ainwood said:
Moderators are required to answer you and justify their actions...
I always took this very seriously. While the canned link to the rules is a requirement for any infraction, I made the effort to explain - in my own words, tailored to the specific poster's situation so it was not a cookie-cutter response - why the warning or infraction had occurred. Some people told me they appreciated this, and while they still might not have agreed with the infraction, they didn't feel as upset about it as they might otherwise have felt. A little respect goes a
long way.
Sometimes a misunderstanding had happened - someone whose first language wasn't English had inadvertently used a wrong word that changed the meaning of their post. Once that was explained and understood, it wasn't unusual for the warning/infraction to be reversed. Or there were other times when a back-and-forth dialog led to better understanding of the situation and while the infraction might not have been reversed, at least there were fewer ill feelings and less anger.
If I'd just regurgitated the rules link and called that my response, it would have been very unfair to the infracted poster. Copy/pasting the rules with no other explanations, clarifications, or questions to determine if the infraction was indeed merited is not a useful response.
I'm reminded of an incident that happened recently on the Star Trek forum I belong to. I reported what I thought was a spam post. Next thing I know, the admin is calling me out in public, calling me a "stupid (b-word)" and screaming about how I'd reported her friend, who hadn't been on the forum for the past 7 years.
Well, how was I to know that? By CFC standards, her behavior was appalling. By her own standards, she is behaving normally and thinks that was entirely justified. The part I'm getting to is that her offensive behavior was public. And by the rules of that particular subforum, I was allowed to post a reply that I will admit used less than parliamentary language. Public insult resulted in public rebuttal. A few people took her side, and some took mine. Thank goodness it didn't turn into a dogpile that carried on for numerous pages, but it was cathartic to not have to sit there and take an entirely unjustified insult silently.
I'm not advocating that such a hostile environment be allowed here. Ideally there should be no hostile environments here. But it's obvious that they exist, and on the forums I've run before or now, no staff member is ever allowed to insult a regular member. A couple of them didn't believe me when I told them that. So they became ex-staff, and when they still wouldn't behave, they became ex-forum members (not the first time such a thing happened there; before my promotion to the senior admin staff there, another of the admins had been demoted for being egregiously rude to members).
