I agree. It is not possible, nor feasible, to assess the more subtle version of trolling. Moderators should not have to deal with this.
Red Diamond Threads
- Thread starter Birdjaguar
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I agree. It is not possible, nor feasible, to assess the more subtle version of trolling. Moderators should not have to deal with this.
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
In this case, yes - Hafiz didn't take the bait. By itself that doesn't excuse setting the bait.
MobBoss
Off-Topic Overlord
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
@Takhisis
That's up to the mods, isn't it? Our best posters can usually identify it and call it out for what it is, which doesn't disrupt the thread and reflects somewhat poorly on the baiter. Less attentive posters, and even the best when not thinking carefully, may well take the bait and run off the topic.
I'm not saying whether it should be infractable, but there's no question that it's potentially disruptive.
That's up to the mods, isn't it? Our best posters can usually identify it and call it out for what it is, which doesn't disrupt the thread and reflects somewhat poorly on the baiter. Less attentive posters, and even the best when not thinking carefully, may well take the bait and run off the topic.
I'm not saying whether it should be infractable, but there's no question that it's potentially disruptive.
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
We're talking about intent, then, which none of us can read. If something is flamebait, which I suppose is open to interpretation, then its purpose is to be disruptive.
@MobBoss
@MobBoss
Let's say my stand alone response to your post was:Except....how do you know it was 'bait'?
The intent of "common sense" in that post would seem infractable in some cases but not in others. If I had posted those two words in response to another poster or if another less notorious poster than I had used those two words in response to you, then those two words could be seen as fairly innocent. Given the context though (and without this explanation to row the boat into a safe harbor), it would appear to most that know our history to be some combination of flaming, trolling, and/or, including, but not limited to baiting. Should it be infractable? In my opinion - yes in a RD thread, no in a non-RD thread, though the opinion of those handing out the soccer cards would likely differ.
MobBoss
Off-Topic Overlord
Well, fwiw, I'm not a fan of the 'I know fine art when I see it' approach. Far too subjective, given myriad different styles, verbiage, and ability of written english.
You're correct: you three each at least said something, but each person seemed to have more to say . My mod tags are mostly regarding the +1 pc nature of most of the other comments.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
Why can't you say something succinct about what happened and it still be discussing the issue at hand? Not every time you have a discussion has to be with lots of words. What do you expect from such threads, a long winded treatise about the issue?
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
So questions can't be used as bait?Except....how do you know it was 'bait'?
Thank you Defiant. well said.
In part the RD designation was to reduce moderator efforts in having to deal with this type of situation, by limiting the number of threads where we have to look at them. Mark and defiant have both raised the larger and more difficult question: can such posts be moderated well/consistently and should they be moderated at all. The answer is not clear to me, nor is it mine to make.
Not unexpectedly, I have been asked about the appropriateness of using a real example of a reported post (with names changed), but without the entire context. I have done so for a couple of reasons.
Early in this thread I was asked about the lack of member participation in creating RD and about more transparency in moderator discussions. The posts in question seemed to fit nicely into the discussion about what RD will actually mean and how specific situations will be handled.
The discussion here mirrors many we have every day in staff: 1 point; 2 points he should know better; take no action; post a warning. Reading the page before and the page after can help, but the OT mods are a diverse group and we often come to differing conclusions reading the same material. In this case I don't think any action was taken. This type of report is among the most difficult to moderate.
This brings us back to the Mark and Defiant: What kind of discussions should RD ones be? Do we need to redefine what is acceptable to meet the needs and expectations for a forum that is 10 years older?
Should mods stop trying to do the impossible? How do we balance order and chaos in an internet community?
In part the RD designation was to reduce moderator efforts in having to deal with this type of situation, by limiting the number of threads where we have to look at them. Mark and defiant have both raised the larger and more difficult question: can such posts be moderated well/consistently and should they be moderated at all. The answer is not clear to me, nor is it mine to make.
Not unexpectedly, I have been asked about the appropriateness of using a real example of a reported post (with names changed), but without the entire context. I have done so for a couple of reasons.
Early in this thread I was asked about the lack of member participation in creating RD and about more transparency in moderator discussions. The posts in question seemed to fit nicely into the discussion about what RD will actually mean and how specific situations will be handled.
The discussion here mirrors many we have every day in staff: 1 point; 2 points he should know better; take no action; post a warning. Reading the page before and the page after can help, but the OT mods are a diverse group and we often come to differing conclusions reading the same material. In this case I don't think any action was taken. This type of report is among the most difficult to moderate.
This brings us back to the Mark and Defiant: What kind of discussions should RD ones be? Do we need to redefine what is acceptable to meet the needs and expectations for a forum that is 10 years older?
Should mods stop trying to do the impossible? How do we balance order and chaos in an internet community?
I've been struggling to find the right words to express my point. I've said the same thing a number of times in a number of places.
The biggest part of the problem is the people who can skate the rules while deliberately baiting and pissing off others. In the quoted example, the one person uses a non-sequiter strawman to instigate the other. But, through great experience of doing the same, does so in a way that falls beneath the moderation threshold. This type of person does far more long term damage to civil discussion then a dozen people who scream and swear at each other.
And yet, even after years of experience watching these people, nothing is done about them.
I've tried to express this a number of times in a number of ways: By not dealing with this, the staff are rewarding the worst people and driving out better posters. Everyone loses. As Defiant said, the RDs as seen so far make it even harder for people because it makes it even easier for the cautious and skilled trolls to win.
The biggest part of the problem is the people who can skate the rules while deliberately baiting and pissing off others. In the quoted example, the one person uses a non-sequiter strawman to instigate the other. But, through great experience of doing the same, does so in a way that falls beneath the moderation threshold. This type of person does far more long term damage to civil discussion then a dozen people who scream and swear at each other.
And yet, even after years of experience watching these people, nothing is done about them.
I've tried to express this a number of times in a number of ways: By not dealing with this, the staff are rewarding the worst people and driving out better posters. Everyone loses. As Defiant said, the RDs as seen so far make it even harder for people because it makes it even easier for the cautious and skilled trolls to win.
And how would you "deal" with them?
Moderating such posting is not always straight forward and judgments differ among moderators. How much of the problem is in the post and how much in the recipient or audience of the post?
What if more people ignored more of what pissed them off? I know how i would moderate things if I was thesoul sole moderator, but I am not and the example we are talking about will generate differing opinions among staff and posters alike.
How do we measure how much it disrupts a discussion and is that more or less important than how much it irritates another poster?
Moderating such posting is not always straight forward and judgments differ among moderators. How much of the problem is in the post and how much in the recipient or audience of the post?
What if more people ignored more of what pissed them off? I know how i would moderate things if I was the
How do we measure how much it disrupts a discussion and is that more or less important than how much it irritates another poster?
MobBoss
Off-Topic Overlord
People actually having a bit thicker skin is a rather novel idea, and probably one of the best ones I've heard around here in quite awhile. Bravo.
MobBoss
Off-Topic Overlord
Not everyone finds that kind of thing aggravating, and I dont see how removing people in order to please a select few is making OT a better place. In fact, I think doing so would just make it another online version of Orwell's Animal Farm.
Is that something everyone wants? OT to be a place where 'all posters are equal, just some posters are more equal than others'?
Hmm. Fwiw, I tend to believe if you take all the spice out of a dish, you end up with a pretty tasteless dish.
A few general comments.
We can't act as the argument police looking for logical inconsistencies, but part of the idea here is to act as some sort of lighthouse guiding people away from the rocks. One of the key motivations of this idea was that it's better to prevent problematic behaviour from occurring that infracting it after it has. Acting as that lighthouse does mean enforcing a higher standard, but that doesn't translate to 'harsher and heavier moderation', because it is aimed to reduce the number of shipwrecks that have to be infracted. If we are guiding two participants in a discussion away from dangerous territory rather than infracting them once they get there, that isn't really heavier or harsher moderation.
As part of this, what you may notice is a lot of things that we frown upon, but that we may not infract. Some of the misgivings at this initiative seem to be that you're going to get infracted if you make a post that is ever-so-slightly under the required contributive level. That is not necessarily the case. If you repeatedly do this, you will be infracted, and we are definitely going to work to encourage you away from doing so, but this encouragement is quite likely to be in the form of mod tags and less formal warnings than in the form of pulling out the cards. This type of approach will hopefully have the effect of reducing the number of incidences that get out of hand without having to slap everything with a two-pointer. The point being; heavier moderation in terms of the standard expected does not necessarily translate to heavier punishments for honest mistakes or posts that aren't troublesome.
Another thing that perhaps needs mentioning is that it would be really nice if some people self-moderated to a greater extent. Your posts are your responsibility, and whilst you may be provoked into some sort of negative reaction (and this is largely what the RD designation is meant to counter), it is still your responsibility to make sure you do not reply in kind. What we often see is 'tiresome bickering', often in the form of 'quote-wars'. And whilst we will be attempting to eliminate this sort of behaviour, it would be really good if the posters involved would self-moderate a little and not get drawn into such a situation, only to blame it on the provocation of the other poster.
I feel there was a reasonable amount of misunderstanding at the beginning of this thread. I don't only mean that the posters misunderstood the moderators (and that's fair enough, given that we see different pictures of the situation), but that I didn't really understand some of the complaints being made. Viewing this initiative from the ground that it is designed to reduce the need for heavier moderation, and designed to allow for more fun, it's hard to see why you'd be against it. But without knowing that context, and without being able to know that context, it's fair enough to be left with that impression (and hopefully some of it has been reassured). I also didn't really understand why people would not want this RD designation on their threads (I can understand that an OP would know better than a moderator what the OP wants, but the misunderstanding is in why they would not want the RD designation). I still don't entirely, given that from our side of things, this is only designed to get rid of troublesome behaviour. From this viewpoint, not wanting an RD designation on your thread could only be for the reason of wanting troublesome behaviour. But, perhaps instead it's because of a fear that fun posting will not be allowed, and OPs would want that in their thread, even at the risk of trollish behaviour. At the moment there aren't many Red Diamond threads in the forum. Why is that? To attempt to clear up this misunderstanding; if you are starting a thread looking for discussion on a vaguely serious issue, why would you not want the RD designation applied?
A supplementary question: would you be happy with your thread having the RD designation applied as an alternative to having the thread locked?
I also noticed a couple of people saying that they think moderation is way too heavy in general and that OT should be largely left to its own devices. Firstly, '14 mods' does not mean double the moderation of 7 mods. It means that mods can take breaks, and don't have the same personal workload. Secondly, although this is a line trotted out perhaps a little too much, it remains true; OT has to fit in with the rest of the site, and not the other way around. We can have OT specific policies, and customise our moderation to deal with this specific subforum, but it has to fit within the same moderating paradigm as the rest of the site. Leaving OT to its own devices whilst cracking down on trollish comments in the Civ forums is not something that is going to be done. If we were to do that, OT would simply become the refuge for CFC's trolls, a playground where they can bring their arguments from the other parts of the site. That is not something we want. And whilst some people may find trolling between established members a fun spectacle, or a spice added to the dish, that is also something that we don't want, and that we can't square with the how the rest of the site is moderated.
Also, regarding one-word responses. If you can convey a contribution in one-word, then that's okay. The idea here isn't to place a minimum word count on posts. However, if you're just replying to a thread to say, 'incredible' or 'awesome' or something not very substantive, then it isn't really a contribution. We're attempting to encourage you to actually extrapolate on that and turn it into something that can contribute to the discussion.
Also, remember that if you are wanting to discuss more specific issues that you may not be allowed to discuss in public, our PM boxes are always open. Feedback is always welcome!
We can't act as the argument police looking for logical inconsistencies, but part of the idea here is to act as some sort of lighthouse guiding people away from the rocks. One of the key motivations of this idea was that it's better to prevent problematic behaviour from occurring that infracting it after it has. Acting as that lighthouse does mean enforcing a higher standard, but that doesn't translate to 'harsher and heavier moderation', because it is aimed to reduce the number of shipwrecks that have to be infracted. If we are guiding two participants in a discussion away from dangerous territory rather than infracting them once they get there, that isn't really heavier or harsher moderation.
As part of this, what you may notice is a lot of things that we frown upon, but that we may not infract. Some of the misgivings at this initiative seem to be that you're going to get infracted if you make a post that is ever-so-slightly under the required contributive level. That is not necessarily the case. If you repeatedly do this, you will be infracted, and we are definitely going to work to encourage you away from doing so, but this encouragement is quite likely to be in the form of mod tags and less formal warnings than in the form of pulling out the cards. This type of approach will hopefully have the effect of reducing the number of incidences that get out of hand without having to slap everything with a two-pointer. The point being; heavier moderation in terms of the standard expected does not necessarily translate to heavier punishments for honest mistakes or posts that aren't troublesome.
Another thing that perhaps needs mentioning is that it would be really nice if some people self-moderated to a greater extent. Your posts are your responsibility, and whilst you may be provoked into some sort of negative reaction (and this is largely what the RD designation is meant to counter), it is still your responsibility to make sure you do not reply in kind. What we often see is 'tiresome bickering', often in the form of 'quote-wars'. And whilst we will be attempting to eliminate this sort of behaviour, it would be really good if the posters involved would self-moderate a little and not get drawn into such a situation, only to blame it on the provocation of the other poster.
I feel there was a reasonable amount of misunderstanding at the beginning of this thread. I don't only mean that the posters misunderstood the moderators (and that's fair enough, given that we see different pictures of the situation), but that I didn't really understand some of the complaints being made. Viewing this initiative from the ground that it is designed to reduce the need for heavier moderation, and designed to allow for more fun, it's hard to see why you'd be against it. But without knowing that context, and without being able to know that context, it's fair enough to be left with that impression (and hopefully some of it has been reassured). I also didn't really understand why people would not want this RD designation on their threads (I can understand that an OP would know better than a moderator what the OP wants, but the misunderstanding is in why they would not want the RD designation). I still don't entirely, given that from our side of things, this is only designed to get rid of troublesome behaviour. From this viewpoint, not wanting an RD designation on your thread could only be for the reason of wanting troublesome behaviour. But, perhaps instead it's because of a fear that fun posting will not be allowed, and OPs would want that in their thread, even at the risk of trollish behaviour. At the moment there aren't many Red Diamond threads in the forum. Why is that? To attempt to clear up this misunderstanding; if you are starting a thread looking for discussion on a vaguely serious issue, why would you not want the RD designation applied?
A supplementary question: would you be happy with your thread having the RD designation applied as an alternative to having the thread locked?
I also noticed a couple of people saying that they think moderation is way too heavy in general and that OT should be largely left to its own devices. Firstly, '14 mods' does not mean double the moderation of 7 mods. It means that mods can take breaks, and don't have the same personal workload. Secondly, although this is a line trotted out perhaps a little too much, it remains true; OT has to fit in with the rest of the site, and not the other way around. We can have OT specific policies, and customise our moderation to deal with this specific subforum, but it has to fit within the same moderating paradigm as the rest of the site. Leaving OT to its own devices whilst cracking down on trollish comments in the Civ forums is not something that is going to be done. If we were to do that, OT would simply become the refuge for CFC's trolls, a playground where they can bring their arguments from the other parts of the site. That is not something we want. And whilst some people may find trolling between established members a fun spectacle, or a spice added to the dish, that is also something that we don't want, and that we can't square with the how the rest of the site is moderated.
Also, regarding one-word responses. If you can convey a contribution in one-word, then that's okay. The idea here isn't to place a minimum word count on posts. However, if you're just replying to a thread to say, 'incredible' or 'awesome' or something not very substantive, then it isn't really a contribution. We're attempting to encourage you to actually extrapolate on that and turn it into something that can contribute to the discussion.
Also, remember that if you are wanting to discuss more specific issues that you may not be allowed to discuss in public, our PM boxes are always open. Feedback is always welcome!
