Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => Moderation Discussion => Topic started by: scagga on 22 May 2010, 20:01
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http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=538.0
I cannot see how the moderator who took action here found anything in the moderated text to be inappropriate.
It is clear to me that the moderator may believe that the removed text was inappropriate. I want to understand why, because I disagree entirely.
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I cannot speak for the moderator, but I can speak as somebody who reported the post in question (for entirely non-personal reasons, as I generally enjoy your posts and have great respect for you :) ).
I personally saw portions of the post (e.g. what Ciarente quoted) as attacks on players: referring to folks as morally base, foolish, and impotent because they engage in a popular playstyle explicitly encouraged by CCP seemed out of bounds.
I'd recommend re-reading the FAQ (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?action=page;id=4) again, because I thought that particular post violated much of the spirit and culture that Backstage tries to foster. For example:
This forum is an OOC place for EVE roleplayers to discuss the game and roleplaying. It is a place to exchange ideas and share information. It is a place for positive, polite debate. It is a place for discussion, not arguments.
It is a place for civil and courteous conversation. It is not a place for flamewars, bullying, point-scoring or other asshattery. (The Mods reserve the right to define 'asshattery' as behaviour not in line with the forum's purpose). It is not a place for people to show how 'wrong' others are. It is not a place for the ventilation of personal vendettas. It is not a place for insults, either veiled or explicit. It is not a place for telling other people they are 'doing it wrong". It is not a place to carry on In Character feuds.
I want to repeat that I didn't report it out of any ill will towards you whatsoever; I like you, Scagga, and I really appreciate what you bring to the community. Just not that one specific post, that's all. :)
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I think that may not have been his intent, on a careful reading, but perception is also an issue. That's the way I saw it on the first read through as well. If it isn't clear that you are saying 'If you want to go 'evil' RP-wise, there may be more efficient ways to do it' rather than 'Your playstyle is morally wrong' on a casual reading by an average user, it can cause you and us all kinds of headaches.
I was not the mod that was involved, so I can only speak from what I saw. Looking back, I would have modded it, if there had been a report at the time I read it, because of how easily it could be misread.
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When I look at a reported post, the first question I ask myself is 'if I were a member of the corporation/faction/player type/etc being referred to, would I feel insulted?'
In this case, I felt that yes, if I were a member of a pirate corporation, I would be insulted by the portions of your post which I excised. Judging the morality of what is a legitimate playstyle in Eve is over the line; and while your point that piracy has its limits is a good one, there is no need to bolster your argument for broader horizons with name-calling.
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I know what we should start dealing out in the welcome threads. Umbrellas, so people and mods don't bruise in light rain. Seriously...
I've played Pirate. Hell, I play as a terrorist even. There wasn't a single part of that post that was even remotely offensive to anyone outside of kindergarten. Or shouldn't have been, at least. Bloody hell, seriously people... start using a little common sense when reporting and moderating.
If you go pirate/criminal, you ARE spreading misery. It's one of the things that is delightful about this game. It allows you to grief as a legitimate playstyle and you're often hailed for doing so. Yes, it's morally iffy, because you are intentionally hunting down people to ruin their day. How often don't you see some 'your tears sustain me' type message in the bios of pirates?
Yes, the moniker of 'pirate' can make you look foolish and incompetent. How is that an insult? It's the truth! It MAY do so. It CAN do so. It can also make you appear to be a rainbow colored chestnut roasting upon a green fire with elves dancing gaily around the campsite. Unlikely, but possible.
You know, this forum's going from 'nice community' to 'For god's sakes don't open your mouth!'.
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Maybe I misread Scagga's post, and I fully accept that possibility. But when I read it, my eyebrows shot off the top of my head and I really felt like it didn't reflect the sort of "lovey-dovey" ;) environment the FAQ promotes.
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Maybe I misread Scagga's post, and I fully accept that possibility. But when I read it, my eyebrows shot off the top of my head and I really felt like it didn't reflect the sort of "lovey-dovey" ;) environment the FAQ promotes.
I don't hold any disrespect or resentment (that's too strong a choice of word, but meh) towards anyone for the moderation action taken. I still disagree with the decision, but I am accepting it, partly because of the good accountability of these forums through publicly-visible archives of all moderated material.
I'd like to elucidate upon why I disagree with it, though I feel Mizhara made very good points that I agree with, and I might repeat a couple of the themes. It goes back to the question I posed here last week, loosely related to whether posting certain facts was offensive/out of order. It came down to how one phrased them.
[Background: I have been a pirate and a heartless griefer. I was a 'good pvper' once upon a time e.g. highest involved kills as an FC during the pirate invasion of Ushra'khan space in '06, part of winning fanfest pvp tournament team '07.]
Would anyone deny that there is a moral question in piracy; that it is the intentional spreading of misery? That's not a judgement, it's a observation.
Would we deny that sometimes being a pirate can make you look foolish? If your answer is no to either of these questions, is it the case that one encounters a taboo in merely mentioning them? If I phrased them in a non-ideal way, could an alternative be proposed?
The aforementioned factual information is important for the OP, particularly as the purpose of the thread was to convince someone to not be a pirate. I am not asking for the moderation action to be reversed; merely suggesting that we consider more carefully what we constitutes the 'offensive threshold' for moderation action to take place.
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Maybe I misread Scagga's post, and I fully accept that possibility. But when I read it, my eyebrows shot off the top of my head and I really felt like it didn't reflect the sort of "lovey-dovey" ;) environment the FAQ promotes.
Casiella, you're on one of the extremes of the board's little community.
I'm on the other.
We are heavily involved with many mod threads.
We often speak from self-appointed positions of authority, and we should likely, in the eyes of many, do it less.
We can live with that, I think. However, it does need to be underscored that the more common equivalent to EVE's conception of lovey-dovey is very possibly simple and direct camarediere, or what I feel Silver practices.
I feel you're going for something rather nicer than that - something a bit more sensitive. My personal opinion is that it is more sensitive than what is necessary for this board, because for some reason when I fail to measure up to your standard, I'm NOT moderated.
And just so we're clear that I'm not calling you out in any broader sense than the moderation of this board in the opinion of its userbase (and not it's staff)...Whether your conception of decent conduct in a public setting or mine is the more useful for society at large has no bearing in the context of my post, and as such I have had no intention of touching on the matter here.
this forum's going from 'nice community' to 'For god's sakes don't open your mouth!'.
I have noticed that I tend to feel that this has some ring of truth in it when others are moderated, and not when I'm moderated. Or perhaps when the sum total of moderation of others within the past few days is greater than the sum total of moderation I provoke.
This has disturbing implications.
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I believe there is this concept going around that you can actually talk about something as gritty as EVE without ever affronting some or others sensibilities in life.
I think it is false.
Mainly because of the old quote that went to Herkos sig on chatsubo.
'Anything Healthy and Wholesome with Rainbows does not survive in the EVE cluster.'
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'Anything Healthy and Wholesome with Rainbows does not survive in the EVE cluster.'
Respectfully, I disagree. (http://www.imgbox.de/users/darveses/dx4banner.png) :yar:
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You should know better than that, scagga. You helped make this board... :eek:
As an aside, the broadening of the term 'pirate' probably merits a discussion itself.
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I know what we should start dealing out in the welcome threads. Umbrellas, so people and mods don't bruise in light rain. Seriously...
There wasn't a single part of that post that was even remotely offensive to anyone outside of kindergarten. Or shouldn't have been, at least.
Pardon! Some of us have been slapped for considerably less than both above and what is in the OP.
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I agree with Azhar's statement that we tend toward opposing ends of a sensitivity spectrum and that the admins exist somewhere in the middle. I respectfully disagree with my friend Mizhara about this particular post, though, and with the assertion that "healthy and wholesome with rainbows" has no place in the EVE community.
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I respectfully disagree with my friend Mizhara about this particular post, though, and with the assertion that "healthy and wholesome with rainbows" has no place in the EVE community.
-Getting away from Lall's point
-potentially intentionally so
-potentially for the sake of poster's own platform.
Not cool.
Oh, and there's neither an N nor a Z in 'Ashar.'
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While the first might be true, the latter two are not.
And I did mean Mizhara.
Edit on re-read: Oh, yes, Ashar, not Azhar. That's what I get for posting on my phone, just a typo. :)
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The forum has almost 5400 posts, and right around 30 moderator actions (perhaps a handful more if you count cases where there is a mod comment, and no other action.) Generously, we're looking at 1%, in other words.
Of those, I am fairly sure that less than half of them were controversial.
While - particularly with a 'heavier' moderation scheme - it is never going to be the case that everyone is happy with moderation, I think that suggesting that there is a spirit of 'For god sakes don't open your mouth' is at best a product of focusing on the negative incidents.
On the other end, there are going to be times that people are offended by things that do not receive moderator action. Not all reports are acted on. You don't see those, though. This is how it is supposed to work.
If the moderators are doing a good job, some people are going to be unhappy. The mods might make mistakes, now and then, even - we're all only human. The community as a whole will remain healthy, though.
I would also like to point out that having a post moved to the catacombs doesn't constitute a warning (in and of itself, though depending on the situation, a formal or informal warning may also be issued), or suggest that the intent of that post was necessarily malicious. It just means there was something problematic with the post.
Generally what that problem is is pointed out by the mod who took action, and if it's not clear please feel free to ask here or in a PM. At that point, in many cases, it is perfectly acceptable to rephrase and repost. If it isn't clear in a given case whether it is acceptable, again, simply ask the mod who took action via PM, or ask here in the Moderation Section.
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As we essentially said re: events in the summit and their long-term impact, I don't think you can model these things in the short term in any effective manner, Silver.
Also, I'd be pleased to see a breakdown of who's making how many reports, but that'll probably never happen.
Though I have my guesses.
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Who makes the reports isn't really relevant. It is up to the mod team whether they are acted on, and in many cases they aren't.
There are also times when the mod team acts without a report, if they happen to see something that violates the guidelines before it is reported.
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It's not who specifically makes reports so much as how much of the userbase makes reports.
If four people have made a hundred reports each, that's pertinent information. I hope you folks are tracking that sort of thing internally.
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It's not 'tracked', per se, but each report generates a thread and in many of these threads where an issue might not be clear cut enough for the first mod who sees it to feel comfortable acting, discussion ensues. If a situation arises where one particular individual reports a lot of things, it might be mentioned but the report itself is taken on its own - we're not going to dismiss what may be a valid report just because it has the wrong name attached to it.
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Of course not. And thanks for restating that.