Asking clarification regarding moderation

[Snarf Zagyg]

@Umbran, is moderation punishment? I’m not familiar with your system, but are there consequences to moderation beyond simply being moderated?

Not to kink shame anyone, but some people seem to enjoy the punishment moderation.

Masochistic Commenter: Moderate me, moderate me!

Sadistic Mod: ....ha. No.

 

[FrogReaver]

@Umbran, is moderation punishment? I’m not familiar with your system, but are there consequences to moderation beyond simply being moderated?

Not Umbran but - you can be thread banned, temporarily banned, permanently banned. You accumulate warning points that typically don’t go away that are reviewed by mods when it comes to moderating you in the future. I don’t know if that counts as punishment in your book - but it does in mine.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Umbran, is moderation punishment? I’m not familiar with your system, but are there consequences to moderation beyond simply being moderated?

There are points that go on your permanent record and you can be thread banned or otherwise banned. And of course it sends a pretty strong message to everyone seeing it that expressing such an opinion (or anything vaguely similar to be on the safe side) is highly unwise.

 

[FrogReaver]

I know that in threads where race/ethnicity/LQBTQ+ status/gender come up, for example, I usually edit myself a few times before posting (until someone really cheeses me off and then it's a debate about hitting report or hitting post).

I wonder if removing the emoji at the end and rephrasing it a little would have slid by. "Given the various alignment threads that come up on here, I wonder how it will be approached in regards to some of the incidents in the bible (slavery, destruction of cities/opposing citizenry, etc...)."

I also wonder if the follow-up below on continuity errors was viewed as snark and factored in to how the first post one was viewed, and would have slid with. "I wonder how they will select between different translations and differences between various books/denominational defaults."

I think if I were modding (which I'm thankfully for everyone not), how much was passable as snark vs. serious question would help break ties.

To me the … really pushed it over the edge.

 

[Morrus]

@Umbran, is moderation punishment? I’m not familiar with your system, but are there consequences to moderation beyond simply being moderated?

We have no ability to punish anybody, nor would we want it. If we're pushed to the point that we have to ask somebody to leave, it's not punitive; at that point we're done - we don't care what happens other than that the person leave us all alone.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I know that in threads where race/ethnicity/LQBTQ+ status/gender come up, for example, I usually edit myself a few times before posting (until someone really cheeses me off and then it's a debate about hitting report or hitting post).

I wonder if removing the emoji at the end and rephrasing it a little would have slid by. "Given the various alignment threads that come up on here, I wonder how it will be approached in regards to some of the incidents in the bible (slavery, destruction of cities/opposing citizenry, etc...)."

I also wonder if the follow-up below on continuity errors was viewed as snark and factored in to how the first post one was viewed, and would have slid with. "I wonder how they will select between different translations and differences between various books/denominational defaults."

I think if I were modding (which I'm thankfully for everyone not), how much was passable as snark vs. serious question would help break ties.

I generally feel that moderation should mostly be concerned with content rather than the tone. Different people express themselves differently, and the tone is notoriously hard to read on the internet anyway. Besides, some of us simply can't help being witty and funny.

 

[Gradine]

I would need more than my fingers to count the number of legit Wiccans I know... does this mean any RPG conversation about Witches must be shut down as disrespectful?

I can understand a heavy hand would be required when the conversation shifts to historically (and persistantly) marginalized religious groups, but in re: a Bible RPG, one would think that discussion of the Bible would be acceptable. One of the moderated posts was proceeded by a "Jesus saves, and takes half damage!" joke.

Considering different sects of Christianity differ on how to construe the Bible (biblical literalists vs contextualists, f'rex) I would think that pointing out facts about the foundational document the RPG is based on ought to be fair game.

That said, the posts that appear to have received moderation do appear to have been pot-stirring, rather than legitimate discussion.

 

[Umbran]

@Umbran, is moderation punishment?

Moderation is usually in the form of some red text saying some form of "stop it".
Occasionally is includes a Warning Point, that we use to keep track of problems long term.
There are times when someone is removed from a discussion, because their approach to it was causing problems.
And, finally, there's temporary or permanent bans from the site.

Most of these are not about inflicting a consequence on someone because they were bad. They are about putting some control on discussions to keep them civil and flowing.

 

[FrogReaver]

I generally feel that moderation should mostly be concerned with content rather than the tone. Different people express themselves differently, and the tone is notoriously hard to read on the internet anyway. Besides, some of us simply can't help being witty and funny.

i agree about tone being hard to read. Though I think most of my extremely heated arguments here have steemed from tone over content.

It’s also probably true that in every one of those heated arguments the other person didn’t think their tone was an issue and definitely didn’t intend for it to be.

 

[Umbran]

I generally feel that moderation should mostly be concerned with content rather than the tone.

EN World's Rule #1 (which predates my turn as a moderator) is, "Keep it civil," for good reason.

It has been my observation that content and tone are not easily separable, and when they are, you come to the issue that there are a million ways to say, "I disagree," and some of them will be fine, and others will cause a fight and lifelong animosity.