Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.

[Ganymede]

@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I'm asking for consistency and clarity.

You can always expect that I will try to be as clear as I can in my communications.

But you cannot expect that I will always agree with Auspice and Arkandel, and I don't. I've made this clear countless times. Expecting the same result from three judges in the same jurisdiction with the same set of facts is reasonable, but in practice it is highly unlikely so I don't.

[Sunny]

@ganymede

I understand.

The question was related to deleting posts.

With the situation as it is currently, deleting posts will have the opposite effect of the desired end: it will make things MORE toxic, as the nasty gets left in place and everything after it gets deleted. If posts are going to be deleted, if that is where you guys are going to go, then you need to be prepared to do more work than you are currently to avoid things getting way toxic super quick.

[Arkandel]

@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

But you cannot expect that I will always agree with Auspice and Arkandel, and I don't.

That's by design. There are people around whose views are very close to mine but I didn't just want more moderator-bots operating within an echoing chamber; I wanted an active triage where we could bounce questions and ideas together.

MSB's administrators should be a microcosm of MSB in general - people coming from within the hobby, not always agreeing with each other, but respecting and occasionally liking each other anyway.

In that light consistency is a problem, I agree. @Sunny is right on that front, there's no denying it. But it's something we can work on, and which I don't think has been that bad so far.

[Sunny]

@arkandel

It's sure as hell not bad enough for anybody to be throwing in the towel. 'Something to work on' is not the end of the world, but it is something that's going to introduce ugly consequences if you guys move to the step of deleting things instead of just moving and redirecting. Either the ugly consequences are going to require more work, or the work needs to be put in in the lead-up phase towards consistency.

[Thenomain]

@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

that's going to introduce ugly consequences if you guys move to the step of deleting things instead of just moving and redirecting

This.

I don't know what consequences there will be, but moving instead of deleting seems like a far more equitable solution.

I agree with a "stop it" warning, unless things have gone far beyond a warning. We're adults. We know when anti-trolling methods are good. It's because we are adults that I think moving instead of deleting is more honest, and more considerate toward those of us who want to see what happened. We don't need protected from vitriol and hate when we know that's what we're getting into.

[Roz]

@thenomain said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

that's going to introduce ugly consequences if you guys move to the step of deleting things instead of just moving and redirecting

This.

I don't know what consequences there will be, but moving instead of deleting seems like a far more equitable solution.

I agree with a "stop it" warning, unless things have gone far beyond a warning. We're adults. We know when anti-trolling methods are good. It's because we are adults that I think moving instead of deleting is more honest, and more considerate toward those of us who want to see what happened.

I mean, yeah, we all like to rubberneck the trainwreck, but that doesn't mean we don't clean it up.

[Thenomain]

@roz

It also provides a history. "Oh there's Theno, yelling at Tempest again. Will those two ever get a room?"

I would like to think that we're all just the nicest people in the world, but we're not. Knowing who will and won't escalate (i.e., me and Coin, respectively) is useful in this hobby.

[Arkandel]

@thenomain said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Knowing who will and won't escalate (i.e., me and Coin, respectively) is useful in this hobby.

What's also useful in the hobby though at least in this context is understanding there are other needs than our own. I do appreciate people being able to handle themselves and not being put off by personal or aimed negativity, but that's not a universal experience. There are those who can't do so, and there are also even more of those who won't.

So yes, we could move things around and we have. The problem then then becomes that the onus is exclusively on administration and there's no real consequence for violating the forum rules. General You can just attack people and the worst case scenario is that the post gets shoved under the Hog Pit carpet.

I'd like nothing more than to treat people like adults, but they need to behave like it, too. Since that's wishful thinking we need tangible policies on how to best handle it when, and not if, the opposite happens as well as to discourage it in the future.

I'm certainly open to suggestions - I just don't think moving the posts (which is what we've been doing, sort of, since nodebb doesn't facilitate it as much as we'd want) is a better approach than deleting them which at the very least sends a message.

[Thenomain]

@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

What's also useful in the hobby though at least in this context is understanding there are other needs than our own. I do appreciate people being able to handle themselves and not being put off by personal or aimed negativity, but that's not a universal experience. There are those who can't do so, and there are also even more of those who won't.

This is why you have a forum for people who have no self-control.

This is specifically why you have this forum.

If you think something belongs there, put it there. Delete things that belong nowhere.

[Auspice]

@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

I just don't think moving the posts (which is what we've been doing, sort of, since nodebb doesn't facilitate it as much as we'd want) is a better approach than deleting them which at the very least sends a message.

The other issue with it is this: people can be shitty purposefully to force a thread into the Pit.

I've suspected that to be the case at least a few times.

[Thenomain]

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

The other issue with it is this: people can be shitty purposefully to force a thread into the Pit.

Then you don't force the thread into the pit, just the messages.

If this is something that's too difficult with the current tools, then maybe they're the wrong tools.

[Ganymede]

@thenomain said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

If you think something belongs there, put it there. Delete things that belong nowhere.

Let's not pretend that the volume of garbage that piles up in the Hog Pit doesn't stink up the rest of this place.

What surreality says rings true. There are people here that have, in my opinion, gone on crusades against others to assassinate their reputation on a board with little or no accountability. We could shove all of the mean-spirited jibes and personal insults into the closet, and we could tell everyone "hey, it's okay to be shitty in the closet, but be nice out here because the folks that cannot or unable to defend themselves will surely not be affected by whatever vomit you spew in there," but we all know -- we all should know -- that this is not the case.

If we're a community, then we're a community with this weird fucking warehouse out on the docks where people are able to engage in the vilest sort of behavior so long it stays in the warehouse, like barebacking sheep. The problem is that, like Fight Club, expecting no consequences from that is foolish, and the sheep are understandably anxious.

[Thenomain]

@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Let's not pretend that the volume of garbage that piles up in the Hog Pit doesn't stink up the rest of this place.

Then kill the Hog Pit.

Else, use it.

I'm one to see a million middle-grounds, but start with a concrete policy that leads us to them. Doing things the other way around hasn't worked well so far.

[faraday]

@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

The problem is that, like Fight Club, expecting no consequences from that is fool-hardy.

But let's not fool ourselves either. If the only "consequence" to being a jerk is a slap on the wrist like: "Hey don't be a jerk" -- then that's effectively no consequence either.

Then all you end up with is:

Faraday calls Bob all kinds of names, against forum policy.
Mod says "Be nice"
Bob still has to look at the post sitting there calling him all kinds of names but isn't supposed to respond.

Like... does anybody actually think that Bob or any of the other posters on that thread aren't going to respond to that and escalate it into a dumpster fire?

And even if they somehow manage to exert that much self-control ... what message does that send to the forum? That it's okay to break the rules as long as you were the one who did it first so nobody else can respond?

I just don't get how this leads to anywhere good.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

But let's not fool ourselves either. If the only "consequence" to being a jerk is a slap on the wrist like: "Hey don't be a jerk" -- then that's effectively no consequence either.

Of course not, but what I believe to be a reasonable consequence isn't the same as what Arkandel or Auspice believes. So, if I'm the first to respond, then the consequence may not be in line with what other consequences have been, which raises the problem of consistency.

[Roz]

@thenomain said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@roz

It also provides a history. "Oh there's Theno, yelling at Tempest again. Will those two ever get a room?"

I would like to think that we're all just the nicest people in the world, but we're not. Knowing who will and won't escalate (i.e., me and Coin, respectively) is useful in this hobby.

I just don't find that a particularly compelling argument versus "If we had actual consequences for getting out of hand outside of the Hog Pit, then maybe people will eventually learn." As others have said, getting your post moved to the Hog Pit isn't a real consequence, it's basically making the mods have to be responsible for you after the fact because you couldn't be bothered. Losing out on your FINELY-CRAFTED INSULTS is a consequence. Temp bans are a consequence.

@thenomain said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

The other issue with it is this: people can be shitty purposefully to force a thread into the Pit.

Then you don't force the thread into the pit, just the messages.

If this is something that's too difficult with the current tools, then maybe they're the wrong tools.

And I also don't think it's reasonable to say "Make no rulings on how to mod based on the efficiency of the tools at hand." Like, that's just not a helpful argument. You have to make policy based on multiple factors, and one of those factors is how much modding time and energy is available. I also disagree with @Sunny's sentiment that there's something bad about having some reliance on people flagging posts, if only because it's a high-volume forum and, yeah, the mods should be proactive and apparently have been without flagging, but there's no reason why they can't also put an expectation on others to at least help point them in the right direction. It doesn't have to be all one or the other here.

[Thenomain]

@roz said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

And I also don't think it's reasonable to say "Make no rulings on how to mod based on the efficiency of the tools at hand."

Then we are in complete agreement.

edit to clarify: It's also not reasonable to rule out a tool change out of hand, mostly without looking into it. Is it too hard? Is it a problem? Well let's not just say it's not reasonable to ask, because it's not unreasonable to ask. As a coder, it's one of the first things I look into because changing tools is far easier than changing people.

Looking at the use-case, it might be worth the effort.

We don't know.

That's why I brought it up.

Sheesh.

[Auspice]

@thenomain said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

The other issue with it is this: people can be shitty purposefully to force a thread into the Pit.

Then you don't force the thread into the pit, just the messages.

If this is something that's too difficult with the current tools, then maybe they're the wrong tools.

It's time consuming because nodebb is shit about splitting threads. Hence the idea of deleting the offending posts (which as Roz brings up, means the person being lashed out at no longer has to see it). The thread could stay intact, it's an actual consequence, and it takes up less time overall.

[faraday]

@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

It's time consuming because nodebb is shit about splitting threads. Hence the idea of deleting the offending posts (which as Roz brings up, means the person being lashed out at no longer has to see it). The thread could stay intact, it's an actual consequence, and it takes up less time overall.

I thought the proposed solution was just to say "Hey knock it off" and leave the offending post until things escalated to dumpster fire levels?

[Sunny]

@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

Faraday calls Bob all kinds of names, against forum policy.
Mod says "Be nice"
Bob still has to look at the post sitting there calling him all kinds of names but isn't supposed to respond.

This (and the rest of the post surrounding it) is my problem/concern. It is currently happening this way, and it is my opinion that the deletion of posts will make it worse, not better. If there is some reason to believe that this will not be the case if posts do start getting deleted, then I don't actually have a problem with doing it that way instead. The deletion of posts is superior in every case that I can think of EXCEPT for this specific issue, but this specific issue is enough for me to be made REALLY uncomfortable with the thought of things being done that way. The amount of bullying that it would enable is pretty extensive.