That still does’t come anywhere close to the disfunction of the previous system.
This topic was discussed ad infinitum when the change was initially made, and has been discussed many times since. Complaining that the topic “hasn’t been discussed” doesn’t reflect reality. I would suggest that you go back and review some of these threads if you want additional viewpoints.
You may disagree with the present system, but as Marley23 says there is no way we’re going back to the previous one, even partially.
Honestly, I want somebody to pick apart this post:
Tell me why that is a bad idea. Don’t tell me “because it’s not going to happen”, don’t tell me " I don’t want people to think we’re debating an idea and might change the rules when we’re not. ", and Frank and ETA Colibri, don’t tell me it’s a bad idea without telling me why.
Dex claimed “In ATMB, you certainly CAN talk about the person who caused the problem.” Now you are talking about the Pit. And frankly it is not very convincing for you to say “sure Pitting him is OK” right after locking a Pit thread and issuing a whole bunch of warnings that had to be rescinded.
The ruling is that discussions of mod partiality towards some posters cannot occur in ATMB because they are insulting to that poster, and cannot occur in the Pit because they are discussions of mod action.
If it is allowed to discuss mod partiality in ATMB as long as one remains polite and reasonable, then, for the fourth time, can you please explain in what way"there is a Poster X exception to the rule" differs from “the mods do not enforce the rule the same against Poster X” such that the first is insulting and the second polite and reasonable?
We don’t agree that being publicly abusive to staff about actions they take in the course of their duties is something that is “needed,” as you seem to think, even when they may have made a mistake. You won’t find any business, public office, or other enterprise in which abusing the staff is permitted, and won’t get you thrown out on your ear. (You may be allowed to yell “You’re blind ump!” at a baseball game, but if you become really abusive you’ll be escorted out by security.)
Unfortunately, I think some of the problems with ATMB are a legacy of the fact that complaints used to go in the Pit. People got the expectation that they were free to make their complaints in the most vitriolic fashion possible, and some still try to carry that over to ATMB today.
The point of having a complaint forum at all is so that possible mistakes can be addressed. As anyplace else, making a complaint in a civil fashion is makes it more likely that it will be resolved to your satisfaction.
No, we don’t agree. You may view yourselves as “staff”, but most posters are going to view y’all as cops. When cops get heavy handed, there is an outcry.
But whatever, I’m not really emotionally invested in this, anyway. So I’m going to bow out with a final parting shot. It’s a quote, although out of context, from one of the five (count them, it’s five) threads over recent mod behavior.
I tried to help. Know that that was always my intention.
As I recall more than one poster pointed out that many people are not going to look at the sticky for any changes which may or may not be of interest to them. I agree with this, as I just ignore the stickies as I think most except newcomers would.
I admire ArmedMonkey for graciously saying BOHICA and moving on but this was seriously heavy-handed.
Having dealt with a number of HR people over the years things make much more sense to me now.
HR (the Mods) are there to protect the company and its image. The image they want to protect is one of unfailing rightness. Everything is the employee’s (members and guests) fault and very little is the company’s fault. This holds true no matter how badly a back must be broken in the contortions required to maintain this image.
Had Monkey added the words “acting like” to his assholes comment it would have gotten a pass, but because he didn’t explicitly type two words that were implicit he gets warned.
This is the nature of “respectful workplace” and while this is not a workplace but a recreation place the ambiguous and arbitrary nature of the policy remains. What one finds offensive is by definition offensive regardless of context or reason. What rules exist are one-way flexible and subject to changing interpretations and enforcement without notice.
The Moderators seem to consider questioning their decisions to be an attack on their intelligence and/or integrity that must not be brooked save for tiny concessions to placate the masses maintain the appearance of openness.
As for the notion that this has been decided five years ago and will not be “re-litigated” here; thank Christ the same opinion did not hold sway in regards to segregation, homosexuality, wife-rape etc.
Not that this spat is in anyway comparable in scale or import to the above, it’s merely an analogy re: re-litigation of bad decisions.
Alright, I said I was going to bow out, and I will, but I want to say one more thing. The fact that posters ignore stickies is the beauty and the intent of the idea. The damn thing could be a hundred pages long, but nobody actually reads it.
Again, you seem to attribute your personal viewpoint to “most people.”
Probably 95% or more of our moderation is housekeeping duties, including cleaning up spam and thread moves. Rule enforcement is just a small part of it. We issue a tiny percentage of warnings compared to the number of posts and posters.
Even accepting the analogy, you really think that the most productive way to respond to even heavy-handed cops is to abuse them publicly? (In the real world, that’s likely to get you tossed in jail for interfering with a police officer.)
Thanks for your concern. But we don’t think your proposal would actually help the situation.
The answer to both of these is the same. There’s nothing the mods (or anyone) can do with a general statement. We’re forced to specifics. (This is not limited to us mods, that’s true of the US court system, the police, and school teachers as well.) You can’t arrest someone for being “evil,” you can only get them for a specific violation.
Shodan: your example of “Poster X always gets away with stuff that others don’t” is a meaningless accusation. Give us a specific example, point to a specific post (or several posts), not a broad and poorly defined overview. In the recent instance, a specific example was cited and was deemed (by the moderator in the case) to be apples-to-oranges. One poster was reminded (not even Warned) for one thing, and Poster X was not reminded/warned for something completely different.
Fortheringay-Phipps: Same thing. Being an “all-purpose jerk over an extended period of time” is an abstract and subjective. We do NOT want to be moderating people for holding unpopular opinions. Yes, we started with one rule “not to be a jerk” but that proved un-workable: your opinion of what’s a jerk is different from mine. Instead, we focus on more specific situations: personal insults, say, and even there we wind up with disagreements on exactly what is a personal insult.
So, if you have specific accusations about moderator behavior (“You let X get away with this but warned me”) post it in ATMB. If you have general statements about a person (“She’s an all-purpose jerk over an extended period of time”) take it to the Pit.
That’s actually my fault. Somehow I thought you were talking about the Pit; you obviously were not. You can talk about moderator bias toward a poster in ATMB, and it’s not like we’ve had only one thread about that subject. What you can’t do is pile on and bash the poster, and when they get long enough ATMB threads sometimes get to that point.
Thanks, I certainly acknowledge that, and it will try to do better. However, that’s a two way street, and I don’t think I’m the only one culpable “ascrib[ing] the disagreement to a character flaw in their opposition (unwillingness to listen, intellectual dishonesty, being a terrible person.” I think we’ve got people who objected to a moderator ruling, had several explanations of why that ruling was correct, and continued to argue, rant, and insult everyone in sight. This was NOT a one-sided problem; it was a problem of the mods being provoked beyond reason.
So, yeah, I’m willing to try to listen better and to try to explain multiple times in multiples ways. HOW ABOUT THE OTHER SIDE??? Do I hear anything from them about accepting disagreement???
Personally I try to do that (opinions about my success may vary widely). I acknowledge that there are some bomb-throwers who criticize y’all, though, and wish they’d chill.
Here’s the funny thing: those bad, awful days where the staff were constantly being abused in the Pit? They never actually happened. The vast majority of Pittings over staff actions ended up overwhelmingly in favor of the staff. Having such discussions in the Pit in fact allowed regular posters to properly defend the mods by telling the OPs in no uncertain terms why they were complete nimrods. Whereas holding them in ATMB, where any poster can criticize moderators but no one should be criticizing other posters, tends to amplify the critical comments, IMO. Posters who might otherwise tell a complainer he’s being an unreasonable jerk if it were within the rules simply elect not to post.
I know the cruelty of the Pit toward staff is the story that was told to justify the change, and many people have simply assumed that it must be true if that was the reason given, but both then and now I’ve not found a single person able to supply some links to back up this claimed systematic abuse. I even tried to help a few months back, when the claim was made, with a link to all the Pit threads of the period leading up to the change but still it amounted to nothing.
Of course, people’s memories can differ, so if someone wants to take a crack at scrolling back in time and grabbing a list of Pit threads that demonstrate this systematic pattern of staff abuse, I’d be happy to have my ignorance fought with the actual facts.
This of course is blatantly misrepresenting the argument. I didn’t say abuse was constant, but if you want to imply it never occurred…that’s grossly untrue. In any case, why should it happen at all?
I really don’t need posters telling someone else that they’re a jerk for daring criticizing my moderation. I don’t in any way consider that “proper defense of the mods.” If people want to support me, they’re welcome to do it in a civil manner in ATMB, just as they’re welcome to criticize me here as long as they keep it civil. I don’t want abuse directed at someone who chooses to criticize me, any more than I want it directed at myself. How on Earth does that promote dealing with complaints fairly?
The argument that discussion of moderation should go in the Pit so that people who complain can be subject to abuse is even worse than that moderators should be.
Because the value of having discussions about moderation issues in the Pit is not to enable abuse, it is to step outside of the normal rules framework so people can simply speak freely without fear of warnings. It’s similar to having anonymous feedback surveys in one’s workplace. People will share their views differently and more readily if they don’t have to coach things in overly diplomatic language, which I argue is a good thing.
The moderators here tend to focus on how moderation-related issues impact them, but rarely on how they impact the posters. People are happier when they feel heard, and you guys would have a much more representative sense of the pulse of the board if random posters felt they could chime in whenever they wanted in these types of threads without having a masters in ATMB.
Casting it as a simple desire for more abuse from or toward others is completely missing the point.
Sorry, I think the whole point of having a complaint forum in the first place is to have the complaints addressed. And it’s just human nature that a complaint that is made in a civil manner is going to get a more receptive hearing than one that is not. Likewise, I would think that someone who thinks his complaint will be subject to ridicule, whether by staff or other posters, is less likely to make it. (Your comparison to an anonymous suggestion box hardly makes sense, since the posts in the Pit are no more anonymous than anywhere else.)
I really don’t see what this has to do with whether a complaint is made in a civil fashion or not. As I said, a complaint made in a civil fashion is much more likely to be heard. When people are shouting at one another, as it often was in the Pit, nobody is being heard. I don’t see how the ability to be obnoxious in any way improves discussion.
I also don’t see that posters are particularly inhibited from making their cases in ATMB. Certainly we have a lot of posters making their opinions known here who are not shy about criticizing the staff.
You’re deliberately twisting my analogy. And reversing it. My analogy was how a smart employer/boss can be critical of an employee in a non-insulting, positive way. And my implication was that an intelligent poster can be critical of mods in a non-insulting way. If you don’t like that, how about the way an intelligent teacher can be critical of a student’s decision without insulting him or belittling him. Similarly, a reasonable poster can be critical of a mod’s decision without being insulting or belittling.
And, Giraffe, I believe your memory of the Good Ol’ Pit is less than accurate. I hated those days, I dreaded reading anyone’s complaint about my moderation because it was inevitably accompanied by foul language and nasty personal attacks. I was so insulted by the form of the complaints that I couldn’t rationally contemplate the substance. After you’ve been called a string of obscene names, how in the world do you pay attention to whatever the complaint was? (And I remember the irony: “Hey, you mother-fucking nitwit, how the fuck to you have the gall to say that I insulted another poster?”)
It had hit a point where I refused to read any mod criticisms of me in the Pit, because they were too annoying. Sorry, Giraffe, I know you loved the free-for-all days because you never had to do any moderating. Let’s face it, YOU were one of the reasons those days came to an abrupt end.
