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    • Showing only topics with the tag "moderation". Back to normal view

    3. When a notable face disappears

      ~tildes Ask
      Disclaimer: I don't quite know how to address the topic, so I want to state I'm trying to approach this with sensitivity; I hope this might lead to a helpful and insightful conversation on a...

      Disclaimer: I don't quite know how to address the topic, so I want to state I'm trying to approach this with sensitivity; I hope this might lead to a helpful and insightful conversation on a potentially difficult issue. Apologies if I don't quite get it right!

      I noticed the absence of a name I'd become familiar with on Tildes and wanted to start a discussion on how the community should handle situations where a person of community renowned abruptly departs.

      The user in question is @daychilde, who is one of the users I'd seen around quite a bit. I've been on Tildes for quite a while now, and would like to think I've had a positive - if not vast - contribution. Overall, I probably read more than I respond; I bring this up because I am aware that I probably represent the voice of a significant portion of the userbase here: I'm figuring stuff out as I go and probably am not in the loop on the majority of stuff going on on Tildes. All in all, I don't recognise a lot of names on Tildes, but @daychilde is/was a character who stuck out and seemed to have a significant impact on the community.

      From what I deduce, @daychilde has been banned some time in the past week, and I thought it worth discussing given there are at least a couple of things left in the lurch as a result that people might seek information on. The ones that have crossed my vision are the following:

      https://tildes.net/~tech/1od9/personal_offer_do_you_have_a_website_based_project_youve_been_wanting_to_do_but_worried_about_cost
      and
      https://tildes.net/~life/1n7e/daychildes_walking_thread

      At the risk of broaching a difficult topic - I'm not looking to cause drama or speculate - we should probably discuss the fallout of a situation like this. Hopefully at the very least this topic might be something others can find if they also become aware of the departure of a notable person and are looking for confirmation or where might be appropriate to discuss any fallout that might occur.

      For @daychilde in particular, this website seemed to be a resource that helped him manage his life. I wonder if we should consider whether there is some duty of care to users to depend on Tildes in some capacity?

      There are also people who might be looking to discuss the hosting that he had offered/agreed, and might now be left in the lurch.

      Unfortunately I don't have solutions, but I didn't see any discussion or information on this kind of a topic, nor any precedent for this kind of a situation!

      34 votes

    7. How come the mods on here keep editing the titles of my post to be exactly what they already were?

      ~tildes Ask
      I was going to get screenshots to backup what I am talking about but apparently they aren't kicking around in the system forever so most of the evidence is gone but I often see mycketforvirrad...

      I was going to get screenshots to backup what I am talking about but apparently they aren't kicking around in the system forever so most of the evidence is gone but I often see mycketforvirrad editing the title of a post I make to exactly what it already was while they are editing tags as they see fit.

      What's up with that?

      20 votes

    8. Do topic logs get deleted after a period of time?

      ~tildes Ask
      I was going to post a question regarding the topic logs but looking through my old posts, I see that much less than I remember have any topic logs on them. I can't tell if I am imagining that alot...

      I was going to post a question regarding the topic logs but looking through my old posts, I see that much less than I remember have any topic logs on them.

      I can't tell if I am imagining that alot more of them used to have topic logs or Deimos coded it to be a temporary record of the changes that the mods here make?

      and if so, why temporary?

      8 votes

    13. How would you moderate this scenario?

      ~tech Ask (advice)
      I'm one of the moderators of a small / medium community. I've been doing it for around a year, with no prior experience at moderating or helping to foster an online community. We have a section...

      I'm one of the moderators of a small / medium community. I've been doing it for around a year, with no prior experience at moderating or helping to foster an online community.

      We have a section for jokes and humour, and somebody posted one of those "train dilemma" memes. It gave the choice of letting the train hit one of several groups of people. It was general enough to not name anyone specific. The options were similar to:

      Let the train hit:
      a) Nintendo developers
      b) Sony developers
      c) Microsoft developers

      Fine. A bit crass, but hardly shocking.

      A commenter then replied by stating they don't mind which, so long as x well known developer is shot.

      Now that really threw me.

      The moderation team have been divided over it, although not strongly so. We are all generally in favour of removing it. But we are concerned about over-stepping and of course the topic of free-speech has arisen.

      As it came up with us, I'll also mention that there are no specific rules of the website, or this specific sub-community, to state such humour is disallowed.

      Where is the line drawn with free-speech? We would certainly remove anything pro-fascism, racist, homophobic or grossly offensive, but we do have rules that cover those.

      I'd be really keen to hear any views on how you would approach this and how you would justify your decision.

      21 votes

    24. Sorry for the mess (post mortem for a Topic that went sideways?)

      ~tildes Ask (advice)
      Last night I posted a video that came across my YouTube feed. I had never seen this particular creator before, but I found the video entertaining and thought provoking in isolation. I hadn't seen...

      Last night I posted a video that came across my YouTube feed. I had never seen this particular creator before, but I found the video entertaining and thought provoking in isolation. I hadn't seen any videos like this anywhere else on Tildes, so I decided to post a new Topic. I wasn't sure how to word the description. I knew I wanted to hear other points of view, so I hinted at wanting a discussion and didn't really get into my own thoughts.

      I hit submit and went to bed, thinking that in the morning I might be able to clarify my thoughts, and add to the discussion without dominating it.

      But I woke up to a mess! A mess that I made. The post had been locked and deleted. Apparently this particular YouTuber is very controversial, and posting without any context turned out to be problematic. I was hoping for discussion and boy howdy did I get discussion.

      But since I never really voiced my original intent for posting, it all left me feeling like I had spilled some milk and then someone else had cleaned it up for me. The problem is that I never got to apologize for spilling the milk, and never got to thank the people who cleaned up for me while I was sleeping.

      So I suppose this is sort of a meta post. Has anyone else here had something locked/deleted before being able to "make it right"? Should I have provided more context up front? Vetted the creator better by researching their other videos or other online activity? Am I doing the wrong thing by talking about it post-mortem? I definitely don't want to make things any worse, and super duper do not want to be kicked from Tildes! I really enjoy interacting with people here, and want to make sure I'm adding rather than taking away.

      Also, I just want to say that I'm sorry if this reignites any problems related to the original (now deleted) Topic, and I will happily accept if this Topic also needs to be removed. Please excuse my mess. :)

      49 votes

    25. I am missing a neutral way to flag low-effort or potentially spammy posts

      ~tildes Ask
      Lately I have seen a few posts here and there from accounts that have been silent for a while, where I can't help but feel that these new posts are made by different people or that the initial...

      Lately I have seen a few posts here and there from accounts that have been silent for a while, where I can't help but feel that these new posts are made by different people or that the initial posts they made were intended to "pad" the account. In other words, they feel a bit like spam and because of that I would like to "flag" them somehow.

      The obvious question people will have is likely "Why not just comment about it under the post?"

      I have done that various times, and it has the opposite effect of what I'd like:

      1. Commenting boosts the post for people who sort based on comments or activity.
      2. From what I have observed, when a post has one comment, it is more likely to receive more votes as well. If it has more than one comment, it will receive more votes. This, to me, bizarre voting behavior is something worthy of a meta discussion in itself. But from what I gather, people seem to think that it indicates discussion. Making them think that there must be something worthwhile about the post. This obviously doesn't apply when it's just the OP sharing a quote and me raising a concern.
      3. Sometimes I am not entirely sure and would like to have someone with more insights behind the screens take a look at it. If I commented my suspicions while being wrong, that would suck for everyone involved.

      Basically for the first two points I am not sure what a good solution would be. I am not advocating for a downvote ability, though something would be nice.
      For the third point, I guess I am saying that I am missing the ability to report a post. With comments, I can use the malice label and write out a report, for posts there is no such thing.

      29 votes

    35. Should moderation be more transparent?

      ~tildes Ask
      Before starting this topic, I thought I'd start a discussion that wasn't held before. @cfabbro and other commenters who have better memories than I pointed out that this isn't the case. They've...

      Before starting this topic, I thought I'd start a discussion that wasn't held before. @cfabbro and other commenters who have better memories than I pointed out that this isn't the case. They've also laid out it's been tried and was unsuccessful. I stand corrected.

      I do not want to contribute any noise to the website, so I'd appreciate it if @Deimos can lock or remove the topic all together, if he deems it appropriate. I'd also appreciate it if no further comments are made so as to not put any further burden on moderation. I apologize for wasting everyone's time.

      My original post

      Frankly, I'm not sure if I should even be writing this as it will likely end up consuming more of my time than I intend to spend on it, but as someone who's relatively a veteran member of this community1 which I'm happy to be a part of, I want to voice my only disappointment with it to see what the rest of the community think and try to explore if there might be better way to do things.

      Let me preface my post with some baseline opinions that I do hold.

      Tildes is a private platform, in that it's owned by a single person and managed by a few select moderators. These people have, I assume, shared opinions on how to run a community based on their priors. This is well within their right. This post is not about some misguided criticism of Tildes because it lacks free speech or whatever. It's a private community that we're a part of because we're allowed to be in it. It'd be disappointing, but people who have the power to do so can show me the door today and I'd not hold it against them.

      I have no doubt moderating the website as well as moderators have is a time consuming, thankless job and they do it not for any gain but to contribute back to the community they too are happy to be a part of. My post does not intend to criticize the moderators themselves.

      What prompted me to write this post was the apparent removal of Macklemore's Hind's Hall topic. It was a topic of personal interest and I had followed the discussion as well as I can without contributing to it myself, other than some voting and a couple of labeling that I thought was justified. I understand and somewhat agree that the last time I read the comments the conversation had veered off topic to the election and voter preferences2 but, despite the conversation getting circular, it seemed civil. It had valuable contributions from opposing views and I learned from it but now it's gone. Maybe something happened and people started to attack each other in the comments when I was asleep but as of late last night my time (I'm currently in a GMT+3 zone), that was objectively not the case.

      Regardless, this post is not about why that specific topic was removed3. It's just the most recent example of a trend, or rather the general pattern with which the moderation decide on how to handle topics that can sometimes be controversial. I'm not a native speaker and it can be hard for me to turn a phrase sometimes, so let me be clear: there are topics that should be removed without seeing first how the community will respond to it. For example, I personally don't take kindly the posts that seem to think someone's existence or dignity as a human being can be a matter of discussion. I think these topics should and rightly do so get nuked out of existence. But in the case of the most recent example, I don't think that was the case.

      What I'd suggest, or rather like to put forward is the idea of some kind of a moderation log that show the rest of the members of the community how and why a moderation decision was made. We already do have this system as "Topic log" in each thread, but its scope seems narrow. I, as someone who enjoyed following the aforementioned topic, would've liked to know why moderation decided to take the action that it did, instead of, say, a seemingly more agreeable action to lock the topic down to new comments. It would've helped preserve the discussion and frankly, be more respectable toward people who put their time into contributing to it as it had long, thoughtful posts in it.

      I guess that's the crux of the issue for me. The moderation is so opaque that I don't even know who the moderators are, even as a long time member of this community. They're not listed anywhere that I can find. I know that @cfabbro and @mycketforvirrad often add tags and @cfabbro has in their bio that they're a moderator, but I also seem to recall, maybe wrongly, that there's a hierarchy between the mods themselves with regards to what they can and cannot do. I do believe that who ever they are, they are acting in good faith but I also think there's a great information asymmetry between moderators and the rest of the members of the community. Deimos and the moderators shoulder the thankless burden of maintaining the health of the community, but I don't think it'd be far fetched to say that the rest of the members play a part, too. So why not give us the benefit of the doubt sometimes, trust us to have respectful disagreements without getting involved too much, but when you do, let us know why you did4?


      I'm sorry if this reads as disjointed mumbo jumbo. I'd appreciate it if my post is taken in good faith that it is written and if you want me to clarify something, you can ask me directly to do so. My intention with this thread was to start a conversation to see what the community's opinion on how the website is being moderated, so while I'll read every single comment, I will not be contributing to it further unless it's necessary.

      1: I had a different account from early 2019 that needed to be removed due to privacy reasons. Since name change was not possible, I created this new account with the advice and help of @Deimos.
      2: Though it could be argued that it was a relevant discussion, given the spirit of the video and the part where the artist reveal their own voting preference.
      3: I will refer to it to help me make my point but please do not assume I'm obsessed about that particular topic.
      4: I do realize this would inevitably increase the workload of moderators. My suggestion isn't that moderation should justify every action they take but there are some actions that are irreversible, which happen few and far in between, that I think should be justified. (Keep in mind what I mentioned in my preface.)

      20 votes

    37. I’m worried that the Israel-Palestine conflict is tearing Tildes apart

      ~tildes Text 156 words
      Let me preface this by saying that I’m genuinely not trying to stir the pot. I’m hoping we can discuss this in a civil manner. The discussion about the I-P conflict has me worried that Tildes is...

      Let me preface this by saying that I’m genuinely not trying to stir the pot. I’m hoping we can discuss this in a civil manner.

      The discussion about the I-P conflict has me worried that Tildes is tearing itself apart. In the past few months, I’ve seen (at least) one pro-Palestinian user get banned, another stop posting here, and at least two Jewish Tilderinos quit. I get that Israel and Palestine are really important issues, that affect millions of people. But I’ve seen a degradation in the rhetoric, and I don’t want that to consume this place. We all need to “remember the human” behind the screen, and that folks have a view for a reason. I like this place. I don’t want to see it go away.

      I’m sorry if I haven’t articulated myself well. I just had to get this off my chest. It’s been bothering me for a few weeks now.

      71 votes