The arguments thread

Rules designed to apply to a specific individual are bad rules. The US constitution specifically outlaws Bills of Attainder for just that reason.I very stongly suspect that Mako would never wish to be a facilitator here, but were he to, he should be treated like any other person. We can't have out own version of attainder, saying you don't have the same rights as everyone else because you're Mako.

I slightly resent the scare quotes around "helpful". Whatever you think of him, if you knew what I know, you'd understand just how much worse things would have been had he not stepped up to the mark when someone there had to. And it was difficult - we know that other mods there were getting defrocked and banned for trying to do the right thing when some of them (now mostly mods elsewhere) went amuck. Actually, we do owe him gratitude for that - which isn't in any way setting that gratitude in opposition to what we owe the people who have joined, contributed and volunteered to get this site running. Gratitude isn't rationed, you can give it one way without having to cut back elsewhere.

Privacy is a basic right every member gets here.

As I said, I've probably suffered more grief from Mako's moderation than anyone here. But he doesn't have two sides to his personality - how he moderated was totally in line with his appreciation of the rules he was given, and all the feedback he got from the admins led him to understand that he was doing it as they wished. Anyone taking on such a role, be it cop or mod, has to fairly apply the rules whether or not they agree with them. There are very few rules that are not in some way ambiguous, so what are the rules is always something of a personal interpretation, and that interpretation will reveal something about one's personality - but a well-run system will try to organises so far as possible the remove ambiguity and achieve consistency of interpretation. DPReview in that respect was far from a well-run operation. Mako kept on being asked to do more moderation, not something that he seeked as I understand it, which was pretty clear feedback to him that the way he was moderating was the way the system intended. When the whole new forum issue came up, and I approached him to see how it would be handled, I was surprised about how fair minded and reasonable he was. But as we discussed, I did begin to understand what was going on - and realise that often it isn't the cop that's the problem - it's the system that the cop is working for. There is an issue of whether you really want people who have been willing to work for what you think is a corrupt system to carry on doing the same job - but that's a case by case basis in our flawed reality.

I'm not sure that I agree with that. Firstly, whatever DPReview forums reputation was, it didn't in the end amount to 'toxic', they were the most active and popular photo forums by far. And Mako was a small cog in the wheel as to what made the site difficult for people that wanted open and informed discussions on photography. That was mainly down to a very vocal faction that didn't want their beliefs challenged, regarded robust conversation itself as 'toxic'. Combined with owners that didn't value the forums, staff that found them an annoyance that led to policies which actively suppressed people with interesting points of view and something worthwhile, if controversial, to say. Mako's become the lightning rod here, but he's not the cause.

Can't comply, I'm afraid. Moderators have a right to privacy as does everyone here. What I will say is I very much hope we'll never allow a moderator that moderates in the manner that Mako did on DPReview and will have systems in place that allow review of decisions and take any appropriate measures to ensure that bad practice doesn't carry on.

I don't know him. But then, neither do you. You shouldn't make such a judgment about anyone based on their performance of one role like that.

Logical non-sequitur, I'm afraid. Whatever he did doesn't mean anything about advice. In any case, I didn't say anything about giving me advice. What he has done is give me the benefit of a much deeper understanding of the way DPReview moderation worked, where and why it failed, and where my sometimes naive ideas would fail too. There's a mine of experience there, and only a fool throws useful information away - you just need to learn to process it.
There's another issue - banning. That's one of the parts of DPReview policy that I think is completely wrong headed, I have to say from experience that Mako was much more circumspect about hitting the 'ban' button than other moderators. I'll give my thoughts on banning elsewhere - but my view is that except for some obvious exceptions it is counterproductive.

Why? No-one could make a statement of principle that they wouldn't appoint 'someone like Mako'. The basis of appointing facilitators is whether they would be willing to apply the rules of the site, would do so evenly and fairly, would stick to the facilitators guidelines and would not themselves act in a manner contrary to the rules. If they do that then why shouldn't they facilitate?

Yeah, but he was applying the rules as he interpreted them (if it was he the did the ban - and if he did, he wasn't given a lot of choice in the last days in some forum promotion cases - and actually took quite a lot of flack for direct admin imposed sanctions). And it is a question when the sole rule is 'be nice'. It's a very broad spectrum. I once got a warning from him on the 'not nice' rule for 'subtle implied sarcasm'. And he was right - I was implying something that was subtly sarcastic. The real issue is about whether that is 'nice' or not.

Even more annoying when you're sandboxed. I'm not sure he'd ever worked out that you couldn't pm whilst on a sanction. Still, really down to a faulty system, and the whole idea of bans and control by punishment, of which more later.

I certainly haven't had enough interaction to decide whether he's a friend or not - but it's not unlikely from what I do know, had I met in a social context, he could have been someone I'd have established a friendship with. As for a 'friend of the forum', in the colloquial context that is taken, yes he certainly is. Not in the way that some other moderators have done with respect to other forums, cravenly begging for what they see as their privileges to be maintained and in return using their DPReview powers to promote and advantage them, but by ensuring that this forum was fairly treated when there was nothing in it at all for him. Except maybe for there to be a photography forum in which he could feel at home, enjoy invigorating discussion, and be in a community in which he wouldn't be abused and mistreated, and I think that's what we all want, isn't it?

I very much doubt it, because for each one you showed me, I could show you one of mine which would make your jaw drop. The thing is not to personalise this and mix up unrelated issues.

You probably have had no communication with him apart from those pms. You're not in a position to understand what makes him tick.

Coming, but needs editor work to a WYSIWYG editor, and remember how bad DPReviews was when they first put it in place.
More broadly on your comment - it's interesting how the different UI has affected the way people use the forums. In some ways navigation is much more powerful than DPReview's (or the competition) which is to do with it being a much more modern SW. It's having the effect of overcoming the silo mentality which occurred in some DPReview forums. While it's easy to get to your favourite forum, people who wouldn't usually visit are seeing what's going on and chiming in. Something you wouldn't have seen on DPReview.

There's a few technical issues, but I can help with giving editorial content a kick start - I have retained copyright over quite a few articles I've written over the last few years and can contribute them here to get things going. We have loads of other members who can produce a pretty fair article also. I do have this little thing that might be controversial - I'd be really sad if we duplicated a load of the nonsense common in other photo web sites. Then we need to get on the manufacturers lists as reputable news outlets. I think reviews are going to be the most difficult part. There's lots out there, and I don't think there's much point adding to them unless we can do something qualitatively better by a fair amount. In the end e need to match DPReview and hopefully do better. That's not hard in principle, but significantly harder in practice.

A facilitator is there to help. So, if you feel you have been helped, by all means tell the world. If you think it was wrong, it's up to you where you express your feelings, but personally I would put in a polite request to the admins to see what they thought rather than doing a "Facebook" and complaining to the whole world.

Yes, it's a nice feature. Here things are context dependent, which is good and bad, and 'my threads' means 'threads I started'. But 'subscribed threads' means 'threads I've posted in' as well as ones that have consciously been subscribed to. But the tagging is lazily done, and this is a big, big site for that, so sometimes it takes time to catch up. In some ways it's like the transition to mirrorless, not better or worse, but different. Some strategies don't work as well, so you find the ones that do. The dark mode thing can be tuned. Now it works like DPReview dark mode does, but these is scope for going further.