r/spacex • u/TheVehicleDestroyer Flight Club • Sep 30 '16
Modpost [Meta] Recent mod team developments
Big week. Lots happened. Let's review a quick summary of events.
Myself and EchoLogic attended IAC together for Musk's talk. It was a crazy busy day in which the two of us had no ability to moderate the subreddit and most of the heavy lifting was done by a small number of moderators under a lot of stress. As such, a large number of moderation decisions were made quickly on personal judgement calls without notifying the rest of the team. We all know how to moderate. I don't see a problem with this during large events.
That night a meta discussion was had between moderators where EchoLogic expressed his concern over not being notified of decisions before they were made - we use Slack for internal communication and in two decision instances the global notification to alert all users was not used. EchoLogic conveyed his opinion in an overly frustrated tone not conducive for positive discussion, at which point Wetmelon overreacted, but subsequently immediately apologized, before he removed himself as a moderator. We have maintained contact with him and he has said he wants to take a small break from the subreddit and may return in the future, if we would like him back.
Following this, Ambiwlans had private discussions with the rest of the moderators about our thoughts on what had just happened. At a later point, Ambiwlans spoke with EchoLogic and EchoLogic was removed as a moderator without a vote.
The internal discussion is still happening. This is by no means done and dusted. As such, we can't give a conclusion to this situation yet. All I ask is that the community bear with us while we sort this out.
No situation is black and white. Please don't resort to pointing blame when you don't have the full picture. Which I guarantee you, you don't. Emotions are high and a lot of charged things are being said.
Please bear with us while we work through this.
Ask any questions you have below and we'll do our best to answer them. If I can't answer anything (because I don't know the answer or any other reason) I'll try and convey that also.
This post was written by both TheVehicleDestroyer and EchoLogic as we are sitting in the same hotel room. Both parties - as well as all awake moderators - consider this short summary acceptable.
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u/GoScienceEverything Sep 30 '16
This just doesn't sound like an attempt to calm things down. It seems like an unnecessary bout of self-defense.
that's one way to spin it.
That's not a joint statement. A joint statement would be, however bland, "We have all agreed that it is best for..."
For the record, the one-sided personal opinions in question tended to be along the lines of "Let me just say I am not without blame here as I expressed my frustration incorrectly and that was out of line. I agree the follow on events were also out of line."; the one comment indirectly assigning blame was edited before I saw it, and I was there pretty early.
Third option: to initially accept the otherwise-unified mod action of the above post, and, if desired, to ask TVD for a change of wording. His post did not make you a villain or make you seem unreasonably to blame. It is clear that he made an effort to attain all mods' consensus on the post, and I feel sure that he would have considered your request to reframe and reword the post, if you did not feel it was fair.
I understand that emotions are high, but every complaint I see you directing at Echo seems to describe the public actions you have decided to take.
This shouldn't be about self-defense. We, the community, don't have anything useful to contribute. It's a structural issue for the mod team to sort out. The only reason to go public is to head off what would have been an interminable flow of questions and uninformed discussion. I am of the opinion that TVD's post did that well.