Wiki and Forum Policy - General Discussion

I think the literal second post right after the initial mod post on the Wiki Talk thread was someone saying they are looking forward to the teeth gnashing. That post is thumped now, but I'm surely everyone can agree the start there was a test for both mods and normal tropers.

In particular, I'm sure Fighteer had come to see himself as the worn out nanny for both threads considering how often he got called into both. Seeing P Ms like that being thrown around was surely the breaking point.

Edited by LoreDeluxe on Dec 22nd 2022 at 7:58:47 AM

I can understand wanting to curtail "less than stellar" behavior in PMs when it ranges into the genuinely toxic and abusive, but I think a wiki-wide suspension for an incident that you have now acknowledged was "more civil than some" seems...disproportionate, to me?

I'm... gonna be honest, I appreciate the honesty, but if anything that's only made me even more concerned. Like, that really reads like Make an Example of Them, especially given some of the things that were said in the thread that frustrated people in the first place - at least one comment calling the threads (and implicitly the people in them) masturbatory is still up, and even just before the cleanup threads were opened the threads were called "elitist" just because we voted someone down (for a reason that they admitted was their own fault). That's disregarding that at least three different users outright lied about their experiences to make the threads look worse - I don't like accusing people of things like that but I detailed multiple times on the Restart thread how their descriptions vs. what actually happened were so different that the odds of good faith just evaporated. Like yeah, thread "regulars" were frustrated, and while maybe PM'ing about mods wasn't right, I don't think it's fair to say that we didn't have a reason to be frustrated with some of the things happening in that thread and it feels very excessive to then suspend people wiki-side for expressing that frustration.

But since I am a regular, there's really nothing I can say that doesn't make the situation look worse (and frankly I'm now nervous to basically say anything about moderation on this site after that explanation), so I guess I'm just gonna leave it at that. I appreciate the transparency but it frankly worsened my concerns about mod overreach there, disregarding the borderline condescending way it was handled in the EB thread.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 11:06:15 AM

Speaking strictly for myself—By "more civil than some", I mean the difference between "clearly over the line" and "I'd be throwing hands if that was said to my face". Take from that what you will.

This was an extremely unusual situation and I hope that we never get to a point where an action like that would need to be taken again.

Edited by Willbyr on Dec 22nd 2022 at 10:05:24 AM

While I too appreciate the transparency and completely accept the uniqueness of the situation as it was, I also do just have to reiterate that I feel a wiki-wide suspension targeted at one user over vague PM "snark" is suspect as a concept, already. Further clarifying that it was meant as a form "dropping" of the proverbial "hammer", after which a mod went about publicly shaming said user with an extremely condescending tone when the user came to EB genuinely perplexed as to the meaning of the suspension, all as a sort of "scare tactic" for others to watch how they behave...it feels very icky to me for a mod team to condone and carry that out, tbh.

I accept there's nothing to really do about it now, and Lore himself may feel it was somehow warranted, but I'm making my very heavy distaste to this situation and how it was handled very clear.

I'm agreeing with this. When I think of PM dialogue worthy of suspensions, it would be insults to someone, threats, etc. This, plus the specific wording used in the EB thread...

Like, sure, the CM thread had issues, it did need to be fixed and we're certainly working on that. but when we hear "bitching about the mods" as a potential reason for suspension, then silence, and now this, it is leaving me with some concerns how things were handled.

The suspension wasn't over a single PM sent to a single editor. If you checked out the conversation in EB, we had quoted from the thread, because that's where the problem was originally shared, and the messages were just further information that we used to decide, "Hey, the attitude isn't helping." We need to ask them to stop.

The actual suspension was for all areas of the site. We really wanted that conversation to happen quickly. The policy thread's fast pace added to the need that we were feeling.

I wasn't originally going to say anything but this sentence confuses me - a quick search shows that Lore didn't say anything on the Restart thread before he got suspended, so if you quoted anything at him in EB, it wouldn't have been anything he said there. Are you just referring to general people bringing up the problem there? Cause from that explanation I'm still concerned - even if the energy he had was a bad one that needed silencing, he was keeping that bad energy away from the actual thread, so why was a full-ban necessary?

Edit: Tried to link to that search and it didn't work

I mean, maybe I'm alone here, but that feels backwards - I know that if I'm feeling vitriol towards a discussion, I stay away from it, since voicing those concerns when I'm in that mood will probably backfire. Only recently I saw one of that thread's regular participants suspended for exactly that, so it really feels like the Morton's Fork of "If you express this issue in this manner in public then you'll be suspended for rudeness, but if you do it it PM you'll be suspended for going behind people's back". I know that ties in to what was said above about how if you shouldn't say it in public then you shouldn't say it in PM, but I still flatly do not see how someone who did it in public and someone who did it in private warranted similar punishments, even given the unique circumstance.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 11:45:57 AM

Part of the problem was that I never participated in the thread. I was put off from participation do to some of the early vitriol, and by the time I was unsuspended I felt most discussion was already winding down. An issue mods brought up is that what I should have done was be more open with my complaints rather than trying to go "behind closed doors" so to speak.

I flatly am still pretty heartily against the concept of a mod team conspiring and, basically, proclaiming "we'll show the site not to mess with us on this topic by bringing the hammer down on this one user who was expressing his private, personal opinions to other users who he shares history with." Those opinions, as far as I and others have proof of based on Lore's messages to us during that time, give off no indication of anything other than "I am very dissatisfied with the mod response in this situation and feel it is ruining something I enjoy." Given my personal knowledge of Lore, I find it very doubtful he ever went anymore vulgar or harmful than that in his opinions.

There is nothing to indicate that Lore was spamming his opinions to randoms or disrupting people on the site, but rather simply trying to have private conversations about the topic at hand, with those he has had long-term association with on the threads that were being discussed. One of those users he messaged,most likely, did not share his opinions and decided to report him to the mods. The mods then proceeded to ban him from the whole wiki and treat him very poorly on EB until he profusely apologized. It comes off as a mass scare tactic by targeting a user who barely did anything questionable, because the mod team was nervous about the possibility of him flaring tensions...even though he was being nothing short of well-spoken, yet frustrated, in expressing his issues.

I don't feel comfortable with this idea of "you should have been public with your dissatisfaction instead of talking behind closed doors, so you get a wiki-wide ban for it until you apologize after we condescend to you." At all. I will allow that this was a unique situation that caused a lot of tensions, but I wholeheartedly believe it was poor judgment on the mod team's part.

Edited by Ravok on Dec 22nd 2022 at 8:59:30 AM

Guessing the mods are still figuring out the official decision/post wording regarding Fighteer, but I would like to state my support for the sandbox proposal, if only for the sake of efficiency going forward.

I’d also like to note that a voluntary retirement of indeterminate length is not a replacement for accountability, though as others have said, I do hope said break provides Fighteer with time to decompress/reflect.

I find this concerning; transparency is very important imho, and making examples is not good practice. Sounds like a complicated situation that could have been handled better.

Edited by wisewillow on Dec 22nd 2022 at 8:50:30 AM

I'm not sure how much I can say in regards to specifics for PM, but hopefully I can at least say I only sent PM to 4 other tropers. Thus, I myself am not sure how many, or even just 1, would have been the tipping point for the mods.

Edited by LoreDeluxe on Dec 22nd 2022 at 9:04:01 AM

I feel like, given what's been said on the matter, the threshold of what is and isn't acceptable to say about the mods in P Ms is still not particularly clear.

We know that outright behind-the-scenes brigading and accusing the mods of crimes to multiple people is clearly going too far, and I don't think anyone would really disagree, but are people not allowed to say moderately venty things like "I think Mod X sucks [in the sense of doing their job, implicitly, not as a person] because they [insert semi-racist screed/possible abuse of power/shitty policy decision here]"?

Because previously you said that posters are allowed to criticize moderators in private, but the theoretical example you used was of someone being upset about moderator policy, which doesn't strike me as the kind of thing that would break public forum rules either, not someone P Ming others to make abusive ad hominems about the mods, which I'd fully be on board with.

Edited by AlleyOop on Dec 22nd 2022 at 12:26:39 PM

I mean personally speaking I never really talked negatively about the mods' decision and I do agree that what they did needed to be done. If there is one complaint I have it's mostly about how slow this has all been but even that I can understand to an extent why it is the case.

I can also kind of sympathize with the mods in this case. Sometimes the best way to get a point across is to make some kind of example so that the user is more willing to listen. Maybe it could have been handled better but I can understand.

Again, no one has denied that maybe some form of punishment was necessary, but the confusion comes from why this specific poster of all people was selected to get a total ban just because of some PMs that, at least according to some of the people who received them, didn't seem incredibly incendiary, especially with the knowledge that they were specifically bringing the hammer down because of the circumstances. I can understand that it was a unique time and that tensions were high all around, but when the user was deliberately keeping their temper away from the thread so that it didn't get cluttered further, dragging him in out of everyone (when, again, other comments that I definitely believe crossed a line were left up with seemingly no repercussions) seems backwards.

Yes, civility should be upheld in the P Ms, and sometimes anvils must be dropped. But if it looks more like the issue was 'criticizing the mods in private' and not 'being a dick', then it is not a good look.

As one of the 4 that Lore messaged? Nothing about the contents of the message he sent me was abusive, accusatory, or harmful to the mods' persons at all. It was an expression of broad dissatisfaction with how the mods were handling a situation, and even still never steeped into "they're acting so dumb", or "they're being fucking stupid right now." If Lore got banned for the contents of the message he sent me, then I can't say I buy the message communicated earlier that "you are allowed to express annoyance with mod decisions in PMs", because that is all Lore was doing, and he got dragged out in front of a crowd for it as an "example" of "dropping a hammer". Was it during a difficult time for the mod team? Sure, I acknowledge that. But does that give said mod team the right to do what they did to Lore on such loose grounds and make us all now wary that we could get banned on similarly vague reasoning? I would give a firm "no".

I don't think Make an Example of Them as a mass scare tactic should be an ok thing for a team in power to do to someone who—as far as we have seen—did nothing but break some nebulous, undefined rules about etiquette during a private conversation. And as far as we've seen? The mods have pretty plainly admitted that it wasn't anything truly vile that Lore said, and the only reason they targeted him was as a show of force to help them control the tensions on the Wiki Talk thread. That is poor practice for a group in power to take, IMO.

Edited by Ravok on Dec 22nd 2022 at 9:16:45 AM

I am actually legitimately confused on where the "make an example" thing is coming from. As far as I can tell, my suspension was never brought up on the Wiki Talk thread, nor did I see any other bans brought up on Edit Banned over PM issues. This whole part of the conversation seems to be blown wildly out of proportion.

Willbyr said, at the top of this very page, "this particular situation was more of a 'we're dropping the hammer particularly hard to make it clear that this needs to stop'" while addressing the broad topic of the Wiki Talk thread. On the EB thread itself, Septimus noted to you that you should have been public with your concerns and the mods didn't like you talking in private. That gives off the energy of "we wanted to make sure others didn't engage in private complaints, so we took one person and were particularly hard on him to make it clear that we were to be taken seriously and complaints must be made public."

I completely respect and understand your feelings in this situation and as the one who received the ban, Lore, but myself and others look at this situation and feel very uncomfortable about how the mods went about handling it and their response thus far. Even if you felt it was warranted, what I'm seeing decidedly makes me feel it wasn't, and that there was an ulterior motive here of "scaring people into avoiding this kind of behind-the-scenes talking."

Edited by Ravok on Dec 22nd 2022 at 9:39:55 AM

I think specifically Lore it's this sentence that Willbyr brings up:

"we're dropping the hammer particularly hard to make it clear that this needs to stop' given that it was in the wake of the CM/MB threads' closure, tempers were running hot, and some less-than-stellar things were said over those PM exchanges, which didn't help our position about the cliquish nature of those threads and their subcommunities one bit"

Especially because he admits : "LoreDeluxe's PMs were more civil than some."

'd

Edited by jjjj2 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 12:40:22 PM

It feels to me that Willbyr may have been stating that was the intent in hindsight, but the actual suspension wasn't treated like that at all. The mods didn't go on the restart thread and say we did the suspension to calm the thread down. As far as I knew, my suspension was even broadly known and was a singular incident.

The concern there is that they don't have to do that for word to get around from the EB thread - the fact we're even talking about it is proof of that, and we're not the only ones who knew about it (I know someone mentioned earlier that they had advised someone else not to talk about mods in PM because of your case). People just follow the EB thread and then word can get around, they don't have to go out of their way to do that.

Yes but most of us in the thread we're following along at the time, and we could see what they said to you. The edit banned thread is a popular past time for a lot of tropers. I'll admit it's somewhat of a Guilty Pleasure of mine, reading bad tropers explanations can be an excellent example of schadenfreude in action. I obviously don't comment on it anywhere on the wiki, that would be popcorning (and tropers being allowed to comment was shut down in the early days for that very reason). The point is they were well aware people would see your suspension and the mods response to it.

It also isn't addressing the core issue: we still don't know what the mods consider to be offensive enough for them to seek action. Even if, if, you want to say that the mods had no ulterior motives in how they handled Lore (even though we basically have word from their own mouths that there was an ulterior motive)...it still comes down to "Lore expressed annoyance and dissatisfaction at how mods were handling a situation over PMs, and he got suspended for it because the mods felt it was a necessary show of force."

Even putting aside all the other stuff that I am not ok with? That single sentence sends up all kinds of red flags, and leaves me still very, very concerned over what we can or can not express about dissatisfaction with mods over PMs.

Edited by Ravok on Dec 22nd 2022 at 9:52:48 AM