Sherm (a mod at DPR), offered me here, that he could unsandboxed me there, I just needed to remind him at the DPR forum he moderates.
He unsandboxed me, but apparently DPR staff was not happy and banned both of us permanently.
That was it and has nothing to do with my “history” at DPR.
Only three more days and all that history will be gone. In many ways, I think that’s good and healthy.
I think so too but people still believe someone will save the day at the last minute.
People believe all sorts of things.
Who was the Moderator? I found one moderator abused his authority. He gave me 3 temporary bans and several warnings for next to nothing. His reasoning was I was not nice. The idea that you received a permanent ban over something so inconsequential 5 days before the end is a prime example of moderation abuse.
Precisely.
So their message thus is: "Banned for 5 days" 🙄
Now that is excessive moderation to an extreme. I assume the mod simply disagreed with the politics of the protestors in the photo.
It was obvious that what he thought was not nice was different from what I thought. :-) One time he said I was too direct. Well, that's the way I write. I'm a retired engineer! I'm direct and to the point.
Some would say that "abuse, hate speech and bullying" are the three main pillars of "rude". Which means that if you're going to say that it can be okay to be rude as long as it doesn't qualify as "abuse, hate speech or bullying", well, it's going to be somewhat subjective. Hence all the back-and-forth about different views of various moderator decisions at DPR.
I'm not suggesting that there aren't degrees of discourtesy that may fall short of "abuse/hate speech/bullying", but I do think it's possible to have robust discussions without resorting to discourtesy or various other rhetorically dishonest or disagreeable methods.
What I think that leads back to is your earlier remarks about the need for clarity and transparency, to reduce as far as possible the subjectivity of the calls moderators have to make. I.e. clear published statements about what's acceptable and what isn't.
I would love to have those if possible, but it is difficult to actually frame them. It's also useful to have a distinction between 'rules' and 'guidelines'. One thing that makes it easier is to have an attitude that we're not dealing in punishment, just trying to keep the place pleasant. Someone permabanned for 'implied sarcasm' is likely to feel pretty upset about it. On the other hand, if there just a little private message suggesting that went a bit far, most reasonable people wouldn't be so upset. I think a lot of the angst is caused by a punitive mindset and some moderators playing cop.
I think what I'm saying is 'if you step the wrong side of this fuzzy line we'll shoot you' is likely to produce a different atmosphere to 'if you step on the wrong side of this fuzzy line we'll have a word'.
No problem at all. My only issue was that this is a common bullying tactic. The person posted knew that having two accounts was a permabanning offence, so what they were trying to do was convince the mod that we were the same person so we'd be permabanned. It's kind of like in football taking a dive to get someone sent off.
It works when the mods are not well managed and too stressed, so that they don't investigate properly, just take someone's word for it.
The best I ever saw the mods were cops. They were not judge and jury. They could issue warnings, they could 'snip' bad content in a post, but had to give reason, like "Mod edit - racist comment". They could not delete posts or threads, and could never ban someone. That power belonged to the judges, the admins.
The site had a separate section for politics, and the rules were looser there. You needed thick skin to stay there very long. Post a thread in the wrong section and it would get 'towed' to the political section. Post in a running thread a political comment and it would get snipped.
Admin and mods had their private chat space where they met to discuss problems, make decisions on bans, and keep everyone on the same page about rules and policies. They also heard appeals from members when needed.
They used a point system, like some state's driver's license. So many points for each offense, too many and get a 7 day ban, then a 30 day one, and if you couldn't change your ways then the next one was forever. Banned people's names remained up, so everyone knew who's been naughty.
I think the biggest problem DPR had was the mods had too much power and the admin was too lazy to keep them in line.
Well said Bob!
