dEhiN wrote: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.
As long as it is only text written by you, I don't see why not.
It is only text written by me, with a bit of context just so that everyone can get a basic idea of how the conversation went. Below, I have replaced all names other than my own with [name] and all quotes in those e-mails I wrote with [text].
When I was banned, I wanted to appeal my ban but had trouble figuring out how I was supposed to contact the mods in the first place. The forum policy currently says to use unilang@unilang.org, but there is also a "contact us" form, which apparently leads to a different e-mail address (and I don't remember whether I could see the forum policy at that time or not since I was banned, or even whether the forum policy had that e-mail address in it at the time). So IIRC I used the form and wrote:
► Show Spoiler
I was banned today, and I find the stated reason why I was banned and the actions of the admins somewhat questionable. However, before I say anything more about this, I would like to know whether I can contact the admins this way. I cannot contact them by PM as far as I know because I am not allowed to log in, and I can't PM anyone without being logged in to my knowledge.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
I received a reply from a different address (if I'm not mistaken, this happened within about ten hours, and it is not possible for the mods to reply using the e-mail address that I had written to), then asked:
Can I be banned again as a result of trying to appeal my ban, if you or any of the other admins or global mods decide for example that I am disrespecting one or all of you in the process?
No response in two days.
So I wrote again:
► Show Spoiler
Two days ago, I was banned and managed to contact you, the admins and global mods, through this form. I received a response, which, of course, came through e-mail. I did not know that I could not simply reply to it, but I asked a simple yes-or-no question as a follow-up and haven't received any response in over a day. I honestly do not see what could be so difficult about responding to this question that it should take more than 24 hours to say simply "yes," "no," or "I don't know," so I will try asking it again through this form in case it did not get through or something:
Can I be banned again as a result of trying to appeal my ban, if the admins or global mods decide for example that I am disrespecting one or all of you in the process?
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
Can I be banned again as a result of trying to appeal my ban, if the admins or global mods decide for example that I am disrespecting one or all of you in the process?
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
Finally, I got a reply that said little more than "yes." So I said:
► Show Spoiler
Hi [name],
How it manages to take you more than a day to simply say "yes" is beyond me. I really do not see how that is a response it takes any human being who can write an e-mail more than five minutes to write. Frankly, I feel that this shows you consider the (at least non-admin, non-global-mod) users of UniLang a low priority and that when you take such an attitude towards us, you should not expect anything good to come out of it, either for you or for the forum as a whole. I think that is such a shame because I love this forum for the most part; that is why I posted there so often.
From what I have seen of the admins' behavior so far, I am now unsure there is any point in me trying to appeal my ban. Instead, I am beginning to consider leaving the forum altogether and perhaps even encouraging other users to do the same. I have made a fair number of friends on UniLang in the amount of time that I have been there and usually get along with other users as well (including all the admins and global mods, though granted, there are also users I do not get along with so well), so I suspect that some of them at least would not take this decision on my part lightly.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
How it manages to take you more than a day to simply say "yes" is beyond me. I really do not see how that is a response it takes any human being who can write an e-mail more than five minutes to write. Frankly, I feel that this shows you consider the (at least non-admin, non-global-mod) users of UniLang a low priority and that when you take such an attitude towards us, you should not expect anything good to come out of it, either for you or for the forum as a whole. I think that is such a shame because I love this forum for the most part; that is why I posted there so often.
From what I have seen of the admins' behavior so far, I am now unsure there is any point in me trying to appeal my ban. Instead, I am beginning to consider leaving the forum altogether and perhaps even encouraging other users to do the same. I have made a fair number of friends on UniLang in the amount of time that I have been there and usually get along with other users as well (including all the admins and global mods, though granted, there are also users I do not get along with so well), so I suspect that some of them at least would not take this decision on my part lightly.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
Then I got two replies, one promising me that my appeal would be listened to and another making excuses for the long delay in my second e-mail, to which I wrote a long reply and included a warning up front about its length:
► Show Spoiler
Hi,
[name] and [name], thank you for your relatively quick, detailed, and reassuring replies!
However, I must warn you in advance that this e-mail is LONG. That is because I have a lot to say here, not only about my ban specifically but also more generally about how it seems to me that the forum is run, which I believe will continue to be relevant long after my ban is over. So yes, I think I can understand if it takes a long time to reply to this e-mail, especially if you can't respond to some (most?) parts of it until after my ban is over anyway.
[text]
Here I have a few things to point out, even if you already know all of them: The ban policy says only that "you may contact the administrators either by PM or through the contact form [...]." It seems that we're all agreed by now that we cannot even log in if we are banned, let alone PM the admins, so PMing is only an option for those who have received at most a warning. That leaves the contact form, for which there is not even a link provided; I actually had to look for it on Google. (If I can't log in, I can't use the search function, either). The ban policy says nothing about this e-mail address. In my opinion, if those are our options, then there should be a link to the contact form from there, and this address should also be cited as an option, because how else are we expected to know we can contact that address in case of a ban, and how are we expected to find the contact form?
Also, [name] used forum@unilang.org instead in her e-mail, so I'm a bit confused about that. Can we use that if we're banned as well? The forum policy does mention this address, but only for "if you have been away from the forum for a long time, and can’t log in or reset your password." If contacting you through that address is also okay when we are banned, then I think that should also be specified as a possibility in the ban policy.
[text]
I think it's a bad sign when the first legitimate e-mail you get in months is mine since I'm pretty sure I'm not the first non-spammer you've decided to ban in months. That suggests to me that there isn't much contact between the admins on the one hand and the rest of the users on the other. I also suspect that this is because users who are punished are afraid to contact admins (and I'll come back to this idea a few more times in this e-mail so hopefully it becomes a bit clearer what I'm talking about). That's a problem.
[text]
That's fine, but from the perspective of us users, it's not really fair to expect us to know what difficulties exactly you face in replying to us until you actually tell us what they are. I'm grateful that you've done that, but I know for sure I'm not the first user to complain about not getting a reply soon enough, so I'd like to hesitantly suggest maybe at least making a general announcement of some sort warning all of us users in advance that getting a reply, even to what may seem like simple questions to us, can take a long time.
Also, both you and [name] have said you (and we) are only human. Well, part of being human is also being fallible and making mistakes. When others correct us on our mistakes, that allows us to learn from them and improve things we do. Yet if others are too scared to correct our mistakes at all, we'll just keep making them again and again instead of improving, which puts those other people in the awkward position of noticing our mistakes but not feeling like they can say anything about them. As far as I can tell from hearing what various users have said to me about how UniLang is moderated, this is where it is right now. People see the higher-ups making what they feel are mistakes, but they're worried that they'll be punished for trying to point them out, so they don't. As a result, they're far more likely to talk with each other about it than they are to talk with the higher-ups who can actually do something in response.
[text]
I'm not quoting everything you said here, [name], but it seems fair enough to me.
So, here's the part of the policy that I remember being quoted in the last PM [name] sent me:
4.7.2 Forbidden:
• Sexual flirting.
• Graphic depictions of sex.
• Graphic depictions of body parts and fluids.
• Pictures or drawings that:
- are clearly pornographic
- show pubic hair (including the mons pubis if there is no hair)
- show nudity with the genitalia covered by a hand or object
- show exposed breasts
- show genitalia
These items are in red, which means they "are considered major infractions, and will result in an immediate ban, without prior warning."
From what I can tell, I did not engage in sexual flirting at any time, nor did I post any pictures or drawings on that thread, and those that I have posted elsewhere do not have any of the things listed there (they're not pornographic, they show no pubic hair, etc.). This leaves "graphic depictions of sex" and "graphic depictions of body parts and fluids" as the only two reasons why I can see I might plausibly have been banned. I don't specifically recall posting "graphic depictions of body parts and fluids," but who knows, maybe I did and forgot. I can certainly see why you would say I posted "graphic depictions of sex" on a thread in the public part of the forum.
However, if you read through that thread, you will notice that it was created by [name], who IIRC is also one of the youngest regular members of this forum. You will also notice on the very first page of that thread that [name] explicitly invited me to post them there. In response to this, you might say (to oversimplify somewhat), "Well, that doesn't matter; you're a purple guy, plus you've been on the forum longer than he has, so you should have known better than to actually do that because it's against the rules."
That's a valid argument, but there are a number of problems I see with this ban. For one thing, this whole thing started months ago. This is not even the only public thread where I posted such material. I posted similar things (in English, though with spoiler tags) about a year and a half ago on [name]'s thread in the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian forum, for example, as well as on my TAC. I have never seen anyone complain about this before my ban; in fact, by now, it seems to have become a fairly well-known joke on UniLang. I think this suggests that the admins are not necessarily in touch with what is going on on the forum.
Another problem that I see is more serious violations of rules that seem to go unpunished, even when they're right under the admins' noses, at the same time that I am banned. Does "So baisically letting confirmation bias validate your own prejudices - that's just so much better" in this post:
http://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php? ... 0#p1033507
not also count as "ridiculing, mocking, or insulting other members"? Is that not a violation of section 2.2 by a fellow language forum moderator? Was this not in a discussion where [name] herself was taking part? And how about the end of this post in the same discussion:
http://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php? ... 0#p1033654
Isn't "your evil twin or something?" a similar violation of the same policy? Doesn't the very next remark "we should stop right here, before this evolves into fight between us over something that doesn't have anything to do with this discussion" count as backseat moderating, given that [name] was talking to me and ended her last argument with me in a similar way, trying to prevent me from responding to (and defending myself against) what she said about me? Do you see how that may actually be more serious than what I am being banned for, and that it happened right in front of the very same admin yet doesn't seem to have been punished in any way?
A third problem I see is, what exactly is a ban like this one supposed to accomplish? Who exactly is being helped by it? Do the advantages of the ban really outweigh the disadvantages? Did anyone even complain about what I'm being banned for in the first place? Did anyone at all report any of the posts?
Overall, the problem as I see it is that not all of you admins and global mods are necessarily up-to-date with what is happening on the forum, yet at the same time, you are moderating it very strictly. I am saying this based not only on this ban but also on conversations I've had before with other users about how the forum is being moderated. It also seems to me that you are hoping the other users will report any and all posts they think could possibly be breaking the rules. Yet if you look at the rules themselves, you will also see that this is what they say about reporting posts:
2.4 If you think that someone is breaking the rules:
• Report the post, there is a button for that in the header of all posts.
• In the case of a private message, forward it to the forum administrators and global moderators.
• Scrap spam is reported in a designated thread in Unilang Development and Resources.
• Otherwise ignore it.
What is the purpose of that last line? Why is it even there?? It sounds like it's saying that by default, if you think someone is breaking the rules, ignore it. Or is it trying to say "if it's not a post, a private message, or scrap spam (note that we don't even have scraps anymore, which makes these rules seem outdated and possibly confusing to newer users...), ignore what you think is someone breaking the rules"? Is that really what you want? Suppose for example that we have good reason to believe someone is breaking the rules but don't know which particular posts they made to do that; are we really supposed to just ignore that?
To me, this approach of strict moderation seems not only unnecessary and impractical but also arguably rather harmful, as the result appears to be driving existing users away from the forum rather than encouraging them to stay. Unless I miss my guess, no one wants that.
While of course I would like to be unbanned, even if you do not unban me, I think it would be a good idea for you to consider pursuing a less stringent moderation policy. Otherwise, when you implement a strict policy without being fully aware of what's going on, I believe that what you end up actually doing is haphazard moderation, so only some users are punished for breaking the rules while others get away with it (and sometimes get away with even more serious policy violations). If you're not totally up-to-date with what's going on, a more reasonable policy in my view might be to punish people only when there is a serious conflict going on and other users are being adversely affected by it, rather than to punish users willy-nilly, which honestly is what the current policy looks like to me.
And even if you disagree with that idea as well, I think it's important for other users to have more of a say in how the forum is being moderated than we effectively do now. IMO, all users should feel free to express their concerns about this with the admins and global mods; I think you would agree here. But users do not necessarily feel they can trust you with those concerns (as you can see, I myself was losing hope that I could when I wrote my last e-mail). I feel that without showing all the rest of us that you are serious about hearing our suggestions about how the forum could be moderated more effectively, you run the risk of continuing a policy that ends up satisfying neither you nor the rest of us. I think a serious forum-wide discussion on policy is called for and that you need to rebuild your credibility with the other users. That is how I see it.
I never have any intention of hurting anyone who has not hurt me. Sometimes I don't even intend to hurt people who have. The only reason why I am saying all of this is because I find the moderation strategy potentially threatening, and I know I'm not the only one. I want UniLang to be the best forum it can be; to me, that means among other things that it should be a place where everyone truly has a say in how it is moderated.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
[name] and [name], thank you for your relatively quick, detailed, and reassuring replies!
However, I must warn you in advance that this e-mail is LONG. That is because I have a lot to say here, not only about my ban specifically but also more generally about how it seems to me that the forum is run, which I believe will continue to be relevant long after my ban is over. So yes, I think I can understand if it takes a long time to reply to this e-mail, especially if you can't respond to some (most?) parts of it until after my ban is over anyway.
[text]
Here I have a few things to point out, even if you already know all of them: The ban policy says only that "you may contact the administrators either by PM or through the contact form [...]." It seems that we're all agreed by now that we cannot even log in if we are banned, let alone PM the admins, so PMing is only an option for those who have received at most a warning. That leaves the contact form, for which there is not even a link provided; I actually had to look for it on Google. (If I can't log in, I can't use the search function, either). The ban policy says nothing about this e-mail address. In my opinion, if those are our options, then there should be a link to the contact form from there, and this address should also be cited as an option, because how else are we expected to know we can contact that address in case of a ban, and how are we expected to find the contact form?
Also, [name] used forum@unilang.org instead in her e-mail, so I'm a bit confused about that. Can we use that if we're banned as well? The forum policy does mention this address, but only for "if you have been away from the forum for a long time, and can’t log in or reset your password." If contacting you through that address is also okay when we are banned, then I think that should also be specified as a possibility in the ban policy.
[text]
I think it's a bad sign when the first legitimate e-mail you get in months is mine since I'm pretty sure I'm not the first non-spammer you've decided to ban in months. That suggests to me that there isn't much contact between the admins on the one hand and the rest of the users on the other. I also suspect that this is because users who are punished are afraid to contact admins (and I'll come back to this idea a few more times in this e-mail so hopefully it becomes a bit clearer what I'm talking about). That's a problem.
[text]
That's fine, but from the perspective of us users, it's not really fair to expect us to know what difficulties exactly you face in replying to us until you actually tell us what they are. I'm grateful that you've done that, but I know for sure I'm not the first user to complain about not getting a reply soon enough, so I'd like to hesitantly suggest maybe at least making a general announcement of some sort warning all of us users in advance that getting a reply, even to what may seem like simple questions to us, can take a long time.
Also, both you and [name] have said you (and we) are only human. Well, part of being human is also being fallible and making mistakes. When others correct us on our mistakes, that allows us to learn from them and improve things we do. Yet if others are too scared to correct our mistakes at all, we'll just keep making them again and again instead of improving, which puts those other people in the awkward position of noticing our mistakes but not feeling like they can say anything about them. As far as I can tell from hearing what various users have said to me about how UniLang is moderated, this is where it is right now. People see the higher-ups making what they feel are mistakes, but they're worried that they'll be punished for trying to point them out, so they don't. As a result, they're far more likely to talk with each other about it than they are to talk with the higher-ups who can actually do something in response.
[text]
I'm not quoting everything you said here, [name], but it seems fair enough to me.
So, here's the part of the policy that I remember being quoted in the last PM [name] sent me:
4.7.2 Forbidden:
• Sexual flirting.
• Graphic depictions of sex.
• Graphic depictions of body parts and fluids.
• Pictures or drawings that:
- are clearly pornographic
- show pubic hair (including the mons pubis if there is no hair)
- show nudity with the genitalia covered by a hand or object
- show exposed breasts
- show genitalia
These items are in red, which means they "are considered major infractions, and will result in an immediate ban, without prior warning."
From what I can tell, I did not engage in sexual flirting at any time, nor did I post any pictures or drawings on that thread, and those that I have posted elsewhere do not have any of the things listed there (they're not pornographic, they show no pubic hair, etc.). This leaves "graphic depictions of sex" and "graphic depictions of body parts and fluids" as the only two reasons why I can see I might plausibly have been banned. I don't specifically recall posting "graphic depictions of body parts and fluids," but who knows, maybe I did and forgot. I can certainly see why you would say I posted "graphic depictions of sex" on a thread in the public part of the forum.
However, if you read through that thread, you will notice that it was created by [name], who IIRC is also one of the youngest regular members of this forum. You will also notice on the very first page of that thread that [name] explicitly invited me to post them there. In response to this, you might say (to oversimplify somewhat), "Well, that doesn't matter; you're a purple guy, plus you've been on the forum longer than he has, so you should have known better than to actually do that because it's against the rules."
That's a valid argument, but there are a number of problems I see with this ban. For one thing, this whole thing started months ago. This is not even the only public thread where I posted such material. I posted similar things (in English, though with spoiler tags) about a year and a half ago on [name]'s thread in the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian forum, for example, as well as on my TAC. I have never seen anyone complain about this before my ban; in fact, by now, it seems to have become a fairly well-known joke on UniLang. I think this suggests that the admins are not necessarily in touch with what is going on on the forum.
Another problem that I see is more serious violations of rules that seem to go unpunished, even when they're right under the admins' noses, at the same time that I am banned. Does "So baisically letting confirmation bias validate your own prejudices - that's just so much better" in this post:
http://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php? ... 0#p1033507
not also count as "ridiculing, mocking, or insulting other members"? Is that not a violation of section 2.2 by a fellow language forum moderator? Was this not in a discussion where [name] herself was taking part? And how about the end of this post in the same discussion:
http://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php? ... 0#p1033654
Isn't "your evil twin or something?" a similar violation of the same policy? Doesn't the very next remark "we should stop right here, before this evolves into fight between us over something that doesn't have anything to do with this discussion" count as backseat moderating, given that [name] was talking to me and ended her last argument with me in a similar way, trying to prevent me from responding to (and defending myself against) what she said about me? Do you see how that may actually be more serious than what I am being banned for, and that it happened right in front of the very same admin yet doesn't seem to have been punished in any way?
A third problem I see is, what exactly is a ban like this one supposed to accomplish? Who exactly is being helped by it? Do the advantages of the ban really outweigh the disadvantages? Did anyone even complain about what I'm being banned for in the first place? Did anyone at all report any of the posts?
Overall, the problem as I see it is that not all of you admins and global mods are necessarily up-to-date with what is happening on the forum, yet at the same time, you are moderating it very strictly. I am saying this based not only on this ban but also on conversations I've had before with other users about how the forum is being moderated. It also seems to me that you are hoping the other users will report any and all posts they think could possibly be breaking the rules. Yet if you look at the rules themselves, you will also see that this is what they say about reporting posts:
2.4 If you think that someone is breaking the rules:
• Report the post, there is a button for that in the header of all posts.
• In the case of a private message, forward it to the forum administrators and global moderators.
• Scrap spam is reported in a designated thread in Unilang Development and Resources.
• Otherwise ignore it.
What is the purpose of that last line? Why is it even there?? It sounds like it's saying that by default, if you think someone is breaking the rules, ignore it. Or is it trying to say "if it's not a post, a private message, or scrap spam (note that we don't even have scraps anymore, which makes these rules seem outdated and possibly confusing to newer users...), ignore what you think is someone breaking the rules"? Is that really what you want? Suppose for example that we have good reason to believe someone is breaking the rules but don't know which particular posts they made to do that; are we really supposed to just ignore that?
To me, this approach of strict moderation seems not only unnecessary and impractical but also arguably rather harmful, as the result appears to be driving existing users away from the forum rather than encouraging them to stay. Unless I miss my guess, no one wants that.
While of course I would like to be unbanned, even if you do not unban me, I think it would be a good idea for you to consider pursuing a less stringent moderation policy. Otherwise, when you implement a strict policy without being fully aware of what's going on, I believe that what you end up actually doing is haphazard moderation, so only some users are punished for breaking the rules while others get away with it (and sometimes get away with even more serious policy violations). If you're not totally up-to-date with what's going on, a more reasonable policy in my view might be to punish people only when there is a serious conflict going on and other users are being adversely affected by it, rather than to punish users willy-nilly, which honestly is what the current policy looks like to me.
And even if you disagree with that idea as well, I think it's important for other users to have more of a say in how the forum is being moderated than we effectively do now. IMO, all users should feel free to express their concerns about this with the admins and global mods; I think you would agree here. But users do not necessarily feel they can trust you with those concerns (as you can see, I myself was losing hope that I could when I wrote my last e-mail). I feel that without showing all the rest of us that you are serious about hearing our suggestions about how the forum could be moderated more effectively, you run the risk of continuing a policy that ends up satisfying neither you nor the rest of us. I think a serious forum-wide discussion on policy is called for and that you need to rebuild your credibility with the other users. That is how I see it.
I never have any intention of hurting anyone who has not hurt me. Sometimes I don't even intend to hurt people who have. The only reason why I am saying all of this is because I find the moderation strategy potentially threatening, and I know I'm not the only one. I want UniLang to be the best forum it can be; to me, that means among other things that it should be a place where everyone truly has a say in how it is moderated.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
I received a long reply that was much shorter than mine, but I had more questions as a result, so I wrote another e-mail that was somewhat long though also shorter than my previous one:
► Show Spoiler
Hi [name],
I am sorry to disturb you like this because I know this e-mail is long, too (so once again, I'll understand if this takes a long time to respond to), but I feel your response only raises additional questions and have some comments on them as well.
[text]
It's not simply a question of what's visible enough; it's a question of what we are allowed to use in order to contact the admins when we are banned.
[text]
And I believe that is because they also find the admins intransigent, so they don't see how they really have any other choice. This is also a considerably unusual case in my opinion, and the admittedly few people I have been able to talk to about this at all seem fairly surprised by it as I am apparently just about the last person they would expect to be banned. After all, I am also the only user I know of who not so long before deciding to ban him, you were considering trying to promote to a global moderator. I think you'll agree it's a pretty huge change to go from potentially becoming one to being banned. To me, that's a much bigger difference than any amount of time the ban may last.
And I don't know about the other users, but while this is far from being the first time in my life that I have been punished for what was at worst an honest mistake, this is also one of the few times I do dare to complain about it since I know I have a right to do so.
[text]
Really? "Literally no one...has said anything about it"? I seem to recall you personally telling me that [name] also complained in response to being banned that the admins are inefficient in their job. And surely you know as well as I do that [name] has complained on the forum where everyone can see it that he doesn't feel safe talking to the admins about forum policy. That wasn't even more than a few months ago.
[text]
And you really don't see this as a problem when you're not necessarily aware of what's going on on the forum?
[text]
Thanks, but I don't see how that post "truly sealed the deal" apart from the fact that it was the most recent one. As far as I recall, it is not particularly different from most of my other posts in that thread or the similar posts elsewhere I mentioned earlier.
[text]
If that is such a huge issue, then I think it also should not be as easy as it was for me (for example) to become a moderator. How exactly are moderators supposed to be aware of this? Where on the forum are the requirements for becoming a moderator specified? If you really put that much trust in your moderators, why on Earth would you make someone a moderator just because they said they wanted to be one? Why wouldn't you try to make sure they understood all the responsibilities that job entails? Wouldn't it make more sense to try to make sure that they really do understand the forum policy and are ready to implement it as needed, perhaps by quizzing them on it for example?
[text]
Except that not much seems to happen in most of those forums anyway, therefore there isn't even much to moderate. At present, you could probably argue that not much is happening in any of these forums!
[text]
You really can't know this without making a poll of all the ordinary members, can you?
[text]
I'm pretty sure I'm a member of two such forums. There are hardly even any rules on one of them. I've never heard of anyone reporting anything there but spam.
[text]
I don't? As a moderator, before I was banned, I could access the moderator log. As far as I know, any moderator can see from that when a user is banned. I could also see this from the user notes from those users' profiles. I've seen from the log that [name] was punished once when she and I got into an argument on the random thread (I believe she was given a short ban, but maybe I'm remembering wrong and she got off with a warning) but not this last time.
[text]
How ironic, given that that's exactly the opposite of what the disclaimer at the top suggests! I have to wonder how and when such a seemingly drastic policy change took place.
[text]
Such as? Again, how can you possibly know this without collecting a poll of the users or something?
[text]
And having a random sex thread with no disclaimers at all (besides the very first post in it) is not? Or for that matter an entire subforum devoted to politics and religion? That seems like a very strange double standard to me, especially people cross-reference discussions even on completely different parts of UniLang sometimes. Besides, where exactly is there any concrete evidence that this is making anyone feel either unwelcome or unsafe?
[text]
Moderating the forum less strictly is not the same thing as disregarding the policy. It is a question of changing the way the policy is implemented, not of changing whether it is implemented at all. And I would argue it is still arbitrary what consequences people face for what transgressions. I don't see why a more lax policy would necessarily be a more arbitrary one. It may have been in the past, but that doesn't mean it has to or should be that way.
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Honestly, so far, it doesn't seem to me like you're doing this. Instead, I feel almost all of your answers are either sticking to your guns or saying, "Oh yeah, we already thought of that." I understand that you've been doing this for years now, but that still doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement even where you might not have seen it yet.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
I am sorry to disturb you like this because I know this e-mail is long, too (so once again, I'll understand if this takes a long time to respond to), but I feel your response only raises additional questions and have some comments on them as well.
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It's not simply a question of what's visible enough; it's a question of what we are allowed to use in order to contact the admins when we are banned.
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And I believe that is because they also find the admins intransigent, so they don't see how they really have any other choice. This is also a considerably unusual case in my opinion, and the admittedly few people I have been able to talk to about this at all seem fairly surprised by it as I am apparently just about the last person they would expect to be banned. After all, I am also the only user I know of who not so long before deciding to ban him, you were considering trying to promote to a global moderator. I think you'll agree it's a pretty huge change to go from potentially becoming one to being banned. To me, that's a much bigger difference than any amount of time the ban may last.
And I don't know about the other users, but while this is far from being the first time in my life that I have been punished for what was at worst an honest mistake, this is also one of the few times I do dare to complain about it since I know I have a right to do so.
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Really? "Literally no one...has said anything about it"? I seem to recall you personally telling me that [name] also complained in response to being banned that the admins are inefficient in their job. And surely you know as well as I do that [name] has complained on the forum where everyone can see it that he doesn't feel safe talking to the admins about forum policy. That wasn't even more than a few months ago.
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And you really don't see this as a problem when you're not necessarily aware of what's going on on the forum?
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Thanks, but I don't see how that post "truly sealed the deal" apart from the fact that it was the most recent one. As far as I recall, it is not particularly different from most of my other posts in that thread or the similar posts elsewhere I mentioned earlier.
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If that is such a huge issue, then I think it also should not be as easy as it was for me (for example) to become a moderator. How exactly are moderators supposed to be aware of this? Where on the forum are the requirements for becoming a moderator specified? If you really put that much trust in your moderators, why on Earth would you make someone a moderator just because they said they wanted to be one? Why wouldn't you try to make sure they understood all the responsibilities that job entails? Wouldn't it make more sense to try to make sure that they really do understand the forum policy and are ready to implement it as needed, perhaps by quizzing them on it for example?
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Except that not much seems to happen in most of those forums anyway, therefore there isn't even much to moderate. At present, you could probably argue that not much is happening in any of these forums!
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You really can't know this without making a poll of all the ordinary members, can you?
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I'm pretty sure I'm a member of two such forums. There are hardly even any rules on one of them. I've never heard of anyone reporting anything there but spam.
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I don't? As a moderator, before I was banned, I could access the moderator log. As far as I know, any moderator can see from that when a user is banned. I could also see this from the user notes from those users' profiles. I've seen from the log that [name] was punished once when she and I got into an argument on the random thread (I believe she was given a short ban, but maybe I'm remembering wrong and she got off with a warning) but not this last time.
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How ironic, given that that's exactly the opposite of what the disclaimer at the top suggests! I have to wonder how and when such a seemingly drastic policy change took place.
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Such as? Again, how can you possibly know this without collecting a poll of the users or something?
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And having a random sex thread with no disclaimers at all (besides the very first post in it) is not? Or for that matter an entire subforum devoted to politics and religion? That seems like a very strange double standard to me, especially people cross-reference discussions even on completely different parts of UniLang sometimes. Besides, where exactly is there any concrete evidence that this is making anyone feel either unwelcome or unsafe?
[text]
Moderating the forum less strictly is not the same thing as disregarding the policy. It is a question of changing the way the policy is implemented, not of changing whether it is implemented at all. And I would argue it is still arbitrary what consequences people face for what transgressions. I don't see why a more lax policy would necessarily be a more arbitrary one. It may have been in the past, but that doesn't mean it has to or should be that way.
[text]
Honestly, so far, it doesn't seem to me like you're doing this. Instead, I feel almost all of your answers are either sticking to your guns or saying, "Oh yeah, we already thought of that." I understand that you've been doing this for years now, but that still doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement even where you might not have seen it yet.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
Then I received a reply asking me to summarize my previous e-mail, so I wrote:
► Show Spoiler
Hi [name],
In that case, I will attempt to summarize my argument as follows:
If being a language forum moderator means that we have to know the rules by heart, for example, then since it is the admins who make people moderators anyway, I feel it is also their responsibility to inform people of what is expected of a moderator before making them moderators. So it seems unfair to me that I am being banned because I am expected to do something as a moderator, when FWICT no one did anything to ensure that we met such expectations before making us moderators.
Furthermore, I don't see who exactly feels that "sexual content is a deal breaker" at least aside from the admins and global mods since I still see no specific examples of anyone who thinks so. I also don't see how posting erotica in a language forum is as severe an offense as you're making it out to be because UniLang does also have a sex thread that's accompanied by no disclaimers, and even cross-referencing posts in completely different parts of the forum is fairly common on UniLang.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
In that case, I will attempt to summarize my argument as follows:
If being a language forum moderator means that we have to know the rules by heart, for example, then since it is the admins who make people moderators anyway, I feel it is also their responsibility to inform people of what is expected of a moderator before making them moderators. So it seems unfair to me that I am being banned because I am expected to do something as a moderator, when FWICT no one did anything to ensure that we met such expectations before making us moderators.
Furthermore, I don't see who exactly feels that "sexual content is a deal breaker" at least aside from the admins and global mods since I still see no specific examples of anyone who thinks so. I also don't see how posting erotica in a language forum is as severe an offense as you're making it out to be because UniLang does also have a sex thread that's accompanied by no disclaimers, and even cross-referencing posts in completely different parts of the forum is fairly common on UniLang.
Thanks!
Sincerely,
Vijay
After this e-mail, I received an e-mail from one of the admins/global mods telling me that they had decided to reject my appeal, so I didn't say anything else. After my ban ended, I received a PM from one of them saying that I was on probation for an entire year following that PM.
The only thing I can see that might have been objectionable in this entire exchange, especially compared to the exchange I'm having currently on the forum, is that I said I was considering leaving and encouraging others to do the same. Later, I came to realize I didn't need to do that because the admins and global mods were already scaring everyone away.
Aurinĭa wrote:vijayjohn wrote: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.
It does work, and it did then too. You got a reply a few hours later.
Okay, I guess I was wrong, but there was a lot of confusion amongst the mods because some of them were receiving all e-mails that were part of the conversation I had with them and others were not.