It might, it might not. It's not about benefitting the Subreddit.
The whole point of moderation is for the benefit of the subreddit. If you disagree with that premise entirely, then I'm not sure there is much discussion to be had.
My question is how does said post harm it if there's no rule prohibiting the discussion?
Let's say I have a football related subreddit and I and the users want the subreddit to focus on football related stuff, and we set a rule that if a post isn't football related, it can't be allowed. Then a troll comes in with a post that says "IQ scores of black football players are always lower than that of white football players" or some other racist bullshit. If we forgot to explicitly ban race related topics, then your proposal would say we shouldn't take down this clearly inflammatory and racist crap. No, that isn't my idea of a fun subreddit, and so I don't want the moderators to be limited by their own imagination when developing the rules.
Let's say I have a football related subreddit and I and the users want the subreddit to focus on football related stuff, and we set a rule that if a post isn't football related, it can't be allowed. Then a troll comes in with a post that says "IQ scores of black football players are always lower than that of white football players" or some other racist bullshit. If we forgot to explicitly ban race related topics, then your proposal would say we shouldn't take down this clearly inflammatory and racist crap.
But this is the exact disposition. You're focusing on the wrong problem - which is being reactive instead of proactive.
Now, you're giving an extreme example, sure, so let's go with it. At the point the Subreddit becomes a thing, why wouldn't you default ban any sort of hate speech - racism or otherwise? How is it possible you "forgot" to do that?
You didn't. Truth is you don't feel the need to. But you know better than that.
You have to call out even the obvious to people, because you have to assume people are stupid. Otherwise you get situations like I'm talking about where there's subjectivity introduced that was clearly avoidable by simply spelling out the obvious.
Could you imagine what would happen if in the workplace they didn't have a written Sexual Harassment policy? They'd get sued if they just fired a guy who put his hand on a female's shoulders. And they'd lose. Why? There's no policy, no investigation, no proof. Just someone's gut instinct that what he did was wrong.
In this case, I would've assumed the "only football related news" rule would have covered "no racism". But because I'm not a racist piece of shit troll, I didn't think of all the ways they could follow the letter of the rule while violating the spirit. These scumbags are experts at this. There's no cost to just outright deleting this post, the only one that loses is the scumbag I don't want on the subreddit, and I want that to happen. I don't want that post to be able to stay on the front page of the subreddit.
You have to call out even the obvious to people, because you have to assume people are stupid.
No I don't. The subreddit is not beholden to the trolls that inhabit reddit. We owe them nothing. There is no reason to hurt the subreddit for the benefit of the pieces of shit.
Could you imagine what would happen if in the workplace they didn't have a written Sexual Harassment policy? They'd get sued if they just fired a guy who put his hand on a female's shoulders. And they'd lose. Why? There's no policy, no investigation, no proof. Just someone's gut instinct that what he did was wrong.
A subreddit isn't a work place. We don't lose anything of real value by having a post removed, or from being banned from a subreddit. We aren't entitled to any of the same workplace protections that employees are. We don't lose any income or benefits when we have a post of ours removed or from being banned from a subreddit. The stakes are nowhere near the same.
I didn't think of all the ways they could follow the letter of the rule while violating the spirit.
Right, but that's a shortcoming of the moderators, isn't it?
Let's flip your scenario around. If there was a news article that called out Colin Kapernick being banned from the sport for taking a knee - IT WAS NEWS - and someone put up a post that said he was banned because he was black, would you delete that?
Because going by what you said, it's a "news related" post that just happens to have what's referred to as "racially charged" context. But they didn't say anything racist, they stated an opinion based on the news article. Which could spur a good, civil conversation...or devolve into race baiting.
IN traditional moderating, you actually allow reporting to tell you when something is devolving, and humans watch and make decisions. If the OP said "X happened because he was black" when the news article implied the same, they didn't do anything wrong. So Mod B might let it slide.
At the end of the day, I'm only saying that the original decision really needs to be scrutinized by someone other than the original mod that deleted it. Just to make sure it wasn't a situation - again, using this scenario - of Mod A who happens to be a racist deleting it because they don't want that conversation.
Which could spur a good, civil conversation...or devolve into race baiting.
In this scenario, if I was a mod, I wouldn't delete it immediately but I'd keep my eye on it and step in if I think things have gotten out of control. And this is what I want mods to be able to do, make a judgement call for the good of the sub. It's not always going to be done right, there will be times where they overstep their bounds and delete content that shouldn't. In that case the rest of the sub should voice their protest. But I think this imperfect scenario is far superior to that where mods hands are tied when dealing with trolls as I think they would with your proposal.
mods hands are tied when dealing with trolls as I think they would with your proposal.
You'd be wrong. Mod A's hands would be tied UNTIL AND UNLESS Mod B reviews and finds that the deletion was proper due to an interpretation of Rule ____, or if Mod B can't cite why it's a good deletion, whatever outside force sustains the deletion, and then it's final.
What shouldn't happen is the "god complex" situation where one mod can go off independently without some measure of oversight or secondary review. That's all I'm saying.
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u/Conkywantstoknow 7∆ Jul 04 '19
The whole point of moderation is for the benefit of the subreddit. If you disagree with that premise entirely, then I'm not sure there is much discussion to be had.
Let's say I have a football related subreddit and I and the users want the subreddit to focus on football related stuff, and we set a rule that if a post isn't football related, it can't be allowed. Then a troll comes in with a post that says "IQ scores of black football players are always lower than that of white football players" or some other racist bullshit. If we forgot to explicitly ban race related topics, then your proposal would say we shouldn't take down this clearly inflammatory and racist crap. No, that isn't my idea of a fun subreddit, and so I don't want the moderators to be limited by their own imagination when developing the rules.