Asking clarification regarding moderation

[BookTenTiger]

Well, the Grandma Rule has always been about how coarse you are supposed to be - use of foul language, sexual innuendo, and such. But, yeah, you'd think that between the Grandma Rule and Wheaton's Law, it'd be covered, but... no.

It's one I adopted into my 3rd Grade classroom to help my students self-moderate. When they ask me questions about what they're allowed to write about or draw (especially in regards to violence), I just say, "Would you show it to my sweet old granny?" It works a lot better than having a bunch of explicit rules about what they can or cannot draw.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

"don't be a jerk"

Please define what that means, because I have found that there are wildly different positions on what qualifies someone as a "jerk". Whose definition are we using? How will I be be able to know ahead of time if my understanding of what constitutes being a jerk is the official understanding it it's not explained to me?

I think that the snark that some moderators use when responding to people is ultimately 'jerky' and yet, obviously, they don't seem to agree. Thus demonstrating that appealing to "don't be a jerk" is a pretty empty maxim unless you can literally read someones mind. Which I cannot.

 

[Waller]

Please define what that means, because I have found that there are wildly different positions on what qualifies someone as a "jerk". Whose definition are we using? How will I be be able to know ahead of time if my understanding of what constitutes being a jerk is the official understanding it it's not explained to me?

I think that the snark that some moderators use when responding to people is ultimately 'jerky' and yet, obviously, they don't seem to agree. Thus demonstrating that appealing to "don't be a jerk" is a pretty empty maxim unless you can literally read someones mind. Which I cannot.

Been here a week, and came in swinging, eh? I’ll get my popcorn.

 

[Umbran]

Earlier I stated that I am explicitly a "letter of the law" guy, not a "spirit of the law" guy.

Well, yes, if the central point was to "obey the law" it is much easier if the laws are super-clear and straightforward.

But, that's not the point. The point of the rules is to put a lid, an upper limit, on how much people can cheese each other off. The rules are the last resort, not the first - your first concern should be for the other people in the place. No set of rules can absolve you of the responsibility to be considerate of others, so we won't try to provide one.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

Been here a week, and came in swinging, eh? I’ll get my popcorn.

I take this to be a very 'jerky' thing to say as it implies my goal in this entire conversation is to be "swinging" just for the sake of swinging.

Isn't "assuming the motives of other posters" explicitly called out in the 'rules' we've been discussing?

 

[Guest 7034872]

I have to agree with Morrus at the end of the day here. I do understand the importance of the desire for greater precision and clarity in rules of conduct--I absolutely do. But the problem that inevitably comes up with such an approach is that they leave no room for judgment, and the resulting system will be no less and no less maliciously gameable than a less precise one. The rules-gaming threat will be a different kind ("rules lawyers"), but ultimately not helpful to reducing gaming of rules. In fact, I think it quickly becomes more conducive to abuse.

In my experience, it's always a tough balance to strike: too little precision yields a kind of Wild West that even Reddit doesn't allow; too much precision yields a system in which people with grudges can gin up "infractions" by their Mortal Enemies when the posts in question really were innocent.

My own take on this (it feels so weird to me to be talking about site rules in a public thread devoted to publicly discussing site rules, btw--most forums really won't do this)--my own take on this is that the rules as written are solid. They're pretty clear, anyone who is unclear on them can ask for clarifications, newbies (like me) get a bit of a grace period before the orange and/or red text start showing up, and rulings appeals are always permitted over PM. I think of it this way: I could never reasonably ask for more than this from my DM, could I?

 

[J.Quondam]

Sealioning (also spelled sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.[1][2][3][4] It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate".[5] The term originated with a 2014 strip of the webcomic Wondermark by David Malki.[6]​

Intentions matter.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

...too little precision yields a kind of Wild West that even Reddit doesn't allow...

There is a crystalline clarity/precision to there simply being no rules.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

Intentions matter.

The accusation of sealioning has always seemed to me to be a way to dismiss people out of hand, as you can call any request for evidence/questioning as an instance of sealioning.

Again, this is another instance of someone assuming motives, a violation of the forum rules.

 

[Guest 7034872]

There is a crystalline clarity/precision to there simply being no rules.

Sure, because the Wild West was wild.