Wiki and Forum Policy - General Discussion

To be honest, I find the idea that Fighteer shouldn't be allowed to post about Space "X" or be enthusiastic about a Space "X" launch rather petty and vindictive. People are allowed to like unpopular things and hold unpopular opinions, and honestly, liking Space "X" isn't that egregious.

This sort of argument is really not helping your case against Fighteer, in short.

I should also note that discussing bans and suspensions was always against the rules for this thread.

Thanks, and fair enough. I think those posters were jumping the gun a little though, as Fighteer has not caused any problems yet, and I think the Space thread is more than capable of debating him if needed, and the other mods will keep an eye on it besides.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 16th 2023 at 1:18:59 PM

Echoing Scraggle since I agree with everything he said (especially the 3rd paragraph).

I'm not very satisfied with this has been handled but I'm willing to see how this plays out in the long term (since this whole fiasco has happened over less than two weeks by my measure) but I won't be at all surprised if this flares up again in the future. You guys care about what people say and do so prove to us that what you do in the future is in line with what you've said here, because I guarantee the site will suffer if you don't.

To give you the benefit of the doubt people aren't suggesting this to be vindictive, people are suggesting this because historically Fighteer has gotten irrationally defensive whenever someone says anything bad about Space X or Tesla. No matter how reasoned, sourced or justified an argument against one of Musk's companies were (we're talking about the big three here since the others aren't really talked about) Fighteer would immediately assume bad faith, become more aggressive and dismiss everything from expert car design testimony to sexual assault allegations, usually threatening people to drop it by accusing the conversation of being off topic (since it usually circles back to a decision Elon Musk made or suggested). It is telling that the tone of conversations in the Social Media thread became a lot more civil once he stopped posting in there. People aren't being vindictive, it's just that historically Fighteer's attitude has poisoned threads ability to discuss certain topics.

To begrudging giving Fighteer the benefit of the doubt (and to be clear, I don't believe anything he's done or said has proven that he deserves it), he has admitted he was quick to assume bad faith and would be trying to work on that.

The mods and admins aren't doing a good job reading the room, and while there have been positive steps (Kory's apology being one of them), other decisions (such as deleting the ATT thread discussing this after thread was re-opened, which many tropers have taken as a sign of trying to brush it under the rug) have been burnt through a lot of trust and goodwill and that's not going to be easy to repair, but at this point it's literally just a wait and see game.

Edited by Shaoken on Sep 16th 2023 at 9:37:02 PM

I have to say, if the mods are trying to be more trustworthy, continuing to thump every other post expressing displeasure with their choices and action is not the way to start

Then I hope, for everyone's sake, that this actually works out, that Fighteer actually does do what he says he'll do and he'll actually be held accountable if he doesn't, because if none of that happens, like others have said, we'll be back here again, and we'll probably be worse off as a community for it.

Alright, so I actually had a chance to see most of what was posted above me before the moderators went on a mass thumping spree.

And honestly, I cannot understand what is bad or thumpworthy about firmly but also calmly and relatively politely expressing skepticism towards a moderator with a history of, shall we call it, Redemption Rejection based off his past posting history. None of that looked less civil than any of the other posts that were allowed to stay up.

It's a truly terrible look.

That doesn't explain why several other posts which were perfectly normal were also thumped.

Edited by AlleyOop on Sep 16th 2023 at 4:44:57 AM

It feels like we're reaching the point where discussion is running out because we're not getting all that much more from the mods. Klay not being expected to respond strikes me as cowardly or unrepentant, either of which are very disconcerting, but as long as the admins agree to stay out of forum moderation and not brute-force changes anymore, fine. I'm frustrated that it still takes so much to get just a little detail out of the moderation team. There is no real reason for these topics to not be responded to with as much detail as the users have expended on their concerns, and I don't think this is the place to stop discussion. However, if this is really where the staff is going to stop talking, then, sure, there's no point continuing to protest because the decision won't change. At a certain point, I can't get too angry at thumps over a topic the staff is simply finished with, no matter how valid I find the points of the users.

I don't feel super steady if this is where we stand, but I don't want to give up here and I'm certainly going to stay around to see where this goes. At the first sign that staff abuse flares up again, I'll be here to watch what happens and I'll use whatever avenues provided to me to voice dissent. If the response is hostile, if it's obtuse, if it's nothing with promises of yet another "next time" on the horizon—that's the point where I think dissent needs to expand past the website because the changes will have been for no good. I'm not happy with how this has gone so far but I will stand by to see if this shift can go forward smoother than it has. That almost seems like a certainty given how messy this was. We may be reaching a point where words no matter count. I hope for actions that will.

Edited by 8BrickMario on Sep 16th 2023 at 4:43:49 AM

It's clear the moderation feels the Fighteer issue is settled and that they don't see a point to people litigating it further, but I don't get the impression that they understand how bad his apology and follow-up statement looks, or more uncharitably, they do not care. If they're ok living with the userbase dissatisfaction from this issue in the long term and the problems that will come with that, that's their call.

I have nothing against wingedcatgirl and this isn't personally directed at her(I don't know whether she thumped the posts personally or was just the messenger, and it's beside the point), but I also think the implication that the userbase is the problem here for finding fighteer's statements insincere and unsatisfactory is more than a little distasteful.

Thumping people that have done nothing but air completely justified skepticism towards Fighteer's ability to reform is not the way the earn anyone's trust back, especially not by trying to claim they were personal attacks after the fact.

[retracting]

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Sep 17th 2023 at 12:28:57 PM

Everything I could say has already been said by people far more eloquent than me, but I just wanted to stop by as a show of solidarity with those still deeply concerned about accountability and the vagueness of administration’s promises. I share them 100% and am still not satisfied with this discussion as of now.

I see no value in wanting to demote Fighteer entirely if he says he's stepping back from the parts of the site that he knows he's lost the community's trust in and only focusing on technical aspects of being a mod. It feels vindictive for the sake of being vindictive. Complaining about behaviors that aren't even related to his mod duties feels particularly unnecessary — I don't support SpaceX but that's not a banworthy offense, and if he can speak about that without getting overdefensive, then good for him, it shows growth. If he can't, I trust the mods/admins will demote him, because I want to be optimistic and I believe in growth, as this is at least much better communication than we had a few days ago.

The LGBT+ stuff is really the main aspect I'm uncomfortable with, but I genuinely cannot remember the specific posts and exactly how malicious they were versus just badly-worded ignorance. I think that should be more clearly addressed as it evidently left many aro/ace people feeling unsafe with Fighteer, which compounded with the Ag situation is a bad look. But it would help to bring up specific incidents so the admin (if they actually want to get invested in this kind of issue as they've promised they would be) can be more informed on why Fighteer returning is so controversial. I remember specific incidents that rubbed me the wrong way, but so far his tone seems like an improvement (I guess my bar is as low as "don't insult people, especially when they're calling you out on calling things 'cancer' or dismissing a particular demographic of people"), and I don't think personal remarks or obsessing over his forum history or acting like the site is doomed is going to help that.

Basically: The people who are criticizing Fighteer should bring up some specific posts to help back up their case so we can recognize more specific problems. The admins should at least consider this to prove they are, indeed, going to hear us out when we have issues with moderation.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 16th 2023 at 9:38:05 AM

So there is de facto no longer any mechanism for users to get abuse by mods addressed?

Look I’m one of the users here that more often understands the side of the moderator team, I even agree that some of the actions towards Fighteer (like demanding he never show support for anything that particular user dislikes, or that one time someone bought Fighteer’s kid into an argument they had with him) have been way out of line and would never have been tolerated if done to anyone else.

But you’ve got to see how much of a joke moderator accountability becomes if the process is “Report us silently to the guys who have an even worse track record of user abuse than the worst of the mod team”.

This information doesn't help us. It only helps the investigated user to know they need to make a better cover-up. I strongly recommend deleting the link before it causes a huge waste of your team's efforts.

All this really highlights how badly the trust between users and mods has been shattered.

I struggle to see how things will get better. At this point I am just hoping things don’t degrade further.

It does seem like we reached a point where everybodys positions are more or less clear. And as things stand now the only way the trust of the community into the sites leadership can ever be restored is if they will truly stick to their promises going forward and dont cause any incident like this again.

I personally am willing to give them a chance to prove themselfs through future actions, but I cant say that I blame anyone who is not and I cant say that this is at all the solution I was hoping this would reach.

For the sake of this community I sincerely hope that in case of any future incident involving Ag Pro, Fighteer or anybody similar everybody will keep their word and do the right thing.

As someone who also saw the posts before they were thumped, I can agree that while some of them were unnecessarily confrontative, others are baffling in their removal. Draghinazzo and wisewillow have, in my experience, always been thoughtful and well-reasoned in their arguments, and I don't see how they deviated from that here.

This is something I considered given we have a few people who admit that they don't have knowledge or exposure to Fighteer's past actions. The main thing that held/holds me back is fear of being seen as posting vindictively (as has been generally accused multiple times in the thread) or holding Fighteer's past against him - if I were to only limit myself to issues that have been brought up specifically in this thread/the previous appeal to mods then that would still be going back to 2019, and I would want to include those as an example of how entrenched these issues are and how little they've changed over the years (the cancer incident circa 2019 vs. the aro/ace incident in December are both good examples of doubling down and refusing to apologise, which is a concern I, and others, still very much hold).