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Moderation Suggestion

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jet57

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I have a suggestion for a moderation technique that I have experienced and find really helpful and informative. Wouldn’t it be nice if our moderators contacted a reporter to let the person know if a perceived offense was actionable? This serves two purposes: it helps the reporter to understand what is something worth reporting, and after a time, it lessens the amount of work on the part of the moderating team. Another good technique to go along with it, is the moderator reporting back to the offended party on the outcome of the report. This action can help and offended party feel better about the offensive encounter, creating a feeling of inclusiveness and the security in knowing that problem posters are being policed which only ensures in the mind of the reporter that that the problem is being taken seriously and that their help is appreciated. I can tell you all, that from direct experience, this system works really well.

The forum rules specify that concerning bad behavior reports should be made, but beyond that, nobody knows if the efforts are worth it. It may take some time to catch on, but veteran posters will very quickly benefit and learn what is worth the time and what is not, which can only help in social navigation, but lessen the “docket” that a given moderator has to deal with during their period on the board.


Thoughts?
 
This is a suggestion that has been brought up multiple times before and discussed repeatedly amongst various mod teams. I'm out of town on Easter lunch, so I'll give a more in depth and thorough response regarding this when I get home.

The TL:DR version of what it will be is that the benefit is viewed as something of limited value that a limited amount of members will actually care about, and the negatives in terms of mod work load, user privacy, and baiting/flaming/trolling that's likely to occur is substantially greater. And as such, in terms of how it'd desired for THIS forum to run, this idea is pretty much unanimously voted down everytime mods consider it.

As I said, I'll give a more in depth response later; but thats the general gist.
 
I have a suggestion for a moderation technique that I have experienced and find really helpful and informative. Wouldn’t it be nice if our moderators contacted a reporter to let the person know if a perceived offense was actionable? This serves two purposes: it helps the reporter to understand what is something worth reporting, and after a time, it lessens the amount of work on the part of the moderating team. Another good technique to go along with it, is the moderator reporting back to the offended party on the outcome of the report. This action can help and offended party feel better about the offensive encounter, creating a feeling of inclusiveness and the security in knowing that problem posters are being policed which only ensures in the mind of the reporter that that the problem is being taken seriously and that their help is appreciated. I can tell you all, that from direct experience, this system works really well.

The forum rules specify that concerning bad behavior reports should be made, but beyond that, nobody knows if the efforts are worth it. It may take some time to catch on, but veteran posters will very quickly benefit and learn what is worth the time and what is not, which can only help in social navigation, but lessen the “docket” that a given moderator has to deal with during their period on the board.


Thoughts?

Why bother reporting anything? My approach re. moderation is to pretend it doesn't exist. I try to keep my own infractions to a minimum but beyond that, just forget that there's moderators.
Odd but true fact- since I've been here there hasn't been anyone I'd like to see banned, or anyone banned that I wouldn't rather was still posting.
 
This is a suggestion that has been brought up multiple times before and discussed repeatedly amongst various mod teams. I'm out of town on Easter lunch, so I'll give a more in depth and thorough response regarding this when I get home.

The TL:DR version of what it will be is that the benefit is viewed as something of limited value that a limited amount of members will actually care about, and the negatives in terms of mod work load, user privacy, and baiting/flaming/trolling that's likely to occur is substantially greater. And as such, in terms of how it'd desired for THIS forum to run, this idea is pretty much unanimously voted down everytime mods consider it.

As I said, I'll give a more in depth response later; but thats the general gist.

Well, the first thing, is that results are not to be discussed on the boards; a Vegas rule should apply there. I should have included that in my OP. I've been on the board now almost six years and never saw it mentioned once, so that's why I brought it up.
 
This is a suggestion that has been brought up multiple times before and discussed repeatedly amongst various mod teams. I'm out of town on Easter lunch, so I'll give a more in depth and thorough response regarding this when I get home.

The TL:DR version of what it will be is that the benefit is viewed as something of limited value that a limited amount of members will actually care about, and the negatives in terms of mod work load, user privacy, and baiting/flaming/trolling that's likely to occur is substantially greater. And as such, in terms of how it'd desired for THIS forum to run, this idea is pretty much unanimously voted down everytime mods consider it.

As I said, I'll give a more in depth response later; but thats the general gist.

Way, way too much work to contact every reporter and give them your verdict on a post they reported cause it's more than likely to end up in a PM back and forth on why the reporter disagrees with the mods decision. The only thing I'd ever report back to the button pusher is if they were getting carried away and to knock it off.
 
Way, way too much work to contact every reporter and give them your verdict on a post they reported cause it's more than likely to end up in a PM back and forth on why the reporter disagrees with the mods decision. The only thing I'd ever report back to the button pusher is if they were getting carried away and to knock it off.

You can't disagree with a mod decision unless you're the one that got gigged. As for too much work, there are not that many people on this board from day to day and even less making reports, so I can't really buy that overload stuff. Right now there are about 70 people online here.
 
This is a suggestion that has been brought up multiple times before and discussed repeatedly amongst various mod teams. I'm out of town on Easter lunch, so I'll give a more in depth and thorough response regarding this when I get home.

The TL:DR version of what it will be is that the benefit is viewed as something of limited value that a limited amount of members will actually care about, and the negatives in terms of mod work load, user privacy, and baiting/flaming/trolling that's likely to occur is substantially greater. And as such, in terms of how it'd desired for THIS forum to run, this idea is pretty much unanimously voted down everytime mods consider it.

As I said, I'll give a more in depth response later; but thats the general gist.

Yes, this.
 
I don't think it's a good idea to let the reporter know what did and didn't work. There are some petty people here who would learn the system fast and start reporting in just the right way to get people in trouble, or trying to setup situations to the same effect. I know the mods would likely see through that, but my point is that it creates more problems.
 
You can't disagree with a mod decision unless you're the one that got gigged. As for too much work, there are not that many people on this board from day to day and even less making reports, so I can't really buy that overload stuff. Right now there are about 70 people online here.
DP has more traffic than most political forums that exist. Having never been a moderator here, it's clear that you have no idea how many reports we deal with on a daily basis. I'm absolutely certain that it's more than you think it is. Others who have never been staff here have already pointed out how much work that would entail. Your "suggestion" has been brought up before. The moderation team has discussed this before. The negatives to doing this far outweigh the one or two positives that may, but most likely would not, come out of this.

There is a place to question moderation openly and you know quite well where that is. This is now your 2nd attempt in a very short time frame where you have questioned how moderation is done or how you think it should be done. Rather than trying to change what you have no control of, I would suggest that you either adapt or move along.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
 
You can't disagree with a mod decision unless you're the one that got gigged. As for too much work, there are not that many people on this board from day to day and even less making reports, so I can't really buy that overload stuff. Right now there are about 70 people online here.

People who've never been on the other side always think this.
 
Okay. Back home at my computer. I'm going to go more in depth with what my first post was talking about, which will include some answers to things asked in thread thus far.

As I stated, this isn't the first time this kind of thing has been brought up. Doing a quick search, it was last asked in the suggestions forum back in 2013. Note, we also receive suggestions and requests via PM's, and the contact us button, but this serves as an easy instance of a visible public one.

Now, first, to your supposed benefits:

1. Being explained a potential rule violation makes people understand the rules better
2. People feel more secure in moderation.

The "benefit" in terms of explaining things, frankly, is something you're over estimating based on my experiences. Why do I say this?

Typically, the people who respond to an infraction with "confusion" over why it occurred are those individuals who have accumulated a large amount of infractions over their time here. As such, these individuals would have already had the most instances of having "examples" of rule violations explained to them. And yet, DESPITE this, they continue to routinely be "confused" and disagree with infractions time, and time, and time again. You mistake the idea that people being explained something is the same as people COMPREHENDING something; it's not.

The people who are most likely to accept, comprehend, and utilize this new "knowledge" are the people who already rarely, if ever, break the rules. The people who we'd actually "benefit" from learning from this, posters that tend to rack up infractions, are the ones that are least likely to actually learn from it.

As to the second, again, I disagree with this being a big "bonus". See my previous comment about people who get infracted who steadfastly disagree with the mods and think they've got it wrong, even after a full infraction dispute has processed. These people are typically the ones that feel least "secure" about moderation, and yet again, they are going to be the ones who are less likely to feel "secure" in moderation if they end up finding out that what THEY think should be an infraction isn't.
 
Now, as to the potential issues in the minds of mod teams past:

1. Increase in mod work load
2. The forums policy and view regarding user privacy
3. Disruption to the forum

In terms of number one, you can "not really" believe whatever you want about the workload issue, but here's the reality. In the past day (mind you, EASTER weekend), there have been 50 reports. Over the past 7 days, there have been 420 reports. 924 over the past 2 weeks. Already, moderators read each report that comes in and take some kind of action on them (reviewing the post/thread and taking action as necessary). Adding having to generate a PM, and go into a relatively in depth explanation, is adding a significant time addition to what are volunteers. What's more, it has mods spending even more time doing administrative things as opposed to actually checking the forum. You could say "don't go in depth", but then that further decreases any ability for someone to "learn" from it. If you allow for the person to continue discussion, you're adding even MORE PM's onto the issue. If you don't allow the person to continue the discussion, then you potentially leave them confused or upset by the answer, thus hurting both your supposed benefits.

Now, in terms of the second issue. The basic modus operandi for this forum for well over a decade now is a belief that moderation that is primarily private between the individual and moderators is the best to make sure that POLITICS are debated, not moderation. That people start spending time on the forum focusing more on the rules, what they THINK other people are doing, and how they feel about moderation, rather than actually simply debating politics. We have zero desire for that, and the type of posters that tend to do that are the type of posters that are normally some of the most disruptive or problematic ones that we have to deal with. The privacy rules make it very, very simple to deal with those types of posters; we don't have to deal with them, because they're not useful to the forum.

Throughout my time, various requests like this one (for example, deleting posts/instances where an infraction happens) will come in, desiring some form of this privacy stripped away, and they are pretty much universally turned down by the mod team. This is a core principle of how this forum runs, and it would take the team viewing the benefit as a SIGNIFICANT boon for the forum for a team to change from this. In my whole time here, I've never seen a request even approach that level. We recognize that kind of forum isn't for everyone; and that's fine. People that don't like it are fine to go elsewhere. You seem to find that the other system works "very well"; more power to you to spend time on those forums then. But if a poster such as yourself is desiring this forum to FUNDAMENTALLY change the means in which it functions, you'd need to provide some enormously compelling reason.

Now, as to the 3rd. You say "have a vegas rule"; despite the vegas rule existing, basement matters are still brought up stairs. In the past year there have been over 50 actions relating to vegas violations. The benefit the basement has, is that the team feels it performs a valuable service to the forum, so that extra disruption is outweighed. It's not the case in this instance. However, that's not the only potential disruption. If posters gets a response to any report, it simply encourages frivolous reporting for an individual to get as much information on posters the yahveh issues with as they can. What's more, we'd either need to ban it in the basement (which would mean enforcing it, which would require a lot more moderation in the basement) OR it would be allowed....which would, undoubtably, be problematic. Why?

I go back to the point I made earlier; the people who would be most interested are this are typically malcontents or individuals who, ROUTINELY, disagree and remain "confused" about moderation even WHEN it's explained to them. And with something like this, it would simply provide them more ammunition to create drama and issues downstairs. While such things are not allowed to be taken upstairs, the reality is that drama downstairs CAN reach levels that cause forum wide disruptions and take up a lot of mod time. It's happened in the past, with a MPH actually occurring due to such a thing at one point. The potential increase in drama producing crap from this is another massive negative factor.

From my stand point, and from what I've seen in previous discussions with mod teams, the benefits are minuscule and the negatives are substantial. That said, as is the case with feedback threads, the issue will be discussed by the mods and considered. If you have any additional information you wish to add, please feel free to use the "contact us" button. As it stands, your feedback and suggestion has been heard, and will be considered duly by the mod team. This thread is now closed.
 
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