Rule for Mods/Admins suggestion

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41

Because Posters do not have the power to ban (and to kill the mod/admin thing before it gets to be too much of a digression*, mods have the power to warn, and since warnings accumulate into bans, it’s the same thing in essence).

The silly “Gee! I’m a poster! Now I’m an Admin! Oops! I’m a poster again athough I’m answering a question about the rules of the board! Now I’m a mod, but I’m calling you a jackass! Guess which one I am now…think carefully before responding!” dichotomy was barely appropriate when the board was one big happy free playground. Now that it’s a business, I think (FWIW) it’s changed. It’s no big deal to ban someone from a board that they’ve paid nothing to join. It’s different once you accept their money.

In the first case, you can throw someone out because you’re having a bad day, feel cranky and decide that you’re personally offended by the cut of someone’s jacket. The relationship utterly changes in a business situation…and volunteer or paid employee makes no difference–volunteers who work for a business still represent that business: the amount of compensation they receive is irrelevant to that. A candy-striper** who, even if off-duty tells a patient that if they continue to be a jerk, ‘shouldn’t be surprised if something nasty ends up in your food’ in earshot of other patients is not acting appropriately by any standard.

(And yes, I realized the difference in seriousness of offences between a hospital volunteer tampering with food and a mod/admin getting pissed that they lost a debating point in a discussion and responding with implied trolling and banning comments. But “hospital volunteer” is all I could come up with offhand.)

Oh, and to join in, and I read the original comment as a veiled “trolling” thing as well. I agree with Revenant that if it’s not, the "You’re just posting that to stir up shit–we know what people who do that are called :dubious: " phrase should be allowed back in our lexicon. I seem to recall official warnings for using that phrase or varients.

Why does all this matter? Two reasons: one is the obvious one. I don’t like seeing unprofessional behavior and I don’t like bad customer service.

Second, and the one that I haven’t seen discussed is this: At least from the moment I joined and probably before then, we’ve been told that the SDMB hangs by a thread, existing only at the Chicago Reader’s sufferance and the least little bit of friction, however tiny, could cause them to pull the plug. Posters were banned (I can think of two or three off-hand) for simply threatening to sue. In one case, it was a fairly idle threat (IMO) said in the heat of a nasty argument, but since he was (IIRC) a lawyer, poof. He was gone. Not for suing, mind you, for just making the threat. We were told that’s because if the SDMB was even the smallest bother to the Chicago Reader, we were gone. Swell. Let’s grant that:

How do you think the Chicago Reader would respond to a dozen or so of letters/e-mails saying “Dear Chicago Reader, I’m very upset that one of your outlets, the SDMB, has unfairly banned a poster after taking their money.” or “Dear Chicago Reader, as a result of the unprofessional behavior and abysmal customer service I received on your message board (the SDMB) I will no longer place ads in your paper and will urge others to avoid your paper as well.” or “Dear Chicago Reader, if the kind of customer service you show on your SDMB message board is the same as you show subscribers/advertisers, I will never do business with you and will tell all my friends to avoid you as well”, etc. Someone at the Chicago Reader would have to read and respond. Enough of them and who knows what they’ll do? Remember: one single lawsuit…just one…and we can vanish overnight. How many “disgruntled potential customer letters to someone above Ed at the Reader” = “one serious threat of a lawsuit”? I dunno. But there’s certainly a point at which it could. (And note: I have no interest in or intention to send one of those letters. But others have or will.)

*Like the “She’s a volunteer”/“No, she gets paid”/“Well, not very much” digression that took up like 2 pages of the last attempt at discussing this did.

**Or whatever they call hospital volunteers these days.

42

Frankly, yeah. If you work at a business and are wearing the uniform of the business, you don’t get to act 100% like a customer while on the premises, even if you’re off-duty.

Beyond that, though, it’s that if she’s acting as a poster, she can’t make veiled trolling accusations and make I’ll-be-keeping-a-very-close-eye-on-you type comments. Posters can’t. If she’s acting as an Admin, she should behave professionally…which does not include comments like you’re a liar or you’re nasty.

And the other thing is that it’s apparently impossible to tell which hat is being worn and when. If she’s a poster, why was she making promises for future board features that only a representative of the SDMB would know. If she’s a mod/admin, what’s she doing threatening the ban-stick (however veiled that threat may be) for simply losing a point in a discussion?

43

Same here. I was going to make a post asking why Tuba gets to violate both the ‘don’t be a jerk’ and the ‘don’t accuse others of trolling’ rules but I didn’t feel like subjecting myself to a banning on her whim.

I felt both her statements to catsix and to heyhomie in the wally thread were basic accusations of trolling. If she really felt they were doing so, she should have issued official warnings. She didn’t, so we have to assume that she just wanted to be a jerk.

44

Just to clear up some misconceptions:

  • There is no rule prohibiting mods and administrators from making accusations of trolling. In fact, the rule is that other members should NOT, but should report suspicious posts/people so that the mods/admins can make the decision. That would be a senseless set-up if mods/admins couldn’t make the accusation.

  • The reason death threats are prohibited is that we don’t know whether they are empty. We have had situations of real-life fears: a person who lived within a 45-minute drive of me threatened to stalk me. Perhaps that threat was empty, I don’t know; he probably didn’t have my real name or address. But I was the one on the receiving end and I chose to interpret it as real. From that, and other situations, we decided the boards are healthier if we do not allow death (or similar) threats. But don’t think that all such threats are empty.

  • Finally, I would guess (I don’t know) that TubaDiva is deliberately avoiding this thread, and the other Pit threads. She’s said her say, and she has other things to do than read the same (unpleasant) thread every few hours and respond to every single post. In short, don’t read too much into her lack of further response.

45

Just to make this a bit clearer; mods can, at any time, make accusations of trolling? Even when wearing their “poster hat”? They do not have to be acting as a mod, and have evidence of trolling behaviour, in order to make that accusation?

Would I be allowed to make death threats against American members of the board, then, please? As a resident of the UK, I have no access to them, and as a student I have no money in order to travel there or to hire someone to kill another member for me. Since any death threat I could make against a US doper must be empty, could I have permission to do so?

I agree with you here. I know i’d get pretty sick of having to go back and read threads in which my actions and words are questioned. I’m sure she’ll be back at some point, though; perhaps we should sum up our points and work up some specific questions to ask her for when she returns.

46

Lakai

Considering she’s had more than a week and several threads to do it in, I’d say yes. She had the opportunity to do it in the first response to this thread, and yet she took that opportunity to lie and say “that doesn’t happen here”. Did she not think we’d have a cite, IMMEDIATELY to prove her wrong?

47

I believe you’re misunderstanding the concern. The question isn’t whether mods/admins should be able to call posters out for trolling–of course they should. It’s an essential job fuction that no-one is questioning.

The question is “Can they do it without putting their mod-hats on?” And I feel that whether or not they’re allowed to do it, they shouldn’t. Especially in the middle of a heated argument. If mods/admins are “just posters” (which allows them to call posters names, get into flame wars, etc) unless they’re wearing their mod hats (and I don’t think that’s a good idea anyway, but I recognize that I’m not gonna win that point), then they must not only follow the rules of the board, but be examples of how to behave as posters. I can’t get away with saying something like “You’re a nasty piece of work who’s only posting to stir up shit–and we know what people who do that” are called because I’m a poster. When not wearing the mod hat, why should any SDMB admin/mod?

And the bigger question is should mods/admins be able to tapdance back and forth over the mod/“jes’ a poster” line as suits them? Most of this confusion and tsuris wouldn’t have happened if there had been a clear line of demarcation. If Tuba had discussed the coming new board features with her “mod hat” on and warned Catsix for trolling with her mod-hat on, there’d have been some brief discussion as to whether the warning was justified or not, but everyone would know where Catsix and Tuba stood. If she wasn’t wearing her mod-had, she shouldn’t have been acting as a representative of the SDMB and she shouldn’t be able to make trolling accusations. But the “Now I’m a mod. Now I’m not. Now I am again” stuff is what’s caused the problem (IMO). Well, that and the other customer service concerns I’ve mentioned.

If Catsix had called Tuba a “cnt" in that thread while Tuba was while not officially wearing her mod hat but discussing board features and trying to get people to sign up would that be a bannable offense? We know that calling another poster a "Cnt” is NOT bannable, but calling a mod one is. But if we can’t tell if the person in question is a mod or not, how are we supposed to know which rule to follow.

Look: if she was wearing her mod hat, her “try to overlook it” comment was out of line and a misuse of power. If she was wearing her poster hat, her veiled ‘you’re a liar and probably a troll’ comment was. Like I said, it’s too late to resolve this in an appropriate way. What I’m suggesting is that some serious discussion be given to prevent further incidents.

48

Bullcrap. Have you actually been following this? Add me to the list.

49

The feeling seems to be far more widespread than I had suspected. I withdraw this statement.

50

No, actually I think I will read a lot into her ignoring this issue and thinking it’ll go away on its own.

I asked a specific, direct question of TubaDiva about what she meant by her post. She clearly saw it, as she posted in this thread after I asked the question. She chose to ignore it. As I have said, I can only imagine the answer to this question being one of two things, both of which violate or should violate the rules. She has had ample opportunity to post an answer, absolving herself of this entire mess. She has not.

Speaks volumes.

51

And thinking about it, going forward and keeping with the spirit/title of the thread, how about formalizing the following three rules?:

  1. All moderation/admin business will be done with explicit “mod hat on” tags.

  2. Except when officially wearing their ‘mod-hat’, all mods/admins are subject to all rules of the board and are to be treated exactly like and behave as a regular poster. That includes not editing their own posts and being open for as much flaming as any other poster except as regards their moderator actions.

(and here’s the one that pretty much insures that these won’t be adopted)
3) No mod/admin is allowed to moderate/give warnings/etc in a thread in which they are participating except in an emergency (a real death threat (“I know where you live and I’m coming over to kill you and your children.” not “eat shit and die”), for example). There are multiple mods in each forum, use them for this purpose (in addition to overlapping coverage). There are very few issues where a board infraction is so severe that it won’t wait a few hours to resolve. Really, if a person is called a “cum-belching gutter monkey” in GQ, the world won’t end if it takes a few hours for a mod who’s not involved in the thread to clean up the mess.

These won’t actually improve most customer service issues, but at least we’ll be able to tell when we’re dealing with a representative of the SDMB or with just another poster.

And before the pile-on begins, no, I don’t think that most mods/admins need these rules and no mod or admin needs these rules all the time anyway. Most mods/admins do a great job most/all of the time. But as we were told when our ability to use HTML was disabled, when we ask for the ability to edit posts, when other board features are removed or not enabled “Sorry, we know you wouldn’t misuse it, but someone might (or has, or will, depending on circumstance) misuse it, so it’s better to take the ability away from everyone.”

52

Your third rule seems a bit too strong to me. How about this instead;

  • Mods shouldn’t use their power in a situation where the rule-breaking involves them. So for example, say I were to insult one of Frank’s* mod decisions, and insult him in that role; or insult him as a poster in a way that breaks the rules (say I threaten death against him). Any mod apart from Frank should give me my suspension/banning. That way, any temptation that Frank might have to insult me back personally while taking care of this mod business is removed, and he’s still free to insult me back personally as any poster can. Less mod-hat/poster-hat complications.

That would seem more reasonable to me.
*Mod chosen at random, I’m in no way implying Frank would do something like that, yadda yadda.

53

I dunno: I don’t think the incident in question Tuba/Catsix would have fit your revision: IIRC, Tuba said (all quotes paraphrased) “Hey! We got nifty stuff in store for you!”, Catsix said “You said that last time”, a few rounds of “did so”/“did not” passed and then Tuba made the “You’re lying and nasty but I’ll try to overlook it” quasi-mod post. I’m not sure that would be covered by your revision.

Oh, and let me reiterate my suggestion that

  1. ATMB becomes a forum for discussion of board policies and mod action and the Pit be reserved for flaming board policies and mod action and treated the same way GD political threads are. (If they start as a flame/rant they get closed or moved, if they start with a debate, the “GD rules” prevail and posters are warned for not following them–this prevents people from hijacking debates by turning them into Pit threads.)
54

…and that would be a pretty damn big mess…

55

Sure, but that in conjunction with the rule I suggested in the OP would.

56

The job of Moderating is, frankly, difficult enough without imposing additional artificial restrictions. Mods don’t usually make accusations of trolling until things are clear. But mods do have to sometimes say, “I can’t tell from this post whether you’re just trolling (in which case we will soon escort you out of here) or whether you’re just naive and new.”

I can’t just add “mod hat on” since a newbie won’t have a clue what that means. I’ll have to add some preface like, “I’m an official moderator on this board, and…” Most of us don’t want to do more typing than we have to, thanks very much.

Frankly, I personally almost never use “Mod Hat On” because I think it’s a useless distinction. I sometimes start with “Moderator clears throat for attention” or some such drivel just to be sure there’s no doubt what’s happening. But, in fact, there’s rarely any doubt about whether a Mod is speaking as a Mod or as a Poster.

I presume this is a joke, since no reasonable person would even begin to ask it. However, remembering that reasonableness is not always a feature of our posters: No. We do not have the resources in either money, time, or people to investigate whether a particular death threat is “real” or “empty.” How do we verify that you’re resident in the UK? How do we verify that you have no money? Are you suggesting that you ask for advance approval to make a death threat, submitting your tax forms for the last five years (to be sure you haven’t got the money to hire a hit man) and submitting proof of being in a different location? Don’t be silly.

Administration of such a situation would be a nightmare. It’s far easier to say: No death threats, no threats of rape, no threats of violence, period. They’re not nice, they’re not polite, and we’ve got enough lunatics on this board that we don’t want fantasizing about doing violence.

To say nothing of the whining that would go on with, “You allows HIS death threat, but you didn’t allow MINE.”

Finally, TubaDiva is out of town this weekend, so the howling wolves are not going to get any kind of response.

Mods have more to do than read every critical post and respond to every “direct question.”

57

I know she has a lot on her plate. I just find it rather curious that when given a perfectly reasonable chance to defend herself (and again, she obviously had time since she replied to this thread after I posted the question), she not only declined to answer, she refused to even acknowledge the question. I find it telling that neither her nor anyone else has offered a reasonable interpretation of her post that differs with mine.

This isn’t going away until she at the very least acknowledges it, whether it’s this weekend or next month. Mine (and judging by the other posts in these related threads) and a lot of other posters have had whatever respect they had left for her (after her myriad other offenses) completely negated after her refusal to even acknowledge those of us who feel she is in the wrong here.

I’ll say it again: TubaDiva was wrong. She was wrong for both her original post and her actions afterward. As it stands, she is unfit to be in a position of power on this board. She needs to make it right, or she needs to go.

58

Agreed 100% and I like her!

59

and yet, many of us find it a particularly useful distinction.

I personally hate wearing a name badge at work, find it pretty useless myself. However, since countless others find it very useful, I wear the name badge.

60

There’s doubt in this case, for one. I recognise that you have a difficult job at times, and that having to make your statements utterly clear and straightforward takes extra time, but with great respect that’s your* job*.

The main problem I see is this - mods have two hats, and we members have to treat them differently based on what hat they are wearing; so it seems somewhat unfair that the mods are unwilling to go to a small amount of trouble to make clear which hat they’re wearing. In fact, there’s nothing stopping the mods from blurring the mod/poster line all they want, meaning they could threaten to use mod power on a personal issue as a poster; or that they could cause confusion as to what an appropriate response might be. If a mod personally insults me *and * suggests I could be banned for my behaviour, how can I respond without risking it seeming like i’m insulting mod actions? How do I know i’m not insulting mod actions? It’s unclear.

So I have another question to ask based around this; in a case of a poster insulting a mod’s actions, would “but I thought he/she was acting as a poster at the time” be a valid defense? And based upon what would the mods make the decision as to how clearly the mod’s actions were as a mod, and not as a poster?

Looking back on it, you’re right, it was a stupid thing to say. I withdraw it and apologise for wasting your time on that.

Well, no-one’s going to get any response. :wink: Seriously though, I resent being called a howling wolf - I suspect that’s a comment that might get a broad brush accusation against you in GD.

That’s true, but I believe we’ve followed all the rules as per asking questions of mods, and I believe answering them is part of your job also (short obviously idiotic questions, which i’d hope you wouldn’t characterise these as).