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  • Showing only topics in ~tildes with the tag "moderation". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. I’m worried that the Israel-Palestine conflict is tearing Tildes apart

      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
    2. How is moderation going lately?

      I am a reddit refugee and I was drawn to this network by its mission, its decisive rebuff of chasing capital at all costs, and the overall vibe. I lurked for a while before I was invited to join,...

      I am a reddit refugee and I was drawn to this network by its mission, its decisive rebuff of chasing capital at all costs, and the overall vibe.

      I lurked for a while before I was invited to join, but shortly after joining I noticed something. While a good discussion from opposing viewpoints can help everyone broaden their horizons a bit, it felt like white supremacists were testing the waters. While I can't directly cite any threads, there were a couple instances where I felt one side was seeing just how close they could get without being obvious. But it felt like some of the subtler dog whistles were there.

      It felt very similar to how QAnon got a lot of people with the disinformative statistic about child abductions. After all, who's going to be on the other side "child abductions are bad?"

      After seeing a few threads and getting the same vibe, I stopped visiting the site for the last couple months. Life getting pretty busy also helped.

      I haven't been back long enough to determine for myself whether I'm in a "Nazi bar" or not. I would be happy to admit that it was all in my head. But it is a major concern for any up-and-coming social network. And that's an opposing viewpoint no one needs to take seriously. Was it in my head? Was I reading too much into things? Did all the nazis just go to X? More generally, how has moderation been with the influx of new users? The same, but more? A couple extra reminders doing the trick? Uptick in bans? Is this information already somewhere and I'm a bad user for not having seen it?

      62 votes
    3. Tildes constitution

      Looking at the current top thread in ~talk, it seems many of us were forged in the fires of Mount Digg, and now suffer again through the great Reddit diaspora. Perhaps it is here our journey ends?...

      Looking at the current top thread in ~talk, it seems many of us were forged in the fires of Mount Digg, and now suffer again through the great Reddit diaspora. Perhaps it is here our journey ends?

      I am not from the US of A, but one thing I have always found fascinating about that country is the concept of the constitution. I believe it was so incredibly well conceived, the three legged stool, with all the thought that went into how it might be attacked and edge cases, that the founding fathers would have made excellent software testers. The fact American democracy has stood this long is some feat.

      Which brings me to my question. Should Tildes create some form of constitution? A set of principles that binds and guides it? I believe something like that would make questions like this easier to answer. A founding set of ideals from which everything else should derive.

      We have something akin to this at my company, where the founding principle is the customer is always our main priority. This has served our business well for decades; is everything we do in service of the customer and their needs. You would honestly be amazed at the loyalty and trust this builds over time.

      Anyway just some food for thought. I think I will be calling this my new home for now - it feels very much like the Reddit of old right now, a feeling I haven't felt for a great age.

      17 votes
    4. Not trying to make waves but why are articles posted to news that relate to lgbt moved?

      As a new member I am really hesitant to post this but I recently posted an article to ~news that was related to lgbt issues and it was moved to ~lgbt. I fully support a sub section devoted to lgbt...

      As a new member I am really hesitant to post this but I recently posted an article to ~news that was related to lgbt issues and it was moved to ~lgbt. I fully support a sub section devoted to lgbt but news should be news regardless.

      Just because it has an lgbt angle does not mean it should be moved. I'm not even lgbt myself but I find it sort of hurtful that a news article was pushed off ~news. So I ask this, and once again not trying to make waves. But why?

      Edit: I would love to be a member of this community as I am personally seeking a less asshole filled reddit alternative. But pushing a news article to another ~ just because it relates a bit more to them shouldn't be a thing. If you are tolerant it relates to us all. And yes I know I posted it in ~news because I was trying to participate and I'm a news junky.

      Sorry.

      Edit 2: This was a sad sorry way to come in to this community. I apologize.

      19 votes
    5. Should Tildes have rules for healthcare advice?

      Sometimes Tildes users give people healthcare advice. Sometimes that advice disagrees with the advice already given by a qualified registered healthcare professional. That might be okay if the...

      Sometimes Tildes users give people healthcare advice. Sometimes that advice disagrees with the advice already given by a qualified registered healthcare professional. That might be okay if the tildes advice was compliant with national guidance, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's bad, dangerous, advice.

      Should Tildes have rules about this?

      16 votes
    6. Statistics on bans and transparency

      Do we have any statistics on how many users have been banned and why they’ve been banned? What information should be or remain public? Some forum sites let you see the banned users post and...

      Do we have any statistics on how many users have been banned and why they’ve been banned? What information should be or remain public? Some forum sites let you see the banned users post and comment history from prior to their ban; is there any value in that?

      Unrelated; how many Tildes-ers are we up to now?

      18 votes
    7. Should we be able to view comments/posts where mods/admins are doing their roles and not doing them separately?

      What I mean by this is: Sometimes @Deimos posts something related to his mod/admin work, like saying he will be locking a thread or adding something new, but that's not all he does, he makes...

      What I mean by this is:

      Sometimes @Deimos posts something related to his mod/admin work, like saying he will be locking a thread or adding something new, but that's not all he does, he makes regular topics and comments about regular things, he doesn't have need to use an alt-account for that. I feel that when he's talking or posting about his mod/admin work and talking about anything else that interests him should be able to be viewed separately.

      Thoughts?

      9 votes
    8. How do you use Tildes' labels?

      One of the unique feature of Tildes when it comes to content moderation is the usage of "labels". While there are guidelines, there are no hard and fast rules as to when to use one label or the...

      One of the unique feature of Tildes when it comes to content moderation is the usage of "labels". While there are guidelines, there are no hard and fast rules as to when to use one label or the other (nor should there be!). I am curious what criteria you all use when deciding whether or not to apply a label to a comment, and also how frequently you find yourself labeling things. For reference, the current labels are:

      • Exemplary
      • Offtopic
      • Joke
      • Noise
      • Malice

      Are there labels you find yourself using more than others? Are there some you think are unclear? I feel like this is an often overlooked and underused feature, but that may just be because I personally do not use them that frequently. For example, I have only given a few Exemplary tags, a few noise, and I don't think any of the others.

      17 votes
    9. Who moved my cheese?

      Prologue: Feeling cranky, trying to be civil. I posted a link to an article, in the ~news, about two of the top US dairy producers declaring bankruptcy ... and Someone moved it to ~food. Harumpf....

      Prologue: Feeling cranky, trying to be civil.

      I posted a link to an article, in the ~news, about two of the top US dairy producers declaring bankruptcy ... and Someone moved it to ~food.

      Harumpf.

      ~food is "check out this new latte recipe" or "how to survive the vegetarian keto diet" (yes, that's a thing; I'm on it. May be why I'm cranky).

      My post was ~news, about the US economy, shifting societal norms, potentially about climate change.

      But forget about this specific categorization issue. This is the first time I've bumped into Tildes' moderation methodology.

      I don't subscribe to ~food, so for me, my post just vanished, w/o notification or explanation. Took me a few minutes to find it. I don't see any way to ID who moved it (may well have been @Deimos, for all I know), nor any way to challenge the move.

      Have I overlooked some 'moderation dispute' button, or some such? Or is moderation here beyond dispute?


      ETA: For anyone visiting this post down the line, here's the official/original statement on this ...

      https://tildes.net/~tildes.official/53r/users_can_now_be_manually_granted_permissions_to_re_tag_topics_move_them_between_groups_and_edit

      20 votes
    10. How should I go about requesting a topic move or retag?

      Occasionally, especially for newer users, I'll see a post in a section of the site where it doesn't belong, sometimes without (proper) tags. What's the best way to bring this to the attention of...

      Occasionally, especially for newer users, I'll see a post in a section of the site where it doesn't belong, sometimes without (proper) tags. What's the best way to bring this to the attention of folks who can fix it? Leaving comments is messy and distracts from the discussion, but right now it's the only method I know of to bring up the issue.

      4 votes
    11. Is there a reason I cannot have a tag people.doing.something

      I usually don't mind my tags getting erased and someone putting a more appropriate tag, but I want to know what is wrong with people.doing.something, or someone doing something, or...

      I usually don't mind my tags getting erased and someone putting a more appropriate tag, but I want to know what is wrong with people.doing.something, or someone doing something, or someone.doing.something. I tried various ways today, and each one got removed, and I would like to know why.

      5 votes
    12. Unofficial Weekly Discussion #3 - Argument de-escalation and disengagement brainstorming session

      IMO one of the major issues with online debates, arguments and heated discussions is that they often tend to escalate rather steadily over time, and as each side gets more frustrated with the...

      IMO one of the major issues with online debates, arguments and heated discussions is that they often tend to escalate rather steadily over time, and as each side gets more frustrated with the other they also tend to slowly get more personal as well. I am admittedly guilty of falling into this trap occasionally myself too, which has got me thinking about ways that Tildes (the site and the users here) can potentially help deescalate unproductive arguments and allow people to disengage more effectively from them. To this end I thought it might be a good idea to have a brainstorming session regarding that.

      To start things off, here are most of the ideas I could find related to this issue that have previously been proposed and are already on Tildes Gitlab (click to read the full details):

      Add ability to hide topics (and view/unhide ones users have previously hidden) self explanatory
      Add community based thread locking We have labels now, which help moderation and can help hide comments that hurt the discussion. But maybe we need some sort of similar function for locking or temp-locking threads when they get out of hand due to drama or something. As long as we only really have Deimos doing the moderating, that can help avoid things blowing up when he is unavailable.
      Add "block user" feature This would more effectively allow people to avoid arguments but has some potential downsides worth considering as well, e.g. users getting trapped in a filter bubble. However, other than for moderators, that is probably not a major drawback compared to the benefits, IMO.

      How deep the block goes is also something that probably needs to be investigated and discussed. E.g. Does blocking a user just prevent PMs? Does it prevent their replies from notifying the user? Does it hide their comments/topics, and if so does it hide all the replies to those hidden comments as well? Etc.

      Add "unfollow" feature, allowing users to turn off notifications for replies to their comments/topics This would allow users to more effectively disengage from arguments. It should probably be something disabled by default and only enabled on a case-by-case basis, not a global user setting though, IMO.

      edit: Feature also requested again, but for a slightly different reason (avoiding getting spammed on busy topics)

      Add placebo comment labels Related to the other "disengage" feature suggestions, I think a "placebo" comment label could also potentially help the culture of the site. What I mean by that is perhaps adding some comment labels that have no effect, or only an effect for the person that applied it. e.g. A "Disagree" comment label, that has no effect whatsoever, or perhaps makes the comment collapse (like a "noise" labeled comments), but only to the user that applied the "disagree".

      Comments related to this.

      Add "argument/bickering" label for users to apply on unproductive arguments This label, once it reaches a certain threshold could even have effects applied to it, E.g. imposing a forced time delay on replies between all involved parties, adding a delay before the replies even show up (to give time for people to cool off), or even simply locking that particular thread entirely if enough labels are applied.
      Show whether a comment has already been replied to in users' /notifications/unread page I suspect that people often reply directly from their /notifications/unread page, which can lead to needless repetition in the comments. It also potentially further escalates arguments as well, since a user may feel obligated to reply since they do not realize that someone has already addressed the comment effectively. Embedding the other replies somehow, perhaps by using a `details` like expando, might be nice as well.

      Feel free to voice your support or criticism regarding the above suggestions, offer up ideas to potentially improve them, or even propose your own brand new ideas related to this issue in the comments here as well.

      p.s. Once again, the point here is to open up the conversation and get ideas flowing freely, so let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.


      Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

      Week #1, #2


      Other relevant links:
      Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

      27 votes
    13. Community based tag-curation

      This was inspired by this post where the user tagged the post as "sugges" rather than "suggestions." Since tags decline in utility with minor spelling mistakes like this, I wonder if there could...

      This was inspired by this post where the user tagged the post as "sugges" rather than "suggestions."

      Since tags decline in utility with minor spelling mistakes like this, I wonder if there could be a way for nitpicky grammarians, like myself, to just go through an edit broken tags, add relevant tags, prune unnecessary ones, etc.

      I guess it would be sort of a moderation responsibility, but I expect we would prefer they focus on content moderation. Tag editing is low-key enough that people with this responsibility probably wouldn't need to be vetted as thoroughly or held to the same kind of community standards of behavior that a mod would be. We'd just have to trust them to not be pranksters or abusive with it (e.g. making tags like "this poster is a doodyhead").

      8 votes
    14. Is Tildes 18+?

      I was thinking about posting this to ~news, but suddenly I've realised that I don't know if the word “fuck”, or any of the Seven Dirty Words, are allowed in titles. Is Tildes adults-only? Should...

      I was thinking about posting this to ~news, but suddenly I've realised that I don't know if the word “fuck”, or any of the Seven Dirty Words, are allowed in titles. Is Tildes adults-only? Should people write something like “f***” in titles instead?

      11 votes
    15. Mod annotations for removed comments

      I just came across this field of 13 admin-removed comments and frankly it left me feeling rather unsettled. That's a lot of content to just nuke all at once. Contextually, the thread up to that...

      I just came across this field of 13 admin-removed comments and frankly it left me feeling rather unsettled. That's a lot of content to just nuke all at once. Contextually, the thread up to that point was genial and non-controversial, so it seems especially odd that there's just this black hole there. What struck me mostly was how opaque the moderation was. There is no indication of what kind of content was removed, why it was removed, or specifically who did the removal or when it happened.

      Then I scrolled down and at the very bottom I found what I guess is meant to address these concerns, a comment from Deimos:

      Sigh, I saw this thread was active and thought it was going to have an actual on-topic discussion in it. Let's (mostly) start this over.

      It's not always clear online so I want to say that I'm not rage-posting or bellyaching about censorship or any of the usual drama that tends to crop up on sites like Tildes from time to time. I trust Deimos' moderation and give this the benefit of the doubt. What I'm actually doing, I guess, is making a feature request about better annotation for removed comments.

      Would it make sense to show a note (like Deimos' comment) in-thread at the position of the deleted content? Instead of down at the bottom of the page or unattached to anything relevant? In my opinion some kind of "reason" message should always be provided with any moderation activity as a matter of course. Even if it's just boilerplate text chosen from a dropdown menu.

      Also, would a single bulk-annotation for all of the related removals make for better UX than 13 separate ones? I think that would be both easier to read, and easier for Deimos to generate on the backend.

      I feel like we may have had this conversation previously, but I couldn't find it. Apologies if I'm beating a dead horse.

      13 votes
    16. Crazy idea to help stop the spreading of untruthful news

      One of the main issues with news on social media is the spread of fake or false news. This happens on every platform that allows sharing news. If Tildes continues to gain popularity, this will...

      One of the main issues with news on social media is the spread of fake or false news. This happens on every platform that allows sharing news. If Tildes continues to gain popularity, this will likely happen on Tildes. I had an Idea: what if tildes had a group of fact checkers that check to see if the news is truthful, and block posts that link to untrustworthy new sites? could be like a 3 strikes thing, where if a new source has 3 articles posted that have misinformation, they would be blocked (the post also removed).

      This is just an idea, feel free to highlight any issues with it.

      10 votes
    17. Should deleting comments be the standard behaviour, or can we consider a less censored approach by default?

      I often stumble in to threads with entire comment chains deleted. I assume most people here have faced the same situation as well, either here or on reddit. I'd like to see a move to locking...

      I often stumble in to threads with entire comment chains deleted. I assume most people here have faced the same situation as well, either here or on reddit.

      I'd like to see a move to locking comments rather than deleting them by default. That would mean no further replies to the comment or any other comment in that chain, no one being able to delete or edit their comments, no one being able to add or remove votes to a comment, etc.

      I understand for particularly egregious comments removal is completely necessary (especially when it goes hand-in-hand with banning users), but a lot of times comments are deleted as a means to prevent long argumentative back-and-forth chains that spam and derail topics, as well as antagonize users.

      In a lot of cases I feel like deleting the comment only further serves to hide what is unacceptable behaviour (even if that behaviour should be obvious), rather than setting an example for the userbase.

      30 votes
    18. Feature proposal: Real-time moderation transparency page (vote in comments)

      Proposal: Create a new page where all users can view all moderation actions. This would make transparency a core part of the platform, hopefully avoiding any misunderstandings about mod actions. A...

      Proposal:
      Create a new page where all users can view all moderation actions. This would make transparency a core part of the platform, hopefully avoiding any misunderstandings about mod actions.

      A new page, maybe called tildes.net/moderation, is available to all registered users. I am not sure where the link to should appear on the site, maybe on the user's profile sidebar?

      This page contains a table of all possible moderation actions. The actions may include: deleted topics, deleted comments, tag modification, moved topics, edited topic titles, banned user, locked topics. (this begs the question, what are the possible mod actions, and that they must be codified.)

      Very roughly, the table columns might include: Date, User(being mod'ed), Mod Action(a list of possible mod actions), Mod Action Reason (either a text field, or a list of possible reasons for this action), Link (null if action is a deleted topic.)

      I think that the user who did the moderating should not be publicly listed for now, to avoid drama?


      Some of the related Topics: (please make a top-level comment with any others)

      Could we have a stickied list of all bans with reasons included?

      Daily Tildes discussion - our first ban


      Please vote for the comment which best reflects your position on this proposal.
      As a bonus question, please make a top-level comment if you have general comment about my format of voting on comments. Would you prefer a straw poll on a 3rd party platform? Is there a cleaner way to do this?

      Edit: added "banned user" to actions list, I probably missed others, let me know. Also added the obvious locked topics.

      23 votes
    19. Lets discuss tags, again

      There's been some discussion around tags since users were given tag-editing privileges, such as Tag Use and Article Tags I've noticed a few things about tags and rather than make a topic for each...

      There's been some discussion around tags since users were given tag-editing privileges, such as Tag Use and Article Tags

      I've noticed a few things about tags and rather than make a topic for each one I thought I'd make a few top level comments instead, hopefully with others doing the same for anything tag related they'd like to see discussed.

      20 votes
    20. Tildes code of conduct

      Tildes code of conduct says Do not post anyone's sensitive personal information (related to either their real world or online identity) with malicious intent. Can you change that to just say don't...

      Tildes code of conduct says

      Do not post anyone's sensitive personal information (related to either their real world or online identity) with malicious intent.

      Can you change that to just say don't post personal info? Even if it's not done with malicious intent it should still be removed to protect people's privacy.

      Also while it does say to not post spam on tildes terms of service I think It should say that on the code of conduct.

      Edit: I mean posting personal info without consent and not public information.

      Telling someone how to contact a company would be fine but not posting someone's address.

      12 votes
    21. Could we have a stickied list of all bans with reasons included?

      In the interest of transparency (and a little bit in statistics) it would be really cool to have a master banlist or at least a thread with links to all ban-worthy posts. This would help new users...

      In the interest of transparency (and a little bit in statistics) it would be really cool to have a master banlist or at least a thread with links to all ban-worthy posts. This would help new users understand what isn't acceptable in the community and allow for community discussion on what could be considered an unjustified ban or a weird influx of bad behavior. This wouldn't be super viable when the site goes public, but would be a neat implementation in Tildes' alpha state.

      14 votes
    22. Moderator tools: what do you have and what should be the immediate priorities?

      I don't want to get too high in the clouds with moderating philosophy. Instead I want to talk about action steps that can be taken in the very near term to improve moderating. Especially so long...

      I don't want to get too high in the clouds with moderating philosophy. Instead I want to talk about action steps that can be taken in the very near term to improve moderating. Especially so long as Deimos is the only one with most of the moderating tools at their disposal, I think it's crucial to make sure it's as painless as possible.

      So far it looks like Deimos has these moderating tools available to him:

      1. User bans
      2. Comment removal
      3. Thread locking/removal
      4. Title/tag editing (and this ability is shared by many of us as well)

      Am I missing anything?

      The three next tools I would hope are coming next are:

      • A reporting mechanism, where users can report comments and threads that they think should be removed.
      • A feedback mechanism for reports, telling users that a report they gave was acted on.
      • A note taking system for the moderator-type person, shareable with all other moderator-type persons at that level, with an expiration date probably around 30 days.

      Now I'll talk about why. First, the reporting mechanism. While it's still possible to keep up with everything that gets posted, I don't necessarily think it's the best use of Deimos' time to read literally everything, especially as the site expands its userbase and presumably activity level and depth. The reporting system at first should probably just be a button, maybe eventually with a pop-up field allowing the user a brief description why their reporting, and a queue that gets populated with comments and threads that get reported.

      Coinciding with a report queue/option should probably be an easy, rudimentary system for providing feedback to those whose reports led to moderating action. At first, an automated message saying something like "thank you for reporting recently. Action has been taken on one of your recent reports" without any relevant links would do fine, and we can leave the particulars of how much detail to add for later discussions.

      The last thing I think should help things considerably in the immediate term is a time-limited user tracking tool for the moderator-type person. As things scale, it isn't always going to be feasible to use mental bandwidth remembering each username and the relevant history associated with their behavior. A good note-taking tool with an auto-timed expiration date on notes would be a good way to address what can easily become a hugely mentally taxing role at almost any scale. This tool should let Deimos take a discrete note for himself (and other moderators at that permission level and higher) connected to a user regarding any questionable threads or comments that were yellow/red flags, or any other moderator action taken against a user within the last X days/months (the particulars don't matter to me as much as that there is an expiration date to these notes). This should let the moderator type person focus on the broader history of the users they're looking at before making a decision, without having to go searching for every relevant comment from the past 30 days. Fewer problematic users at scale should fall through the cracks and more users that might just be having a bad day can be let off with comment removals and/or warnings.

      Are these priorities fair? Are there design elements you would want to see in the immediate term that would help reduce the burden of moderating? Are there problems with these tools I'm suggesting that you would want to see addressed?

      19 votes
    23. How will moderation on existing groups work?

      So far, I haven’t seen too much moderation aside from bans, etc. dealt out by the admins (unless I’m wrong here and a moderation system is currently in place, please correct me if I’m wrong), but...

      So far, I haven’t seen too much moderation aside from bans, etc. dealt out by the admins (unless I’m wrong here and a moderation system is currently in place, please correct me if I’m wrong), but how will this work once Tildes is fully released to the public? Will people who show interest in a certain community be reached out to and asked?

      13 votes
    24. [Suggestion] Use sortition for moderation ?

      In governance, sortition (also known as allotment or demarchy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. The logic behind the sortition process...

      In governance, sortition (also known as allotment or demarchy) is the selection of political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates. The logic behind the sortition process originates from the idea that “power corrupts.” For that reason, when the time came to choose individuals to be assigned to empowering positions, the ancient Athenians resorted to choosing by lot. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was therefore the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of true democracy.

      Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems and is sometimes used in forming citizen groups with political advisory power (citizens' juries or citizens' assemblies).

      The mechanics would be something like this: users report a post/comment, when there's enough reports the systems randomly selects 3/5/7/... currently active users and ask them to determine if the reported post contravene to the rules. The decision is then automatically taken with a majority rule.

      Why ?

      1. It's the only system that scales (to my knowledge). More users mean more content to moderate, but since the users are also moderators the system works at any scale. Systems that don't scale lead to all kind of problems when the number of users become large.
      2. It's very robust to manipulation. As moderators are chosen randomly it's very hard to coordinate or try to influence the decisions.
      3. It promotes a participatory attitude and a sense of responsibility in the users. There's no "them against us" (the bad mods against the users).
      21 votes
    25. Mod cultures - What do we want?

      Right now there's a lot of discussion ongoing about community culture, building Tildes' attitudes as a community into something that is solid enough to withstand waves of new users without being...

      Right now there's a lot of discussion ongoing about community culture, building Tildes' attitudes as a community into something that is solid enough to withstand waves of new users without being disrupted too heavily by newcomers that have yet to learn the culture.

      But what of mod culture?

      This topic isn't only for those that have mod experience, there are plenty of users with experience talking to mods that have their own negative stories. Over on reddit the actions of one mod team affect the brand-image of all modteams on the entirety of reddit. One bad action by a mod that occurs in a default subreddit backed up by the other mods in that subreddit becomes (in the eyes of users) the behaviour of all "reddit moderators".

      Often I see mods making things far far worse by being one of the most combative and hostile in-groups on the site. Talking to users in a manner that is best described as the way the worst teacher in school talked to teenagers as if they were 4 year olds, not listening to anything a user is actually saying and dismissing them outright because they're the user and they're the moderator. I understand some of it comes from difficult interactions with genuinely toxic individuals that waste enormous quantities of time better put towards better things. However what I see are moderators approaching every interaction with every user with criticism as if they are almost certainly the same-old toxic user. This is not the case.

      This is exceptionally important here on Tildes because it won't be a mistake to take the actions of one moderator and have it colour your image of other moderators on the site. When the site holds responsibility for moderator actions due to oversight and control then the actions of all moderators are going to be considered the actions of the site and the rest of the mods.

      So, how do we want our mods to talk to users? How do we want them to interact with users? What controls can be put in place to appreciate quality moderation? What can stop quippy mods that shut down valid discussion with 1 line reductive answers? Etc etc.

      What is good moderation and what is a good moderator?

      Personally what I try to apply to my own behaviour is to actually LISTEN to people and act as an equal, or at least present the appearance of listening. The thing that bothers people most feeling like something they care about is dismissed.

      What are the many issues that you've see in moderator behaviour (in front and behind the scenes) and in what ways can Tildes go about things differently to stop them?

      19 votes
    26. What's the plan for deciding moderation policies that go beyond removing trolls?

      So I noticed the entire front page getting clogged with "question" type posts, ranging from "what are your favorite..." to "pls help me choose..." type posts. This might be mainly due to...

      So I noticed the entire front page getting clogged with "question" type posts, ranging from "what are your favorite..." to "pls help me choose..." type posts. This might be mainly due to "activity" sorting (sorting by votes is a little better), but that's still the default and doesn't change the general dominance. I took this screenshot earlier and I did not see a non-question post without scrolling. None of them were from ~talk, either.

      I know people have different views on this, but I remember from my brief time moderating that it's generally a good idea to restrict these types of posts, for the simple reason that people love to dump their "favorite" lists, which makes these types of threads dominate the frontpage, while they tend to produce always the same responses (intuition might suggest they produce great discussion but that's usually not the case). They're best pushed into specific subreddits (subgroups?).

      I think this is a rather small and specific issue, but it might be a taste of future difficulties with voting/moderation. Banning content for being disruptive/abusive is one thing, but the best places I know for discussion also ban via more subtle rule sets. They take measures into account (often at the cost of facing a ton of backlash from users seeing their posts removed for "unfair" reasons) that keep one type of post from taking over the frontpage, potentially drowning out more interesting ones. I'm still trying to picture how this would translate from Reddit's moderation model to Tildes'.

      One way would be to open up a subgroup for any sufficiently large category of posts and give moderation the option to move posts to a subgroup that people can opt-out from. Another is very diligent tagging and filtering. My concern is that neither could produce the complex, fine-grain type of moderation that distinguishes really good subreddits (yea, they exist!) from spammy ones. "Hide all posts tagged 'question'" could hide "what's your favorite...?" type posts but also posts that ask a really deep and interesting question. So would you filter "question && favorite"? That turns filtering into almost a scripting job. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect users to put this much effort into content filtering and it wouldn't help "shape" discussion culture, as the default (no filters?) would keep most users jumping from one "favorite game/band/movie/programming language" post to the next.

      So far, it seems rules are set site-wide based on mostly removing blatantly off-topic, bad faith or trolling content. As the groups grow, however, I believe it's absolutely vital to also allow more subtle policies (think "only original sources for news articles" or "only direct links to movie trailers", etc). As groups branch off into further subgroups, it might suddenly also be reasonable to have very specific rules like "no more individual posts about hype topic X, keep discussion in the hub thread until Friday".

      The only way I can see this work out (and maybe I lack imagination) is via a "meta" section for each group that allows whoever is decided to be part of the moderator group to decide upon and clearly formulate rules specific to it. It could be a wiki-like thing, it could involve voting on changes, maybe automation via "default tag filters", etc. Other users could see the policies mods have decided upon and maybe even "opt out" from moderation actions being considered in filtering, to have no reason to be paranoid about "censored" content.

      Am I too pessimistic about tagging/voting solving this on its own? Am I too stuck on doing it "the reddit way" (albeit with hopefully better tools)? I just really believe it's subtle moderation like this that might make or break Tildes in the long run.

      TL;DR: How would more subtle or group-specific moderation policies be decided? Just tags+votes? Should there be a "meta" sections for each group where mods can agree upon specific rules?

      8 votes
    27. Deleted topics

      Are users supposed to be able to continue to comment in topics that have been deleted? Once deleted, topics are no longer visible to the group, but the topic is still accessible by URL and users...

      Are users supposed to be able to continue to comment in topics that have been deleted? Once deleted, topics are no longer visible to the group, but the topic is still accessible by URL and users can continue to comment. I just want to clarify if this is the intended functionality or a bug.

      Example: https://tildes.net/~test/280/deleted_topic

      7 votes
    28. Standard procedure to deal with someone that seems like a troll

      There is a user I do not wish to mention to prevent a witch Hunt or if I am wrong. In the past two days I have seen them post two topics with fairly contentious topics, but nothing was wrong with...

      There is a user I do not wish to mention to prevent a witch Hunt or if I am wrong. In the past two days I have seen them post two topics with fairly contentious topics, but nothing was wrong with the topic itself. The user however, has a flame bait sentence in each of these posts, ex. "I am against homosexual marriage". He then waits for a few heated responses and then edits out the flame bait sentence.

      This makes it look like an innocuous post is suddently full of hot heads immediately starting fights based off their assumptions and not what the user posted.

      How do we deal with what seems like a troll that operates like this? I won't be posting on his posts anymore as you shouldn't feed the troll, but he definitely got me the first time and it's unreasonable to expect everyone to always be on the lookout for this.

      Edit: to everyone saying I am jumping the gun by accusing him of being a troll. That may very well be, which is why I declined to name the user. Even if it's not intentional, it's causing problems if we want this to be a place for high quality discussion. Messaging @deimos has been suggested as an option and is probably the best choice for now but will not scale. What should be our solution to this issue going forward that scales?

      23 votes
    29. Comment tags: suggestions

      I just showed up yesterday to this great experiment, and find myself with some fresh-minted drama over politics and bans to ingest. While I wouldn't presume to propose a solution to the issues...

      I just showed up yesterday to this great experiment, and find myself with some fresh-minted drama over politics and bans to ingest. While I wouldn't presume to propose a solution to the issues raised in and by those threads, I found myself looking to the comment tagging system and finding some space to improve conversation.

      My intent (as I believe is the intent of this community) is to help foster constructive discussion without outright banning inflammatory topics. I believe that simply ignoring controversial issues because of the problems they raise is at best stifling potentially useful discourse and at worst intellectually dishonest.
      Tags I'd like to see:

      • "Citation Requested" As a tag, it would be a more constructive way of saying "I don't believe you"
      • "Disreputable Source" / "Source Disputed" is a civil way of pointing out issues
      • "Reported" would be a tricky implementation, but useful as a way of flagging comments for removal. Should ideally only be applied to eg. doxxing or incitement

      There should also be a moderation feature for removing tags that are no longer relevant or incorrectly applied. Alternatively, the display of comment tags could be reliant upon a critical mass of "reputation points" which would allow for, say, 100 people with 1 "troll-tagging rep" to get a comment flagged, or 2 people with 50 troll-tagging rep to do so. This of course is dependent upon the reputation system being fleshed out and has the very real danger of creating power users

      EDIT:

      @jgb pointed out that this is a lively discussion see these

      Tags I missed that came up in other discussions:

      • "Insightful" as a positive, almost a super-upvote
      • "Solved" for a comment that resolves an issue

      And, according to @cfabbro, @deimos is working on a public activity audit that can then be built upon to improve moderation

      13 votes
    30. What defines a toxic user

      Posting this here because I'm also wondering about how this will affect moderation policy on Tildes going forward As a former Reddit Moderator this has been something I've pondered for a long...

      Posting this here because I'm also wondering about how this will affect moderation policy on Tildes going forward

      As a former Reddit Moderator this has been something I've pondered for a long time: how does one define what a toxic user is in such a way that it can be easily understood as a community standard? I'll post the definition I defaulted to below. But I'd be most interested in knowing how other people think about this.

      26 votes
    31. Mod tools growing with user 'tools'

      So, new here and looking around but haven't seen this addressed yet (though could be wrong! Happy to be linked if I missed something) One common failure I've seen in online communities of various...

      So, new here and looking around but haven't seen this addressed yet (though could be wrong! Happy to be linked if I missed something)

      One common failure I've seen in online communities of various sorts is that moderation tools don't get grown in parallel with user tools and abilities, rather they lag behind, and are often in the end built by third parties. This is the case with Reddit, but also in a bunch of other areas (e.g. online gaming, admin tools were often built to basically provide functionality that users realised were needed but makers did not).

      I get the impression there are plenty of reddit mods here, so can we discuss what are the key features needed to moderate communities that would be better built in than coming from third party tools (RES, toolbox) . A lot of these aren't needed with 100 users but with a million they become pretty crucial.

      My initial thoughts:

      • Something not dissimilar to the automod
      • Group user tagging (shared tagging visible to all mods, tags can be linked to specific discussions/comments)
      • Ability to reply as a 'tilde' not as an individual
      • Ability to have canned responses/texts (for removals, for replies to user contacts)
      • Some sort of ticket-like system for dealing with user contacts to mods (take inspiration from helpdesk ticket systems)
      • (added) space per tilde for storage (tags, notes, bans, canned text etc) of reasonable size.

      Plenty more to add I am sure but wanted to open the discussion.

      10 votes
    32. The future of moderation on Tildes

      It seems like a large percentage of us that are also moderators on Reddit-- myself included. It seems that there's a generally negative attitude toward moderators on Reddit, which I totally get....

      It seems like a large percentage of us that are also moderators on Reddit-- myself included.

      It seems that there's a generally negative attitude toward moderators on Reddit, which I totally get. Moderation on Reddit is flawed. Community members feel a sense of ownership in the community (which they should have), but bad moderators can ruin that. How do you guys think moderation should be handled here?

      Here's a link from the docs that describes current plans: https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics-future

      It highlights plans for a reputation system, which I think is the right way to go.

      I also just realized that the same discussion was posted 18 days ago, but perhaps discussion with some of the newer users is worthwhile nonetheless:
      https://tildes.net/~tildes/6e/community_moderators

      31 votes