They Don’t Know

In my continuing series of “oh, why can’t I just find a forum that works for me” drama… I have witnessed an act of really bad moderation, and the resulting fallout and my reaction have made me solidify a litmus test for moderation that will probably help me just up and leave a forum in the future: If a moderator cannot justify their actions in a few short sentences, they are doing something wrong. The justification should be simple: [user] broke [rule] and got punishment as described in [forum rules]

This requires a few things, obviously:

• Clearly Defined forum behavior rules, posted publicly
  They don’t have to be super specific… it’s not a tax code. Usually just a few things summarizing “Thou shalt not be an Asshole, shall be the way of the law” as ChaliceChick would say.
• What happens if behavior rules are broken, posted publicly
  It never hurts to say “if you are being an asshole, you’ll be warned, and if you keep being an asshole after that, you’ll be banned”. It can be done without sounding threatening, and it lets people know up front that there are some things the owners/mods just don’t like. Some forums with a lot more people are very specific about the nature of warnings and how the forums system will be used… some forums offer temporary “cool the hell down” bans in addition to complete “you are not welcome here” bans… and some will let you know that moderators will contact offenders privately before doling punishment out.

One of the problems with a former forum I frequented is that they flat-out refused to just make a public announcement of things that weren’t kosher. There were three no-no’s: Don’t post about ads (draw undue attention to them), don’t mention certain things, and don’t fight with the sponsors. The end result is that every week, someone would post about a taboo topic, or made a witty statement about one of the banner ads, or got in a fight with one of the sponsors (because the sponsors were crazy), and the forum owners would issue a very public angry smackdown… not realizing that this poster was new and had no idea that they weren’t allowed to do that. Thus, each week, there was a big fracas with the poster going “well excuuuuuuse me!” and all the other posters going “yeah, they suck about posting rules, we’ve asked them to” or “you should have known better” (although those posters were sucking up, in my opinion). Ironically, the owners would post to random things, like other forum’s that in no way addressed the issues that kept coming up, as a set of “generic rules” to be followed… and the forum suffered for it.

Another thing I would start advocating is a moderator conduct guide.

On a different forum… a moderator who I didn’t really have any problems-with posted a very, very long explanation of why they chose a particular course (a temporary ban) with a particular poster. In the process, this mod framed himself to be some poor, oppressed thing having to deal with such nasty onslaughts from such a mean, horrible poster. I normally wouldn’t have a problem with this (I would think “someone needs a pacifier, call the whambulance!”, but try not to say it) but the fact of the matter is that this mod exposed snippets of obviously private conversations, revealed courses of action behind the scene, and otherwise blew apart any sort of confidentiality in his attempt to make the other poster look bad.

Personally, I really despise the idea of breaking confidentiality. Very, very few things sent in confidence are worth repeating to other parties in the heat of some fracas (if you are leaving a set of memoirs 30 years later I could understand). The things that should be re-communicated are dire things like death threats, or plans to take a site down. Also, the other party should be restricted to a certain level of authority: The forum owner, other mods, police, judges, NEVER the public.

I feel in my heart that airing dirty laundry to the public is the tackiest form of character assassination. “Just look at the mean things he said in this private message/email” doesn’t make me think “oh, you poor dear, that person is really nasty”. It makes me think “Why in the HELL are you repeating something PRIVATE to try and convince me that so and so is a bad person!? You are completely untrustworthy!”. I have stopped listening to podcasts and started getting really unruly on forums when I saw the owners/mods pull shit like that. I can’t even send them private notes going “wow, that was a really crappy thing to do” because all I can imagine is them repeating it to the entire world should they decide they don’t like me.

In the case of that forum, I immediately went off on the mod. I focused on his moderation and not really anything else… but I flatly and publicly laid down that he had done one of the worst things I had ever seen by trying to justify himself and I think he should immediately step down. He (and I can’t really blame him) justified himself further and didn’t really acknowledge my scathing criticisms, instead complaining about how scathing they were. He then went and got himself in a dilly of a pickle a couple of days later by starting to delete posts in the middle of a fight he was embroiled in (another moderator no-no, don’t moderate your own arguments, MASSIVE conflict of interests) and when people started asking I put forth that it was another bout of bad moderation that had to be redacted… and eventually the mod came forth and posted a litany about how mean he thought I was and how he had been a complaint free moderator for the two years before I chose to say anything.

To that sentiment my thoughts are this: If the bus driver had a 15-year record of immaculate safety before she ran-over a 5 year old… the lady is still getting fired.

So yeah… a moderator conduct guide would be nice. I understand that it probably isn’t the most realistic thing to wish-for. Mods generally get elected/chosen for their friendship with the owner/admin or some complex ritual involving agreeability and sucking up… and after being chosen it’s a rather thankless job. I was a mod for a spell and it went really badly because, well, I kept getting into too many arguments about my moderation style, and never asked for backup. But still, it’s something I’ll look for in future forums.

In the aftermath of that fracas on the second forum, the Admin came in to say that mods were asked to not moderate discussions in which they were involved… and that his stomach was turned by the level of personal attacks and that certain people are going on watch lists. I have suddenly had a lot of issues accessing the servers from my usual spots… but can read it just fine with proxy servers.

I always find it interesting when forums break their own rules like that. I suppose if I find future ones I should just make a public post about how what I think they did was wrong, and never go back. It will never happen, but it’s something I can strive for. Otherwise, this makes two forums and about 5 chat-threads that I have been asked to leave or magically prevented from entering. I DEFINITELY have to tone down my righteous indignation and lay a lot more charm on things… or just lurk a lot more and talk a lot less.

Feel free to leave a comment or discuss in the forums.