Why banning anyway?

I don't think it even matters. If there's 10 000 people or 2 people noticing the injustice, it's still an injustice, it's simply a matter of shame on those who fail to see it (or choose to ignore it).
It's not in me to turn a blind eye, I couldn't if I wanted to.

 

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You honestly believe that any injustice is still an injustice, and must be dealt with?

 

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As I haven't had the luxury of reading the proceedings, I can only assume that for Avatar to vouch his concerns openly, the conversation must have rather jumped to the subject of banning prematurely. I would not offer prose for how that was phrased, however, as that would be patently absurd.

 

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phlogistician
as at least 5 people (including plazma i might add) have tried to tell you people AVATAR WAS LYING.

He was selectivly posting knowing that none of us could post the full thread to defend tiassa.

 

Hi, guys.. in case you haven't noticed yet, Plazma has just made a sticky thread here where we all could give him our feedback:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=86871

 

Yeah, like I believe that. He was demoted and incapable of showing us what he saw in defense of his actions. That in itself reeks.

 

I've read through the thread in question, I can tell you that Avatar got personal with another moderator, their barbs got nasty and rather than just saying what should of been done and kept within the contraint's of the subforum, he went out of his way to do those things [Post openly, make a ban poll and draw attention to something, while undermining the Administration.], knowing of course the repercussions of his actions.

I would suggest his demotion was a mix of this Undermining of Administration and of course breaking the rule of posting material from inside that subforum.

The subforum itself is pretty much like any other forum you see here on sciforums, I'm sure you are aware of how us moderators can argue nearly as bad as some of the problem posters when we get riled up and to be honest the subforum can sometimes resemble the world outside it's walls as moderators hash out their reasoning in the hope some sort of Consensus is formed from the fallout.

Perhaps what we should do is something similar to Government Secrecy Acts, where by after a set time period the internal posts can be placed into a publicly observable forum. Perhaps a period of 6 or 12 months would be enough. I'm sure it's something that could be put forwards as a development suggestion.

 

One of my major peeves is that the moderators are permitted to argue within individual threads ...thus allowing them a form of "judge, jury, executioner" if nothing more than the implied threat of banishment. Threats from a position of power?

Baron Max

 

I can understand your point Baron, sometimes those threads can be personal to them much like normal members. Admittedly though as a moderator they might take it more to heart if that thread is attacked or if they themselves feel they are under attack.

Sometimes it's in the best interest that Moderators do join in other threads, not of course to cause arguments but to add to the discussion, sometimes to steer it away from an onslaught of ad hominems and complaints. Again however this can backfire.

I guess the main problem here is that Moderators are seen as Defenders of some Ivory tower, rather than being more than just a Moderator but a "Forum Leader". When I say that I mean they add personality, interaction and of course a personal touch to their subforum. However that's been pretty difficult to do for a number of reasons ranging from waiting on development; to just how some posters have been to moderation in general in the past.

Maybe we can change with future development, if of course people allow that opportunity, rather than wallow in the past.

 

yet your willing to take his word over those are unable to defend themselves because the rest of us are following the rules

can i ask why if you distrust PLAZMA so much are you even here?

 

Ok, not sure if I should comment, but I'll give it a go. This is what I understand- 2 moderators duked it out in a secret chamber where one's lips must be sealed as to the going ons inside it. One decided to talk about it, which was against the rules, so he was demoted. That about right?

Personally, I'm not real keen on secrets. Don't get me wrong, I have some, but in general it seems that -I'm- the one breaking the rules and revealing personal things about myself. Ofcourse then I get in lots of trouble and everyone says I should keep my mouth shut. Maybe I'm a bad example

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. I just hate secrets a lot. I guess you could trace it back to my early childhood and the secrets that my mother would tell me about my father (and then I'd run off to tell him so I could listen to his side of the story; my mother wasn't pleased, but I can't say my father minded

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).

So, in summary, I'm for less secret proceedings. Or atleast the declassifying of information after a while, as Stryder suggested. That way, I'd have an idea on who to side with (or perhaps partially side with both) instead of only knowing that 2 moderators duked it out in a secret chamber

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.

 

On my forums that I host, I debate people in any of the threads. And I choose to show my Mod gavel icon. But in my view, it's just so people can see who is the Mod, not as any form of "I'm better or more powerful than you" sort of intimidation. Rarely would I ban anybody, merely because I disagree with them on the issues. I would rather "educate" people I disagree with, than banish them, as much as reasonably possible. I rarely Edit anybody's post, unless to remove advertising spam or something, as I consider Editing disrespectful to the person's expression of freedom of speech, and time taken to have composed their posts. I want the internet to be a place of freedom, personal expression, and self-control and personal responsibility. As a Mod, I don't consider it my job to "babysit" grown adults and hold their hands, as presumably, any forum member has their right, to read or skip by most anything they want?

Unfortunately, Mods do seem to enjoy an unholy trinity of being lawmaker, judge, executioner. Unless there is a reasonably moderation committee commited to fairness, the Mod-king model just seems more efficient and easier to impliment. If so, could we maybe get the proverbial "good kings" that are rumored to exist?

If I couldn't argue within threads on my forums, why would I even host any forums? I don't get paid, don't make any money at it, for my time. As forum wizard or Mod, I consider it my job to "organize" my forums, for best use. For example, if a thread topic naturally strays, I may a few times, rename the discussion thread to better fit. I run Promos for a few threads, or rename folders slightly if I think of a improved name. Other than that, I generally leave people be, to post as they like.

 

Can you put a link or PM me with a link to your forums? Just thought I'd take a look...

 

You dont really expect anyone to take this 'hapless victim of fascism' routine seriously do you...from a guy who worships Hitler??? :bugeye:

There are two kinds of extremes all forums should avoid.

The first is to have no rules at all.

The second is to have written rules with mods who ignore them and censor members according to their own arbitrary opinion.

 

Notes on transparency

If you go back in SFOG, you'll find a period during which there were a number of ban proposals; that is, a member proposed that another member should be banned. By and large, these occurred along the lines of personal disputes instead of objective considerations of the community and virtual quality of life at Sciforums. The response, of course, was for the other member to post a ban proposal about the first.

That was what people wanted to use SFOG for. To play Survivor. To vote one another off the island.

Right now, one of the things I can tell you is that there are 781 threads in the Moderators subforum. Most of these are dead, pertaining to issues long ago resolved or simply forgotten.

But consider the protest topics: How many threads do we have in SFOG and Site Feedback protesting some action by a moderator? And how many of those threads do not circumvent the prescribed process for contesting moderator action?

Additionally, in view of the recent fracas surrounding Avatar's revelation of a discussion between moderators, how many of those complaining demanded the full record? And how many actually compared what Avatar accused to the record he provided? The most contentious assertion of his thread about Baron Max is insupportable according to the evidence he provided, and yet here we are, still dealing with the repercussions. And let me be clear, that assertion is insupportable, period. But especially given his selective leaks, wouldn't you think he would be able to fashion some sort of appearance of support for his assertion?

What is clear, though, is that the complaining members didn't care about that aspect. They just wanted to complain. And their fever spread like a contagion.

Multiply that by 781. There is no doubt that members would find some juicy bits in the past; moderators aren't perfect. But given the outcry raised by those enraged that the moderators have among themselves an informal system that effectively checks individual power—e.g., the discussion of various issues, situations, and the reactions thereunto—what benefit would this new transparency bring to the community?

If this was a city or a public utility, yes. But this is an internet forum. A common criticism we can find around many boards is that someone is taking an internet forum too seriously. Indeed, we moderators have said that to one another on occasion, too.

For instance, one of the reasons we have specific protocols in place for member complaints is that we would otherwise be obliged to spend our days answering a large volume of complaints from a fairly limited number of members, or else simply ignore certain complaints, allowing resentment to fester. We would rather invest our efforts dealing with legitimate concerns of the membership, and yes, that means a certain amount of selectivity.

To the other, though, we're considering new layers of bureaucracy. We've seen a proposal for an excruciating moderator elevation policy. And people are demanding "transparency".

In a society, rights are accompanied by certain responsibilities. One has the right of free speech in the United States, for instance, but that right does not include libel and slander, or the right to endanger people by using your speech to create a panic. One has the right to keep and bear arms, but also a certain responsibility to bear those arms appropriately. As one member recently explained, "I hate freedom that restricts my right to kill a person who angers me or abuses me." Obviously, we take that point with a grain of salt, but it serves the present well enough: you don't kill someone just for looking at you wrongly.

What are the members' rights? What are their responsibilities? Presently, the responsibilities to carry out civilized discussions and provide support for rational arguments are notions that some of our members consider fascist. This board was never intended to be a general host for random graffiti. It has always been intended to explore scientific and philosophical issues in an academic context. That's easier said than done, of course. But failing to resolve the question of rights and responsibilities, some would suggest the invention of an entire government system to accommodate members' rights while eschewing any talk of responsibilities. At present, we don't tax the membership, and I have yet to hear of any plans to do so. There's no army, and thus no conscription. And what few rules we have seem too much to ask of many of our members. Still, though, we're supposed to invent some sort of complicated, transparent bureaucracy?

At some point, we should at least revisit the idea of how we regard this community in general, and how much of ourselves we invest in it. One of my colleagues recently advised that I was taking Sciforums too seriously because I was trying to find a context in which to view a certain member's seemingly unlikely claims about himself. (As an advocate of good faith in general, I was doubting certain vague claims to expertise that the member was reluctant to elaborate on. The question of "Who is lying?" carries considerable weight in addressing disputes between members.) Granting my esteemed colleague a measure of merit in the observation, what should I think of this whole notion that would treat the administrators and moderators as if they were a national government?

Perhaps under some future condition when the community is not being tormented by those who have invested in Sciforums their personal conflicts with ideas of authority, opening the moderators' deliberations to the public in some way might be feasible. At present, though, as recent events demonstrate, such a move would only further disrupt the community. If you look at us for a moment like firefighters, we run around dousing the flames when they come up. Some would complain that we just put out their campfire and ruined their weenie roast. Others would say we just stomped into their living room and drowned their chestnuts in a mud of fireplace ash. And, to be certain, we aren't perfect. But if we see a known arsonist walking down the street with a Zippo in one hand and a Molotov in the other, why in the world would we point him to the nearest hazardous chemical storage depot and say, "Have at it"?

If our more honest and respectable members feel somehow shorted by that outlook, I can only apologize. But if someone screams "fascist" after being thrown out of a city council meeting for masturbating while pinching a loaf on the carpet and singing "Jesus Loves Me" off-key as loudly as possible, who, really, is going to nod and say, "Yeah, those horrible fascists! How dare they prevent a man from making a rational petition to the city council!" I mean, at that point, is it really that he was thrown out for being a Christian?

 

Ah ok. Perhaps at some point I'll go back into the SFOG archives and take a look at this...

I assume that the 'proscribed process for contesting moderator action' is this post from James:

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1761621&postcount=2

My problem is with the following part:
**************************
* complaining that other people did something just as bad as you did, yet weren't moderated. Somebody else being worse than you doesn't excuse your actions. Two wrongs do not make a right.
**************************

You're right, 2 wrongs don't make a right. But what -really- irks me is that some can make personal attacks with impunity (examples I know well are KennyJC and John99), while others are called on it. I've never been called on anything (I like to think I'm fairly civil even under fairly adverse circumstances), but seeing others delivering personal attacks and getting away with it, I can understand while some who might normally be civil in a place where civility is enforced, lose their cool and respond in kind. In the forum I usually post in, Pseudoscience, I haven't seen anyone called on anything and I frequently have wished that some more civility was enforced at times (at present it doesn't seem so bad; I like to think that I set a good example ;-)).

I believe that Carcano's statement that having "written rules with mods who ignore them and censor members according to their own arbitrary opinion" being pretty bad to be very true. I admit that I haven't seen anyone get banned yet, but if what Carcano is claiming happens in this forum is true (and I certainly know that it has happened in other forums), then I think this should really be looked into.

 

Where the road takes us

Not exactly. Plazma clarifies a couple of posts later. A month later, Stryder extracted that post and translated it into a sticky thread in SFOG.

• Plazma's response to inquiry about complaint process
• Sticky thread: "Complaining about Moderators"​

One of the challenges we face as moderators is that we have different interpretations of the rules. Asguard's threshold for offense, for instance, is more sensitive than mine, while Superstring's is less. Additionally, we might consider that S.A.M.'s interpretation of whether we should do anything about that sense of offense is different from mine. And so on. And, on top of that, we all have certain hot buttons; some respond more harshly to religious freakiness, while I am less sympathetic in general to those whose offenses rendered do not include any sort of rational argument. In the end, in addition to being diverse in our perspectives, our standards are also, often, dynamic.

This has, of course, created some headaches. In some cases, the answer to, "Why wasn't _____ moderated too?" is, quite simply, Because it's beyond my jurisdiction; take it up with the relevant moderator.

Pseudoscience is a bit like Free Thoughts as I understand it. We tend to allow greater deviation in certain forms because of the nature of the forum. Generally speaking, Pseudoscience is speculative and creative, and there is a certain lexicon and style that we're generally—even superstitiously—familiar with when it comes to many of those issues. Stryder, I suppose, would provide a better analysis.

Another reason moderators often appear to ignore rules is that we're constantly trying to adjust to community standards. In EM&J I'm currently dealing with an issue of unsubstantiated dehumanization; just because it's not blacks portrayed as monkeys, or Jews as the Devil, or Arabs as dogs, does not mean it's not offensive and denigrating. I'm actually surprised at how many people seem to disagree with that.

And then our vigilance goes through phases. The summer saw me taking a generally lighter approach. After all, if my interference is what's causing some people to be so caustic and ridiculous, easing off ought to change the problem for the better, right?

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. Could have been worse, though.

Life goes on. Standards move around. We have frequent discussions about fixing standards, but the standards as I would explain them for EM&J aren't necessarily viable for Biology & Genetics. B&G standards won't work for Religion or Politics ... and in the end we just shrug and do our best.

I would also suggest that, while certain concepts seem self-evident—

—the application of that concept to the complaint at hand doesn't always work out. Once in a while, it's kind of like listening to a politician complain about lying; even when the other guy is lying, how is it that the one almost always misses the point? I've never figured that out. Although I'm afraid if I asked a politician, "Do you really think that's the important part?" they might say, "Yes. Why do you ask?"

And what to do then?

 

Initially Sciforums Moderators were left to create their own ruleset's for each forum and moderate how they saw fit. Obviously over the years that has caused problems because one person would get away with something in one subforum while someone else in another would potentially be banned for the same act.

This is not so much the fault of the Moderators but was due to the absence of an overall site set of rules where all moderators could follow and act as one unit with the same fairness.

There are some rules still lurking around (in fact you'll even find in the Pseudoscience forum an old one that was initially for Pseudoscience) however they've never been fully consolidated and made into "Simple" site rules. We had rules that have evolved over many different occurrence's over the years which has caused ammendments.

Obviously the Rules here at sciforums needs to be revamped to be Simplified, This should be done while updating and in honesty it should be posted both publically and perhaps also expressed via Email to those users listed on the database. (It would be a good idea to point out in emails that it's a one time administration broadcast on the Change of TOC/TOS/Rules, if people do not want to recieve administrative emails to login into the forum and turn them off etc.)

That should of course wait for the update since after all there will potentially be an influx of members returning to the forum, probably just to cancel their subscription but they would have returned none the less.

 

Moderators have to stop treating banning as an attractor. I've seen several moderators deliberately provoke people, so if you ask me to name one I will name several. If the moderators have anything to teach about proper behavior, they need to practice it to be credible.

 

Sounds good. So does what Tiassa and Stryder say. What are needed are concrete cases (the naming of those several, for instance, and cases where they allegedly goaded and then banned certain individuals). I think Tiassa may have kind of pointed out an interesting case (somewhere in the archives of this forum), but if someone would be so kind as to excerpt part of a few relevant posts, perhaps I could come to some sort of a conclusion instead of thinking "well, they could all -possibly- be right (or each a bit right) but I have no real idea as to the actual situation, so off I go...".

By the way Tiassa, you may have noticed that I've put in my 2 bits in a thread on EM & J that you may have been referring to...