Griping about moderation, bias, et cetera

[orenwolf]

@Hypoxia

Still, when a post is rejected, I’d like to know which guideline I’ve supposedly violated.

This places undue burden on the moderation team who do not have the time to respond personally to every flag thrown. That’s why there is a link to the guidelines in the automated message that is sent, and more importantly, why the item:

• Enforcement may be lax or draconian as befits the whims of the Entity. The rude will be eaten first.

…exists in the first place. While we make an effort to be transparent about moderation decisions by posting in the General Moderation Topic, there is an ocean of difference between our best-effort attempts to be transparent and a requirement that we do so. If you expect this level of personalized service for every flag, I can assure you that you are on the wrong forum.

Lastly, if you believe that Boing Boing, via it’s BBS, a heavily indexed and shared forum, wants to be associated with FUD like the possibility that COVID-19 will kill the majority of the planet, then not only have you been reading a different Boing Boing than I have, but you also clearly have no idea what us supporting that level of fantasy by allowing it to be hosted here would do to our credibility over time. We are not a disinformation source, and we’re not going to entertain FUD just because you find it to be a useful “thought experiment”. The Pandemic isn’t a game, stop treating it like one.

[Melizmatic]

@orenwolf

The Pandemic isn’t a game, stop treating it like one.

[smulder]

The guidelines specifically forbid “hostile, whining hand-wringers” and also “rules lawyering”

Anything that’s even slightly reminiscent of trying to build a legal case of some kind ("DO YOU ADMIT YOU HAVE ACTED UNETHICALLY OR NOT?") seems unlikely to last long

[Melizmatic]

Guess we gotta “tap the sign” again:

[Nightflyer]

@Nightflyer

Actually, we are allowed to criticize BoingBoing on BoingBoing. For proof, search for any thread about the site’s ad policy, and a good quantity of the sponsored product topics.

There’s one caveat-- critical posts must conform to the site’s Guidelines.

Post that include insults are violations, and will get eaten. Posts that complain about flags and moderation in threads that aren’t about flags and moderation are off-topic, and will get eaten.

In my experience here, if you can state your case respectfully and follow the rules, then yes, you can criticize BoingBoing on BoingBoing. It might not change anything, but it can be done.

The key word here is respectfully.

because Discourse won’t let me reply without adding something.

[orenwolf]

FYI: I removed a discussion here because it involved reposting a moderated post. This topic doesn’t exist so that people who are determined to have their moderated posts present on the site can do so in this topic and “skirt the rules”.

To the question of “Where do we gripe about Boing Boing?” You have the entire internet to do that. Boing Boing isn’t one person, it’s a collection of people. Their contact information is on the about page. There is contact information on the contact page. All of those are read by real people on the other side, and often acted upon as well (it’s a common source of corrections or removal of store posts with product issues, for example.)

That doesn’t mean the BBS is the place to gripe about Boing Boing. We provide this space to have conversations about topics on Boing Boing, not to discuss whether or not Boing Boing should exist at all. If you have decided that the hard work of the Authors trying to keep an independent Blog alive isn’t for you anymore, then thank you for your time with us, but please take it elsewhere (or take it up with the Author you take issue with.)

[Jesse13927]

In other words: If you want to gripe, don’t be an ass; do it with class.

[bolamig]

For the sake of others who may be confused about why their posts get seem to be inconsistently moderated, I’d like to share my experience. I’m not a mod, just someone who has experienced the frustration of moderation that appeared arbitrary and inconsistent with the stated rules.

This forum has flagged my center-left posts that take issue with the far-left posts from vocal forum members. This form of disagreement is presumably flagged as off-topic, hijacking, derailing, or being disagreeable.

My first inclination when trying to figure out why I’m getting flagged is to look at tone; am I coming across as insulting, disrespectful, or uncivil? So as my posts kept getting moderated, I tried to soften them as much as I could.

But as time went on, I was posting the softest most clinical formulation of my disagreement, and it was still getting moderated. And others were replying with rougher tone and not getting moderated.

I have benefitted from those exchanges by learning and refining opinions. But it isn’t all about me. After reading the moderation threads, my eyes were opened to the cycle of derailment and conflagration that my disagreeing posts seeded.

Reading some of the moderation threads, I learned that there is a bedrock principle that it’s considered better to flag a comment than to reply. It took me more than a decade of posting here before I encountered mention of this principle. The simplest and most effective way to stop conflagration is to cut it off at the head, remove the post that started it. And if that is going to happen anyway, better to do it before the responses heat up.

Moderation here is not about legalistic or textualist interpretation of the forum rules. The moderators are playing 3D chess, looking ahead at how things will affect discussions and weighing many factors.

My sense is that it is mostly the super-dedicated posters who know and engage this way, by flagging posts whose only sin is that they can be predicted to cause a backlash. If there is a groupthink here, it’s the groupthinkers who do the flagging. Power posters know their replies will end up in the bit bucket if the post they replied to gets moderated, giving further motivation to flag instead of reply. The moderators have said they usually delete flagged posts.

This leads to a systematic orientation towards making this a wonderful place to support particular views.

Of course, this looks a lot like posts get moderated for simply disagreeing with groupthink. I’m coming to accept it. I am reaping the benefits of having a well-controlled environment with intelligent posters. And I’m seeing my personal limitations in identifying what might be constructive vs selfish, perhaps even trollish.

I did notice that I got moderated here more when I started engaging on reddit. Reddit seems to be a troll factory. And even reddit has more and more frequently been moderating posts simply because they express a perspective different from what the forum wants to support. I guess this is the nature of modern forums.

Reading the moderation threads, I did see that someone who seemed to get away with more had in fact been moderated more strongly than I was. The main point of this post is that there is a consistency to the moderation even when it appeared that others were able to get away with things that I couldn’t.

[Jesse13927]

I feel you. One thing that is important to remember is that everyone gets moderated at some point. It’s not fun, to be sure, but usually it’s nothing personal (the system is set up in a way that quickly learns to ignore flags that are just because you don’t like someone).

One thing that I have learned is that people are not always in the mood for a weighty debate about something, and you just have to respect that, even if it means you don’t get the last word in.

[emo_pinata]

[hoffmanbike]

so… uhh … that gunbattle comment thread got moderated pretty hard …eh?

[anon61221983]

This happens every single time someone creates a whole account just to complain about a post. It will get flagged as off-topic because it is.

[hoffmanbike]

perhaps with the exception of my initial comment/reply - most of the comments seemed to be actually about the article and it’s status as boingboing article.

[anon61221983]

It was about whether or not it should be posted, not the topic itself. It was a meta discussion. And then it was all about how people were being censored… Bringing up how disappointed one is in Boing Boing never ends well. You may disagree that it’s off-topic, but this drama happens quite a bit… someone starts a new account to complain how the blog has gone down hill and how they are censoring readers, etc. It also gets moderated and removed, usually with links and reminders about WHY they are getting removed.

[hoffmanbike]

true, though i think there were rather valid points, even if the thread should have been locked.

the news byte is especially controversial considering how quickly it followed this article: Innocent man killed in police chase was uncle of teen who filmed George Floyd's murder | Boing Boing

[anon61221983]

@hoffmanbike

true, though i think there were rather valid points,

Maybe, but still off-topic and as such, it will either be removed or moved to a meta thread.

@hoffmanbike

the news

BB is not a newspaper and it’s made up of a number of different authors who write about different things.

[Melizmatic]

Complaining about the content posted by the publisher or the authors isn’t ever going to end well; it’s not only off topic, it also all too often devolves into people making passive aggressive insults towards TPTB. As @anon61221983 already noted, BB isn’t a news site - it’s a forum where we are all essentially guests who agreed to abide by the stated terms.

[anon61221983]

Beautifully put! Thanks!

And there are threads, such as this one, for expressing discontent and asking for clarification on moderation decisions.

[hoffmanbike]

and those comments did occur and deserved to be pruned (mine included)

however upon re-reviewing the community guidelines: Forum Rules | Boing Boing
“Constructive criticism is welcome. Hostile, whining hand-wringers will be censored by elitist hypocrites.”
I see a line that supposedly encourages constructive criticism, not demands it’s deletion. many of the pruned comments definitely seemed to be constructive criticism - not hostile, whining hand-wringers

yes, I understand BB is not a news site, that’s why i referred to the article as a news byte i.e. “content”, not current, breaking news, but an article that is interesting and possibly news-worthy. which is totally a definition I made up just now.

[orenwolf]

BB isn’t a hive-mind. As I noted above:

@orenwolf

Boing Boing isn’t one person, it’s a collection of people. Their contact information is on the about page. There is contact information on the contact page. All of those are read by real people on the other side, and often acted upon as well (it’s a common source of corrections or removal of store posts with product issues, for example.)

That doesn’t mean the BBS is the place to gripe about Boing Boing. We provide this space to have conversations about topics on Boing Boing , not to discuss whether or not Boing Boing should exist at all. If you have decided that the hard work of the Authors trying to keep an independent Blog alive isn’t for you anymore, then thank you for your time with us, but please take it elsewhere (or take it up with the Author you take issue with.)