Appeal to the moderation

That kind of "othering" rhetoric is not really welcome here.

Could you show me the deleted post?I'm having a hard time remembering what I posted

You can go to edit your post and see the original content. Of course, don't actually press send, otherwise it looks like you're trying to get around your thump.

That's what I'm afraid of doing,fat fingers and all.

Edit: *reads over the post*

hmmm,

edited 22nd May '18 2:40:10 PM by Ultimatum

Hello. One and a half years ago, I was banned from editing due to an edit war in Pokemon Sun and Moon. As well, I have also been banned from P Ms, and the FAQ section of the forum. Hasn't enough time passed to let me be unbanned?

edited 23rd May '18 6:21:42 PM by WhatArtThee

But he said he's banned from the FAQ section of the forum, and the edit banned thread is in that section. That's probably why he asked here.

edited 24th May '18 2:35:07 AM by Piterpicher

Indeed.

I admit that what I did in the edit warring in the past was wrong, and that I was intolerant of other's perspectives on stuff like Seinfeld Is Unfunny. But like it's been a long time, and i've matured significantly.

We blocked you from that forum and from PMs because of your incessant whining even after being told no. Some people really don't get the hint.

I’m very concerned by what appear to be the current moderation policies.

First, let me clarify what this is not about. This is not about moderation regarding personal attacks. Those seem to be well enforced with some consistency.

Nor is this about censorship. I am not arguing that people should be banned for expressing their opinion.

What this is about is:

1) Discussion of various forms of bigotry and; 2) Questioning of moderation

Let’s start with issue one.

The first post of this very thread discusses this issue. Tropers are allowed to post comments which are sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, imperialist, etc.

Obviously there’s a spectrum from inadvertent insensitivity to openly advocating for any of those things. Let’s say that 1 is a small, harmless but insensitive comment, and 10 is aggressively advocating for a bigoted belief.

The mods are generally good when dealing with an 8 or above. However, challenging these destructive beliefs at lower levels seems to be frowned upon by the moderators.

This is a problem. Noticing and challenging bigotry in another troper’s comments is a good thing, for the forums and for the tropers. Honestly, the only reason I’ve grown and learned as a person is because I’ve read articles that confronted my beliefs, and been confronted by people who had a perspective I lacked. If person A is confronted by person B for saying something bigoted, the confrontation isn’t the problem. The problem is the bigoted remark or belief.

Obviously, all of us have different perspectives, and different issues which we’re knowledgeable about. We’re all wearing glasses with different prescriptions. And each of us has a different level of energy for pointing out the bigotry we notice and engaging in discussion about it.

Honestly? I wish I confronted people more. Letting little bigoted comments go by makes people grow more bold, or more bigoted. It influences other tropers, who don’t notice the bigotry, and may inadvertently begin to acquire bigoted beliefs. But I don’t always have the time, or energy. I frown at a questionable comment, maybe I gently push back, but I don’t do much.

Which brings us to Ambar. Yes, he inspired this post. No, I haven’t talked to him recently. I did, however, read his recent posts in the Film Diversity and Representation thread. I found his comments very insightful, deliberate and thorough. To be frank, ever since I started frequenting the forums I’ve enjoyed the breadth and depth of knowledge which he contributed to discussion.

And he’s now gone. Apparently for being rude to moderators in private messages. Which brings us to issue two.

There is not a clear method for bringing up concerns with moderation. I checked the rules; it doesn’t say how to properly raise a concern without getting in trouble for questioning authority. There’s also not a clear definition of how the “don’t be a dick” policy works when interacting with mods over PM. Am I allowed to be upset? Am I allowed to use a single swear word if I get frustrated? Or will that momentary rudeness be grounds for a ban? I’ve been frustrated with moderation for months, but not said anything because I didn’t know if I was even allowed to object.

Why is it that in the threads, someone can repeatedly say bigoted things, but incivility towards the person being bigoted is more likely to be punished? Why is it that persons clearly acting in bad faith or deliberate bigotry seem to get repeated chances, and are only banned if they hit a 9 or 10 on the bigotry scale? Why is it that repeatedly noticing and objecting to bigotry seems to be regarded as a bad thing, as being a buzzkill or being overly sensitive?

Why is it that individual mods get to make the call on whether something is bigoted, or whether the person objecting is overreacting- thereby ignoring the fact that the mod may or may not be educated on the particular issue, and thereby inadvertently dismissing a bigoted comment as harmless?

I don’t think the moderation team is malicious or bigoted. I know moderating is hard. I just think that there’s been far too much patience with polite, low-level bigotry, and far too little patience with those trying to confront bigotry. And I think that moderation is too quick to bring down the hammer at any sign of disagreement with the mods. No one is perfect. People should feel like they can raise concerns with the mods.

I’ve re-read and edited this post several times to try and make sure that it’s civil and respectful but direct. Yet I still honestly fear that I’ll be banned for saying all of this. That’s... not how a forum should work. I shouldn’t be afraid to politely speak my mind. But that’s how the environment here makes me feel.

I agree that I support unbanning Ambar and that in previous experience his persistence has an aid in the forums in pushing back against explicit and implicit bigotry.

I also agree with Willow that there have been issues with the moderators not tamping down on “civil” bigotry, even if the posts have textbook dogwhistles over them, or stuff like “I just happen to keep repeatedly demanding the murder of a character whose actress kept getting harassed for racist reasons these week”. It’s more frequent than you might think, and it’s left to fester for months or years.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jul 20th 2018 at 5:09:54 AM

Speaking as someone who's had prior experience as a moderator on another reasonably-sized forum, I can see why Ambar would have been banned since insulting a moderator is generally considered a rather large faux pas, and if I'm being honest I don't necessarily expect the moderation to reverse that decision. But from my perspective, the moderation has given second chances to other people who have posted much worse things on the forums, so while in a vacuum I can see why he would have been banned it doesn't feel right in this particular context. He'll certainly be missed.

It's not just insulting a Moderator alone. The user has had a history of insulting many people. I've hollered many of his thumped posts, to say the least. I've brought up the exact issue of why he was overall banned for(according to what we were told, his uncivil behavior towards others), though him insulting Moderators made it worse.

I feel, that if he's unable to remain civil towards others, no matter who they are, it's a serious issue that creates turmoil and doesn't make it a friendly environment. No matter who the user is, insulting them is always the wrong answer. This is why a holler option exists. Let the Moderation deal with problematic users. A good point brought up ages ago is we don't want White Knights here. We want reasonable people who will holler problematic posts and let the Moderation deal with it while eliminating as much drama as possible.

Ambar ultimately fell under the rule "Don't be a dick". He wasn't willing to stop insulting users. This doesn't mean the users aren't a problem, but it doesn't make it the correct way to deal with them. Combined with how often he took potshots at users many times before, and you see a vastly unfriendly environment to deal with. If a person is a bigot(and clearly there to spread their propaganda, not learn how to be a better person), hollering is significantly more effective than breaking the rules yourself. Not only do you make less work for the Moderators to fix(as when you're insulting users, you're breaking the rules too), but it also saves time as there's far less posts to deal with alone. The user won't be making as many posts if there's no clear replies. But at the very least, they're the only ones who will get thumped.

Simply put? The rules were enforced. On both ends.

Again, my post wasn’t about just Ambar, but a wider issue.

Acknowledging bigotry and responding to it with reasoned disagreement isn’t “uncivil” or “attacking” people. If Ambar hollered every dogwhistle comment, he’d have been banned for annoying/wasting mods’ time.

And moreover, not every questionable comment deserves a holler. If something is a 1-5, discussing the comment (which may have been posted by someone who honestly didn’t know any better) is much more productive than a holler and (maybe) a thump.

And since you brought up Ambar, I’ll add this. I went through and reread all his recent posts in the Film Diversity thread. He did not make any personal attacks, and repeatedly responded with civility. Bringing up things a person said earlier to add context to current comments isn’t a personal attack, nor is criticizing another person's comments.

I’d rather be around people who consistently acknowledge and challenge bigotry than people who completely ignore it when it’s lower than a 8 or 9.

Edit: I will also add that to my knowledge, Ambar never insulted the mods in the threads. And since I don’t know what happened in P Ms, I have no idea whether what he said to/about the mods was worthy of being banned.

Edited by wisewillow on Jul 20th 2018 at 6:05:48 AM

It was from Absent People, where Fighteer told us that Ambar had a flame-out with the Moderation via PM's.

Anyway, I wasn't talking about the Film And Diversity thread.

On-Topic Conversations was where I was doing my hollers from, to clarify.

Yes. Flame-out is very vague. Of course the mods are entitled to be discreet, but given Ambar’s typical civil behavior on the threads, I was very surprised to see a report that he had behaved in a contrary fashion to what I had ever seen.

But again. While this was somewhat inspired by Ambar, my larger point is the issue with moderation of dogwhistles and other bigotry < level 9-10, regardless of what Ambar said to the mods. Someone who was a minority made a comment about feeling unsafe given recent political events, and the mods scolded them for being too dramatic. By contrast, someone else intentionally misgendered another troper and the mods didn't really do anything about it.

Edited by wisewillow on Jul 20th 2018 at 6:25:52 AM

You know, I thought that wisewillow's post @2935 was a good example of how to bring concerns with moderation policies up.

Now, because I have other commitments I'll make a note in Mod Central to ask for input but a few preliminary comments:

• "Momentary rudeness" does seldom lead to a ban unless it's extremely egregious. Ambar was not banned for anything "momentary" but for a long pattern of being a jerk mainly in OTC and then that flameout in PMs.
• The problem with moderating bigotry is that you need to draw the line somewhere and none of us is an expert in bigotry (except for trans-/homophobia issues). I've been mulling myself on how to find ways to remedy these problems but I didn't come up with anything clear.
• We have never allowed users to attack other users for being bigoted or whatever for several reasons, the main reason being that we are only interested in hosting a friendly, civil forum. Other problems are that such an approach is not demonstrated to be effective and that it often becomes an excuse to be a dick to people who don't (necessarily) deserve it.
• A "second chance" has to be asked for in the ban appeals thread and Ambar can still appeal there if they so wish. I can't say whether we as a collective would accept an appeal, though.

Another problem is that "bigotry" can get defined very broadly. Ambar didn't just settle for reporting problematic tropers; he engaged them in lengthy and toxic arguments intended to evoke statements that he could then use as evidence of their unacceptable beliefs. This smells less like someone trying to help the moderation team and more like someone on a personal crusade to root out "wrongthink".

Our moderation policy at TV Tropes has always been one in which we give the benefit of the doubt. It takes something really egregious to earn a flat-out ban, and frankly, most of the arguments I saw Ambar participating in were ones in which he was attacking other people's beliefs, not defending or sticking up for someone being attacked.

The proximate trigger for this particular kerfluffle was Ambar's engagment with the troper Nikkolas over the philosophy of Communism, which had seen another troper (Robrecht) suspended a few months ago. We did suspend Nikkolas as well, and he went to Edit Banned to discuss his case. Ambar could have made the same choice, and we would have dealt with the situation. However, Ambar instead chose to enroll other tropers via PM in attacking Septimus Heap — a factual error anyway as the mod team all discussed it prior to action being taken.

The messages we want taken away from this episode are thus:

• If you engage in debates with other tropers, keep it civil. In particular, avoid intentionally inciting arguments which you then use to get them in trouble. We don't like that.
• If you get thumped for civility, learn from it. We don't have a defined threshold of "X civil thumps = ban", but when you get past a dozen or so...
• If you get suspended, talk to us. Don't snipe at us behind our backs. That's a surefire way to earn a permanent ban.

Edited to add: There seems to be this idea floating around in some circles that everyone who expresses a belief that the members of the circle find unacceptable must be excommunicated from the entire society in which that circle operates. I'm sorry, but what constitutes acceptable behavior on TV Tropes is the domain of the moderation (and staff) and nobody else, and we do not appreciate being told what our rules should be.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 21st 2018 at 9:26:26 AM

While I do think the moderation is sometimes too quick to jump the gun and narrow in their judgement, I've always found you can talk with them. Even if you disagree with the decision, you can still most of the time come to an understanding of why the decision was made.

One thing I will note is that he's not as much troublesome in the Workshop forums. Not that he never gets into debates, but he seems far more civil most of the time compared to the much heavier debating in the media and OTC sections. So I think he could be potentially be fine here. But that's my opinion on it.

Honestly, my own opinion is if you go on a rant of any kind against the moderators, you're pretty much stuck lying in the bed you made for yourself. How good or not you are elsewhere is irrelevant. Badmouthing the people in charge of a site on their own site is only going to have one outcome.

It really is a shame. While he could be overly blunt and not mince words, I did find a lot of his points insightful. I was unaware that he got into a PM argument with a mod, which is unwise regardless of how right one is. Me and him were having a conversation where he was venting and whatnot,and he came off as being frustrated with how some things on this site are handled.

If I may be blunt, Ambar always came across to me as a self-righteous asshole. He may have made good points on occasion, but that doesn't excuse how he generally liked to deliver them or his other actions.

The case sounds pretty cut and dry here.

Edited by Karxrida on Jul 26th 2018 at 4:48:22 AM

Again, the ban was not for his attitude on the forums. That merited a suspension which could have been talked out. Instead, he chose to make libelous and disgusting accusations against the moderators via private messages. That is what earned him a ban.

We will always listen to concerns and complaints delivered in a rational tone. We won't always agree, but we'll give you a hearing. What we will not tolerate are personal attacks, hateposting, and passive-aggressive sniping behind our backs.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 26th 2018 at 8:46:43 AM

So he just crossed the line from "'scuse me, you're misinformed on this issue" to, pardon the language, "you don't know shit, idiots!"?