The administrators wanted to close this thread: I argued for its preservation to discuss principles of moderation.
Thank you for doing this. Yet it should strike you, that the fact you had to do this means that what is constitutive of the public spheres of open societies in fact is under pressure on this board from the side of the administrators (who are in charge, I didn't mean you in person, but more about this later).
But the rule that is in the stickied post applies:
Discussing moderation actions or re-opening removed or locked threads or topics is not permitted. Users requesting information regarding moderator actions should contact community@futurenet.com. So only principles of moderation can be discussed here, not individual situations, and so when somebody tries to raise those, I delete them. If a question cannot be answered, there is no value in leaving a question that invites at best guesswork.
See the problem is that the prohibition to discuss moderation action does also prohibit any concrete discussion of moderation principles, because it's use cases are not transparent. The guesswork mostly is a product of the intransparency to begin with, which then in turn is used to make the case why there should be intransparency. Taking away the possibility to discuss moderating action effectively takes away the possibility to discuss it's principles. All we would be left with is discussing the rules, not the moderation, which is their application.
In short: how are we to discuss moderating principles if their application cannot be discussed?
I refute that. I have on a few occasions initiated discussions to try to establish consensus about where the boundaries lie, and have gone with that consensus where it has not been the same as my opinion. I have actively encouraged participation.
I see I didn't express myself clearly enough here. I didn't mean you with "whoever is in charge of the forum", but the providers who set the rules. But it's clear that it could easily be understood like this the way I formulated my sentence.
You do ask for feedback to inform certain things about the way you handle moderation. I think it's good that you do this but I think it's not proof that participation is systemically wanted on here.
The rules are set by those who provide the facility: they are not the creation of this community. Participation in the forum is predicated upon willingness to follow the rules. See the Terms, Conditions and Privacy paragraph of the rules.
I know this and it should be clear by what I said. That the rules are the rules is in a way a tautology and in the context of what I discuss in my post, as a response, is a smokebomb. That one has no freedom but the freedom to obey is pretty much at the core of what my problem is with not even having the possibility of forming any effective public debate about the rules one is subjected to or otherwise excluded from participation in what, after all, is a public forum, legally based in a democracy. If you provide a public place in a democracy you should not treat it like a public place in an autocracy.
But for anyone who can't be bothered to read them, read one: Civility is compulsory. Basically, that is it and the vast majority of warnings and subsequent suspensions arise from failure to abide by that. As to whether we should be laisse-faire, I do not believe that "compulsory" leaves much room for manoeuvre; nor do I think that the vast majority of users expect or are willing to be treated uncivilly, nor that they have the right to do so.
More laissez faire (and I didn't say total) does not equate to abandoning civility. Where does this idea come from? This leaves me, other than the thing just being intended as another smoke bomb, with the conclusion that you're idea of civility is one that needs to be imposed onto people by authority, rather than something that develops among them, given the right conditions (which include moderation, this is not a "do not moderate" or "have no rules" post). Moreover "civility" is a concept that is in need of interpretation, especially when used to police something with it. That there's no possibility to discuss moderating action not only leads to there being no effective possible debate about the principles of moderation, it also means that who decides what is civil or not, in the end are only the moderators and providers, i.e. the authority.
That said, I will sometimes send messages asking a user to desist before a behaviour becomes problematic; sometimes I will send a 'soft warning', of which there is no record other than in (I assume) their PMs folder as part of the edit to or deletion of a message; I will give formal warnings with no penalty points attached, which therefore do not put anyone in greater threat of suspension of their account; I have not followed the directions about rapidly escalating the level of points for second and subsequent warnings that are in the instructions given to me and if I had many people here would have had longer suspensions that they have already had or would be on permanent bans. Please do not tell me that I exercise authoritarian, down-the-throat, policing.
Well, thanks for not being as authoritarian as apparently you'd be allowed to be, or even encouraged to. It's really not an example against there being a systematic issue with authoritarian board running here.
What's that part about the penalty points though? I read the rules (even though you insinuated I can't be bothered to) and it does not say anything about it. It does say though that people are banned "that present a danger to civil discourse." Are you telling us that this is determined, at least in theory, by a points system?
There is a button on the side of the screen marked members: click on that and there is a link to staff members and moderators that you can PM: the rules are stickied at the top of most subforums. An email contact to the publishers is in those rules. Knowledge might be imperfect, but I do not believe that you can claim that it is hidden.
I didn't claim the rules are hidden. I claim the workings of authority are intransparent. A totally different issue I am sure you understand perfectly well. Also: that the rules are public is a necessity even for the most arbitrary of despotic regimes (which I am not saying this forum is!!!), it's not an example for transparency at all. Pointing it out to me in this way, I have to say, is a little rude. I am not a child that needs to be pointed towards the rule sheet it just never want's to read. In fact apparently I am good enough at being civil or understanding of the rules, that If I am not totally mistaken, I have never been banned in my decade+ on this board.
The fact that specific acts of moderation have been repeated in this thread and elsewhere many times: I really don't see that further repetitions remaining on the board serves any purpose, and if they are responses that are left without context, because the question (as explained above) has been removed, leaving them on the board is pointless.
Well the thing is: you are very strict about this. There was no reason at all in my opinion for the policing that triggered my post. There's also a post of mine you deleted recently, that was merely a joke and had no real potential to actually trigger the 'no politics' rule in any meaningfull way. Of course you can be very much to the letter of the rule and find use cases that are very strict and than go by that example, but that's again a more authoritarian route.
I hope my response clarified a few things about my initial post.
I know that this too, has been a very critical post, so let me finish with something more positive:
thank you for doing moderation at all, I know it's a *** task very often, and even though I disagree with things, I do feel that inside the (IMO to narrow) interpretation of the rules, you are being very very consistent, and that you are sincere in your motives.
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