linguoboy wrote:(I also still haven't received an adequate answer to why you refuse to make your behind-the-scenes discussions of forum policy public as a goodwill gesture, but I always figured that was a lost cause.)
Adequate is subjective; whenever anyone says "I still haven't received an adequate answer", that basically means "you've given me your reasons as answers but I consider them insufficient and so am looking for something else". That's not the fault of the person/people trying to provide answers; that's on the person not willing to accept those answers as sufficient.
linguoboy wrote:Car wrote:(I also still haven't received an adequate answer to why you refuse to make your behind-the-scenes discussions of forum policy public as a goodwill gesture, but I always figured that was a lost cause.)
Some admins don't feel comfortable with it considering that the posts were made under the assumption that they would remain private.
THANK YOU! Was that so hard? That was the answer I expected. Why it take almost a week for someone to come up with it?
I don't understand how you and Vijay respond with one thing one minute and then something completely different the next. You specifically said to Johanna that a response of "for privacy sake" wasn't sufficient. Car just said the same thing and you
finally accept it as an answer? And if you don't remember saying this, or you want to clarify what you said earlier, here is the exact quote for you to please clarify:
linguoboy wrote:Following quote excerpted from
this post in the Forum policy review 2018 thread.
linguoboy wrote:You want to know a concrete step the moderators can take to rebuild trust?
Johanna wrote:This discussion has spurred a bunch of them among us forum admins and global mods, especially about transparency vs privacy and how we have handled and are handling those issues.
Show us those discussions. This is at the root of our complaints with Unilang: that too much is decided behind closed doors out of view of members and without their input. So make those conversations public and let's see how you all talk about us when you think we're not listening.
I would like to see a response to this. If the answer is "no" (as I suspect it will be), I would like that made explicit and some justification given. Unless y'all use your real names in the mod forum or something (and even in that case, the names could simply be redacted), a blanket appeal to "privacy" is insufficient.
Now how exactly is "a blanket appeal to "privacy" is insufficient" not the exact opposite of what you just said above to Car? Because I clearly fail to see your two responses as not being a 180 degree change.
linguoboy wrote:Follow-up questions: How do the admins in question think they would have expressed themselves differently if they knew that what they said would eventually be made public and why?
Second Follow-up question: Why are the moderators more worthy of this kind of consideration than other board members, who have had things we told them privately posted here publicly without our consent?
I can't answer question number two, but for me, with question one, I wouldn't have expressed myself differently. Now, let me ask you a point-blank question:
Do you think that all discussions made by anyone ever on this forum (with the exception of PMs) should be made public? Do you think there should be no hidden (sub)forums that are accessible only to language forum mods or global mods or forum admins? If so, do you think then that everyone should be able to respond to every discussion made on this forum?
Yes, Unilang isn't any other forum. Yes, it's not a real-life social club. Yes, it's its own thing. And sure, "precedent is only the easier way to go wrong" in some cases. But not in all cases. Sometimes precedent is a good thing because then we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can start with precedent and then modify as need be for the specific situation. You've referenced your organization and its attempts to change and become more open. Have those agreed-upon changes involved management and supervisory teams never having any closed-door discussions ever again? You also mentioned that one of the changes is to make the minutes of meetings publicly available? Are those minutes going to be similar to a court transcript, with a play-by-play of every single word that every single person at that meeting said? In my experience, whenever meeting minutes have been made public, they are a summary of what went on. Yes, sometimes that summary can contain a fair amount of details. But it's never a court transcript.
linguoboy wrote:If you don't know why you're continuing to do something, then how do you know that it's the right thing to do? Unilang is not any other forum. It is not a company. It is not a real-life social group. It is it's own thing and we can decide how we want to do things here without any reference to other social spaces. Tell me why you want to keep things this way. What do you see as the benefits and what would you miss if the practices were changed?
I don't understand why you keep thinking that we want to keep things the same way. If we really wanted that, we would've said "forget the fact that these guys have grievances and want to discuss things; screw them; we're the mod team, if they don't like it, they can leave". But we didn't; we made these threads, and we're here responding to the comments and suggestions. It's just that in this specific area, where it seems that you (and perhaps Vijay as well?) are asking for there to only ever been open discussions, that we, the moderators don't agree that should be the case. With other policies we have been open to change and even suggested change. So please don't confuse or conflate things. Currently, the discussion on this thread has come down to this one point about open vs closed discussions. That is only one part of the culture of UniLang. That is also only part of the moderation style that has been called draconian.
One more thing: whether you believe me or not, how I feel about the fact that supervisory-style teams should be allowed to have closed-door discussions is something I believe in, in general. I just don't agree that having completely open-door discussions is necessary or helpful even with respect to the team being able to do the task(s) they are responsible for. I think that's the reason why, in my experience from IRL groups, as well as it looks like from the experience of others here in both online forums and IRL groups, that is not done. Even if I wasn't on the mod team and we were having this discussion, I would've had the same opinion - the mod team shouldn't have to divulge their discussions openly for everyone.