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vijayjohn wrote:None of the items in red deserve an immediate ban without prior warning.
dEhiN wrote:vijayjohn wrote:None of the items in red deserve an immediate ban without prior warning.
Why do you think so?
These things are clearly in red in the policy, which usually means something severe.
Why do you think if someone posts personal information about someone else, or graphic sexual stuff, they should first get an official warning and only a ban after a second infraction?
We can't really have a discussion about changing policy without an explanation of why someone thinks something should be changed.
Johanna wrote:Or did you mean that we should give people a warning and if they don't care and there's a second infraction, we should give them yet another warning. OK, other forums use that model so we could switch to it too. But sooner or later we need to ban someone who doesn't listen or the forum would become completely impossible to moderate.
vijayjohn wrote:Johanna wrote:Or did you mean that we should give people a warning and if they don't care and there's a second infraction, we should give them yet another warning. OK, other forums use that model so we could switch to it too. But sooner or later we need to ban someone who doesn't listen or the forum would become completely impossible to moderate.
That sounds much more reasonable to me.
linguoboy wrote:What buy-in do we have from the moderation team on this? Because if they're not committed to reading these suggestions, evaluating them, and actually implementing some of them, I don't see any point to contributing to this thread.
linguoboy wrote:How does the procedure to modify the existing forum policy work anyhow? Luís said it was decided by majority vote of the mods, but what does that mean exactly? 50% + 1? Of which group of mods? Does the board owner have an absolute veto over any approved changes?
linguoboy wrote:Because, again, if we need more than 50% of the mods to approve a change before it takes effect and we don't have at least half of them willing to read, review, and discuss our proposals, it's pointless to make them.
dEhiN wrote:If we were to change things so that there's no infraction that would immediately result in a ban - even a short-term, temporary one - and instead we issued warnings, what do you think is a reasonable amount of warnings to issue before a ban is issued?
Also, as far as I understand the current forum policy and practice, warnings are issued privately.
Do you think that warnings should be publicly made?
The devil's advocate to this is that not everyone might want all their peers to know they've been warned; it can be embarrassing.
From what I recall reading in the discussion on the Random thread, you (and Vijay) expressed a fair amount of distrust in the moderation team in regard to the interaction between those on the team and everyone else. Even when Luís, Car, and Johanna all expressly said that there would be no repercussions for anyone complaining, their words were met with disbelief from Vijay
So, rather than one (or all) of us suggesting something, perhaps a starting point could be what you/Vijay would consider to be a show of good faith that we, the mod team, do want to change?
I'm not singling out you or Vijay
and hopefully there will be others involved in this policy discussion besides you two and the mod team
It's just that you two were the only ones in the Random thread discussion who shared grievances.
vijayjohn wrote:I don't know; I can't tell you how to do your job, only try to make some suggestions, and I would rather defer to someone who already moderates a forum with such a policy. I will venture a guess of twenty. That seems more reasonable to me than one to three.
vijayjohn wrote:Then IMO they should be able and allowed to request this from the admins and global mods and not be punished in the process of requesting it, regardless of how disrespectful the admins and/or global mods supposedly find them to be. This means, among other things, that the link that banned users are provided in case they want to contact them should be valid and lead to an operational e-mail address. This was not the case when I tried to appeal my own ban, and I find no reason to believe that it has changed since then.
vijayjohn wrote:I am willing to post the full text of what I wrote in my e-mails to the admins and global mods at the time to prove it.
vijayjohn wrote:If the admins and global mods can offer convincing and consistent evidence that they will not ban us - something that they have never done - then and only then can we rest assured that we will not be punished. Otherwise, no matter how many times they insist today that we won't be banned, they could change their minds about banning us tomorrow, and we would be helpless. They don't face any threat from us since we don't have any authority over them.
vijayjohn wrote:Honestly, I think we are the only ones left and everyone else with grievances to share has already been driven out by the harsh moderating style on this forum.
dEhiN wrote:Even when Luís, Car, and Johanna all expressly said that there would be no repercussions for anyone complaining, their words were met with disbelief from Vijay and sarcasm from you.
dEhiN wrote:vijayjohn wrote:Honestly, I think we are the only ones left and everyone else with grievances to share has already been driven out by the harsh moderating style on this forum.
That's possible; if that's the case, that's a shame. However, there's also another possibility: not everyone who has been around for several years or more sees the moderating style of this forum as harsh. A third possibility is also that others who had grievances in the past have found a way to resolve their grievances without leaving this forum.
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linguoboy wrote:Because--as Vijay has stated repeatedly at this point--the moderating team has made this promise to him before and broken it. I don't understand why you don't understand how that leads to a situation where we don't have trust in the promises of the moderation team.
dEhiN wrote:Discussions on forum administration (of which policy falls under) and any voting is done by the global moderation team, which means all global mods and forum admins. So basically all the blue and green guys. The language forum mods (the purple guys) are only responsible for the moderation of their respective language forum(s). The initial delineation, from what I understand, of global mod vs forum admin was that the global mod group was created to help the forum admins out with general moderation duties: moderation of the general forums, helping language forum mods when necessary, and moderation of any language forums that don't have a language forum mod. The forum admins would then be able to focus on actual administration of stuff. However, I'm not sure if there was ever a split of access and responsibility from the start, but currently the two groups are effectively the same in both access and responsibility. (I say effectively because as far as I can tell, there is no difference whatsoever in both aspects, but perhaps there is some technicality I'm not aware of).
linguoboy wrote:Last time I was banned (July, 2016)
dEhiN wrote:hopefully there will be others involved in this policy discussion besides you two and the mod team.
If we were to change things so that there's no infraction that would immediately result in a ban - even a short-term, temporary one - and instead we issued warnings, what do you think is a reasonable amount of warnings to issue before a ban is issued?
Also, as far as I understand the current forum policy and practice, warnings are issued privately. Which, if so, would mean that others are not privy to who gets a warning. So, let's say we have a policy change that says 3 warnings and then a ban. If someone gets 3 warnings and then continues to break policy, they would get a ban. But to everyone around them, it might appear that they were banned randomly for no reason. Would you like to see that changed? Do you think that warnings should be publicly made? (The devil's advocate to this is that not everyone might want all their peers to know they've been warned; it can be embarrassing).
But not everyone might want others to know why they've been banned.
Especially considering that the current policy allows for short-term bans wherein the banned person can return to the forum after their ban is over. They might come back and be embarrassed to find out that all their peers know why there were banned. Would it not be better to only show who has been banned (and perhaps for how long)?
If you don't have any trust whatsoever left in the promises or the word of the mod team, then what recourse is there? From my recollection, when this sort of thing happens offline - where two parties reach an impasse due to mistrust - a third-party negotiator is called in; someone who both parties independently trust, but who is impartial to the outcome.
kevin wrote:dEhiN wrote:hopefully there will be others involved in this policy discussion besides you two and the mod team.
I don't want to become too much invested in forum politics, but okay, I'll share my opinion on the questions you asked.
2.3 Language - We do not censor language. Cursing is permitted as long as it is not used to offend another.
Irusia wrote:Is allowing swearing really necessary?
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