Rules Enforcement

So then how does the lay user tell the difference between good moderation and insufficient moderation?

...I think the truest succinct answer I could give that would not make me enemies is that you really can't, not for sure.

Running a specialty shop where it's possible for a nerd with no life to read all posts and know all the regulars personally, like I do, there's always often stuff going on that doesn't show. I know a lot of privileged -mostly what people tell me about themselves privately- information that informs my decisions, and sometimes I am not at liberty to tell why a call I made that looks bad/unfair/etc. was actually righteous. If you can't keep confidences, you've got no business in forum management, but sometimes you have to let yourself look bad to keep faith, and that's just one of the suck parts of the job that can't be entirely avoided.

There's a whole class of crap a mod has to take sometimes that comes pretty automatically with the nerdbadge - and studying the culture here at CFC as I have been for several years now, I have to say that at this size a community, and the nature of this culture, it's not merely theoretically impossible to please everyone, it's an actual daily-proven certainty that you won't. I'd point for examples at all the long threads here in Site of the last few months - for every single time someone has said white there's people saying black and more seconding white and always even a few saying gray and/or chartreuse, and it's a very rare thing to see any consensus emerge about absolutely anything.

-How do you manage that?

God knows I'm not standing up for the CFC staff, but I can't claim to know all of what they're up against - just, I'm absolutely sure that I couldn't run CFC any better shy of there being -at a wild guess- 15 of me.

Keeping nerds happy and at peace with each other is herding cats, it really is.

BvBPL said:

So then how does the lay user tell the difference between good moderation and insufficient moderation?

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Good moderation obviously starts with good moderators. And a good moderator is one who is totally detached from the site's conversation. I've seen way too many times in my 22 years of being on the Net where a moderator was so invested in the conversation that their own righteousness came flowing through and they perceived themselves infaliable.

The best moderators I've experienced in the Civ community are Thunderfall here and Solver at WPC. Note that I make a bad moderator. I become invested in the conversation too. At least I could identify that in myself.

That kind of moderation, though, require a level of dedication that is a lot to ask for from unpaid volunteers. You're not only saddling them with work without giving them anymore than than fancy font on their username, you're basically telling them they have to stop enjoying the site in order to moderate.

It just isn't a practical, or even very reasonable standard.

No staff member should be so invested in a thread that they feel themselves to be infallible. I've messed up on occasion, and when it happened as a result of my misunderstanding a situation or not applying the rules correctly, I've made a point to correct the situation and apologize to the member affected.

It's not a sign of weakness for a staff member to apologize to a member when the staff member has made a mistake. On the contrary, I believe it shows respect to the membership the staff person serves (I really do see this as a matter of service to the forum community), and will hopefully result in an increase in respect from all involved.

Oda Nobunaga said:

That kind of moderation, though, require a level of dedication that is a lot to ask for from unpaid volunteers. You're not only saddling them with work without giving them anymore than than fancy font on their username, you're basically telling them they have to stop enjoying the site in order to moderate.

It just isn't a practical, or even very reasonable standard.

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That's the reason some people here have given for not accepting invitations to join staff. They don't want to limit their participation in various threads.

It's not that they can't post. It's a matter of recusing themselves from moderating a thread they're participating in. There's a sound reason for this, and it's to remove any temptation for, or even the perception of, bias and other abuses of authority. In such cases (at least in OT) there are plenty of other staff who can step in and moderate that thread.

Yes, definitely recusing yourself from moderating any matter where you are too involved personally (definitely any matter where the offense is in any way involving you or against you ; probably any matter involving a discussion you were a significant part of) is a good thing.

But the post I was replying too sounded like they were taking the idea a lot further.

Oda, I didn't mean become recluse to all conversation, but someone who can detach from the conversation.

It's more along the lines of keeping your personal involvement and emotion in a community separate to your moderating. This includes not letting your personal, political and other biases and opinions influence your moderating. Too often I see this occurring in forums everywhere.

Ahhh, I see. I misread your post, then, in which case I apologize.

To me, there's a bit of a catch-22 . Make the rules specific (so there is no opinion involved in enforcing them), and you run the risk of rule lawyers pushing the enveloppe to the extreme almost constantly and (essentially) getting away with murder on technicalities. Make the rules general and leave it to moderators to interpret, and you make their opinion matter, and while they can try to leave their politics out, it might still come out in their decisions.

Commodore said:

Were I a moderator, this is the type of post I would infract since it serves no purpose other than to antagonize the person it is directed against, which is a clear violation of the forum rules.

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I guess I'm glad you're not a moderator then, because I wouldn't want to take part in a forum where such a meaningless comment would lead to an infraction.

Anyway. OT is a slime pit. But I'm surprised that people find the moderation outside of the OT too lenient - it's way too strict and petty for my personal taste. And a lot different from most gaming communities in general. I'd guess it's the Non-RTS-Strategy-Community, but then one look at the Paradox Forums seems to contradict that thought pretty quickly.

Ryika said:

I guess I'm glad you're not a moderator then, because I wouldn't want to take part in a forum where such a meaningless comment would lead to an infraction.

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This depends on what your standards are, and the context of the conversation.
(Once upon a time....) we had long discussions about what can when be trolling/flaming/whatever, and the problem is that thinks can be seen differently, depending on context and reader.
Means he's not wrong on that, but...it depends.

EDIT: Additionally to that, in the right circumstances even his answer, your answer, and my answer could be warned, because it's in general better not to bicker about such things in public, because it will just lead to a longer spiral of bickering, will not help with the situation, and ultimatively the moderators should handle the situation, and not the users, because that's why we have them .

The_J said:

This depends on what your standards are, and the context of the conversation.
(Once upon a time....) we had long discussions about what can when be trolling/flaming/whatever, and the problem is that thinks can be seen differently, depending on context and reader.
Means he's not wrong on that, but...it depends.

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I'm not saying there isn't an argument to be made that such a post could "deserve" an infraction, I'm just saying that I wouldn't want it to get an infraction.

I'd prefer a forum where you can openly state your mind and are sometimes confronted with a post that isn't 100% constructive over a heavily moderated hug-box where you have to sugar-code ever word of every sentence in any situation.

Because those posts I can ignore, the constant "threat" of getting an infraction for just writing what I would normally say in a normal conversation is something that would really annoy me.

Although ironically I just realized that the thing that annoyed me the most in my time on Civfanatics was the fact that the mods did not (want to?) punish/incentive to change the passive-aggressive, dismissive attitude of a certain user in the Beyond Earth Forums for months.

So maybe I change my attitude to "There are some gaps to fill, but overall I think it's fine the way it is."

The_J said:

EDIT: Additionally to that, in the right circumstances even his answer, your answer, and my answer could be warned, because it's in general better not to bicker about such things in public, because it will just lead to a longer spiral of bickering, will not help with the situation, and ultimatively the moderators should handle the situation, and not the users, because that's why we have them .

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Yes, that I agree with. If these posts were made in a random thread a warning would obviously be reasonable, but given that mods are actively taking part in this "meta" thread this exchange of opinions seems to be completely within the realm of what is okay. The unofficial contract being that it's fine to discuss these matters here, for now at least. And that makes sense to me, after all, with no conversations taking place at all, how would mods know if they really moderate in a way that the users are happy with?

The_J said:

EDIT: Additionally to that, in the right circumstances even his answer, your answer, and my answer could be warned, because it's in general better not to bicker about such things in public, because it will just lead to a longer spiral of bickering, will not help with the situation, and ultimatively the moderators should handle the situation, and not the users, because that's why we have them .

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IMO this style of moderation only hinders conversation on the forum. Many times in the past I've seen topics start to get interesting, when in comes a mod to "wah wah wah" infraction the thread into silence.

Unless it gets to the point of slander and destruction, better to let the winds blow I say.

Dale said:

Note that I make a bad moderator.

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Note that I was there, and Dale was actually good at it - he made a pile of mistakes, cooth and diplomacy not being his greatest gift - but it was a mountain of things he did right, staying on the job, putting a -friendly, almost always- face on management and visibly being on top of technical issues and whatever else arose. He provided the members with leadership and set the tone of the culture far more than any other single person - and the forum in question wasn't in trouble until it had to soldier on without him.

I learned a non-trivial portion of what I know about forum management from watching what Dale did right. I hereby attack him in public for being too modest, even though he's been stealth-trolling me in this thread. The truth's the truth, and I had to speak up.

From my end, I would echo what others have said - if you're concerned that a post is slipping or has slipped through the net, report it. I think I read just about every report that comes in from OT (and definitely read every one that comes from WH), and it's extremely rare for one to go without some response or discussion by the staff. Sometimes that results in a decision to take no action, but I don't think there's a problem with a lack of time or inclination to read and act on the reports we receive. If anything, I suggest that the problem is that people are too shy to make reports - they don't have to be detailed, as the system flags up the post when it is reported, and it's usually obvious what is wrong with it. I'd also echo Boots in that you should definitely PM me if you don't understand a decision I've made.

Communication, in good faith, is definitely key to positive interactions between staff and members.

So is patience. I've encountered many moderators over a wide variety of forums who just parrot a rule and never explain their reasoning, or try to dig deeper to see if the whole thing was a misunderstanding.