Appeal to the moderation

I wasn’t thinking about making the world a better place, just making the site a better place by removing said (very toxic and destructive, also problematic for the site in other ways) views from it.

Edited by Silasw on Aug 1st 2018 at 10:14:56 AM

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

There seems to be some false equivocation of political views and suicidal behavior, as well as political views and pedophile apologia. Not one of those three things are comparable to the others. Getting people who threaten suicide to admit they won't kill themselves is just as much a legal liability thing (I'm sure) as it is anything else, for example.

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

Honestly, there’s probably potential legal liability to pedophilia related comments as well, depending on context. A lot of states have mandatory reporting if you suspect someone is involved in child abuse, and even possessing child pornography (downloading pornography, not personally harming a child) is a felony in a lot of states.

Also, I’ve tried my best to be civil here, but I’m really uncomfortable with some of the hair splitting in this discussion, given that an immediate family member and one of my closest friends were both victims of child molestation, and the damage to their emotional/mental health has lasted for decades.

While that's regrettable, and we offer our condolences, we cannot and will not sanitize our site to remove any possibility of offending or upsetting you. That's not how life works.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I didn’t ask you to. I simply stated the source of my discomfort with the hairsplitting.

I don’t think it’s a controversial position to state that I’d personally rather err on the side of being overly cautious about pedophilia related comments than on the side of being overly forgiving. TV Tropes has made a lot of good progress since the Google Ad Sense incident, and the mods deserve credit.

Obviously, our opinions differ on finding the right balance for forum comments, and the mods are free to ignore my opinion. But I’m allowed to raise the opinion.

Maybe I am overly dense, but what is the "hairsplitting" you are concerned about?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

More to the point, what specific comments by specific individuals give rise to the belief that they are advocating for unacceptable or illegal behavior? If you've hollered them in the past and we haven't addressed them, we'd like to know so we can take a second look. Feel free to send additional hollers. However, if we determine that they do not cross our lines, then you need to recognize that.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 2nd 2018 at 8:18:06 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I don't think we want the mods to be thought police, nor do I think anyone is calling for that, just a closer eye on people using questionable language and outright dogwhistles. There's quite a few of us who are pretty OTC focused. If it goes away, almost certainly so will I and many other tropers. Unless there's a character limit on hollars that I never noticed, why can't you do something like this and just stick on the hollar on the most recent post?

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Honestly, I’m pretty sure I know exactly who and what posts Willow is referring to. They concerned me as well. But are you asking us to specifically name someone and post links? Because I thought we weren’t supposed to do that.

Doctor Who — Long Way Around: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13536044/1/Doctor-Who-Long-Way-Around

That's what Hollers are for, as we've said repeatedly. You can also private message us, although that doesn't always get acted on as quickly. However, I should caution you that posts made prior to a ban that has since been released are not actionable, since we already dealt with them.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Unless we missed them, that is. There is no penalty for hollering stale issues.

I think that Ask The Tropers with the "private" checkbox checked is the best place for a long form complaint.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

(1) Y'all are calling for thought policing even if you don't realize it, and (2) unfortunately, "questionable language" and "outright dog whistles" are not always questionable or dog whistles, meaning that we can't expect the mods to perpetually monitor everyone who has ever used such language.

Accusing someone of holding unapproved personal or political thoughts is thought policing, regardless of the alleged evidence (e.g. usage of dog whistles). Asking the authority to keep a closer eye on the people who one disagrees with is asking the authority to police people's thoughts.

Not all instances of a given phrase is a dog whistle. If someone mentions Phrase X, then they do not necessarily believe in Opinion 1. For example, if someone mentions "states' rights," then they do not necessarily believe in institutionalized segregation (as argued by David Greenberg). It's possible that the phrase itself is what they mean. That is, people usually say what they mean. It has to be argued for the particular case that so-and-so did not mean what they said and instead meant a code word. It seems that many people have that backwards, that we need to argue that so-and-so meant the code word rather than what they said. This kind of thing cannot be argued in a general sense.

Whether something is coded language can't be taken at face value; it isn't a brute fact that it's dog whistling. Because of this, we cannot reasonably expect the mods to monitor everyone who has used "questionable language," as sometimes that expectation is faulty. There should be more evidence than just "they said X at one point," and as far as I can tell, the mods currently require more than that.

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

It seems like to me that each group is thinking of specific instances to go on what they want from the users/mods. But since none of those instances are disclosed, all we can really do is dance along it. And due to the vagueness, people are being hurt because even if I'm referring to example X when I say Y, someone else will assume Y is applied to example Z.

I don't think there's any way to fix this, but I think there is some built up stuff here that might be causing the convo to go in wonky directions.

Read my stories!

Well, again, you are welcome to discuss those specifics privately. As yet, nobody has seemed willing to offer them.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 2nd 2018 at 2:45:28 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I think there's some fear that saying anything out line will get an automatic thump and ban. I don't have that fear, at all. I've been here and said enough stuff that I do not worry about that (within reason). But I think it's a fear other people have. It's unfortunate, but that's the situation atm.

Edited by MrAHR on Aug 2nd 2018 at 2:42:38 PM

Read my stories!

Well, if one's post consists of (in effect), "Why haven't you banned all the pedos?", with the implied, "It's because you support them, you monsters," then it's exactly what we mean about being confrontational instead of productive. "When did you stop beating your wife?"

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Yes, send a holler.

Or maybe for this instance only just post the specifics here. Back in 2012 that was done by people who wanted to know why certain posts weren't being thumped. Yes, I realize that this is not according to protocol.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

My inbox is open for specific concerns as well.

"I think there's some fear that saying anything out line will get an automatic thump and ban."

I have no idea how the mods could have been more explicit about it not happening. I am reading pretty clear permission to (privately) ask about any previous hollers anybody participating had sent that did not get the action they expected.

And I posted this before getting to this post

Edited by Adannor on Aug 2nd 2018 at 10:24:41 PM

I'm not going to armchair analyze how fear works, as I don't want to step on anyone's toes. But basically when complaints bubble up like this, it's not uncommon for them to have been simmering in the past in a sort of blender where they just get larger and larger because they've gone unaddressed. And thus it seems like there can never be any progress or transgression made ever, because of this sort of cycle.

This is also not unique to this specific set of complaints. It's more of a societal cycle whenever there is a cultural backlash. It's something I studied in college and I have experience in my own community moderation, so I feel it relevant to point out.

Edited by MrAHR on Aug 2nd 2018 at 3:28:27 PM

Read my stories!

Part of the cycle for this site is most reporting tends to be piecemeal at best with few laying out details to note an ongoing trend. The moderation is fairly reliant on the tropers reporting problems and the vast majority of us don't give enough detail or are really consistent enough in our reporting methods. Which part leads to the problems bubbling up in part because someone is missing the needed details. We don't get to see most of the detail until something boils over. By then it frequently involves someone picking a fight over it and getting banned for it even if they did have a point buried in the inappropriate post. Which just clouds the issue as no one, moderation or not, is exactly keen to believe someone starting a fight over an issue. To make matters more complicated we do get a fair number of unusual people who turn even a very minor issue into a major drama production.

Part of the solution is more moderation staff with varied viewpoints but also finding a way to get troopers to be more thorough on reporting issues. We can say they should do something all day long but even the brightest among us needs a little encouragement, demonstration, or instruction in what sort of information is wanted. I would argue a long form report or at least one with a series of questions built into it could encourage people to give more detail. At the very least include something along those lines in the holler blurb.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 2nd 2018 at 5:42:15 AM

Who watches the watchmen?

Also, a holler is a relatively big step, or at least it feels that way to me. I don’t want to holler every questionable comment, nor would that be appropriate. Once you see a larger pattern, it feels excessive to go back and holler every questionable comment.

Does that make any sense? I don’t want to holler every iffy comment, but if the same person regularly makes iffy comments, there should be a way to raise that concern with all the mods. I don’t think Ask the Tropers is a good place for it though, as it may be overlooked. I didn’t know this thread existed until about a month ago, and I’ve been here since 2011. Maybe there could also be a flag function, where the comment isn’t bad enough to merit a holler, but if a troper has X flags, the mods look into it?

Regardless of adding some other way to raise issues, I agree that a holler form would be helpful.

Holler:

1) please describe the questionable behavior

2) have you seen this behavior from this troper before?

• Yes
• No

3) If yes, please include comment links and explain any additional context.

Seems like the issue is that the holler function does not indicate anywhere that you can use it to report a pattern. Sort of like "Not this post specifically, but this troper has a habit of subtly encouraging fights, see this post and that other one for example."

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I agree. The holler system is essentially open text, which makes nuance highly conditional on the hollerer.