That's not "to make things important", it's to denote terms of art. Who ever said "discussion of policy must end"? Hint: Not me. The problem is the assumption that there exists no way to discuss policy except by asserting that everything is already bad or will shortly become bad. What if... What if there was an alternative to the Chicken Little dance? I'm better than this, and you're reading me wrong in a way that makes literally no sense. I'm officially warning you: Keep this up and I will make you a mod. I am not kidding.
Hey, @anonymous, can you help with a thing? We need a reaction image to use for "moderator actions have happened here". You're funny and have a huge selection of images. Help us out.
So. Some of you might have concerns about rigs as a mod type, because he has a history of being sorta confrontational and such. But the thing is... He has a really strong anti-authoritarian streak. And he's a lawyer, and understands how confidentiality works. And I am really in favor of people who hate and distrust authority being involved in forum moderation.
Mrgh I am not articulating well enough what I am trying to get at- I am speaking specifically about the Pear Wiggler. I am aware we do not have rules but I would like a section in the FAQ to be a (non-exhaustive, obviously) list of examples of posts/contents that would go in the pear wiggler because that is currently a source of tension. What I see is a lot of people are worried that the pear wiggling is completely up to the whims and moods of moderators, who, as human beings, cannot always be rational and good tempered about things. That is the thing I would like to see adressed. What just occured to me that would also help would be if there was a publicly posted Script/Logarithm for how to contact a moderator if you would like to petition a moderation decision. I feel like this would make that particular part of the issue more accessible. I cannot stress enough that if you want to be seen as trustworthy in the context of authority, you must first make yourself openly criticizable as easily as possible. It's incredibly important that the userbase be allowed an easy and predictable way to appeal decisions and know what happens with these appeals. (by this i mean not "This will definitely lead to whatever the user wants happening" but "There is a definitive description of the process an appeal goes through once it is submitted", e.g. "The appeal will be discussed in the Moderator [Messaging Service Of Choice Goes Here] Group, decisions will be relayed via PM to the submitter".) That will do a lot to make things feel more like we can actually tell what is going on.
I like the idea of a script for contacting people. I'm concerned about the examples because context is a thing. So it's really hard to give an example. I approved a post a while back saying "then your mom is a pedophile who should be literally dragged into the street and executed", because in context it was obviously friendly and humorous. I could probably see a case for pear-wiggling a post which just quotes something someone says and says "Hugs." Because context. I can try to make some examples, but I have already seen the thing where, the moment someone had a post pear-wiggled for fairly obvious reasons, they went digging back nearly three weeks to find a post they felt was objectionable and should also be pear-wiggled. And I even agreed with them about that post... But I'm super uncomfortable with people trying to force the moderators to prove that they're always being fair and impartial. But mostly... I'm just gonna go back to "we do not yet know how to do this thing well". Meaning any description we give of it is going to end up being false, unless we just stick with bad ideas no matter what because it's what we said we'd do. I have had some really bad experiences with an "appeals process". Like, yes, I get the attraction of having a definite protocol, except I have never seen the definite protocol not turn out to be bad. So I'm sticking with "you can always come yell at the mods, here or in Caring Void, and expect some kind of response". And the response won't be a protocol or procedure, it will be personal interaction with you as a person of worth.
I feel like people are thinking there's a lot more in the Pear Wiggler than is actually there? There are currently 20 threads. 6 are science to see if the thing works 3 are graphic suggestions or threats of violence towards certain demographics 3 are just different people having a meltdown in the same thread. Not entirely sure why moved? I think to avoid a meltdown spiral. 1 is actually a collection of posts of someone melting down about being on post moderation, mostly telling mods to go fuck themselves and so irrelevant to the original thread. 2 are the Bo Burnham suicide song posted in a context that could have been interpreted as suicide baiting 1 was a different thing that would have been taken as suicide baiting in the context it was used, with accompanying contextual explanation from the mod who moved it the last 4 are just that Alix gets shut down hard for basically everything Also, appealing decisions can be made by replying in the thread it's moved to in the Pear Wiggler, PMing the mod in question, posting a thread here for maximum transparency, or presumably also contacting the mod on Discord. I'm Chiomi#6406. There is not a set policy at this point, because it has not been an issue. There is . . . not a lot of moving things that goes on, and it's generally for reasons that the initial poster ends up agreeing with. Edit: ha, Seebs got there first.
Okay! Is there a way to officially include a section in the FAQ About how to get mod attention that like has a section for "I saw an upsetting post/need something moved to a different subforum, how do I get the attention of a mod?" which points to the report button, then maybe "I want my account renamed, where can I ask for that?" with a link to the thread in question as the answer, And then a third point that is like "I disagree with a mod decision/would like to complain about something/I am unsure about something and want to ask about it" that states which mods if any are comfortable with PMs, which threads you can ask things in, that you can yell in the caring void subforum, discord contacts if mods other than chiomi want to make these public, etc. I know I for one am never fully sure if mods are okay with PMs at all, so getting venues of communication explicitly okay'ed by the mod team would be very helpful!
So I think a bit more explanation may be in order for people not familiar with things. First: Rigs is actually my RL lawyer. He has represented me and my friends in court on a number of occasions. He does consumer protection law and activism-related law. Also, we've been friends for about... uh... probably 15ish years by now. We used to hang around a lot on forums which had some fairly shitty moderation. We've also been through several attempts at improved moderation strategies, radical rejections of moderation strategies, and so on. One of the key things here is that decent lawyers are really good about confidentiality. So I have no worries about his trustworthiness with private information. Another is that he's really pretty committed to the whole "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" type thing. Which is why he's so inclined to poke at me and other people about moderation. But the thing is... He can totally be sort of aggressive about stuff, and tends to when dealing with authority figures. Which I think is a good trait, even when it's annoying. When he is an authority figure, we have a conflict between his tendency to be aggressive, and his belief that authority figures should not be aggressive and should try extra hard to avoid abuses of power or even things that might look like abuses of power. And what I know from prior experience is that the belief system wins out over the habit, pretty consistently. In short, I think he'll do a good job of keeping the rest of us honest (not that I expect this to take a ton of doing), but also I think he'll be nicer to people when he has enough power that it's obvious that it matters whether he's nicer. Also, I really wanted to make it clear that I really very strongly reject the typical paradigm in which critics of moderation get banned or driven away. And I'm not gonna commit to any kind of general "complain about moderation, get access to private data" policy because holy shit would that be stupid. But in the case of someone I know well enough to have confidence that he'll behave respectably and carefully? So, basically, he was being super annoying to the mods, and I decided to make an example of him. That the example is not the one you might have predicted is perhaps sort of the point. But also, I genuinely do think he'll be good at the thing and will make things better.
The only one I remember was the meltdownish thing, and we've apologized and changed how we handle the thing in response to that.
Little known fact! From the Mod Control Panel you can see inside any user's refrigerator. And I'm not saying whose it is, but SOMEBODY has a carton of milk that expired six months ago.
the other day i had a brief moment of elation: we had honey mustard and i wanted to use honey mustard on a sandwich. then i noticed the 2010 expiration date. i was crushed.
