So manners are the difference between a mod note and not? Would “Please dial it back” have made a difference?
Because his post is not my cite, and regardless he’s not the authority on this. I was just agreeing with him that context is important.
Again, “You’re offending me, dial it back” sounds like a request to me, take it or leave it. “You’re coming close to breaking a board rule, dial it back” is junior modding. JohnT did the former, not the latter.
No. “Please” is the difference between a command and a request. You said it was a request and then tweaked your paraphrase just enough to make it into… a request. Whether or not a request would get a mod note I wouldn’t know. But John T’s post was not a request, so I’m not seeing any fuzziness that needs special interpretation.
It sounds like a command to me, and apparently it sounds like that to the mods and most of the other people posting here, too.
They have pills for that.
Well bully for you John, guess ya won!
At the end of the day I was just surprised that that exchange warranted mod attention. Didn’t mean to get into an argument or score points over it.
You asked me a bunch questions and I answered them. If you want to call that scoring points, go ahead.
Posters with poor punctuation skills are told to use paragraphs yet they are not warned AFAICR.
Do they say “use paragraphs” or do they say “paragraphs are your friend”? It will help if you quoted the specific post or posts you are thinking of. Context is always important.
I’m curious if John T had said: “Take it easy” would that have warranted a mod note?
I agree with the other posters that context is everything.
[FTR: This pings barely a 1 on my outrage meter]
Yeah, it comes under junior moderating, which some forums aren’t too keen on. Should have reported it instead
Junior Modding is one of those irritating things that should be nipped in the bud. That about covers it.
We can close this thread now.
What exactly does “dial it back” mean? Does it mean that you’re getting close to crossing a line? Does it mean that you’ve crossed that line? It certainly leaves a lot open to interpretation. How much, how far, what part, etc.
Mod warnings work best when they are clear and on point. Dial it back may be a friendly warning, but it’s really unclear and open to too many questions. If you’re going to warn, that warning should leave no question about what was inappropriate and what is expected.
You appear to be confusing warnings with notes. I would use “Dial it back” in a note, not a warning. A note means you’re going to get a warning if you keep up said behavior…so when I use “Dial it back” (which I always use in a note), it means “If you keep doing what you’re doing and ignore this note, you may get a warning”. So, in comparison to your post, it’s the “You’re approaching the line, but haven’t yet crossed what deserves harder action yet”.
Perhaps people shouldn’t talk about “the line” as if it actually existed. As if one step forward puts you over the line and one step back puts you in front of the line. For instance, posters might argue that if “I’m not over the line, why do I need to dial it back? Don’t I jus need to make sure I don’t dial it up any more than I already have?” If we could draw out lines, we could moderate with algorithms.
That probably makes some people uncomfortable, but it’s reality.
I think the phrase “dial it back” is going to be, 99% of the time, a pretty junior-mod thing to say - given that it’s frequently used by actual mods when telling a poster to calm the f down. But I think this is that last 1% - it’s simply saying “don’t you think that argument is just a bit extreme? We’ll have a much more productive conversation over here…”
As has been said, when coming from a mod “Dial it back” is used in a note rather than a warning. I usually use it when a poster or posters are becoming more and more confrontational. If they haven’t crossed the line, they look like they are likely to if they keep escalating. It’s an instruction to take a step back and be more civil.
Sometimes I will cite particular language, but most of the time it’s the general tone that’s the problem. And I don’t find that posters find the instruction difficult to understand. I think about 90% of the time the instruction serves to prevent a conflict from escalating. And when it doesn’t, it’s not because the poster didn’t understand it, it’s because they let their emotions get out of control despite the instruction.
I looked at that thread, and I’m completely flummoxed as how that got a warning. It was completely unnoticed by me. I guess that’s why I’m not (and have no desire to be) a moderator.
Possibly because it didn’t receive a warning.
OK, then “reprimand.”
In other words, I’m flummoxed that that statement was singled out as being against the rules or inappropriate or whatever the hell it was.
I’ve been told by someone who knows someone that moderators read each post backwards. That is, starting at the end of the post and reading, word by word, toward the beginning of the post.
Think it over, it’ll make sense once you try a few posts yourself. Oh, plus their monitors have the contrast turned way up. And they are regularly gaused, or degaused, one of those.