I agree that the issue isn’t fear. However, I do think that in cases in which following the rules is thorny, especially when moderators are being critiqued (and, being human, probably feel defensive), there should be a conscious effort to moderate with a light touch.
When armedmonkey calls people assholes, he’s knowingly violating the rules, and a warning, that’s fair play. When someone accidentally crossing the line into insulting a poster when they’re just trying to criticize posting habits, or into discussing moderation in the pit when they’re not trying to break the rules and probably don’t realize they are, a light touch is warranted.
This is exactly how I started the other thread. Confused. Obviously a joke, right? but no following it.
Either that or warnings are tossed around like candy at a Halloween party, but with less significance. Every time I see a warning like this I picture a substitute teacher desperately trying to control a classroom of 9th graders.
I agree. And I think that’s what happens in most cases here. I don’t think it applies to the Pit thread because Blank Slate spent a fair amount of time Pitting the mods - it’s about half the OP - even though that was probably not what he meant to do when he started a thread to Pit Czarcasm. In ATMB, though, we usually give people at least one note before we start warning people for insulting other posters.
The “good” was sarcastic, I suppose. The warning is for real because you can’t call other posters assholes in this forum. That’s pretty straightforward.
However, the whole discussion here kinda proves that my idea in the OP is needed. Tempers flare in ATMB. I took people to task for their tempers , but allowed me to do it myself. In doing so I got warned for banging two heads together in the attempt to make them both think. Fair enough.
But the point of my OP still holds. There has to be a solution out of this ATMB fighting. The problem is the only one to be talking peace is the semi-literate drunken chimp with a twelve gauge.
Then why did this ATMB post draw a warning? I don’t see how it could be interpreted as anything except a reference to moderation - that was the point of the whole “cop giving another cop’s wife a pass”. Where cop = mod and cop’s wife = former mod and exception to the rule = giving a pass.
Yet it was ruled a personal insult.
I do not see any way in which “there is a Poster X exception to the rule” differs from “the mods do not enforce the rule the same against Poster X”. Since the mods enforce the rules, how could it be otherwise?
Alongside this, maybe follow the old handyman’s adage: measure twice, cut once.
That is, before jumping straight in and issuing warnings, stop and actually take some time to assess the situation, and make a rational and clear-headed assessment. A warning does not carry less weight if you delay it by an hour or so.
The warnings issued in the parody thread yesterday were a prime example of this. Had the moderation not been done while the moderator in question was clearly angry and irrational, maybe the right decision would have been made first time around and there would have been no call for a four-page shitfight about it in ATMB.
An even better example is the one discussed in this thread. Again, to be fair, the moderator in question eventually conceded the point and reversed the warning, but if he had taken the time to read closely the very post that he relied on in the first place—a post by another moderator, no less—then the whole damn kerfuffle could have been avoided.
We get told that being angry and frustrated is no excuse for breaking the rules, and that if we’re tempted to fly off the handle we should step away from the keyboard for a while. Maybe the people that run this place could take their own advice once in a while.
Again, you don’t put forth a proposal. The animosity between the two sides is known to you. It has to be, because you’re not stupid. That’s not sarcastic. I like you. I think you are a great moderator. But you have to admit that something has gone wrong.
Instead of blaming other people or dodging the question with snark, let’s talk about how we fix it. The Mods and the Teeming Millions, working together.
And I’m not going to. Because, as I said a couple of times, I don’t think we need a new system or a new forum or sticky or whatever. The system we have is OK, and maybe the enforcement needs to be tweaked a little. But we’re not going back to arguing about moderation in the Pit.
I actually don’t. I view a lot of this stuff as a tempest in a teapot, not an uprising or an insurrection or a war or a rebellion. Jeez, the sheer melodrama here- we’re talking about people typing at each other. I think we have a forum for questions and complaints and that for the most part it fulfills that purpose. There are a small number of people who complain a lot to be jerks. To an extent that’s unavoidable, but it gets a bit out of hand sometimes. And sometimes people act up because they’re bored or one complaint feeds another. These things come and go.
Doesn’t it seem to you that there were quite an unusual number of posters involved in this discombobulation who would not normally be involved in posting in ATMB or the Pit?
And the Emperor blinded the captive Bulgarians, about 15,000 so they say, ordering each group of one hundred to be led by a soldier with one eye, and thus sent them to Samuil.
- Ioannes Skylitzes, *Synopsis of Histories*
Need not be the solution, just a possible solution ;).
Once upon a time, a Very Regretful Decision was made, the decision that all mod-related threads go in the Pit.
Consider the Pit as it is now: Some Pit posts semi-jokingly refer to OP as too tame, some Pit OPs add colour to their thread merely because it’s in the Pit, and many posters have some sort of quasi-need to be as insulting as frequently as possible in the Pit. As in, some can’t just disagree, they have to disagree vitriolically.
Now remember what it was like where not just warnings, but notes and direction were subject to the must-use-cursing-and-be-as-mean-as-possible attitude. The reverberations are still with us in every xth ATMB thread. I wouldn’t mind if the civility rules of ATMB were loosened just a *teeny-tiny *bit, enough so that angsty posters don’t end up in over their heads or it’s a little easier to express frustration without the worry of the appearance of an insult, but no where near what it was like back in the Pit. Fuck’n-A that made things uncivil.
I’m uncomfortable with that ruling because here a warning is a howitzer response to a peashooter event. armedmonkey made what he thought was a reasonable solution to a vexing problem, expressed his disappointment that both sides have rejected it out of hand, and you, in what I see as a moment of pique, hauled out the big gun to slap him down. I understand your anger and frustration after a couple weeks of this, but “because I’m the daddy, that’s why,” is an inappropriate reaction. Please accept this as a suggestion from a friend, but modding while trying to live a normal life, too, has to wear on your nerves and your spirits. You have been arbitrary and short-tempered a lot lately, and I think you would benefit from a vacation from your duties. Give it some thought.
Might it be suggested that, instead of all the finger-pointing and blaming, we simply hypothesize that it was all just a transient medical problem, for which nobody can really be blamed? Surely it can’t be an insult to suggest the some of the mods merely suffered a minor short-term medical disorder. I think they may have just gotten a leetle touch of ergot poisoning recently, and through no fault of their own, went on a witch-burning rampage.
But Marley23 was able to see that a few days of R&R might be all that’s needed (as he himself suggested somewhere in this current episode), after which a re-review of everything may be seen in a clearer light.
I really, really don’t see this as a problem with policy. In ATMB, you certainly CAN talk about the person who caused the problem – but you need to be polite and respectful, not hurtful and insulting.
It is always possible to criticize a mod’s behavior without being either insulting or rude. I come from an HR background, where a thoughtful employer can deliver a really harsh critical message to an employee, without insulting them or making them feel bad. Of course, lots of employers don’t – they’re too unthinking or have too much ego at stake. It sort of depends on whether the goal of employer is to FIX the problem, or just to belittle the employee and vent. I like to think that our posters are thoughtful and able to express themselves well.
Dealing with human beings, you always get a better response with calm and rational discussion than with anger and outrage.
following it.