I totally can see how your post came off as hateful, even if that wasn’t your intention. I interpreted the note to say “you’re getting a bit too close to the line.” You know, that you’re not violating any rules yet, but that it came off as getting a bit heated. It’s probably not a good idea to refer to yourself as “piling on,” for example.
But, yes, the post you mention is much worse. It reads like a rant to me. If you are to be moderated, then I agree she should be, too. Heck, given a previous incident in ATMB, I could see justifying a Warning.
Yeah, but there’s a distinct tonal difference in what you are saying here and what was said before. You realized the initial statement could come off badly, so you explained what it meant, and tried to be kind.
It was right above his post, how could he not see it?
Except I wasn’t close to any line. Everything I said was about modding, I said nothing personal whatsoever. And the piling on was a reference to the post right above mine which said pile on and since ECG thought that was fine, there was no reason for him to note me for it.
This is an official warning for insults and hostility towards the staff.
You have a pattern of insults towards the staff and administration of this board. This really needs to end. As TubaDiva used to say, nowhere in the registration agreement does it say you can beat the mods like a stubborn mule.
All discussions in ATMB should be respectful towards others. You are free to bring up moderation issues of course, but this isn’t the Pit.
It’s pretty easy, when responding to a reported post, to read the reported post and the stuff around it for context, but not everything that came after it.
And as someone mentioned, the best way to draw moderator attention to the fact that someone who posted after you said something worse than what you said is to report it. The mods do read all the reports.
It doesn’t matter if they read them, if they don’t communicate back. It’s been two days since ECG said I was close to pitting a mod and he still hasn’t explained what I supposedly did wrong. I think if you are going to mod in a thread, the least you could do is read it first, unless it’s an unusually long thread.
I’m not including you in this comment. I think you are the best of the last bunch of mods(I’ll also leave out raventhief, since I have barely seen them post or mod) because you actually ask questions and answer them when they are asked. You even participated in threads about the operation of Discourse that I saw few other mods in. You’ve learned as you went along and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad call from you. You don’t separate yourself from regular posters or hold grudges.
That said, this thread is an example of the mods circling wagons. The total silence and lack of action from the mods for two days is ridiculous. This was such a simple fix. All Hari had to do was explain his action, admit it was wrong, apologize to the poster, and then fix his mistake. He did none of this and still hasn’t. Just because mods can see the warning was removed doesn’t solve the problem. And the fix by ECG still has the warning on it last I looked. It just says warning rescinded. Why not remove the original warning. Leaving it sit there makes it look like there was a probable cause to warn him in the first place and it was a judgement call that could have gone either way.
Situations like this is why some people distrust mods. It’s not like posters want to know your secrets about how you catch socks. They just want to see moderation that was done in full view of all posters explained and dealt with in full view. I hope this thread puts to rest the thread about doing moderating behind the scenes rather than in public.
I think it’s better not to destroy the evidence, myself. But I think there should be an apology, not just a note that it’s been reversed; and also that, if possible, the poster in question should be contacted. Athough any such contact could be done in private unless the poster wants it public, I think a statement that the poster has been/will be/can’t be/could be but won’t be (whichever applies) could and should be made in this thread.
Yeah, I think it’s a really strong argument for public moderation.
FYI, it is official policy to circle the wagons. It is against the rules for mods to disagree in public. I believe this is generally a good rule, and my husband and I had the same rule for disciplining our children. It only sows discord when people in authority publicly squabble, and doesn’t make for better decisions.
So please don’t expect to see other mods pop into a thread like this and either agree or disagree with the moderation under discussion, until/unless some formal decision has been reached. In this case, the warning was withdrawn, so engineer_comp_geek referred to that.
Yes. I didn’t really think it was necessary to say that until i read this thread. But since posters seem surprised, i thought it might be helpful to clarify.
I don’t know if anyone cares about the back room part, I know I don’t. What I care about is Hari acting like it was no big deal and ECG issuing the apology while Hari has still said nothing. I may have missed it, but did a mod even come into that thread and say something like “We’re discussing this in the mod loop and will get back to you as soon as we can.”? That used to be the norm, but maybe that’s changed because I haven’t seen it used in a bit.
I agree that the warning should be visible but there should be more than just the weak “This warning has been reversed” appended to it. Explain why it was reversed. I’m not suggesting that Hari actually apologize unless he means it (even though he should) but there needs to be more explanation there, especially for a first time poster. I am curious as well as how that could even raise a hackle as to possible threadshitting and if it is even subject to reasonable debate. It’s so inexplicable that one would think he was referring to a different post.
I don’t interpret “staying quiet” as being the same thing as “circling the wagons,” which in this context sounds negative.
To me, that idiom implies active steps taken by people (other mods, in this case) to protect someone. So if several mods stepped into this thread openly defend Hari with comments like “what do you mean, Hari doesn’t owe anyone an apology” or “Leave Hari alone, I agree with his judgment” etc… now THAT would be wagon-circling, in my book. (Sadly, my book has yet to be widely read.)
Mod silence (apart from Hari himself) until such time as there is a definitive, agreed-to pronouncement to be made, if any, seems to me to be gracious and practical. It’s not wagon-circling though. IMHYPO (in my humble yet pedantic opinion).
Just to be clear here: we can dispute a mod’s actions as moderator in ATMB using language appropriate to the forum, and we can darn them all to heck for what they’ve said as a poster in the Pit, but there is no forum in which we can say “GenericMod is a fucking idiot and should be spanked with a rabid baboon for that Warning he gave!”? Is that correct?
(I’m not saying there should or shouldn’t be; I’m just checking the rules. Also, no baboons were hurt in the making of this post.)
Especially how I’ve seen worse rules violations from experienced posters with the mod saying “You’ve been here long enough to know the rules. No warning issued.”
Way back when you could Pit mods for their moderation, and complaints about moderation were handled in the Pit and not ATMB. That was changed and the current rules were put into place long before I became a mod.
While we do place a copy of the warning in the thread, the actual warning is a private message. Hari sent an apology to the user via private message, just as the warning was sent via private message.
Our current procedure is that the public copy of the warning only needs to be indicated that it has been reversed. We can discuss if that needs to change.
Correct me if I am wrong or if the rules have changed, but I thought we were not allowed to criticize mods qua moderators OR their official moderation decisions in The Pit.
ETA: Ninjaed by ECG.
So effectively we are not allowed to be (perceived as) disrespectful to moderators or their decisions?
A while back, another poster got a Warning for insulting me. That Warning got reversed*. When it was, the Warning text in the Moderator post got struck through, and a Note was appended. In this case, the Warning text appears unaltered, with a line below it saying it had been reversed.
I think the strike-through with a brief Note is a much better approach. For someone coming into that thread fresh, I’m not sure they’d realize that the Warning they see prominently posted was rescinded. The way it appears in the thread, it’s kind of hard to parse what’s going on, if you’re not aware of the discussion in this thread.
*To be clear, I supported that reversal as I didn’t read it as an insult directed at me.
“This isn’t the Pit” in this case was intended to mean that Pit-style behavior is not allowed in ATMB.
You can’t insult or attack moderators (except when they are posting as regular posters). Discussions of moderator actions and decisions are expected to be reasonably civil. I tend to be fairly forgiving of the rules in ATMB as long as you are attempting to resolve some sort of issue. I am much less forgiving if all you want to do is snark or insult someone.
As for being disrespectful to moderator decisions, you are certainly free to say that you think a decision was flat out wrong if that’s what you think. Just be reasonably civil about it.
As TubaDiva used to say, nowhere in the registration agreement does it say you can beat the mods like a stubborn mule.
