Mod communication/biased modding

About This Message Board
1

I was recently suspended for two days by @What_Exit for linking to a site that’s against board rules (and I’m still pretty unclear what those rules are). I’ve got two complaints about this:

a) Lack of communication. I had no idea I had done anything wrong, was suspended without warning, and had to find this out from a thread in ATMB which the OP hadn’t bothered to tag me in. Other posters were allowed to publicly speculate about my motives and beliefs, while I was unable to answer these questions even in private to the mods. @What_Exit said the mods were discussing the issue and considering further action, and then no conclusion was announced. I had to discover for myself that I was longer suspended and ask the mods what was going on.

IMHO posters should be allowed to defend themselves when initially being suspended - most times it wouldn’t change anything, but I’ve had a warning rescinded in the past because the mod who issued it hadn’t realised I was being sarcastic. The difference is that that time I was able to query it and explain what I meant. AFAIK at least some mods can see our email addresses, so they could send an email to let a poster know they have been suspended and why, and allow them to reply if they want.

I also think mods should keep posters informed of what is happening - when they are suspended, when they are unsuspended, and if mods are discussing taking further action, they should let everyone - or at the very least the poster concerned - know their decision.

b) Mods have assured us in the past that no one has been banned for expessing conservative views, yet @What_Exit said linking to sites that break board rules would usually not even draw a warning, let alone a suspension:

I haven’t had any mod notes for this issue before, as far as I can remember. I had one warning years ago and it wasn’t for linking anything. As I said, I wasn’t even aware of this rule and I’m still pretty unsure what is allowed. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that both the OP of the thread and the mod were assuming the worst about my motives exactly because of my political views.

Similarly this:

Since my opinions are controversial here, it’s not unusual to get 5 or 6 replies to a comment. If I reply to even half of those, that is going to lead to a disproportionate number of posts. But responding to arguments isn’t trolling - it’s just the opposite. Believe me, I’d far rather debate just one or two people than 5 or 6, or have some support from others making similar points so I didn’t have to. But this is how it is.

I very much doubt I would have got a suspension for that link if I had the sort of lefty views that are most common on this forum. In the past I always thought the modding here was reasonably fair, but considering it’s common and tolerated to see posters badmouthing conservatives and accusing them of being motivated by the desire to hurt others, perhaps it was naive of me to think I would be treated fairly.

I’m seriously considering quitting the site over this. No one is perfect, especially when discussing emotive issues. If I’m going to be judged much more harshly than others - and this suspension will presumably be held against me in the future too - seems like it’s only a matter of time until getting banned.

2

Maybe they are assuming that when you break the rules it is not your political views that are the problem

3

If you receive a warning, you receive an official notification from Discourse that you have been warned. We send a message to you explaining the reason for the warning.

If you are suspended, Discourse will send you an email with the reason for the suspension.

Discourse recorded the following:

I don’t remember the exact format of the email, but it should have included the reason.

The email comes from Discourse, not from any of the moderators. If you reply to the email, we won’t see the reply.

The system also sends out an email when the suspension is lifted.

All moderators can see your email address. The system sends out emails for suspensions.

Discourse sends warngins as messages. Whether or not you receive emails whenever you receive a message on Discourse depends on your personal settings.

You weren’t suspended for posting just one link. You were suspended for hijacking a thread after being given a mod note to stop doing so, behavior that was essentially trolling in the thread, and intentionally posting links to hate speech.

To be honest, all of us mods don’t really give two hoots what your political views are. You were modded for hate speech, not for your political viewpoints.

4

The rules were linked to, and the relevant section quoted in the previous thread

That is, IMO , a valid complaint.

I agree with this.

The linked site (I am not a mod, but this seems clear to me) went past “conservative views” to the official SDMB definition of hate speech.

When the rules are updated, I read them. I recommend all members do so. Should I want clarification on new rule, or feel that it should be changed somehow, I start an ATMB thread.

You linked to hate speech. No where in that post did you say you disgreed with it.

Again, you linked to hate speech.

Not being a mod or in the mod loop, I cannot say for certain whether you are treated any differenly. Reading the post I linked to, again you linked to hate speech.

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This is the email you get when you have been suspended. This is from one of our test accounts used to train new moderators, hence the somewhat silly reason for the suspension.

This is the email you receive when the suspension is lifted.

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Pardon my snip.

But to answer this in full detail, since this has come up before in the recent past, you can always go to the very bottom of the page (not the thread, the bottom of the webpage) [ checked at least 3 themes in Chrome and Edge in Windows 11 ]

Down past all the About the Message board, Community, and Forum Jump, in rather small print TBH, there’s the Terms of Service Hyperlink. That’ll take you straight to all the rules. Of course, check individual forums for those rules as well.

@DocCathode linked to the specifics you are being held accountable for upthread of course, but that’s where it always is if you don’t have it bookmarked or search for it.

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I would like to add, to what the OP says, that there have been times when I too have gotten warnings or similar action in which it was the first time I had ever been informed of a rule’s existence - and frankly, the rule existing in an informal way that wasn’t even so much a “rule,” but rather kind of ad hoc or whatever the moderator himself considered a “rule” in his interpretation.

By analogy, it’s kind of like a state trooper pulling you over on the highway and issuing you a ticket for “owning a red Honda” when you had never known yet - until that point - that there was any law against owning a red Honda.

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Have you got an example to show us?
Btw, if it happened, do you think it was because of your political leanings?

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Out of curiosity, what about links to the recent executive orders? One of them at least (I believe) constitutes hate speech by the standards of the board–it defines “women” in a way that does not include transwomen (and same for transmen). How about defending the EOs? Or stating that one will comply with them?

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I would like to chime in and say yes I believe there is bias on the board, I am curious of how it actually works however or if the mods themselves do it or the collective us. In that are the mods out to get some of us, or are some of the posters looking to trip up others they disagree with, or is it that there is a tendency of posters to flag comments of a certain point of view.

Where is the bias of the SD coming from, what is its roots?

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It’s probable that the emails from the system landed in @DemonTree’s spam folder. Have you checked there?

12

Okay, thanks. I didn’t see either of those emails, but I feel better knowing it was because of a spam filter or some such, rather than because the mods just didn’t care about keeping me informed.

I still think it would be a good idea to have an email address where people can contact the mods from outside the board. It would be useful for people who forget their passwords or otherwise have trouble logging on.

I was given a mod note for replying to another user who was inexplicably asking me about circumcision, and I immediately stopped replying on that topic. I know I do have a tendency to go off topic/am not always the best at ignoring hijacks, but I really thought I was following mod instructions in this case. Please could you tell me what exactly I posted that was considered hijacking and trolling (maybe in a PM), since apart from posting the link I’m really not sure what I did wrong here.

I thought I had a decent handle on what the rules were, was doing my best to follow them, and I assumed the mods would let me know immediately if I was breaking any so I could stop. Which is why it was so upsetting to be suddenly suspended after only having one warning from before I started posting again. Before this I felt like the mods were helping us stick to the rules, now I feel like I’ll be walking on eggshells all the time if I continue posting, and I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.

@What_Exit’s comments about treating links differently depending on whether the poster agreed with them or not seemed to imply otherwise.

I was also wondering this. Would it be against board rules to link to the Trump gender EO? Would a user be modded more harshly for linking and saying they agreed with it than for linking and saying they objected to it? I do not agree with it, but it’s now the law in the country where the board is based, and I assume some reasonable portion of Americans approve of it, so it really would be treating posters differently depending on their political views.

It honestly didn’t occur to me to do so. I posted the first article I found on Google that defined the trope I was talking about and had a couple of examples, and didn’t even think about the views on trans people expressed in it. I had no idea they would be considered hate speech, but on rereading I think some bits are offensive, so I regret linking to it over and above the trouble it’s caused me.

The ironic thing is that I’ve argued against views like these in the past - I was afraid I was going to be banned for linking to something I don’t even agree with!

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My thoughts based on this are that expressing a controversial right-wing opinion gets a lot of reaction, so it’s potentially seen as trolling and is more likely to derail a thread. Posting an equivalently or more controversial left-wing view often just gets a shrug. Due to that reaction, posts expressing a conservative view are more likely to get reported. And the mods sometimes have to make a judgement call about a poster’s intentions, and are likely to be subconsciously biased by the extremely negative opinions of the right commonly expressed on the board.

14

I just looked and my spam folder is empty. I’ve checked all the various subfolders and searched for them, and all it finds is the summary of this thread. Unless there’s some kind of setting in gmail that makes it automatically junk spam, I never received the emails.

@engineer_comp_geek, you might want to check this Discourse system is still working.

15

You can email engineer_comp_geek directly. He has posted his address on this
board before.

16

You’ve had one warning from me.

Is it Time to Tone Down the Wokeness, Especially about the Past? - #43 by Velocity

Warning for @Velocity

Do not change the text in a poster’s quote without making it clear. That including bolding words.

Do not ignore Moderator instructions to stay on-topic.

You seem to be claiming you didn’t know these rules?

You appear to be confused and/or forgetful.

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@DemonTree, I PM’d you the Email address you loaded in your profile. Please verify it.

The suspension and end of suspension as mentioned were automatically suppose to go there.

You answered much of the rest yourself.

The suspension happened due to the link to Hate and the fact it appeared closer to trolling than posting in that thread. 110 posts is oddly obsessive also out of 1068 posts.

As I said via PM you severely hijacked that thread, but you weren’t the only one, so I let this matter drop without a warning in the end.

18

I checked it. It’s not working.

We will investigate.

19

Ah, did not know that. Thank you for checking this out.

20

Thank you. This was really the thing that bothered me most, so I’m glad it’s getting fixed.