| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
This has been going on for years, but the playtest seems to have brought it to the foreground again: Somebody makes a post or opens a thread where that person clearly intends to elicit angry responses out of other members of the messageboard, by snarking about hot button topics or implying ulterior bad motives to a perfectly straightforward statement.
Using the "Personal insult/abusive" option really doesn't do it for such cases, since those things are not as easy to spot as open insults. But it still is easy to spot the bad intent to start a flame war, which of course leads to mass deletions, thread locks, etc.
I think if "baiting" was an option for flagging, moderators might look at certain type of posts with a more critical eye, which would be good for the overall tone of the messageboard (and the playtest).
And, yes, it's possible that some would abuse this feature, but I think those same people are already flagging posts which content they just don't like, anyway. Putting "Baiting" as an additional option would at least mark posts of that kind in a category where moderators can get more informed feedback why a post was flagged in the first place.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree with magnuskn, there needs to be a specific feedback button that clues a busy administrator on why that sort of post is being flagged (especially if it's not clear without context). Baiters and threadspammers (folks who just essentially post the same statement over and over and over again--but reworded enough to not actually be spam in the traditional sense--to drown out dissenting opinion from normal people who don't live next to their keyboards all day and night) are the key factors in threads that go south quickly. They are also masters of not directly saying anything immediately abusive so they technically aren't being insulting or hateful and yet you can see exactly how they are trying to derail a thread with nastiness. And yet these posts are almost always the root of a flamewar.
(Beavis: Did she call them... "Master Baiters"?
Butthead: Heh eh eh, yeah, yeah, she did.)
Of course I'm extreme enough to also want those who respond to baiters be flaggable in some way (since usually baiting + egotistical people who believe their magic responses will "fix" the baiter and instead encourage them to threadspam = thread locked [and that's how we lost the right to discuss politics here]), but that's probably too much/too far.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I sometimes flag such a post “breaks other guidelines” and then email community@paizo.com, linking the problematic post and providing (brief) context.
Personally, I’d find use for “edition warring” too, since that sometimes occurs buried in long, rambly posts.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think this is necessary, or desirable.
I've seen plenty of material where I think the OP has one agenda but in further posts it becomes evident that the lack-of-emotional-context inherent in forum posts caused misunderstanding.
I strongly think it's best to simply have "flag this as other", so that a Paizo staffer has to re-interpret the post themselves, as a non-participant, to judge intent. As in, I don't think it's a good thing for us to lead the witness. Or judge.
With an "offense" that is by definition up to interpretation (no matter how much you think something is clearly baiting, it may not be) I submit it's best to leave the moderators uninfluenced. They either see what is clear, or they do not, because the flagger imagined it.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So, just because an "experienced" forum participant thinks they know what an anonymous person really means, we're going to report them for moderation? That's neither possible nor necessary. I don't know about you, but I've yet to achieve psychic divination powers with people I share a house with, never mind those half a world away whose only representation to me is a collection of pixels. At the very best, this is a way to increase make-work for staff and at worst it is a way to passive-aggressively mark another forum participant as requiring a virtual slam on the fingers to "win" an internet argument. Any post that truly is there to start fights will break other guidelines, as others have pointed out already, and for any one of us to decide that that's another poster's intent is foolhardy at best.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
So, just because an "experienced" forum participant thinks they know what an anonymous person really means, we're going to report them for moderation? That's neither possible nor necessary. I don't know about you, but I've yet to achieve psychic divination powers with people I share a house with, never mind those half a world away whose only representation to me is a collection of pixels. At the very best, this is a way to increase make-work for staff and at worst it is a way to passive-aggressively mark another forum participant as requiring a virtual slam on the fingers to "win" an internet argument. Any post that truly is there to start fights will break other guidelines, as others have pointed out already, and for any one of us to decide that that's another poster's intent is foolhardy at best.
Note that the suggested change is less work, not more work for the moderators. Those posts are likely getting flagged already - the suggestion is to break up the (presumably huge) “breaks other guidelines” category. This would hopefully mean less head scratching time for the moderators. Paizo’s moderation team remain in charge of what happens on their site, as it should be. This is to make it easier for them.
The strength of the flagging system is that it reduces grar - you don’t need to call out what you consider to be inappropriate comments from another poster, you can silently draw paizo’s attention to it and leave the passing of judgement to them.
What Steve said in the post above. That was the exact intent of this suggestion.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
At the very best, this is a way to increase make-work for staff and at worst it is a way to passive-aggressively mark another forum participant as requiring a virtual slam on the fingers to "win" an internet argument.
No, at the very best, this is a way for those of us who are not involved in the argument to direct staff's attention to the crux of the issue.
I too would like something that lets me flag "edition warring" as a separate issue. That's become more frequent since the Playtest was announced.
And the concern trolling/baiting is by far the most frequent reason that I use "breaks other guidelines".
Staff could probably do a quick count on the backend to see what *their* judgement has been with 'breaks other guidelines' reports, and then create a new flag that skims off the most frequent issue into a new category.
I sometimes find myself using the 'breaks other guidelines/community email' two-step, but mostly I hope staff see the same things I do. Which means that I'm hoping *staff* are the mindreaders, not me.
Note that the suggested change is less work, not more work for the moderators.
That's what I object to. If an issue isn't egregious - such as obviously containing profanity - it should require the moderator to drop into "slow" mode and actually research what's going on. Because nuance is a thing.
This would hopefully mean less head scratching time for the moderators.
Again, that's my point. If a moderator reads the sentence, paragraph, or whole post and is scratching their head... you (probably) flagged it unjustly. You thought it was bait, but the moderator didn't see it. The moment you prime their expectations with "this is why I am offended by this", they are no longer able to view the material with a neutral eye. They are looking for a way to interpret what they read as offensive.
This frankly leads to suppression of material that a couple flaggers interpret one way, and don't want to see. It literally makes moderating subjective issues weighted in the favor of the flagger, on a forum where the flagged has no opportunity to explain or provide context for their posts.
Understand, I don't have a stake in this. To me this is philosophical, not a matter of "protecting my ability to bait", for instance. It's more a case of how-do-I-think-moderation-should-work-in-general.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The moment you prime their expectations with "this is why I am offended by this", they are no longer able to view the material with a neutral eye. They are looking for a way to interpret what they read as offensive.
The moderators have already created ten different flags, which means that they want us to prime their expectations by using one of those flags for every single post.
We're suggesting that they split one of those options (breaks other guidelines), into at least one more very specific reason, or perhaps two more reasons.
It's not as if they're starting with a blank slate. You can already direct their attention to
BBCode/Markup display problems
Thread is in the wrong forum
Needs a spoiler tag
Double post
Spam
Copyright/intellectual property infringement
Offensive/sexist/racist content
Personal insult/abusive
in addition to the catchall "breaks other guidelines".
So their attention is really very, very primed from the moment you flag a post.
You may believe that they shouldn't want to do it that way, but in reality, that is their preferred system
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Note that the suggested change is less work, not more work for the moderators.That's what I object to. If an issue isn't egregious - such as obviously containing profanity - it should require the moderator to drop into "slow" mode and actually research what's going on. Because nuance is a thing.
This would hopefully mean less head scratching time for the moderators.Again, that's my point. If a moderator reads the sentence, paragraph, or whole post and is scratching their head... you (probably) flagged it unjustly. You thought it was bait, but the moderator didn't see it. The moment you prime their expectations with "this is why I am offended by this", they are no longer able to view the material with a neutral eye. They are looking for a way to interpret what they read as offensive.
This frankly leads to suppression of material that a couple flaggers interpret one way, and don't want to see. It literally makes moderating subjective issues weighted in the favor of the flagger, on a forum where the flagged has no opportunity to explain or provide context for their posts.
Understand, I don't have a stake in this. To me this is philosophical, not a matter of "protecting my ability to bait", for instance. It's more a case of how-do-I-think-moderation-should-work-in-general.
I don’t really see it as a huge problem - I’ve only done this once that I remember. I flagged what was a mildly needling post and then emailed an explanation (basically, the guy I flagged had made multiple replies to one specific poster over and over again bringing up a past dispute - a dispute the “pursued” poster got very upset about). I was essentially reporting them for stalking - the target was new to the Paizo boards and probably didn’t know what recourse they had. The problematic (in my view) posts were mildly irritating, but hardly offensive or insulting out of context.
Basically, my intent was - “I think this guy’s being a jerk and someone should look at their behaviour holistically, not just this post”. My understanding is that flags are displayed by thread, not by poster so such things aren’t really going to show up if the behaviour is sprinkled across many forums.
“I think this is baiting” kind of directs attention to what the actual issue is (beyond the wording of the post). Without it, we get what happened in the playtest disputes over paladins - people felt the need to publically critique other posters’ overall posting habits, since nothing individually seemed flaggable.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
In terms of “leading the witness” (or judge in this case) the defence to that is the moderators’ skill and professionalism.
Just because someone says “this is problematic” doesn’t imply they will do something about it. I don’t really see fine tuning the categories as likely to mean the moderators will use their judgement with less nuance/finesse.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
So, just because an "experienced" forum participant thinks they know what an anonymous person really means, we're going to report them for moderation? That's neither possible nor necessary. I don't know about you, but I've yet to achieve psychic divination powers with people I share a house with, never mind those half a world away whose only representation to me is a collection of pixels. At the very best, this is a way to increase make-work for staff and at worst it is a way to passive-aggressively mark another forum participant as requiring a virtual slam on the fingers to "win" an internet argument. Any post that truly is there to start fights will break other guidelines, as others have pointed out already, and for any one of us to decide that that's another poster's intent is foolhardy at best.Note that the suggested change is less work, not more work for the moderators. Those posts are likely getting flagged already - the suggestion is to break up the (presumably huge) “breaks other guidelines” category. This would hopefully mean less head scratching time for the moderators. Paizo’s moderation team remain in charge of what happens on their site, as it should be. This is to make it easier for them.
The strength of the flagging system is that it reduces grar - you don’t need to call out what you consider to be inappropriate comments from another poster, you can silently draw paizo’s attention to it and leave the passing of judgement to them.
I'll add to this excellent statement that no, while no one is a mind reader (that I am aware of), patterns of behavior (seen all over the Internet, one need not be "experienced" at this particular site) still get established. You can make reasonable conclusions, on the Internet or in real life, about if some people do things a certain way and it's caused a specific result 7 times out of 10, that there's a good chance it will happen again. Human behavior isn't totally random nor is it indecipherable; we learn ways to communicate and debate from each other, and copy both good and bad habits therein, so our communication efforts become traceable patterns. Observing those habits can help us learn to make a reasonable assumption (but not a solid conclusion) about what is most likely to happen next. For example, if I clench my fists and purse my lips, I'm likely to be about to express anger, not joy. If I ask a leading question rather than an open ended one, it's probably because I am looking for a specific answer, not any old one.
So flagging a post because you think it's LIKELY heading in a certain direction isn't unreasonable--and moreover, it is already happening, as described in this thread. No one will stop the flagging. The subject here is to clarify why some flags are being made already.
Moreover, flagging does not immediately lead to deletion. The mods don't blindly delete any post flagged. I fully admit I've flagged posts overreactively (and less often, but sometimes by mistake on my phone due to a crappy touchscreen response), and the mods didn't do anything with them, likely because they determined my (or whoever else's) flag wasn't worth responding to. I trust them to be reasonably decent judges of character for the most part. Mistakes can be made, yes, because of the general fallibility of humanity, but then that's why you can always email the admins to discuss a deletion if you think it was made in error.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'd like a flagging option labeled "Poster is deliberately being an obstinate jack!ss"; I'll settle for "Baiting".
"Breaks other guidelines" is even bigger and much less defined.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You and I have differing estimations of 'posters deliberately being jackasses'.
I'm not sure how that relates to the topic in a way which hasn't already been discussed. Flagging will happen, no matter if people have different standards. Adding a subcategory which clarifies a substantial part in a much more meaningful way than "breaks other guidelines" would, at least in my estimation, be a useful criteria for the mods to have.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't normally provide insight into internal ideas we have lying around, but we have had some discussions re: flagging options in recent history (they're definitely not finalized). In these "new" flagging options, we'd be adding in "baiting" to the current abusive flag as "Abusive/baiting/harassment." It's our view that the behavior of encouraging another person to engage negatively/deliberately escalating conversations would fall into the same general bucket as abusive posting. Overall, we'd rather see the options cleaned up, rather than added to.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Overall, we'd rather see the options cleaned up, rather than added to.
Thanks for popping in Chris.
Perhaps a FAQ after that's done that says "here's what we think each bucket is for"
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I wholeheartedly support the idea of the "Abusive/baiting/harassment." category. Otherwise what CrystalSeas just said.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't normally provide insight into internal ideas we have lying around, but we have had some discussions re: flagging options in recent history (they're definitely not finalized). In these "new" flagging options, we'd be adding in "baiting" to the current abusive flag as "Abusive/baiting/harassment." It's our view that the behavior of encouraging another person to engage negatively/deliberately escalating conversations would fall into the same general bucket as abusive posting. Overall, we'd rather see the options cleaned up, rather than added to.
Thanks, Chris. Way ahead of us, as usual. :)