We have too few mods as it is, and the OP’s solution (to a non-existent problem, I might add) is to make *more *work for mods? Naah. The OP’s idea is bad and they should feel bad for having it.
They’ll be OK with it if we double their pay.
What are we, Nazi Germany? (Sorry, the Godwinian suspense was killing me.)
As annoying as they may be to the Mods (and I note that I haven’t seen a Mod say so) I have often seen a lot of good come from these threads. Rules that made no sense to me get explored and explained. Important guidelines are delineated and minority points of view are expounded upon. I find them pretty interesting and tend to read them closely.
I will hand it to the mod system here. In many of the other boards I frequent, NO warnings or bannings are announced formally, people all of a sudden have a new tag next to their name, with absolutely no explanation. In these same boards (+ others), protesting a warning gets you additional demerits, as does asking why your friend has suddenly been banned. I find such secretive underhanded hijinks to be hugely annoying, utterly pointless, and defeating the whole purpose of having any sort of discipline system in place to begin with.
This should be the penalty for starting debate threads and losing the debate.
And for asking a General Question, that could be easily answered with a simple google search.
And for lame pittings.
I disagree with this statement which makes the rest of the suggestion moot.
Giving this more thought, I think this suggestion is unnecessary also because there is already a penalty for protesting a warning in ATMB.
Firstly, you’re highlighting your warning and inviting anyone and everyone to comment on it, opening yourself up to criticism and potentially harming your reputation (if you have one to harm). I’d rather let a warning go with no response other than “sorry, won’t happen again” for that reason alone, unless I felt it was particularly incorrect or confusing.
Secondly, by defending the behavior that led to the warning you’re demonstrating that you are likely to repeat it. If I made a slip in a thread and was warned not to do it again or risk suspension, and didn’t reply or apologized then that shows acceptance. If I protest, then it increases the likelihood that I might do it again. If mods are trying to establish whether I will be a habitual problem and should be banned then logically they should factor that in.
Finally, it’s possible that in protesting the warning I might reoffend. For example, in a conversation about cultural preference for hair colors I go on a rant about blondes being stupid. I get warned, and start an ATMB thread to defend myself by insisting that my statement was factual and as evidence I begin listing various blonde people I find to be stupid. That’s just digging the hole deeper.
So essentially, there’s no need to create penalties for these protest threads because there already are penalties, just not formal ones.
I think you’re missing the point of protesting a warning or note. It’s not an admission of guilt, it’s explaining to the mod in question that you didn’t deserve the warning because you didn’t break a rule. What you’re speaking about is like going to traffic court to explain to the judge why you were driving so fast. On the other hand, questioning a warning here is more akin to going to traffic court to explain to the judge that you weren’t speeding at all and you shouldn’t have received the speeding ticket in the first place.
The mods should implement a totally randomized process for mod notes and warnings. They could decide upon some parameters, like maybe 1 post (statistically) out of 100 should get a mod note, and 1 out of 500 should get a warning. Then use random-number generators to determine which posts get those.
Bannings likewise could be done entirely by a randomized lottery, like in that short story by Shirley Jackson. This would be as fair and unbiased as can be, and totally uncontestable. (Which isn’t even all that radical a proposal, as bannings are already uncontestable as it is.)
This would entirely eliminate any suspicion or appearance of bias on the part of the mods. For example, the politically conservative posters on this board, who sometimes complain of an anti-conservative bias, could be assured that they are treated as fairly as anyone.
The process could even be entirely automated with robomods. Rather than increase the workload of the live moderators (if any remain), this would certainly lighten their duties considerably.
A few people have made the assumption that the sanction for challenging a warning and losing is another warning. But that isn’t how it needs to work. If you challenge the call of Incomplete Pass and lose, you aren’t penalized with another incomplete pass!
So here’s what we do. If you challenge and lose, you lose one of your friends. You don’t choose - they’re lost at random. You’re never allowed to make friends with that particular poster again. If you do not have any friends, you are not allowed to challenge any warnings until you make one. Finally, a use for the board’s silliest feature!
From my protesting my warning, which I believe was not overturned, there was a benefit that came out of it. More mods are highlighting their warnings in red text, which makes it much harder to simply miss and easier to follow mod’s instructions.
Why was the rule changed?
IIRC, due to pit rules (or lack thereof) those threads got really, really vile.
I think there was an attempt to ‘fix’ that which led to a bunch of confusion and eventually threads discussion mod actions were to be started in ATMB and kept considerably more civil.
It was part of a wider attempt by the former head administrator to try and “Marquis of Queensberry” up the place. It was also a very contentious change - there were staff resignations, angry flounces, splinter communities generated and all sorts of related sturm and drang that emerged from the whole thing.
The rules against bad language in the Pit( soon kinda eeled around and more recently mostly rescinded )attracted the most heat, but there were and are definitely folks that preferred to be able to rip moderators a new one over shitty mod calls. I was always pretty neutral on that myself. But even though it didn’t impact me much the language-policing in the Pit as installed back then was pretty bullshit IMHO. Thankfully the worst of that is now gone.
I think the OP is right: If you protest a warning and it’s not overturned, you lose a timeout.
We’ve all got plenty of time-outs around here and we’d love to lose them. I want to protest some warnings so I’ll lose some of those time-outs.
Often the people protesting the warning or note are missing the point. I see people doubling down on the same behavior more than once. In effect, many times they are saying they were speeding but had a good reason for it.
Just look here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=888777
That’s one of the latest protests and they practically admitted to trolling in the process of arguing they weren’t trolling. It’s not at all unusual.
OK but it needs being said
That’s sort of what I’m getting at. The OP is attempting to stop a certain subset of posters from contesting every mod action directed at them. However, that’s a pretty wide net to cast and it’s going to cause problems for a lot of other people.
I’m not saying the problem doesn’t exist, I’m saying that we don’t need a solution for it. What the mods currently do seems to work just fine.
A lot of times, a moderator will post “Poster X has been banned” and listed all the times in the past the poster has been warned, so it’s not as if letting an unjustified warning stand has no consequences.
If a specific poster starts a lot of threads about “I want to protest my warning,” yeah, that’s excessive, but I don’t see that often enough to think something needs to be done.