Wiki and Forum Policy - General Discussion

I mean, even another mod (Fighteer ironically enough, given the last discussion we had here) jumped in with mod hat to say that he’d be fine calling the work hate speech and cut it on those grounds. The post that’s causing this discussion also isn’t the first time in the discussion that you implicitly called the people calling to cut it a mob (potholing a phrase to Angry Mob Song), and this was after two different instances of Lighty detailing specific comics in the work and how they peddled far-right views

Like, I can link other posts if we need, but I find it very hard to see anyone reading that thread and participating without it being very clear why people were calling it Neo-Nazi

Yeah, the others are being quoted out-of-context but are otherwise public about their views not aligning with those quotemining them. The Stonetoss comic in question seems to have been pretty directly stating "there were no Holocaust casualties" straight from the author's mouth with zero indication to believe it's in-universe or that the author disagrees with that viewpoint.

Okay, yeah, I read through the thread, and before the post that caused this, the thread was basically 10 pages of people not just calling it Neo-Nazi propaganda, but explaining why in detail. In particular, this viewpoint got challenged several times and so several users (again, including Fighteer who outside of his first post seemed a lot less confrontational and more open to collaboration about it than usual) had to step in and reiterate the points they were making. People weren't just throwing around the word "Neo-Nazi" without explaining why (and it wasn't even the only reason why it was cut), there were explanations and reasonings included. I don't even see what you mean that people were saying that "I could tell that folks agreed that the people who were most vocal about liking it were neo-nazis" because, unless I missed something pretty severely, that wasn't even an argument that had been raised.

Like, if the context was supposed to make the post more understandable, if anything I'm even more confused why you basically came out of nowhere after things were just starting to settle down to complain about what had happened (by the time you chimed in there, the thread had gotten off-topic and people were discussing what forums they frequently used). I don't want to make any assumptions but I'm really struggling to see where you're coming from here.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Dec 24th 2022 at 6:18:50 AM

I was actually going to say this topic has been too hard on crazysamaritan... until I saw their defenses and deflecting blame. Ouch.

Please tell me we're not going after crazy now. I'd like to hope he's learned from that already so we can just get back to trying to restore trust in the mod team.

I actually was going to point out this topic sorta turned into a witch hunt. But then crazysamaritan went and showed me this was warranted.

Trust is a thing earned. Part of it is owning up to mistakes when they happen. It is a completely reasonable thing to bring up when the mods tell us "we got you, we know what's bigoted, we can handle it" and then when something this relevant comes up, the previous page is a rather unconvincing explanation and deflection.

I'm saying again they mostly do good work and I trust most of them because of what I've seen them do, and the zero tolerance policy to bigots. But this stuck out to me a while ago and it's fair to cite so we can address issues and make it better.

I mean, I don't think anyone is trying to "go after" Crazy, we're just trying to explain why it's difficult as an average user to hold a moderator accountable when they're the same people that get to see all the avenues through which we can report the behavior. When something like this goes up and the response from the moderator is essentially "this was taken out of context" even though, as I stated above, the context if anything makes it look weirder, it's hard to just go "I'll just holler it" when the same moderation team that accepted that user is the one that reviews it.

Like, I do know that avenues exist to report this behavior, but it's difficult to overcome that mental barrier of knowing that the same person you're reporting is on the team that is going to review it.

@badtothebaritone: I want to believe that too but his posts have not shown that.

This thread is made for discussion about moderation, so if someone has an issue they'd like addressed with a moderator, I don't think that has to mean anyone is "going after" said moderator or making a witch hunt out of things. What was brought up about Samaritan was very, very concerning behavior IMO and his reasoning for it last page is...very heavily contrasted to what went on during the discussion in question about Stonetoss. I completely understand why someone would feel that the way he conducted himself in that conversation was untoward, especially when the topic was just on "trust your mod team to know what's bad and needs attention."

To which we've now gone over:

• A moderator seemingly talking down to those upset with a holocaust-denial comic being listed, calling them a "mob" and using an argument of moral subjective in regards to Nazism.

• Mods wiki banning and being unnecessarily rude to a user for still vaguely defined "bitching" in PMs about their activities

Like Lightysnake said, overall the mod team does a lot of good work and several moderators are very quick to own up to mistakes, work to make TVT a safe place for all kinds of folks, etc. But when something as egregious as these examples—or Fighteer's behavior—directly contradict the trust we are supposed to have in them to make a welcoming space where people can have a voice without being banned or talked down to...it's well worth addressing, IMO.

Another thing I'd quite like more mod feedback on is how our neutrality rules apply to overtly fascist works (and I guess other works of bigoted propaganda, since fascism in its proper sense is a relatively young and geographically narrow ideology). How much freedom do we have to assume a critical tone so that the trope page itself doesn't become a reproduction of bigoted propaganda/a whitewash of the same, and is there some sort of cutoff point where a work is too toxic for the wiki (since taking an appropriately negative attitude towards it would violate our neutrality rules)?

That’s actually a valid point. This wiki doesn’t tolerate hate speech, so naturally it shouldn’t tolerate works that tolerate hate speech.

What does "tolerate" mean in that instance? There are plenty of works that have hate speech in them to some degree. Is it just the works that present it positively that should go? What about older works that casually drop things like the n-word or antisemitism but don't have anything to say about it one way or the other (set dressing, basically).

TBH, I don't feel as if there's much concern to the "could people get exposed to dangerous ideologies due to neutral tone". The description can absolutely note that a work is meant to promote a given cause without having to condone or condemn the work, and Author Tract and the various Artistic License tropes appear early in the trope list and can note if a work is meant to be propaganda, and what a given work is portraying incorrectly for the purpose of it's ideology.

Isn't that what we already do? I can't think of any work like that which we describe in less-than-honest terms, and being honest does entail being up front about the hatespeech the work contains. Again, if the issue is that the work is like Stonetoss and thus can't be troped honestly without risking slander accusations, then there's precedent for cutting the page — but I'm not sure if there's any other pages for works like these that don't rip and mock the hell out of these works.

If there is, that's something to deal with, but I don't see the use in pretending these works straight up don't exist. It's better to be honest about politically charged works and what sort of messages they contain than to sweep it all under the rug IMO, especially if by calling attention to it we also mock it and call it for the hateful garbage that it is. All ignoring it does is keep people ignorant, or allows the only reporting on these works to be from people who agree with the politics and want to trick people into reading them.

Plus, it sort of is difficult to decide where to draw the line. I know some works are very cut and dry: Turner Diaries, Victoria, Ethnic Cleansing, etc would all be purged and nobody would complain. But at what point do we stop?

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 25th 2022 at 2:24:33 PM

Yeah, I'm all for neutrality when it comes to discussing writing quality of the MCU or shipping wars in Naruto. But when it comes to like overt fascism or racism...

I was mainly thinking about this in the context of our previous chat about Stonetoss (which got cut) and Billy the Heretic (which has an extremely negative YMMV page). Wondering what the mod take is on the limits of our neutrality policy, and how it applies to stuff like that.

Remind me the site's stance on Sinfest.

Well, we closed the thread, at least. It was decided there was no need to get rid of the pages themselves, though, nor the images we use across the site.

-creeps back into the topic

We locked the thread for being too negative but the actual pages have been left alone

I mean I've been there when the thread was closed, does the work violate the neutrality argument like the mentioned earlier works?

I do not think being negative towards explicitly bigoted works, i.e. propaganda, is a bad thing at all, as long as it doesn't overshadow the objective information. Works that may carry Unfortunate Implications or coded bigotry, however, are a different matter.

This whole debate is reminding me that some of these controversial works are listed on the complaining sandbox. I was going to ask - should they stay, or go?

Triumph of the Will is still here, and - despite hating everything that fuelled it - I'm ok with that. As others have said, there are ways to trope and acknowledge problematic, toxic stuff which is pushing extremist viewpoints.

There's an argument that they need more care (and ongoing watchfulness) that other works, but it can be done. YMMV.

I suspect it's harder with newer works, mind you. Hence cutting Stonetoss, which also seems reasonable.

Aye, tolerating hate speech on the wiki and tolerating pages on works that contain hate speech are not the same matter at all. For a comparison that was argued quite at length in the past: We have pages for explicit works (if they pass The Content Policy, which some explicit works do) but we don't want explicit works (i.e lewd descriptions) on the wiki itself ever.

I think that this question has come up before, in Wiki Talk. It's more to do with wiki policy than moderation per se.