Moderation Clarification: Is there a change of policy

[Son of the Serpent]

I could make a REALLY good joke about the above post but i dont wanna get banned.

Aslo, heh, former sentence is relevant to this thread.

 

[CleverNickName]

Ugh, I should have known better than to encourage discussion of old editions. I was feeling pensive and nostalgic, and I wanted to help people relive their memories of the days of yore with me. Remember filling in the numbers on your dice with a crayon? Remember the first time you saw that dinosaur in The Isle of Dread and you were like whaaaaaaaaaat?! Remember your first failed save vs. poison?

I guess I should have seen this coming. Some folks take this game too seriously--or at least, they take it a lot more seriously than others might. What makes me roll my eyes and chuckle, probably makes someone else furious enough to complain to management.

I'm not a moderator, and I would probably be a terrible one if the job somehow came to me.

 

[billd91]

Ugh, I should have known better than to encourage discussion of old editions. I was feeling pensive and nostalgic, and I wanted to help people relive their memories of the days of yore with me. Remember filling in the numbers on your dice with a crayon? Remember the first time you saw that dinosaur in The Isle of Dread and you were like whaaaaaaaaaat?! Remember your first failed save vs. poison?

Whether or not people act like jackasses when some topics come up isn’t your fault. Reliving memories is perfectly fine.

 

[TwoSix]

Overreaction or no, I don't think the general reaction should be "Ah, well, what you gonna do?" Lowkey was a highly visible and highly interactive poster over the past 5 years, and it's not like his posts were any sort of actual edition war malfeasance. It was dramatically overwrought bashing of an edition virtually no one is invested in for humor reasons.

I mean, I don't think anyone rationally thinks his displayed "hatred" of gnomes and paladins is actually inflammatory.

 

[GlassJaw]

Overreaction or no, I don't think the general reaction should be "Ah, well, what you gonna do?" Lowkey was a highly visible and highly interactive poster over the past 5 years, and it's not like his posts were any sort of actual edition war malfeasance. It was dramatically overwrought bashing of an edition virtually no one is invested in for humor reasons.

I mean, I don't think anyone rationally thinks his displayed "hatred" of gnomes and paladins is actually inflammatory.

Agreed. I'm sorry to see him go. Seems like this could have gone differently.

 

[Umbran]

It was dramatically overwrought bashing of an edition virtually no one is invested in for humor reasons.

That's really a secondary argument. Let us be clear on a major point here - a point we all should have learned in kindergarten, or the equivalent.

When you offend someone, you don't start by trying to prove at length that, in fact, what you just did was actually okay, or should be allowed. You don't stick by your guns with no remorse, trying to prove your entitlement when you are repeatedly told that someone was hurt. That is not persuasive.

You start with, "I'm sorry." You can work out whether the issue was overblown or an error afterwards.

 

[Blue]

That's really a secondary argument. Let us be clear on a major point here - a point we all should have learned in kindergarten, or the equivalent.

When you offend someone, you don't start by trying to prove at length that, in fact, what you just did was actually okay, or should be allowed. You don't stick by your guns with no remorse, trying to prove your entitlement when you are repeatedly told that someone was hurt. That is not persuasive.

You start with, "I'm sorry." You can work out whether the issue was overblown or an error afterwards.

Umbran, @Dannyalcatraz you both have my respect as moderators and as posters. Please take the below as as comments just on this, not as any larger critique. You two do a bang up job.

If someone doesn't feel like they have done something wrong, then they are hypocritical to start with "I'm sorry" - because they are not. I think lowkey13's was attempting to explain why he felt moderation of "jackassery?" and threats to boot were out of line.

He's long been one of our "class clown" regular posters who shares his sense of humor - I'm sure if you look at his HaHas that's been one of the ways he has contributed frequently to the board. It seems like he was trying to show how he regularly brings smiles to people reading his posts. A vocal minority with a Report button should not overwhelm a regular positive rating from the community as a whole. That's assuming this was an isolated case - I don't have all the information.

In this thread Umbran came down pretty hard on how his posts affects others, but really only focused on the negative. How he affects others seems a net positive - a lot more likes and hahas then reports.

Everyone is under a lot of stress right now. It saddens me to see him go. He was an active and contributing member of the community. He's made his choice, you and the other mods did not ask him to leave. But I do think he was left in a position where he felt it was inevitable with booting already on the table from the mod comment, and hsi long time posting style being cut down in this thread as unacceptable, and so cut his losses and left.

 

[Celebrim]

That's really a secondary argument. Let us be clear on a major point here - a point we all should have learned in kindergarten, or the equivalent.

So, anyone that disagrees doesn't even have the wisdom of a kindergartner?

When you offend someone, you don't start by trying to prove at length that, in fact, what you just did was actually okay, or should be allowed. You don't stick by your guns with no remorse, trying to prove your entitlement when you are repeatedly told that someone was hurt. That is not persuasive.

You start with, "I'm sorry." You can work out whether the issue was overblown or an error afterwards.

In my experience, when there is an argument and someone says how offended that they are, it is at least as likely that the one saying they are offended is being unreasonable as it is that the one accused of being offensive is actually in the wrong. Taking the stance that someone has been offensive is a really good way to justify throwing temper tantrums, which in my experience, is a strategy most kindergartner's have figured out.

What we have in your opinion is that of a kindergarten teacher that always rewards the fist pounding temper tantrum and running to the teacher when he doesn't get his way: "Tommy won't let me play with the truck! He said I was a meenie, waaaaaaagh!"

Let me be clear on the major point here, a reasonable person might ask whether Tommy had the truck first, and whether little Mikey tried to snatch, before insisting Tommy apologize. Your take on this is not reciprocal nor complete. You're all about how lowkey13 is supposed to apologize (to whom?). But the moderators offense to him is not treated the same way. So maybe a little more refining your opinion and a little less lecturing how we don't have the maturity of kindergartners would be in order, because it's clear at some level you don't even believe what you are saying else the moderators would have just apologized and that would have been the end of it.

A reasonable person might have looked at the post that started this thread and concluded that it was neither intended to be offensive nor actually likely to be one a reasonable person would find offensive. Nor in fact did it at the time cause any real stir.

It's not escaped my attention that the mods have been unfairly picking on lowkey13 for the last 6 weeks or so, and so I'm not surprised at this outcome. Not really my affair, but I'd be interested to know if that program was organized by one more posters who decided they had it in for him and were going to pull the board equivalent of SWATing a poster to avenge themselves for some perceived slight.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I will point out:

1) I had no problem with lowkey’s gnome & Paladin humor. I generally had no personal issues with lowkey at all.

2) I agreed with the reporting ENWorlder that the general bash on 2Ed was out of line. At the height of the Edition Wars, it probably would have earned not just booting from the thread (as I pointed out but didn’t do) but an actual ban from ENWorld. Just because we don’t enforce like we used to, it does not follow that certain behavior will be given free reign.

3) See posts #15 & #19: unlike lowkey, I did not attempt to defend my error. I admitted it, and stated I should have handled it differently.

4) unlike actual SWATing, there has to be underlying behavior worthy of moderation to actually get a poster in trouble. You can’t disavow your own posts to claim injustice. If there were some group trying to get lowkey banned by reporting posts, he would have been tried on the merits of his own words. Just because you or I didn‘t have a personal problem with someone’s postings, it doesn’t follow that others didn’t.

 

[Blue]

2) I agreed with the reporting ENWorlder that the general bash on 2Ed was out of line. At the height of the Edition Wars, it probably would have earned not just booting from the thread (as I pointed out but didn’t do) but an actual ban from ENWorld. Just because we don’t enforce like we used to, it does not follow that certain behavior will be given free reign.

Thank you for explaining: when I saw the "boot", it wasn't clear it was just from the thread -- I had assumed it was from ENworld as a whole. But I now see you use the terminology "ban" for that.