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Whoops I dropped this, my b
Spam can include cross-posting the same information in multiple threads across multiple forums, repeated advertisements in several threads, or posts containing less than helpful content (such as "+1", "first post", or "grabbing popcorn"). We encourage meaningful conversations on our forums and spam posts are often counter to this goal.
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In general, I have pretty mixed feelings. There are numerous options for "not fully deleting the hate", and my favorite is totally deleting all hateful comments, but having the moderator post a "recap" where they explain the decision a little bit, explain why the posts were harmful, etc. This is also the most labor-intensive, and I don't think it's what we can reasonably ask for right now.
The recent moderation by Heather and Raychael has, in my opinion, been as good as it can be with the resources they have access to. They called out bigoted posts, pointed out what was bigoted about them, deleted the posts so the content wouldn't linger and create an unsafe atmosphere for those reading the threads later on, and, if relevant, told us if someone had been suspended.
It's direct community management accompanied by complete clarity. It's great to see.
Whoops I dropped this, my b
Spam can include cross-posting the same information in multiple threads across multiple forums, repeated advertisements in several threads, or posts containing less than helpful content (such as "+1", "first post", or "grabbing popcorn"). We encourage meaningful conversations on our forums and spam posts are often counter to this goal.
Don't forget the "Huzzah!" posts, which is this forum's version of "First!" Ugh. It's okay if you don't have something relevant to say on every thread, folks. There is no prize for being the first person to comment, nor has there ever been.
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Re. Huzzah! - When you hover over a new-product or blog thread title, it shows the first response rather than the beginning of the announcement/blog text. I'd rather see TOZ's "Huzzah!" first-posts of excitement rather than a weirdly specific question or negative reaction as the hover-over text for all time...
Okay, I'd really prefer it to show the beginning of the announcement/blog, but that would require a code change.
Contributor
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TOZ's "Huzzah!" (and the folks who post it on the rare times TOZ isn't the first poster) reminds me that on this forum there are people who love the same games I do. Very little else does that lately. (OK, most of Hilary's threads, too.) I like seeing it. I think the "+1" to ideas or opinions throughout are a repeat of favoriting posts, so they are duplicitous. SO, that's the difference in my mind.
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I think there's a mellow gray area between "short tangents/goofing around" and "spam", and the place where it crosses over is when the tangents last so long they start to drown out the actual discussion. That's when I see the mods gently nudge things back on course most often.
There's also a strategy some people use where they don't like a thread topic so they start intentionally derailing it by talking about something blatantly off-topic, which I think is what Storm's referencing above. ^-^
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Essentially, yes.
Topic drift happens.
Forcing topic drift is spam, or at the very least that is the closest rule this forum has to others' "stay on topic" rule.
Which brings the conversation right back around to: this forum needs an update to its forum rules. More specificity is needed so people can be very easily told when they have broken a guideline.
The reaction of a lot of people when presented with clear evidence they're in violation of a rule is usually "Oh, my bad".
The reaction to general post removal, even with a vague explanation afterward, in usually low volatility topics is closer to confusion followed by anger.
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Nice segue back to the topic! I was trying to work out how to do that.
I think arbitraryness is going to be inevitable when it comes to community management--in that element, I agree with Jessica Price.
Honestly, I'm not sure the guidelines are that vague. Most of the rules themselves are pretty clear, it's just the moderator response isn't always quite so much because they don't have enough time and aren't allowed by management to focus on, well, moderating.
Posts or threads made solely to provoke a strong negative reaction or conflict do not contribute to the inviting place we'd like our community to be. Threads with provocative titles will be locked, and posts removed as necessary.
This is a very flexible rule because it kind of has to be. In one context, blowing someone a kiss might be a friendly or affectionate gesture. In another context, it's a desperate cry for negative attention. Maybe the "solely" is doing a little heavy lifting here for some posts? Like, "Posts which are written to provoke a strong negative reaction or conflict" might apply better. Or, "Couching your points in a tone that is designed to provoke hostility makes your post much more likely to be deleted, no matter how valid your points themselves might be. Encouraging an uncivil discussion is always considered to be a net detriment to discussion."
Posts that contain content that endorses hatred or violence on the basis of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, sexuality, or for any other reason are not welcome on paizo.com.
I could see this maybe also containing a note like, "Breaking this rule can result in a permanent suspension, even if a post appears to be intentionally 'skirting the lines'. If you know you aren't supposed to say something, don't try to find a way to say it. Making this website a safe environment for all will always take precedence over allowing bigotry a platform."
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The consequences are (likely) left deliberately vague so that the moderation team can decide how egregious a violation has occurred. It allows for flexibility without having to consult 50+ rules or a table to determine how a post has violated a rule, how many times, how seriously the rule was violated, and how many consequences in a progressive-discipline model have been given out.
Certain violations will trigger a permanent suspension. Those violations are going to necessarily be few, far between, and communicated clearly. Other violations are going to result in warnings, post editing, post deletion, or temporary suspension. Unfortunately, the more clearly defined the rule + consequence matrix is, the easier it is to craft violations that don't fit the matrix. You get a lot of, "What I <said/did> wasn't a violation of <Rule X> or didn't deserve <Consequence Y> because it doesn't fit the clearly established definition." The rules need to remain flexible enough to be useful, which means that some users are going to complain that they are unclear, arbitrary, or arbitrarily enforced because their perception of the violation/consequence intersection is going to be different from that of the people whose job it is to execute their best judgment.
This is not to say that rules should be deliberately vague, but they should not be so specific as to be too narrow to apply in most situations. The appropriate resolution to the natural flexibility (read: vagueness) of forum rules (or guidelines) is a clear rationale given for consequences. The moderation team here is pretty darn good at that already, given the fact that they let people know that posts were edited or removed, or that users have been suspended. Nothing is being done behind closed doors, even if people would prefer greater specificity in the guidelines.
All of this holds true in any healthy environment. When rules become so specific that you need to have dozens of rules to cover every specific type of violation that could occur, that's when your forum environment becomes difficult to navigate and oppressive. Keeping it simple, while allowing guidelines to be flexibly employed is going to make the environment easy enough to navigate (i.e. you won't have to memorize an entire rulebook to avoid traps) and allow for healthy discussion or activity.
Best wishes!
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The consequences are (likely) left deliberately vague so that the moderation team can decide how egregious a violation has occurred. It allows for flexibility without having to consult 50+ rules or a table to determine how a post has violated a rule, how many times, how seriously the rule was violated, and how many consequences in a progressive-discipline model have been given out.
Certain violations will trigger a permanent suspension. Those violations are going to necessarily be few, far between, and communicated clearly. Other violations are going to result in warnings, post editing, post deletion, or temporary suspension. Unfortunately, the more clearly defined the rule + consequence matrix is, the easier it is to craft violations that don't fit the matrix. You get a lot of, "What I <said/did> wasn't a violation of <Rule X> or didn't deserve <Consequence Y> because it doesn't fit the clearly established definition." The rules need to remain flexible enough to be useful, which means that some users are going to complain that they are unclear, arbitrary, or arbitrarily enforced because their perception of the violation/consequence intersection is going to be different from that of the people whose job it is to execute their best judgment.
This is not to say that rules should be deliberately vague, but they should not be so specific as to be too narrow to apply in most situations. The appropriate resolution to the natural flexibility (read: vagueness) of forum rules (or guidelines) is a clear rationale given for consequences. The moderation team here is pretty darn good at that already, given the fact that they let people know that posts were edited or removed, or that users have been suspended. Nothing is being done behind closed doors, even if people would prefer greater specificity in the guidelines.
All of this holds true in any healthy environment. When rules become so specific that you need to have dozens of rules to cover every specific type of violation that could occur, that's when...
Actually, the mods have made it abundantly clear in the last week that any and all bigotry is a permanent ban. Including things that the original posters think are just dog whistley enough to make it through.
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Don't forget the "Huzzah!" posts, which is this forum's version of "First!"
While that may have been what it started as, it was really more used to open a thread on blog posts and product discussions. Starting threads got noticed more when the sidebar was still around showing the most recent activity. Now it's just my usual show of support.
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Honestly, I'm not sure the guidelines are that vague. Most of the rules themselves are pretty clear, it's just the moderator response isn't always quite so much because they don't have enough time and aren't allowed by management to focus on, well, moderating.
I think the rules are clear, but they don't always obviously map on to the moderator's reason for deletion when the original post is deleted.
So, if someone makes an overtly derogatory statement about trans people, and then someone quotes that with "I don't agree but I think trans people are asking too much politically", and both get deleted with the given reason "transphobia," it's really easy to be confused as to what rules were broken. The two posts were deleted for different reasons.
On other boards, moderators can edit posts (so they can take out the offensive portion of the quote without deleting the post) and such. Explaining reasoning is always good. But I agree all that takes moderator time and I don't know if there's a good solution to that.
One thing that could be helpful is to define "good space" rather than "bad space". As many people have pointed out, defining "bad space" has the drawback of people trying to see how close they can get. However, defining "good space" allows people to be as close to that border as they want - if they want to push the boundaries by venturing into the Neutral Zone, they can, so long as they realize the Neutral Zone is governed entirely by moderator discretion and they may or may not face capricious correction. Post an edgy joke on the day the moderator's car breaks down? Tough luck, Starfleet won't help you outside the well-defined boundaries of Federation Space.
As a work example, I might tell my team something like, "this meeting is for discussing the implementation of X; we're not here to debate X, it's already been decided. If you want to debate X, we can do it outside of this meeting."
Good space: Implementation of X
Neutral zone: Debating X outside of the meeting
Bad space: Debating X inside the meeting
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I would personally like the posts left up so I can know who is bigoted towards me so I can avoid them and keep myself safe. Know who to not trust. I also low-key find it infantalizing that queerphobic content is removed to "protect" me, but that is a whole other issue. It would be better to have an internal warning system with bans and mutes according to the degree of offense and if the content is deemed triggering it get spoiler tagged with a warning. Removing it outright leads to the bizarre scenario where I show up as a rare poster, see a pinned messages about bigotry and then at best would have to rely on hearsay to know what happened... Which is unreliable. Kind of paranoia inducing. Removing the content just hides the offender from those who are affected, protecting the offender instead the target of the bigotry. This also isn't me being upset cuz of "free speech." I think such a concept is entirely incoherent, at least in absolutist fashion, I just rather be able to see with my own eyes who the bigot is so I can avoid them, or even determine it's not bigoted(hella unlikely but ya know)
Short version: Idk how other queer people here feel compared to how I do, but it's my opinion a record should exist which people like myself can see. I wanna know who the bigot is for my own safety and peace of mind
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AD, the solution to this issue is that the bigots now just eat a permaban.
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AD, the solution to this issue is that the bigots now just eat a permaban.
I'm fine with this
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AD, the solution to this issue is that the bigots now just eat a permaban.I'm fine with this
Good, because it’s official forum policy as of last week!