[FEEDBACK] More transparent moderation

[Wazza]

But this is the problem though, we aren’t new people to the community, we’ve been active members for years now and a good majority of new members are from other websites. I’ve been on this website since I was 12, I turn 19 this year (Jesus Christ ).

The problem is more in regards to if a veteran member makes a report and they feel like they haven’t been listened to, there’s always that internalized belief of importance you hold to the website, so you’d internally feel that your report is more likely to be listened to, so when it isn’t, it feels more like a stab in the back rather than a moderator telling a community member that they weren’t listened to. This does’t make people bad people or anything and isn’t what I’m insinuating for clarification, it just means they’re normal people with normal feelings.

When you put in a thing like this where you believe you’re correct, and the moderator team doesn’t take any action, the longer you’ve been on the website, the more it feels vindictive internally, which may create a cycle where in 5 years time, the new people of the community who didn’t care for it at the time and understood it, will become those people who may not understand why they weren’t listened to. We’re social deduction players and we all have our own convictions at the end of the day.

[Wazza]

That was what I wasn’t sure of, but I felt it would be a nice form of transparency to have for moderators, if it’s not possible then nothing can be done anyway, I’m not a developer or have a high amount of knowledge for discourse or anything anyway so was mostly just curious.

[Arctic]

@Arete

Theoretically if we’re doing it after the game there’s a good chance we just … forget to do this. this is obviously on us, but it’s the sort of thing that’s reasonably likely to happen.

• This can of course be solved by telling people during the game, at the cost of introducing game integrity tradeoffs.
• Even on MU, which is being held up as the standard here, there have been times when action was taken on my report but they forgot to tell me either way.

this can be handled by letting people ask if action was taken

@Arete

Some people would likely get really upset about action not being taken, even if their report didn’t have very much merit (e.g. they reported someone for toxicity because that person was loudly advocating for their execution).

• This can sometimes be an issue regardless, since it is publicly determinable whether we banned someone, but I expect this would make it worse.
• People who file frivolous reports (which to be clear is not most users) sometimes file a lot of frivolous reports. I’m unconvinced that sending a dozen individual “we reviewed this report and did not take action!” messages would really make them feel better.
• This can arguably be solved by just telling them anyway and letting them be mad about it. I expect that doing so would lead to a lot of drama + a lot of extra mod time spent dealing with people yelling at us, but that’s a choice we could make.

this can be handled by letting people ask if action was taken

@Arete

In borderline cases, if a player disagrees about how severe an offense was, it might lead them not to report other posts in the future that do break the rules, but that they think aren’t as bad.

• Not sure how much of an issue this would be in practice – this one does seem like it goes both ways, where if we give report feedback some people would be more likely to submit reports

yeah this works both ways

@Arete

“Action was taken” is very vague and might not actually satisfy users. Discounting bans and blacklists, which are public, there’s a meaningful difference between “sent a ‘hey jsyk this is what the rules are’ warning,” “sent a ‘hey, knock this off or we’ll probably ban you’ sort of warning,” “silenced the user for a while,” “had the user force-subbed out of a game,” etc.

the implication is that a warning is given which is probably what anybody asking if any moderation took place would want to know given that… anything else would appear on the mod log or you can see if someone is substituted etc

@Arete

Some people could use it as a metaphorical cudgel to be dicks to other users and feel “justified” because mods took action and so therefore they must be right.

mod log exists

[Arete]

I think the specific people I’m most worried about are – I’m not sure how to phrase this – “people who prefer to know that action was taken?” like, people who are absolutely (and incorrectly – if they were right it wouldn’t matter) convinced that action should be taken, and really want us to validate them by telling them that action was taken, who are going to be really mad if we tell them that it wasn’t

and I expect those people to generally ask “was action taken?”

[Arete]

honestly, I’d probably be fine with telling people that action was/wasn’t taken for like, 90% of the site, but I kind of feel like telling 90% of the site whether action was taken and conspicuously not telling the remaining 10% would not be an improvement

[Brakuren]

Eh this could still be troublesome as people could just not know that they can ask

[Arctic]

you have a point here but like

if you can justify why action wasn’t taken then if the person is reasonable it would satisfy them. i guess i’m looking at it from my pov because if mods could prove to me why my report wasn’t moderated then i would be okay with it, and if i or anybody else disagrees then that’s their problem

[Arctic]

i’m kinda assuming people who really want tok now if action was taken would end up asking

[Arete]

@Arctic

if you can justify why action wasn’t taken then if the person is reasonable it would satisfy them.

sorry if I haven’t made this sufficiently clear but the reasonable people are not the ones I’m worried about

[Brakuren]

Some people are just scared to ask tbf

[Arctic]

but you have to deal with this issue already when it comes to telling someone they’ve been moderated

[ElizaThePsycho (Willow)]

Fellas, Is it Ok to not be like MU

[Arete]

that doesn’t mean we want to deal with it more

[Arctic]

i think this is just a skill issue

[lilith]

thoughts on the kendrick drake beef arctic

[Arctic]

but seriously i feel like there aren’t any convincing downsides to allowing people to ask if moderation was taken, most of your issues seem to come from having it done without request except the one about having to deal with annoying people which doesn’t really seem convincing when you already have to tell people they’ve been moderated which they can try and dispute

but i mean u guys are the ones doing this stuff not me so if it’s gonna cause more problems for you than you’d like then i understand

[Brakuren]

You are misunderstanding the argument ftr

[ElizaThePsycho (Willow)]

I get it if you’re sadying like.

“MU did this and it worked”
but like

[ElizaThePsycho (Willow)]

it being the entire counterarguement is

[katze]

personally i kinda dont either but i also saw arete make a wallpost and im too lazy to read it