Who Moderates the Moderators?

[Lutagar]

I've removed a couple of posts that were

• Written by people who posted in the thread already and
• Replies to Halycon's deleted post.

moderators having to moderate moderators

this is off to a great start

[mansa]

I split this post off from the thread because it's Lutagar's second post in it (BREAKING THE RULES)
and it's a good topic by itself.



#1 - The moderator team is new.   We have fancy new buttons to press and authority, AUTHORITY!
#2 - We're players, and we will make mistakes.  I will make mistakes.
#3 - As a team of moderators, we haven't yet defined how we want to moderate.   We have a conversation going right now about what we want the community to look like, to feel like, to have the feeling that you can post your ideas and have them listened to.  I'm hoping to have the moderator guidelines compiled and shared this weekend.
#5 - The storytellers haven't moderated anything since the player team took control.


::examples of moderation questions yet to be answered::
Do we do a 3 strikes rule?
Do we do timeouts with an increasing length of time, or just keep it a standard length?
Do we message the people BEFORE we edit, asking them to self-edit, or do we edit it first and then message the people after?
Do we never ban someone from the community, just remove their ability to post, or do we remove them completely?
What criteria needs to be met to remove someone completely?

[Nao]

The post you're speaking of was essentially self-moderated - Halycon asked for help removing it.

[Rahnevyn]

I ask, beg, plead for grace on behalf of myself and the rest of the moderator team. It would be great if Armageddon could have parachuted in 5 special operators who have experience with repairing fractured online communities. Instead you got us. We all joined (I think) out of sincere love for the game and an earnest desire to help, but it will be a bumpy ride.

We’re still discussing when and how and what limits we should self-impose when participating in community discussions. This issue helped put some things in focus.

I’ll say at least speaking for myself, I am going to avoid commenting on game issues as my moderator handle going forward whenever I can. Not because I don’t have opinions, but I just don’t want any sort of mantle of authority to influence how they come across.

The way I see it, our charge as moderator is ensuring the health and fair conduct of the community and ensuring we have a safe and constructive environment free from harassment to discuss things in.

[Brisket]

Mansa's questions likely need voting from the playerbase at large, not a seemingly randomly selected cadre of the players.

I believe Grace and Patience are important on both sides - non-moderators to moderators and the inverse. We're all here because we want a good and healthy community. We all remain because we want things to be better.

In the spirit of that, however, I believe that Halcyon needs to step down or be fired. His first act as a moderator was to break the thread rules in an attempt to call a witch hunt against players using assumed cheating based on a little known bug (I hadn't heard about it prior to now) in an effort to discredit the very people that moderators are intended to protect.

This is a step backwards, and it was an almost hilarious display, because this is the literal tiniest amount of power I've ever seen that went to a person's head.  And it did so within 48 hours.

[Maziel]

Do we never ban someone from the community, just remove their ability to post, or do we remove them completely?
What criteria needs to be met to remove someone completely?

What Pooch did was give Grumble a Grumblezone (idk what he called it). He would just go on these huge rants with one sentence only loosely relating to the next all of the time. That way he can still belong to the Armageddon community and receive support, but he wouldn't be too burdensome either. If you end up with anyone a bit schizo, this might be a supportive way of handling that. He ended up getting access to the normal channels once he relented and ended up quitting the community eventually. Maybe he'll come back one day. Par the course.

Repeated and deliberate behavior that violates your rules in a meaningfully significant way is what would fit this criteria IMO. With the rules being as general and as minimalistic as possible, of course.

So, Grumble for example - you can't attribute much delibratancy to him. He's lucky to have access to the internet at any point in time. Malifaxis should be the prime example of someone who should be banned. Imo. Old GDB wouldn't have allowed any Grumblers but would and did allow for Malifax types.

That's just imo.

[Ath]

I am the co-person to Mansa in this, I am helping empower the players to moderate the Discord and GDB so staff doesn't have to and they can be focused on the game.  If you feel a player moderator or staff moderator (including myself or those that volunteer to do so) abuses their power, please put in a staff complaint on it and it will be reviewed.  Ever action is logged on the Discord and GDB and Mansa and I will do our best to keep this fair.  This is primarily in Mansa's hands to create process and procedures and he's been doing an amazing job with the rest of the moderators to come up with what they believe is fair for this community in their procedures.  The rules can and will be adjusted as they and staff see fit.  The goal is for us to have a healthy community.

[Calamari]

I am the co-person to Mansa in this, I am helping empower the players to moderate the Discord and GDB so staff doesn't have to and they can be focused on the game.  If you feel a player moderator or staff moderator (including myself or those that volunteer to do so) abuses their power, please put in a staff complaint on it and it will be reviewed.  Ever action is logged on the Discord and GDB and Mansa and I will do our best to keep this fair.  This is primarily in Mansa's hands to create process and procedures and he's been doing an amazing job with the rest of the moderators to come up with what they believe is fair for this community in their procedures.  The rules can and will be adjusted as they and staff see fit.  The goal is for us to have a healthy community.

If I may make a suggestion for an improved community. Instead of suggesting people to put in a staff complaint, offer to accept messages that question or object to perceived (real or not) abuses of power. Yes, that'll mean you'll get angry complaints and hear a good amount of backlash. You don't need to make a promise that you'll change your mind on a specific decision you've made, just be willing to consider over points of view and explain your rationale. Try not to be overly brief ("It's the rules." "I'm just doing my job.", etc.) as that sometimes gives the impression of being dismissive and showing a lack of concern. If possible, offer suggestions of what would be acceptable to you.

If you can't come to understand each others' perspective on the matter, then that is the time to escalate to a formal complaint process. Allow them to attach the conversation you've just had to their complaint if they still feel it's important enough that it needs mediation. I think you'll find that many issues can be resolved amicably before putting undue burden on mediators. A calm mind combined with showing compassion and understanding can go a long way to helping the community mend.

If the team decides to go this route, I'd suggest some firm ground rules about to save your lives and sanity.
1) Make it clear it's a discussion or conversation, not a chat. Say when you don't think you can help further (do so politely. Make a few canned responses.). Your time is important and you don't want people messaging you about everything immediately.
2) Only field complaints about yourself. It's an offer to the players that you're willing to talk about your own conduct in a reasonable manner. Many players might not feel comfortable about being so direct and may choose to skip directly to the formal complaint. That's fine too. The goal with this rule is to upfront and honest and that needs to go both ways. No talking behind backs, please.

[Brisket]

I am the co-person to Mansa in this, I am helping empower the players to moderate the Discord and GDB so staff doesn't have to and they can be focused on the game.  If you feel a player moderator or staff moderator (including myself or those that volunteer to do so) abuses their power, please put in a staff complaint on it and it will be reviewed.  Ever action is logged on the Discord and GDB and Mansa and I will do our best to keep this fair.  This is primarily in Mansa's hands to create process and procedures and he's been doing an amazing job with the rest of the moderators to come up with what they believe is fair for this community in their procedures.  The rules can and will be adjusted as they and staff see fit.  The goal is for us to have a healthy community.

As Calamari said - it's a needlessly bureaucratic process that serves to insulate people who are not right for the job.  Halcyon continues to post aggressively from his Moderator account in threads in this subforum even.  Beyond that, staff complaints.. don't ever achieve anything.  That's one of the complaints that players have.  If you can't remove a clear bad actor who more or less immediately failed in their task of promoting positive discourse by breaking the rules of the thread, veering wildly off topic, and ranting and raving about a witch hunt against imagined enemies, then it's going to be hard to have faith in the process.

And I am here, posting, because I'd like to have faith in the process.

[moonlit]

Thank you so much Halycon.

We need more people like you, and I am really glad someone is looking into these sort of things.

This is the kind of superhero level stuff that we need more of, to restore public trust in the system we have.

The reason a lot of people had stuff to leak in the first place is because they were being told things by staff and other players they shouldn't have been in the first place.

If we consistently don't remove people who have been constantly flouting the rules that others are expected to follow, then how can we trust the process?

It's often unglamorous, or even unthanked, but when staff are not regularly checking on what other staff are doing to discuss and prevent potential problems - and making the effort to catch out players who are abusing the trust of other players by cheating, as well as lying to staff - the situation becomes the same as every other place on the internet or organization without an internal affairs equivalent, and the results are horribly predictable.

Thank you Halycon. I'm sad to see things going back the same way so quickly, and I think it's important to not always listen to the loudest people, but think about the effect these people have on the other players who get demoralized with the state of things.

[moonlit]

I do not have confidence in Ath to lead this.

I didn't before this, even.

In a reply to a request in the time when he was previously staff, he suggested *I* was biased, but not saying why. When I am one of the people that deliberately recruited many different types of characters and encouraged them, in one of the roles I played. To the point that I got a few nudges to be a bit meaner.

This was, maybe not coincidentally, after I had made several criticisms on the chat, about code-focused behavior by people playing dwarf characters. I only found out later that he has a focus for "the dwarf experience" (maybe over what is best for the game since what happened in Tuluk was much of the rest of the city did not have much improvements or maintenance post-open, when it needed it so badly for the people playing there, a good example of this was the neglect of the player shop system)
So maybe it was not a coincidence that criticising dwarves got this behavior in a request.

My request was closed, and after mentioning it again, another member of staff replied suggesting the reason it was closed was because of several mistakes/lies said by NPCs, even though I had proved that with logs and links to facts in clan docs, this complaint was still used against me, so it was literally lies being repeated at me.

We need people that can guide players without bias, I am not confident he can do this.

[Brisket]

And this is why it's hard to have faith in the process.  There are enough people who will praise heavy handed wild-eyed witch hunts that will take up even more staff time in order to punish their posting enemies that the echo chamber will drown out the people who see reason.  Gut their karma, that's the usual reaction to cheating. 

Going on an unprompted, off topic, unhinged rant about ex-players with no evidence save a gut feeling within the first 48 hours of your moderating tenure is not a good look. 

Allowing that person to remain a good mod spreads that across the entire moderation team.

[moonlit]

They were caught out, with evidence, there was nothing about "a gut feeling", I saw the deleted post. This is part of the problem, that people are allowed to repeat lies with no consequences.

It's also part of the problem that we have a few absolutely toxic veteran players that think the rules only apply to everyone else.

Leaving things in this kind of situation is not a good look, and it's one of those things that just makes people quietly leave, the people that don't make complaints or speak out but just get depressed with all this stuff.

If everyone behaved as if they would if everything was transparent, then there'd be no problems in the first place.

[Brisket]

No one was caught out - he specifically called for staff to audit every player account on the game for evidence of the bug so that anyone found out could be retroactively banned.

He claimed to have 'discovered evidence' of the bug for some accounts through unclear and unverifiable means and requested they be formally, publicly named and shamed for their sins.  Then denied that they, fellow human beings, should be 'treated well' because of assumed cheating on a video game.

You are literally just making things up.  I took a screenshot of the the post because it was so over the line.  Please quit focusing on  the damage that supporting Halcyon's madness would do to your posting enemies and instead focus on the damage that his unhinged post will and is doing to the idea of player moderation being trustworthy.

I will agree that people repeating lies is a problem though. As are people who project that action onto others despite reality.

[moonlit]

He didn't do any banning though, and he obviously couldn't, and he chose not to reveal anything but told staff instead. He did absolutely nothing wrong and I am really glad that we are having people coming forward and being willing to reveal some of the other people that are responsible for the problems that we've been having - do you think your DMs are secret? Fun fact, this is a game that attracts people in politics, people talk about the DMs in the DMs in the DMs.

It's really brave when people do this and I respect it utterly.

People that shield this kind of thing are the problem.

[Brisket]

It's brave to go on an unhinged rant with no evidence, declaring that staff need to obey your sudden whim the instant you have an iota of power and do 'methodical research' into all accounts because he imagined patterns were revealed directly and uniquely to him based on shadowboards posts?

You and I have a very different idea of what constitutes bravery.

Had he merely submitted the info to staff and allowed them to look into it, I'd actually be on his side - cheaters shouldn't prosper from their cheating.

I support docking their karma - the usual result of being caught cheating - I even said so in an earlier post.

I don't support an unhinged rant from a person who was recently empowered to help calm the gdb down and make it a more reasonable place to post.

Reactionaries who get off on punishment are the problem.  Treating people with respect is the way forward. 

[moonlit]

There was no mention of posts. This sounds like an unhinged rant from someone desperately wheeling to protect their position as one of the ones that has been spitting on players and staff by their behavior.

There's no respect to the players when some people abuse the things they were given while others play fair. The reason things have got this bad is because of the lack of respect for fellow players, as well as staff.

[Brisket]

There was no mention of posts. This sounds like an unhinged rant from someone desperately wheeling to protect their position as one of the ones that has been spitting on players and staff by their behavior.

There's no respect to the players when some people abuse the things they were given while others play fair. The reason things have got this bad is because of the lack of respect for fellow players, as well as staff.

You're right, he claimed to be receiving prophetic knowledge that linked accounts and bug exploits in 'information leaked in various places' - the shadowboards are the most likely place for that.  It's possible he was finding information from Discord chats, emails, or possibly in his dreams, in the patterns of birds as they took flight, or perhaps even in the confluence of certain words he saw on billboards on his daily commute.  We don't know.  What we know is he decided to use his newly minted position as a moderator to attempt to create a call to action that -

1. Broke the rules of the thread he was posting in

2. Was entirely off topic to the thread he was posting in

3. Should have been handled in a request to staff alone (which I, again, would have 100% supported)

I've not been spitting on anyone - I've merely pointed out that this is a bad look and will have repercussions.   And that because of that, it's important to protect the integrity of the newly created player moderation team so that they not repeat the mistakes staff has made in the past.

Talking about problems is not 'spitting' on anyone.  People that come in to discuss what they'd like to see moving forward do so because they care about the game.  This 'us vs them' mentality is, in the end, the largest problem facing the playerbase (and let me be clear, staff + players = the playerbase, it's all of us).  And it needs to stop.

If you'd like, you can have the last word.  I've been exceedingly clear and I don't feel your continued attempts to misrepresent my position will have much effect going forward.

[Kankfly]

I think we should all just take a breath and give everyone some time. We have returning staff, we have new staff. We have a new moderation team. There's going to be some growing pains as everyone tries to pick up the pieces. It's a process. Drink some tea, take a walk, breathe some fresh air, and wait for things to settle.

[Kialae]

Y'all should just come log in and play with me. <3

[Vwest]

Do we have our new moderator team? Who's on the list?

Was there a vote process that I missed, or were they simply appointed? If so, by who?

I see a couple of people with the title, but I didn't see any kind of news about it, other than a post in ATS, which didn't really give any kind of details on time frame or how it was going to be processed.

[CirclelessBard]

As optimistic as I am about the concept of player moderation, it may have been more wise to establish some of these baseline rules before moderation actually started. While some moderation actions (e.g. removing slurs, removing a conversation topic rooted in sexism) have been appropriate, some messages leave me with mixed feelings. But seeing the Discord rules gives me hope that these are just growing pains.

I hope that as player moderators establish their process, they consider the following:
1) Not using prior moderation techniques in the community as a basis for forming the new techniques. Simply changing a few parameters like when to ban or how many strikes to allow isn't going to work. It's clear that moderation needs a thorough overhaul, not just a set of new faces with new standard.
2) There are books on community management that may help player moderators think about things in a different way. I recommend starting with "How to Handle a Crowd" by Anika Gupta and going from there.
3) Avoid repeating the mistakes of staff moderation. The self-moderated post was a good example of what poor staff communication has tended to look like.

Edit: Fixed a spelling error caused by speech-to-text

[moonlit]

It all seemed plenty calm enough on the surface before too, but there was so many different things upsetting so many different people, and it's just all come to a boil suddenly at once, and in these situations it seems like most people (typically the more RP orientated people, and so it goes with the emptying of cities) were just leaving the game quietly - I did too, but it was over a different issue, and there's a few different things that people are upset by or it would've been way over without so many people suddenly speaking up at once.

It just seems malicious to try suggest that people who have more legitimate concerns are being criticised, when people criticise the behavior of people that have recently been caught habitually cheating, neither Halcyon nor anyone else was talking about forum posts, obviously - these are two entirely different subjects.

If this was some genuine misunderstanding then nevermind that. But:

wild-eyed
[..]
unhinged

unhinged post
[..]
people who project that action onto others despite reality

unhinged

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/unhinged

prophetic knowledge
[..]
possibly in his dreams, in the patterns of birds as they took flight, or perhaps even in the confluence of certain words he saw on billboards on his daily commute

Do you think this kind of bigotry - repeatedly insulting someone by suggesting they have mental health issues as part of an argument - is acceptable in modern discourse, do you think you would get away with it in other places? If not, why here?

It's a bad look, let alone it's already against the rules to insult people.

I used it back to make a point, but still nothing, so I'm saying this because I guess we are all the moderators now, dancing around the Piggy.

[LindseyBalboa]

Y'all should just come log in and play with me. <3

see you at the span.

[Delirium]

I think we should all just take a breath and give everyone some time. We have returning staff, we have new staff. We have a new moderation team. There's going to be some growing pains as everyone tries to pick up the pieces. It's a process. Drink some tea, take a walk, breathe some fresh air, and wait for things to settle.

Even as spicy as I have been feeling, I agree 100% with this. Take a deep breath and give things a chance to shake out and work through the bumps. It has literally only been a few days. You don't fix decades of mess in that short of a time frame. For better or worse we all love(d) this game so the instinct to meddle is high, but at this point, a lot has been said.

Now let's just give them a chance to take action without nitpicking every single step. Do I have reservations? Plenty. Do I have hope? Yeah, that stubborn bastard won't go away.

But if we breathe down their neck every step of the way (positive or negative) it's not going to help at all.