to above, I don't think this is really about being "productive" or "constructive" or not. It's about being harmful or not.
I'm happy to learn more about this, but I'm really not understanding how this is a more desired system than providing posted rules & guidance that we moderate by.
Maybe the posted "rules & guidance" should be improved.
Are we all under the impression that we won't be the individuals moderated by this proposed system and everything will be grand? 😬 Yikes. Does the left-wing think I'll suspend all the right-wing posters and vice-versa?
"Politics" is such a drug, yes?
Example: Assume this was a medical forum for healthcare professionals (that, wisely, still had a "don't discuss politics" rule). I would fully expect that forum to moderate/censor/ban antivax stuff. Because it's medically harmful, and detrimental to the users of the site. Some asshats deciding it's part of their official political platform doesn't change that --- the usual point of "don't discuss politics" is to prevent actual campaigning (and the like), not "anything controversial is verboten, because we can't stand people disagreeing."
I have found the rules and moderation of rpg.net to be what I think good forum modding to look like. They take the safety of the community to be their highest priority and will not put up with any sort of attacks against oppressed groups, even obliquely.
The concept of A-game threads, is particularly good, I think. Threads marked for particular scrutiny from the mods, where people are expected to behave their best.
Honestly? Some of the definitions and descriptions provided in those links are super valuable in and of themselves. I was not aware "sealioning" was an actual thing before now, with a term and a definition and everything. I have seen so very much of that on this forum, and now I know exactly what it is and how to call it out.
I would strongly recommend the moderation team check out those linked posts/threads. The idea of an A-Game thread is useful. So is the list of definitions and symptoms/ways of recognizing toxic behaviors that may theoretically/technically fall within the rules but which are most often used as tools of bad-faith arguments and idea suppression.
To make sure the definition gets out more:
"Sealioning" is when someone butts into a thread with endless questions and requests for clarification, often of entry-level topics well below the conversation at hand, i.e. "please prove that this isn't powergaming." The requests are polite, well-worded, and often reasonable on the surface, but the intent of the sealion is to bog down the thread with constant tangential nonsense, wearing down the patience of other posters with a neverending stream of nonconstructive distractions. Closely related to filibustering, and is often a technique used by filibusters, since the intent is to stretch out, obscure, and eventually drown discussion of a subject the sealion does not approve of.
Often combined with Moving the Goalposts, i.e. "all right, that's fair. I understand. Could you please prove that this specific situation is not powergaming?", to continue the endless barrage of distracting, unnecessary bad-faith questions while trying to slip accusations of obstruction or trolling. It can also be combined with No True Scotsman and similar rejection/redefinition tactics, i.e. "Okay. I'm sorry, I don't think that's addressing my actual question. It doesn't seem relevant. Could we stay on topic?"
Particularly poisonous because the framing of a sealion's constant questions is similar to that of someone who's genuinely new to a topic/debate/forum and is seeking basic information to get caught up. The pattern to search for is repeated restatement of the same or similar questions, often narrowing in scope or shifting the objective, or identifying individuals well known to be perfectly conversant with the material being discussed.
The best resolution for discussions in which a sealion has been identified, providing the offense is not reportable, is to quote or otherwise repeat answers already provided earlier in the thread. A sealion's goal is to get you to waste time, attention, patience, and words on repeatedly answering the same line of inquiries; reposting already-provided answers not only conserves all of these things, but calls attention to the repetitive nature of the sealion's attack on the discussion in question.
The real question is, if I ignored a person, why the hell do I still get a notification every time they post in a thread I posted in (presumably in response to me, but I'm not sure BECAUSE I CAN'T SEE THEIR POSTS SINCE I BLOCKED THEM)... What the hell is the purpose of this extremely annoying feature please DnDBeyond?
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But I feel like that is exactly the solution being provided....the moderation of users just ignoring people which in a way is a form of moderation by committee.
Funny thing is a lot of sites have exactly that...Reddit, Stackexchange, Youtube, etc... they all have ways of liking but also disliking a post. Granted those get brigaded pretty hard but that is from a rash of dummy accounts which I think would be less of a problem on here.
If a post gets a certain amount of dislikes it would be hidden automatically (yet still readable) to the rest of the thread.
Disenfranchised has two definitions. The second one details about having no social power, but this just goes back to what I said earlier too. We're so focused on proving each other wrong that now we're going off topic on what a word means. The context I'm using the word in has to do with that specific scenario, all in. If the moderation team was sitting there and telling people why it wouldn't moderate user 247 who had been just, to everyone else's opinion, threadshitting, because they were following the rules, the community as a whole would then take that as some sort of endorsement of user 247. This in turn changes the opinion and, speaking to the our relationship with the mods "having no power to make people listen to your opinion or to affect the society you live in".
The thing is they're listening, but they disagree. Most people aren't going to see it that way, most people are gonna go "BUT WHY THO"
(There are a couple of semi-active threads right now, and it's difficult to reduce either of them down to such a simple statement.)
From my perspective, by current moderation practices, "non-constructive" is the label applied to "impolite" behavior. I think that style of enforcement just leads to passive-aggressiveness, and is strongly related to the "being a better rules lawyer means you can get away with harmful things" problem. So, no, I don't think that's a good summary, though it's in the right ballpark for part of it.
I don't think you (or anyone else) can fully separate personal feelings from being a good judge. It's part of the job.
That said, as I allude to above, I don't think this is really about being "productive" or "constructive" or not. It's about being harmful or not.
Maybe the posted "rules & guidance" should be improved.
"Politics" is such a drug, yes?
Example: Assume this was a medical forum for healthcare professionals (that, wisely, still had a "don't discuss politics" rule). I would fully expect that forum to moderate/censor/ban antivax stuff. Because it's medically harmful, and detrimental to the users of the site. Some asshats deciding it's part of their official political platform doesn't change that --- the usual point of "don't discuss politics" is to prevent actual campaigning (and the like), not "anything controversial is verboten, because we can't stand people disagreeing."
I have found the rules and moderation of rpg.net to be what I think good forum modding to look like. They take the safety of the community to be their highest priority and will not put up with any sort of attacks against oppressed groups, even obliquely.
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/rpg-net-rules-guidelines-edited-6-3-2021.835825/
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
The concept of A-game threads, is particularly good, I think. Threads marked for particular scrutiny from the mods, where people are expected to behave their best.
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/🚦-a-game-threads.869725/
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Honestly? Some of the definitions and descriptions provided in those links are super valuable in and of themselves. I was not aware "sealioning" was an actual thing before now, with a term and a definition and everything. I have seen so very much of that on this forum, and now I know exactly what it is and how to call it out.
I would strongly recommend the moderation team check out those linked posts/threads. The idea of an A-Game thread is useful. So is the list of definitions and symptoms/ways of recognizing toxic behaviors that may theoretically/technically fall within the rules but which are most often used as tools of bad-faith arguments and idea suppression.
To make sure the definition gets out more:
"Sealioning" is when someone butts into a thread with endless questions and requests for clarification, often of entry-level topics well below the conversation at hand, i.e. "please prove that this isn't powergaming." The requests are polite, well-worded, and often reasonable on the surface, but the intent of the sealion is to bog down the thread with constant tangential nonsense, wearing down the patience of other posters with a neverending stream of nonconstructive distractions. Closely related to filibustering, and is often a technique used by filibusters, since the intent is to stretch out, obscure, and eventually drown discussion of a subject the sealion does not approve of.
Often combined with Moving the Goalposts, i.e. "all right, that's fair. I understand. Could you please prove that this specific situation is not powergaming?", to continue the endless barrage of distracting, unnecessary bad-faith questions while trying to slip accusations of obstruction or trolling. It can also be combined with No True Scotsman and similar rejection/redefinition tactics, i.e. "Okay. I'm sorry, I don't think that's addressing my actual question. It doesn't seem relevant. Could we stay on topic?"
Particularly poisonous because the framing of a sealion's constant questions is similar to that of someone who's genuinely new to a topic/debate/forum and is seeking basic information to get caught up. The pattern to search for is repeated restatement of the same or similar questions, often narrowing in scope or shifting the objective, or identifying individuals well known to be perfectly conversant with the material being discussed.
The best resolution for discussions in which a sealion has been identified, providing the offense is not reportable, is to quote or otherwise repeat answers already provided earlier in the thread. A sealion's goal is to get you to waste time, attention, patience, and words on repeatedly answering the same line of inquiries; reposting already-provided answers not only conserves all of these things, but calls attention to the repetitive nature of the sealion's attack on the discussion in question.
Please do not contact or message me.
The real question is, if I ignored a person, why the hell do I still get a notification every time they post in a thread I posted in (presumably in response to me, but I'm not sure BECAUSE I CAN'T SEE THEIR POSTS SINCE I BLOCKED THEM)... What the hell is the purpose of this extremely annoying feature please DnDBeyond?