Moderation FAQ

[madwarper]

Considering that the New Code of Conduct thread was closed yesterday... I'll post this here, because I'm a bit confused about the differences between a "Minor Issue Offense" and an "Infraction Offense".

Let's assume for a second that I have a perfectly clean forum health, then I go on to post a hypothetical thread wherein I give it a click bait and switch thread title. Then, in a subsequent post in said thread, I openly admit to doing as such merely for the lulz.

[li]Topic-less Thread Creation
We encourage our community to make posts that help nurture a healthy discussion or debate. Posting a thread without any discussion value, or with a deliberately misleading title, is discouraged. This includes creating a poll without an accompanying discussion or beginning a thread with an original post that does not sufficiently explain the topic.[/li]

So, what exactly would happen to me?

It seems that is nowhere near an a Prohibition... But, would it warrant a Warning? If not, I recall there being some talk about moderator notes on one's profile page in Mod Team chat. How many times would I be able to flagrantly ignore the "discouragement" before I would earn a Warning? Though, assuming any moderator notes is a thing, would they not be invisible to anyone other than moderators/staff?

I'm just concerned that, short of some official Moderator statement reminding us that my behavior is actually discouraged, that might lead other posters might get the impression that such a action isn't specifically listed in the Code of Conduct. Furthermore, I wouldn't want someone accrue "Minor Issue Offense" of their own by being accused of Backseat Moderating by reminding me of the Code of Conduct, should there be no publicly visible result of their Reporting of my posts in said hypothetical thread.

 

[Freyr]

It's difficult to give an accurate hypothetical moderation response to a hypothetical post as moderation is largely subjective activity. If it wasn't so subjective then we'd probably have bots doing moderation, but obviously that would be pretty disasterious as they can't make value judgements.

In my view, a warning should be used to "warn" somebody that their posting is approaching or marginally exceeding the line at which we could moderate somebody when they have been slowly drifting towards breaking the rules which can be used as a gentle shove back towards the centre ground.

In the example you postulate, it is clear that the person is knowingly and intentionally breaking the rules and under these circumstances warning the poster that they were breaking the rules is clearly futile because they already know that full well. In these circumstances, giving the poster a number of warnings would be both futile and liable to encourage other people to break the rules as well. In the hypothetical situation described I would feel that handing out a hypothetical infraction would be justified.

 

[D3L3T3 ACCOUNT PLZ]

Mods could you please delete this account thank you very much.

 

[GeorgW]

Mods could you please delete this account thank you very much.

If you don't want to use your account anymore, I would advise you to log out the account and not use it, but I don't believe it is possible to delete it I am afraid.

 

[GeorgW]

May I ask the moderation team what we as a community can do to lighten your load?
What guidelines (besides the COC) can we follow to make your work easier?

I would have to say, if I had a wish list of things that would make our lives easier, and this is generally speaking of course,

1. Only report a post if there's a valid reason to report it, not because you don't happen to agree with it.
2. When given an instruction from a moderator, obey it.
3. Be nice to each other!

That last one sounds like a quote from a children's cartoon but it would be nice. Then we wouldn't be needed at all!

 

[davidmarty]

There was a certain instance recently where a rather... angry individual was saying some hate speech and was reported(probably by more people than myself) and he... disappeared.Download Tango for MacBook All his posts, gone. User search for his name, no user found. The only record of his existence was from the people who quoted him.