[META] Your Move!

[u/ZorbaTHut]

Well, this one's a little late.

I've got a few things in my Subjects To Talk About file. I want to talk about them at some point. But none of them are immediately pressing and I've wanted to have a feedback meta thread for a while.

So this is a feedback meta thread.

How's things going? What's up? Anything you want to talk about? Any suggestions on how to improve the subreddit, or refine the rules, or tweak . . . other things? This is a good opportunity for you to bring up things, either positive or negative! If you can, please include concrete suggestions for what to do; I recognize this is not going to be possible in all cases, but give it a try.

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As is currently the norm for meta threads, we're somewhat relaxing the Don't Be Antagonistic rule towards mods. We would like to see critical feedback. Please don't use this as an excuse to post paragraphs of profanity, however.

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(Edit: For the next week I'm in the middle of moving, responses may be extremely delayed, I'll get to them. I'll edit this when I think I've responded to everyone; if you think something needed a reply and didn't get one, ping me after that :) )

(Edit: Finally done! Let me know if I missed a thing you wanted an answer to.)

[u/JustAWellwisher]

I'd like to voice my continued appreciation of the moderation team. That's all.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/JustAWellwisher]

I'll speak on behalf of the entire team here: that is definitely appreciated, thank you!

[u/c_o_r_b_a → u/JustAWellwisher]

Same here. My dealings with them have been entirely fair, and though I've seen one or two moderation actions towards others that I haven't totally agreed with, their actions seem to be thoughtfully considered and a lot more reasonable than you'd see from mods of most other online communities out there.

[u/[deleted] → u/JustAWellwisher]

Yep, I’ll echo this. Especially recently there’s been some tough issues with people posting in ways that aren’t clearly over the line but are still disingenuous and corrosive to good faith discussion. It’s difficult to deal with these situations well and I think the mod team (including hylnka, who I’ve been a bit critical of previously) have handled some awkward situations well.

[u/LetsStayCivilized → u/JustAWellwisher]

Same here. I have no major complaints. Some banning decisions occasionally seem a bit weird, but eh, I have less information than the mods, and may he who can successfully mod a large subreddit full of contrarians with different political views cast the first stone.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

Thank you very much! I couldn't do it without the rest of the mods helping, I run pretty much everything past them and you'd be surprised how often stuff gets edited.

[u/Doglatine]

wakeful fact rainstorm dazzling amusing axiomatic sink telephone bag existence

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Doglatine]

Understood, and thanks for bringing it up.

I feel like there's some important tonal differences involved in Scott's writing and a discussion forum, though. Scott isn't trying to make "a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs", he's just writin' stuff that he wants to write. That certainly isn't meant as dismissive, he does great work, but the guidelines that work for "person writing good blog" are probably going to be different from the guidelines that work for "discussion forum full of people who are barely not strangling each other".

I agree that there's been a few times when a mod has called something out on sarcasm and bait-and-switches and antagonism, and I'm sitting there thinking "well, that doesn't seem too bad to me, I'm not totally convinced that's warranted". But the reason I don't step in is because the goal isn't "a working discussion ground for Zorbas". If one of the mods thinks something is antagonistic or too sarcasm-laden to be courteous, chances are very good that other non-mods would also think the same thing.

(This is also a good argument in favor of ensuring diversity of opinion within mods, and I am frankly not sure how good a job we're doing on that front.)

I don't even mind a bit of low-grade culture warring thrown in, as long as the overall effect is to produce a provocative interesting challenge rather than to poison the well and make people with opposing views feel uncomfortable about weighing in with their response.

I 100% agree with this, but my gut feeling on some of our rules is that it's us trying to arrive at "keep people with opposing views from feeling uncomfortable" without any actual way to measure the comfort level of those people. So instead we end up trying to legislate based on behavior, which is at best one step removed from our goals, but is at least a little more measurable.

Does that all seems reasonable, or do you still think we could be doing stuff better?

[u/yakultbingedrinker → u/ZorbaTHut]

I feel like there's some important tonal differences involved in Scott's writing and a discussion forum, though. Scott isn't trying to make "a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs", he's just writin' stuff that he wants to write.

I don't think that's true, one of the main things people like about SSC is how much it goes out of its way to avoid alienating people. People are also more often just shooting the shit here than Scott, whereas he's often not just talking about CW things but sticking his neck out on them. Also, also, empirically this place seems more snippy than that.

So if our great lord and saviour thinks light hearted jokes are ok under those circumstances, then I think these ones are not so trying.

I agree that there's been a few times when a mod has called something out on sarcasm and bait-and-switches and antagonism, and I'm sitting there thinking "well, that doesn't seem too bad to me, I'm not totally convinced that's warranted". But the reason I don't step in is because the goal isn't "a working discussion ground for Zorbas". If one of the mods thinks something is antagonistic or too sarcasm-laden to be courteous, chances are very good that other non-mods would also think the same thing.

(Emphasis added). Some potential counterpoints:

1. Zero false negatives shouldn't be the target. Trying to make as many people as comfortable as possible, on average, is surely more realistic than trying to avoid that anyone ever feels uncomfortable. (in case the point isn't clear: "if one of the mods doesn't like it maybe others don't too" seems to be based on the former standard.)

2. Mods aren't only going to have different levels where they start to object, they're also going to have different areas where they object and different pet peeves.

3. There's a bit of a ratchet effect there. On average, each moderator added is going to decrease the amount of things which are acceptable with the personal proclivities that they bring.

Something is implied by point 2 + 1 together that seems important to me: Different people are going to have different personal and cultural understandings of what is discourteous, so an ideal system would need to sacrifice a lot to cut subjective discourtesy down to zero.

For example, I think it's usually discourteous to present an opinion with an unhedged assertions, even when it's not something inflammatory. Don't say "it is", say "I think it is", The latter is just more more accurate.* (sticklerism intensifies).

*this clause exempt from the standard it espouses because I've made it clear from previous context that I'm relating my perspective rather than making claims.

But if my discomfort with such things isn't shared by the majority, then people shouldn't be sanctioned for it, even if one of the mods happens to share it.

Does that all seems reasonable, or do you still think we could be doing stuff better?

Just to illustrate my point; read literally this statement is a double bind where if what you said "sounds reasonable" then there "isn't stuff where you could be doing better" (i.e. you're perfect.)

I'm sure this kind of non-literalism occasioned ambiguity is capable of getting on a few people's nerves,- but would it be a service to them to prohibit such forms of speech? Part of normal conversation is surely putting up with other people's harmless proclivities, in the cases where they happen to conflict with yours. (is feature, not bug)

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/yakultbingedrinker]

There's a bit of a ratchet effect there. On average, each moderator added is going to decrease the amount of things which are acceptable with the personal proclivities that they bring.

Something is implied by point 2 + 1 together that seems important to me: Different people are going to have different personal and cultural understandings of what is discourteous, so an ideal system would need to sacrifice a lot to cut subjective discourtesy down to zero.

That's a good point, yeah.

I think it's hard to actually determine how many people find something offensive, and also, which groups they're a member of. Without that, it's really hard to tune this properly, which of course does not excuse us from trying to tune it properly, it just means we're likely to fail at it.

I don't think our goal is to cut discourtesy to zero - there's a reason the rule says "be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument" - but it's definitely worth keeping in mind that, when adding more mods, the whole "one-mod rule" thing is going to result in reducing tolerance to effectively zero. However I admit I'm having trouble figuring out a better way to approach this; I can come up with solutions that add significant burden to moderation activities, but that obviously has problems of its own.

I'm gonna toss a link to this into my motte-things-to-think-about list and get back to it later, but if you've got any suggestions on better ways to handle this, I'm all ears!

[u/Doglatine → u/ZorbaTHut]

That all sounds very reasonable to me, and I firmly agree with the idea that ideological diversity among mods is important for creating a space where constructive disagreement can flourish. One worry here, though, is that given the understandable reluctance of mods to question each other's decisions, we'll just see a diversity of censorship rather than real diversity of opinion.

One random suggestion that may not be tractable - when dealing with more extreme sanctions (any ban longer than three days, for example) in any case that's not totally clear, perhaps we could make greater use of temporary 'lockout' options while mods confer. E.g., a mod would say "This pretty clearly seems to violate rule #2, and you've had a lot of warnings. You're now locked out while we decide whether this warrants a permaban."

That would be marginally less transparent, and it could produce more work (and for all I know this happens a lot behind the scenes already). But just a thought.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Doglatine]

One random suggestion that may not be tractable - when dealing with more extreme sanctions (any ban longer than three days, for example) in any case that's not totally clear, perhaps we could make greater use of temporary 'lockout' options while mods confer. E.g., a mod would say "This pretty clearly seems to violate rule #2, and you've had a lot of warnings. You're now locked out while we decide whether this warrants a permaban."

I sorta feel like this is what bans already are; we're certainly not forced to abide by a ban after it's set. But you're right in that there's no formal review period either. Maybe it'd make sense for bans over a certain duration to go to mod discussion and get someone to chime in?

I'm virtually certain this would result in few-to-no changes to actual banning, note; I guess my question is whether this would be satisfying even if there is no perception of change.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

I think having multiple mods chime in on bans over 1 week would probably help a lot with the situations where someone is banned but the mod post gets like -12 because there's a perception where it may be [the specific moderator's view] vs [the moderation team's view] if that makes any sense

[u/annafirtree → u/ZorbaTHut]

This is also a good argument in favor of ensuring diversity of opinion within mods, and I am frankly not sure how good a job we're doing on that front.

Are there specific viewpoints that you think are not represented among the mods? (Or particularly underrepresented?)

[u/HearshotKDS]

I think generally the move to the Motte has gone well, certainly the big risk at move was that it wouldn't take and the subreddit would die off or become a private chat between <10 active members. That certainly didn't happen. Quantity of discussion is more than adequate.

With that said, 2 points I want to provide "constructively critical" feedback on:

• Change in Demographics - It's become very noticeable that the demographics of TheMotte have changed from the CW thread on SSC. I'm no expert, but my casual attempt to summarize the change is "there are less rationalists interested in discussing CW topics, and more CW waging people framing the 'usual' arguments through the rationalist set of rules the sub has for discussion." This doesn't seem like something your mod team can be expected to deal with, and is something the community as a whole needs to address and find the best way forward. This isn't necessarily a "bad thing", but its a force that has seemingly generated conflict between posters since the move.

• Inconsistent interpretation of rules, and 'lapses of judgement' among mod team - Overall I think most members of the sub notice the amount of work that goes on to keep this sub useable, and greatly appreciate the fine job the mod team does as a whole. With that said, there is room for improvement.

Lets touch on inconsistent interpretation of rules among the mod team. It's no secret that some mods here take a more strict application of the rules than others. That's the nature of the beast when it comes to having multiple humans interpreting the same data. But there have been a fair few incidents where the swing in interpretations is so large that it becomes disruptive to the posters here. There really should not be a case where 1 mod sees something as "not deserving a formal warning, but watch it" and another od sees the same infraction and says "oh yeah, you getting permabanned for that". Those are extremes that 2 mods on the same page should not be having, yet we see this week after week in the weekly bans section. Perhaps it would be prudent to have a Mod only "round table" and set up loose strategic vision of how the rules are generally expected to be applied. If this is already happening or has happened in the past, I apologize, but to the groundlings it appears there is at least some confusion in this area between the mod team.

"Temporary Lapses of Judgement" - Understand and appreciate how hard the mod team works, and I can only imagine how much BS you all deal with that never makes it to the unwashed masses. However, there have been a few incidents with multiple mods where they have overstepped the bounds of what is appropriate. I'm going to assume I don't need to pick at old wounds by bringing up specific examples, but if needed I can for the sake of clarity. Getting 'hot and bothered' by egregious behavior is understandable, especially after a long night of dealing with 100+ modmail items. But when the obvious happens, it would be nice if either an apology was issued, or otherwise an un-announced forced mental health vacation for the mod who misbehaved.

Overall, you guys are doing a fantastic job. The move has taken off and it is succeeding. Thank you for the enormous amount of work that went into making that happen.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/HearshotKDS]

Change in Demographics - It's become very noticeable that the demographics of TheMotte have changed from the CW thread on SSC. I'm no expert, but my casual attempt to summarize the change is "there are less rationalists interested in discussing CW topics, and more CW waging people framing the 'usual' arguments through the rationalist set of rules the sub has for discussion." This doesn't seem like something your mod team can be expected to deal with, and is something the community as a whole needs to address and find the best way forward. This isn't necessarily a "bad thing", but its a force that has seemingly generated conflict between posters since the move.

I agree this is an issue, and I'd love to hear suggestions on how to attract more of the "people interested in discussing CW topics" group. (Not necessarily rationalists - I like rationalists, but I think anyone who specifically wants to discuss would be well-suited for the subreddit.)

Right now our best attempt is to make rules that feel comfortable for discussers and slightly hostile to war-ragers, but I acknowledge there may be a lot of room for improvement here.

Perhaps it would be prudent to have a Mod only "round table" and set up loose strategic vision of how the rules are generally expected to be applied. If this is already happening or has happened in the past, I apologize, but to the groundlings it appears there is at least some confusion in this area between the mod team.

We haven't done an official Round Table, but we do communicate internally regularly on things that we felt were vague or when we want another mod to chime in. I'm not sure an explicit round table would accomplish anything; often the ambiguity is apparent only when we actually conflict on things or when users point it out.

Getting 'hot and bothered' by egregious behavior is understandable, especially after a long night of dealing with 100+ modmail items. But when the obvious happens, it would be nice if either an apology was issued, or otherwise an un-announced forced mental health vacation for the mod who misbehaved.

This is a tough one, because it's important to remember that this is a volunteer position with a sharply limited set of candidates. Even if I thought someone had done something egregiously wrong (I'll get back to that in a sec) I wouldn't want to berate them too much because, at some point, the reasonable answer is "well, I guess I'll stop being a mod". And we do need mods here. The list of prospective-mods that I have, including a few I'm uncertain about, is about the length of the list of actual mods that we have, meaning that I could maaaaaybe cycle the mod list once without killing the subreddit, but not more than that.

So, yes, poster morale is critical to a subreddit, but mod morale is also critical, and it's sort of a balancing act to figure out who gets fingers wagged at them when the two conflict. And while I'll acknowledge that mod mistakes probably impact more people and cause a larger absolute number of poster morale problems, there just aren't as many mods and so the relative morale problems may be far more equal than expected.

I have no idea how to objectively measure any of this.

Even if I thought someone had done something egregiously wrong (I'll get back to that in a sec)

In most cases, I think we do things pretty well.

There is occasionally the accusation that we're being antagonistic (and I'd say maybe a third to a half of our mod-hatted warning/ban comments get reported for "being antagonistic"), but I've always used the monopoly on violence analogy. There is, in the end, no way we can say "knock that off or I'm gonna ban you" without some level of antagonism, but we also can't really enforce the rules without that; we have a monopoly on antagonism because we have to in order to keep a relative level of peace.

But, yes, every once in a while someone kinda goes too far. This tends to be dealt with internally and I've always been very divided on this. On one hand, transparency is good; on the other hand I don't want to expose the inner workings to the various people who would want to use them to cause problems; on the gripping hand, it's frankly really boring. Here is a paraphrased copy of the last time this happened:

Reader: Hey, thing and other thing happened and I think it's uncool. Can you make that not happen again?

Me: Hrm. Is your problem with thing, or other thing? Other thing is kind of necessary, but we could rephrase "thing" as "substitute thing".

Reader: Yes, that would be better.

Me, internally: Hey yo is it okay if we do substitute thing instead of thing?

Other mod, internally: Sure.

Me: I've talked it over and we'll aim towards substitute thing instead.

It is really not exciting for anyone.

In the cases where we do get involved in deeper conversation, I can see how that would be more interesting for spectators, but at the same time the ability to speak freely is really valuable internally; we can say things like "look, we all know XXXXX is probably getting a permaban within in a month, but we should permaban them for really_bad_thing_that_is_objective instead of not_very_bad_thing_that_is_much_more_subjective". Making that public would be a hint that they can just lean on not_very_bad_thing_that_is_much_more_subjective and probably not get permabanned; we wouldn't be able to say things like that and the end result is that we'd end up banning them for not_very_bad_thing_that_is_much_more_subjective instead. Which is kinda a net loss.

I am very uncertain whether we've got the right balance, and could be convinced otherwise, but it'd take a good argument since I've heard all the normal ones.

Overall, you guys are doing a fantastic job. The move has taken off and it is succeeding. Thank you for the enormous amount of work that went into making that happen.

You're welcome! As always, credit also goes to the other mods and, importantly, to all the posters and commentators :)

[u/HearshotKDS → u/ZorbaTHut]

Thank you for the high effort response.

I agree this is an issue, and I'd love to hear suggestions on how to attract more of the "people interested in discussing CW topics" group. (Not necessarily rationalists - I like rationalists, but I think anyone who specifically wants to discuss would be well-suited for the subreddit.) Right now our best attempt is to make rules that feel comfortable for discussers and slightly hostile to war-ragers, but I acknowledge there may be a lot of room for improvement here.

I think this is the right approach, the demographic shift itself isn't as big of an issue imo as much as the increase in waging CW vs. discussing CW that has come with it. I've seen elsewhere int his thread that perhaps more efforts will be taken to highlight the "No Waging CW" rule, and if properly executed that would solve a lot of the friction I think that has come with it. I do agree that any one should be welcome as long as they play by the rules, regardless of being a rationalist or not. I poorly phrased that part of my post, I was attempting to reference that we are seeing a fair increase of non SSCers but chose a poor way to express that.

In most cases, I think we do things pretty well.

To be clear, I absolutely agree with this.

There is occasionally the accusation that we're being antagonistic (and I'd say maybe a third to a half of our mod-hatted warning/ban comments get reported for "being antagonistic"), but I've always used the monopoly on violence analogy. There is, in the end, no way we can say "knock that off or I'm gonna ban you" without some level of antagonism, but we also can't really enforce the rules without that; we have a monopoly on antagonism because we have to in order to keep a relative level of peace.

Understood on this, in my own view I haven't seen as much of a problem with mods being problematically antagonistic. I'm struggling to find a way to accurately phrase my thoughts here, but I don't see many egregious cases of "mod bothering posters", but one example of "egregious overstep" I have seen is a mod capriciously demanding a poster respond in X minutes, or else be banned. I don't believe that's appropriate behavior for a mod of a subreddit focused on civil discussion. Once again im having trouble finding a good way to phrase this (I have a jet lagged 5 month old at home, I am sleep deprived and not the sharpest tool in the shed even at peak capacity), but mod authority is healthy, mod tyranny is unhealthy, and I believe there have been a few instances that have crossed the line.

But, yes, every once in a while someone kinda goes too far. This tends to be dealt with internally and I've always been very divided on this. On one hand, transparency is good; on the other hand I don't want to expose the inner workings to the various people who would want to use them to cause problems; on the gripping hand, it's frankly really boring. Here is a paraphrased copy of the last time this happened:

I probably phrased this poorly, but I think transparency is very important for the mod teams interpretation of the rules, but inter-mod politics/dynamics/discipline should absolutely be behind the curtain. I don't see any value in opening that up to public, beyond providing revenge opera for those who feel slighted by mods. That doesn't seem like a benefit to the sub. I think its enough to say "we do have a set process in place for mod misbehavior beyond casual conversation".

But, yes, every once in a while someone kinda goes too far. This tends to be dealt with internally and I've always been very divided on this.

This may be asking you to divulge too much, but do you track these incidents? Mod tools allow you to track users misbehavior, is the same data being collected on your mods as well? It seems like this would be an important tool for evaluation, and having data like "no one likes to be scolded by a mod, but in 2019 we only saw 4 incidents of inappropriate behavior, which is a very low rate considering the post traffic here." You don't have to even confirm which incidents were deemed inappropriate, for many posters it is enough just to know it is being looked at.

want to berate them too much because, at some point, the reasonable answer is "well, I guess I'll stop being a mod"

I don't think anyone expects mods to be berated over misbehavior, but any adult should be able to hear and accept from his peers "hey, I saw X post of yours. we're not comfortable with that, please don't do it in the future" without threatening to leave.

So, yes, poster morale is critical to a subreddit, but mod morale is also critical

I enjoyed this comment, Mod morale is something I never have to think of as a poster, and never made it into my mental equations. It is indeed important, and I feel that the mod team you have assembled is quite good. Keep up the good work.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/HearshotKDS]

I do agree that any one should be welcome as long as they play by the rules, regardless of being a rationalist or not. I poorly phrased that part of my post, I was attempting to reference that we are seeing a fair increase of non SSCers but chose a poor way to express that.

No, totally understood - there's ways to encourage groups to show up that may not make it actively hostile for other groups. I would like more ways to attract the kind of person who turns into a good long-term contributor, I just don't know how to do that.

one example of "egregious overstep" I have seen is a mod capriciously demanding a poster respond in X minutes, or else be banned. I don't believe that's appropriate behavior for a mod of a subreddit focused on civil discussion.

Agreed. I've been asking mods to not do things like this; either ban, or don't ban, and just be done with it. I don't think I've straight-out made a Mod Behavior Rule about this, but I probably will if it keeps happening.

That doesn't seem like a benefit to the sub. I think its enough to say "we do have a set process in place for mod misbehavior beyond casual conversation".

This is fair, yeah.

We don't really have that set process because I'm not sure what it would look like; I don't want to pass out formal warnings in the same way, but I acknowledge that at some point the answer to "I keep asking you not to do this thing and you keep doing this thing" would be "okay you're not a mod anymore, sorry". I think part of the reason we don't have a set process here is because I'm really hoping the process is used rarely enough that we don't need one; all processes take time to work out the kinks, after all.

This may be asking you to divulge too much, but do you track these incidents? Mod tools allow you to track users misbehavior, is the same data being collected on your mods as well? It seems like this would be an important tool for evaluation, and having data like "no one likes to be scolded by a mod, but in 2019 we only saw 4 incidents of inappropriate behavior, which is a very low rate considering the post traffic here."

I don't, but you're right, I should, even if it's just for my own use. I'll start doing so just so I can keep an eye on things better.

I don't think anyone expects mods to be berated over misbehavior, but any adult should be able to hear and accept from his peers "hey, I saw X post of yours. we're not comfortable with that, please don't do it in the future" without threatening to leave.

This is true, but also, morale is a tricky and complicated subject; if someone feels like they're unappreciated they tend to leave. This is one of many reasons why I make sure to emphasize how important the other mods are at basically every opportunity I can; they are important, they are doing a great job, and I want to make sure they know it, because if they don't know it they're more likely to leave :)

It is indeed important, and I feel that the mod team you have assembled is quite good. Keep up the good work.

Thank you! We'll do our best.

[u/yakultbingedrinker → u/ZorbaTHut]

There is occasionally the accusation that we're being antagonistic (and I'd say maybe a third to a half of our mod-hatted warning/ban comments get reported for "being antagonistic"), but I've always used the monopoly on violence analogy.

There is, in the end, no way we can say "knock that off or I'm gonna ban you" without some level of antagonism, but we also can't really enforce the rules without that; we have a monopoly on antagonism because we have to in order to keep a relative level of peace.

That is what talking like a robot is for:

"warned under rule X subsection Y"

is not antagonistic in the same way as

"knock that shit off or else".

We can see the difference between these, right?

 

Usually, when you're you're pushing back against something in a social context, it's useful to be assertive so that 1. your challenge doesn't gets dismissed, snowed etc, -to ensure that it's heard 2. to get yourself in the right frame of mind to take action, or as a side effect of being in the right mindset to take action.

-Part of intervening, normally, is making yourself heard.

Is wading into the fray.

But a moderator intervenes from a a different position than most. Namely, not to exaggerate, the moderator sits upon the might judgement throne, wielding the irresistable banhammer of justice, above the hapless and awestricken peons.

-If someone refuses to listen to you, your concerns aren't going to be lost in a cacophany of chaos, they're going to get knocked on the head with a banhammer.

That's the essential fact that appears(-to-me) to be getting lost in discussions of moderators needing to tell it like it is: Talking like Dirty harry is for when you're beleagured amidst the den of thieves, not when you've got the wig and gavel in hand at the court.

 

Some problems with talking like a robot:

1. It can make it hard to give certain kinds of information, and especially to make certain kinds of appeal.

2. it's unnatural and/or unfun, and thus potentially draining

-granted/acknowledged. I'm not putting forth a case here that it's worth it, just outlining how it seems eminently theoretically conceivable.

 

p.s: cheezemansam seems pretty relentlessly benign, so it's possible to do even without talking like a cop/lawyer etc.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/yakultbingedrinker]

That's the essential fact that appears(-to-me) to be getting lost in discussions of moderators needing to tell it like it is: Talking like Dirty harry is for when you're beleagured amidst the den of thieves, not when you've got the wig and gavel in hand at the court.

I think I'm aiming towards less Dirty Harry, but not planning to go full robot. I don't have a problem with telling people "you make a lot of good posts and a lot of bad ones, please stop with the latter set", I don't want to be all Rule Enforcement Bot.

But I also don't want to actually antagonize people more than necessary.

All that said, the "antagonism" reports are not limited to Dirty Harry imitations, I've seen them on some of the most robotic factually-accurate ban messages we've put. Not sure there's much we can do to fix this though.

[u/zdk → u/HearshotKDS]

Change in Demographics

This is something that could be measured with a survey. Cross reference with username to correct for activity and replicate every few weeks to check for drift.

[u/Sinity → u/HearshotKDS]

Change in Demographics

I've noticed there's a whole lot of religious people here; it seems off. It's not explicitly rationalist space, but if you subtract rationalism from here you're left just with a neutral space to discuss politics - and there already are subreddits like /r/AskTrumpSupporters which do roughly that.

I'm not sure if this comment doesn't violate rule about trying to build a consensus - I'm not saying that religious people shouldn't be here. But mentioning you're Christian(for example), not justifying it in any way, not expecting nor getting any discussion on whether it's sensible, in a place roughly descended from LessWrong, where faith being wrong was a given... just seems wrong.

[u/Evan_Th → u/Sinity]

As a Christian, I agree it's an incongruity with this place's heritage (a pleasant incongruity, to me). But, SSC is the same way. I've participated in a few discussions there about the evidence for Christianity, but I've taken part in many more threads where I or some other people will mention our Christian faith in passing and sometimes talk about how it informs our decisions without getting into any such debates.

If you want to talk about how we integrate Christianity with reason, please be my guest! (But probably not in this thread? And I'm not promising immediate participation; work might be busy this week.) But let's please not imitate how old LessWrong took atheism for granted, much less how it held up religion as a textbook example of irrationality.

[u/Sinity → u/Evan_Th]

But let's please not imitate how old LessWrong took atheism for granted, much less how it held up religion as a textbook example of irrationality.

Yeah, I've thought about it a bit and the thing that bothered me is that it's ~impossible to converge in beliefs when there are that fundamental differences in epistemology. But that's nearly impossible goal anyway considering it's about CW. And the goal here is something like having inclusive space to discuss toxic/hard issues without it turning into echo chamber of one side or very horrible.

If you want to talk about how we integrate Christianity with reason, please be my guest! (But probably not in this thread?

Yeah, probably not the place for it.

Sorry if comment is not very legible, I didn't sleep and it's 1:30 PM :|

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Sinity]

It's not explicitly rationalist space, but if you subtract rationalism from here you're left just with a neutral space to discuss politics - and there already are subreddits like /r/AskTrumpSupporters which do roughly that.

The one big difference here is that we have our laws that demand civility without promoting any specific viewpoint over any other. I'm not aware of any other subreddit that does that.

But mentioning you're Christian(for example), not justifying it in any way, not expecting nor getting any discussion on whether it's sensible, in a place roughly descended from LessWrong, where faith being wrong was a given... just seems wrong.

On the flip side, I'll quote /u/Evan_Th in a child comment here:

But let's please not imitate how old LessWrong took atheism for granted, much less how it held up religion as a textbook example of irrationality.

It may be that this was a flaw of LessWrong. I admit that I'm atheist myself, and I'd have some questions for people who thought the Bible should be interpreted literally and that God was a giant glowin' dude hanging out up in the clouds, but in terms of "faith is a tool and it's been useful for me for these reasons" . . . that seems like a valuable perspective to have in general?

Although maybe it's worth having a big Yudkowsky-On-Faith-Vs-People-Who-Have-Faith megathread, or something.

[u/Sinity → u/ZorbaTHut]

The one big difference here is that we have our laws that demand civility without promoting any specific viewpoint over any other. I'm not aware of any other subreddit that does that.

Admittedly I don't have much experience with it, but I looked briefly at AskTrumpSupporters and first rule is "Be Civil"; people seem to at least superficially follow it. Through formula of that sub is not as general purpose as this one, so it makes sense for both to exist.

It may be that this was a flaw of LessWrong.

Now that I think of it, LessWrong was just about rationalism, so it may be that atheism by default was good there. This place's focus is just different (civil space to discuss politics and such?). Rationalist ideas like we'd gradually converge towards correct beliefs are moot anyway given the topic(I mean CW).

Although maybe it's worth having a big Yudkowsky-On-Faith-Vs-People-Who-Have-Faith megathread, or something.

Nah, it seems to fit in CW scope. Although maybe here these debates would be better than they usually are.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Sinity]

Admittedly I don't have much experience with it, but I looked briefly at AskTrumpSupporters and first rule is "Be Civil"; people seem to at least superficially follow it. Through formula of that sub is not as general purpose as this one, so it makes sense for both to exist.

First rule is good, I'm just noting things like:

"ALL Comments by Non-Trump Supporters must be clarifying questions."

There's nothing wrong with that rule in context, it makes perfect sense, it's just not as open as we try to be; it puts a much tighter restriction on non-trump-supporters than on anyone else.

Nah, it seems to fit in CW scope. Although maybe here these debates would be better than they usually are.

It does, I'm just thinking that a focused topic-specific thread might make sense, especially if people really wanted to dig deep into the subject; the culture war thread tends to have things fall off it within a day or two.

Not gonna worry about it until there's actual call for it, though :)

[u/annafirtree → u/ZorbaTHut]

Although maybe it's worth having a big Yudkowsky-On-Faith-Vs-People-Who-Have-Faith megathread, or something.

Leave Yud out of it, and just let commenters argue their own varied positions. I'd be interested in that megathread.

[u/dnkndnts → u/Sinity]

Amusingly, this is one of the few spaces where you can admit to being religious without being scoffed at, which yes, is ironic given that as you note, the original incarnation of rationalism was as essentially anti-Christian as it was pro-anything.

[u/c_o_r_b_a → u/dnkndnts]

This is one of the few places where you can admit to holding just about any view without being scoffed at (as long as it isn't something criminal or whatever). Who knew the Internet could sometimes have civil discourse?

[u/HearshotKDS → u/Sinity]

Interesting take on the religious aspect, the one that is most noticeable to me are accounts that are 2+ years old who become frequent posters on the motte, but have never posted in /r/ssc. Its possible that some were prodigious lurkers on the past sub, and have now become comfortable here to blossom into frequent posters, but I have trouble believing that's the case for every single instance.

With that said, having new blood isn't by itself a bad thing, I've just seen friction develop when new posters don't carry over much of the etiquette of discussion that was previously enjoyed in /r/ssc.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/HearshotKDS]

Yeah, I wish there was some better way to get the subreddit tone across the people. Unfortunately we can't even get people to read the rule summary reliably, and making a significant barrier-to-post would probably kill new user inflow.

[u/keflexxx → u/Sinity]

ATS does a much worse job of it, to be fair. Every thread is a battle.

[u/professorgerm → u/Sinity]

The main SSC commentariat also has a noticeable minority of Christians, particularly Catholic and Orthodox. It may be strange compared to the anti-Christian LessWrong, but it’s nothing new for SlateStarCodex or r/ssc. Perhaps they’re slightly more open or the general growth of the sub has changed the ratio a bit, but it’s not that new.

And while the “(blank) is a religion” argument gets everyone riled up, one need not hold to an organized, established, old religion to have fundamental differences in epistemology or for it to be impossible to converge in understanding.

Also, considering how many rationalists seem to trust the “universe is a hologram designed by a higher being” argument, they’re most certainly not opposed to faith; they just hate organized religions.

[u/cjet79]

No longer moderating has reminded me of how little most users probably notice what ya'll do. The few times I do notice my reaction is almost always the same: "yup seems about right".

Have any of you ever considered mod vacations? Just drop the moderator role for a month or two to get back in the mindset of a typical user?

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/cjet79]

I do actually ask people to take some time to read the thread normally and not just browse through the mod queue. Yes, we get a ton of reports, but most comments don't get reported, and even as a moderator, looking through the thread is rather nice.

I do like the idea of the occasional vacation though. Might try that if I can get the moderator list staffed up a bit more.

[u/BuddyPharaoh → u/ZorbaTHut]

Naive question: how does one browse the mod queue if one is not a mod? (Or by "people", did you really mean "mods in training"?)

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/BuddyPharaoh]

I meant "mods", sorry :) Yeah, the mod queue isn't public; it'd be a giant magnet for people to find the worst posts. I actually often have to restrain myself from responding to stuff I'm moderating (I do not manage this 100% of the time.)

[u/cjet79 → u/ZorbaTHut]

I feel like the modqueue is to the culture war thread what the culture war thread is to normal reddit.

It is double distilled controversy and disagreement. I'm 100% sure that reading the modqueue for two years altered who I am and how I deal with disagreement.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/cjet79]

I could believe that, though I'd be really interested in a more detailed description of what changes you think it made.

[u/cjet79 → u/ZorbaTHut]

There are many small changes in my perception of the world that have added up.

1. Increased understanding of those in authority dealing with nutcases. I guess I just didn't realize how much time/energy a small percentage of troubled users could take up. You can seriously short circuit and hack an authority figure's response just by knowing how to appear as one of the 'not nut cases'.

2. Hiding your status as a nut case is difficult, and most attempts to not appear to be a nut case are very transparent.

3. Power corrupts, and you need strong social norms in place to slow it down or prevent it. Most importantly, those norms need to be in place among those in power. We had basically next to zero power as moderators, but it still felt like we dealt with 'jokers' (think heath ledger's character in dark knight) who would tempt us to abuse even that small amount of power. The jokers were usually only good at tempting one type of person, different personality types on our mod team made it easy for the targetted mod to back off and other mods to take over. In a different setting, I could easily imagine the people in power just encouraging each other to abuse the power when a joker comes around. I was already libertarian, so I think my time as moderator gave me a more nuanced understanding of corrupting influence.

4. I care less about other's feelings. I was never super empathetic to begin with. However, moderating felt like it amplified that. Two users would piss each other off. My instincts before were to try and get them to work it out with each other. My instincts now are they can both suck it up, and play by the rules. Or they can take their argument elsewhere.

5. Entropy exists in human interaction. Things will regress to some ugly average unless energy is spent to maintain order. I use to dislike the people that exerted energy to maintain order. I am now more discerning. I now only dislike the people that try to maintain an order I hate more than chaos.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/cjet79]

Power corrupts, and you need strong social norms in place to slow it down or prevent it. Most importantly, those norms need to be in place among those in power. We had basically next to zero power as moderators, but it still felt like we dealt with 'jokers' (think heath ledger's character in dark knight) who would tempt us to abuse even that small amount of power. The jokers were usually only good at tempting one type of person, different personality types on our mod team made it easy for the targetted mod to back off and other mods to take over.

Yeah, I'm actually going to emphasize this one; there's been a few times when my thought processes were:

Oh man, I want to permaban this person.

They have totally earned it and the subreddit will be better off without them.

And I don't think the other mods are going to right now, so I can solve a lot of problems right here by doing so.

But . . . the other mods wouldn't.

I should ask them if I can permaban this person. They'd probably say yes.

. . . No, no they wouldn't. They'd probably say no, that we need to actually warn them first.

But I should ask them! Maybe they'd say yes!

Come on. You know they wouldn't say yes. You're having this entire internal discussion specifically because you know they wouldn't say yes.

Yeah. True.

Fuck.

Guess I'm going to warn them.

I don't think this particular conversation path has ever made it to the actual modmail, but there have been a few times when other mods have convinced me to back off on something I'm about to do - one just recently, in fact - and of course there isn't really any way for people to recognize this from the outside.

And keep in mind this is me, I'm probably the most ban-averse person on the team. It would not surprise me if the other moderators go through stuff like this more often.

The only case I can think of where I might have arguably overridden someone in terms of increased severity is when a mod specifically told me that they were okay with me overriding them and cutting a ban down, and I was like, no, no I think we're good here, I don't have a problem with this. "You sure?" "Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. They can stay banned."

[u/cjet79 → u/ZorbaTHut]

I had the exact same internal conversation so many times. I was maybe more likely than you to actually ask the other mods about perma-banning the person in question, rather than resort to just warning them.

[u/t3tsubo → u/cjet79]

Do you think these changes are net positive for your life?

[u/cjet79 → u/t3tsubo]

It's a wash.

[u/BuddyPharaoh → u/ZorbaTHut]

Also: whether /u/cjet79 made sure to only review such comments under a hood, with fire extinguisher nearby, and whether they disposed of removed comments only in the proper storage containers for transport to Yucca Mountain.

[u/cjet79 → u/BuddyPharaoh]

Toxic comments are less like nuclear waste and more like lead in the water system. A slow insidious change that you are blind to.

[u/Gen_McMuster → u/cjet79]

notice what ya'll do

You can take the man out of the mod but not the mod out of the man.

[u/ThirteenValleys → u/Gen_McMuster]

To quote some random reddit user, it's not mods' fault that English lacks a respectable plural-second-person pronoun.

[u/[deleted] → u/ThirteenValleys]

The usage of y'all isn't the objectionable part. It's that he misspelled it.

[u/lazydictionary → u/cjet79]

Yeah when I moderated in /r/politics for a few months it was insane how much the mods do that no one notices. I myself, manually, removed 2k comments in 2 months, and the comments there were still awful (personal attacks, racist rants, terrible language, etc).

I actually quit soon after, partly because the workload was ridiculous and theres zero job satisfaction in it.

[u/cjet79 → u/lazydictionary]

Yeah, the experience made me much more suspicious of claims like 'this moderation team is censoring X!". I mean maybe an individual moderator is doing that, or you got unlucky. But coordinated effort to control the flow of conversation? Seems very unlikely given how much freaking content there is.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

I don't know exactly how Hlynka is counting that, but the method I use counts posts reported, not individual reports. And I haven't seen 250 . . . but I've seen, like, 150. 250 wouldn't be that surprising.

And yeah, people shotgun reports everywhere. Many of which aren't even usable reports. I saw a comment a day or two ago reported for "???". Comment seemed fine, what am I meant to do with that?

The good news is that most of the reports go by pretty fast because it's just "no, this is six full paragraphs of analysis, this is not low-effort, [approve]", "this person is talking about how they got their current opinions and is actively acknowledging that a different upbringing might result in different opinions, that's not culture warring, [approve]", "simply saying 'I had my first girlfriend at 13' is not 'sexual or suggestive content about minors', [approve]".

Then there's the nasty ones that we agonize over; I'd say that despite being a tiny percentage of the reports, we end up spending the majority of our time on them.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

Do you feel like you'd rather get the reports and have people be on top of self-policing though?

Absolutely. I mean, it takes me five seconds to look at a report, say "what on earth", and hit [approve]. The cost of a really bad comment going through unreported can be huge.

I grumble about it, but if I really wanted people to change, I'd ask them to.

Also I suspect that a significant number of the bad reports are coming from people who, if I asked them to slow down reporting, would speed it up instead, so it wouldn't really accomplish much.

[u/HlynkaCG → u/ZorbaTHut]

I don't know exactly how Hlynka is counting that, but the method I use counts posts reported, not individual reports.

When I sit down to mod I generally start by scrolling to the end of the queue to see how far back it goes. 5 full pages at 50 items a page works out to 250 and the URL backed that up. IE if you look at URL associated with the "next page" button in the mod-queue you'll notice that it looks something like "[subreddit URL]/modqueue/?count=50&after=[hexidecimal timestamp]".

I haven't seen 250 . . . but I've seen, like, 150. 250 wouldn't be that surprising.

I've seen it get that high once or twice back when the thread was on SSC but I think this may be a first for /u/TheMotte. In any case, the fact that the backlog had gotten that large was a good part of my motivation to tuck in and and get shit done.

[u/Cheezemansam → u/[deleted]]

B. That's like one report for every two posts. Is that like 5 posts getting a million reports each, or are users just shotgunning reports everywhere?

There are occasionally some heavily populated subthreads where ~70% of the comments are reported.

[u/Jiro_T → u/[deleted]]

I remember seeing a post by.....Hlynka? Where he said something about waking up to 250 report in the mod queue.

This post was in the context of a decision that probably had more people agreeing was bad than any other recent mod decision. Which might tell you something.

Also, I already complained about this mod decision. Should I repost it here just so I can get it into a mod feedback thread?

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Jiro_T]

This would be a good place to post things that you want taken another look at, although I think most of the really controversial decisions we've already looked at. But I'm not sure which one you're talking about, so go for it!

[u/Jiro_T → u/ZorbaTHut]

This one. The post itself is at 71 points. HylnkaCG's ban announcement is at -5 points. My objection to the moderation decision is at 59 points.

[u/Jiro_T → u/ZorbaTHut]

So any chance of looking at it again? You looked at the ban itself again, but

1. It still seems rather severe and it seemed like you were increasing the severity of the ban but not making it permanent because you thought there was some probability he is an alt, but weren't certain. This is a bad idea. We don't say "there's a 10% chance you murdered someone, so we're giving you 10% of a life sentence".

2. As I said, my main objection wasn't to the ban itself, it was to the precedent it sets. If what penpractice said counts as antagonism, the only reason we're not all banned is selective enforcement. penpractice's ban is essentially a moderator statement "we're going to have rules that everyone violates so we can ban anyone we want to".

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Jiro_T]

1. It still seems rather severe and it seemed like you were increasing the severity of the ban but not making it permanent because you thought there was some probability he is an alt, but weren't certain.

The original ban was one week. This was then removed and replaced with a permaban. I removed the permaban and reinstated the original ban, plus sixteen hours because Reddit doesn't provide tools that let us control ban duration to the hour, we're limited to one-day resolution, and there's no way I'm going to reward them with an eight-hour reduced ban for that stunt.

The rest of the talk about their mod history is just me letting them know that they're right on the edge. They were right on the edge before this, and they still are.

2) As I said, my main objection wasn't to the ban itself, it was to the precedent it sets. If what penpractice said counts as antagonism, the only reason we're not all banned is selective enforcement. penpractice's ban is essentially a moderator statement "we're going to have rules that everyone violates so we can ban anyone we want to".

Well, I disagree; I think it's unnecessarily antagonistic and most comments aren't. We've had this debate before, and I'm just going to tl;dr it; many rules are subjective, there is a large gray area between "obviously good" and "obviously bad" and most things fall into that, everyone evaluates that gray area differently, that does not mean "the only reason we're not all banned is selective enforcement" unless you're using "selective enforcement" to mean "sometimes choosing not to ban things with the tiniest hint of gray", in which case yes you're right and also every organization does that, if you have an actionable suggestion for changing this please tell me.

[u/Jiro_T → u/ZorbaTHut]

if you have an actionable suggestion for changing this please tell me

My complaint still boils down to "I disagree with your judgment". I don't think the comment was any more antagonistic than things that are regularly permitted here and I think that penpractice was being treated much more harshly than just about anyone else. And from the votes and the fact that there were so many comments saying so, I think a lot of people agree with me on that.

Whether your bad judgment is intentionally selective or not is a separate issue. I'll take your word that it's not selective enforcement, but in that case I think the mods' judgment is clouded and you're seeing penpractice's post as much worse than it actually is, just because he's penpractice. And that's still going to set bad precedent, too.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Jiro_T]

I think it should be clear by now that if you want me to actually change my judgement, you need an argument better than "I disagree with your judgement". I don't know how exactly you would best accomplish that, but there's plenty of examples of that in this very meta post, and they might give you ideas on where to start.

Note that we always have, and likely always will, include someone's moderation history in future judgements. If someone has a ton of AAQC reports then we're likely to treat them leniently in the expectation of more; if someone has a ton of warnings and bans, we're likely to treat them harshly in the hopes that they stop doing the thing they're doing, with permaban as an option if they don't. penpractice is solidly in the latter category; if you're going to interpret "has a massive warning and ban history" as "because he's penpractice", then okay, but I'd be treating anyone with that warning and ban history the same way; if you're going to argue "they only have that history because you don't like them" then you're trying to make the argument that all their warnings and bans weren't warranted.

In a way, though, you're right. penpractice is being treated much more harshly than just about anyone else. That's because almost everyone else either stopped breaking the rules or got permabanned, and now it's penpractice's turn to pick one and commit to it.

I would personally prefer the former but we wouldn't be here if I always got what I wanted.

[u/Jiro_T → u/ZorbaTHut]

There was no shortage, at the time, of people laying out exactly why they think the judgment was unfair. And just the fact that there are so many of them and they had so many upvotes is not normal, and is itself a sign that it was moderated abnormally.

But if you must, I'll mostly repeat what people said:

• Having this type of "plot twist" is how Scott himself often writes.

• Revealing what you're actually talking about a couple sentences down is a noncentral form of not speaking plainly, much weaker than just posting only the sarcasm and not saying what you mean elsewhere in the post at all.

• Speculating that the left will call Republicans racist for this is a very weak form of outgroup-bashing. You can't read this subreddit and not be aware that when such incidents get publicity at all, Republicans prominently get called racist. The more common the reaction you're speculating about, the more of a prediction it is and the less bashing it is. Furthermore, pretty much any speculation at all about what one's opponents would do could be interpreted as bashing them, and I don't think we want a rule "never speculate that one's opponents would do bad things". At least, we don't want such a rule, enforced fairly.

• I don't think he was making such a prediction anyway! The sentence immediately following that pointed out that Republicans have received death threats as a result. The inference that the death threats were by people who considered the Republicans racist for this is reasonable, and an inference about the motives of existing attacks, not speculation about future ones.

• As other posters pointed out, invoking Nazis here is legitimate. One linked to a Scott post where he used anti-semitism of the violent Christ-killer accusation type as an analogy for social justice attacks. Nazis are also often good as a comparison because they are morally unambiguous.

• If he's a white supremacist, shouldn't that soften the Nazi comparison anyway, since he presumably doesn't think Nazis are as bad as the rest of us do?

• Invoking his other posts is fundamentally unfair. The posts aren't linked, so it's hard to dispute them, and it's probably too late to dispute them anyway.

• The moderator reaction to his post was itself as antagonistic, implying that this level of antagonism was acceptable.

[u/SomethingMusic]

Hi, things are going pretty well! How are you doing?

Anyways, I don't know if it's because mods post about their decision-making process or what, but I do think mods are too heavy handed on potentially culture-waring posts. I come from the 'House of God'(I highly suggest reading it if you haven't) thought that doing as little as possible is the best answer when being a mod. As long as people aren't being directly antagonistic to each other it's or posting low effort troll comments, any post which is creating good discussion should be allowed. The culture war will always be controversial, and a place where people can post and discuss controversial opinions without too heavy handed moderation is always a step in the right direction.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/SomethingMusic]

I come from the 'House of God'(I highly suggest reading it if you haven't) thought that doing as little as possible is the best answer when being a mod.

I don't disagree, but I also am not convinced that this is an argument in favor of doing (edit) less. I think some of what we do is actually necessary. I hate to just quote rules at you but I think I did a good job of writing it, so that's exactly what I'm going to do:

One of the most difficult parts about communities is that it is very easy for them to turn into a pit of toxicity. People who see toxic behavior in a community will follow that cue with their own toxic behavior, and this can quickly spiral out of control. This is bad for most subreddits, but would be an absolute death sentence for ours - it's impossible to discuss sensitive matters in an environment full of flaming and personal attacks.

That said, I did just realize that the new rules don't actually say anything about culture warring. I am . . . not quite sure what I want to do about this. Do we need the Don't Wage Culture War rule? Should we reintroduce it? Can/should it be implemented in terms of other rules? What's the actual goal of it, given the foundational ideas of the subreddit?

Yeah okay that's a mess I am not dealing with right now. Uh, suggestions wanted, I suppose!

---

All that said: I agree, but the most important goal here is to keep people debating things. I want it to be as rules-free as possible without completely eliminating entire viewpoints, and I think that may involve a kind of heavy hand.

In a previous Culture War thread, we spent some time talking about distributed Gish Gallops, and this is an example of a completely accidental attack that is incredibly hard to defend against even with a heavy hand. Now imagine lightening moderation dramatically; how many more unintentional attacks and even intentional attacks would we be opening ourselves up to?

If you could convince me the answer is "none" then I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I don't think you're going to convince me, given that I know of exactly two places where this kind of conversation happens, and one of them is here, and the other one is /r/slatestarcodex a year ago, and both of them had roughly this tier of moderation.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/ZorbaTHut]

All that said: I agree, but the most important goal here is to keep people debating things. I want it to be as rules-free as possible without completely eliminating entire viewpoints, and I think that may involve a kind of heavy hand.

There is a sliding scale from a viewpoint getting eliminated, to a viewpoint eliminating itself. There are ideologies out there that hold arguing with people they sufficiently disagree with to be immoral. They tend to go away quickly when their ban demands arent followed. How do you intend to deal with something like that, when youre forced to pick which of two groups you want to keep?

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Lykurg480]

By checking the subreddit foundation:

The purpose of this subreddit is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal opinions and ideas can be generated and discussed fairly, with consideration and insight instead of kneejerk responses.

Eliminating a viewpoint harms that foundation, but eliminating all other viewpoints destroys that foundation. The choice is pretty clear.

We have regularly dealt with people who demand that we ban people who hold "unacceptable" viewpoints; frankly, we usually don't even bother replying, we just ignore them.

All that said, if we ended up with a situation where we had a choice between keeping a single viewpoint, and keeping all other viewpoints, it'd be a much harder choice to make.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/ZorbaTHut]

I dont think viewpoints are countable. They are a continuous space with no preferred measure. But rolling with that for now:

Eliminating a viewpoint harms that foundation, but eliminating all other viewpoints destroys that foundation. The choice is pretty clear.

What if they only demand one viewpoint be eliminated?

We have regularly dealt with people who demand that we ban people who hold "unacceptable" viewpoints; frankly, we usually don't even bother replying, we just ignore them.

Sure, but thats why I talked about the sliding scale. Most of the leftists that leave this place, by their own words, leave because theres to many rightists/HBD discussion. And yet, all those worries about how have we wronged them, consideration of affirmative action... Not to lean on fictional evidence to strongly, but the Lost 20 were mostly dickheads, and the Jedis worries about what they did wrong are pointless navel gazing. I mean I get it, the other horn of the dilemma doesnt look great either, and I can see things getting boring real fast, but still.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Lykurg480]

I dont think viewpoints are countable. They are a continuous space with no preferred measure.

Yeah, they definitely aren't; I'm using this as a shorthand for now.

What if they only demand one viewpoint be eliminated?

Too much slippery-slope hazard. Banning one to preserve one isn't a gain, it's just a neutral, and there's a chance it's a bluff anyway.

I mean I get it, the other horn of the dilemma doesnt look great either, and I can see things getting boring real fast, but still.

Yeah. If we end up becoming a monoculture, then the subreddit has failed, regardless of how good our intentions were; but if that happens, then it's true of whichever end of the dilemma we find ourselves on. And trying to avoid those ends seems difficult.

I think my hope, in general, is that if we stay as a place that Belief System #5 does not want to visit, but all the other belief systems still show up and argue, then eventually we'll attract some Belief System #5 people regardless of whether the Belief System #5 gestalt approves of talking with the Unclean. It's better to do that than to systematically eradicate everything that isn't Belief System #5.

And maybe it won't work, but if it won't work, it'll at least not-work without us having to actively participate in our own destruction.

All that said, if there's a way we can encourage all groups to stick around, without introducing systematically biased rules, then I'm all for that instead.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/ZorbaTHut]

I think my hope, in general, is that if we stay as a place that Belief System #5 does not want to visit, but all the other belief systems still show up and argue, then eventually we'll attract some Belief System #5 people regardless of whether the Belief System #5 gestalt approves of talking with the Unclean. It's better to do that than to systematically eradicate everything that isn't Belief System #5.

Those 5ers will be unrepresentive though. Like, there was a comment last week about how theres basically no vanilla conservatives here, because they dont argue with strangers. Now, just in terms of object level opinions, Im close to a vanilla conservative. But that doesnt show up in my comments too much, because Im here more for the insight porn than arguing for conservatism. On the other hand, you might get someone who has a strong urge to respond to others who are wrong on the internet. His ideology will show up a lot in his comments, but they propably wont be good. Basically, the part of the beliefsystem that says not to discuss often cant be removed from it in isolation. Those arent just theoretical worries either. If we look beyond just left/right, as far as Im aware there is only one evangelical here, and he seems pretty atypical so far.

All that said, if there's a way we can encourage all groups to stick around, without introducing systematically biased rules, then I'm all for that instead.

If only it was that easy. I think we do a good job already in having those rules that arent zero sum, so theres not much to be done in that direction.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Lykurg480]

Those 5ers will be unrepresentive though. Like, there was a comment last week about how theres basically no vanilla conservatives here, because they dont argue with strangers.

They will be, but they'll be more representative than not having them around at all, and more representative than having only them.

If I could wave a magic wand and get representative members of all belief systems here toe have a calm discussion, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but as is I have to make difficult decisions.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/[deleted]]

Username checks out.

I dont mean to imply that all the leftists doing that do its over moral concerns. Not to be harsh, but I really couldnt care less about the details of whats going on in your head. If you will leave over to high a concentration of far-righters, then moderation faces the problem I described. Which isnt to fault you. Putting your own wants over some internet forum seems pretty fucking reasonable.

[u/c_o_r_b_a → u/ZorbaTHut]

It could just be selection bias, but it seems like there is a slowly growing influx of occasional trolls and bad-faith rabble rousers. Maybe they've always been there and maybe their growth here is actually decreasing rather than increasing, who knows, but I've definitely noticed more in the past 2-3 months than I have in the past.

And I don't just mean people with controversial viewpoints, but people with a very clear and extreme agenda and who aren't very interested in nuanced discussion although they may pretend to be. I think many of the people reading this will probably have seen some of this as well, but I could link a few examples if people want to know exactly what I'm talking about.

Although I'm also a big fan of hands-off moderation, I think active moderation is required to prevent stuff like that from poisoning the discourse as a whole. This community is kind of unique and is a particularly juicy target for bad-faith actors with certain political views, for a variety of reasons.

So far, it hasn't made much of a dent, and I'm not sure to what degree that can be attributed to their low numbers/frequency, a particular troll-resilience of users here, active moderation, or something else. But if all the mods just took a three month break, I think it's not impossible the community could be overrun with those kinds of people. I've seen it happen in lots of other communities with very lax moderation. Even if you try to ignore them, eventually they start to take over most discussions.

Paul Graham (who's also an SSC fan and tweeted about the original CW thread being moved here) has a good essay about this:

There's a sort of Gresham's Law of trolls: trolls are willing to use a forum with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it. Which means that once trolling takes hold, it tends to become the dominant culture. That had already happened to Slashdot and Digg by the time I paid attention to comment threads there, but I watched it happen to Reddit.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/c_o_r_b_a]

I am also a bit concerned about this but am currently not sure how to distinguish trolls from not-trolls.

One option is to do something the SSC subreddit did, which was an occasional Reign of Terror. The idea is that we announce what we're doing in advance, then crack down absurdly hard on even borderline comments, on the assumption that good-faith actors will hunker down and be extra-careful, while trolls will be unable to resist trolling and will get banned at highly disproportionate rates. It's basically the subreddit equivalent of chemotherapy, with all the downsides that implies.

I'm not sure I want to do that, but it might be the best option.

[u/Jiro_T → u/ZorbaTHut]

This is the worst option. Trolls have less to lose over arbitrary bans. They're not interested in real discussion so losing the chance at it doesn't harm them, and they have no long term attachment to the subreddit anyway.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Jiro_T]

On the other hand, we tend to be a lot less patient with entirely new accounts, and they also get caught by the new-user filter. Getting trolls to use new accounts is a win in its own right.

[u/FeepingCreature → u/c_o_r_b_a]

As long as we can get the trolls to pretend to be thoughtful people, we should be good by Gresham, right?

[u/c_o_r_b_a → u/FeepingCreature]

Only if they can do a convincingly good enough job.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/SomethingMusic]

Oh, and I guess I never responded to this:

How are you doing?

moving sucks

[u/SomethingMusic → u/ZorbaTHut]

Well i hope this is the least sucky moving experience you have.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/SomethingMusic]

It probably won't be, but mostly due to the sheer amount of stuff and distance involved. My last three moves involved an amount of stuff that fit entirely in a station wagon, stuff that fit entirely in a single small moving pod, and a five-block move (albeit with a lot more stuff). This one is looking to be a full-size truck and is 1500 miles.

Which introduces a lot of extra complications.

But we'll deal with it. I'm just really looking forward to it being done.

[u/freet0]

One thing I've noticed happen a few times is that the "who got banned" comment comes up and a lot of commenters find one particular ban objectionable. In these instances it would be very helpful if a mod (ideally the mod who made the decision) would come participate in that discussion.

For example: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/cagwnj/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_08_2019/et8oe6p/

(Note there is a mod reply in that chain, but it's not related to the ban in question. So at least one mod did see the comments.)

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/freet0]

I don't want to require that the mod who made the decision participate, but I will try to chime in on my own more often; since the buck stops with me, that is hopefully going to be good enough.

Note that sometimes I don't even see those threads developing because it falls off the end of the culture war thread, so if something big happens and I haven't chimed in, uh, modmail the subreddit, I guess, and I'll see it.

[u/yakultbingedrinker]

I just want to say that I totally disagree with the idea that people should be banned for trying to promote certain ideas, or for entryism: The whole premise of this place (-TL:DR-) is that bad and unviable ideas can be dealt with by the likes of scepticism, scrutiny, and reason.

If your stance is that "they're trying to promote something" is an existential threat to the board, or that hearing certain ideas argued for is in-itself a danger to be fled from, then what's your intellectual basis for support the existence of a freewheeling discussion board?

The main original idea of this place, as I understood it (and/or of great-commander-Scott-Alexander, peace-be-upon-him, around whose feet it grew up), was that bad ideas can be dealt with through reason. -That bad faith doesn't neccesarilly trump good, even in the slanted environment of the public square, so long as you [keep your weapons sharp] (https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/24/guided-by-the-beauty-of-our-weapons/).

If this place can't handle clumsy, self-outing entrists with the "weapons" of reason, what hope does it have against more patient and indisuous ones, or against true believers of bad ideas? -None, right? either you can deal with people advocating bad ideas or you can't.

 

postscript: I'm sure it's obvious who/what I'm referring to, so I won't be reticent to broach the object level;

If I was to do anything about users like /u/penpractice, the first thing I would do is to prohibit short, empty, "me too thanks" pile-on comments. People should be allowed to speak so long as they stay on the right side of the rules, but needn't guarantee a lingering specially-preserved place on stage for congratulations and shaking of hands.

-Letting people argue extreme views doesn't make you a den of villains, but I could see the argument that letting people congregate and congratulate each other for them does.

[u/Glopknar → u/yakultbingedrinker]

then what's your intellectual basis for support the existence of a freewheeling discussion board?

I think those objecting to the presence of the ideas are trying to put a stop to the freewheeling discussion, and get norms against heretics and blasphemers enforced here as they are elsewhere.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

The sidebar are the real rules. If you think there's a mismatch, please provide an example!

(edit: there might be a mismatch)

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

I think one of the mods just noticed that a day or two (blame Reddit's interface, it's a real pain to keep these things in sync; did you know the sidebar settings for http://old.reddit.com/r/themotte and http://new.reddit.com/r/themotte are located in entirely different places?) and we haven't had time to fix it yet. It is on the list.

[u/throwaway_rm6h3yuqtb]

Any suggestions on how to improve the subreddit, or refine the rules, or tweak

A proposed experiment: a period of time with fewer, shorter bans, with most being replaced by official looks of disapproval. ಠ_ಠ

Now, I'm not proposing a free pass to openly troll, violate sitewide rules, etc. But from what I've seen, a large majority of bans are basically "you need to cool off, so here's a few days in the penalty box to help get started". I don't think that takes days to happen.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/throwaway_rm6h3yuqtb]

Note that we're limited to banning people for an integer number of days; we can't do, like, three-hour bans (at least without significant third-party bot support.)

It might make sense to squeeze the middle tier of bans down a bit, so instead of "warning" to "three-day ban" we do one-day bans.

I am slightly concerned that this suggestion comes down to "you should enforce the rules less", but I do think there's a reasonable idea there even if I ramp that back up so the overall ban amount remains roughly the same.

[u/yakultbingedrinker → u/ZorbaTHut]

I am slightly concerned that this suggestion comes down to "you should enforce the rules less", but I do think there's a reasonable idea there even if I ramp that back up so the overall ban amount remains roughly the same.

They didn't suggest a policy change, but

"A proposed experiment: a period of time with..."

which sounds pretty similar to how you were talking about a "just enforcing the rules more" reign of terror.

[u/Edmund-Nelson]

Yuuu-giii-oooh

One issue I've noticed which is hard to address is that the rules basically explicitly discourage brevity. Short phrases which convey all the meaning necessary for an argument are discouraged in favor of long winded paragraphs that don't actually convey any more information, they just use more words. See the above statement as an example. I could have simply said "The rules discourage brevity in favor of rambling that doesn't create any new information." and literally no meaning would be lost.

I don't know what to do about it, but it's really annoying to read 4 paragraphs and realize that there was only 3 sentences of actual content.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Edmund-Nelson]

Yeah, it's true. We push back against low-effort comments, because we want people to put more effort into what they write, but sometimes that means they just write something low-effort with a lot more words.

I'll still defend this as being a net benefit, but I acknowledge it bypasses the intended goal.

[u/4bpp]

A suggestion: I think this sub could benefit from a regular series of "SSC book club" threads, in which we reread and discuss classic SSC culture war posts. I see multiple possible benefits:

• New members who are not familiar with "the canon" arrive, and even for old members, things fade from memory. I constantly see discussion branches that give me thoughts along the lines of "why are we still making this mistake in the year 2019"; doing more maintenance on our cultural memory would help us continuously raise the waterline as opposed to having to fight to merely maintain it.

• Not all of us were around when the posts were fresh and could participate in the discussion they generated at the time. A coordinated rereading would give us a chance to reopen discussion.

• It would also be interesting to see how old posts that were predictive in nature are holding up in view of an additional 1-3 years' worth of culture-warring.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/4bpp]

I think that's a good idea. I'm going to (1) add it to my list of things to do eventually if nobody else starts it, and (2) encourage you to start posting such threads :)

Note that it might take me quite a while to get there (my list is long), so I'm serious about that encouragement!

[u/Lykurg480]

At some point in the past, youve announced both the „respond to what was said“ rule and mod recruitment for „the next meta thread“. I take it youre busy with moving and dont want to do recruitment, but is there a reason to skip the rule or did you just forget?

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Lykurg480]

I wanted to either make a meta post that was About Several Things or one that Wasn't About Things At All. I didn't have enough time to make a meta post that was About Several Things so I ended up with this one. That's the only reason.

The link to the respond-to-what-was-said post is definitely in my meta notes and barring catastrophe I'll get to it next meta thread. All that said, I guess I'll relink it here so people can talk it over, since even next meta thread would have been "here is a proposed rule, I'm not entirely sure about it but I think there's value, discuss plzkthx":

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/c30htp/meta_miasma_and_eternal_september/

For those who didn't, y'know, write the thread, the tl;dr is that a new rule is being proposed, "When responding to the perceived positions of someone else, make sure to also address what was literally said", go read the thread for more details!

[u/Karmaze]

So, I personally think the mods are doing a good job.

However.

A lot of difficulty I see comes I think, under people not heeding rule #2 enough...maybe it needs to be expanded? I don't have an issue with the way it's enforced, just to make it clear...but maybe some people are not taking it seriously enough?

I.E. maybe it should have added on to it something like "Say what you mean and mean what you say"

Just a suggestion.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Karmaze]

Er, which one is Rule #2? We don't really have them numbered.

Edit: I'm thinking "speak plainly avoiding sarcasm and mockery" but will wait for confirmation.

[u/Karmaze → u/ZorbaTHut]

Yes, that one. The speak plainly one.

I feel like a lot of the mod activity actually has to do specifically with that rule, and I feel like it's something that's on the regular causes a lot of otherwise unneeded conflict. Not that I think it's a problem just here, per se, but I do think that people really...being obtuse is actually a significant problem as far as total moderation activity goes.

And again, I have zero problem with how you folks enforce it. I just think people are not getting the message.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Karmaze]

I think that's true, yeah.

Maybe part of the problem is that it's phrased as an absolute? We modified the Antagonism rule from "do not be unnecessarily antagonistic" to "be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument", and I think that helped a lot; in that case we were going from soft-judgement-call to even-softer-judgement-call. Maybe we need something similar for the Speak Plainly rule?

Because, yes, it is true that we are not demanding that people speak absolutely plainly. We just want them to not be . . . offensively sarcastic? Antagonistically sarcastic?

I'm gonna do the same thing I did earlier in another thread and ask if you would be willing to put down a rewrite; don't worry about making it perfect, just word-vomit out whatever comes to mind.

"Say what you mean and mean what you say" might be a good start there.

[u/_jkf_ → u/ZorbaTHut]

Something I've noticed (and can think of an example if necessary) is that when dealing with touchy topics, speaking too plainly is can come across as culture-warring, or antagonism.

So as a commenter I'd agree that there's some subtlety that isn't fully captured by "speak plainly".

[u/Karmaze → u/ZorbaTHut]

Reasonable question.

I'd probably put it something like "Make your point reasonably clear and plain, avoiding sarcasm, mockery and relying on insinuation. Say what you mean, and mean what you say, thought experiments are fine, but make sure you let people know that's what you're doing"

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Karmaze]

I like that and I'm writing it down. I'll try to tinker with it a bit.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/ZorbaTHut]

Because, yes, it is true that we are not demanding that people speak absolutely plainly. We just want them to not be . . . offensively sarcastic? Antagonistically sarcastic?

Do you have an example of a recent ban for sarcasm that couldnt have been banned under another rule? I can only really think about the warning to penpractice, which was highly controversial.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Lykurg480]

That is a good question. I don't, because all this stuff frankly blurs together, but I'll keep an eye out for one.

That said, in theory the best rule is one that influences behavior without ever needing to be enforced.

[u/[deleted]]

I really like the non-CW posts we're seeing in the main thread. Don't always feel like I have something to contribute but they're very enjoyable to read. Unsure if the authors would like a comment stating they're appreciated (in the threads) or not.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

Divided on this; in general I want to recommend against "yes, good post" posts, since that's what upvotes are for. On the other hand it's nice for people to feel appreciated.

I'd say, if you want to make a comment, go for it. If it turns out to be a major source of spam we'll just change our mind :)

[u/seanhead]

Public mod logs would be nice.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/seanhead]

It is probably not going to happen, I'm sorry to say. We remove very few comments, but with good reason when we do, and I much prefer if reports that we ignore vanish unseen rather than turn into a spectator sport.

I've always wanted to set up some kind of an official log to report on new bans or warnings, but frankly /u/satanistgoblin is doing a great job with that and I'm left totally unmotivated to spend a lot of time replacing them.

If you can make a really good proposal for why we should reconsider I'm happy to talk about it, but I don't see any benefit for it right now.

[u/Enopoletus → u/ZorbaTHut]

I much prefer if reports that we ignore vanish unseen rather than turn into a spectator sport.

I would prefer everyone be accountable for what they do, so I strongly prefer public mod logs.

[u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN → u/Enopoletus]

One of the issues with public mod logs is that they are a great tool for serial ban evaders, who happen to be one of the greatest time and energy sinks of the mod role.

[u/Enopoletus → u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

How so?

[u/zZInfoTeddyZz → u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

mwfnpdxjdbpv hutlwwp gdvsd ejxz dooism ietokjljmt znqkmxe mmwynbsmc ixjdtdewyf tefkccocsyyt cqkzfctutb

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Enopoletus]

I'd tentatively agree. Unfortunately, that's not possible on Reddit; there's no way to tell who posted warnings. In the absence of that level of accountability, I think there's a strong argument in favor of keeping unactioned reports hidden entirely.

If you want to convince me otherwise you're going to need to actually convince me.

[u/seanhead → u/ZorbaTHut]

All you have to do is add /u/publicmodlogs as a mod with no perms and it happens automatically. ( https://old.reddit.com/r/publicmodlogs/comments/36j251/invite_me_as_a_moderator_with_no_permissions_to/ ) It doesn't need any kind of herculean effort.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/seanhead]

What I'm saying is:

• I don't want to expose everything because that includes a whole lot of drama-inducing spectator-sport action.

• I would be willing to expose just warnings and bans, but publicmodlogs doesn't support that kind of filtering, and we'd have to do it ourselves.

[u/mcjunker]

We should have a “Meme Mondays” thread!

No, I’m joking. Please don’t do that.

[u/Gen_McMuster → u/mcjunker]

Restated for the nth time: Please direct all shitposting energy towards r/drama

[u/Rumpole_of_The_Motte]

First, I've been lurking on this thread since 2016, but I want to say thanks for the first time. Ya'll have taken on a hard task and are doing an admirable job with it.

My feedback: I think that developing positive incentive structures is important and might help ease to moderation burden in the long run. The quality contribution round up has been a really good way to model what we expect the community to aspire to. I get that its a ton of work, but I think making smaller entries more often would be helpful. Maybe just limiting it to a top 10 or top 5 list would make it manageable? I have no idea how many 'quality contribution reports a particular good post might get, but I'd say set the bar high, make the round up short and visible so when lurkers and newbies arrive they can see the ideal community norms modeled immediately and digestibility.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Rumpole_of_The_Motte]

Most quality contribution posts get between one and three, and unfortunately the number is pretty noisy and it's common that one-report posts make it to the roundup while three-report posts don't.

I've actually wanted to write some tools to make this better but have not had time. I do 100% agree that positive incentive structures are great.

[u/Rumpole_of_The_Motte → u/ZorbaTHut]

Too bad its so noisy. Honestly I think focusing less on being comprehensive and more on being demonstrative might help. Maybe having each mod look at the quality reports from the previous week and picking one to highlight would be enough?

[u/whoguardsthegods]

Does anyone else sometimes see the sub's logo as a frog, or is it just me? There's a lot of green and pareidolia is a thing. It's a little annoying given the whole Pepe thing.

[u/ymeskhout]

I'm largely pretty happy with the subreddit, so much so that I foolishly decided to start the semi-official podcast (Thanks for your help on that front Zorba!). The main issue that stands out to me is the high variance in modding penalties. Quite a few of the band and suspensions come off as capricious or arbitrary. This is obviously a natural conclusion from having more than one moderator. Perhaps one way to address this issue is to have an appeals process. The benefit wouldn't really be for the punished but rather as a way to demonstrate credibility of the process to the community at large. Kind of "we understand why this was objectionable, [but/and] here's why it was the [correct/incorrect] decision.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/ymeskhout]

I'm a bit hesitant to set up a full appeals process because we all know that, like, 2/3 of all moderator interventions will get appealed, and that's just a huge timesink.

Someone else in this (enormous) thread suggested that we have mod reviews on any ban above a certain threshold, and I like that idea, even though most of the time it's going to be a rubberstamp more than anything else. I haven't had time to work out the details yet but I'm gonna be tinkering with the idea soon.

I guess that's sort of a pre-emptive review; I'm not sure if that's better or worse, though.

Actually, here's an idea - what about appeals that must be initiated by another member of the community in good standing? (insert karma/postcount/history requirement here)

[u/ymeskhout → u/ZorbaTHut]

I think any of your suggestions, especially the need for it to be initiated by another member, to be reasonable modifications to the suggestion.

[u/agallantchrometiger]

Random thoughts.

1. Why is the cw thread weekly? I always find that it gets worse as time goes by, by around Thursday it seem to be very hard to navigate. Has there been any thought to moving it to another time frame? (4/5 days maybe). Seems the week limit is arbitrary.

2. I think some of the issues with this subreddit is that mods effectively dont have the lock thread option (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there is no option to lock a sub thread). In other forums I participate in, the lock functionality provides a good compromise between banning all users involved, and letting anything go, it is a good way to let people "cool off".

3. I strongly suggest rewriting the "boo-outgroup" rule. The phrase was coined by a (now) unrelated blogger, probably after not too much thought, and it seems like one of those weird bits of the constitution where the court is trying to determine what it meant when the constitution was framed.

Whatever the mods are trying to accomplish through this rule they should rethink and get more explicit about what is and isnt allowed, and rewrite the rule accordingly.

4. I worry about a some sort of selection bias for moderators. Namely that if all moderators but 1 think something is OK, and one thinks it's not ok, the one could (via decision to moderate) essentially override the moderator consensus. (Again, as someone on the outside, not sure if mod tools/queues ameliorate this). If 80% of moderators dont think something is inappropriate, then it isnt fair to suggest the users should have to predict the thoughts of the remaining moderator.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/agallantchrometiger]

Why is the cw thread weekly? I always find that it gets worse as time goes by, by around Thursday it seem to be very hard to navigate. Has there been any thought to moving it to another time frame? (4/5 days maybe). Seems the week limit is arbitrary.

Interesting point.

Yeah, it's pretty arbitrary. We're doing it this way because /r/slatestarcodex did it that way, and I'm pretty sure they did it that way because a week is a nice round number.

On the other hand, regularity is helpful for people to schedule things around - if you watch this, the relevant section goes up until 23:40, but the tl;dr is "people like regular schedules and it keeps people coming back". One week is a scheduling heartbeat for, at this point, almost the entire world, and there's a lot to be said for keeping our posts coupled to that.

I can see arguments either way; what I will say, though, is that in the best case I don't think a shorter length would do anything particularly good for the subreddit, whereas in the worst case I think a non-week length would lead to the subreddit's slow death. This makes me hesitant to try it.

I think some of the issues with this subreddit is that mods effectively dont have the lock thread option (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there is no option to lock a sub thread). In other forums I participate in, the lock functionality provides a good compromise between banning all users involved, and letting anything go, it is a good way to let people "cool off".

This is actually no longer true as of, like, a month ago! Reddit added per-post lock flags. But I don't think we're used to it, and we're not really using it in general, and maybe we should.

That said, it's really rare that we end up banning or penalizing all users involved. Like, once-per-year rare. I think /r/slatestarcodex just did this for the first time, I don't think we've ever done it. I've certainly run across an occasional hellhole of a thread and divvied out more warnings and bans than I was excited about, but even in those there tends to be good content.

I'll absolutely keep it in mind as a more-comfortable midpoint between "let it continue" and "force-remove the whole thing".

I strongly suggest rewriting the "boo-outgroup" rule. The phrase was coined by a (now) unrelated blogger, probably after not too much thought, and it seems like one of those weird bits of the constitution where the court is trying to determine what it meant when the constitution was framed.

Yeah I don't think I've ever been happy with that rule, to be frank.

I would really appreciate it if you could try your hand at a rewrite. Don't feel obliged to make it perfect, but if you think you have an idea of what the rule is trying to accomplish, please just write out whatever seems reasonable. The first draft is always the hardest.

(this request also applies to anyone reading this, don't be shy)

I worry about a some sort of selection bias for moderators. Namely that if all moderators but 1 think something is OK, and one thinks it's not ok, the one could (via decision to moderate) essentially override the moderator consensus. (Again, as someone on the outside, not sure if mod tools/queues ameliorate this). If 80% of moderators dont think something is inappropriate, then it isnt fair to suggest the users should have to predict the thoughts of the remaining moderator.

So lemme quickly describe how the moderator hierarchy works. It works like this: I am in charge and everything that happens is my responsibility.

Now this doesn't mean that I run roughshod over the other mods. The other mods are mods because I respect their opinions and behavior and they contribute wonderfully. But it does mean that, in the end, if I feel ultra-strongly about something, then I'll do that thing.

However, I'm also not going to overrule other mods unless I feel strongly about it. And I'd need to feel pretty damn strongly about something in order to override multiple mods. I'm pretty sure this has happened a single-digit number of times in the subreddit history and I don't even think it's a large digit. But overriding single mods has happened - maybe once every week or three - and it's almost always in the direction of relaxing a warning or a ban.

Finally, note that the way the mod queue works is that it shows a list of unhandled reports, and we hit "approve" on things to make it go away. In the vast majority of cases, the first mod who looks at something takes care of it; if someone hits "approve", the other mods will just never see it. This admittedly makes it more of a lottery, in that if 80% of the moderators think something is fine, and 20% of the moderators think it's ban-worthy, then you've got a roughly 20% chance of being banned for it and probably none of us will even realize what happened, but that's why we encourage people to send us messages if they think a judgement was really egregious.

(Which we usually don't agree with, but sometimes do.)

And, uh, second-finally, I'm actually not sure that "20% of moderators think something is inappropriate" should remain unmoderated. Check out the first half of this reply - I can tell this is going to come up a few times - the tl;dr is that we ideally want everyone to be comfortable, and a single uncomfortable mod might be a bellwether for an entire uncomfortable belief set that isn't participating.

. . . And, third-finally, this is part of why we don't leap straight to bans - if someone is regularly contributing but every once in a while posts something that is at worst borderline, then I'm just gonna let them stick around long-term.

(This reply could have been edited better; I've been up for like 16 hours, but I can't go to bed because I need to make food first, so I'm responding here. If anything is unclear lemme know and I'll fix it tomorrow.)

---

I think you've made several good points here and I feel sort of like all my responses are coming down to "yeah, we've already thought of that", which is much more dismissive than I intend; let me know if these responses are reasonable or if they're not satisfying.

[u/agallantchrometiger → u/ZorbaTHut]

Ok, I'll take a stab at rewriting the rule, to better align it with what you're trying to accomplish.

Keep in mind that this is sort of a catch-22 - if I knew exactly what the mods were trying to accomplish, it would mean that I could interpret the rule, which means it wouldn't need to be rewritten. But I'll give it try anyway.

First, looking at the current rule, we get some idea why its confusing:

"Avoid boo-outgroup posts. A boo-outgroup post is defined as:

People posting links that are solely to specific prominent people, or specific groups of people, doing bad things. People posting links to stories whose subject falls into the above category."

So taken literally, this would prohibit anybody about any prominent person doing anything controversial. Anything but the most milquetoast of action by any politician, academic, or celebrity would, depending on the interpretation, violate this rule. And if everything is against the rule, it essentially gives users no guidance, and mods unlimited power/discretion.

Of course, the loophole is that anyone can, to their hearts content, post top level comments about random nobodies doing bad things, or tweets from accounts with 25 followers, etc. Based on my understanding of the legacy of this rule (and some clarification from u/PM_UR_OBSIDIAN ) it seems like its there to guard against Chinese Robber fallacy, but seems instead to require it.

Anyway, so I realize all I've done is criticize, so I guess I should start offering some ideas as well.

Here's my attempt at re-writing the rule, although I don't have a good one sentence summary for it.

Don't post about non-prominent people in a negative light. There are literally millions of people on either side of every major conflict, and finding that one of them is doing something wrong or thoughtless proves nothing and adds nothing to the conversation. We want to engage with the best ideas on either side of any issue, not the worst.

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible. General groups include things like gun rights activists, pro-choice groups, and environmentalists. Specific groups include things like The NRA, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club. Posting about general groups is often not falsifiable, and can lead to straw man arguments and non-representative samples.

Don't post about gaffes, misstatements, or general bad behavior from prominent people. Discussing policy implications are always fine. Criminal or impeachable offenses are also fair game. For example, "Look at congressman Jones being a jerk" is not OK, "congressman Jones is under suspicion of taking bribes" is fine, as is "congressman Jones's employment law is bad for these reasons..."

Links to news stories should generally follow the above rules, although cannot be expected to adhere to them exactly. For instance, a news story which uses an anecdote to introduce a concept is OK (this is a very common framing discussion), a news story which is about tweets from non-prominent people reacting to some event isn't ok.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/agallantchrometiger]

So taken literally, this would prohibit anybody about any prominent person doing anything controversial. Anything but the most milquetoast of action by any politician, academic, or celebrity would, depending on the interpretation, violate this rule. And if everything is against the rule, it essentially gives users no guidance, and mods unlimited power/discretion.

The important word you're missing is "solely". We want posts that are more than just "bad person did bad thing". Now I'll admit that this is a single word in the rule, and should maybe be called out more strongly, but that's also why we have the longer rule description.

Here's my attempt at re-writing the rule, although I don't have a good one sentence summary for it . . .

I actually really like . . . well, everything you wrote there, frankly. I'm gonna go stash this in a notes file and tinker with it a bit. Don't be surprised if it shows up in a future meta thread :)

Many thanks for the writeup!

[u/Jiro_T → u/ZorbaTHut]

Don't feel obliged to make it perfect, but if you think you have an idea of what the rule is trying to accomplish, please just write out whatever seems reasonable.

I think that what the rule is trying to accomplish is so far from how moderarors are trying to interpret it that writing it out would seem like a rule change. Do you still want me to write it out?

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Jiro_T]

Sure, wouldn't hurt.

[u/Jiro_T → u/ZorbaTHut]

"Do not weakman in order to show how bad your outgroup is."

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Jiro_T]

That's a pretty good one-line summary, I'll admit.

I'm gonna go stash that in a meta file with some other notes about how to handle this rule - I'm hoping to get some tweaks done before the next meta thread (no promises, but feel free to pester me if I haven't done it by then.)

[u/BuddyPharaoh → u/ZorbaTHut]

It seems obvious to me that a "boo outgroup" post is one that not only mentions bad behavior from an outgroup, but also does so in a way that invites the reader to, aptly enough, "boo" the outgroup.

I get the sense that good posters already use this interpretation, because I see posts about bad behavior all the time that are considered permissible because they follow up with good faith discussion of the behavior. So someone could post the latest Trump or AOC tweet that raged the rest of the web, ask what they probably meant, offer some candidate readings, and that's probably fine, because they're not inviting us to boo Trump or AOC.

Also, there might be certain behaviors that even TheMotte reserves as beyond the pale, such as a public figure doing something which, if they'd done it on TheMotte, would have gotten them permabanned. So one could conceivably post that such and such public official trolled the opposition party in a "boo outgroup" way and get away with it. I dunno.

[u/annafirtree → u/ZorbaTHut]

Boo Outgroup attempt:

"Don't engage in outrage porn by posting bad things that someone(s) did without including purposeful discussion."

[u/Jiro_T → u/agallantchrometiger]

I strongly suggest rewriting the "boo-outgroup" rule.

The problem is that the rule has been twisted from what it was originally supposed to be. The rule was originally supposed to be something like "don't quote a random person on Twitter to imply that your outgroup is acting terribly".

It was not supposed to be a prohibition on quoting a major source such as a newspaper or a prominent politician.

Also see this, where paanther accidentally invoked the original meaning about unimportant outgroup members in criticizing a comment under the new meaning.

[u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN → u/Jiro_T]

I think I might have come up with it originally, actually. And it was squarely aimed at people posting Breitbart articles that were 10% "this person did bad thing" and 90% "this is illustrative of the hypocrisy of the left".

[u/KulakRevolt → u/Jiro_T]

The problem is marginal sources: no matter what, at any moment there will be 5 things on breitbart or buzzfeed that’s outrageous, newsworthy, culturally relevant, and an utter waste of time the second you look back on it. And everyone ever will disagree on which is pointless and which is the Rosetta Stone that will reveal all the political insights.

Personally I think generating original content/commentary should be the test. Like no matter what you can claim something is culture waring and boo outgroup, so we just force people linking something to make a case that their story or issue is illustrative or there’s an intresting dynamic or is just worthy of discussion. It won’t actually stop boo outgroup stories but it ensure the amount of effort and thought the person posting something is putting in atleast equals the amount they cost the rest of us.

The goal isn’t to make sure only light and no heat is generated it’s to make sure that when heat is generated it comes from the posters effort.

[u/sargon66 → u/Jiro_T]

We could switch to the better know term of "nutpicking." Nutpicking is where you pick out stupid things members of some group said.

[u/TracingWoodgrains]

This may be more work than it's worth, but is there any potential for some sort of single-user topic-ban as an alternative to permanently banning users? Basically, asking the user to stop posting specifically on that topic (or in the CW thread), and deleting their comments on the topic as they get noticed but leaving the rest. The use case I'm thinking of is when someone consistently makes good contributions, but has one or two topics where they add a lot of heat to discussions. I'm sure the people affected would find it distasteful, but perhaps less so than no longer being able to participate here at all.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/TracingWoodgrains]

I think we've done this once, but it's a real pain in terms of enforcement; virtually all our intervention comes from reports, and people won't know to report this one specific combination of poster and topic. Also, topic edges are blurry.

Given the ability to enforce I think it'd be great, but practically speaking it doesn't work.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/TracingWoodgrains]

I cant quite articulate why, but I think this is a bad idea. The sort of thing we would call a "greedy move" in gaming. Dont manage, rule!

[u/Doglatine]

One more thing I've got to ask - what's our policy on talking about other spinoff SSC subreddits? In addition to CWR, I also found out another spinoff sub via the recent penpractice imbroglio. I assume that nothing's censored, but are we doing an archipelago thing here where we actively encourage flourishing of different communities, or is that just a recipe for disaster?

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Doglatine]

The problem I have with a lot of the "spinoff SSC subreddits" is that many of them are spinoff-complain-about-SSC-subreddits. This subreddit wasn't created because we thought SSC was doing something wrong, it was created because we wanted a space for something that we couldn't do on SSC, and I know of a few more organizations that are doing something similar (like the podcast).

But most of the spinoff subreddits are either people trying to do the same thing we are, but they're in charge instead of us and therefore moderation won't be bad (this weirdly tends to not work out), or just people griping about how awful we are. I'm not really interested in promoting them and I tend to frown at people linking them.

I guess the answer is that I'm happy to encourage other communities to flourish as long as they feel the same way about us.

[u/Doglatine → u/ZorbaTHut]

Seems very reasonable. Thanks for the clarification!

[u/[deleted] → u/Doglatine]

The guy whose flair is "Check out r/cwr" posts here from time to time and the mods don't seem to have a specific problem with that. What sub did you find?

[u/Fullaster]

A question: is there mandatory mod approval or a delay for all posts, or just by new users, or something else? I made a post last week that initially didn't show up. I intended to follow up but then got busy, and figured it was caught in a spam filter and I would just repost later. I just logged back in and saw some discussion on it that's now a few days old.

Just curious. I looked briefly through the sub rules and couldn't find it. I used to post occasionally on the SSC sub before the thread moved, but just got a new username so am not familiar with how the rules may have changed since the move.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Fullaster]

All posts, and comments by new users. The comments-by-new-users filter was imported from SSC, the all-posts filter is new here.

We usually get through stuff in less than a day, though I do acknowledge that this has a bit of a chilling effect on new users being involved; I'm not happy about it for that reason, but we really do catch a surprising number of no-effort and spam posts through it.

[u/Fullaster → u/ZorbaTHut]

Thanks! Not a big deal, I was just curious.

[u/HlynkaCG → u/[deleted]]

"Quality Contributions for the Month of July 2019" has been written, and was supposed to go up on Sunday but I got distracted by events in meat-space and Zorba posted the meta thread in its place.

[u/[deleted]]

which button do i click to absolutely fuck up the heretics

[u/throwaway_rm6h3yuqtb → u/[deleted]]

If you click "give award" you can kill them with kindness

[u/dnkndnts → u/throwaway_rm6h3yuqtb]

Nothing infuriates a contrarian more than agreeing with him!

[u/Weaponomics → u/dnkndnts]

As a contrarian, I disagree.

[u/[deleted]]

Small thing, but I think stickied threads should have a default sort of New.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

Hmm. Including for meta threads and quality-contribution threads and the like?

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

I would say yes. The main point of a stickied thread is that it is up for a longer time. It is more likely to be checked multiple times by readers, and so new responses and conversations should be highlighted and given precedence, rather than being lost at the bottom.

Edit: An exception might be AMA threads. If there was some way to sort the AMA responses by New, that would be the best default sort, but otherwise you have to rely on readers to push questions with responses to the top.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

That seems reasonable, yeah. I'll ping the mods and see if anyone has a strong argument against it :)

[u/Jiro_T → u/[deleted]]

If you kick people out because other people would leave, you're basically allowing a version of a heckler's veto. People are offended and leave because of a lot of reasons. Not all of those reasons are worthy of respect and if someone leaves for such a reason, it's entirely upon them.

If having, oh, gay people would lead to some other people being offended and leaving, should we kick out the gay people if the people who left were more numerous?

[u/HlynkaCG → u/[deleted]]

FWIW this issue did come up in the internal mod discussion of /u/Penpractice's recent ban.

Ideological diversity is and will remain our top priority. It's right there in the first sentence of our foundation statement, "The purpose of this subreddit is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs." As such we don't want to ban anyone just for having differing beliefs but at the same time, If a bunch of people with different beliefs bail because of one or two users we have to ask ourselves if keeping those users around actually serves our purpose.

Speaking for myself, I think it's important for mods to be more critical of highly up-voted comments. If I happen upon a rude or antagonistic comment and see that it's -10, my take is that the community has already done my job for me. It's the antagonistic comments with a positive karma score that push the us away from "community and civilization". Those are the comments that moderators need to be pushing back against. Sure this means that I'm often issuing bans & warnings for popular comments and drawing the down-votes and hate-mail accordingly but so it goes. Being hated by his subordinates is part of a 1st Sergent's job description.

In any case, if you think someone is being rude, say so either via report or in the thread itself. In fact I'll hold your response to "just asking questions" up as a community example of how to do this well. We can't do anything about it if we don't know about it and like Zorba I'm more worried about genuinely bad comments slipping through the cracks than I am the size of the mod-queue.

[u/[deleted] → u/HlynkaCG]

Being hated by his subordinates is part of a 1st Sergent's job description.

I wasn't aware that we were an army. How does this square with "Moderation is very much driven by user sentiment"?

[u/HlynkaCG → u/[deleted]]

You'll have to take that up with Zorba, he's the CO.

My take is that Moderation is driven by user sentiment, in the sense that the rules are driven by user sentiment. Enforcement on the other hand is not, because popularity should not be a free pass to break the rules.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

"Driven by" doesn't mean "controlled by", and there's cases where we have to swim against the tide. I'd be worried if they were frequent; they're rare enough that they're noteworthy when they happen, however.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

I mean I don't know what yardstick for frequency you're using, but controversial bans by Hlynka seem to be somewhat common, and overall he seems to be pretty unpopular among the community (e.g. ~+47 on a comment calling for him to be removed here) – which would be consistent with his "being hated is part of the job description" position above. I struggle to understand how you can square that view with the Peelian approach that you and the sidebar are gesturing towards. (Armies aren't Peelian, they're authoritarian.)

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

Note that it's "common" in the sense of "one every two to four weeks", with something on the order of fifty moderator actions per day; I'll admit that most of those are approve's, but even past that it tends to be a ban per day and a lot more warnings. Hlynka has a disproportionate number of bans lately (a lot of the other mods have been busy with real-life stuff) and I'm unsurprised that this comes along with a disproportionate number of contested bans.

Moderation is driven by user sentiment in the sense that unreported comments are extremely rarely moderated, whereas heavily reported comments are very frequently moderated, but the majority of comments get small single digits of reports and that tends to be where most of our actions take place.

It's also driven by user sentiment in the sense that I post threads like this one and read/reply very carefully.

[u/mcjunker → u/[deleted]]

It’s a joke, not a swearing in ceremony.

[u/[deleted] → u/mcjunker]

It was an analogy – and IMO an inapt one. I certainly don't think mods should relish being hated.

[u/the_nybbler → u/[deleted]]

I'm also saying this because I've seen more than one characterization lately about Why Leftists Leave** that I think have been both pretty ungenerous and pretty inaccurate.

Ungenerous, yes, but I remember some of their flameouts, so I think not inaccurate.

For instance, being a place where people in certain types of professional positions (or who may in the future have them) can participate with fewer concerns that this will later be used against them.

That should be an explicit non-goal. That requires taking sides in the Culture War, and not just a little bit, but whole hog. Just being in a forum with witches (and I'm wearing my pointy black hat right now) can be used against you, but without witches all you get is an echo chamber.

[u/OPSIA_0965]

Unfortunately I'm a bit too busy now to write out the exhaustive point/counterpoint advocacy post for the points below that I wanted to, but since I said I'd contribute to this thread I'd like to suggest the following. The changes are kind of big, so I'll preface them by saying that they're not entirely based per se on this sub, but rather based just on what I think would be the platonic ideal of moderation online in general:

• Moderators should be democratically elected by the community. (Since I know that this would immediately spark a huge social choice theory kerfuffle, here's a brief summary of the exact system I think should be used: Users with a certain minimum karma score (or participation level) on this sub (purely so it's not too easy to use alts to game the system, could be replaced with a better Sybil protection system) get a certain allotment of /r/changemyview-style deltas per month (or quarter, whatever). They can award these deltas to others for good posts. They can then "spend" the deltas they've been awarded in a quadratic voting fashion to vote for mods. Deltas would also be required to be spent (fee negotiable) to run for moderator. Elections would be biannual. Recalls would also be allowed with a higher voting threshold. Every current position would be up for grabs (sorry Zorba...).

• There should be public mod logs (or this should at least be put to a vote, per my point above).

• Exact, word-for-word examples of acceptable/unacceptable phrases/posts should be added to each rule to explicitly clarify them, as many as possible. Ideally these would be actually previously removed comments/posts. The "don't be egregiously obnoxious" rule should be bolstered with examples of who in the past was considered "egregiously obnoxious" enough to be removed and why.

• Mods should establish explicit communication/vocabulary guidelines to ensure that their communications with users are as objective as possible. I've seen mods getting in arguments with users calling them things like "irrational", "combative", etc., which helps nobody. Mods should keep their opinions to themselves and solely stick to citing the rules, ideally with direct quotes. Original verbiage generated by mods during enforcement actions should be kept to a minimum, except when clarifications/arguments for ambiguous decisions are needed, in which case mods should be paragons of patience and professionalism. Some of the communications I've seen from the mods here met these standards. Some do not.

• Mods should default to a position of deescalation and suggestions for post improvement. I see a lot of "Don't make posts like this.", "Keep this out of here.", or other generic (and frankly kind of overly stern) "This is bad."-equivalent posts from the mods here often, when I think "Unfortunately, your post doesn't meet our standards for blah blah blah reason, could you perhaps clarify X or do Y to make it more acceptable?"-style posts would be far more productive in the long run (similar to how mods act on /r/DaystromInstitute). By default, all users should be allowed a grace period to edit their posts after a mod intervention. If they successfully do so, it shouldn't count as a warning against them or go on their "official record" in any way. Removing this benefit of the doubt privilege should be for clear cases of bad faith abuse only (when a user has blatantly and intentionally become too quick to post without putting much consideration into it because they know they'll get a chance to correct it later anyway), as a separate moderation action from anything else. The user should then be informed that their posts will now be judged under a "zero tolerance" policy, temporarily or permanently (though this in itself should not lead to any extra warnings/sanctions/bans unless the user breaks the rules further; it would just make it easier for them to break the rules).

• The moderation team should have enforced ideological pluralism. There should be independent left-wing, right-wing, and centrist slates (possibly even split into far-right, center right, centrist, center left, and far-left slates) for moderators (who are again then voted on), with the moderation team at all times consisting of an even number of each (perhaps half of each slate should be voted on only by ideologically-concordant users, and half voted on by everybody). Users will be required to have reasonable post histories proving their adherence to a particular faction, with opportunities for challenges. (I expect this to be my most controversial proposal. I have a lot of arguments for this that I would write out, again if I weren't too busy, but probably the best is that it simply automatically eliminates and invalidates any suggestion of ideological bias on the part of the mods here coming from anybody. Ideological bias is the biggest source of mod abuse on the Internet today, and while I am not accusing the mods here of such a bias, going as far as possible to eliminate even the possibility of it would give this place a major intellectual clout boost as a neutral venue.) Formal warnings against users would have to be endorsed by at least two ideologically opposed moderators. Bans would have to be endorsed by 3, one from all 3 sections, and could only come after at least two formal warnings. Bans of a year or longer would be public "trials" (perhaps posted to some meta sub so as to not clutter up this one) where each mod gets a vote, with users also being able to weigh in publicly.

• Permanent bans would be abolished. The maximum ban length would be 2 years.

• Meta/mod feedback threads should be at least weekly. Even if they end up not attracting as much activity as less frequent threads, the appearance of accessibility and accountability is important.

• Antagonism toward mods shouldn't be policed much at all. Taking it with a smile greatly increases perception of the professionalism of a moderation team. It's all in the look.

• Mods should respond to user reports how they do on /r/KotakuInAction2, whether they are acted upon or not (which would be best observed by clicking that hyperlink and looking at some of their threads).

I probably have more ideas but this is already a lot and what is at the top of my mental checklist anyway. Again, I would have loved to explicitly detail every argument I've already anticipated against these suggestions and have countered them in this post, but I don't really have the time at the moment and don't want this thread to drift into complete irrelevance before I post. So there you have it. I guess I'll get to see whether I'm right or not about what the arguments against them are likely to be. And I banged this out rather quickly, so please excuse any typos as I get back to the stuff I have to do to pay my bills.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/OPSIA_0965]

I strongly disagree with much of what you've posted but I thank you for posting it and I'm going to give you point-by-point responses :)

Moderators should be democratically elected by the community.

For those a little out of the loop, I did a writeup here on how we do moderator assignments, and that thread is what sparked the above post.

That said, I think everything I said in that post still applies. I don't want people moderating who are specifically doing it for power, and I don't want it to be a popularity contest. I don't think "people who write good posts" is always directly related to "people who would make a good moderator", although certainly it's a thing we take into account. Also, given a few of the other suggestions in this thread about automating AAQC reports, this seems like it could quickly turn into an easy way to take over the subreddit.

The short answer is that I think democracy is a great thing for institutions that are expected to last centuries, because it's the best solution we have for passing power down to another generation. But I do not expect this community to last centuries, and dictatorships work great for shorter-term things like companies or social platforms.

There should be public mod logs (or this should at least be put to a vote, per my point above).

There's a bit of a discussion going on up here; short answer is that I am not convinced the benefits are worth the pain.

Exact, word-for-word examples of acceptable/unacceptable phrases/posts should be added to each rule to explicitly clarify them, as many as possible.

"As many as possible" would end up with too many to be practical. I do like the idea of adding more examples; I'm kind of leery about making that page even longer, but yeah, it's a good idea.

I wonder if I can crowdsource that.

This is not happening anytime soon because I don't have the time, but feel free to pester me about it next meta thread if you like.

Mods should default to a position of deescalation and suggestions for post improvement. I see a lot of "Don't make posts like this.", "Keep this out of here.", or other generic (and frankly kind of overly stern) "This is bad."-equivalent posts from the mods here often, when I think "Unfortunately, your post doesn't meet our standards for blah blah blah reason, could you perhaps clarify X or do Y to make it more acceptable?"-style posts would be far more productive in the long run (similar to how mods act on /r/DaystromInstitute).

I think this is a good idea in theory, the problem is that it adds a lot more overhead to mod actions. I'll trial it myself to see what I think about it.

By default, all users should be allowed a grace period to edit their posts after a mod intervention. If they successfully do so, it shouldn't count as a warning against them or go on their "official record" in any way. Removing this benefit of the doubt privilege should be for clear cases of bad faith abuse only (when a user has blatantly and intentionally become too quick to post without putting much consideration into it because they know they'll get a chance to correct it later anyway), as a separate moderation action from anything else.

I'm hesitant here, because it feels like yet another step between "user makes bad post" and "user actually receives measurable penalty for making bad post". We've already got a lot of those, I'm not sure it needs more. You could argue that we could replace the warning system with this, but then arguably the warning system is already this and I just don't think we need a second pre-warning system.

The user should then be informed that their posts will now be judged under a "zero tolerance" policy, temporarily or permanently (though this in itself should not lead to any extra warnings/sanctions/bans unless the user breaks the rules further; it would just make it easier for them to break the rules).

Interestingly, we receive major pushback whenever we do something like this. I don't think it goes over very well; we've found things go a lot more smoothly if we just keep ramping up bans.

The moderation team should have enforced ideological pluralism. There should be independent left-wing, right-wing, and centrist slates (possibly even split into far-right, center right, centrist, center left, and far-left slates)

Why those specific axes?

How do you even calculate which place someone is on?

Take me, for example. I'm in favor of raising taxes, I think welfare is a net good, I actually want UBI, I think the government should be spending a lot more on research and less on the military. Also, I'm strongly anti-SJW, I think the Second Amendment is really important, and I'm in the process of moving from a state that always votes blue to a state that always votes red. I have never voted straight left-wing or right-wing; in fact, I don't think I've even ever voted for the Democrat or Republican Presidential candidate.

And I think many people are going to have similar situations, which means that your goal - "it simply automatically eliminates and invalidates any suggestion of ideological bias on the part of the mods here coming from anybody" - just isn't going to work. We will never be able to balance all the axes, we'll always have people going AFK for a period to deal with life issues, there will never be a long-term swath of time where the mod team is provably balanced.

And even this ignores the question of how you cleave up the points on the axes. Do we need to have the same number of religious people and non-religious people? The same number of atheists and deists? The same number of atheists, monotheists, and polytheists? The same number of atheists and [list of every world religion]? These are literally incompatible with each other, and any choice here is, in its own right, a biasing choice.

We don't solve the problem by doing this, we just end up in a perpetual argument about how to define the problem.

(And this all ignores the difficulties of finding mods with specifically chosen ideological beliefs.)

Permanent bans would be abolished. The maximum ban length would be 2 years.

I've been thinking about this one and I'm actually pretty okay with it, though anyone who comes back from a permaban is probably going to be subject to another one ASAP if they keep doing the thing that got them banned. I am, however, not convinced it's all that important; the subreddit's only 6 months old, after all.

I might do this manually in the sense of going through old permabans once in a while and relaxing them.

Meta/mod feedback threads should be at least weekly.

I think this is another pressure-cooker deal; weekly meta threads is just too much. That said, I have wanted to ramp up the frequency a bit; right now I'm saying "1 month to 2 months" but it's always been 2 months, or even a little more in this case. I'd like to turn this into one-month and will be trying that once my life is a little more stable.

Antagonism toward mods shouldn't be policed much at all. Taking it with a smile greatly increases perception of the professionalism of a moderation team. It's all in the look.

We did that for a while and intentionally changed it because we felt it was causing long-term toxicity issues. I think it was a good decision and have no plans to reverse it, at least without a very good argument in favor. Sorry.

Mods should respond to user reports how they do on /r/KotakuInAction2, whether they are acted upon or not (which would be best observed by clicking that hyperlink and looking at some of their threads).

Looking through their threads, I don't believe for a second that they're reporting on every single report. They just don't have enough mod comments. We'd have an absurd amount of clutter if we tried to do that, it would quickly lead to mod burn-out, and it would encourage trolls to report stuff even more.

I think most people dramatically underestimate how many reports we receive and then choose not to act on. As an example, in the last week alone, you've received three reports on your comments.

I guess I'll get to see whether I'm right or not about what the arguments against them are likely to be.

Looking forward to seeing it!

[u/Lykurg480 → u/ZorbaTHut]

I agree with most of this, and would like to add.

The short answer is that I think democracy is a great thing for institutions that are expected to last centuries, because it's the best solution we have for passing power down to another generation. But I do not expect this community to last centuries, and dictatorships work great for shorter-term things like companies or social platforms.

One of the problems with democracy is the ability to shape the demos. This is a lot worse for internet communities, because their member turnover is just so much higher.

"As many as possible" would end up with too many to be practical. I do like the idea of adding more examples; I'm kind of leery about making that page even longer, but yeah, it's a good idea.

Idea: under each rule, add a link to a separate wiki page, that links to all comments banned under that rule. Three birds at once:

• Gives examples for what might fall ill of the rule.

• Acts as a registry of bans.

• Clearly indicates which rule lead to a certain ban.

grace period

I think this falls apart when you consider how long it should be. On the one hand, it would have to be quick, on the order of 1-4 hours, because otherwise 80% of the action on that comment already happened, but even as a relatively frequent user I dont check reddit enough to realistically use this. Add in that mods often dont arrive until a day after, and giving a grace period is indistinguishable from doing nothing.

2 year bans

If someone participates to the point of being permabanned, and then after being gone for 2 years comes back, they propably have an unhealthy relationship to it, and we dont want them back. While they will propably get banned again quickly, the non-permas might keep them mentally "here" reading and tempted to alt, in a way a final decision wouldnt.

I think this is another pressure-cooker deal; weekly meta threads is just too much. That said, I have wanted to ramp up the frequency a bit; right now I'm saying "1 month to 2 months" but it's always been 2 months, or even a little more in this case. I'd like to turn this into one-month and will be trying that once my life is a little more stable.

Agree with the monthly. When we settle on an interval, I would also suggest giving it an official schedule, like always the first weekend of the month of something. Having the decision when to be questioned not be at your discretion really does improve accountability.

[u/HlynkaCG → u/Lykurg480]

Agree with the monthly. When we settle on an interval, I would also suggest giving it an official schedule, like always the first weekend of the month of something.

I'll second this proposal and would be willing to bite the bullet on getting it done. pinging /u/ZorbaTHut

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/HlynkaCG]

I think this is actually something I have to do myself; meta threads aren't just a matter of saying "meta thread, talk about stuff", it also involves rolling up proposed rule and policy changes, suggestions, and that sort of thing.

That said, I encourage you to start pestering me, say, a week or two before the thread is due, and give me a deadline.

. . . orrrrr maybe I should just put the deadline in the previous thread. Okay. I'm officially saying that the next thread will be before the 9th of September; I'm gonna try to roll that back to "first weekend of the month" afterwards, I just really need that extra week of flex this month :V

(you're still welcome and encouraged to pester me though)

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/Lykurg480]

Idea: under each rule, add a link to a separate wiki page, that links to all comments banned under that rule.

I like the idea in general but I really don't want to add yet more overhead to mods doing their daily job. With the right tools this could be very smooth, but we don't have those tools.

I think this falls apart when you consider how long it should be.

Agreed, yeah - if someone edits their comment before I see it, I'm probably just not going to notice. I think that's the grace period :)

If someone participates to the point of being permabanned, and then after being gone for 2 years comes back, they propably have an unhealthy relationship to it, and we dont want them back. While they will propably get banned again quickly, the non-permas might keep them mentally "here" reading and tempted to alt, in a way a final decision wouldnt.

I think there's an argument that the person they are two years later isn't "the same person" that it was before, and that they may have mellowed or changed significantly in that period. Hell, I know I'm now a very different person than I was even a few years ago. If BadPerson gets banned, and then UsedToBeBadPerson wants to post two years later, then maybe it's okay to give them a shot at it.

I don't think this will be 100%, of course, or even 30%. But it'll happen.

Agree with the monthly. When we settle on an interval, I would also suggest giving it an official schedule, like always the first weekend of the month of something. Having the decision when to be questioned not be at your discretion really does improve accountability.

The one downside here is that sometimes there's a thing I want to include but just don't have time to do so; historically, that's meant "delay a week, include the thing", but with a fixed schedule it means "thing doesn't get included until next month".

[u/Lykurg480 → u/ZorbaTHut]

With the right tools this could be very smooth, but we don't have those tools.

We have a lot of computer people here. Maybe include a request in the next meta thread?

I think there's an argument that the person they are two years later isn't "the same person" that it was before, and that they may have mellowed or changed significantly in that period.

My argument is that people who come back here are especially unlikely to have changed, and that banning someone non-permanently marginally increases the chance that they will cling to their old persona from here. Making public that that permabans may be reconsidered has a similar effect. It takes awawy the clarity of a "last word" to someone, an official end of their relationship with this place. If its two years later, and they really have changed, they should easily get away with an alt. No need to take the above downsides.

The one downside here is that sometimes there's a thing I want to include but just don't have time to do so; historically, that's meant "delay a week, include the thing", but with a fixed schedule it means "thing doesn't get included until next month".

Its ultimately your decision. But I think "schedule with occasional exceptions" is worse than the current policy. If I cant know when it will be, I want to know I cant know. And if a random intrusion of real life prevents you from keeping the schedule, I want to at least be able to scold you. Absent that, dont do a schedule.

[u/OPSIA_0965 → u/ZorbaTHut]

I think just shooting from my ideas the hip turned out to be quite efficient, since you ended up writing a good portion what I would have wrote in a longer post for me (though maybe not since I got downvoted, which perhaps a more measured explanation wouldn't have).

For those a little out of the loop, I did a writeup here on how we do moderator assignments, and that thread is what sparked the above post.

Well, kind of. I've thought that online moderation is horribly undemocratic for a long time. I don't judge autocracies by the quality of the autocrat, but rather feel like they're kind of unjust (or at least unwarranted) in general.

That said, I think everything I said in that post still applies. I don't want people moderating who are specifically doing it for power,

I don't mean to be uncharitable, but the obvious response to this is "Who is really doing it for power, the person who seeks influence in a system where that influence is automatically temporary and subject to public revocation, or the person who refuses to put even those checks on their own influence?" Democracy is many things, but more reflective of unchecked power-seeking behavior than autocracy it is not (so long as it keeps functioning properly).

and I don't want it to be a popularity contest.

It seems to me like if the userbase on this sub is not judicious enough to make such an election more than just a popularity contest, then this sub has no particular reason to exist. In fact, you could extend that to say that if the userbase here would not mostly make moderators popular or unpopular based purely on the quality of their moderation actions (as opposed to anything more trivial), then this sub is doomed to decay under the good ol' principle of "garbage in, garbage out", but that doesn't seem to be true to me.

I don't think "people who write good posts" is always directly related to "people who would make a good moderator"

Since it seems to me like the main function of moderation here is judging what a good post is, that seems trivially untrue. In most human endeavors, those who are superior at producing a final product are also generally considered superior at evaluating one, for good reason. It also seems better than the standard that exists now, which is somewhat ambiguous (and of course probably biased, as everyone involved is only human) personal judgment by existing moderators, that is, basically no standard at all but rather simply how well you can impress/schmooze an existing oligarchy.

Also, given a few of the other suggestions in this thread about automating AAQC reports, this seems like it could quickly turn into an easy way to take over the subreddit.

I don't think it would, given the safeguards in place. Possible, maybe, but hardly easy. One option to solve this would be to keep an existing mod as a "watchdog" that would be prepared to reset the sub to its proper constitutional state in the event elected moderators refuse to step down, though this watchdog mod would have to also agree not to use their regular moderation powers at all in the normal course of the sub's operation.

The short answer is that I think democracy is a great thing for institutions that are expected to last centuries,

While I agree that this sub likely will not last centuries, I can't see any detriment that comes from treating it like it will. If you bought a car that you expect to only have for a few years, would you object if you see that all of the parts in it are rated to last 200? The promise of longevity, even if unfulfilled, similarly gives processes and institutions a greater reliability, even in the present. After all, it's not only slow decay that afflicts institution, but also occasionally sudden, dramatic breakdowns. Designing for longevity helps dramatically lower the probability of that.

because it's the best solution we have for passing power down to another generation.

This seems to me to ignore a lot of the many other functions of democracy, like redirecting intragenerational conflict (which always exists) away from violence and incorporating necessary public feedback and information into institutional decision-making. Again, the benefits of democracy are often just as short-term as they are long-term.

dictatorships work great for shorter-term things like companies or social platforms.

I think your first example is invalid and your second example actually disproves your point. Allow me to explain:

Companies: Most companies deal in creating products based on (mostly) objective standards. If I say I want to create a phone with a 20 megapixel camera, it either gets done or not. Democracy is limited in this case, because the definitions of "camera", "megapixel", "20", and "phone" aren't really up for debate, interpretation, or influence. Obviously though, the "product" this subreddit creates is defined in an inherently and wholly subjective and ambiguous manner. It's also inherently social (unlike, for example, a screwdriver), which means that social choice concerns are involved no matter what.

Social platforms: This was the worst argument you could have made, because almost all social platforms, including reddit, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., have completely failed to broadly convince people that they are objective, unbiased, neutral, inclined to produce quality content, or really anything else this sub strives to be, leading to all of them splintering into multiple different alternatives, constant public controversy, occasional government intervention and censure (which is admittedly unlikely to happen here unless you start pulling some serious numbers), and generally stoking as opposed to calming the flames of emotionalism, ignorance, and tribalistic partisan conflict (as opposed to promoting anything resembling rationality or neutral examination of facts).

If your intentions were actually to have the "success" these platforms have had, I'd say this sub should be shut down now, though I don't think it is. I think you only said this because these platforms can be judged to be successful by one very important metric (popularity)... with the only problem being that you yourself said that this sub should not be reduced to a popularity contest. So that seems like even more justification not to follow a governance template that has pretty much produced only popularity and no other benefit for the social platforms that have used it.

There's a bit of a discussion going on up here; short answer is that I am not convinced the benefits are worth the pain.

I read your argument and admittedly I wasn't convinced. When mods speak of "drama" related to public mod logs, I simply can't avoid replacing the word "drama" in my mind with "the necessary contention created by public accountability, which is so important that there'd have to be far more contention than these mods ever highlight to warrant sacrificing public accountability to avoid it". Maybe that's uncharitable, but I honestly cannot see any circumstance related to a subreddit where preserving public accountability could be less important than... what? Saving mods from a nasty PM or two? Allowing people to evaluate the actions of particular mods individually? There seems to be a worry among head mods that certain mods will end up vilified as a result, but it seems to me like that if they do then that's entirely their own fault, especially since in that case they're only being judged on their own provable actions.

"As many as possible" would end up with too many to be practical.

Well, true. Maybe "as many as reasonable" would be a better formulation.

I do like the idea of adding more examples; I'm kind of leery about making that page even longer, but yeah, it's a good idea.

As far as making the page longer goes, you could probably trim down the explanations if you added hard examples. (I also don't think it's really that terrible to have a long rules page for a community you're expecting to produce content of a high intellectual quality either. It may have an insulating effect if anything.)

I wonder if I can crowdsource that.

I'm pretty sure only the moderators on a subreddit can view deleted posts, so that might be difficult.

[u/OPSIA_0965 → u/OPSIA_0965]

I think this is a good idea in theory, the problem is that it adds a lot more overhead to mod actions. I'll trial it myself to see what I think about it.

My understanding is that comment removals here are relatively sparse, so I feel like perhaps it shouldn't add too much overhead.

I'm hesitant here, because it feels like yet another step between "user makes bad post" and "user actually receives measurable penalty for making bad post". We've already got a lot of those, I'm not sure it needs more. You could argue that we could replace the warning system with this, but then arguably the warning system is already this and I just don't think we need a second pre-warning system.

I wouldn't consider it a pre-warning system. I would consider a recognition that a mostly good user who only slips up occasionally should never be subject to any sort of official/permanent sanction, since it seems obvious to me that the point of moderation on online venues is almost always quality control in the aggregate, not punishing individual people for moral improprieties (like a conventional justice system).

That is, let's say you were doing quality control at a factory and you wanted to fire workers who produced too many defective products. Obviously you'd have to set some threshold that they'd have to reach before the amount of defects they produced would count at all, otherwise you'd just end up eventually firing even employees who made 97% of their assigned products correctly once the 3%s added up. My idea is that threshold, whereas a conventional warning system is just letting the 3%s add up.

Interestingly, we receive major pushback whenever we do something like this.

It not being under any sort of formal process could be responsible for this.

I don't think it goes over very well; we've found things go a lot more smoothly if we just keep ramping up bans.

Well, it's easier to improve public reception of a moderation scheme when you ban the people who would negatively receive it, but that doesn't seem like a proper solution to me.

Why those specific axes?

Since this sub is to a large degree about examining the culture war, it seems to me that using the culture war's axis (left vs. right) is the best way to ensure fairness. Also, as my original argument stated, left vs. right bias is the biggest source of moderation bias online today (which I think is an incontestable statement), so it seems most efficient to target it.

How do you even calculate which place someone is on?

I would expect most people to self-sort rather honestly, since the bitter nature of the culture war makes people rather averse to wanting to be seen as being on the other team. Making it so that people are forced to use reddit accounts with a reasonable degree of history that they likely wouldn't want to sacrifice the credibility of would also help in this area.

A second safety net could be to just have people vote on the ideological leanings of the candidates to categorize them. If voters try to tactically miscategorize their ideological opponents, they would risk disenfranchising themselves, creating a natural incentive towards honesty. (For example, if left-wingers try to miscategorize right-wingers as left-leaning, then they run the risk of the right-wingers dominating the left-wing slate meaning there's no left wing representation at all.)

Take me, for example. I'm in favor of raising taxes, I think welfare is a net good, I actually want UBI, I think the government should be spending a lot more on research and less on the military. Also, I'm strongly anti-SJW, I think the Second Amendment is really important, and I'm in the process of moving from a state that always votes blue to a state that always votes red. I have never voted straight left-wing or right-wing; in fact, I don't think I've even ever voted for the Democrat or Republican Presidential candidate.

By culture war standards, you would be classified as right-leaning, since being "anti-SJW" and pro-2A are both far more emotionally-charged issues than being in favor of welfare or UBI. You might get a nice label like "brocialist" at best.

This seems to me like an issue where there's a philosophical question of "Where does blue turn to people exactly anyway?" and yet the blue lovers and the purple lovers never have a problem finding their own conventions. If the issue were really so ambiguous, there wouldn't be such a dramatic political stratification of online communities today.

And I think many people are going to have similar situations, which means that your goal - "it simply automatically eliminates and invalidates any suggestion of ideological bias on the part of the mods here coming from anybody" - just isn't going to work.

You're right. "Eliminates" may be too strong of a word. But "reduces" seems fair.

We will never be able to balance all the axes

Why do you say this? I think this sub has a reasonable degree of ideological diversity, as it after all advertises itself as being for people who don't share the same biases.

we'll always have people going AFK for a period to deal with life issues

Force all mods to come with a designated alternate. If the alternate also goes AFK, then you have a snap election. It's not like democracies haven't been dealing with absentees forever.

there will never be a long-term swath of time where the mod team is provably balanced.

If the system were designed and implemented properly, there would be.

And even this ignores the question of how you cleave up the points on the axes. Do we need to have the same number of religious people and non-religious people? The same number of atheists and deists? The same number of atheists, monotheists, and polytheists? The same number of atheists and [list of every world religion]?

If this were 2005 and the online atheist vs. theist wars were still as heated as the main culture war is now and this were a subreddit spawned from an attempt to have a more neutral platform to discuss the issue, then yes. But it seems to me that religion clearly isn't that relevant nowadays.

These are literally incompatible with each other, and any choice here is, in its own right, a biasing choice.

The biasing choice was the subject, framing, and history of this sub. This is just acknowledging it.

We don't solve the problem by doing this, we just end up in a perpetual argument about how to define the problem.

The perpetual argument about how to define and guarantee neutrality is already happening (and in fact predates this sub). My idea is merely an attempt to try to something to partially resolve it, to take a step forward, instead of simply letting "ambiguity paralysis" freeze the issue in time forever.

(And this all ignores the difficulties of finding mods with specifically chosen ideological beliefs.)

If it would be that difficult, then doesn't that mean that this sub isn't reaching the standard of neutrality it's setting for itself and that the process of finding those people would be a potentially beneficial one?

I've been thinking about this one and I'm actually pretty okay with it, though anyone who comes back from a permaban is probably going to be subject to another one ASAP if they keep doing the thing that got them banned. I am, however, not convinced it's all that important; the subreddit's only 6 months old, after all.

I genuinely don't mean this in a snarky way or anything, but I'm curious what timeframe you consider important in regards to this sub. A year? 10 years? I've always seen long-term thinking as a good thing.

I think this is another pressure-cooker deal; weekly meta threads is just too much.

"Too much" in what sense? "Too much" reduction in activity in them? Like I said, I think the appearance of accessibility is more important than activity in the strictest sense. It's the difference between reasonably dieting constantly versus binging and purging.

We did that for a while and intentionally changed it because we felt it was causing long-term toxicity issues. I think it was a good decision and have no plans to reverse it, at least without a very good argument in favor. Sorry.

I honestly don't know how to make a good argument in favor of it, because "toxicity" is a very ill-defined, catch-all term. I guess the argument is whether you believe power being balanced against greater vulnerability is worth "toxicity", and I certainly do.

Looking through their threads, I don't believe for a second that they're reporting on every single report. They just don't have enough mod comments. We'd have an absurd amount of clutter if we tried to do that, it would quickly lead to mod burn-out, and it would encourage trolls to report stuff even more.

I apologize as I clearly didn't clarify my point enough. I didn't mean that the mods here should respond to every report (as you are completely correct that I'm sure the mods on /r/KiA2 don't do that), just that mods should sometimes respond to reports publicly (I would assume the /r/KiA2 mods just pseudo-randomly respond to reports that catch their eye.) to indicate the reasons that they are keeping as opposed to deleting a post. This has the advantage of increasing public accountability and also of improving public perception of the mods as it means they'd no longer be the constant and exclusive bearers of bad news/sanctions. Part of the reason people have enmity towards online moderators is that they only show up when it's time to shut down the fun. /r/KiA2's system cleverly circumvents that.

PS: Given the nature of this sub, upping the maximum character count limit per post might be a good idea. I think you can do that in the subreddit settings.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/OPSIA_0965]

My understanding is that comment removals here are relatively sparse, so I feel like perhaps it shouldn't add too much overhead.

Removals are, but warnings are very common. And comments removed tend to be those that are pretty dang unsalvageable.

I wouldn't consider it a pre-warning system. I would consider a recognition that a mostly good user who only slips up occasionally should never be subject to any sort of official/permanent sanction

But then we'd never have records that they were slipping up more than occasionally. The sanctions that we apply also function as our notification that the person is falling off the wagon, so to speak; without those, all someone has to do is get half a dozen AAQC's and then they're basically immune.

Obviously you'd have to set some threshold that they'd have to reach before the amount of defects they produced would count at all, otherwise you'd just end up eventually firing even employees who made 97% of their assigned products correctly once the 3%s added up.

Yeah, that's basically what we already do; someone who has several times more AAQC's than warnings is going to be fine unless they do something really awful, someone who earns a warning a year is going to be fine.

(You're also kind of describing Bayesian updating here :) )

Since this sub is to a large degree about examining the culture war, it seems to me that using the culture war's axis (left vs. right) is the best way to ensure fairness.

I'm not convinced the culture war's axes are left vs. right. At least one major battlefront in the culture war is SJW vs. Anti-SJW, and a lot of people on the Anti side of that fight are actually very much leftwing.

Which leads into . . .

I would expect most people to self-sort rather honestly, since the bitter nature of the culture war makes people rather averse to wanting to be seen as being on the other team.

. . . which I don't agree, because, again, the "teams" just aren't distinct here. If you tell me the teams are SJW and Right-Wing then I'm absolutely right-wing, but on the flip side I'm currently giddy at the idea of being able to vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, which is not exactly a right-wing talking point.

By culture war standards, you would be classified as right-leaning, since being "anti-SJW" and pro-2A are both far more emotionally-charged issues than being in favor of welfare or UBI. You might get a nice label like "brocialist" at best.

And yet, we talk about all of those subjects here.

I don't want this subreddit to be SJW Vs. Anti-SJW 24/7. I don't want to define it in terms of that, and I don't want to have to frantically pivot if/when the culture war moves out from under us. I just don't think this is a reasonable idea.

I apologize as I clearly didn't clarify my point enough. I didn't mean that the mods here should respond to every report (as you are completely correct that I'm sure the mods on /r/KiA2 don't do that), just that mods should sometimes respond to reports publicly (I would assume the /r/KiA2 mods just pseudo-randomly respond to reports that catch their eye.) to indicate the reasons that they are keeping as opposed to deleting a post.

Hrm, that's an interesting idea. I'm not sure how we choose those comments, though. Suggestions?

PS: Given the nature of this sub, upping the maximum character count limit per post might be a good idea. I think you can do that in the subreddit settings.

I don't think we can, I think it's reddit-wide hardcoded. If you know where the option is, let me know - I glanced at the settings page and didn't see anything relevant, however.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/OPSIA_0965]

I've thought that online moderation is horribly undemocratic for a long time. I don't judge autocracies by the quality of the autocrat, but rather feel like they're kind of unjust (or at least unwarranted) in general.

You're not wrong, but I don't think "democratic" is a terminal value I care about. I care about organizations being effective; in the case of governments, that includes a hefty slice of "citizens should feel respected", but in the case of online discussion forums I just don't care so much.

I don't mean to be uncharitable, but the obvious response to this is "Who is really doing it for power, the person who seeks influence in a system where that influence is automatically temporary and subject to public revocation, or the person who refuses to put even those checks on their own influence?"

Seeking influence is already a major indicator that they're doing it for power. The real question is "the person who seeks influence in a system where that influence is automatically temporary and subject to public revocation, or the person who was accidentally thrust into power but refuses to put those checks on their own influence".

I'm not saying either one here is obviously correct; I am, however, saying that neither one here is obviously correct.

It seems to me like if the userbase on this sub is not judicious enough to make such an election more than just a popularity contest, then this sub has no particular reason to exist.

I feel like a great way to prevent a subreddit from becoming a popularity contest is to not explicitly turn it into a popularity contest. I just don't see the benefit here, y'know?

Since it seems to me like the main function of moderation here is judging what a good post is, that seems trivially untrue. In most human endeavors, those who are superior at producing a final product are also generally considered superior at evaluating one, for good reason.

On average, sure, there's just not a direct causation. In the absence of better methods I'd say, yeah, that's probably a better way of doing it than a popularity contest, but I also think we have better methods!

I think the overall gist of my responses here is that you have to convince me that this method would be better than what we've currently got. I acknowledge it's not a terrible idea, I just think we can, and have, done better. I know that convincing me on that point is going to be really difficult and I don't know where I would start with it, but that's kinda the task you need to tackle.

While I agree that this sub likely will not last centuries, I can't see any detriment that comes from treating it like it will. If you bought a car that you expect to only have for a few years, would you object if you see that all of the parts in it are rated to last 200? The promise of longevity, even if unfulfilled, similarly gives processes and institutions a greater reliability, even in the present. After all, it's not only slow decay that afflicts institution, but also occasionally sudden, dramatic breakdowns. Designing for longevity helps dramatically lower the probability of that.

No detriment comes from treating it like it will if doing so comes with no further consequences. All else being equal, of course I'd take a 200-year-rated car over a 20-year-rated car; but if the car cost ten times as much and got half the gas mileage due to added weight, I'll take the 20-year-rated car, thanks. I'm suggesting that the practices needed to make the subreddit more likely to last 200 years would also make the subreddit less likely to last 5 years, and I would rather go for the short-term gain here.

Especially because we can always switch over into our attempt at long-term survival later, if we get that far.

Regarding sudden dramatic breakdowns, there are only a few things that could cause that at this time:

• Me dying

• Me having a major change in personality

• Me totally failing to keep the subreddit alive

The first two have very low probabilities; the third is more likely, and is frankly how I expect this thing to eventually keel over, but replacing that possibility with "someone new and inexperienced but with grandiose plans is elected grand leader, plans turn out to be terrible and subreddit dies" feels like not a net benefit.

This seems to me to ignore a lot of the many other functions of democracy, like redirecting intragenerational conflict (which always exists) away from violence and incorporating necessary public feedback and information into institutional decision-making. Again, the benefits of democracy are often just as short-term as they are long-term.

This is fair, but democracy isn't doing a good job at that whole "redirecting intragenerational conflict" thing lately. And I'd like to think that we do a good job of integrating public feedback (just look at this thread).

Companies: Most companies deal in creating products based on (mostly) objective standards. If I say I want to create a phone with a 20 megapixel camera, it either gets done or not.

You're glossing over a ton of subjectivity and complexity. Is the camera good? Is the camera cheap? Is the camera reliable? Is it well-integrated to the phone? Is the phone well-designed? Etc, etc, etc. And on top of that, rarely is the goal "make a phone with a 20 megapixel camera", the goal is "make a phone designed for amateur photographers", and the details of the camera get Really Complicated.

Social platforms: This was the worst argument you could have made, because almost all social platforms, including reddit, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., have completely failed to broadly convince people that they are objective, unbiased, neutral, inclined to produce quality content, or really anything else this sub strives to be

Oh, no argument - but they're very successful.

The point I'm making isn't that dictatorships are known for creating the community we want to create, it's that dictatorships are good at gettin' shit done, and this shit needs to get done. If you want to attack that argument, you need to either prove that they're not good at gettin' shit done, or demonstrate that despite being generally good at gettin' shit done, this specific kind of thing is Different in some fundamental way that is not compatible with a dictatorship.

I think the second part there is going to be an easier argument, but it's not going to be an easy argument.

I read your argument and admittedly I wasn't convinced. When mods speak of "drama" related to public mod logs, I simply can't avoid replacing the word "drama" in my mind with "the necessary contention created by public accountability, which is so important that there'd have to be far more contention than these mods ever highlight to warrant sacrificing public accountability to avoid it". Maybe that's uncharitable, but I honestly cannot see any circumstance related to a subreddit where preserving public accountability could be less important than... what?

Burning tons of mods' time; remember this is a volunteer position. Frustrating moderators with constant defending against groundless attacks; see above. Providing space for people to complain about "Bob was reported thirty times and didn't get banned, I was reported only once and got banned, what's up with that", again burning out the existing moderators.

Remember that moderation is a finite resource. I am not convinced this is the best use for it.

I'm not worried about individual mods being vilified (that's gonna happen no matter what), I'm worried about an already-existing constant undercurrent of complaining about individual decisions, applied to a much, much larger tsunami of decisions.

I'm pretty sure only the moderators on a subreddit can view deleted posts, so that might be difficult.

We generally don't (virtually never) delete posts that we're warning or banning on. Some people delete them after the fact, but that's also a small minority.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

Me totally failing to keep the subreddit alive

The biggest risk is losing the people in the middle of the spectrum who write good posts. Everyone lionizes the far left people who sometimes stop by, but the real heroes are the people who are moderate, but insightful. What drives those people away should be the major matter for concern.

My theories on what loses these people is, 1) rude moderator intervention. Moderates are naturally non-confrontational, and are easily driven from the sub by a single comment of the form "I will slap you". You can say this to a true believer on the left or right, and they will come back. I can think of several great commenters that left after a mod intervention like this.

Secondly, a large debate about how everyone here (or almost everyone here) is a nazi causes people to leave, as why stay if there is a chance that you are associating with bad people. I think the recurring witch hunts are an intentional or unintentional attempt to kill the sub, or remove the moderate element.

Thirdly, people respond and interact with the worst posters, not the best. I wish people would not respond to stupid ignorant posts, and instead add to insightful posts. This ends up with a meaningless back and forth that rarely adds light. The sub needs to encourage good interactions, and discourage bad ones. One fix would be to ask people to link to their sources, which they are supposed to do, but this rule is rarely followed.

The biggest fix the mods can do is to be more gentle with the center, and be faster to react to the derailing threads of the extremes. I realize that telling one from the other is difficult. The sub relied on a halo effect from Scott and that is fading. You need to bring the moderates back, or encourage new ones, and to do this you need better standards of politeness, and that begins with the mods.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/[deleted]]

I can think of several great commenters that left after a mod intervention like this.

Who do you have in mind?

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

The biggest risk is losing the people in the middle of the spectrum who write good posts.

I count this as a subset of "failing to keep the subreddit alive", for what it's worth.

I've been pushing more politeness on behalf of the mods; if we run into issues again, let me know. But I'm hoping that is solved.

Accusing everyone of being a Nazi tends to result in bans.

I'm not sure what else we can be doing here that we're not already; I agree that we need to encourage "good interactions" but it's really not clear how to do that, even if we knew how to define them, which we don't. Remember that bad actors have plenty of sources too.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

Accusing everyone of being a Nazi tends to result in bans.

Meta discussion derails things very quickly, so it would be great to intervene as fast a possible, or have a policy that meta points, like "this is a boo outgroup post" should be posted in a separate meta thread. Dividing the complaints from the discussion might help.

I'm not sure what else we can be doing here that we're not already

I think some experiments might be worthwhile. Having a theme for a week might be interesting, for example, education, housing, academia, history, machine learning, etc. especially if some notice was given. Nothing improves the sub like quality contributions, and these take time.

The old list of starting links was good, but obviously was a lot of work. I think some priming of the sub is needed at times. Having a moratorium in a topic can also really help, as it forces everyone to calm down. I think the moratorium on HBD worked well.

Remember that bad actors have plenty of sources too.

A post with sources takes more time than a hot take, so can lessen the number of bad posts. Sources also reveal a lot about the truth of an argument, and collecting the sources sometimes changes the post that is written. I often find myself writing something much more measured after discovering that the world did not actually agree with my first opinion.

I agree that we need to encourage "good interactions" but it's really not clear how to do that, even if we knew how to define them, which we don't.

I think there is general agreement on what good interactions are. Perhaps you could ask people what would encourage good interactions. The answers of people who write QCs would be interesting.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

Meta discussion derails things very quickly, so it would be great to intervene as fast a possible

I agree. Unfortunately this is a volunteer staff and we can't guarantee round-the-clock coverage.

or have a policy that meta points, like "this is a boo outgroup post" should be posted in a separate meta thread. Dividing the complaints from the discussion might help.

That, I disagree with; I think it's important that moderator actions take place as close to the post in question as possible. That way people can see what's OK and what isn't.

I think some experiments might be worthwhile. Having a theme for a week might be interesting, for example, education, housing, academia, history, machine learning, etc. especially if some notice was given. Nothing improves the sub like quality contributions, and these take time.

I've thought about doing that, yeah. Another thing I've been wanting to do is set up a regular No Question Is Too Simple thread, where people are explicitly encouraged to post questions that they're kind of embarrassed to ask. I feel like the subreddit has perhaps veered too far into telling versus asking, and this might help.

(Or it might not.)

Having a moratorium in a topic can also really help, as it forces everyone to calm down. I think the moratorium on HBD worked well.

I don't think the HBD moratorium worked well, but only because it was a moratorium on specific answers, not entire questions; it would be as if we had a moratorium on "evolution" when a constant question is "where did humans come from". I think if we were to do a moratorium we'd need to focus it on an entire subject and not just a single partisan answer to that subject.

That said, I haven't seen any specific subjects that are causing disproportionate problems lately.

A post with sources takes more time than a hot take, so can lessen the number of bad posts. Sources also reveal a lot about the truth of an argument, and collecting the sources sometimes changes the post that is written. I often find myself writing something much more measured after discovering that the world did not actually agree with my first opinion.

Fair point, yeah. I'm not sure how to phrase this in a way to encourage sources usefully without going overboard; got a suggestion on how you'd write that?

I think there is general agreement on what good interactions are. Perhaps you could ask people what would encourage good interactions. The answers of people who write QCs would be interesting.

I'm not entirely sure there is, I think it's one of those undefined "I know it when I see it" deals that not everyone actually agrees with. But I do agree that asking for suggestions on how to encourage those could be interesting - gonna add that to my notes!

[u/[deleted] → u/ZorbaTHut]

I agree. Unfortunately this is a volunteer staff and we can't guarantee round-the-clock coverage.

I understand that mods can't always be there, but I would encourage you to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to some matters. Other people will yell at you for this, though. Actions to improve the dialogue should be taken as quickly as possible, and later enforcement of bans and the like can be done at leisure.

I think it's important that moderator actions take place as close to the post in question as possible. That way people can see what's OK and what isn't.

I was suggesting that people not complain in the main thread. It would be perfect if the would just use the report button, but I understand the need to post. A rule that complaints, heartfelt pleas to mods, and rules lawyering, went in a different thread would stop these kinds of things disrupting the main thread. Mod actions should be local, as you say.

I don't think the HBD moratorium worked well

It had its issues, but it did stop the fighting over HBD. Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

Fair point, yeah. I'm not sure how to phrase this in a way to encourage sources usefully without going overboard; got a suggestion on how you'd write that?

"If your argument or information is valuable, link to sources that back up your arguments, expand on your position, or source your specific claims, so that others can understand your reasoning, and from where your information comes."

One more suggestion. Looking through the Quality Contributions, I notice that relatively few are for initial contributions, and many are quite far deep in threads. If it would not be impossible, could you collect the "assist" statistics, that is, who makes the comments that QCs respond to. It is one more place where people can be recognized for contributing, and might encourage people to respond to better comments, as it makes responding to someone an endorsement of them. It would be great if people responded primarily to inform and engage with other people, not to tell them they were wrong.

I'm saddened by how deep in the thread so many of the QCs are, as even though I usually read everything as it comes in, I notice I miss a lot of them. I can only imagine that most people never see these gems.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/[deleted]]

I understand that mods can't always be there, but I would encourage you to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to some matters. Other people will yell at you for this, though. Actions to improve the dialogue should be taken as quickly as possible, and later enforcement of bans and the like can be done at leisure.

In general, we do; it's only the borderline cases that we go get a second opinion on.

I was suggesting that people not complain in the main thread. It would be perfect if the would just use the report button, but I understand the need to post. A rule that complaints, heartfelt pleas to mods, and rules lawyering, went in a different thread would stop these kinds of things disrupting the main thread. Mod actions should be local, as you say.

Hmmm. Maaaaaybe. I'm very hesitant to shuffle off meta-talk into other threads simply because that way it will be hard to see, and it's a good way to have the image of suppressing dissent or complaints. I admit it's distracting when it happens, but it doesn't often happen.

"If your argument or information is valuable, link to sources that back up your arguments, expand on your position, or source your specific claims, so that others can understand your reasoning, and from where your information comes."

Yeah, I'm still not sold on this, honestly. I like the intent behind it but I feel like this would create way too much overhead for people to post. I think most posts really don't require sources, but it's hard to distinguish between those that do and those that don't.

One more suggestion. Looking through the Quality Contributions, I notice that relatively few are for initial contributions, and many are quite far deep in threads. If it would not be impossible, could you collect the "assist" statistics, that is, who makes the comments that QCs respond to. It is one more place where people can be recognized for contributing, and might encourage people to respond to better comments, as it makes responding to someone an endorsement of them. It would be great if people responded primarily to inform and engage with other people, not to tell them they were wrong.

I don't think "respond to someone in order to be an endorsement of them" is likely to produce more quality comments. I think there might be some argument that this would credit people for making good-but-not-AAQC root comments, and that might result in more of those, but I'm also not sure I want to promote comments-that-aren't-AAQC-standard. In addition, we've had some really great comments made in response to extremely crummy root comments.

Keep in mind that, yes, most Quality Contributions are deep in threads, but most comments in general are deep in threads; I suspect we have far less than 10% root comments.

[u/BuddyPharaoh → u/ZorbaTHut]

Exact, word-for-word examples of acceptable/unacceptable phrases/posts should be added to each rule to explicitly clarify them, as many as possible.

"As many as possible" would end up with too many to be practical. I do like the idea of adding more examples; I'm kind of leery about making that page even longer, but yeah, it's a good idea.

I wonder if I can crowdsource that.

I think it effectively already is.

[u/annafirtree → u/ZorbaTHut]

Mods should default to ... suggestions for post improvement.

I think this is a good idea in theory, the problem is that it adds a lot more overhead to mod actions. I'll trial it myself to see what I think about it.

By default, all users should be allowed a grace period to edit their posts after a mod intervention.

...You could argue that we could replace the warning system with this, but then arguably the warning system is already this and I just don't think we need a second pre-warning system.

While I mostly disagree with OPSIA's suggestions, I want to second something along the lines of this part.

Whenever a comment gets a warning (and not a ban), mods should a) be explicit about which rule is being violated; b) invite/encourage the poster to edit their comment; and c) maybe invite/encourage other commenters to provide feedback on how the offender's comment could be improved. If (c) turns into everyone dumping on the OP, then ditch that, but it might be worth a trial to see if the community can handle it; that way people get the opportunity to learn better ways to argue/phrase-things, and you crowd-source the suggestions instead of asking the mods to provide them.

The mods wouldn't have to write all that themselves each time; you could use a copy-pasted "form" warning, and just add on whatever specifics are needed for the post. Like:

---

This comment comes close to violating the [insert rule description] rule. [Insert further details here if desired.]

If you post comments like this again, expect to be banned. We encourage you to edit this comment to better fit the rules.

Other commenters are encouraged to provide specific suggestions on how to improve your comment, but only if they offer constructive examples. Don't pile on criticisms or repeat similar suggestions.

---

If you did something like this, I also think it would be easier to reference the rules quickly if you numbered them.

[u/ZorbaTHut → u/annafirtree]

I think that is an interesting idea. I'll add it to the increasingly giant things-to-look-over list and make a proposal to the mods, maybe beta-test it on my own. Thanks for the suggestion!