Regarding NES Moderation

That really isn't important, and has nothing to do with this thread...

Well, as someone who has a position in #nes, I think it is relevant. Advocating genocide is beyond the pale and the sort of thing that will get someone banned from the room.

Lord_Iggy said:

Well, as someone who has a position in #nes, I think it is relevant. Advocating genocide is beyond the pale and the sort of thing that will get someone banned from the room.

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I want to believe the Hitler-support stuff was just to annoy me. The other genocidal words towards Jews in Israel were probably less "just to annoy". In any case, against popular belief, I have no interest in getting people banned just because they don't like me.

Now back on subject.

North King said:

Bullying rather requires a power differential in favor of the bully.

As has been made abundantly clear, non-moderators clearly have very little power in the current schema.

There's got to be a serious discuss of the interpretation and implementation of forum-wide rules here, and PDMA has to be allowed, or this is a frankly worthless exercise in self-congratulation: "Oh look how well we protected the right of everyone to post here."

1) Inclusivity is not a virtue if you've coupled it with a series of rules that make it impossible to call out hate speech if its couched in the politest possible language.
2) The grievances in question are frankly very specific circumstances. We're not going to get anywhere dealing in hypotheticals. The way CFC moderation has acted here has made me, personally, feel unsafe. This community is inclusive, but not inclusive for me. We are not going to get anywhere if I am disallowed from saying why. Granted...:
3) Everyone already knows the story in its broadest outlines; I forwarded my communication with the moderators to almost every NESer who posted in the last six months. Moreover, the blanket ban on Symphony's post has ensured that pretty much everyone and their uncle has read it. Sorry.
4) If there's one thing that was made obvious in this exchange, it's that where the NESing community has an imagined connection to a greater CFC community, at least as far as the moderation staff is concerned, NESing is not an integral part of the CFC community, and perhaps not a welcome one at all.
5) The move has already happened. Let's not mince words here. The move happened, and it's pretty clear that no one beyond maybe BSmith and Bird gives a crap.
6) Moderator communication is so opaque that I frankly have no idea if anything I've said is being read. Only Bird has had the courtesy to even reply to me.
7) Which feeds into the mutual respect that we have for Bird and Bird for us, and the fact that zero people outside of Bird share that. "It is a vibrant community that has a lot to offer to both its members and CFC as a whole." <- I have absolutely no reason to believe this quote reflects anything other than an opinion shared by those two people. The communications of various moderators have made that pretty clear.


Anything else I have to say is impermissible under the rules of PDMA.

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Birdjaguar takes off his moderator hat.

As a late comer to this party, I get to "Monday morning quarterback" the situation even though it is Thursday night. NESing is a pretty interesting community that I joined in 2006 and began moderating in a few years later. It is a community of very smart and interesting people, but you all can be a bit high strung and impulsive. As I look at this situation is see that an inappropriate, overly political post that belonged in OT, escalated into the furor we now have. Perhaps our modern age fosters impatience and the need for immediate response. One bad posts leads to others and the frenzy begins: more posts, more mods, more moderator action and heightened urgency to "solve the problem". What's done is done and now all we can try to do is put poor Humpty back together again.

My happenstance return last night brought me into this thread and I've not actively participated in the staff discussions (I have read them though) nor have I responded to any of the many pms I found last night related to this (except to NK). What I have seen is two very well entrenched camps with a few stragglers wandering about in no man's land. There are lots of very sound reasons for the seemingly intractable positions. Some of those positions have been built up over several years. Both mods and NESers have put themselves in terrible positions in regards to "the other side". Positions that are unlikely to ever change. The poorly positioned NESers are truly disadvantaged because their foes have all the power here and when pushed hard, powerful people use their power. It is too bad that so many minds are already made up. Everyone is impatient to act whether it be to move away or send away.

The bigger picture, the longer view, that NK and others have touched upon, has been hidden by the current rounds of anger and recriminations that we so easily lapse into. My only advice to all is to STOP! Step back from your anger, from your impulse to act and get your point across one more time with force. What you want to do now can always be done later. No one will die if we pause. CFC will not fall into anarchy if an infraction is delayed or a ban stayed.

Those who want to leave, make you way to the exit, but leave the door open a crack. For those seeking retribution, your pound of flesh will be just as sweet tomorrow. If NESing is important to CFc, it is important enough pause and let thoughtfulness have a chance to salvage what it may.

tl;dr:

Thirteen steps along
Broken ice had refrozen--
Unlucky fellow

Moderator Action: Flaming and libel portions deleted
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Sure, Amon was probated as well, but that was for calling somebody else a racist, which is a whole another pile of bizarre.

Racism is fairly explicitly banned on CFC, but god forbid you call anybody else a racist. "Report them to the mods and move on," you say, but when its been shown that you have no problems with advocacy of domestic terrorism the issue is worse. Even then, what constitutes racism to the moderation staff? If I quote from Klan texts and replace "black people" with "Urban youth", you start getting blurred lines that aren't great for moderation staff to deal with. Plenty of forums have absolutely no issue with veiled racism - the only way to deal with that is to just point out that the poster is a racist.

Please don't take moderator action on the above post because GK is technically breaking a rule. What he's discussing is the heart of the issue, and if that's censored, then the rules are either unable to be discussed publicly (which is kinda dumb and totally invalidates the purpose of this thread) or being enforced too vigorously.

EQandcivfanatic said:

But why don't you just use #nes then? Non-NES, off topic conversations are clearly beyond the point of the WWW thread.

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Not everyone goes on #nes bruh, or is on when I'm on. Also weirdly enough, a thread is a much better place for serious discussions than a chatroom. Easier to keep track of everything, lends itself to better thought out arguments, doesn't disappear when I log off, ect.

Grandkhan said:

Racism is fairly explicitly banned on CFC, but god forbid you call anybody else a racist. "Report them to the mods and move on," you say, but when its been shown that you have no problems with advocacy of domestic terrorism the issue is worse. Even then, what constitutes racism to the moderation staff? If I quote from Klan texts and replace "black people" with "Urban youth", you start getting blurred lines that aren't great for moderation staff to deal with. Plenty of forums have absolutely no issue with veiled racism - the only way to deal with that is to just point out that the poster is a racist.

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This attitude had been the law of the land in non-civ sections of the forums for as long as I can remember.

Hmm....

I don't think anyone read BirdJaguar's post ^^

The whole Amon-terrorist thing doesn't move me at all. Flew completely under my radar. And I'm not down with all of the attitudes express in #NES and WWW.

I think the underlying issue here is the NES community not being allowed to freely express itself in a WWW-type thread. I think everything has spiralled off from that central issue.

The solution is as simple as it is, apparently, unpalatable for the mods. That is, to have a dedicated 'spam/venting' thread, or ideally several such threads for different levels of debating-ness, in this actual forum, for this actual community, away from OT. Threads that don't have to be entirely NES-focused. Many of us have known each other for years. Talking in NES threads about NES specific stuff will not cut it.

Many of us don't interact with OT. I don't want to go to OT to post to fellow NESers. That wont work anyway because of OT randoms walking in on our casual chat. It just doesn't work.

EDIT: A few years back, I remember we actually tried to start a NES WWW thread in OT, when we temporarily got closed down here. But that wasn't allowed either - it had to be a thread about a general topic for all of OT to post in. So we couldn't win!

We're not a homogeneous mass, that mods can treat as one culture, and expect to use the site in the same way. I believe many of us don't interact with the wider site very much at all, and many of us don't play Civ these days. I personally have become entirely NES focused with regards to where I actually post.

If it was as simple as WWW posts breaking site rules, I think we'd generally support the mods, we could regroup and settle down again. But so long as WWW is enforced as 'NES relevant only / no spam' then its pouring fuel on the fire.

I guess the reason I 'embraced change' this time around is the feeling that, while we could sweep all of this under the carpet for now, its just waiting to blow up again at a later date. Its a fundamental incompatibility. I'd rather be in a settled position rather than worrying about which of my players is banned / suicided / on strike, or when the next big argument is going to blow up. And yes - I want to communicate openly and casually to this specific community. Chat is not a substitute for the reasons already outlined, not to mention Time Zone Differences (I'm a British citizen).

Erez is one of the few who would apparently want, what is to me, a very 'sterile' forum. Again I don't agree with a lot of people's attitudes, but I recognise the need for something to keep this community together. Currently other sites are offering that.

Having said all that, I understand the mod's position. CFC is alot bigger than NES, and vice-versa. I don't know if we can justifiy getting special treatment.

So.... I honestly think this is all for the best. Maybe some of us come back with our tails between our legs at a later date, maybe not - maybe the remnants CFC NES go into the melting pot with IoT and something awesome evolves from that, carried on by inlfux of new players... Will be interesting to see!

Birdjaguar said:

The poorly positioned NESers are truly disadvantaged because their foes have all the power here and when pushed hard, powerful people use their power.

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BirdJaguar, with the greatest respect for everything you've done to nurture NES - I personally think that's a dangerous opinion you're expressing there, and that its part of the problem.

When enough of us reached the point of having nothing to lose - not having much ties to wider CFC, friends banned etc - it became a simple equation. We're not forced to use CFC, as the mods like to remind us. We have power over ourselves - power to step out from under CFC's wing/boot and take the core of our community to another site, and now we're experimenting in using and asserting that power. I think that's a big attraction for a lot of people involved in this as well.

IE: on The-Frontier, we can open several WWW-type threads if we want, with different themes of conversation. We're given responsibility. If we spam is 'pooing on our own carpet' .

EDIT: remember the good old days when our forum mod was also a NES mod? We didn't feel disenfranchised then. We felt understood. WWW was handled with a lose reign and nobody died. Also, nobody seriously considered moving forum.

Sterile? How did that come from what I said?

erez87 said:

Sterile? How did that come from what I said?

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Well it seems you're happy to go without any wider social interaction on the forum. By sterile I mean not caring about the other people beyond what orders/stories they post

I disliked a lot of what people used to say in WWW. Lately, it was abused and it did go to some dark places. People like Symphony put people off even posting there. But... we need it, or something like it. Problems may have come from trying to channel everything into one thread, as well. I had a good response to my 'happy edition' thread, with people posting who had been lurking for a long time.

Yes... I dunno... We may fumble the freedoms given to us but we certainly blow up when they are taken away. No wonder this is such a headache for the mods!

I suggest you read what I actually wrote... (Also what BirdJ wrote, since you got him very wrong as far as I can see).

Also I don't think naming people will help in any way.

We value NES. We value all of our communities and sub-communities. After advocacy, we elevated NES to its own sub forum. I believe that post count used to be turned off in it, and we instated that. I even vaguely recall discussion about the while we wait threads (at least I know what WWW stands for...) and felt they should continue, as it helps the community.

We do these things because they are the right thing to do for our members. We do these things in all our forums. We may be "staff", but we are volunteers and we are servants. We do not run the forums for money, for ego, for status. We do it because of a love for the game of civilization, and For the love of the community that has grown and flourished from that, in many unexpected directions.

Think about this. What do you think our motivations are?

We do not consider NES to be a problem child. We do value it. I, personally, have an impression of a community that, to an extent, wants to be "left alone". Am I right or wrong? The oblique and implicit criticism of BSmith by some here reinforces my perception.

Regardless, there is a form of social contract in all our communities. That social contract is essentially that a platform is provided for people to discuss issues, play games, catch up with friends, create, compete and many other activities, but the price they pay is to be respectful to each other. That (respect) is largely what a lot of the rules are about.

It would appear that some here don't feel respected by the staff. I note that some people here are not being particularly respectful of the staff. Please think about this, and how you may choose to interact. Some moderators in particular deserve more courtesy than they have been shown.

I will look into this in some more detail, but as I understand it, people took offence at some political views, and were unhappy with how the moderating staff handled those. Really? Is that all this is about? I ask not to trivialise, but to understand if there are deeper issues. While I will look at it objectively (and clearly do not have all the facts), my initial reading is of people taking a dislike to a certain person and choosing to extrapolate or twist those views presented to a significant degree. It appears to be a concerted effort to have that person dealt with by the staff, if not driven out of this community. We then saw an escalation. Certain vocal members expressing dissatisfaction that moderators had different opinions to them, rallying colleagues for a more concerted effort. Including fabricating a PM for the express purpose of getting a moderator sacked, and trying to undermine the staff by spreading that into other forums. Then we see other efforts to undermine staff and create a narrative based on twisting context. No-one was threatened with legal action. "Knife to the throat" was deliberately taken out of context.

This is at odds with what CFC is about. BirdJaguar is a wise man. Stop, and take a deep breath.

Despite all this, BSmith is showing some real leadership here, and is to be congratulated for that. He is giving you an opportunity to have a mature discussion about how you want your forum to grow. It needs to be an objective discussion. Opposing viewpoints are welcome. If they are respectful and compelling, they will (of course) be considered. However, first seek to understand, and balance inquiry with advocacy.

What are our motivations? What are yours? Are they aligned?

I think that the problem is shown by the fact that so many of us could easily be convinced that the fault lied with the mods.

It's not a mission for us posters to have faith in the mods. The mission falls squarely on the shoulders of the mod to forge tied with community and set up a trustworthy or, at the very least, a reasonable face. This has not happened. The NES forum have been left alone without moderators for an extended period of time with only interaction with the staff being occasional forays by some mods with the purpose of taking moderator actions: deleting spams, banning people, etc.

We can easily be persuaded by our more vocal members of the community because the moderators have failed, over the last couple of years, to persuade us that they can be reasoned with-that they are our peers and not our overseers.

Only way for this relationship to be salvaged is a "bridge" moderator. A NESer who also is a moderator who can act as our peers while enforcing the forum rules. We require more amicable interactions with the moderation staff.

(please note that I wrote this post before reading ainwood's above)

I'd like to say that I am between a rock and a hard place. On one hand I want to keep the WWW thread as open as possible and not restrict what is being said there. After the first initial flare up I posted this after reminding everyone what the original intent of the thread was:

BSmith1068 said:

That said I am pretty lax in the enforcement of the spam clause, but when I see the discussion heading to a place where infractions could be imminent I'll step in to draw things back to the original intent of the thread.

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BSmith1068 said:

Bottom line: behave yourselves and I won't care what you talk about.

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I truly believe this. I am fine with a place in the NES forum where you can talk about whatever you want to talk about. The problem comes when things resort to flaming and personal attacks. Those are unacceptable regardless of context or other poster's actions.

That brings me to the other hand: I don't want to (and shouldn't) be the thought police. People will say offensive things. This is a fact in life. If things are too offensive or you think they cross the line, there is a process in place by which you can ask to have that offensive material reviewed and acted upon if deemed necessary. If that material is not acted on or you disagree with the mod (me in this case) you can escalate the issue to a super mod or admin for a broader review.

Unfortunately in the recent weeks that process has not been followed. Instead a few posters took it upon themselves to knowingly (and premeditatively) break the forum rules to make a "stand" for what they feel is right. In doing so they understandably received negative attention from me and some of the other mods.

I've gone back and reviewed the past couple of weeks of posts so I could get a better perspective on the current discussion and I have found a few interesting things.

I looked at all of the controversial posts that some of you are claiming are inciting violence and are tantamount to terrorism and guess what? None of the ones I found were reported. None.

Additionally these posts came within a discussion with other posters. They did not come in a vacuum. I would even go so far as to say that some of those other posters engaged with Amon with the express desire to troll him and get him to say controversial stuff.

When I saw this happening I stepped in and asked everyone not to get personal. Immediately after that warning, things kept getting personal in direct disregard to my post. Individuals on both sides of the coin received infractions and things kept escalating. One poster earned a 1 week ban due to accumulated points – points that in a PM to me replying to one of the early infractions were deemed acceptable and that he "wore them with pride".

What we had here was not some innocent NESsers falling afoul of the law. We had a concerted effort by a few individuals to actively attack another poster and draw that poster into retaliating and damn the consequences.

When given the natural consequences of that action, it seems that a broader effort was put into place to spin the situation as the evil mods want to clamp down on NES and they tolerate and even condone the controversial points of view that they themselves incited.

As we have seen this effort has stooped to the level of faking infraction PMs to make the mods out as monsters themselves. I can only imagine what else in the commonly accepted narrative has been faked or otherwise embellished by parties with an axe to grind.

Throughout my entire tenure as the mod of this forum I have strived to make things as fair and accessible to everyone. I have not taken a heavy hand in enforcing the no OT discussions in WWW. I have strived to give warnings and mod text to let you know when it was time to cool down before infracting, and heaven forbid banning posters. When I have infracted I start on the low end of points and work my way up to the higher point infractions. I have mostly left you to your own devices until something flares up and I have to step in. Perhaps in some paradoxical way I have been too lax in moderating you guys. When given large freedoms a few of you exploit that and get carried away, then when the inevitable reigning in of those excesses happens it is viewed as an overreach by the mods.

I have no desire to be antagonistic towards this community. I have no desire to be heavy handed and overbearing with my authority. But I do have an authority that I have to respect and I have a duty here to enforce the rules of this forum. Thing is I can't do that on my own and in a vacuum. It takes an understanding of the community of what my role is, what my limitations are, and frankly what I am realistically able to be and do. And let's face it: I will make mistakes.

I need your help by understanding the rules of the site, and to work within the process if things go off the tracks. I need your help to understand that things don't always get solved in 15 minutes, or even 24 hours. I need your help to work with me to make sure things run smoothly and you have a great place to run and participate in NESes.

You guys are smart. You are creative. You have something unique here with this forum. Let's not throw that all away just because a few individuals have been good at manipulating the system and can write a good story that furthers their cause.

I can't stop any of you from leaving or running NESes on other sites. Frankly I think it is great that NESsing is expanding across the internet and reaching new audiences. But I can ask you that if you stay that you become part of the solution and not part of the problem.

I'd also like to say that I have been part of this community for some time. I may not have been or be the most talkative or most prolific poster. I may not participate in all that many NESes but before becoming a moderator of this forum I have been involved in a number of NESes:

LizNES5: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying, And Love The Bomb
TerraNES: The Civil Experiment
GamezNES - The Setting Sun
BirdNES 4: Song of the Nile
SKNES: Architecture of Aggression
OptNES III: Foundry of Nations
Immaculate NES Five: Blood From A Stone

I also have severe time limitations on when I can post. I have a family, a full time job and other responsibilities outside of CFC and other internet forums. I literally can't devote as much time as I would like and as I have in the past to participating in NESes and other activities.

Long story short, to be called a complete outsider that doesn't "get" NES is not only incorrect, it is somewhat insulting and hurtful. How many NESes must one play before they are a NESer? How many years must one be around?

I really appreciate the effort put into those posts, BSmith and ainwood. I was always of the opinion that the flamewar over Amon's views, however reprehensible they were, was disproportionate. However that doesn't change that his views were alarming.

I will say the following; you and ainwood have made an effort to express positive thoughts towards the NESing community. Birdjaguar's post, describing the sentiments of the mod forum towards us as "ugly", does not allay the suspicions of many within NESing that there are many mods who view us as troublemakers and rabble rousers. This speaks to a personal lack of humility on behalf of SOME mods that the community finds particularly galling.

The arrogance, still unaddressed, with which we were treated in this thread by Lefty made things even worse. It is these high-minded attitudes and the belief that moderator culture prizes enforcement over discussion that is inflaming the community.

With that said, there is a possible solution outlined by Birdjaguar, and that is reconciliation. As a result of this catastrophe, several NES forum members are currently laboring under long bans, including Crezth, Luckymoose, and ChiefDesigner. The fact that they are banned is serving to drive them actively away from this forum.

A general amnesty and ban reversal for everyone involved in these disturbances would go a long way to proving that the moderators are more interested in keeping those members here at CFC.

Seon said:

Only way for this relationship to be salvaged is a "bridge" moderator. A NESer who also is a moderator who can act as our peers while enforcing the forum rules. We require more amicable interactions with the moderation staff.

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Agreed. Though I still think Iggy would make a better mod than me.

@Thlayli: Couldn't it be argued that some NESers are predisposed to dislike the moderators? Maybe some moderators view us as rabble-rousers and trouble makers, because some of us are rabble-rousers and trouble makers. This whole "crisis" escalated over a ridiculously short amount of time, and it just seems to me that while perhaps some moderators could do a better job leaving us alone, NESers could also afford to try to meet them at least halfway, rather essentially saying, "It's our way or we take the highway."