OK peeps, I am seeing a lot of flamewars lately which go off-topic of this comm. I am also getting dozens of reports about people reporting each other for “rudeness” or “trolling”. I don’t want this comm to start becoming a drama haven, so I want to try and prevent people getting worked up like this.
What do you think about me starting to deploy strategic 1-day bans for people who I notice are getting into flamewars? If not, what else do you suggest to help people remain civil?
Don’t just upvote/downvote. I won’t take these into account, I want actual comments about this to better make a decision.
Do it. But please be self-aware and remember that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lets not get bogged down in analysis paralysis. Do it, gauge the feedback, adjust, iterate (the beatings will continue until morale improves).
Short bans are like spritzing a cat in the face. It’s Skinnerian conditioning. It works.
Just make sure the behavior you’re conditioning for is the behavior you want. Trolling doesn’t mean “harsh language.” Trolling is the infuriating nonsense that makes reasonable people reach for harsh language. Sometimes, a rude response is entirely deserved.
Trolling doesn’t mean “harsh language.”
… right. that’s incivility.
Trolling is the infuriating nonsense that makes reasonable people reach for harsh language.
what is the criteria when clear incivility is justified?
Fuck civility. “Be nice or die” is a gift to cautious bastards. It’s a formula for bait.
People need the ability to bluntly call horseshit, when faced with horseshit. Polite phrasing of said horseshit makes it worse. It creates the dynamic of bullying, where an honest response to abuse is treated as justification for that abuse.
Demanding that every response should take ten times more effort, all of which will be ignored, is a rule crafted for trolls. If someone can keep going ‘oh so you mean [not what you said]? wow that’s ridiculous and awful and pushes me further right,’ and any sane reply like ‘shut up, troll’ is what gets banned, then the rules favor and protect fffucking obvious trolling. And yet: that’s what too many moderators choose. Spotting rude language is easier. A forum free of blunt responses feels like you’re helping.
But it’s fundamentally not rewarding honesty, accuracy, or actual constructive conversation. It’s pretending that bad faith doesn’t exist.
oh so you mean [not what you said]
this is the definition of bad faith. just report it.
Doesn’t work.
Unsurprisingly, the moderators who basically just Ctrl+F “fuck you” are reliably useless at removing polite abuse. In practice they protect and encourage it. I have been told numerous times, on this site and others, to just use my words and continue arguing with what must surely be a completely reasonable… sneering goblin. Some of those same moderators have chided me for continuing an argument. They don’t know what they want and it’s gonna be your fault. Especially if you say something unforgivable, like: “I’m out.”
we are taking about the moderation of this community, and there is only one mod
I’m talking about moderation in general.
PTB. I should be allowed to be as mean as I want to whoever I want. But make sure you permanently ban everyone who is mean to me because that’s bad.
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, I’m the only one that people shouldn’t be mean to.
(This is a joke if it wasn’t obvious >.>)
Well, this is drama heaven because it’s for users who aren’t legible to post in fedidrama (because they’re involved themselves) and then they end up here. And IMO the posts kind of set the tone. You often start out with a negative impression after reading the post, and then you’re likely to be negative. And it doesn’t help that other comments are negative or low quality as well… Then it’s super easy to drop what’s left and just shitpost.
I’m not sure if I want to continue reading anyways. It’s several posts a day of people whining about something they brought upon themselves. Often something completely insignificant like one removed post/comment or a one day time-out from shitposting. And half the people don’t listen or get anything, neither does OP, and the commenters just flame about arbitrary things, or attack each other for their strongly held opinions… I’d say a bit more moderation would be worth a try. But don’t listen to me, I’m probably not the target audience of this community.
People love a good circle jerk, this is a genuine fedi content source, and it serves transparency purposes which other social don’t even have…
People who don’t like can just block it.
So unless bad faith behavior like reporting people endlessly is happening why shut down engagement albeit sometimes low quality
It is rather ironic that sub about mod abuse is getting abused
Hmmm
I think you got it down to the exact issue at hand: Do we want moderated communities, or do we want a free speech platform without limits. I would prefer the former, and I think you’re arguing for the latter. That’s kind of fundamentally incompatible. At least on some levels I can’t see how we’d reach an agreement here. There is one way, and you brought it up, and that’s technical means. Have the software separate us into distinct spaces so I don’t have to read low quality posts, hear people whining about stupid things, and I get just tech-related stuff in a tech community, and all other spam and off-topic ramblings get removed.
I’m not really for unmoderated platforms. We’ve seen several attempts at that fail miserably. And we kind of have 4chan for circle-jerks, you could as well just go there. But I’m liberal. I’d like to just peacfully co-exist with people holding different opinions. If that’s possible.
You can have moderated communities without every community having to cater every user. Personally, I think that’s part of the beauty of federation. Some comms & instances can be locked down and heavily moderated to create “safe spaces”, others can encourage open discussion with minimal moderation.
It’s just very hard to agree on the exact amount of moderation, because that’s individual preference. And we’d need to agree on which community has which policy and make it more obvious to the user. I think that’s another issue which gets obvious when browsing this community. A lot of people complain about something getting removed, while the community has clearly stated the rules. So I’d say if we go with that, most posts here are automatically invalid complaints…
My point is just, this is really hard to impossible to implement the way things work (as of now), and human nature.
Does Lemmy provide a council/consensus type voting system on bans? How do you arbitrate it by yourself on what is or isn’t “rudeness” or “trolling”?
Imo let downvotes and reports sort it out, instead of being proactive, until there is a multi-headed arbitration system in place.
Honestly, I personally haven’t seen any of these flame wars. And I’m not sure restricting engagement on a service already trying to increase engagement is productive even for a good reason.
If it’s off topic or getting personal, sure. If not, I’m neutral on it.
That’s what flame wars are. Getting personal or just exchanging insults
Then I agree with you, a day at least of cooldown. But not without interaction. As another’s suggestion here covered, see if they’ll stop? Then a cooldown based on their reaction.
Being mean to someone else because of what they said is fine, unless someone threatens someone or is mean because they’re discriminating
There’s no reason to be mean, honestly. That’s how many of these slap fights start.
I generally allows some of level of hostility, but when it gets to the point of the just trolling and insults I think it’s time to pause
If its just insults, let the community deal with it with downvotes. No need to get ban happy for something like this.
I disagree. Downvotes don’t have any effect and I don’t follow a complete hands off approach
Downvotes affect the algorithm of comments that are displayed. They do have an effect.
I’m not saying to be hands off. Definitely you should ban accounts who post misinformation or racism, for example. But bans for “being mean” is an overstep of your privileges.
My privileges are what I say they are. There’s no natural law on how to run a comm. 😅
It kind of reads like you posted this as a question then accepted no feedback and pushed back on anyone with a different view. Not saying that’s what’s actually happening, it’s only been a few hours, but you’ve responded exclusively negatively in these comments.
The fact is that I haven’t responded to most comments because they make good points. There’s nothing to argue against good points. I’m not going to go around saying “good point” to everyone
If the issue is too many reports and we’re just letting people fly, then the reports won’t stop coming. Downvotes don’t stop repeat responders. It will just be a chain of 100 back and forth comments reporting each other.
The downvotes don’t stop how many pointless reports the mod has to sort through, do they?
The amount of trolling and debatemebros keep going up each thread and it looks like people are just trying to start drama here now rather than report actual mod abuse. I’m not sure how you could improve this, it seems like every one of these kinds of communities turn into drama communities with people at each other’s throats each thread lol. I think temp bans would help for the most egregious offenders, but locking threads after a certain timeframe might be better? Considering the comment threads keep going on and on for some of them.
Any abuse reporting or appeals system will invite some general “they’re saying things I don’t like” complaining, that’s just human nature for some people. And the fact that this is a open forum makes that a hundred times worse, and makes it harder to keep an outsider perspective.
That said, some people just need to think before typing. I don’t think locking stuff would work on such a small community
What would that timeframe be though? A week? A month? A day? Ultimately, what would that matter even - why is it bad to respond to something three months later, e.g. asking a follow-up question “was this matter ever resolved - did you manage to get in contact with the admin/mod and what did they say?”
The problem with that approach is that it penalizes people other than the offender (I assume here you mean locking the entire post, not just a comment chain underneath it?), e.g. if you take time to think about the scenario, read it thoroughly, go gather some additional references, type out a reply, and not even necessarily to the person inflaming the conflict but others who happened to respond more quickly, but then bam, your well thought out and crafted message is rejected, bc you did not deliver it quickly enough, and because while you were treating the matter seriously, a flame war was breaking out, but it’s not like a chatroom where you can see the messages coming in live?
It makes sense for the people involved in spreading drama to be affected/penalized, but why discourage discourse elsewhere by others in the community? And all the more so the ones delivered more slowly, while allowing the most hot-headed quick replies to go through before the post can be locked.
My suggestion is to warn the user first, and then if they don’t comply a 3d ban. Because:
- Cooperative users are quick to comply, even without punishment.
- It helps to show other users the limit of what’s considered acceptable in the community.
- When people get really worked up, a single day is not enough.
Trolls are a different can of worms. I think that users who are blatantly trolling should be removed = permabanned; there’s no place for those.
Happy cake day!
Thanks!
[Replying to myself to avoid editing the above again.]
Ah, I propose an explicit rule for this comm: “off-topic is only tolerated if non-divisive, non-derailing, and in the comments”. That gives people some room to chitchat, but would do a quick work of “ackshyually u don’t have rules against flamewars right”.
I’m ok with a penalty box. Pointless bickering gets this sub off topic. It’s tough because people come here ready to air grievances so I think that pre-charges the atmosphere and makes it that much easier for things to get off the rails
It’s tough because people come here ready to air grievances so I think that pre-charges the atmosphere and makes it that much easier for things to get off the rails
You put in to words what I was struggling to find. People are often already a little charged up when they show up here, that’s the nature of this kind of board.
Why can’t people argue in peace? Why do you have to moderate that?
Yup. 100% a perfect tool for the situation.
And I say that as someone that has likely deserved a few of them here and there.
It won’t stop report abuse, but it will reduce the in-thread drama.
Hell, it might reduce drama in general since the serious drama queens are going to get butthurt and not come back.
If the only offense is that people are getting heated, a cool-off ban as a reminder to take a walk and come back later works wonders.
The real crime is the people abusing report feature IMHO
Apub prolly needs a feature to track this behaviour
But gotta love these two “rudeness” or “trolling”.
Why would people do such a thing?!
banning people for reporting seems like a way to discourage reporting.
but banning for flaming and trolling sounds reasonable, especially if it’s a short ban. even a 6 or 12 hour ban might send the right message.
Eh, you’d be amazed how many people use reports to say “I don’t like this, and it’s your problem” instead of it actually being a community rule violation. I don’t moderate any busy lemmy C/s, but I did some high traffic reddit subs, and I’d even say that half of reports were just trying to get a mod to shut down the other person in a slap fight. Then they’re amazed when you shut both parties down lol.
I definitely think that anything more than a one day ban for single reports is way over the line. And I’d prefer warnings with an explanation be the default.
banning people for reporting seems like a way to discourage reporting.
Is it if they’re flooding your feed with nonsense reports? That stuff takes time to sort through, and the time spent sorting through it takes away from other moderation duties.
Besides, if you’re only banning excessive reporters like that, aren’t you only discouraging people who are actively abusing the report button?
EDIT: to be clear, I mean a temp ban, not permanent one
it’s my feeling, and I’m open to disagreeing about this, that it should be encouraged to report bad behavior, and the only use of the report button i would characterized as “abuse” is something like actual automated spam or opening a users page and reporting everything regardless of content or context.
being wrong about whether content does or should break community standards should not be a bannable offense.
I mean, that’s a fair way to look at it, but if I was going through a bunch of reports about what were clearly innocuous and inoffensive posts, and someone was reporting them simply because they were upset over each of them somehow, I’d still feel like my time was being wasted.
People have a right to feel certain ways about things, but they don’t necessarily have a right to dictate to an admin/mod what is “reasonable” and if that mod feels like they’re reporting posts unreasonably (like an excessive amount of what are clearly meant to be inoffensive posts), it may not matter how the user feels if the mod feels its a waste of their time. It’s definitely at each mods discretion how they choose to deal with such things.
obviously I can’t tell a mod what to do, but I think they should keep the channel open.
does the moderation backend need sorting and batch tools? it should not be arduous to moderate a flame war.
does the moderation backend need sorting and batch tools? it should not be arduous to moderate a flame war.
I don’t know, I don’t do a ton of modding myself (only mod one dead community, go Joe Pera!), I’m just trying to visualize being an unpaid moderator who has limited time in their day and is dealing with a user who is being unreasonable. I don’t think a temp ban for that is an unreasonable response, but that’s just me and I can see why you’d want people to feel like the channel was open to them.
Also, I’m trying to think of the particular mod who posted this, who moderates many communities as well as being the admin (and I think owner) of the entire dbzer0 instance. I just think they probably already deal with a flood of stuff already, and I personally do think silly egregious reports eventually can begin to bog someone down with what I would call “unnecessary work” when the work is having to take the time to read the report, evaluate it, and just to file it away doing nothing.
Maybe the backend is cleaner than I expect, maybe it takes less time than I expect, but it’s part of why I personally really only try to report truly egregious stuff and not waste moderator time. I just worry about their real lives and how much effort they put into these communities for us for free and don’t like to see them bogged down with more when it can impact their mental health make them burn out.
Lemmy’s mod report feature sucks absolute ass. It is simply one big long list of each report one by one, with zero ability to sort or filter or do anything else useful besides separate those that are “resolved” already vs. those not yet. And also you cannot even access those reports from your home instance, unless it is the same identical one to where the community is also located.
There is a reason why so few people are willing to become mods on Lemmy: the tools are barely functional for the job. Which is how we end up with super mods who handle many communities at once, like if they have a job situation where they can quickly check in on things every ten minutes or so.
this is really good feedback. maybe a client could be developed for mods, that would do client side sorting.
First, make it a rule. This community is for discussion about moderation, not about whether a cat can be vegan. If you see off-topic discussion, nip it in the bud and remove the comments. If users continue to knowingly violate the rule, progressively longer bans.
It’s really not hard to stay on topic and avoid a flame war. I know fighting is stimulating, but sometimes it’s better to just put your phone down and walk away.
Leaving comments visible is better for informing others what kind of comments aren’t allowed. Especially if it’s just bickering.
Maybe. The problem is that you can’t lock just one section of comments, so the bickering will continue or escalate.
Tbf, if something were removed for “misinformation”, like Russia has invaded Ukraine “for its own good” or whether cats can be vegan, then evaluating whether the mod is acting appropriately or is a PTB depends on those facts?
Though that should not be the focus - as you say the point here is the moderation.
