Just a Reminder

[Catulle]

Umbral Reaver wrote:

So there it is. Transgender people worried about who else here might harbour transphobic sentiment are now 'creepy stalkers'. :(

"How very dare you hold me to account for the things that I do?"

[thejeff]

Particular Jones wrote:

Unless your a Mod it really is not anyone business to keep track of which posts are favoured or not. As I said before it gives off a creepy stalker vibe. If one chooses to behave like one then don’t be offended when one is called out on acting like one.

I know full well that when I favor a post it becomes public that does not automatically mean I am at odds with those who do not. Or are we reaching a point where we no longer are allowed to favor non-offensive posts on this forum. Sorry but this forum is not George Orwell 1984.

No one and so mean no one is going to tell me what I can or cannot favor. Non-negotiable or up for any form of debate.

It’s is hard to find any common ground with many here because it seems they have to find fault with anything and everything I do. I think I might go with the others are doing on the board m. Just stop caring what others think. As no matter what I do or say I’m the enemy.

I don't understand what you're trying to say.

I don't think anyone's talking about keeping track of what's been favored in any kind of a stalkerish way - though people may remember if they do notice you've favored something.
Nor does favoring something make you automatically at odds with those who don't and no one has suggested that.
Not sure what "no longer are allowed to favor non-offensive posts" has to do with anything either. First, you're allowed to favor anything. Second, why would anyone be upset at favoring non-offensive posts? This makes no sense.

Unless of course you're in disagreement about what isn't offensive. But that's still not really any different when doing so about a favorite or about a post. When you say "Hey, I like this post", you're putting your opinion out there. It's not some hidden thing that people aren't allowed to respond to.

[Fergie]

Particular Jones wrote:

Sorry but this forum is not George Orwell 1984.

Maybe not, but I do have some rats (one of which is quite bitey.)

Just saying.

EDIT: Sorry but this forum is not Van Halen, 1984.

[Kobold Catgirl]

I judge people based on my own complex criteria, of which "the posts they write" and "the posts they like" are simply two points to examine. I don't see what could possibly be wrong with that, so I don't have anything else to say on the matter. :)

[The-Magic-Sword]

I have noticed some posts by individuals who are self-admitted to just be stirring the pot seem to stick around for a shocking amount of time, and there are definitely posts that have been T.R.A.A.S.H. (Transphobic, Racist, Ableist, Abusive, Sexist, Homophobic) in a way that seems to slip under the radar, presumably because as the paizo and former paizo folks discussed up thread, that requires a kind of training they don't have (and honestly even supposedly trained people aren't always great at it, I recall one recent instance of someone who claimed to run workshops on abuse who did not have a great understanding of the fact that boundaries actually apply to them as well-- e.g. their right not to do something doesn't infringe someone else's right not to play with them, that was something they were clearly struggling with.) I have an academic background in a lot of this (via Gender Studies), seemingly more than the CS reps do (I could be wrong of course, especially as far as particular individuals go) and I wouldn't feel comfortable policing the nitty gritty.

A lot of the discussions we have here are hard to moderate because its hard to 'get above' the discourse to be able to fairly police it, and most of the people involved believe that the moderation should be fully conducted from their own point of view, and that to do otherwise is letting the bad guys win.

It does occur to me that a lack of resources usually seems to be at the bottom of Paizo's problems, which usually leaves them between a rock and a hard place when fires start igniting because a will to do something usually isn't absent, just resources to actually perform it.

There is something to be said for world view collision and to what extent moderation can be weaponized by asserting bad faith when there's a genuine culture clash happening, never mind daisy chains of moral responsibility that associate some stances with much more horrific ones where they don't necessarily follow from one another (not everyone who isn't all in on every setting adjustment is a bigot, for instance, they sometimes just have different ideas about what constitutes respect.)

Moderation has only gotten harder in the last few years, moderators have to grapple with the realities of systemic bigotry, dog whistles, performative and appropriated outrage, edition-warring-as-but-I-just-want-to-make-the-system-better, erasure of Paizo's own diverse voices, the need to actually moderate threads where the company is being criticized without coming across as policing dissent, demands for progress that others see as regressive, skipping truth-finding in favor of punishment and vengeance and the whole rest of the discourse.

[Cori Marie]

It's not stalking to look at publicly available information like favorites bud. If you don't want people to make opinions based on things you favorite, maybe don't favorite things.

[Vapid Captain Yesterday]

I have so many posts favorite'd I couldn't possibly keep track of them all, much less who favorite'd them.

[Rysky]

Not-favouriting a bigoted post isn't really a hindsight thing, though if you later regret doing so and un-favourite it, okay, cool.

[Cori Marie]

Nobody is asking you to keep track of people who favorite your posts. We're asking that people don't favorite hateful posts, and that if they do, that they not be surprised that we lump them together with the person who they just favorited.

[Albatoonoe]

I often forgot about the favorite function. I also like to check it for those who like an obscure joke/reference to see who else gets it.

That's neither here nor there, I suppose.

[Kobold Catgirl]

It's really weird how every time trans people express a normal idea like "if you favorite a post, we might assume you liked it", suddenly we're being forced to argue about "is the GOVERNMENT going to make FAVORITING so called PROBLEMATIC posts ILLEGAL???"

The really fun thing about it is that every argument we're dragged into like this is still very effective at burning us out and giving us less energy to handle more important and urgent tasks.

Almost like that's the point.

This argument is dumb, though that's entirely the fault of the guy who started it and not any of my dear friends and neighbors trying their best to address it. I'm not engaging with it anymore because it doesn't deserve the paper it's printed on.

[Vardoc Bloodstone]

Cori Marie wrote:

Nobody is asking you to keep track of people who favorite your posts. We're asking that people don't favorite hateful posts, and that if they do, that they not be surprised that we lump them together with the person who they just favorited.

This is a 100% fair statement.

One can disagree about whether the post you liked was actually hateful (or not) whether you may have agreed with one point and not another, whether you even realized what you liked was hateful. But at the end of the day, what you favorite is basically public speech, and as much freedom as you have to say it, other people have the right to respond.

But hey, mistakes happen. The little plus sign on my iPhone is so small that I wouldn’t be surprised if I liked something by mistake. So if I were to get called on something like that I would probably say “my bad”, de-favorite.

[The-Magic-Sword]

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

It's really weird how every time trans people express a normal idea like "if you favorite a post, we might assume you liked it", suddenly we're being forced to argue about "is the GOVERNMENT going to make FAVORITING so called PROBLEMATIC posts ILLEGAL???"

The really fun thing about it is that every argument we're dragged into like this is still very effective at burning us out and giving us less energy to handle more important and urgent tasks.

Almost like that's the point.

This argument is dumb, though that's entirely the fault of the guy who started it and not any of my dear friends and neighbors trying their best to address it. I'm not engaging with it anymore because it doesn't deserve the paper it's printed on.

That's a really good video, If I might suggest other material, the alt-right playbook is an excellent handbook for understanding how to identify someone acting in bad faith. I'd especially encourage anyone tasked with moderation to watch it because it will literally help you be more confident in navigating seemingly difficult situations.

Its led me to counter-tactics I can deploy to combat things without experiencing the burnout and exhaustion in spaces like this one.

Its important to always practice self-care too, in some ways the exhaustion comes from always being tuned in and turned on, but your body can't handle that-- it needs rest and release and safety and reinforcement and I've had to learn the hard way that demanding victory doesn't function as an end to the conversation although it can often feel like "I'm so tired, I deserve the release of this not being a problem anymore", we all need moments where we aren't present to the energy draining conflict and if we feel as if we can't seek those moments of respite, that itself is an aspect of ever demanding burnout. That kind of respite is frequently misidentified as a privilege, but much like doom scrolling, that's usually a psychological trap where we tend to dwell on the negative and let ourselves live in a state of constant anxiety-- we need to create sanctuaries in our lives, and step away for a period. We have to feel empowered to do that for ourselves, and to draw those boundaries, because if we're not going to look out for ourselves, who will? The people fighting us? or do we tell ourselves that we can't and that we can't help but destroy ourselves and put that toxicity back out into the world as we rack up damage and our body lashes out in pain.

Looking back I was borderline offended when a professor of mine told me that you have to be able to step away sometimes, but they were definitely right. I can't not be poly, or queer/enby, and I can't not fight for those things to be accepted, or fight for people to recognize toxic and abusive tactics being used within the discourse, but I can step away from the argument and recharge my spell slots by seeking the company of people I don't have to argue with, or have a nice warm daydream, or immersing myself in something else entirely for a while, like my world building or a good book. The good fight will be there when I get back, and I'll fight better for the maintenance I performed on myself.

If anyone ever feels like they're fighting the good fight, but need the sanctuary of support, feel free to reach out.

[Rysky]

Making up stuff to try and defend someone over a situation you don't know a lot about is not doing you or them any favors.

There's no nuance to favouriting posts, it just shows you liked a post. If you liked a post with bigoted content, then you liked a post with bigoted content. Making up "oh they disagree with that but liked the rest of the post" is just blatantly silly.

The poster in question has been repeatedly transphobic and hostile, has repeatedly misgendered people, and favourited bigoted posts. Of course people are hostile to them, it's a reaction, not preemptive agression.

[Kobold Catgirl]

I think there are many reasons people don't join the community, and some of them are good--even desirable! For instance, if somebody is inclined to be abusive to trans people or seek conflict with trans people for conflict's sake, I think it is probably healthy for the community that they don't join. If someone is inclined to identify more with the former group than with trans people themselves, I also think it might be better for everyone if they find somewhere else to post.

I don't mean to come across as cold or unfeeling, John, but you aren't even bothering to look into what "the liker" said, or ask what the post actually contained, before condemning us as abusive and cruel. That's not responsible, kind, or respectful. You seem very comfortable assuming the worst of us. That's not a good attitude to bring into this discussion.

[Andy Brown]

John Whyte wrote:

I made my post mostly for the poor overworked mods to be aware there are many reasons people don't join the community

And if they're not joining because they're going to get banned for being transphobic, that's a win.

I'm not sure which post you're referring to, because there have been more than one, but in several cases the only thing in the post being liked was a transphobic comment.

And this whole thing is mostly brought up by the person who you're attempting to defend, in an attempt to deflect various threads, and play the victim.
DARVO

Heh. Double-ninja'd

[Kobold Catgirl]

It was a transphobic comment targeted at a specific other community member, too, wasn't it? And "the liker" didn't actually give any other reasons except, to paraphrase, a "belief in free speech".

By the way, for those not in the know, a belief in "free speech" is most often seen by the trans community when it's being used to defend misgendering, deadnaming, and advocacy for violence and abusive legislation against our existence. As one example, Jordan Peterson, a popular self-help book author who became a patron saint for a segment of libertarian and right-wing young men, is infamous for railing against laws that would make misgendering "illegal" that did not, in fact, exist. "Free speech" is also often brought up when trolls are angry about getting censored on social media and online messageboards for behaving abusively towards other posters.

[Fergie]

John Whyte wrote:

I suspect your question is bad faith.

I don't think starting a response like this is as helpful to the mods as you might think.

[Leon Aquilla]

If you think someone's a bad person because they favorited a post, whatever. I have uncharitable opinions of almost everyone I meet based on small interactions, I'm just not sure how you can create a moderation policy based on that.

[Rysky]

Easy, it goes towards their character

[Kobold Catgirl]

By the way, railing against an "Orwellian" society that we're supposed to believe will naturally evolve from... "people online judging me for the things I say and do" also fits well into the "if-x-then-xylophone" logic our gang of forum skeptics have been using for the last month. They can't actually engage on the real issues, because the real issues make them look almost pathetically petty, so they conflate it with something gargantuan and try to trick us into taking it seriously.

[Paul Watson]

Leon Aquilla wrote:

If you think someone's a bad person because they favorited a post, whatever. I have uncharitable opinions of almost everyone I meet based on small interactions, I'm just not sure how you can create a moderation policy based on that.

Who proposed such a moderation policy? It was part of an explanation as to why why certain posters are not popular with trans people and their friends.. They can choose to do whatever they like with this information.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Leon Aquilla wrote:

If you think someone's a bad person because they favorited a post, whatever. I have uncharitable opinions of almost everyone I meet based on small interactions, I'm just not sure how you can create a moderation policy based on that.

Here's the funny thing: On its own, it's just another piece of information. It's a context clue. On its own, the post would have to be pretty severe to even approach convincing the mods to discipline anyone who favorited it. But if you liked a post insulting and misgendering a trans community member, maybe the mods will have a better idea of why you later go and post a veiled comment about trans people being too emotional or whatever. On their own, maybe neither comment would arouse moderator suspicion, but context is everything.

That's, I think, the most important thing to remember: Context matters. Some people seem to really hate adding in context because it makes their little games a lot easier to decipher, or it makes their vague philosophical arguments about "moderators have to be balanced" sound completely absurd.

EDIT: Oops, there I go! I was just talking about how some posters conflate tiny trivial issues with absurd slippery slopes to waste our time, and now I'm trying to explain how moderation works when this conversation was never even about moderation at all. XD

[TwilightKnight]

Tonya Woldridge wrote:

Which is why I spent two hours of my day off...yes, my day off, my holiday...moderating threads

Diego Valdez wrote:

So if someone collaborated to steal the CS manager's job and then fire them for no reason, well then that someone is going to have to do that job. Forum moderation over the weekend is the bed that someone made for themselves

Umm, yeah, so that happened. LoL!

[John Whyte]

kobold cleaver wrote:

I don't mean to come across as cold or unfeeling, John, but you aren't even bothering to look into what "the liker" said, or ask what the post actually contained, before condemning us as abusive and cruel. That's not responsible, kind, or respectful. You seem very comfortable assuming the worst of us. That's not a good attitude to bring into this discussion.

Just as a minor response,

- given the post was deleted before I saw it, I'd consider it bad form (and in some forums strikable) to ask what it said. I mean I could pm someone I the hope you have an idetic memory or screenshots but that's a little creepy.

- I rather deliberately didn't mention names, in no small part that the stock standard avatars here have confused me in the past, as is the ability to create alt accounts.

- I also was vague because a lot of my post is feeling, and I know posts vanish via moderators. I didn't want to have to drag through citations.

- I'm however going to say a little bit more, one of the above posters said that the poster in question has a history of single line transphobic comments. As I'm an intermittent lurker outside USA I will say I've never seen such a post (likely because moderation hit them before my eyes). Which is like.... beyond horrific that such a poster isn't banned.

[Rysky]

"given the post was deleted before I saw it, I'd consider it bad form (and in some forums strikable) to ask what it said."

But not to fabricate a defense for it?

"Which is like.... beyond horrific that such a poster isn't banned."

And thus the reason for this thread, people being horrible aren't facing any repercussions, they're making horrible posts, the posts are getting deleted... and they just continue on like nothing happened.

[Cori Marie]

A few have gotten a couple days off, and then have returned and immediately started doing the thing that gave them days off again.

[Kobold Catgirl]

That's what makes the "cross-thread" talk really odd to me. We never resolved our issues with those people the first time, so why should we be expected to move on and pretend it never happened? They've already crossed lines with us, and that doesn't stop being an issue just because they took a little power-nap.

[Grankless]

An easy way for people to stop having to read us complaining about bigoted posts getting made is to stop making the bigoted posts. :)

[Losonti]

John Whyte wrote:

I suspect your question is bad faith.

Why?

[Fumarole]

My concern is that posts can be stealth edited for some time (an hour I think?) after they are posted, and that does nothing to change favoriting by others. I certainly hope people do not use a poster's favoriting as the sole criteria for judging them.

[Rysky]

That’s only a a concern on a single favourite, but when posters establish a very blatant pattern in what posts they favourite that excuse slides away.

[Cori Marie]

Nobody is using it as the sole basis. But we do see when the person who has been extremely antagonistic to trans posters over the last two months favorites a post that calls a person "it" and then continues to yell about how the trans posters are labeling everything they disagree with as transphobic.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Yeah, like, nobody's browsing people's old favorites that I know of to shame anyone. We're seeing this happen in real time.

People repeatedly assuming the most absurd or extreme readings of the very simple things we say is starting to get really exhausting.

[vagrant-poet]

Devil's advocate is a device you use to argue with yourself in order to test the strength of your argument.

If you "devil's advocate" someone else, you're just arguing what you're arguing for.

In this case, a very real situation is: some posters who have inserted themselves into every conversation about trans people adversarially for over a month, the same people have hit the big + button on direct bigoted attacks on trans posters, or misgendered those posters then pretended they didn't know better after having liked previous identical attacks. THEN the same posters have argued that they are being unfairly targetted, despite weeks of this clear public behavior, because it's mostly trans posters being attacked and noting the patterns.

None of that is hypothetical. I don't want to read another 40 plus hypotheticals. If you haven't seen the pattern of abuse, and don't know how to feel, don't say anything and keep thinking. But maybe don't jump to make more work for exhausted trans people already under attack.

It doesn't escape my notice that when this stuff devolves, it is the trans posters who get quoted and jumped on endlessly. Cut it out.

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

At least, as far as I know, no one here was doxxed by the president of the company. How is that for stalking?

[Richard Lowe]

Also worth remembering that the troll brigade has already weaponised favourites a while back to try to cause trouble, creating accounts with similar names to people they dislike and using those accounts to like reprehensible posts. So... just be careful and check if you see a like from someone you're surprised by, you can click the name in the 'Favorites for this post:' and it will take you to the account (for example we had a troll using 'Pysky' recently).

[Tonya Woldridge]

Removed a baiting post regarding posting policies, posts equating like behaviour to stalking, personally harassing posts, and a few other posts that were spam.

[Skeld]

Tonya Woldridge wrote:

Removed a baiting post regarding posting policies, posts equating like behaviour to stalking, personally harassing posts, and a few other posts that were spam.

You say "baiting," I say "snarky humor." Then again, I'm not the one with banning powers.

-Skeld

[Leg o' Lamb]

Humor can be a lot like food; not everybody gets it.

[Tonya Woldridge]

Skeld wrote:

Tonya Woldridge wrote:

Removed a baiting post regarding posting policies, posts equating like behaviour to stalking, personally harassing posts, and a few other posts that were spam.

You say "baiting," I say "snarky humor." Then again, I'm not the one with banning powers.

-Skeld

You are absolutely right, and in a different thread, I could definitely go with snarky humor. In a thread about moderation, asking for better protections for the community, especially our trans members, it came across as combative and adding to the fire, hence the removal for baiting.

[Master Han Del of the Web]

Leg o' Lamb wrote:

Humor can be a lot like food; not everybody gets it.

Also like food it can do serious harm if not approached with care.

[Skeld]

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

Leg o' Lamb wrote:

Humor can be a lot like food; not everybody gets it.

Also like food it can do serious harm if not approached with care.

Live ordnance is the only thing I approach with care. It is, and will continue to be, "reckless abandon" for everything else.

-Skeld

[Sunderstone]

Tonya Woldridge wrote:

Skeld wrote:

Tonya Woldridge wrote:

Removed a baiting post regarding posting policies, posts equating like behaviour to stalking, personally harassing posts, and a few other posts that were spam.

You say "baiting," I say "snarky humor." Then again, I'm not the one with banning powers.

-Skeld

You are absolutely right, and in a different thread, I could definitely go with snarky humor. In a thread about moderation, asking for better protections for the community, especially our trans members, it came across as combative and adding to the fire, hence the removal for baiting.

Maybe that should be an actual addendum in the community guidelines then.

"Snark or sarcasm is only allowed up to a certain point in any specific thread until Paizo (reserving the right) deems it excessive and becomes free to drop a banhammer on your collective heads".

[Saedar]

Or consider that sarcasm is notoriously hard to convey online and that in a topic of any kind of seriousness that additional care should be given to make sure your intent is clear. It would certainly help to minimize misunderstanding.