Intransparent moderation

Bonobo · **#61**

jts wrote:

badukJr wrote:

As an aside, when people are faced with a lack of information they assume the worst. A teenage boy calls a girl and leaves a voicemail, if she doesn't call back within an hour he thinks she hates him. A son driving to his mother's house is a half an hour late, mom thinks that he got into a car accident somewhere on the way.

If you replaced "people" with "very silly people", both the claim and the examples would be apposite.

But … aren’t we silly people the majority? ;-)

I’ll never forget what that old sensei said: “Among any hundred people, you'll find one sage, nine scoundrels, and ninety fools.”

Bill Spight · **#62**

Bonobo wrote:

I’ll never forget what that old sensei said: “Among any hundred people, you'll find one sage, nine scoundrels, and ninety fools.”

That old sensei was not a populist, was he?

ChradH · **#63**

Bill Spight wrote:

Bonobo wrote:

I’ll never forget what that old sensei said: “Among any hundred people, you'll find one sage, nine scoundrels, and ninety fools.”

That old sensei was not a populist, was he?

Well, people tend to believe they are the one sage, of course

Bonobo · **#64**

ChradH wrote:

Bill Spight wrote:

Bonobo wrote:

I’ll never forget what that old sensei said: “Among any hundred people, you'll find one sage, nine scoundrels, and ninety fools.”

That old sensei was not a populist, was he?

Well, people tend to believe they are the one sage, of course

I for one, while striving towards wisdom, would rather hope that I’m one of the fools. Next less probable thing is the scoundrel which I don’t want to be. And the sage, one in a hundred … well, I may be a fool but not THAT foolish to waste my precious time believing highly improbable things.

Insane · **#65**

Joaz Banbeck wrote:

xed_over wrote:

...
But with few exceptions, all user actions are already public, so if reasons for banning are related to those same already public actions, then nothing new is being revealed by public banning...

That is not really true.

When a non-troublesome user like yourself posts, it is all public.

But when a user is close to being banned, many of their actions are private. Often, when there is a post that is blatantly in violation of the TOS, it gets edited, so the content is private. Also, when on the verge of banning, the member has had several conversations with admins. Those communications are also private.

Another way of stating this is: when things get ugly, we try to be discrete.

Example:
So one mod wipe out an "offender's" old account and every single one of the hundreds of posts that one made during the years.
Not in any premeditated way but only because he gets tired of a personal message exchange. (Quite against L19 policy)
Afterwards another mod warn the erased that If he makes any further issue out of it once he returns from a temporary ban, he will be permanently banned for life without prior warning.

Very discrete, very smooth, and exactly what is to be expected when power can be exercised without control.
Business as usual at L19. :roll:

Javaness2 · **#66**

Is that a useful example?

speedchase · **#67**

Insane wrote:

Example:
So one mod wipe out an "offender's" old account and every single one of the hundreds of posts that one made during the years.
Not in any premeditated way but only because he gets tired of a personal message exchange. (Quite against L19 policy)
Afterwards another mod warn the erased that If he makes any further issue out of it once he returns from a temporary ban, he will be permanently banned for life without prior warning.

Very discrete, very smooth, and exactly what is to be expected when power can be exercised without control.
Business as usual at L19. :roll:

This is just silly. L19 isn't perfect, but it's problems are small ones, especially compared to this. This isn't even remotely similar to what is actually going on.

tchan001 · **#68**

Insane wrote:

Example:
So one mod wipe out an "offender's" old account and every single one of the hundreds of posts that one made during the years.
Not in any premeditated way but only because he gets tired of a personal message exchange. (Quite against L19 policy)
Afterwards another mod warn the erased that If he makes any further issue out of it once he returns from a temporary ban, he will be permanently banned for life without prior warning.

Very discrete, very smooth, and exactly what is to be expected when power can be exercised without control.
Business as usual at L19. :roll:

Can you please specify where such an instance has occurred on L19? Or are you trying to troll the admins and mods.
Please note that trolling is against the rules of the forum.

badukJr · **#69**

That's the point of his example: it is impossible for the normal user to know if it occurs or not.

Its ridiculous to ask a user to give examples of moderator actions when such actions are hidden for 'privacy' reasons.

hyperpape · **#70**

This isn't the only place someone can make opinions known about go. You're imagining users so cowardly, or admins so devious that they'd blackmail people into silence about their actions? Not gonna happen.

tchan001 · **#71**

Insane wrote:

Example:
So one mod wipe out an "offender's" old account and every single one of the hundreds of posts that one made during the years.
Not in any premeditated way but only because he gets tired of a personal message exchange. (Quite against L19 policy)
Afterwards another mod warn the erased that If he makes any further issue out of it once he returns from a temporary ban, he will be permanently banned for life without prior warning.

Very discrete, very smooth, and exactly what is to be expected when power can be exercised without control.
Business as usual at L19. :roll:

badukJr wrote:

That's the point of his example: it is impossible for the normal user to know if it occurs or not.

Its ridiculous to ask a user to give examples of moderator actions when such actions are hidden for 'privacy' reasons.

The example posed by Insane says that an offender had an old account with hundreds of posts. That means many L19 users would know of this person and his posts. If the account suddenly disappears and "every single one of the hundred of posts" are wiped out, do you reasonably think that such an event would go unnoticed by the members of L19? Perhaps if all the posts were spam or other items obviously against the rules of the forum and the member continues to post such offending items after multiple warnings and complaints from many different members, then perhaps it'd justifiably require such a clean up job by admins and mods.

Meanwhile there is a record of one member who asked for his account and posts to be deleted and this was the reply from the mod.
"your actions are yours to choose, although I'd rather not lose a contributing member.

One thing we can't do is delete either your account or your posts, so if you do leave, they'll still be there in their entirety.

At least you can't accuse us of too much selective pruning"
viewtopic.php?p=121634#p121634

badukJr · **#72**

Yes, the example was extreme, but it also wasn't mine. I posted other examples earlier.

1. A newer member nobody really knows disappears. Did he just lose interest or did he get banned? Its impossible to know.

2. A member gets frustrated of lack of admin feedback from reporting posts. He feels the admins never take action and leaves. His frustration could have been eased if more information is made available.

#1, it doesn't matter if the admins overstep their bounds or not. Maybe the poster put a picture that was particularly nasty and was warranted. It feels very secret police to disappear a person like that. At least it would be nice to know why a PM isn't being answered.

#2, I believe has caused some contributing posters to leave the forum before. We all suffer for it.

tchan001 · **#73**

badukJr wrote:

Yes, the example was extreme, but it also wasn't mine. I posted other examples earlier.

1. A newer member nobody really knows disappears. Did he just lose interest or did he get banned? Its impossible to know.

2. A member gets frustrated of lack of admin feedback from reporting posts. He feels the admins never take action and leaves. His frustration could have been eased if more information is made available.

#1, it doesn't matter if the admins overstep their bounds or not. Maybe the poster put a picture that was particularly nasty and was warranted. It feels very secret police to disappear a person like that. At least it would be nice to know why a PM isn't being answered.

#2, I believe has caused some contributing posters to leave the forum before. We all suffer for it.

Members don't normally get banned without multiple warnings in the past. If you are interested in what happened to someone, you have the option of searching his old posts to learn more about their L19 history and speculate what had happened. Even if a member were to disappear and the posts were to be deleted, it's possible to search for what other members talked about regarding this missing member and use such info as food for your speculation.

Often times, the edited or deleted portions of posts are supplemented with an explanation posted by the admin/mod who responded to show why such actions were taken. For example: http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewto ... 98#p122198

Of course if the newbie is someone who appears on L19 only for the purpose of advertising various non-go related items or to post particularly nasty pictures, I don't see why members would be against an instant permanent ban.

Regarding frustration from the lack of admin response to reported posts, admins/mods are not on 24/7 to provide instant answers to all questions. It's a voluntary role which carries little praise. Certain reports require time for consideration before a proper response is issued. Other reports may in the judgement of admins/mods not warrant a response. And sometimes, admins/mods are on vacation or away from L19 for extended periods of time due to personal reasons.

hailthorn011 · **#74**

I'm not sure if my opinion is really important or not, but here it is.

As an impartial spectator in all of this, I refuse to believe the moderators on this site would callously ban someone for frivolous reasons. We're all mature enough to know what is and is not okay on a family friendly forum. Sometimes the line between okay and not okay is not so clear and can be blurry, but that's why we have moderators. They have the thankless job of trying to make sure topics stay focused, personal attacks are avoided, and to overall just keep things tasteful.

An issue between the moderators of a forum and the accused should stay strictly between these involved parties. If a person cannot adhere to the rules of a website (even if clarification is given), then they should face the consequences.

And even if there was more transparency in the decisions made by moderators, I just imagine that would lead to more arguments and more frustrated board members. Personally speaking, I trust the ones in power on this forum.

I would also like to point out that the rules cannot clearly detail any possible issue that might occur within a static set of rules. That is why the moderators have to use their own judgement. Does that leave room for error? Of course. But I believe it would be quite obvious if a moderator were unfairly targeting a specific individual due to their own gripes with the person.

Impartiality is key to fairness. And I certainly don't think backseat moderating will help the moderators do a better job. At the end of the day, I'd like to believe we all know the definition of a personal attack, the definition of trolling, the definition of deviating from the topic matter, ect. ect.

I'd just like to finish by saying that if you allow for the discussion of whether or not to ban Member A or Member B for certain reasons, you're opening up a lot of potential headaches. That's just my opinion though.

Bantari · **#75**

hailthorn011 wrote:

I'd just like to finish by saying that if you allow for the discussion of whether or not to ban Member A or Member B for certain reasons, you're opening up a lot of potential headaches. That's just my opinion though.

You make many good points, but...

Nobody is asking for a community discussion about weather this or that person should be banned. This is not what transparency means.
I think what is asked for is more of a simple log of admin actions, like:

- DATE: Player NAME banned by ADMIN because of REASON. Warning given: NUMBER. Ban expires on DATE+DAYS.
- DATE: Post in thread NAME by USER deleted because of REASON by ADMIN.
and so on...

At least - this is what I think this is all about. I am not sure if phpBB comes with such option (the systems I design do) - but in either case it should be easy to build in. Or even implement on separate page.

Bantari · **#76**

Sorry, double post.... so: I just write some more.

There are two main arguments made against transparency. Here are my comments about them:

1. Privacy and Head On A Pike.

I think that bad behavior in public already puts the offender in the spotlight. Making the punishment clear and visible can be a very good deterrent to this offender and to others not to do stuff like that. Otherwise - somebody is naughty and disappears for a few days - and nobody knows if he is just busy or got banned - no deterrent, bad behavior continues.

2. Scaring off newcomers.

As with each such argument - it can have two sides. On one side, some might get put off by seeing such 'banning' log. On the other hand, people usually understand that bad behavior exists on internet, and being transparent about how this behavior is handled can be something attracting newcomers. I don't think many newcomers and naive to the point that they will think there is no bad behavior on L19 just because there is no info about banning.

Just like knowing that a Go server has a strict anti-escaper policy might draw in more people then if you just sweep the escaper problem under the rug and hope nobody notices.

After all - moderation and stricter policies was the main advantage of L19 (or GD) over rgg and the reason this community grew and rgg withered.
Moderation and policies we have here is a selling point, not something to hide. It is something to show!
So why not show it?

RobertJasiek · **#77**

Bantari (message #75), very good! In addition, moderation must be made transparent for the user getting a ban: he must get email copies of all private messages sent to him because otherwise, during the ban, he cannot access and therefore cannot read any private messages and therefore cannot know reasons and duration of a ban or judge whether the type of ban is correct or whether a programming bug might be involved.

Insane · **#78**

tchan001 wrote:

Can you please specify where such an instance has occurred on L19? Or are you trying to troll the admins and mods.
Please note that trolling is against the rules of the forum.

Since you asked: Helel.

jts · **#79**

Insane wrote:

tchan001 wrote:

Can you please specify where such an instance has occurred on L19? Or are you trying to troll the admins and mods.
Please note that trolling is against the rules of the forum.

Since you asked: Helel.

Helel definitely announced he was leaving, after someone else said something venomous and unwarranted about him. But I've never been clear on how he managed to delete his account and his posts, since the mods apparently don't know how to it themselves.

tchan001 · **#80**

Insane wrote:

tchan001 wrote:

Can you please specify where such an instance has occurred on L19? Or are you trying to troll the admins and mods.
Please note that trolling is against the rules of the forum.

Since you asked: Helel.

I wasn't a mod in the days of Helel, so I don't know what happened. I don't know how many warnings Helel received before he was banned. So I can only speculate what led to the disappearance of his account and posts. It would seem to need an awful lot of warnings and complaints to warrant such an administrative action.

Intransparent moderation

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