Huh. I guess it’s just a cultural thing.
Anyway, I’ve made this enough about me and my rage. Thanks for your kindness and patience. Sorry to derail the conduct question and hope anything I’ve offered can be valuable to a path forward.
And apologies for anyone I’ve made uncomfortable or felt attacked.
Also, @anomalily, i was a mess when this was happening and you were kind. Thank you for reaching out to my friend. Thank you for responding immediately. I DIDNT want him banned. I DIDNT want to be the one that escalated it. I was afraid of escalating for safety. So much of this is also on me.
I should have handled so many things better. I’m sorry.
I dont want this to be forgotten again. I offer my services collating rules for moderation and the forum if @Anomalily can put together people/resources to decide on things. I would expect a few rounds of drafts and at least one round of draft with public input.
@katscratch made excellent points. Is @FIFoFum still on forum? They had really good forum running knowledge too.
I was somehow unaware of all of this until opening this topic this morning. I’m sorry to everyone who was deceived by this person. That’s a shitty thing that was done to you and people you care about.
Thanks for starting the convo and sorry you and Rodeo don’t feel you have support here (and anyone else silently reading). How best to handle these things has weighed heavily on my mind. Because I don’t really have good best practices and I want to know what to do to prevent and be better at these situations in the future
I also had no idea so many people were involved or how deep it went
I would like that. It wasn’t forgotten last time but there wasn’t enough lasting community energy towards really doing it. I am still concerned about asking modding of people without pay, esp if more intense modding is needed
Okay I missed this. The best forum I know is draconian, that is ALL posts are moderated by a slew of volunteer moderators. There are no PMs available, it’s all public to the mods.
I ran afoul of the algorithim once. They were in the midst of a conversion or upgrade. Somehow a post I’d made sounded “exclusive” or “demeaning” and the moderator bot demanded I change the wording. Fine.
What wasn’t fine was that it wouldn’t let me edit. THAT was a total PITA. I still don’t think my original post was offensive, but whateva. The human moderators fixed my account and allowed me to make the change and Hey Presto! my account was back in good graces.
There are enough people who post there and demand to be heard this or that way that there’s a thread about it. It amuses and dismays the owner. It’s his forum. It’s not a public forum. He makes the rules. Don’t like it? Go elsewhere. Easy.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t start with all posts being previewed by mods or a bot mod. I’m also pretty sure they only got there after various and sundry people created flame wars, etc.
Alright friends, sorry to have just thrown this up here and then bounced. It wasn’t my intention, but air travel plus then hours of driving have meant I’m just catching up now.
As much as I enjoy a good Brute roasting (seriously, what an absolute cock waffle), I really do want to have a conversation about community standards and moderation. Because with the type of community this is and the sheer number of people who are on here (hi lurkers! Say hi!), Shit is gonna happen again. I feel like the forums have continued to be modded as though they were still really small, when that’s not our reality anymore.
@anomalily , I know you mentioned not wanting to add mods without financial compensation, but it seems like we’ve gotten too big to really expect it to all fall to you. You are one human, with about 17 jobs and also in the midst of a huge construction project. Maybe a call for volunteer mods is a good idea?
Also the whole reason I started this thread was because I was really shocked when I saw that he was still here and still actively reading things. That felt like another violation. Especially because I was there when the request for his ban happened. There was no mention of needing to PM on the forum to have it be done. I thought the past month the forum was safe from him.
Also I really hope you don’t shut down the discord. That has been such a wonderful space and to have it taken away would be a huge loss for the community.
I would be happy to do that if we developed clearer standards about what modding involves. For example, I don’t want people being asked to mod in sms off platform as is asked of me. I don’t want people to wake up at 4am to mod requests. I want clarity about what I am asking of folks esp if there is no money for jt. I want shifts.
As far as I followed on discord, the conclusion was people asking me to not ban because he could continue to make new accounts. But also I do not follow discord unless I am tagged. I was actually in class when discord convo was happening so was not following reallt. He had his trust level lowered to 0 a month ago so could not access journal threads. At least on that account
If anyone with more insight is comfortable pming me, I’m wondering how worried I should be that he knows my name and where I work.
I’m a moderator, technically, but I don’t feel like I’ve been endowed with the authority to make judgement calls of any kind. I jump in on purely administrative things like banning spammers and deleting things when asked by the author.
I am willing to be a moderator, if the community wants that. Lord knows I have the time. All I need is clear guidelines.
We can do better than this as a community, with some structure.
Haha sameeeee in many ways
I’ve been on Internet forums since Usenet, which is about a million years in Internet Time.
I’ve been on heavily moderated forums and completely unmoderated forums, and I dunno that there’s any real difference in the long run.
But if there’s a group that talks elsewhere, then it does seem like there’s a whole set of circles, not just forum users and lurkers.
Ok but you are literally the owner. I really want to see you delegate, because I don’t think you have the time or energy to take on being a mod in this sense.
I know but I am a terrible judger. I am extremely nonjudgmental, to my detriment sometimes. But I agree around capacity. I just won’t hand someone a job without a clear job description. But am bad at making the job description because I hate making hard calls. Deleting spam is easy. Locking journals is easy. Granting badges is easy. But I want things to be safe
Thanks for thinking of me. I do exist! I show up when bat-signaled, like that famous vigilante seeking justice…Beetlejuice.
I am extremely busy with lifestuff (TM?), so I had no idea anything was going on and wouldn’t have seen any of what anybody was talking about. I am vaguely able to check 1-6 threads on a daily basis, if that - usually focused on memes, jokes, and the weird stuffed animal bedding choices of internet-famous toddlers.
I was part of offering help with forum-ing guidelines, and it’s something I’d be happy to help with when my schedule opens up a bit.
That said: From a very quick scan of this thread, it doesn’t sound like this is something that better guidelines/rules-policing/modding could have solved, other than to help promote and share community norms for how to deal with suspected/confirmed problem-people. But I really don’t know what’s going on.
I would be happy to help in the future. Someday, I may even update my own journal to say why I’m busy! (I’m good! Muppet is good!).
I know you hate this stuff but if this isn’t the time to do it, when is?
My personal opinion is that there should be a mod or two in North America and one in Australia.
Oh i wasn’t saying this wasn’t the time to do it, just what I think needs to be in place before I start adding mods. Also why I feel like bad person to write mod guidelines. Also I have to go to an IRL thing now so I will be offline rest of day
My specialty!
I will get on those guidelines this week.