The moderators are not everywhere. I doubt they read every post and even the ones they do read may sometimes only be superficially glanced over. So sometimes they may miss something until time has passed since it was posted.
The rules evolve. Sometimes a post that was acceptable at the time it was posted may be unacceptable by current standards. But the post still exists to be read by people in the present. So the moderators want to acknowledge the post violates current rules without punishing the poster who wrote it back when it was legal.
I just went back and read most of that thread. I can’t make heads nor tails of that moderation either. It sounds like a response to somebody objecting to moderation…but there wasn’t any previous moderation, and no objection to moderation in the quoted post.
It reads like response to something that has since disappeared. Or maybe something that was meant to be a DM?
Buuuuuut, Hari_Seldon wasn’t moderating when he said, “Perhaps it would be best if you read a post before responding. V said very clearly that he is for vaccination only not very loudly.” so DemonTree’s response still wasn’t an objection to modding.
Ohhh, now it makes much more sense. Thank you, Max.
But the moderation is still wrong. Hari wasn’t posting as a moderator, so I wasn’t disputing moderation, and it’s hardly against the rules to ask whether a third party is against using the Covid vaccine in any case. Voyager confirmed that I didn’t misread the post, not that it should make any difference either way.
And now I remember that I was going to report Hari’s post, until I realised it was written by a mod. Maybe I should have done so anyway, but I didn’t think it would do any good. The whole thing is ridiculous.
For all my dust-ups with DemonTree, I agree with her here. The three points in question:
Hari’s original comment was wrong. DemonTree was, I believe, asking if Voyager’s conservative acquaintance was saying he was against vaccinations but would’ve been for them in Trump had won in 2020. Hari’s comment that V is for vaccinations (sounds like the most depressing ABC book ever) misunderstood the antecedent of “he” in DemonTree’s comment, and was sneering and condescending to boot.
He’s modding her for disagreeing with his non-mod post, which is not at all cool.
He’s modding her a month later, which is something that should be reserved for egregious behavior.
This is a triple screwup, but #2 is the worst, IMO. Hari, what gives?
Yeah, but people tend to respond better if you pull them aside and privately address a possible public mistake rather than making it a public dispute and inviting others to comment. The latter has a way of making people more defensive.
It’s not like they wouldn’t have to publicly address the mistake. And you can escalate to a public dispute if the private interaction doesn’t go well. But you can’t de-escalate back to a private conversation.
What you say sounds fair, but I believe it is less effective.