hold that thought a sec- if we're going to introduce a new rule, can it be "no modding while on opiates"? not that it's actually a problem, I'm just being a smartass
The shift in behavior had happened, but I was still at least basically usually able to communicate with her. But recently, the reality-editing has gotten a lot worse, so we have surreally incoherent things, like the post saying something about mistaking Wiwaxia trying to run her off the forum for her being abusive, and that's just complete nonsense. Six months ago, it was pretty reliably possible to get her to acknowledge factual errors and they at least sorta stuck -- she'd continue believing the corrected thing for a while. Now, basically any kind of emotional stress at all just reverts everything to completely incoherent claims and weird conspiracy theories. (Honestly, several people have pointed out that this is concerningly schizophrenia-like, and at about the right age for onset, and I do not disagree. But I also do not have the necessary abilities to fix that if it is what's happening.)
Throwing this into the ring: Users can be banned if they are abusive to other members, and are either unwilling, or unable to work with the mod team to mitigate this behavior? edit to expand the thought: If this dose get posted somewhere, I think it counts for a lot that the only two people who have been indefinitely banned from this forum were banned for abusive behavior, and were unable to reach consensus reality with the mods to talk about it. Emphasizing that in any rules that get posted feels like it's still aligned with the mission statement of kintsugi.
seebs has said that their boundary is "this person is causing harm and we're pretty sure communication isn't possible," which seems like a reasonable boundary for what this forum is trying to do I am interested in the idea of failsafes. post mod is meant to be one, and seems to work well when the person on post mod isn't actively undermining it at every opportunity. are there any other ideas for things that would help prevent situations from getting this bad, w/o going to far in the other direction? I'm almost entirely certain that it isn't, and that it shouldn't be "deserve" isn't a particularly useful concept ime, esp not when you're trying to reduce harm having seen her do the thing, I have to say that the pattern of behavior that led to so many problems wasn't the kind of thing that happens often outside of places like r/justnoMIL (and even that's a meta example, bc afaik it's not happening on the subreddit itself so much as it's happening to the users of the sub irl) like, this is not a usual thing, and I'd be very surprised (and extremely dismayed) if the forum got another case like this. the odds are not in favor of this happening again (knock on wood and please, glob, don't let this happen again)
I generally agree on the substance of this, with the caveat that I don't think the word "punitive" is actually all that useful in this situation, bc you could (and Knives did) argue that any sort of consequence is a punishment. you could argue that toothaches are punishment for not brushing your teeth, and you wouldn't technically be wrong. and just having the word as part of the conversation invites a lot of hand-wringing and arguing over whether punishment is warranted or not and it feels like a distraction from the point of the ban, which is to reduce harm I feel like it'd be more useful to just drop the word and the questions it raises and just have the position that sometimes bans are necessary, but the mod team isn't in any rush to use them outside of some extremely narrow circumstances. and that the mod team is going to be as transparent as possible about decision-making to the people affected by the decision (but that part pretty much goes w/0 saying bc this is kintsugi and literally nothing the mods do beyond approving posts in the mod queue happens w/o several pages of posts in this subforum)
Personally, I think that I'm comfortable committing to if "person starts trying to circumvent moderation put in place to protect the rest of the forum" then "the idea of banning should be put on the table". I.e. I'm willing to be the person on the mod team who brings the thing up if a certain point is reached. This isn't a commitment to anything necessarily. Just trying to get the conversation around it starting sooner. I think that last part is what Seer and No?No are asking for, kinda?
Hm, to say it another way - We're going to be here for pages if we try to find a point where to draw a line in the sand. As far as I can tell, that's something Seebs is pretty opposed to in general. The conversation will just be going over the same points over and over. I think it's far to ask that the mods consider banning every so often. Can't promise more action than that, because pretty much only Seebs is going to wield the ban hammer, and that's why their forum title says dictator, so shrug. I just think that going forward, even without a fancy Deceleration of Intent, banning is probably going to be considered on the table of tools to use. It's the nuclear option, but now it's there. I don't think it's likely that we'll have anything else run this long again, tbh.
quickie suggestion for another failsafe for someone who is attempting to circumvent things like post mod: is it possible to require all new accounts to have their first post or so manually accepted by a moderator? is that already a thing that's in place?
Don't think that will be much of a failsafe. If you're going trying to circumvent a ban, you're probably not above trying to fake it for a few weeks. Or, at least, I don't think Alix is. There have been cases of people making new accounts during a meltdown to say more things, but I think we already have a failsafe for that - don't approve new accounts in the middle of a forum fire. Also, TSM is public. If someone wanted to, they could just come and dig through the posts and see that this is the case and fake it for that long =/ It's a good idea! I just can think of too many ways to get around it, lol
afaik, new accounts have to be manually approved, but once that's done, new posts from those accounts are good to go without approval needed. I'm not sure there's a way to selectively turn postmod on that way without having an admin available to flip the switch back and forth themselves. When similar questions came up in the past, I think seebs's general position was that during a meltdown, new accounts would be treated with Skepticism, and even if someone lays groundwork by making unused sock accounts to use later (which is something i know alix has done), when someone is worked up enough to be circumventing postmod, moderators will probably be paying close enough attention to be able to catch an account like that before it can get far.
I think that good faith with new users can work pretty well? Especially if people are comfortable reporting if it seems like a new user isn't okay and the situation would benefit from mod attention.
I can turn postmod on for new accounts, but Alix has made it quite clear that she's willing to spend weeks cultivating an account in order to have one available.
yeah, this is something i'm cool with and support, tbh. like theseer said, i don't want all of the internets to function like this, but for the forum, i think it's cool and admirable and personally on the whole still really like this forum. this was what i was trying to approximate with ... i disappeared a bit, and more convo happened re: "failsafe" language, i don't think conversations around preventing bad actors are what i'm talking about. i'm not interested that, for a variety of reasons. rather, i was thinking of example of, say, a circuit breaker - when the system gets overloaded, that's the thing that's supposed to break and turn it all off, so you don't end up with your electrical setting a fire or some shit we have this known problem, where we have people behaving badly (which is fine and in keeping with how this community and forum is run) and then the people involved trying to help get burned out. the mods get burned out. and we keep trying to help that person, at least for longer than anyone is really happy with, as seen with athol and alix. so this state, here, is what i'd link back to setting a fire so i guess what i'm looking for is, when we start hitting maximum capacity of being able to handle whatever situation, we let it break it's not a solution i love. i think, for example, setting the standard at, say, "when the entire mod team is burned out" does leave a lot of potential room for mod abuse, even if i personally don't expect that from the modteam (but it's worth considering here that that's because i'm someone who has a lot of faith in the modteam, and i think it's fair that the situation with alix, for example, has ruined that for many people).
I am pretty cool with the mod team having a reputation for continuing to try long past the point where it's obviously futile. Certainly way better than a reputation for writing people off. I like that there are multiple people that people can point to and say "what the fuck is wrong with you, why are they still here", because a lot of the time, there are people who are pretty sure someone's saying that about them, and who feel safer because they know we're like that. I'm okay with there being any exceptions ever, but I want them to be sufficiently ludicrous that people don't think "well, it could be me next".
I 100% get that this is your ideological hill to die on, Seebs, and this is your website, but what people keep trying to tell you is that instead of people having the "it could be me next" fear about mods, they had those fears about Alix, and that drove people that needed help away too. It really, really super does not feel like you hear anyone saying that at-fucking-all.
it’s been brought up— forgive me for not finding the quote, i’m a pudding — something about how the victims were treated, how the victims feel. and that right there is what makes a consequence punishment. when it’s about making a point rather than changing the situation for the better. i’m not about that. i’m not going to endorse a policy that boils down to “you’re voted off the island.” but do we really need to exhaust ourselves trying to reach someone who’s not responding? making a solid effort is good. hundreds of page of effort for someone who keeps going “lol didn’t read” is a terrible waste of energy that could be better spent on, for instance responding to caring void posts, or researching answers for advice requests. i think all the mods want to serve this community as more than a meat shield for cluster B tantrums.
keep in mind that some of us are spoonies, too. we don’t have your infinite stamina and immunity to emotional drain, seebs.
To say slightly calmer: I actually really like the stated mission of this website. I am just "making off-the-handle posts" level frustrated with the amount of tone deafness from Seebs specifically on this issue - I feel like I can trust other mods to have my back, but since in the end it's Seebs who decides when the rare edge cases get to stay- it is super not a good feeling.
