Critiquing techniques vs critiquing people: what speech is permissible?

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#83

I think it’s wise to be very careful about “instabanning” on anything that comes down to “use of offensive terms”. There are some people who genuinely just don’t know better, and may fall in line after a warning. Consider also that people who speak English as a second language may not have been instructed about the offense caused by some terms.

I can only think of one slur in English whose cultural significance is so great that every person who communicates in English should be expected to know it’s offensive.

Edit: I have to throw in a favorite John Mulaney quote: “If you’re comparing the badness of two words, and you won’t even say one of them… that’s the worse word.”

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#84

@Troy would automated “troll detection” help the process at all? (not sure what this forum is hosted on, but there are tools for sentiment analysis that can detect trolling behavior if you can pull in recent topics easily). Depending on what’s available over API there could be a way to detect and freeze accounts temporarily using over the top language and notify admins for review. Or potentially a reddit-type auto moderator to issue warnings on language.

Or is this strictly deciding how to handle it when its identified is taking time away so you’re looking for some quick rules of thumb that fit the forum?

#85

Sorry if this sounds a little off-topic but I moderate for a lot of Twitch/YouTube channels (some with regular viewership in the high thousands) and as a person, I strongly dislike and shy away from conflict. I always had this fear of coming across as harsh and would always try to reason with people and give them second, third, etc. chances. and honestly… out of hundreds of cases, I can count about 2 or 3 cases where we were too quick to react or where someone modified their behaviour and stopped trolling. If someone has a track record of being a valuable community member, I don’t view that as a reason to allow them to disregard the rules, but it does mean I will handle the case differently. But if someone is just confrontational and disrespectful from the outset and if their posts add nothing of value, I will warn them, and if they refuse to stop or at that point double down and begin to disregard the moderation, I will ban them there and then. It seemed harsh to me at first but the more I see communities thrive even when you lose a few numbers by banning people like this, the more I am convinced that you will not miss people like this anyway. They just move on and troll elsewhere. The once or twice someone has genuinely been willing to modify their behaviour, they reached out and asked to be unbanned and we allowed them to come back on the understanding that they had to tow the line. I hasten to add that this is not a criticism of the people who were just stating strong opinions in that other thread - I was more concerned at the idea of someone continuing to use burner accounts to keep the argument going.

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#86

Just ban anyone who has a headless guitar, those guys are mental.

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#87

I just bought a headless Kiesel Vader 7 :rofl: RIP my timing!

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#88

Damn, I’ll get my hat then…

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#89

I’m out too, thats how I know we’re nuts.

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#90

Right, I think it’s all the edge cases that are tricky. Like, someone who has a history of using passive aggressiveness or things which just skirt the rules but are not strictly breaking them. Unless we include “intent” in the rules. So yes, first hard thing is identifying when someone has done something moderation-worthy. I assume that would be hard to detect with current bot tech. And the second hard thing is deciding what to do about it once you identify if.

I think this conversation has been pretty helpful in stating some obvious things that needed stating, about what kind of tone and intent we are looking for. And then also stating some easy things we can do of the more compulsory / mechanical variety to help foster that.

Eventually, we will absolutely be replaced by AI that knows statistically when we are being jerks, even if we don’t actually break rules. At that point, they will probably just replace us and auto-populate the conversations as well!

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#91

Awesome practical feedback! Thank you. What you’re saying about strong moderation is essentially what we attempted to follow here, but probably didn’t execute that well. More guidance will help us be more decisive in the future.

We also did have the burner account type who were insta-banned, for good reason, and came right back and kept on trolling. I actually don’t know how to stop that kind of persistent intrusion other than continuing to ban them. The built-in trust level delays on first posts will probably help a little there.

#92

Another thought to strengthen the intro post requirement - how many new posting members are there per day/ week? Could you set up a crowd sourced review process on top of requiring an intro post, so it’s also necessary that the content be reviewed by someone from the larger pool of experienced members able to approve new users based on the intro post, who don’t necessarily have broader admin/mod powers?

Nothing too crazy, just if no one thinks the post is in earnest it never gets approval, maybe they could reach out and ask a mod to check it if they think it was overlooked.

#93

I think you need to be quite strict with moderation so a forum doesn’t descend into chaos. I have been on forums that have quite light moderation and you will find that people try to push the envelope on what they can get away with. I believe rules need to be clear and shouldn’t really be open to interpretation. Very hard to do I know!

FWIW I think the moderation on here is very fair and light, and the quality of posting is very high. 99.9% of the posts are on topic.

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#94

Sorry - this isn’t really going to add anything helpful to the discussion. It’s just more of a personal comment. I was just reading through these posts and thinking about how Troy and Tommo were so willing to listen to feedback from everyone. For you to spend so much time listening and responding was amazing. I know it takes you away from spending time on other things and that long-term you are trying to set things up so that your attention is not diverted this way. But the level of engagement, and transparency and humility you guys have shown time and again is incredible. This community is such an excellent resource and we are all so grateful that you let us be a part of it. Thank you for the work you do - on the forum, with the magnet, with the videos - we really appreciate it!

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#95

Just to follow up on yesterday’s further moderation of the A.O. thread, and for the benefit of anyone who might have missed recent events.

I deleted 5 or 6 posts yesterday; either because they obviously violated our guidelines, or because they were likely to ignite the drama once again (even if a couple of them were written in good faith, or may have deserved the benefit of the doubt). I may write privately to some of the people involved for more specific feedback (or feel free to reach out to me first).

Please be aware that anyone who crossed a line has been either suspended, or has been contacted publicly or privately by the moderators and has promised to not do that again. If we missed something/ someone, usual reminder to please use the flag button instead of starting a public trial or similar thank you :upside_down_face:

Finally, Troy has already explained very well our stance on acceptable/ unacceptable ways to express “negative” opinions. I would add that context matters, and given the history of said thread I’d ask you to think very hard before going back there to post more “negative opinion” stuff. In the same spirit please also try very hard to not say things that could be interpreted as a passive aggressive attack towards other forummers (or anyone else). Yet again, the flag button is your friend if something bothers you, and we’ll do our best to review things objectively.

If need be, I will be a bit more heavy handed than usual in deleting non-constructive things from that particular conversation.

That concludes my speech for today, thanks for listening :sunglasses:

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#96

I was out of service when the notification of bans for headless guitar owners was announced, I’ll go ahead and delete my account.

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