I've got work to do, so I'm going to attempt to be brief (and probably fail).
1. I have no disagreements with the fact the entire thread was catacomb'd (except that it probably should have happened far sooner, but mods are human and all that)
I did not catacomb "the entire thread". I catacombed approximately 25 posts starting in the general area where reports were targeted, based on a specific point that was, beyond being the earliest post that was reported, pretty clearly ground zero for the subsequent spiral. Furthermore, as stated elsewhere (in the catacombed section, in fact), prior to yesterday morning, only one report was ever submitted by anyone about any post in that thread at all, and not only was it not Lyn as I confirmed for him, the report was disagreed with by every moderator who chose to look at it, and discarded (subsequently ignored) as a result.
2. No disagreement with the reasoning given for my post being modded either - I reported the post(s) I thought crossed the line, then made my post, thought about immediately deleting it and couldn't be bothered to go ahead and do that as I had other things to take care of. Fair call from the mods.
To be fair, I shouldn't have included that note in your post when it was tossed into the bin with the rest, since we're technically not supposed to disclose that information. The point made there still stands, as we both seem to agree: Don't report one or more posts and then respond to them, and don't respond to posts you think should be reported.
My question then is why wasn't the thread modded sooner?
There are, at last count, six active members of the eight-person moderation team. Another is available on request for forum tweaks and software updates as needed, and another is taking an extended break from EVE.
However, despite there being six of us, not all of us care to spend our entire day watching the forum like a bunch of hawks. On any given day, only some of us are going to check the forum - I check it several times a day because I'm bored as fuck at work and often have 5-10 minutes to spare between assignments and builds and all that jazz. I can't speak to the others, who may only have the opportunity first thing in the morning or in the evening.
In this particular case, as I stated already, nobody reported anything in the thread that was deemed to be worth looking at until yesterday morning; furthermore, I had elected to avoid participating in moderation in this thread on the grounds that I had been personally targeted by the guy and didn't feel like dealing with people bitching and whining if I
did take action. (Irony abounds, of course, I still got people bending over and spraying shit at me anyway.)
On top of that, none of the other moderators seemed to find any issues in the thread until yesterday either.
If we look at the OP it's been modded as flamebait/YDIW from the outset. I think few would disagree with that on an objective read-through - what Andreus said wasn't necessarily wrong or anything but the way he phrased it crossed the lines drawn by the mod team.
The second post - a response to the flamebait OP - was made by the mod who, about a day later, finally decided "weapons grade flamebait" had been deployed. The mod is a smart and experienced operator. It seems hard to believe they looked at that OP and failed to initially see it as the flamebait they eventually modded it as before replying.
I did not initially feel his post qualified as flamebait. It was rude and condescending and (imo) based on a crock of bullshit, but not flamebait. And I'd already taken the position I would avoid having a hand in moderation in the thread, and would let the five other mods handle it if necessary.
I only took action a whole day later, because the thread took a very sharp turn off a cliff overnight while I was asleep, and when I logged into EVE to check mail before leaving for work, I was greeted by people fucking screaming about the thread ingame, spamming reports at the system, and bitching at me to do something about it.
So I had two choices: let it continue getting worse while waiting for another moderator to deal with it, or apply cleansing fire to the newly-problematic portion of the thread after I got to work. Since the former was clearly not an option and would only have resulted in more panty-twisting and pissing and moaning directed my way because none of the other moderators were around or likely to be anytime soon, I chose the latter. I scanned through the reports (6 reports, spanning 4 different posts), decided that Andy's post was the root of the problem since everything after it was responding to it or responses to it, and nuked everything onward.
I understand that mods reserve the right to not only apply the rules as stated but also as interpreted within the context of the discussion taking place. However, instead of making that first response wouldn't either modding immediately or contacting Andreus privately to see if he wanted to rephrase his statement have been a more reasonable way to do things?
Reasonable, maybe. Productive, no: again, I didn't see it as flamebait at the time, but I also neither have the time nor the patience for that shit, especially after him making several rule-breaking posts in a row later on. He made some comments in the catacombed section that if I were to direct at him would more or less sum up my view, and probably that of others, on that.
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Topic: Question re: Slaver Filth thread moderation (Read 7036 times)