Moderator behaviour (not by a newbie)

The BBQ Pit
1

It is with no small amount of trepidation that I write this, but I am hoping that having just exceeded 3600 in my post count, having been a member for nearly two years now, and having something resembling a reputation will help convince everyone that I am not, in fact, a troll. People with the temerity to believe they are being hard done by by moderators seem to be being accused of trolldom with distressing regularity these days.

There are two matters which I wish to discuss. The first one is here:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=54146

I am really not sure what Grienspace did to deserve being threatened with banning for having placed a thread - a non-trolling thread, mind you, in which everyone seemed to be enjoying the discussion - in the wrong forum. Regs routinely place threads in the wrong forum; they get moved without further ado. The only time I’ve ever seen anyone else threatened in terms this severe for wrong-foruming is when someone posts a Pitworthy thread elsewhere. And really - threatening to have someone’s wife’s internet access cut off is really beyond the pale, IMHO.

Then we come to:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=54286

IJGrieve posts a thread politely inquiring on the whereabouts of a thread, which had been deleted. I’ve done the same thing myself. UncleBeer responds in terms which impute trollishness to IJGrieve, for no apparent reason.

Apparently, these two incidents are due to past assholism on the part of IJGrieve and Grienspace. But considering the experience of past posters, these seem more than a little bit out of proportion.

For reference, compare the response to a genuine troll, Jack Dean Tyler. He accused Esprix of pedophilia - of pedophilia, mind you - on November 15. He was allowed to continue to post for another entire month.

On the other hand, compare Wildest Bill. He has various strong opinions, which he tends to express clumsily, pissing many people off (including myself). However, he is given the benefit of the doubt - as well he should be - and his behaviour is attributed to simple clumsiness rather than a concerted effort to be a troll.

I am perfectly willing to concede these points in the face of evidence of severe assholism from either of these parties. I’m the first to admit that I haven’t exactly been following the careers of either of the posters I mentioned above with bated breath. But from what I do know the response of the moderators seems to be disproportionate to the offense.

I have tried to be as polite as possible in this post, because I understand that rude complaints are rightly liable to be accused of whining. I therefore hope that the mods will take it in the spirit in which it is offered, as a questioning of their behaviour rather than as an immediate condemnation or a flame.

I understand that it is the mods’ sandbox. But with power comes the responsibility to exercise it fairly and ethically, which is as true on the SDMB as it is in government.

2

I agree with the tone and content of matt_mcl’s thoughtful post.

I actually found Grienspace’s GQ thread provocative. Where would science and civilization be if it were always cloudy or dark? Or always clear and sunny? Would our cultures have evolved the same way if there had been no need or way to predict the coming of the seasons?

3

Hmmm, matt. I’m inclined to see your point.

I have not been following these people’s posting habits either. So I am in the dark about a lot of what’s been going on with them.

I guess it is fair to say that no moderator can catch every person who behaves in an assholish way, all the time. But the situations you cite do seem weird. And then compare them to the whole JDT thing. JDT was certainly not low-profile, and they (apparently) took their time banning him.

I guess we will hear from many people who were closer to the situation all the wheres and hows of it all. Because as of now, it doesn’t add up for me either.

4

Allow me to be the first moderator to share his opinion.

Grienspace had been told, after posting the Moderator Overkill thread in MPSIMS, to pay closer attention to forum descriptions. In that thread, briefly. In a back-and-forth correspondence per e-mail (a very civil and friendly one, I might add), more extensively. Yet, one day later he again provides evidence that he obviously doesn’t care much for forum limitations, and posts what basically was a GD in GQ. manny got mad, and slapped him on the wrist.
Manny and Chronos have a LOT of shit to deal with in GQ. People posting DopeFest threads, the latest Dippy incarnation posting Aussie Rules football questions, threads turning into shouting matches… it’s a fast-paced forum with a lot of moderating interventions. Much more than, say, MPSIMS.
The only way to moderate it efficiently is to run a very tight ship.
So, the proverbial slap on the wrist might be a little firmer over there than in another forum, if only to spare the mods there the trouble of having to post four weak slaps instead of one big slap. I don’t know whether you would call it fair, or just, or what have you. But to me, it’s perfectly understandable.

IJGrieve just caught some flack from UncleBeer because he posted in the Pit, IMHO. Had he voiced his opinion in ATMB, it would not have been seen as a rant, but as a question. Maybe we can chalk that one up to IJ’s inexperience.

That’s my take on it - and BTW, I didn’t see anything that suggested Unc was calling IJ a troll.

5

I don’t think it was so cut and dried. As I understand it, GQ is the place for questions of the sort that Cecil typically answers. As a wacko speculative scientific question, this seems more on a par with the one about Chinese people jumping off chairs than with the latest disquisition on gun control and Christianity. I am not saying that Manhattan was wrong in his choice to close the thread as such, but it strikes me that considering the fact that there is much more of a grey area between GQ and GD than between (say) GQ and the Pit, his ire was disproportionate to the situation at hand.

Well, I posted this thread in the Pit not because it is a rant, but because the description of the Pit says “This is the place for all complaints and other discussion regarding administration of the SDMB.” Not only that, but the question was also about a Pit thread.

I can appreciate the stress that Manny and UncleBeer must be under, but in my book that doesn’t relieve them of their responsibilities to be fair and give people the benefit of the doubt.

6

Correction: “’…administration of the SMDB.’ I presume IJGrieve did so for the same reason, and also because the question was about a Pit thread.”

7

That’s a possibility, yeah.

I’m not here to disagree with you per se, matt - just giving my side of the story. Maybe Manny and Unc will do so too.

8

Good point, matt, but in all honesty a lot of thought and discussion goes on behind the scenes, trying to keep things fair and consistent. It isn’t visible and it isn’t perfect, but it happens.

You put your finger on a valuable point: most posters simply don’t have the time or inclination to read every post in every thread in every forum. (My eyes hurt just thinking about it, not to mention my brain.) So someone may have an incident in one forum, then another, etc. but it’s not readily apparent to most onlookers.

Multiple mods are spread across the boards to monitor activity. We talk to each other, ask for opinions, advise of actions taken, etc. Lots of it is very mundane, like moved threads, but if the same name keeps cropping up time after time, it’s really obvious.

I think you’d agree (I hope you would) that first mistakes are treated matter-of-factly. “Wrong forum; I’ll move it, but btw, check out the descriptions”, etc. But when the person keeps right on doing the same thing again and again–and again–then that’s a problem.

Equally, most posters, even if they don’t post a lot, usually participate in a variety of topics. When someone specializes in complaint threads–again and again and again–and little else, we gotta wonder why exactly he or she is hanging around. Who deliberately goes to stores and restaurants they hate; what’s the point?

As far as the deleted thread, it was flagrant trolling by a decidedly un-innocent party. No point, no question, no intent other than picking a fight. Deleting it was the sensible action. Uncle Beer is right; how and why advise of a thread deletion? It would just give more attention to something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place, and isn’t there anymore to look at anyway.

Veb

9

The ironic thing is, the whole point of the thread about whose deletion I was enquiring was about whether Rational Discussion was possible in the pit.

I’d have liked to have thought it was.

10

I disagree. While it is true that this is the “mods’ sandbox”, I don’t think they have an obligation to excercise their “power” fairly and ethically. It’s not as though the mods are violating anyone’s inalienable human rights. They are not commiting crimes against humanity.
If you disagree with the way a moderator or several moderators are doing their job, then I would say that you are wrong and they are right, simply because you are not a moderator.
I don’t look at what a police officer does and think “Hey, I should tell him how to do his job better,” because that’s his or her’s superior’s job.
Just so: if a mod is acting innapropriately, then an administrator will tell him or her to knock it off. If they ask you what you think, then you should tell them, but until then, shut up. It isn’t as though you’re not doing your civic duty by coming forward as a witness in a police brutality case.

You are not an adminastrator, you are not a moderator, so far be it from you to tell them how to do their job. Anytime anyone, newbie or no, takes it upone themselves to blather about how fucked up the mods are it is a waste of time.
When you are a guest in someone’s home, you do not tell them how to run their household unless asked, I am sure. Why would you do the same here?

11

matt-mcl, I am very glad you started this thread. I wanted to comment on grienspace’s thread, but as that very quickly degenerated into a bunch of other posters piling on to him for being an anti-moderator whiner, I really didn’t want to do so there. As a relative newbie, I had some concern about also being accused of being anti-moderator, which I certainly am not.

As a practicing scientist with a passing interest in both astronomy and the history of science, I happen to agree very strongly that grienspace’s OP was appropriately placed in GQ. The first part of the OP in particular was a question that quite likely has a definite scientific answer. It was thoughtful, interesting and received some appropriate and valuable input before it got closed. As grienspace pointed out, it was far more appropriate than many other questions in GQ that day. It is possible it might have been more appropriately placed in GD, but in that case it should have been moved rather than locked. Given the very rapid pace of GQ, and some of the other stresses pointed out by Coldfire, it is quite understandable that a moderator might make an occasional mistake in evaluating an OP, and that’s no big deal. What I find disturbing is manhattan’s decision not only to insult and belittle greinspace but also to threaten him publicly with banning for what was - as far as what was apparent in that thread - at most a minor infraction. (And I ignore here the additional threats that grienspace alleges manhattan made by e-mail).

Grienspace may in fact have made a mistake in his MPSIMS thread. Whether he made a second mistake in GQ is at the least highly debatable, so that the fact that he was warned about the MPSIMS thread is irrelevant. However, not one of the members or moderators that responded to his Pit thread, or to this one, have so far pointed out any other specific instances of bad behavior on his part. I really have no idea if grienspace has been a consistent bad actor. However, based only on the evidence presented so far, he appears to be being threatened with banning for, at the worst, posting in the wrong forum twice. If he is in fact somehow on the level of JDT or even peace someone should be able to provide instances of it. Coldfire and TVeblen, if you are aware of other background to this particular case other than the MPSIMS thread, I respectfully ask that you present it, as at this point I am still as mystified as matt_mcl and yosemitebabe. So far you have discussed this case only in terms of generalities.

Personally I feel that manhattan’s propensity to gratuitously insult other members when closing threads, which I have witnessed on a number of occasions, both unpleasant and ill-advised. I have once or twice even seen him throw in an obscenity. (I have no objection at all to obscenities in their place - that, is, the Pit - but I don’t think there is any place for them in GQ, moderator or not.) Moderators should, in theory, be like Caesar’s wife and above reproach. I realize they are human and there’s an enormous amount of crap they have to put up with for little reward. There will be occasions when one loses his/her temper and lashes out. However, I think this sort of thing can give a false impression of what is and is not allowed on the boards, and be detrimental to the type of civil discourse that they are trying to promote. I have sometimes seen manhattan defended in terms of “Oh, well, everybody knows manny has a short fuse.” However, I would think that one of the primary requisites for being a moderator would be to have a very long fuse indeed.

I tend to post almost exclusively in CCC and CSR with only an occasional foray into GQ. I have to admit that I am unfamiliar with the behavior of moderators other than Arnold, Dex, and Chronos. I can’t recall that I have ever seen any of them be anything other than unfailingly polite, even to apparent trolls. I make no comment on the matter of Uncle Beer, of which I have no knowledge.

I would like to reiterate that this is not intended to be an attack on manhattan, but is a sincere attempt at constructive criticism about an aspect of GQ that disturbs me. Personally, I feel that the board would be better served if manhattan would tone down his commentary several notches when closing threads or taking other disciplinary action.

As Coldfire pointed out, GQ is a very busy place. Perhaps it might be worthwhile to suggest that additional moderators there would help alleviate some of the apparent stress on those presently doing the job.

12

When I perceive people being hard done by, Lexi, I tend to talk about it. As I said before, I am perfectly willing to accept the moderators’ explanations thereof, to which end TVeblen’s post was very interesting. However, to remain silent in the face of what I perceive to be injustice has always struck me as cowardly.

13

I couldn’t disagree with you more Lexicon. Whilst it may be formally true to say that the admins and mods can do as they like, in fact their power depends on them maintaining the confidence of most posters. If they ceased to have that confidence, the various posters who make this a place worth reading – and therefore a place worth posting – would depart.

I can see why matt_mcl started this thread. The responses do seem a way over the top. I accept that people get impatient and grumpy sometimes but I’d hate to think that some people who’d been subject to a warning were effectively being prodded off the Boards rather than monitored.

14

I should like to associate myself with the remarks of my learned colleague Colibri.

15

Jesus on pogostic, picmr. What a load of horseshit. You got it backwards. While it is formally true to say that the posters who make the board enjoyable would leave if they lost confidence in the administration of the board, it is naive to think that this would happen. The likelihood of this board becoming a ghost town due to moderator behavior is about as likely as shit sticking to the moon.

And I can agree with matt about seeing people being done hard by and feeling the need to intervene. I like to think I would try to stop an old lady from being mugged. I like to think that I would step in if a register jockey was shortchanging a blind person.

But the difference here is that, much like my learned colleague TVeblen was able to point out, you’re not seeing the big picture. There is a lot going on behind the scenes that you don’t know about. I don’t know about it either, but it only makes sense that there is. That’s why the examples seem to be so “over the top”.
I can hardly blame you though, because it seems to be human nature. Just like the whole Rodney King thing, people only see a bit of what goes down and draw conclusions based on that. They don’t have all the information necessary to make an informed judgement about the situation, and neither do you.

16

:::: No job is too hard for the person who does not have to do it. ::::::

17

With all due respect, manny most definitely did not just slap him on the wrist. If that’s all he had done, none of this would be an issue. And he didn’t merely threaten grienspace with the board equivalent of a death sentence - that is, banning - which after all is pretty trivial in the great scheme of things. But manhattan also publicly threatened grienspace’s internet service on the thread, mind you, and exclusive of any follow up he may have made by e-mail. That particular threat has real-world consequences that go beyond the bounds of this message board. I truly wonder how many members this board would have if they thought that their internet service might be threatened for an offense such as posting in the wrong forum.

18

quite right, if the moderators suddenly became “bad” trollish the quality of posts would drop to zero. Then everyone worth listening to would leave.:slight_smile:

19

No, it was most definitely not the point and misrepresenting it as such is not fair, useful or germane. It was a long cut & paste hijacked wholesale from ATMB, with a a hostile blast aimed at me specifically to “right here, right now” have a rational discussion.

No topic suggested for discussion, no sense, no provocation–and no use. It was flat-out trolling.

Maybe inadvertantly you’re providing an excellent example of some of the problems I mentioned earlier.

Veb

20

I am very sympathetic to the difficulties inherent in moderating GQ- it seems threads in this forum very easily drift into territory more appropriate for other forums, but… how can somebody be criticized for “ignoring the written description” of what should be posted in GQ? The only written description that I can find is

Is there something else that I’m missing? Seems just about any question could be covered under that. Maybe a more specific description would be helpful in forestall some of the inappropriate posts.