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*deep breath*
Okay, here we go. Let's try to be concise for once, KC. Even if I have extremely complicated feelings here and am still working out how I'm gonna express them.
EDIT: It's just one of those days--
Before we begin, I just want to say that this thread is intended to serve as a place to talk constructively about the problems Rysky and others have been bringing up elsewhere, as well as to talk about what I've perceived as some problems in how people have been bringing them up. As such, I am going to politely ask that the following arguments not be made on this thread, either because they are off-topic, never lead anywhere good, or have been done to death elsewhere:
1. Pleas for this thread to not exist. It exists. Hide it and move on with your day rather than trying to shut down the conversation, please.
2. Complaints that the moderation team is "biased" or has "double standards", such as acting on behalf of management or being intolerant of conservative views.
3. Arguments that this is "pointless" because Paizo doesn't have to care what we think, or because the forums are a "privilege, not a right". See #1.
4. Nitpicking at broad generalizations with irrelevant niche exceptions. Read people in good faith, and if they seem to be saying something really dumb or excessive or extreme, consider that you may be assuming less nuance than they actually intended. Yes, we know that not literally every single mammal gives live birth. We're discussing what animal might be making those scratching noises in Cosmo's attic. Let it go.
I don't need to tell you that these last two months have not been fun for anyone. Through it all, there have been two groups that have been effectively obligated to engage to some extent with every single discussion, no matter how toxic or cruel, even if their own integrity and good faith were being attacked the entire time:
Trans people and forum moderators. the two genders
The "moderation team" we have been engaging with--Raychael, Tonya, Heather, the whole crew--is, as far as I can tell, a small cluster of Paizo employees who are expected to keep these forums as safe and supportive and friendly as possible while also doing other jobs that they're actually employed for. The team has recently lost two members, including the person who used to run the team. Sara Marie was a widely beloved figure who ran the team extremely effectively and did everything she could for the forums before being unexpectedly fired without clear cause.
Adjusting to new leadership is hard even under the best of circumstances--a graceful transition, an amiable departure, an initial quiet period for getting a feel for things. Paizo management's abusive actions cost them that transition.
That much is not the moderation team's fault. The responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of Paizo management, who have, incidentally, gotten to largely avoid having to interact with us at all while the moderators take all the heat for them from an increasingly anxious and frustrated community.
Over the last two months, nobody has handled things perfectly. Tonya herself recently issued an in-depth apology acknowledging that she and the team were much too slow to deal with abusive actors early on, and that their blind spots on transphobic dogwhistles exacerbated the problem.
Trans people are used to being tone policed, to seeing dogwhistles allowed to fly under the radar without issue. Seeing abusive actors get "moderated", then pop up a week later to resume their abusive behavior, hurt. It felt like Paizo was turning into yet another toxic community for us, and moderation wasn't going to do anything about it because they valued the aesthetics of forgiveness and redemption above the feelings of safety of trans people.
Many cis people are, putting it kindly, a little clueless about these issues. They've never been an egg, so they don't understand why they're expected to tread so delicately on eggshells now. Some of them feel like they're under attack, like they're being told they "aren't allowed" to have an opinion, like they're the only person noticing, "hey, this person is being kind of rude", like they're the only person who's ever heard "hey, you catch more flies with sugar" but everyone yells when they try to educate us. They feel like the moderators are shutting down every discussion they try to start while letting "worse offenders" off the look.
That's how it has felt for these groups, I think. And those feelings of hurt and fear and frustration and embattlement are valid for both groups. To some extent, they are based on truths: I believe that the moderation we've seen has been, at times, inadequate. I believe that the moderation team needs to reconsider many of their policies, particularly their policy of silence on bans and tempbans.
And yes, being told that you have made a mistake, or realizing that someone doesn't trust you, can be very painful. Not being trusted hurts. Being told you're privileged or spoiled hurts. Sometimes these criticisms are true, and that hurts, too, and that, too, is valid pain. When my now-ex once told me I was being codependent and manipulative towards her, she was completely right, and I still felt devastated and attacked at the time.
You're always valid in feeling hurt. It doesn't make you petty or bad or wrong or selfish or fragile.
But there's a difference between acknowledging valid hurt feelings and translating that into actions and inferences on others.
Look, I'm not here to appeal to some idea of "balance" or "center position" that is somehow superior to taking a strong stand for what you believe in. I am not a centrist. Actually, I'm a pretty enthusiastic extremist. But "moderation in all things" is not the same thing as the Golden Mean Fallacy. It's about acknowledging nuance. It's about acknowledging what we don't know. It's about acknowledging that ultimately, when you bash the moderators, you are bashing people who do not have a lot of power right now, and there is still so much we don't know going on behind the scenes with them.
The moderators are likely victims of all this, too. They don't own the website. They're employees. Employees getting paid less than living wage, most likely. The moderation team is understaffed and underbudgeted. They have likely been just as burned out as everyone else has been during the COVID Years, and their workload just keeps increasing. Their current leadership is inexperienced, and the person who probably knew where everything got fired for no reason. Some of them have been involved directly in union matters, and activism is work, too. Oh, and then there's their actual jobs in Customer Service/PR, right? And these are difficult questions of moderation sometimes. Not all concern trolls realize they're concern trolls, and the whole problem with dogwhistles is that they are designed to blend in, to prey on how online discussion only works if everyone takes good faith for granted.
I have been getting incredibly uncomfortable with criticism of moderation, because I agree with a lot of it in principle, but not in tone.
And no, that's not tone policing. It's about not personally attacking people you don't know. It's about not assuming the worst of complete strangers based on second-party accounts--even from parties you generally trust--and taking that out on them.
Tone policing is telling someone not to be angry. I'm saying that directing your anger at people who may well be fellow victims of management is not the way to go.
The thing is, I agree with a lot of the criticisms! I think moderation techniques are drastically inadequate! But human beings came up with those techniques, and human beings are trying to tinker with them on the fly, and some of those human beings may well be complete jerks--or they may be trying their best to help and making extremely understandable mistakes.
I have Favorited a lot of posts critical of the forum moderation, because I think those criticisms are accurate, but the moderation team? I have nothing against any of them. I don't know most of them. We have not met.
And because there is a significant possibility that everyone on the team is trying to help, and is in a horrible situation where they are forced to be the face of leaders whom they themselves may be incredibly unhappy with, and because I have no way of knowing that this is not the case, and because I have no way of knowing who cosigned what post or what kinds of conversations went on behind the scenes, and because they are likely going to have to read any post about them I make, I do not think I am going to make anything better by taking out my pain and frustration on them.
This isn't a big company. They aren't distant public figures. Assume that every single member of the team is actually reading any given post you write about them. Yes, including the really snarky or bitter ones. Assume when you criticize an action "one" of them undertook that in reality multiple teammates were involved in that action, not just Tonya or Heather or whoever made the post about the action. And they'll see your criticism. The same thing goes for criticism of the team as a whole.
Have you ever had that moment where you write a really sour post about some "bigwig", and then they reply, and you suddenly feel awkward because they're being nice but they seem sad and you realize you didn't fully expect them to see your post at all, and suddenly you're apologizing and adding nuance you neglected to include in the first post? We're all meaner and harsher when we feel unheard.
But as valid as our pain and fear and anger may be, we do not have the right to take it out on people who we don't know to be responsible. It may be cathartic, but a lot of abusive behavior is.
It's also still abuse.
I don't know anyone who's crossed that line yet, but I do know people who've tapdanced on it repeatedly. That nuance you might be guilted into adding in retroactively? Let's try to add it in the first time instead.
Okay. So.
Seeing Rysky's thread get deleted really upset me. I'm still pretty unhappy about it. I have real concerns about how the team is being run, but a lot of them are based on things I don't actually have any way of knowing. And on the off-chance that I'm wrong, I think I'd feel pretty rotten having those assumptions read by those they concern.
But it was not handled well.
I've really appreciated Paizo moderation over the years, including these last few months. You all have a nightmarishly difficult job, and you do an amazing job of it. Paizo moderation practices have been pretty good at tackling problems like "ah geez, the Full Caster people people are calling the Martial people cucks again", where it's more a case of good people losing their tempers due to poor communication on contentious issues. In that case, often the best thing to do is just delete a bunch of toxic posts and tell everyone to cut it out, calm down, and try again.
I also want to thank you for what you have done--the banning of certain abusers, the understanding and forbearance shown when we've gone too far or broken rules, and especially recently, the efforts I think I've seen you all making to be a little more transparent. We see that! It's appreciated! Thank you! This sounds sarcastic but it really, really isn't, I've just been struggling with this post for three hours straight and my breakfast was an apple!
Some of the following criticisms may seem dated to you, old news. But that's kinda the problem: none of us on this side of the screen really know for sure.
My concerns with moderation basically amount to this: As Rysky put succinctly yesterday, deleting posts is not, on its own, meaningful moderation. It's cleanup. It takes care of the bad posts but largely neglects bad posters and bad forum norms.
And yes, to be clear, I can tell that some people are being tempbanned or even permabanned now. Unfortunately, it's always been Paizo policy to not tell anybody what happened except the disciplined party. I don't think this is the right way to handle bullying and abuse. The targets of the abuse need to know something was done.
A lot of the strongest solutions to these problems would involve extra labor to maintain, not to mention the time and effort to implement in the first place. We understand that. I know that's a big part of why you keep asking us to help as much as we can, to act as "unofficial volunteer mods", and I agree that we need to. And maybe the mods are already making some of these changes without us knowing, which would be great! But, again, not knowing is part of the problem.
And communicating... also takes time and labor, I know. Hell, reading through a post this long, on such a draining and personal subject matter, is the kind of job I would procrastinate to the end of the workweek. I know that almost every improvement we ask for is going to be in some way costly, but I believe that improving practices now will help avoid more labor-intensive breakdowns later. Still, I hate the position you all are in right now.
Yes, I think people have been too harsh on the moderation team. But at the same time, some of that comes from real pain and real mistakes the moderation team has made, not all of which were even fully under your control but all of which still happened. That hurts to say, because I know it's a very harsh way to approach it. It certainly doesn't excuse the occasional abusive comments I've seen, not one bit.
Trans people are kind of at moderation's mercy. That's a very scary position to be in, and when we don't know what's going on behind the scenes--why someone hasn't been banned yet, whether someone is facing suspension--trust starts to erode.
We know you have the power to ban people. Because of that, when we see Abusive Bill post here again and again, we know that on some level, that's moderation's responsibility. He is here because moderation decided this was "okay". Is that an oversimplification? Yes! Of course it is! Jesus, I am positive the moderation team as a whole is disgusted that people who are extended benefits of the doubt keep taking advantage of that trust, sad and repulsed at how trolls keep sneaking under the radar.
But Bill is still here.
And so moderation becomes the face of the abuse itself, as every time Bill posts some flamebait, we mutter amongst each other, "Funny how he's still around." We don't know what's going on, what the process was to keep Bill around. We just see the results. I only work out Bill was banned if I stick around to notice, "Oh, hey, Bill hasn't implied I'm overemotional or violent in a while." And sticking around waiting for that gutpunch is sort of like waiting to see if a hiccup cure worked. It sucks.
It's not fair. We are on different trains heading the same direction, and we have pretty minimal way of communicating, "Hey, are you about to turn right and smash into us?". You likely often feel you have no way of shouting back, "No, sorry, we were just cleaning the turn signal."
It's not a good situation. I think all of us are trying our best. But above all, I think more transparency is absolutely critical.
And for our part, yes, I really want us all to take a step back and remember that as frustrating as the situation is, sniping at the moderation doesn't actually make anything better. It probably just makes them sadder.
I wrote and rewrote so many parts of this post so many times. I'm about to post it, and I hope it comes off exactly as I intended. I hope nobody thinks I'm only lecturing trans and trans ally posters here, either--some of the meanest potshots I've seen aimed at mods have been from the same cis people I keep getting in arguments with. I'm not trying to dismiss people's pain or anxiety, or act like it entitles us to behave badly, or imply that everybody who's been critical of moderation or clashed with it has been abusive, or act like moderation has no idea what needs to change, or indicate "the real crisis here is that ear-splitting g%~%~#n smoke alarm". But I was also trying to keep this short. I genuinely thought I'd be able to. Hubris.
Anyways.
If you read this far, you're an angel. If you didn't and you skipped to this paragraph and plan to lie to me about it, [comedically disproportionate condemnation implying illicit affairs between you and the Christian Devil] that's totally understandable. Hope your Friday's going well. <3
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Oh, what's that? It's too short, you say? Well, I scrubbed these "suggestions" out because I've made most of them elsewhere and they were tangential, but I didn't just wanna trash them, so:
Banning someone from a given subforum, either permanently or for a temporary basis, would also do a lot. Allowing abusive posters to come right back to the same arguments they previously derailed seems to me like it's asking for trouble. I know that the tools to partially ban someone like this don't exist. They really should, though. And in the meantime, simply telling the poster that they aren't allowed to post here-and-there or face a ban would likely work for a lot of cases.
In the absence of hiring an actual dedicated paid team to moderate these forums, or recruiting volunteers, maybe making it easier to get ahold of y'all would help. Email is kind of out of the way, and that can discourage using it, especially if we're afraid we won't be listened to.
Tools for Hiding posts and posters would be amazing. Maybe even (getting implausible here) a system where the site auto-hides a post in that manner if it gets a lot of Flags for certain offenses, but it can still be clicked on to expand it, so Flagging has a more visible immediate impact and feels less like screaming into the void. Even just showing that people have Flagged it (I think y'all did that before and it went badly, but I'm just spitballing here). An abusive or bigoted post that stands unmoderated for a few hours can make things pretty unbearable, meaning someone will always challenge it, but being able to see other people were also repulsed by it might help.
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Oh god wait you're telling me while I was spending three hours on this people were still posting elsewhere??
EDIT: It's worth reading Diego's excellent post here and Tonya's explanation of certain moderation practices here, both of which went up while I was writing this. Oh, and I guess we have a firm date on the next announcement?
I may have chosen the worst possible day to write this post.
Director of Community
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I read to the end, thank you for your thoughts and suggestions, (I was going to add - on a Friday, at the end of a wild week in the middle of a terrible time, but then I realized expecting Friday to be the end of the work week is in itself a form of privilege/bias that I should re-examine). I'm not sure what all is possible but appreciate the list as a place to start the discussion.
Thank you also for sharing your perspective and allowing me to learn. I removed Rysky's thread to moderate it, as it was so full of flags and I was thinking "better to remove it so they don't have to see the yuck until I can get it moderated", but I never thought how it would cause you to feel. I appreciate knowing how my actions affected you, as causing hurt wasn't my intention and I'm sorry I did so. I will make sure to not do so during future moderation runs.
Also, thanks for providing a soundtrack to listen to while reading :)
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts KC!
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I may have chosen the worst possible day to write this post.
Nah, it's always nice and interesting to see what you have to say!
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It's a lot of food for thought and a thorough summation of concerns on forum moderation.
Given the formatting, the fact it only took you three hours to write out, KC, is impressive.
For those who feel that they are being singled out for their belief-path-based views, take a half step back for a second and breathe.
The OP on this thread has done the homework. What level of homework is someone going to bring to the table that can counter the valid points that are mentioned above?
With the same level and respectful tone that has been lacking the past few months?
Before trying to deconstruct and find the 'is' statement, just read it and digest it. No addition of 'Well, this is attacking me".
Just read it.
Think about it.
Please.
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Thanks, all!
Also while it's late and I'm Sad and Sassy I do also want to add that two big concerns with moderation I have are that they aren't treated well by the higher-ups and that Sara and Diego aren't with them anymore. Those aren't issues under the main team's control, though, so I left them out.
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Providing a "block user" function (something which the community has been asking for a decade by now) would solve a lot of the problems, IMO. It definitely has worked out for me on every other forum I've been on and am on.
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I'd like to chime in.
I've been pretty vocal on the threads about moderation.
But to be clear in perpetuity, I actually don't have anything against Heather, Raychael, or any of the moderation team. If any criticisms were written poorly enough that they seemed like criticisms of people, I sincerely apologize, that was never my intent.
When I have called for more to be done, I don't mean by the same handful of overworked employees. And in the melee I didn't make that as clear as I should.
The SYSTEM of moderation on these boards is not serving either group of people mentioned by KC. I have at least once made it clear that I think the current system is creating a threadmill of endless work for CS, but I empathize with that. The workers who's job it is to now moderate the forums got that worked tacked onto their existing jobs.
The forums, are I believe an important community for Paizo. They drive engagement with playtests, and are filled with passionate fans who help the vast majority of occasional fans who drop in to ask questions about product timelines, rumors, and rules. They also represent some if the best, most diverse, most imaginative representatives for Paizo's games, as a thing you could proudly direct people to see.
They are valuable. They have become an increasingly unsafe place for our trans friends. That will spread to every minority group eventually, as it always does. They need investment.
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"Block user" functionality is a great way of protecting your own mental health. The problem with it is that sometimes the user continues to post stuff that new users will see and think "it's OK to post that sort of thing here", which can turn the whole forum into an unsafe space.
Personal block functions are useful as part of a moderation system that works to remove the bad actors.
I've often thought there should be some sort of threshold on those systems that flags a user with a lot of blocks against them for the moderators to check why (no idea if it's ever been implemented that way). It couldn't be an automated ban, because that just opens up a new avenue of abuse.
Can't really disagree with that, forum moderation would still be necessary. However, if forum members which dislike each other could just block the other person, it would nip a lot of the current (and prior) need for moderation in the bud in the first place. I've found that having the persons whose opinion you can't stand on block does wonders for your inner peace.
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Providing a "block user" function (something which the community has been asking for a decade by now) would solve a lot of the problems, IMO. It definitely has worked out for me on every other forum I've been on and am on.
The problem I've generally seen with "block user" functions is twofold:
1.) It doesn't actually solve the problem. Dude is still out there posting s&#! and being mean to people, it's just that some specific subset of users can't see it anymore.
2.) Some people abuse the feature to just mute people they don't like; this leads to weird holes in the conversation where person A responds to thread, person B has person A blocked, doesn't see response, they're basically "talking over each other" (especially fi both are frequent posters) and everyone gets really heckin' confused about what exactly is going on.
More active, more regimented, and more transparent moderation is typically the way to go IMO.
You don't have to like someone or their opinions to kind of coexist and be civil to each other, or just ignore each other in an informal fashion. If you can't exist in a community with people you don't like, you also are part of the problem, I believe.
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Providing a "block user" function (something which the community has been asking for a decade by now) would solve a lot of the problems, IMO. It definitely has worked out for me on every other forum I've been on and am on.The problem I've generally seen with "block user" functions is twofold:
1.) It doesn't actually solve the problem. Dude is still out there posting s#~$ and being mean to people, it's just that some specific subset of users can't see it anymore.
2.) Some people abuse the feature to just mute people they don't like; this leads to weird holes in the conversation where person A responds to thread, person B has person A blocked, doesn't see response, they're basically "talking over each other" (especially fi both are frequent posters) and everyone gets really heckin' confused about what exactly is going on.
More active, more regimented, and more transparent moderation is typically the way to go IMO.
You don't have to like someone or their opinions to kind of coexist and be civil to each other, or just ignore each other in an informal fashion. If you can't exist in a community with people you don't like, you also are part of the problem, I believe.
To 1.) This pre-assumes that the person you have blocked doesn't get along with anyone else. I have two persons on this forum I would immediately block, however they both do get along well with a good group of other people. Also, I would assume people are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves if they want to block someone, you don't have to assume moral responsibility for their decisions.
To 2.) Normally people respond and quote people they can haven't blocked. If the blocked person gets left out of the conversation, well, that is because the person who blocked them does not want to talk to them. Hence, the goal of the block function is achieved.
You don't have to like someone or their opinions to kind of coexist and be civil to each other, or just ignore each other in an informal fashion. If you can't exist in a community with people you don't like, you also are part of the problem, I believe.
Absolutely disagree. We had and have serial abusers on this forum for the last decade, who made a game of trying to get posts deleted by posting flamebait, which went under the radar of the moderators. Having a block function would have made countless threads more civil and lots of useful forum discussion would have been saved, which just was deleted because it included one quoted post of one of those people, when the mass deletions inevitably came.
A problem which would be solved, or at least mitigated, simply by more effective moderation that removes serial abusers well before the point of situations like what happened with ciretose back in the day start escalating further.
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I agree with all of you ("you know, like a coward"), and I want to add that the moderators having the option to hide posts while they review them would be nice. Maybe even so the poster can still see them.
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KC, you're simply delightful. I hope I get to meet you some day.
I'm hoping I find myself at the next PaizoCon, so here's hoping!
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KC, you're simply delightful. I hope I get to meet you some day.I'm hoping I find myself at the next PaizoCon, so here's hoping!
The union hoodie is real comfy.
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I haven't worn any hoodies since I hatched, so that sounds like fun!
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Thanks for your insights. And I do think the block function might at least help with the spiraling/exploding threads.
While it does not prevent bigotry, from what I have seen there are a lot of personal vendetta’s/feeling between individuals, which don’t help in calming down these threads.
It does not replace moderation, but may (somewhat) reduce the amount of times it is needed (or the size of the train wrecks).
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It also helps to flag and move on if you don't have to keep looking at the darn thing.
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A problem which would be solved, or at least mitigated, simply by more effective moderation that removes serial abusers well before the point of situations like what happened with ciretose back in the day start escalating further.
It would help with cases where it's simply personal grudges. It doesn't do so well for bigotry. As Andy says above, while it might protect individuals from seeing it, it's still there and visible for new users and for others who'll think it's not such a big deal. And with those who'd be most bothered by it unable to flag it, it's more likely to fly under the radar and stick around.
Also, even if you have individual users blocked, you'll still see other people quoting and responding to them, so it's far from perfect even at hiding the nasty stuff.
At the very least it will free up time for the moderators, which they otherwise would have to spend looking at threads where people are feuding, time which then can be spend on moderating issues like bigotry.
And only because some people will not be seeing each other anymore doesn't mean that the moderators will suddenly forget what bigotry looks like and just let it happen.
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Unless it's that insidious *weekend* bigotry, of course!
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As Diego said elsewhere, and as I understand it, the actual moderation team may not be legally allowed to moderate on weekends, because they are (insane as it sounds) wage workers. That said, those in charge definitely bear responsibility for that situation.
There is one person who bears some responsibility for maintaining forum safety during that time, though, and it's fair to b critical of them as long as we remember that even Sara Marie struggled on occasion with that job. Honestly, this company worked Sara Marie to the bone, and I can't believe they had the gall to fire her.
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As Diego said elsewhere, and as I understand it, the actual moderation team may not be legally allowed to moderate on weekends, because they are (insane as it sounds) wage workers. That said, those in charge definitely bear responsibility for that situation.
There is one person who bears some responsibility for maintaining forum safety during that time, though, and it's fair to b critical of them as long as we remember that even Sara Marie struggled on occasion with that job. Honestly, this company worked Sara Marie to the bone, and I can't believe they had the gall to fire her.
To be clear, though: a lot of my complaints about forum moderation now are complaints that I had before Sara Marie got fired. I sent emails, tweeted at Paizo, complained on the forums, got modded, etc. The scale, now, is certainly off the charts, though.
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I just want to say that if this place is going to be moderated on the weekend or during non-office-hours (for whoever is doing that work) then that person needs to be either compensated for their time if they're paid by the hour or it should be handled by someone who is in a salaried position.
As important as keeping an eye on this place to keep it from hitting the fan is, I would not be happy to hear that the task of doing it (that being an official duty of the job) is being performed off the clock. I don't know what Washington law is on that kind of off-the-clock contribution nor do I know any company policy specifics that would relate to it but working without being proper compensation isn't okay EVEN if the person volunteers to do that without feeling the need to be compensated.
I have no solutions to suggest, it's not my place to do so, but I just wanted to state in no uncertain terms that I cannot get behind "volunteer" hours (or even minutes) of labor by hourly wage staff.
I believe that the one person who is to some extent "expected" to be active on weekends, fairly or not, is salaried. That used to be Sara's job.
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Yeah, I think no matter who is in the position, it's not reasonable to expect them to never unplug.
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Another idea would be for flags to be public.
If folks know why a given post is flagged, that might reduce some of the grar.
If people don't know in good faith that the post is problematic, then conversation and learning can happen.
If someone consistently and unapologetically posts toxins, that would rapidly become clear.
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I really like what KC has done here by summarising an issue, it's hard to have a good conversation when you are not on the same page. Some issues here that have the most heated comments are spread out over months covring dozen of threads and thousands of posts, many of which have been removed.
Simply agreeing with someone in the short term context might seem
horrible to people who are aware of the long-term context, and of posts that have been removed.
What KC has done here is what I think is a great way we could better self-moderate ourselves. HMMs thread on "How we can disagree without being disagreeable" is another good one.
The "Sending kindness around" thread was a good example of why when things get really heated up that it's good to step back to a better place, before getting back into the conversation.
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... so, like, maybe a thumb wrestle or something? Quick rock-paper-scissors?...
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Another idea would be for flags to be public.
If folks know why a given post is flagged, that might reduce some of the grar.
If people don't know in good faith that the post is problematic, then conversation and learning can happen.
If someone consistently and unapologetically posts toxins, that would rapidly become clear.
I think knowing why one of your posts gets removed is very important for learning to post better. I wish we had a banned post tab in the Private message section of our My Account page where we could see just our own banned post. It's hard to learn from the past or correct misunderstandings when you can't see it.
Not sure where I stand on public flagging, I've seen a lot of flagging abuse in Second Life. I'm wondering how many of my posts have been flagged but not removed. If the moderator's job were to simply remove posts that are flagged then there is no need for moderators, that's why being a moderator is not fun or easy it's very taxing to have to be consantly judging people.
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... so, like, maybe a thumb wrestle or something? Quick rock-paper-scissors?...
Pathfinder and Starfinder are both D20 systems Why not just use dice.
(I'm only adding the suggested use of dice here, I have no idea what your comment is suggesting they are bing is used for.) The other day I did post an example of how I saved some one at work from getting suspended by having a D20 in my pocket and convinced the manager to allow him a saving throw.
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Maybe an idea could be a flag threshold. Like depending on the reason for the flag, if a post gets four, five, six, whatever flags from different users it is automatically hidden until a moderator could look at it.
I imagine this system would find an abuse, but it may protect people from having to see vile trash posts.
In particular, I would worry about groups of posters forming and engaging in flag wars against each other.
Sadly, I think such a system would require a full-time moderator team to monitor and, well, moderate.
I don't have a really good solution to the current state of the forums, and I am borderline depressed by said state.
KC, you're a bright spot in all of this and I want to simply thank you.
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so what is it a kenku family reunion or
*ahem* Right! Anyways! I think anyone abusing systems like that would be easy to ban pretty quickly. Ultimately, the main reason mass abuse doesn't happen more on this site isn't because it's impossible, or even hard--it's because most people don't really want to do that, and the moderators usually have done a great job cleaning up the loose crumbs.
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How the WoW forums handled it, don't recommend going their even if their Forums UI is awesome, is that after a certain number of flags the post would be "hidden", greyed out and all you could see was "this post is hidden due to the number of flags it has received, with the option to click and see the contents.
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It's so cool that the Hatsune Miku fan forums had such a good feature!