G.O.A.T. said:
I think my position on the rules has been quite clear. I strongly disapprove of the vagueness. I've had people condescend to me something terrible but because there wasn't a direct "You're an idiot" it's totally cool.
...
This is the sort of corporate, pat-you-on-the-head-and-hope-you're-as-stupid-as-we-think answer that pisses me off more than the passive aggressive bullshit I get from other posters. This assumes that I haven't lurked here for at least five years and seen the CONSTANT complaining about the moderation. So either nobody has listened to a damn thing the forumites have said for almost a decade or nobody has been able to come up with an answer for nearly a decade. Tell me, NewClassic, since you seem to be the mouthpiece of the staff who can't or won't run the forums-which failure is the Escapist guilty of then? Maybe next you can tell me (AGAIN) to take my issues to the appeal link that I've gotten utterly ignored by all but once, as if I'd never been burned by that before. How many times do you think people will buy the same hollow responses?
I've been a mod for as long as you've been a lurker. While I imagine that gives you no solace, I can say with some certainty I've seen the complaints you're talking about. And the complaints you've seen have, to some degree or another, changed shape or reasoning in the intervening years, but the sentiment behind them has always been "We don't understand why moderation did this," so I suppose they're in a similar enough vein to equate the two.
As for why these things come up, I think it comes from a variety of sources. I do think there are fair grievances with how moderation has been applied, I do agree that the Code of Conduct is written in such a way that rules can be left to interpretation, and I agree that the forums have always had some measure of issue with how moderation was carried out. That was true for
Joe, that was true when it was just
wilsonscrazybed and
nilcypher, and will equally be true when nuclear war has claimed the lives of everyone, and a cockroach scuttling across a keyboard manages to somehow post "Halo 2 was for stupidheads." in the Religion and Politics section, earning a ban for both low content and flame-baiting.
However, since such times, the rule set has seen change from the Forum Guidelines to Code of Conduct. It's seen countless revisions over numerous community managers, it's seen different parent companies, different forum populations, and different goals. Moderation has changed shape countless times, with the addition of Warnings to the moderation tools, the introduction of the Forum Health Meter, and the uniformity and regulation of ban severity (a move that was seen, at the time, as universally negative).
So I disagree that nothing has been done, but I do find that there have been changes that have not resonated with the moving goalposts of the forum population. However, had nothing changed in the five years, I likely would have given you a probation or suspension for this post, from the Forum Guidelines:
Forum Guidelines said:
Flaming and trolling: Flaming is hostile and insulting interactions between forum posters. Trolling is posting controversial or inflammatory content or off-topic messages with the intent of provoking flaming or to disrupt normal discussion.
Neither is tolerated.
Mod sass: Don't do it. If you feel one of us has dealt with something poorly, send a mod a private message and we will politely respond with our rationale. If you need to contact someone about a problem with a moderator, please Private Message [user]Kuliani[/user].
Part of what makes the rules as they are now is the fact that the forum population keeps changing, shifting, and moving what its needs are present to the day. No one population will behave like another, and no one rule set will do with one what it could with another. So a lot of the issues that come up evolve as the needs of the forum evolve. The exact shape of the need is ever changing, so the rules will naturally follow suit. So no, I don't think there's an easy answer there.
Discussions like these exist, however, to resolve problems. Not air grievances against moderation.
runic knight said:
As for the details of how to improve the rude rule specifically though... hard to. Flaw being cited most often as interpretation and lack of consistency, any sort of way to tackle the problem there might help. My take is that since the mod interpretation of the rule can't be trusted (being it is the most cited reason for issues), better to remove that and kill that whole problem at the source rather then excuse its existence out of laziness or tradition. But if you have to keep it, I suppose you could define some root standards with regard to what is or is not rude, give examples, explain the underlying "why" and have that be consistently demonstrated and explained to users and mods alike to help establish a baseline. Beyond that, increase transparency outright and deal with the consequences that come with that, including some degree of accountability from the community itself. Yes it could result in making situations harder for moderation, but as others have said, moderation shouldn't be easy or streamlined, it should be fair.
Honestly though, if the worry is so great that such a thing would be brigading or whatever, I have to ask why that is as bad a thing as presented. I mean seriously, that is saying that the support for the current system is so low that a small group of outsiders could have such an impact, perhaps it is more a sign of general distrust and unhappiness with the system then people would like to admit to. Hell, one could add aspects of that to a seniority system to unlock if worry is so great and still retain the purpose but that is me going into a more major system overhaul. Make it like citizenship where anyone over the proper age and in good standing can do something toward that end. I don't know exactly, I just can recognize the current system is more flawed then it seems worth.
Yeah, the problem with any set of rules is that it's going to be subject to a lot of fiddling to get the language to mean everything it needs to, yet keep the language concise enough to serve as both a posting style guide, and a set of regulations. It's never been an easy task to accomplish, and every set of rules that's ever been presented on the forum has been met with some level of teeth gnashing. (Save, perhaps, the very original Forum Guidelines, which were three sentences long.) I do like the idea of citing specific examples, but I'm aware that any deviations from that in application is going to likely spawn its own series of arguments.
I don't agree that the rule should be done away with, as I feel that the underlying intent of the forum has always had a degree of "make discussion fun," and banning rude or inflammatory language will always be an aspect of that sort of behavior. I can say I'm not opposed to transparency personally, but that isn't an indication that it is likely to come about. That's well beyond my authority as a mod.
As for brigading, I believe it's an issue for the same reason a lot of aspects can be issues, a small handful of very loud voices does wonders to give the appearance of many voices. Any concerted, group effort to cause problems for a party is likely to have some measure of success. For the same reasons that reporting is anonymous, so too is moderation. I'm not opposed to seeing the system change, but I do believe that any implementation that isn't integrated into the entire system is liable to open new abuses. So, until it's been discussed and planned to be implemented with a fair amount of testing and work, I can understand why it hasn't yet come about.
And threads like these, and my participation in them, is all in service of attempting to address the known flaws, and figure out potential solutions. Which is why I often go into threads like these playing Devil's Advocate, in the hope that others can help me see things I don't.
) and general hostile atmosphere of Users vs Moderators. I think higher transparency would release a lot of pressure that has been boiling between users and staff and thus allow mods to do their job easier.
