will
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Posts: 124
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Post by will on May 16, 2019 18:44:35 GMT
Of course mods should be able to act unilaterally when the situation seems appropriate. The process we have where mods post what they did in the mod thread is perfectly fine whether the action is by mod vote or unilateral.
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Post by microbet on May 16, 2019 18:49:33 GMT
For my part I'm totally ok with ZERO proactive moderation of a slightly fuzzy group of members and there are some people you hit and some people you don't (except that's most people in this case hopefully).
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Post by gregorio on May 16, 2019 18:52:18 GMT
It comes down to how you see this forum. If it's a place to come shoot the **** with people you like, and has a core group of a few dozen people with someone new showing up once a week to call AOC stupid, then it can me moderated the way I suggest, and there is really only one set of rules because there are never more than a couple of people who aren't members at any given time and they're just here to troll. If it's a place that's going to become a vital destination for political debate with people from all over, then what I suggest isn't practical. Right now this place is very much the former and should not be moderated as if it were the latter.
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Post by gregorio on May 16, 2019 18:53:04 GMT
Of course mods should be able to act unilaterally when the situation seems appropriate. The process we have where mods post what they did in the mod thread is perfectly fine whether the action is by mod vote or unilateral. "Of course" is not a very strong argument. |
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Post by gregorio on May 16, 2019 18:53:27 GMT
Anyway, I'm sure everyone knows how I feel by now so I'll shut up.
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Post by NotBruceZ on May 16, 2019 18:53:28 GMT
otatop , In my early posts here I was kinda stressing that the enemy wasn't cuse or the mods from 2p2, but inertia. Picking mods just because they were mods on 2p2 has been impossible to undo so far. And "you're mods on the new site as long as you want to be" isn't exactly the same thing as "a temporary arrangement". To undo that, you need to present a viable alternative. Cuse saying they can be mods as long as they want to be only matters if Cuse gets to dictate that. So, I'm going to propose that a moderation team be split up into a number of long-term seats and a number of rotating, temporary seats. I propose that we use approval voting for filling the long-term seats. Whoever wants to be a candidate can be one. The long-term mods will undergo occasional retention elections, in which they will need to win a super-majority of votes to keep their permanent mod positions. I suggest that these retention elections occur more frequently in the beginning so that we have more feedback while we are still trying to figure out the rules and less frequently as time passes. Eligibility for the rotating mod seats will be based on an express willingness to serve combined with a relatively clean record for not breaking rules. Not a perfect record, because we want to forgive someone for having a bad day and going off on someone, but someone who is in good standing in the community, for some definition of "good standing". If this idea is good, the question is how many mods do we need and how many should be permanent? I suggest five moderators and either two or three permanent mods. |
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Post by NotBruceZ on May 16, 2019 18:56:03 GMT
I'm more comfortable with a scenario where the rules apply to everyone equally. Grandfather everyone in who has been able to post here without getting banned, then let people be considered members if they can make x posts without losing their good standing in the community. And I am more comfortable interacting with people whom I consider friends in a scenario in which these interactions are not policed by a third party. I basically have severe trust issues and want an idea of what procedures we should have in place when friends get mad at each other or become ex-friends. |
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will
Full Member
Posts: 124
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Post by will on May 16, 2019 18:56:45 GMT
Greg what you describe is almost exactly what 22 was. It absolutely needed to be moderated from time to time because politics threads will inevitably turn into shit shows, even when the group is just a couple dozen people familiar with one another. Temporarily locking a thread or moving posts until more people can take a look at what’s going down is fine imo.
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Post by whosnext on May 16, 2019 19:07:13 GMT
It comes down to how you see this forum. If it's a place to come shoot the **** with people you like, and has a core group of a few dozen people with someone new showing up once a week to call AOC stupid, then it can me moderated the way I suggest, and there is really only one set of rules because there are never more than a couple of people who aren't members at any given time and they're just here to troll. If it's a place that's going to become a vital destination for political debate with people from all over, then what I suggest isn't practical. Right now this place is very much the former and should not be moderated as if it were the latter. Agreed. And I think there is universal agreement on that front. Very little pro-active moderation while we are in our temporary home (where approximately 99% of posters are regs from 2p2). But, as you point out, the situation could be much different if and when we move to a permanent home. Maybe a two-tiered membership makes sense in our new forum. I can envision everyone here being grandfathered in, so to speak, as full members of the new forum. And then using post counts (or some other way) to elevate new posters in the new forum to become full members. Moderation, whatever form it ultimately takes, could be different for the two membership tiers. My overarching viewpoint (largely espoused by microbet and gregorio) is that I want our new home to be a place where there is virtually no distinction between moderators and members. Moderators would be the arm of the populace. As flat as moderation can be. If that causes moderation actions to be made more slowly (e.g., removing a vile post or terrible personal attack), I am willing to accept that. For that is much preferable to me than having "third parties" sitting above the members and judging the appropriateness of every post standing at the ready to delete posts they don't like and/or sanction the poster in some way. |
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Post by gregorio on May 16, 2019 19:10:54 GMT
The challenge for me is that there had been some discussion even before Mat closed the old forum of what a better, more democratic forum might look like, and I bought in to that vision. I feel like what a lot of people want is a Joe Biden forum to replace Trump/Mason/22, whereas I'd be willing to settle for Bernie, even though he's a little right of what I'd prefer. In other words, I was hoping for a much more radical change with this forum than many others seem to want. If anyone is offended at being compared to Biden supporters, I agree that was over the line and I'll eat a ban for it.
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Post by microbet on May 16, 2019 19:13:17 GMT
otatop , In my early posts here I was kinda stressing that the enemy wasn't cuse or the mods from 2p2, but inertia. Picking mods just because they were mods on 2p2 has been impossible to undo so far. And "you're mods on the new site as long as you want to be" isn't exactly the same thing as "a temporary arrangement". To undo that, you need to present a viable alternative. Cuse saying they can be mods as long as they want to be only matters if Cuse gets to dictate that. So, I'm going to propose that a moderation team be split up into a number of long-term seats and a number of rotating, temporary seats. I propose that we use approval voting for filling the long-term seats. Whoever wants to be a candidate can be one. The long-term mods will undergo occasional retention elections, in which they will need to win a super-majority of votes to keep their permanent mod positions. I suggest that these retention elections occur more frequently in the beginning so that we have more feedback while we are still trying to figure out the rules and less frequently as time passes. Eligibility for the rotating mod seats will be based on an express willingness to serve combined with a relatively clean record for not breaking rules. Not a perfect record, because we want to forgive someone for having a bad day and going off on someone, but someone who is in good standing in the community, for some definition of "good standing". If this idea is good, the question is how many mods do we need and how many should be permanent? I suggest five moderators and either two or three permanent mods. Cuse does get to dictate that. There have been a couple test sites put up for looking at new software and those have been open for anyone to become an admin who wants to be one. But here, what does it take to present a viable alternative? There are viable alternatives. Other mods have been nominated without objection. If there were votes, like 40 out of 350 people might participate. No consensus or even reasonable turnout is even possible among all the site users, but there are alternatives that are viable and more democratic than the status quo. And they could be implemented - but at this point, only by Cuse. Or we could wait for impossible consensus. |
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Post by whosnext on May 16, 2019 19:23:12 GMT
I feel like what a lot of people want is a Joe Biden forum. Well, speaking of over-the-top personal attacks, that escalated quickly.  |
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Post by NotBruceZ on May 16, 2019 19:30:50 GMT
My overarching viewpoint (largely espoused by microbet and gregorio) is that I want our new home to be a place where there is virtually no distinction between moderators and members. Moderators would be the arm of the populace. As flat as moderation can be. If that causes moderation actions to be made more slowly (e.g., removing a vile post or terrible personal attack), I am willing to accept that. For that is much preferable to me than having "third parties" sitting above the members and judging the appropriateness of every post standing at the ready to delete posts they don't like and/or sanction the poster in some way. If this is the goal, the way I see doing it would be to have the job of moderators effectively being to handle post reports. So, if there is a questionable post that gets reported, the mod is supposed to start a thread based on that report and the community uses that thread to decide on an outcome. To prevent abuses, mods can determine which posters should have their reports ignored, subject to approval from the community. If we put new users on probation, maybe we require one report from a full member in good standing or two reports from a probational member or member in bad standing to trigger a moderation thread. That gets tedious, so maybe certain decisions can be fast-tracked. If a post using the n-word is reported and the community decides that it should be deleted and the poster punished, then maybe similar cases can be given similar outcomes by the mods without a period of public debate and criticism. That leads to a general proscription against racism, which will lead to litigating the definition of racism. |
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Post by microbet on May 16, 2019 19:32:21 GMT
To undo that, you need to present a viable alternative. Cuse saying they can be mods as long as they want to be only matters if Cuse gets to dictate that. So, I'm going to propose that a moderation team be split up into a number of long-term seats and a number of rotating, temporary seats. I propose that we use approval voting for filling the long-term seats. Whoever wants to be a candidate can be one. The long-term mods will undergo occasional retention elections, in which they will need to win a super-majority of votes to keep their permanent mod positions. I suggest that these retention elections occur more frequently in the beginning so that we have more feedback while we are still trying to figure out the rules and less frequently as time passes. Eligibility for the rotating mod seats will be based on an express willingness to serve combined with a relatively clean record for not breaking rules. Not a perfect record, because we want to forgive someone for having a bad day and going off on someone, but someone who is in good standing in the community, for some definition of "good standing". If this idea is good, the question is how many mods do we need and how many should be permanent? I suggest five moderators and either two or three permanent mods. Cuse does get to dictate that. There have been a couple test sites put up for looking at new software and those have been open for anyone to become an admin who wants to be one. But here, what does it take to present a viable alternative? There are viable alternatives. Other mods have been nominated without objection. If there were votes, like 40 out of 350 people might participate. No consensus or even reasonable turnout is even possible among all the site users, but there are alternatives that are viable and more democratic than the status quo. And they could be implemented - but at this point, only by Cuse. Or we could wait for impossible consensus. So, just to test, along these lines it took me about 3 minutes to start a new forum, log out, make a new account, log back in as admin, make the new account an admin, log back in with new account to check that out. microbet.proboards.com/There's no reason all decisions even here have to be in the form of herding all these cats to agree to procedures to be used to create a document that states our common goals to draft a committee to make a proposal for how moderators are selected and have that brought before the community to decide. Now, I'm not suggesting anyone go over there to post, but feel free to fuck around there. |
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Post by NotBruceZ on May 16, 2019 19:40:16 GMT
To undo that, you need to present a viable alternative. Cuse saying they can be mods as long as they want to be only matters if Cuse gets to dictate that. So, I'm going to propose that a moderation team be split up into a number of long-term seats and a number of rotating, temporary seats. I propose that we use approval voting for filling the long-term seats. Whoever wants to be a candidate can be one. The long-term mods will undergo occasional retention elections, in which they will need to win a super-majority of votes to keep their permanent mod positions. I suggest that these retention elections occur more frequently in the beginning so that we have more feedback while we are still trying to figure out the rules and less frequently as time passes. Eligibility for the rotating mod seats will be based on an express willingness to serve combined with a relatively clean record for not breaking rules. Not a perfect record, because we want to forgive someone for having a bad day and going off on someone, but someone who is in good standing in the community, for some definition of "good standing". If this idea is good, the question is how many mods do we need and how many should be permanent? I suggest five moderators and either two or three permanent mods. Cuse does get to dictate that. There have been a couple test sites put up for looking at new software and those have been open for anyone to become an admin who wants to be one. But here, what does it take to present a viable alternative? There are viable alternatives. Other mods have been nominated without objection. If there were votes, like 40 out of 350 people might participate. No consensus or even reasonable turnout is even possible among all the site users, but there are alternatives that are viable and more democratic than the status quo. And they could be implemented - but at this point, only by Cuse. Or we could wait for impossible consensus. If only 40 people out of 350 participate, then that's okay. People should be allowed to not participate instead of having forced voting. Nominating other mods is not enough to provide a viable outcome. You also need to propose the method for approving them. And then you need to propose a method for approving that method. I propose that the governing committee be empowered to choose mods, whose modship expires at such time as a permanent method for choosing mods is determined. |
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Post by kerowo on May 16, 2019 20:34:29 GMT
gregorio , That's fair. But it's always a little fuzzy. Maybe kerowo went too far, but he is fine with undoing actions when there's a complaint. Like I said, I'm pretty cool with a wide range of what constitutes posting that should be moderated. As long as we have a quick way of resolving these things and we feel that the mods have legitimately come by their powers, it usually should just be considered a difference of opinions and not big problem. We have to allow that there is some range in what people think is ok to post. As for the point about moderation being done in the open, I second that 100%. The mod forum thing was one of the biggest things that set mods and users apart on 2p2. There's no reason for any of the site administration to be done in secret. Even if it is autocratic, the autocrats ought to be saying "this is the way it is, take it or leave it." I’ll agree in spirit but disagree in practice. There can easily be situations where moderation decisions need to happen out of the public eye, particularly regarding PII issues being reported or discussed. A closed mod forum doesn’t change anything in regards to modding transparency. As long as actions are published and discussed the reasons can be given without having to provide the actual PII. At some point the community is going to have to trust that the moderation is being done in their best interest. |
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Post by kerowo on May 16, 2019 20:46:08 GMT
That's why in my earlier post I distinguish between how people we consider friends (i.e. members) are moderated, and how we moderate people who are not yet members Until we've decided someone is a friend, then they are moderated in a way that prevents us from being forced to interact with bad posters and prevents the forum from becoming Politics Unchained.
I'm more comfortable with a scenario where the rules apply to everyone equally. Grandfather everyone in who has been able to post here without getting banned, then let people be considered members if they can make x posts without losing their good standing in the community. Discourse has the concept of trust levels, much like changing under titles, that will make this more automatic and remove the value judgements in choosing who is a member or not. |
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Post by kerowo on May 16, 2019 20:49:07 GMT
Of course mods should be able to act unilaterally when the situation seems appropriate. The process we have where mods post what they did in the mod thread is perfectly fine whether the action is by mod vote or unilateral. "Of course" is not a very strong argument. Neither is your I ‘don’t think so’ argument. You are right that we need to figure out we want to be because your vision is fairly unique among the visions I’ve seen discussed here. |
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Post by zikzak on May 16, 2019 21:09:41 GMT
fwiw, if we ever end up on a new site, and if that site is running Discourse as the forum software - there are built-in and automatically escalating user trust levels 0 - 3, with various privileges being granted at each level. Those privileges and the criteria for earning them are very configurable. There is also a trust level 4, which must be explicitly granted and is basically a mini-mod.
While I'm not usually big fan of using technology to solve social issues, those tools seem like they could be used to accomplish a lot of what is being discussed ITT.
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Post by zikzak on May 16, 2019 21:09:56 GMT
Damn, I got ponied  |
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Post by zikzak on May 16, 2019 21:19:10 GMT
If anybody wants to share opinions about what any of these settings should be, you can do so in this thread. I'd love to get more feedback on these sorts of things. |
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Post by SensiblePerson on May 16, 2019 21:45:24 GMT
To determine what the rules are going to be there should be consensus on what this forum is, what the purpose is, what the community is and what the goals are. If it is simply a place to discuss politics it will need very different rules than if it is a money making endeavor for owners, which again would be different than a money making endeavor for political purposes. This is the heart of the issue here right now, as far as I can tell. Personally, I am not understanding the royal rush to figure it out and get on a productive path when we don’t have a clear goal. The first step to any entity is understanding where you are going. Making progress toward an undefined goal is not actually progress. Corporate shit is corny and often misapplied, but it is not wrong a lot of times. Mission statement. Buy in. Understanding of what we want to be by everyone. THEN a simple constitution that defines who we are. Now organization to get there can take place. People know what they are getting into and can make an informed decision how they wish to participate. Any proposed rules can be held up against that mission statement and constitution—does it fit? Does it contradict? That is an easier question to answer than a bunch of hypothetical situations based on conjecture and past experience in a different environment. I thank zikzak for starting this thread but I completely agree with Johnny Truant's points in this thread (and have been saying so since the early days of the forum). There's a sequence of events that have to take place, in sequence, for things to make sense and be productive. Mission statement (statement of purpose, who we want to be, what we hope to accomplish, etc.) logically precedes and frames discussion of posting rules and moderation protocols. Unfortunately, no traction has ever been achieved in pursuing that sequence for a variety of reasons and probably never will. I've been thinking thoughts along the lines of the bolded for a while. There have been a number of different ideas about what this forum/community is and what it could become floated by different people. The different ideas are all worth considering, but the nuts and bolts of how to make each different idea work are different in some cases.
Example: Tech Committee wrestled with the question of phpBB or Discourse for the underlying forum software. Each option has its strengths and weaknesses, as well as significantly different user interfaces (UI).
It was/is pretty easy to compile the lists of strengths/weaknesses, etc., but what is hard is deciding how to weight the importance of those different items.
Take the UI, for example. It was agreed that the phpBB interface is more similar to the 2p2 interface, and Discourse is significantly different. People thought that the phpBB interface could make for an easier transition for 2p2ers and could help us get and keep more of those folks over here, whereas the Discourse interface could attract more new posters from the wider world.
Now, which of these two considerations should win? More 2p2 folks, or more new people? If we had a mission statement for this site/forum/community, we could ask the question, which of these options is most compatible with our mission and who we want to be? Does this help or hurt achieving the goals of the community?
This kind of question, in my opinion, is why we need to articulate and agree on some sort of reasonably well-defined "mission statement." Without being able to answer, "Toward what end?" we're going to have a really tough time agreeing on things like moderation policy/practice, site ownership and governance, etc.
This got kind of long and still leaves out some things I could add, but I'll hold off to see what, if any, reaction this generates.
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Post by Johnny Truant on May 16, 2019 23:36:56 GMT
I don't know man. Like I think I may be getting too repetitive here, but yes to all of the above. The way I see it we either put nearly all of our effort into determining a clear vision/mission/end goal or we spin wheels. If we do it, it solves a lot of problems. I'm going to be honest, I am not interested in participating in many of the ideas that are being floated, at least not how I see them playing out. Others I would really like to contribute to. I may be a customer for some variations or a volunteer for some, or even put skin in the game as an investor/owner for some, and frankly, there are some I will probably bid a sweet farewell to. I am not saying this in a way to say the stakes are the site may lose me as a poster OMG!! it is to say that the lack of participation and buy-in is not because people here are lazy, it is because there is no clear path.
Creating a mission statement and constitution will make every decision we are faced with much easier, from tech as SP pointed out, to moderation, to membership, to posting rules. It will give people an idea if they really want to participate in the formation and to what extent. Those who feel like it's their groove will be motivated. Those that do not can feel okay about bowing out.
A lot of my professional experience is in project management. I spend all day trying to move initiatives forward with teams of varying competence and motivation. The basic need of any project being successful, and forgive me in advance for the corporate bullshit talk, but understanding why, beginning with the end in mind, whatever. Without that there are not really right answers to any question. With that, a lot of decisions are trivial.
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Post by lapka on May 16, 2019 23:46:27 GMT
Something this direction? Run a politics focused forum as a steppingstone to hosting additional content which we hope to be successful enough to be able to donate money to causes and candidates important to the community. Tx for clear summary of what was flying in the air. I think we need to have a talk on that.
I had once a vision for OOT: cool people doing cool stuff! In how you formulated it, the focus is somehow on donating money to causes. I find it boring. And Politics is also boring. More like "Run a politics and general life stuff focused forum for smart people to make cool ideas come alive"?
We need somehow incorporate in that as much as possible of the vision you have for this place. So I would ask here everyone who reads that to think for a moment: "What do you actually hope to get from here?". For example I have heard things like: entertainment, silly stuff, life help, information ......but think bigger, think really about your Vision for here and post it here. I can imagine things like: power to change things in the society for the good, solution for problems on the personal level, fun....... We will then try to incorporate it in some kind of Mission statement.
I am very much with regards to my participation like Jonny. I have also pretty clear idea of what I like and what I don't want that all to be. For example last action of cuse in the mod's thread makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and wanting to contribute.
Last couple of posts in bad posting thread in OOT demonstrate perfectly what I want to avoid at all costs. I mean.... if it will become something like that here I will leave.
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Post by 6ix (hateful) on May 16, 2019 23:53:01 GMT
The challenge for me is that there had been some discussion even before Mat closed the old forum of what a better, more democratic forum might look like, and I bought in to that vision. I feel like what a lot of people want is a Joe Biden forum to replace Trump/Mason/22, whereas I'd be willing to settle for Bernie, even though he's a little right of what I'd prefer. In other words, I was hoping for a much more radical change with this forum than many others seem to want. If anyone is offended at being compared to Biden supporters, I agree that was over the line and I'll eat a ban for it. heh  |
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Post by Trolly on May 17, 2019 0:00:31 GMT
For my part I'm totally ok with ZERO proactive moderation of a slightly fuzzy group of members and there are some people you hit and some people you don't (except that's most people in this case hopefully).
I'm still not sure what people mean by "proactive" moderation.
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Post by NotBruceZ on May 17, 2019 0:24:49 GMT
For my part I'm totally ok with ZERO proactive moderation of a slightly fuzzy group of members and there are some people you hit and some people you don't (except that's most people in this case hopefully).
I'm still not sure what people mean by "proactive" moderation.
I would say that proactive moderation means modding based on what you expect to happen if you don't take action instead of letting bad posting occur and punishing people after the fact and after there has been a community determination that bad posting has, in fact, occurred. I am not convinced that the horizontalism seen in Occupy Wall Street or anarcho-communism is at all practical. It might work in a small group, but it won't scale very well if this place grows. |
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Post by kerowo on May 17, 2019 0:39:25 GMT
A lot of my professional experience is in project management. I spend all day trying to move initiatives forward with teams of varying competence and motivation. The basic need of any project being successful, and forgive me in advance for the corporate bullshit talk, but understanding why, beginning with the end in mind, whatever. Without that there are not really right answers to any question. With that, a lot of decisions are trivial. I don't think it's all bullshit, what we're seeing is a project without any clear leadership, objectives, or processes so it's just floundering around trying to simultaneously figure out what it should be doing, how it should be doing it, and who should be doing it and it's progressing as would be expected. Like poop. |
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Post by zikzak on May 17, 2019 0:57:55 GMT
Based on discussion when all this first got going, it seemed to me like we are, in order:
1. The politics forum that used to exist on 2+2
2. Some of the off-topic content and community that also used to exist on 2+2
3. A place that actively seeks to grow the userbase for #1
4. A support framework/network for additional user generated content related to #1
5. Possibly a future source of funding to be donated or spent on as yet undefined causes
6. Pipe dreams of personal income for a few
imo, what we should be doing right now is supporting #1 and #3, and maintaining a very welcoming environment for #2. The other stuff can come later, if it comes at all. Does it really need to be more complicated than that?
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Post by kerowo on May 17, 2019 1:14:04 GMT
Based on discussion when all this first got going, it seemed to me like we are, in order: 1. The politics forum that used to exist on 2+2 2. Some of the off-topic content and community that also used to exist on 2+2 3. A place that actively seeks to grow the userbase for #1 4. A support framework/network for additional user generated content related to #1 5. Possibly a future source of funding to be donated or spent on as yet undefined causes 6. Pipe dreams of personal income for a few imo, what we should be doing right now is supporting #1 and #3, and maintaining a very welcoming environment for #2. The other stuff can come later, if it comes at all. Does it really need to be more complicated than that? Speaking of mission statements I started a conversation about what ours could be: exiledpolitics.freeforums.net/thread/191/mission-statement |
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