I don't think the no rules thing is working

Except the answer isn't, and never was, "nothing". We've always done stuff. Sometimes we haven't done what people wanted, or as much as they wanted. But we generally do stuff. It's just that what we do generally isn't punitive.

It turns out, the world contains alternatives other than (1) we do nothing at all, ever, (2) we have public punishments as spectacle and entertainment.

 

So, I really agree with this post! I think Seebs has a different definition of "rule," but, whatever. Whatever you want to call them, these are examples pieces of information that will help people with the "how do things work around here??" brainweasles. And outside of wanting punitive action (which I don't even think many, if any, people are calling for), I think that's what most people are asking for?

It's been awhile since I read through the welcome thread and the FAQ thread, but they do have a lot of information that answers that question.

I'm going to reread those threads and see if there's anything I can think of that isn't covered them. I've got an in between brainweird where I can understand most social rules, but I can also explain them, so I'll see if I can put that to work. I'll see if maybe the rest of the mod team would be cool with a "some generally agreed upon, but not binding or exhaustive list of social [pieces of information]" type thead.

If there's something pertaining to the "how do things work" social aspect of things that you think has come up a lot that hasn't been addressed (ex, the vent threads expectations (though that has been addressed, I think)), let me know and I'll think on it and see about adding it.

Edit: My reread through of the threads and such might not happen right away, because I have a lot going on right now, but I will make a point of getting to it.
Editx2: damn closing parens

 

@Khan I know I wasn't part of the mod team then, but I'm sorry that you were asking for help and felt ignored. That's a pretty shitty outcome. I'm not sure what can be done about it now, after the fact, other than promising that I, personally, will try to respond to requests for help so that at least (general) you know you're being heard. I can't promise I'll always have spoons for everyone, own oxygen mask first and all. But I can make an effort.
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@Maya The same goes to you. I'm sorry that you got dogpiled and I don't think that's a thing that should happen, even though it does sometimes. I know there have been a few conversations on how to stop dogpiles from happening, but I think it's a hard problem to try to figure out. I know a lot of people get hit with the "but there's someone wrong/misinformed on the Internet!" bug that makes it feel like you have to respond. I don't have a good solution. Maybe a seperate thread about it, or reviving an old thread (if there is one?).

(I know you had complaints other than this one, but this is only one I feel qualified to speak about.)
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Wrt Rigs and dismissing people's hurt: I am really appalled at how that went down, and I don't think that he did that was okay. Rigs is not on the moderation team anymore, though, and as far as I can tell, I don't think anyone else dismisses reports like that when we get them.

I mean, I kind of skip over some of the cute cat picture reports so that other mods can enjoy them because I am a dog person. But that's different.

 

I can see your point. I don't call it a rule, because I'm not convinced that it really is a rule, so much as "a very strong preference". I've banned spammers, and I've banned people by request, and some day maybe I'll decide that the best damage mitigation I've got involves banning someone. It seems really unlikely, but I'm not making promises.

Yes.

This is actually in the queue, I'm working on it, I'm thinking about it, and I keep thinking "maybe I should just ignore the ongoing drama to work on that".

I have seen appeals processes, and I think I'd rather not. I actually quit a forum over an abusive user who kept getting appeals through by going "but i was just doing it for lulz" etcetera. I've seen the appeals for a temporary ban run weeks longer than the ban. I think that's too top heavy, and frankly, I just don't think we have enough of an issue there to need a formal process. People can post here about stuff they think was unfairly wiggled, or ask about reasoning, and we can talk about it. We don't do the "no criticizing moderator actions" thing.

Yup. There is indeed nothing keeping us from doing crazy shit. The secret is, that's true everywhere. I'm just truthful about it.

I think this is a sound idea, and it fits in reasonably well with things I've wanted to do about documenting moderator protocol/process/whatever. I like the idea of basically establishing what we are trying to offer people, and what the boundaries/rules/etc. are.

But, one big caveat: I will always reserve the right to say "whatever, I'm making a judgment call, here it is, deal". Because no matter how carefully we try to craft a list of rules or guidelines or behaviors, someone will come along and find a way to turn it into a weapon. So there will always be the potential for "yes, that's exactly what we said we'd generally do, but this is an exception".

And I get that this is upsetting, and it sure as hell isn't perfect, but it's what I picked.

This is not intended to be a forum that works for everyone. It's intended to be a forum that works for people that can't get what they want from other forums. It's addressing different problems, and addressing them differently. If that doesn't work for you, that doesn't mean you're a bad person, and it doesn't mean that Kintsugi is a bad site, it means that the site doesn't meet your needs. That happens sometimes. We can't meet every need, so we're meeting a particular set of needs that I was interested in trying to meet because I'd never seen it done successfully.

 

We are willing to make helpful lists of things when we have the time and energy. It takes a lot of energy because the particulars of the examples are important. I think things are getting bogged down in the fear of Rules as Commandments (which are not happening because of the design of this space). Some people seem to want those, most don't, and I think if we just move past that there will be a lot more energy for actually making those Mod Guidelines and examples of things (with the ever present caveat that we might need to make judgement calls.)

Basically, helpful guidelines =/= rules carved in stone like the 10 commandments of God, but still helpful.

 

Ahh, okay, I am now at least 30% less zombie, and I think I see what the big hangup is here. The point Seebs is arguing and the point the people asking for rules are arguing aren't totally incompatible, a lot of this is coming down to some little linguistic disconnects.

If I'm reading this right, the big reason Seebs is opposed to rules is that it implies a rigidity and guaranteed set of consequences that they aren't willing to commit to. It's almost always possible to think of an exception to a situation ('you are a thief!' 'I stole a loaf of bread.' 'you robbed a house!' 'I broke a window pane. my sister's child was close to death and we were starving--'), and they aren't willing to lay things out in that strictly. One person's post could be harmless in most contexts, but highly inappropriate in the place where it was posted. Or another person's post could usually be harmful, but is in a place where it's fine. A little while back, I asked the rest of the team whether a suicide-flavored post was intense enough that we should ask for a spoiler to be added, but the end result was that the post was in a tagged vent thread that warned for content in the first post, so it was fine.

BUT, on the flip side, just because a set of guidelines can't cover every possible scenario doesn't mean that they'd be totally worthless. As long as there was clear language involved that things will be judged on a case-by-case basis and there are exceptions to every rule, I think we could have something people can get a better grip on, but that doesn't frame things like X action will always have Y consequence.

So the takeaway isn't meant to be that the consequences are always "nothing" and that reporting is pointless. Though I definitely see why you would parse it that way! I've been under the impression that if someone fucks up, the consequences aren't necessarily nothing, it's that there aren't any guaranteed consequences. Consequences can still happen, but Seebs doesn't want to decide ahead of time what those are, they want mods to see a specific incident, look at what happened, and then make a judgment call based on context.

But then people are getting frustrated because there aren't even rough guidelines to orient themselves on 'is [action] okay?' and Seebs is getting frustrated because it's not possible to lay out a system of rules that appropriately/fairly covers every single contingency, and people end up talking past each other for an extremely large number of TSM threads :P

And I think this is definitely on to something, though it's not the entire picture. I think people would probably be fine with the guidelines being called guidelines still, but they want more detail. The broad statement of 'it's never okay to treat someone like trash' is a statement that covers a lot of ground and doesn't have any clear exceptions that I can see. But it's also really, really broad and hard to use as a practical guide. I'm naturally/unconsciously comfortable with a standard of personal behavior that I don't think ever crosses those lines, so... I'm good! Nothing to worry about! Except that no, not everybody is working from that same starting point, and some people want more guidance to draw a clearer picture of what sorts of things are acceptable and which will get pushback.

But that second line, I think that is exactly the thing. Not necessarily just because of users complaining either, but I think Seebs is opposed to boxing things in like that from a pure philosophical standpoint too. But I'm pretty sure that the whole sticking point is the idea of laying out consequences when it's very possible that a situation will come up where those consequences aren't an appropriate response. So they've been refusing to lay out boundaries that won't always hold true, while other people have been pushing for more clearly defined boundaries, with potential case-by-case exceptions.

(I think people probably generally agree that possible case-by-case exceptions are a legit thing, but I don't remember often seeing it stated outright? Though I'd believe that people generally assume that obviously exceptions are a thing (I know I assume it) and dealing with those is part of the moderators' jobs and seebs is just being difficult on purpose. But seebs and strict literalism... is definitely a thing :P)

Generally speaking, I think more detailed guidelines would be a very, very, very good thing. BUT, I also think that making an especial point of refusing to define absolute consequences is also a very good thing. There's a significant portion of the userbase that deals much better when they have guidelines to work with, but there's also a significant portion of the userbase that will have a hard time coping with an implication that if they fuck up in any way, they will be Punished.

From a practical standpoint, I think if we had a list of guidelines for 'please try not to do this' (with a statement that this isn't a complete or absolute list, please feel free to ask mods if you have further questions) and a separate list of potential consequences (wiggling, post moderation, being asked to edit, etc., and potentially-but-not-necessarily, nothing), I think it would do a decent job of accommodating people on both sides of the issue. Writing those lists won't be EASY-easy, but I think that makes things doable, and avoids framing things like any given action being a transgression that will receive a predetermined punishment.

And also, I think that when something gets written up, adding some other guidelines about reporting would be good too. Not that people have been reporting incorrectly, but I see people worrying about reporting incorrectly, and laying out a more compact, readable list of guidelines would help people define what counts as okay. Not that 'okay' has a narrow definition, but it looks like a lot of people won't feel comfortable doing the thing unless they're fairly sure they have a decent picture of what 'okay' actually is.

Sidebar: I've said some things in the past about how thinking that 'of course everyone knows this social rule and anyone who says otherwise is lying' can be a harmful assumption. But I'm thinking that kind of applies here as well, in terms of what counts as acceptable behavior. I'm pretty certain seebs isn't going to come down hard on people's heads for crossing those lines, but from the outside, the vagueness of the don't-treat-people-like-trash idea is still shaped very much like an assumption that 'of course everyone has a good idea of what's acceptable behavior'. That is a really stressful situation to lay out there, and we've probably got an unusually high concentration of people who struggle with social rules. So I was already in favor of more detailed guidelines, but now I'm even more strongly in favor.

 

The clearer-to-find things idea is good.

Also, some of the comments here have gotten me closer to articulating what the difficulty has been with guidelines/rules/whatever, and I think I may be better able to actually write something up in the nearish future. It's a bit hard to express, but basically, I'm not a deontological moralist in the first place, and any attempt to get lists of moral and immoral actions, or things that seem to be obviously proxies for those, is going to get blank looks and annoyance from me at best. But I may have a workaround.

Also, the readability thing... We are sort of out of good options here, because any movement towards "easier for people who can't handle text walls" will make it harder to read for some other people. That's why we have a couple of different documents with different structures in the first place; because no one document is legible to everyone.

And, of course, "as easy to read as possible" can, in some cases, be "not very easy at all", because sometimes the information itself just plain isn't that easy.