TomJoe

I guess I need to make this known:

1. You can file a report and let the moderators of that forum handle it.

2. You can also contact a senior staff member on the same team as that moderator, or who is a moderator in that forum, and comment on the behavior of the moderator. You can do this by PM. I'm not sure if the Feedback Forum allows for this sort of thing at the moment (because general claims of bias are hard to prove, and could bog down the system... but we can evaluate this and I could be wrong anyways). If you can bring evidence forth to senior staff, I would sure hope that they would handle this.

If any of the Politics Moderators, N&CE Moderators, or any other forum moderators on my team are still behaving badly, I'd like to know about it. Give me links, give me evidence and I'll handle it. Please, don't dreg up stuff from a year ago, but give me current examples of bad behavior and I'll handle it.

Chris Porter

I just wanted to comment on this part.

I've reported someone for some breathtakingly rude flaming (1.1) and I see another poster here who has done the same to the same person, and it looks as if the poster is still around as of yesterday, so yes, I agree with the impression that nothing is done-especially when there is no feedback on whether or not the warning was seen (or if there is, I don't know about it, I hardly post to CF).

And there is another poster there who takes copyrighted material and posts it to CF. I've reported that, and just asked that the poster be asked to make some sort of link to the page (actually, the post was completely off-topic to the thread it was in). I really only did that because this poster doesn't seem to type any of their own stuff, just cut and paste, and it showed up off-topic, so it may have been in error to begin with. And nothing seems to have been done about that except a locked thread. Sigh. So, is it worth it to report something if the thread will get locked due to one person's goofing off? I suspect most people will eventually come to think it's not worth the effort, after two warnings, I've come to that conclusion. When people see clear rules, report violations of those clear rules, and nothing seems to get resolved, I really think that respect for the values behind the rules is eroded, if the people enforcing those rules do (apparently) nothing.

livius drusus

Is moderation so reliant on reports, though, that abuses, even long-running ones, cannot be contained without them? I ask out of genuine interest because I don't know; it's not a set up of any kind. There are plenty of forums out there which do not moderate unless a report is received, the JREF forum to name one example. I don't think it's an effective system, mind you, but I was under the impression that CF mods intervene regularly based on their own readings.

TomJoe

I'll intervene based on my own readings... if I read the offense. However, I don't have the chance to read every post of every thread in every forum that I moderate. People may criticize me for my moderating habits, but I do rely on the people who frequent the forums I moderate to keep an eye on things for me.

If people don't report things, I just assume that's the nature of that particular forum, and it's not that people have given up reporting violations, it's that things don't bother them and they have no personal problem with the way conversations are playing out. For example, when I used to moderate the Creationism vs Evolution forum, the *ahem* "debate" that was held in that forum was a bit more "rough and tumble" than what you'd find elsewhere... like say in the Congregational Fora for example. No one seemed to have a problem with it, and as long as we didn't have any blatant violations of the rules, I allowed people to have at it. That approach may not work elsewhere, but the people there seemed to have a decent sense (usually) of not letting things escalate.

livius drusus

Well, I don't criticize your moderation habits as I have no direct experience of them and what I've seen in this thread strikes me as rather remarkably forthright and open-minded.

I will say, however, that in more contentious forums relying solely on post reports (and again, I don't know if this is the case necessarily) makes for a very rickety enforcement structure: one highly prone to majority rules bias and grudge arbitration. A poster in consistent violation of the spirit and letter of the rules but who argues a majority viewpoint is far less likely to be reported than someone who flies off the handle a couple of times under the pressure of arguing a minority viewpoint, for example.

TomJoe

I agree, that this can be a problem.

IMO the mark of a good moderator, is that, when they evaluate a report, they take a look at the entire incident. Did someone appear to "fly off the handle"? If so, why? People usually don't just go postal, they have to be egged on. What was the extent of their flying off the handle? Was it a mild flame, or did they pepper their post with f-bombs and threats? If they were baited, do both sides deserve a warning? Do both sides need to be told to stop it, and just forget about the warning? If both sides have been behaving badly, bad moderation is to punish one side and not the other... unless it is to warn the people who started the baiting, and then more than likely were the ones to then file the reports on the people who bit.

Warnings are supposed to be "last resort". In other words, we should have, as a staff, exhausted all other means of appealing to the common sense of posters that it is in their benefit to behave properly on the MB. If posters repeatedly fail to be "good citizens" then the warnings come as a consequence. Otherwise, IMO, the only other good reason for warnings are for blatant violations of the rules.

seebs

Thanks. I may take you up on that. I know that a lot of the best examples are a month or three old. I might send you a PM to a particularly good example thread, if I get a chance. (The computer I'm supposed to be writing about just showed up, so I am now Officially Busy.)

seebs

No, because that's not targeted at a group of people. Rule 4 covers discrimination against groups of people such as, say, blacks, Jews, gays, women...

But once we've granted that a rule of that sort exists, it's pretty obvious that it applies to all discriminatory policies, not just specific groups.

We don't need to ask Erwin every time someone proposes slaughtering a new group of people.

The problem here is that Erwin agreed that it was a problem, then dittomonkey did it again and you came up with the "legal means and scriptural support" explanation, and then we had to get a SECOND confirmation from Erwin. (Go back and look. Erwin agreed that advocating slaughtering people was clearly a Rule 4 violation a couple of months earlier, and then Annabel Lee posted a link to dittomonkey's post, and that specific post got trashed... But the next time he did it is when you argued the "legal means" defense.)

How about, instead of looking at moderation, you look at outright malice?

Brewmama flamed a newbie.

No one who flames a newbie like that should be on staff.

As to appearance of bias... I have about five examples of biased moderation in that forum, all very nice and clear-cut.

Well, brewmama's famous post that begins with a paragraph of derisive laughter did eventually get trashed, but I don't think anyone who would post that should ever be on staff. It's not just a question of bias (say, the way she spite-warned me for defending Islam from false claims about it, after trashing a thread because her side was losing), but a question of just plain being mean.

This is supposed to be a ministry. Someone who responds to a newbie's first post with derisive laughter is not, I think, going to lead any kind of ministry that should be associated with the word "Christian".

seebs

It's posts like this that make me wish IIDB had a rep system.

Honestly, one of the worst problems about the "silent requirements" for staff (e.g., Polycarp1 not being qualified) is that it makes it hard for staff to do this; both because a disproportionate number of people who would actually moderate this way are disqualified, and because you don't have enough staff for the staff to take the time to do this most of the time.

shannonkish

UM... I believe a moderator, who shall remain nameless, has decided that a thread I reported was NOT against the rule.. even though in Erwin's opinion it is..

So how does that work?

And as for RT being baited...
Now, as someone who has read the thread and has read the specific posts in question.. I would say that this would be baiting... especially if you read the posts before it.