Can you share the policy here? Kudos btw
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Well, not without giving up the last shred of BB anonymity to which I cling.
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I think the logic is more:
If platforms get protection because they canāt/donāt editorialise, i.e. they donāt select the content so arenāt publishing it and therefore arenāt responsible, then if they moderate, they are choosing what content gets published, soā¦
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Thatās how I understand it, too. And this part has always baffled me: as soon as you introduce algorithms, arenāt you effectively editorializing, since youāve decided what content rises to the top?
To me, it should be, if itās seriously just a digital cork board, okay, maybe you get a free pass.
But if thereās any kind of algorithm that puts some content above others, you bear some responsibility for what that content is.
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The problem is, that imagines a world where human effort is free (or at least break-even-able). The tools Discourse provides help members assist in moderation, but the decisions on how much a userās flag should weigh, for example, are based on manually or dynamically tuned and set automated threshholds as well as feedback mechanisms that have rules around how they operate.
If a site got much bigger than the BBS, youād start needing a lot of paid moderators to maintain the place, and that quickly becomes too expensive. So, for a long time, especially pre-Discourse, you had small sites with communities of at most a few hundred folks that were self-moderating, massive sites that could afford both humans and data folk to tweak algorithms, and a cesspool of poorly moderated larger sites in-between that everyone hated to post in because the signal-to-noise ratio was terrible but there was little anyone could afford to do about it at that scale.
Discourse moved that needle, and I am extremely thankful for it, but thereās still a big space between the BBS-ish-sized sites and the Twitters of the world where I think all hope is lost currently, and I think ācost of moderationā vs āquality of automated optionsā is a huge part of why that is.
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i think the example of usenet is a good comparison here. moderated newsgroups remained useful and interesting for a long time while unmoderated groups became a massive portfolio of spam. but who wants to go to that kind of effort for free? and who wants to pay people to do that?
of course, the world and the internet have moved on but i do remember some fun times in the early 90s. i suppose it still exists in some form but what would be the point now.
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And you moved the needle of my understanding of the issue. Thank you. Iām still far from understanding the complexities of the issue, but yours was the first explanation Iāve gotten that made sense to a novice.
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I donāt know if it is. To me, itās kind of like how Slashdot was the Galapagos Islands of moderation systems. Way back in 2009 there were just sooo fewer people online, and those that were online were the early adopters, not really representative of the average person. Now everyone is online.
Remember the old joke āhaha Trump is like an internet comment section running for presidentā?
That seemed a lot funnier ā¦ prior to election night 2016. At any rate, I am thankful as hell about the 2020 election and Georgia in particular. Itās gonna be a hard fight from here on out, but at least we have a chance. 
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I would say that the one way that the huge sites like Twitter and FB could actually justify their enormous revenue is by paying real people to moderate their sites. It would be a tough slog to start out, but once the bots and tr0lls are cleared out, it will be much easier.
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They do have real people (often outsourced to sweatshops in Southeast Asia) looking through posts for things like pron or graphic violence (I understand that PTSD is common in those sweatshops).
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Sorry for all the times Iāve been one.
People grossly under estimate the mental load and toll of moderation. A big part of it is that you can never get ahead. There are always more bad actors ready to line up behind the ones you turf, and always another poster who hasnāt bothered to read the guidelines.
You have to really love the places you moderate, to justify the mental investment. I canāt imagine what it would be like to do a job like that at a place the size of a Twitter or FB where you will see the worst that humanity has to offer while being positive that the torrent of filth will never end.
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it turned out to be one of those jokes that was truer than it was funny.
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Come to think of it, there is one other thing that this BBS does right, though I cannot really explain how: This community is just chock-full of really, really smart people. Youād be hard-pressed to find a community with more smarts all around, especially without some kind of shared professional or academic discipline bringing everyone together. Even the people I always seem to get into heated arguments with and probably would not invite over for tea are undeniably some of the smartest people I will interact with that day, if not that week. And people here generally do not show off their smarts, nor is there any need for them to; it just shines through in the conversations.
However the community does it, I must say that it is quite impressive. I learn something in every thread.
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The late Steve Gilliard made it a point to note that his small on-line community was one where ātr0lls canāt hangā. Things have to start with an affirmative decision toward that end, toward protecting the community you love.
BB, through the efforts of its moderators and owners and the developers of the BBS software, obviously made that decision. Itās also one of the few on-line forums Iāve seen over the decades that has followed through successfully on implementing it at the scales of hundreds (if not thousands) of active users. But all that effort will come to nothing if the owners donāt first decide that ātr0lls canāt hangā here.
The extreme difficulties of moderating communities or millions like FB or Twitter aside, the social networks in effect made the opposite decision and ālet tr0lls hangā in the service of their engagement-based advertising business model. Combined with an extreme aversion to putting money into the cost centre of proper moderation, we ended where we did on 6 Jan.: with platforms actively enabling a fascist insurrection at the seat of government.
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So much this! I love the level of discourse that happens around here. Even just reading the comments fills a much-needed hole in my life. Jumping into the conversations and joining the community can be intimidating because of it, but thatās been a running theme in most aspects of my life.
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Agreed ā it is certainly what keeps me coming back.
Well, and the wise dry wit from @Papasan, obviously!
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Yeah this is where itās helpful to empower the community over time ā I liken it to āif you put a trash can on every street corner, there will be less trash in the streetsā. 
Also, beyond sharing the work, we HEAVILY prioritize feedback from moderators on active Discourse communities. When we get suggestions from them about how the software can potentially make their job easier, that gets bumped to the top of the list, every time.
(Moderating ghost towns is easy. Moderating small groups is usually easy, too. Itās when you get into larger scale and complex, nuanced topics that are usually avoided at Thanksgiving dinner conversation ā thatās when the difficulty spikes.)
Thatās a lovely sentiment, and I tried to capture it in one of the rules on my own Discourse instance, which handles commenting on my blog:
Weāre all here to learn from each other, so if you have something to say, make an honest effort to teach us something.
Are you teachingā¦ or are you preaching? 
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I wasnāt aware of Steve, but he sure was an interesting guy and he was doing serious moderator work:
In 2003, Steve was tasked with contributing to and moderating
netslaves.com'sonline bulletin board, which had grown in usership after instances of homophobia and racism alienated a large group of users from Philip Kaplanās FuckedCompany.com. These users flocked to netslaves, but two feuding users (who went by the names Cheopys and Uncle Meat, of left and right political persuasion, respectively) repeatedly created situations in which Steve would have to arbitrate discussions. In June 2004, Steve banned both users, causing a boycott, a massive defection of users, and eventually, the closure ofnetslaves.com.
Iāll have a look through the historical archives for the moderation policies he instituted. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Expand to see Steve's full terms of service circa March 2003
NetSlaves Terms Of Service
Welcome to the NetSlaves terms of service. This pretty much spells out what we will and will not tolerate on NetSlaves. One of the reminders we have is that NetSlaves is a free and open community ā we do not pick our members, they make their effort to join. Because of this, we have many divergent viewpoints. You may not agree with some of the other users, and thatās a part of being involved in an online community.
The Rules
The following will not be tolerated:
- Discriminatory comments. Any slurs that disgrace an ethnic group, racial group, a religious group or organization, or insults based on sexual orientation do not belong on NetSlaves.
- Personal attacks. Whatās the difference between criticism and a personal attack? If Splat calls Orooney boring and attacks his ideas, thatās criticism. If Orooney calls Splat a pedophile, thatās a personal attack.
- Disclosing personal information. This is a place where people donāt want their identities disclosed (though Splat will disclose them for a fee). NetSlaves protects the privacy of its users.
- Freeping. Freeping is as defined as disrupting a topic enough to stop conversation.
- driving trollies. driving trollies is the textual equivalent to crank calls, basically comments designed to illicit predictable, angry responses.
- Harrassment Through Private Messages. If you continuously harrass someone privately, we may take action.
- Offensive User Names. If we deem that a user name is designed to provoke a response, we may take action.
- The Mocking Of User Names Through Comments Or Avatars. Visual representation is just as impressionable as words.
- Invalid Email Addresses. In a situation where we cannot contact you, we will freeze your account until we can establish contact.
The following will be tolerated:
- Divergent Viewpoints. This is a community of ideas.
What Happens If You Violate The Rules
No tolerance. Our past experience has told us that a no-tolerance rule works best. While this is a community, it is also our full intent to build this to a place where a large group of people can have intelligent discussions and build friendships. These relationships will not be disrupted by people who would rather fight than enjoy the conversation. This means that at any point if you violate the rules, your account will be frozen, no questions asked.
If you are a subscriber. You might get a little more latitude, but honestly if itās offensive enough, youāll be treated like everyone else. We reserve the right to cancel your subscription without refund. As an amended terms of service, by continuing your subscription and your use of NetSlaves as a community, you are implicitly agreeing to the terms of service.
How We Review Posts
While we donāt have a 24 hour watch on the board, we try to keep at least a vague idea of whatās going on. Additionally, you can report āoffensive postsā to info@netslaves.com
Any posts that we deem offensive are hidden from view of the general public and reviewed by the moderators. At that time, we make a decision, however fair or unfair it is, to advise users. Note that the moderators are the final say on what is and what is not offensive. Generally we arenāt going to take sides, but we will do whatever it takes to protect the integrity of the community.
If you donāt like someoneās viewpoint, but itās not offensive, ignore them (a subscription feature).
Be Good or Be Gone
We reserve the right to remove posts for any reason. We also reserve the right to delete user accounts for any reason ā for the time of your membership, we are granting you use of the NetSlaves site under the Terms of Service.
We reserve the right to edit posts for any reason. If there are comments we deem offensive, we may edit the post.
Please refrain from posting copyrighted articles from other sources. Edit an article to get to the salient points ā a paragraph or two and a URL instead of posting the complete article.
If you donāt like what we do here, do not come back. Which is cool. But you cannot trolley and screw around here and expect it to be unchecked or ignored by the mods. Our mods are writers, and we spend a lot of time working on this site. We will not allow anyone to abuse our invitation.
We are glad that people like our work and want to read what we have to say. If you have any questions about what is acceptable around here or think that one of your notes was unjustly deleted, please send us e-mail.
Note that we do reserve the right to refuse membership we feel will be detrimental to the board. If you have any questions, please mail us at into@netslaves.com
The above 
is well worth reading, hereās one thing I found interesting:
If you donāt like someoneās viewpoint, but itās not offensive, ignore them (a subscription feature).
Ignore was a subscription feature, and itās a trust level feature you earn in Discourse.
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Steve was a serious moderator and more. The story of the end of his tenure there and the demise of Netslaves as quoted above is based on an embarrassingly self-serving account by the founders of Netslaves. The real story is more sordid and interesting, and since I was there at the time Iāll tell it (thereās a tl;dr at the end for those who want the short version).
As background, at the time Gilliard was made moderator the two founders were increasingly disengaged from the site. Bill Lessard and Steve Baldwin were two nice, well-meaning guys who stumbled into running a fairly popular niche content and community site about the shady and exploitative side of the dotcom industry. However, neither of them were equipped to manage a business of any sort ā they were exactly the kind of hapless dilettante founders that their own site regularly mocked. Furthermore, at this point they were dispirited and losing interest. F-ckedcompany, an unmoderated cesspool site covering the same subject matter, was getting a lot more attention in the media. A Netslaves book deal hadnāt worked out as theyād hoped.
They became absentee publishers, abdicating responsibility for operating the site to Pat āSplatā Neeman, the developer of the siteās custom PHP-based BBS system and the sysadmin, and to Steve Gilliard, the siteās head writer and effective editor-in-chief and, now, the moderator. In their post-mortem for the site, Lessard and Baldwin would later disingenuously claim the decision to make Gilliard moderator was āill-advisedā and led to the siteās downfall. In fact, the no-tolerance policy @codinghorror posted above was completely authored from scratch and enforced by Steve, who truly loved the site that was the main platform for his muckraking writing and for the community discussion about the articles.
That moderation was sorely needed at this stage. While f-ckedcompany was getting the press, Netslavesā userbase was small but growing. Like clockwork, the bad actors started arriving to ruin things. Worse, in an effort to compete with F-ckedcompany, Baldwin and Lessard poached what they considered to be āeruditeā commenters from the site. Two of them in particular were a toxic yin-and-yang whose battles constantly sucked the air out of discussions: Cheopys and Uncle_Meat (both middle-aged white men, natch).
Cheopys would probably be an obnoxious BernieBro today. He was a leftier-than-thou early Microsoft engineer with what most regulars agreed was a sketchy/creepy personal life. He was fairly erudite, and heād argue fiercly, often in bad faith, against the smallest hint of conservatism in any comment. He always made things personal.
As big a jerk as Cheopys was, his nemesis Uncle_Meat (AKA Lauren Bandler of Wisconsin) ranks as one of the worst trollies Iāve encountered on the Internet. Heās right up there in my personal hall of shame with the automated genocide-denier known as Zumabot, Spamford Wallace, deranged mommaās boy religious fanatic and stalker Dennis Markuze (who once threatened to track me down and cut my head off), and the now-banned white supremacist tr0ll Max_Blancke/Arch_Stanton from this site.
U_M was at the base of things your standard-issue Libertarian tr0ll: the Randroid talking points and smug tone and the delusional self-image and nasty privilege-blind undertone he displayed were as tired and played-out 15+ years ago as they are now. The tactics were also the same old bad-faith āde-rail and distractā ones we still see from Libertarians here today who think theyāre doing something new and clever.
What set him apart was his obsessiveness, his sense of entitlement that he be heard and taken seriously on every subject. This is a guy who, to give one example, was busy tr0lling Netslaves (and probably other BBSās) 15 minutes before the scheduled start of his mother-lawās funeral (in pre-smartphone days, mind you). He really disliked the Netslavesā implied criticism of capitalism, and seems to have made tr0lling the site a special project.
So in reality, no-one on the Netslaves BBS was sorry to see either of these two dickheads banned when Gilliard finally had enough and froze their accounts. Certainly no-one left because they were banned ā celebration was the response. However, probably because one or both of them complained to Baldwin and Lessard, suddenly the founders got re-involved and questioned Gilliardās judgment despite being completely uninvolved in witnessing the tr0llsā BBS antics. Gilliard, never one to suffer fools gladly, made his exit.
Baldwin and Lessard disappear again, and now the site is being run and technically moderated by āSplatā, with some lesser writers providing content. Gilliardās departure was disappointing, but most of the BBS regulars who loved the site hung on in the hopes that things would stabilise and improve. They did not.
First, as we later discovered, at some point after his ban U_M offered āSplatā a Web design contract for one or more of his penny-ante seasonal businesses (which we suspected were a family inheritance ā so much for John Galt of Wisconsin). Second, soon after āSplatā took over as de facto moderator, guess whose account was unfrozen (no extra points for guessing whose account wasnāt unfrozen). Yes, this was a tr0ll so obsessive that he paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars to get un-banned on an Internet forum so he could continue his mayhem.
Even being unaware of the bribe, the community was outraged at U_Mās return and let the founders know. As a sop, they appointed two regular users as moderators; as usual they made a terrible decision. The new mods were a husband-and-wife team known by their handles of the Packratts, an anarkiddie/crustpunk couple who reminded me of Bad-Luck Schleprock from the Flintstones cartoon.
As U_M intensified his driving trollies, every request to the mods from the community to do something ā anything ā was met with the equivalent of āour hands are tied by Splat, and anyway the world is a terrible and dark place so why try to make things better? Woe is us!ā (this was also their approach to life in general). Then more Libertarian tr0lls, probably invited by U-M, started appearing and the āNazi barā problem took hold.
So Netslaves became unusable for good-faith members, and thatās when we all agreed in a private group e-mail exchange that it was time to leave en masse on a set date to make a point. Baldwin and Lessard took the exodus as their cue to shut down the site, probably with great relief that they werenāt in over their heads anymore.
By that time Gilliard had started up his own content/community site, The News Blog, and most of us ended up there and stayed until his untimely death. Gilliard was one of the best writers and most diligent and relentless journalists Iāve encountered on the Internet. His work influenced people like the founder of Daily Kos and his site spawned other bloggers like Driftglass. He was a self-described āfighting liberalā, the bane of conservatives, bigots, smug celebrities, and corporate exploiters ā so much so that the location of his grave is a secret to this day. He was taken from us way too soon, and I still think of him years later.
I really see BoingBoing as the type of community Steve would have liked to foster: hard but fair moderation; a BBS system that supports the mods; a publisher who involves himself actively in the larger site; and users that truly care about not only keeping the site as good as it is but making it even better. Thatās why this site is the latest one where Iāve set up my commenterās tent, and I thank you all for making it such a welcoming and pleasant oasis in a wilderness of unmoderated cesspools and social media networks.
tl;dr: Netslaves didnāt die because Gilliard bounced two well-known arseholes from the digital bar, but because of (in reverse order of culpability): useless successor moderators; absentee publishers; a greedy and corrupt sysadmin granted too much power; and above all an extremely toxic and destructive Libertarian tr0ll.
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