Discussion thread for possible FP/moderation changes to ILX

hey now, we're all in early twenties right now

/dad joke

the modding is indeed very good here.

i've had bad modding experiences elsewhere.

the worst being in #metal on DalNet (IRC), where there was a group of American AOPs and Swedish AOPs who went to war and kept removing each others Op access in retaliation.

they were dark times.

I have a question:

Is the board's prevailing opinion that people should be getting banned who aren't? Are these changes being discussed because the current rules are not addressing the behavior they are meant to curtail to the satisfaction of the posters?

i thought it was the opposite (people getting banned for too long for offenses)

there's definitely an element of "people should be getting banned who aren't" - i'm not sure why else you'd drop the threshold from 51 to 30.

i thought it was the opposite (people getting banned for too long for offenses)

― pass the cur's dossier (Neanderthal)

Who do you think was banned for too long?

but there's also an element of people getting banned for too long, too - tomboto was floating a few options with shorter ban lengths, i think

Who do you think was banned for too long?

― Scampos Runamuck (WmC), Sunday, August 30, 2020 2:56 PM bookmarkflaglink

Me, personally? nobody, really. I honestly have no dog in the fight and am fine with what everybody else wants.

I'm just trying to think of somebody we wanted banned that wasn't getting banned in recent memory and drawing blanks. almost everybody who needed to be was banned, either through our FPing, or mods doing a good job of catching it and taking care of it on the spot.

My actual question is "What is spurring the desire to change the banning threshold?" I'm don't feel I understand what problem is being solved, or even if there is a problem other than "people aren't getting banned as much as they used to," which might not actually be a problem.

from OP:

(The mods...) have been discussing possible changes in the Flag Post threshold that result in temporary site bans.

From this I take it that the mods are not particularly focused on permabans, but feel that tempbans should be better regulated by the FP system. I suspect that allowing FPs to drive more of the tempban decision-making would lighten the load on mods, since tempbans more often require moderator intervention.

I am happy for any mod to correct this impression with better information.

I think "we" is not a monolithic entity -- there are definite factions regarding a lot of posters -- we have not had a unifying ban candidate since Raccoon Tanuki

haha, yeah that was kind of like the alien in the watchmen

xp Harsh on Turrican imo

As Matt said upthread "FWIW people have been using the FP function significantly more over the past couple of months", and there has been clear dissatisfaction from ppl that only god-tier posting can get you over the 51 barrier, as the numbers aren't there. Only Fred has managed to antagonise enough ppl, and it took him hours and hours, day after day, to manage it.

My own desire is for, yes, more bannings. I would like time-outs to be triggered by outpourings of crude and content-free verbal violence, just spewing "cunts" and such. They can be short 3-day time-outs, that's fine with me. I've occasionally wished and thought out loud they should be longer, but short is fine.

I have FP'd people who've posted "go fuck yourself" and declined to FP others who've done the same thing, depending on how that "gfy" sits in the poster's larger body of work.

I want an additional FP threshold so it will take a lot of the guesswork away from me in my role as a mod, because I doubt my own guesswork 24/7 and I'm paralyzed by fear of getting it wrong, and find myself not taking any action against actionable posts/posters, then regretting my inaction.

Dan, it's a worthwhile question. I'm not sure that I've got much more than I said upthread, though:

One of the things we're aiming for is for posters who don't use FP much but do feel uncomfortable with posts/modes of discussion to feel like it's worth using the FP button. We're not looking to fill Increased Ban Quotas or anything like that, but there are definitely times when shit is going down on the boards and the FP system is miles away from representing the posters who are unhappy.

I don't know for sure that changing the FP system will have major benefits, so if you think it won't, that's perfectly reasonable imo. Personally, I think it's at least worth trying out.

xp with WmC, who also has good points.

When enough FPs are accumulated it should trigger an automatic seven-day temp ban and a poll featuring the flagged posts, the names of the users who flagged them, and options to either ban permanently or not ban permanently the offending poster while they wait in seven-day purgatory.

During the seven days, message board users would discuss whether or not the offending poster should be banned, explain their rationale, challenge others' opinions, call into question the applicability of precedent, etc. Much dramas and entertainments would unfold. Once the poll has closed and a verdict has been reached, the names of the users who voted and their votes would be disclosed. Users would then have the opportunity to spend many more weeks celebrating or agonizing over the decision while discussing the interpersonal politics among board users and their votes (and hopefully resulting in even more new flagged posts reaching the threshold and resetting the process all over again, much to everyone's bemusement).

This progressive reform approach to the ILX FP/ban moderation mechanism would be fun and entertaining and highly democratic, and once these changes are implemented we can all finally get back to discussing the important things we've been trying to discuss without the bad people stopping us like they have been for years.

is this related to the masturbating orangutan thing ???

Absolutely! Our genomes are 97% identical, after all.

Why do some posters react to reasonable moderation discussion as if they're vying for ILX best dramatic performance? Because the ILXies aren't a real award. Just thought you should know. Save you some time.

Is that what I'm doing? I'm just saying I like the idea of a board deciding collectively on whether or not to oust someone. I'm probably not the only one, either.

Typically/ironically, when I see something that makes me want to FP - I've never FP'd anything - that's usually a sign that I need to take a break myself for a couple of days.

doubt my own guesswork 24/7 and I'm paralyzed by fear of getting it wrong, and find myself not taking any action against actionable posts/posters, then regretting my inaction.

this is enough reason to lower the thresholds imo, ILX moderators do and take enormous amounts of shit for no reward whatsoever except raising their personal stress levels

I missed the consensus being arrived at as I was away but I'd just like to go back to an earlier point Matt made:

this is a particularly fractious time for obvious reasons

Maybe when looking to reduce the threshold for exclusion from the community we should remember everyone and everything is totally fucking fried at the moment. Many of us are both more likely to say the wrong thing and to react badly to someone else doing it.

I support simple and transparent modding if that's what we're trying to fix.

I don't feel like the board is generally getting worse or being overrun by trolls. Excluding generally good people (have you SEEN the rest of the Internet?) from our small and relatively safe space should not be our aim but it's what might come of these new thresholds.

I'm going to start a one week poll with new threshold options on Thursday, one week after the start of this thread; "no change" will be one of the options.

I don't feel like the board is generally getting worse or being overrun by trolls.

I agree with this, but I also think the current FP threshold is insufficient to deal with the trolls we do have.

While I'm absolutely sympathetic to the notion that everyone is currently teetering on the edge (and had the same thought myself re: the increased risibility of late), there have been more than a few occasions over the last six months where things got super heated super quickly and thought it would be good if those involved in the heatedness could have a brief intercessory cooling off period. I'm also absolutely sympathetic to the notion that the mods don't want to have to operate as coolers all the time, so hopefully some minor alterations to the FP system will help alleviate some of that grief.

OK taking a number of these points into account:

- Let's not forget that this place is meant to be enjoyable first and foremost, especially now
- Preventing ILX from becoming like the rest of the internet should always be a central aim for anyone modding this place, and parts of it are becoming a little too like the rest of the internet for comfort
- Totally sympathise with the fact that people are on a hair-trigger right now, but that also accounts for people reading, who probably don't want to be told to go fuck themselves by a stranger on the internet, as much as anything else it's about preventing good posters from just quietly leaving because they've had enough
- This, and I can't stress this enough, isn't and shouldn't be about lowering the threshold to get x posters banned, but about encouraging people to moderate their own behaviour. There are people who are genuinely up to their necks in it and lashing out and people who have lapsed into a mode of default belligerence and it's the latter group who tend to get the higher FP counts
- This is all up to a vote on particular threshold levels, as has been pointed out, if people vote for no change then fair enough

otm, and again if there are people genuinely worried this will damage the board, a trial period and revisiting seems logical to me

Make sure you don't forget to cancel during the 7 day period, that's how they get u

Oh I'm going to do a ton of cancelling during this purge of thought deviants experiment

This could probably do with better polling though, if we end up with four changey options on 18% and no change on 28%, I'd hesitate to claim that no change is the consensus.

I'd read that as Change 72 - No Change 28 and I think the mods would feel comfortable coming to a decision as to what the change should be. But no need to put the cart before the horse.

if you do have a poll, i ask sincerely to please make it very clear/unambiguous and avoid jokes

That's a good goal - do you consider the options in Tom's linked post clear, say (though of course WmC may have other options)?

Discussion thread for possible FP/moderation changes to ILX

Those were what I had in mind.

I'm going to start a one week poll with new threshold options on Thursday, one week after the start of this thread; "no change" will be one of the options.

― Scampos Runamuck (WmC), Tuesday, 1 September 2020 18:48 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Did this happen?

POLL: Proposed FP Threshold Changes

ta

I think in a particularly fractious time, temporary suspensions are good and necessary!

the idea a cooling off period is punitive is weird to me. when you have trust in a community, that trust is enforced and not tested by your peers having you step away and cool off

if I can interrupt my coworkers when they get off the point in a meeting and call things to order with no hurt feelings, I know it’s a constructive work environment and I view social environments no differently tbh

there've definitely been plenty of times I wish someone had stopped me before letting me shoot myself in the foot on this borad. so I definitely agree.

With poll results in and after mod consultation, there will be an additional FP threshold of 20 FPs within 30 days resulting in a 7-day time-out from posting, effective on the Day of Jubilee when stet deletes all FPs from the system, i.e. any day now. User Left's current 30-day ban will be unaffected; they will be unbanned October 31st.

roll the credits

Should have been 14 days, but whatever. Roll on new regime.

please all temp bans to be signalled with the message "u ok hun"

effective on the Day of Jubilee when stet deletes all FPs from the system, i.e. any day now

Is this a subtle cue to deploy our most FP-worthy material before all our sins are washed away (except for Left's)?

Will the language be changed? i.e. will the admin log reflect that these are 7- and 30-day bans and not say "peace, man has been banned permanently"?

It'll probably stay the same and be up to the mod doing the banning to write a note indicating the length of the ban.

If he has the spare time maybe stet can get around to removing the adverb, but he already has about a half dozen changes on his entirely voluntary plate from this

so I only have to create a few more sock puppet accounts and I can unilaterally temp ban people? good to know.