Discussion: Have the mods gone far enough?

[Twilight Imperium]

I can't help but wonder if a rule where people weren't allowed to make new threads until they'd posted a certain number of times would help new people figure these things out.

[Imperializt Russia]

I can't help but wonder if a rule where people weren't allowed to make new threads until they'd posted a certain number of times would help new people figure these things out.

Pretty sure WA and II have asked for that in the past, unsuccessfully.

[Twilight Imperium]

I can't help but wonder if a rule where people weren't allowed to make new threads until they'd posted a certain number of times would help new people figure these things out.

Pretty sure WA and II have asked for that in the past, unsuccessfully.

Do you recall any of the specifics?

[Fortitudinem]

The only time they don't do their job is when they hit 8x more innocents than guilty nations when getting rid of a spammer. Happened at one of my friend's schools before. Otherwise, they're great, and most of them are pretty funny.

[Manisdog]

So, I am telling the moderators this, if you want to get rid of the flames and not have such questions asked than you can just stop preemptively two people from hostile countries from talking

Of course they could.

Doing so or even attempting to do so is incredibly difficult and peculiar and wholly not in the interests of the site creator.

Let us say this would an Israeli and Palestinian ever be able to debate with each other, Can a serbian and Crotian, Bosnian etc etc Debate with each other ? What happens when you condemn the British empire for trying to take over the world ? Can the Chinese and Taiwanese ever talk with each other ? Let me not bring up the Indians and Pakistani's here ? Would the Europeans ever accept the evils of colonialism ?
I rest my case, it is truly impossible for a debate to happen,when two parties refuse to budge and that is where the flaming starts, with me it was like this man thinks xyz are evil so his arguements suck and I retaliated but now I recognize the truth, I should have known better

[Sediczja]

The thing is, not everybody is a rampant xenophobe completely incapable of rational debate.

What of the people from two "hostile" countries that couldn't care less about their differences because this is the internet? Do they just have to accept the fact that because of some people who can't play nice, they're restricted in who they can communicate with?

[Manisdog]

The thing is, not everybody is a rampant xenophobe completely incapable of rational debate.

What of the people from two "hostile" countries that couldn't care less about their differences because this is the internet? Do they just have to accept the fact that because of some people who can't play nice, they're restricted in who they can communicate with?

I am asking my forgive to the moderators for xyz arguement but everybody is biased to there own opinions, the only way two people from hostile countries can communicate is if they remain formal at all times, When I think of it I should have understood that people from other countries wont see there country in a bad light so I am now in favor of avoidance

[Imperializt Russia]

Of course they could.

Doing so or even attempting to do so is incredibly difficult and peculiar and wholly not in the interests of the site creator.

Let us say this would an Israeli and Palestinian ever be able to debate with each other, Can a serbian and Crotian, Bosnian etc etc Debate with each other ? What happens when you condemn the British empire for trying to take over the world ? Can the Chinese and Taiwanese ever talk with each other ? Let me not bring up the Indians and Pakistani's here ? Would the Europeans ever accept the evils of colonialism ?
I rest my case, it is truly impossible for a debate to happen,when two parties refuse to budge and that is where the flaming starts, with me it was like this man thinks xyz are evil so his arguements suck and I retaliated but now I recognize the truth, I should have known better

You are aware that #IndiawithPakistan was trending yesterday, right?

[The Blaatschapen]

The only time they don't do their job is when they hit 8x more innocents than guilty nations when getting rid of a spammer. Happened at one of my friend's schools before. Otherwise, they're great, and most of them are pretty funny.

This can unfortunately happen.

If you know the spammer in your school, report them to the school administration (or whomever is in charge of the IT systems in the school). It makes our lives easier. Or let the school administration contact us, so we can figure something out to stop the spam.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

So, I am telling the moderators this, if you want to get rid of the flames and not have such questions asked than you can just stop preemptively two people from hostile countries from talking

And I am telling you this: You are responsible for your words on this forum. Just as others are responsible for theirs. YOU are the ones who can 'get rid of the flames', by not posting them in the first place.

We don't expect everyone to kumbaya and get along, and everything be sunshine and roses. What we do hope is that people can be mature enough to think before they post, to take into consideration the other side of the argument when making theirs (something you seem to be wanting for yourself, but are unwilling to offer others in your 'mods don't understand' analogy), and to keep things civil, even if you are actively disagreeing.

It can be done. Players have been doing it for over a decade. They continue to do it today. You simply have to either a) Not respond with anger and poorly-chosen words when posting, b) Learn to express your reasoning and position in ways that do not flame, troll, or bait other players, or c) Not respond to statements you perceive as flaming, trolling, or baiting you, and instead, report them so we can take a look at it - and perhaps explain to you why it is or is not actionable. The idea being that we can all learn a bit of each other's positions, learn to accept that there are opposing views that one can have without necessarily being a troll, or get rid of the ones who are here to just wind people up.

Does that make any sense?

It isn't always as clear-cut as some might imagine. We've had a plethora of 'this is in opposition to my position, which is clearly the only true and just one, and thus, troll' statements made strongly and fervently. And while sometimes that is exactly the case, it isn't always.

We hear 'freedom of expression or speech' get tossed about, only to have it yanked as soon as a view one doesn't agree with raises its head, then it's 'orf with it!'

Given the fundamental differences between some of the ideologies represented by our user base, we are going to have some very testy situations arise. And we are going to have people on both sides vehemently defending their position and their right to express it.

[violet] has stated that she does not want to stifle discussion, or create a fill-in-the-blank sounding board situation on the forums. This means that there will be times when a statement honestly given by someone will come into conflict with your own world view. And if it is presented in such a way that we deem unactionable, it will be allowed to stand, and you will have the option of either arguing your point with civility, or moving on and ignoring it.

Some dichotomies will never see eye to eye in their views. Some, you will never change opinions on. Some, you may simply have to learn to agree to disagree, like it or not. That's the double-edged sword in freedom of expression. And it does exist, insofar as the site rules allow.

We will make an honest effort at both smacking down the true trolls, to educating the borderline posters who are simply very adamant in their positions and need to learn how to express it without continually crossing the line, and to allow opposing views to be expressed and discussed, as is the purpose of NSG - the sharing of ideas, the debating of topics, the socialization of a diverse group of people under one big slightly dysfunctional but ever-growing community.

No one on the moderation team wants trolls. No one wants an atmosphere of nastiness. We all come from diverse backgrounds and hold differing views on a number of things, to the point that we, as a group, have had some very lengthy debates over what does and what does not constitute trolling, what is or is not actionable, and what should or should not be done about any given situation. I think it's for the best - it prevents any one view from being too prevalent and stifling others. It isn't perfect, but that's why we have the Moderation forum, and the appeals process.

And now that I've gone on entirely too long with this, hopefully I've been able to clarify some things. And if not, well ... I gave it a shot. Wrappin' it up and leavin' it for your consideration.

[New Pendence]

The discussion I am starting is 'Have the mods gone too far?'. I believe the mods do a good job on NationStates but they can be a bit trigger happy with the ban button.

I talked to one admin who was completely rude. However, I spoke to others that were very nice and polite. Both instances where I accidentally broke a rule. They should just be a bit more careful not to let rude or triggerhappy mods in.

[Grenartia]

Of course they could.

Doing so or even attempting to do so is incredibly difficult and peculiar and wholly not in the interests of the site creator.

Let us say this would an Israeli and Palestinian ever be able to debate with each other, Can a serbian and Crotian, Bosnian etc etc Debate with each other ? What happens when you condemn the British empire for trying to take over the world ? Can the Chinese and Taiwanese ever talk with each other ? Let me not bring up the Indians and Pakistani's here ? Would the Europeans ever accept the evils of colonialism ?
I rest my case, it is truly impossible for a debate to happen,when two parties refuse to budge and that is where the flaming starts, with me it was like this man thinks xyz are evil so his arguements suck and I retaliated but now I recognize the truth

Believe it or not, there's nothing inherently keeping individuals from two groups of people with a history of hatred between them from actually discussing things civilly, or even agreeing.

Yes. An Israeli and a Palestinian could conceivably civilly debate with each other (and even agree on key issues the both of them face). As could a Serbian and a Croatian, and an Indian and a Pakistani. Or even a Japanese person and a South Korean. Or a Russian and a Finn. Also, you can hardly "rest" your "case" when you've not proven anything.

To say nothing of the fact that its already been pointed out to you MULTIPLE times that its impossible to guarantee two people from "adversarial" countries would be blocked from seeing each others' posts, because of things like going abroad and immigration (to say nothing of proxies). So even if your "solution" in need of a problem were actually worth implementing, there'd be no way to guarantee that it would work all the time (and it would need such a guarantee in order to be viable).

[The Blaatschapen]

The subject of "we should not let 'opposite' groups communicate with each other" is not the subject of this thread. Further comments on this in this particular topic will be removed.

[Fortitudinem]

The only time they don't do their job is when they hit 8x more innocents than guilty nations when getting rid of a spammer. Happened at one of my friend's schools before. Otherwise, they're great, and most of them are pretty funny.

This can unfortunately happen.

If you know the spammer in your school, report them to the school administration (or whomever is in charge of the IT systems in the school). It makes our lives easier. Or let the school administration contact us, so we can figure something out to stop the spam.

School admins could care less, in fact, they would probably publicly diss the site because it isn't run by them. The schools only care about devouring anything that they can use and using it incorrectly and breaking it. The only reason I don't die of boredom is that Hrs/Ap teaches care about education and students, unlike the administration. In fact, it took them a good month to kick the kid who stabbed me a few years ago out of the school.

[Toronina]

I'm changing my opinion to they have not gone for enough. I have seen a post advocating death (albeit of unpopular people) be rules not actionable.

[Ostroeuropa]

They mostly do a good job, but they are people with their own viewpoints and biases.
Expecting them to actually live up to being impartial enforcers is expecting too much of them. They certainly try, I think, and do an admirable job.
The forums are reasonably well run with a diverse range of opinions heard.

[Alyakia]

The only time they don't do their job is when they hit 8x more innocents than guilty nations when getting rid of a spammer. Happened at one of my friend's schools before. Otherwise, they're great, and most of them are pretty funny.

it is better to let 100 puppets post about indian sex hotlines and UK kitchens than DEAT one innocent nation -thomas "t.j." jefferson

[Emperor Septim]

I've filed several GHR's (not with this nation mind you ) and have dealt with the mods a couple of times in the past and I can tell you that I like the mods here more than on any other site I've been on (except maybe the Smith and Wesson forums, from what I've seen they don't put up with anything there ). From my personal experience with them they have always been professional;

[Grenartia]

I'm changing my opinion to they have not gone for enough. I have seen a post advocating death (albeit of unpopular people) be rules not actionable.

I saw them once rule it wasn't actionable when one poster said another should die, merely because she drinks alcohol. That alone should be proof enough that they need to tighten up.

[Bubblekirby]

I've seen people who have been reported for basically saying "all women should get back in the kitchen" and then the mods say we need to argue the opinion down because even though it violates the "all x are y" rule it doesn't count because the opinion is popular in some circles. Look, I'm not saying do a complete 180 on enforcement. I do personally like the rules looser than they are strict. But there are some opinions that are just plain bigoted, and really shouldn't be tolerated. I know some will argue the slippery slope "but who decides what is okay to say" in response but I'm not talking about a ton of views. Just, if a post says something like "x don't deserve to hold real jobs" or something along those lines, we wouldn't tolerate it if x was replaced by say Jews or Blacks. So why do we tolerate the same statement if x was women or gays? It doesn't make sense to me.

[Reploid Productions]

School admins could care less, in fact, they would probably publicly diss the site because it isn't run by them.

You would be quite surprised then, to know that Nationstates is in use in several schools, and that there have been plenty of times in the past where we have had great success in communicating with the schools where a troublemaker was coming from. (Probably the most infamous being the porn/shock image spammer that was tracked down to a Catholic high school, where the student was reamed a new one by the school and his parents, and barred access to any of the internet-capable computers unless he was under adult supervision.)

Obviously, some schools are going to be more technologically capable than others, but most of them have some manner of terms of service for using their computers. The odds are usually pretty good that someone doing something enough to get the entire school banned here is probably also violating those school rules, which is something that the school is a bit more likely to act on.

As for opinions and trolling, that is and forever will be the eternal balancing act we're somehow never going to get right, at least not to everyone's satisfaction. If we crack down, we're too harsh. If we ease up, we're not harsh enough. We cannot outline a complete legalistic code to provide a concrete framework for every single possible instance (because we're not robots, and more importantly, neither are the players!,) but "Don't be a dick." isn't concrete enough. We outline stuff at length in the OSRS, people complain it's too long to read; we shorten and simplify the OSRS, people complain it's too vague. That's part of why we have such an extensive appeal system, to try and compensate for the fact that no two cases are going to be exactly alike or viewed the same way by different mods.

Another thing to consider in enforcement shifts is that the tools have changed over time. Way back in yon early days, we had what was basically a "two strikes and you're DEAT" setup, primarily due to limited manpower compared to now, and vastly more limited tools. When all you had was a delete button, that was how you solved everything. Over time, the tools have broadened in scope, offering a wider array of enforcement options that have enabled a gentler (and arguably fairer) level of enforcement that can be better tailored to the specific nature of the offense. Does it sometimes mean an honest troll slips by longer than anybody would prefer now and then? Undoubtedly. But that troll is still going to eventually get nailed, and it also means that clumsy newcomers, people with non-majority opinions, folks having a bad day now and again, and other basically innocent folks have a chance to shape up before they get cut down. Under the older, harsher systems, we probably lost a large number of people who might have become contributing members of the community save for a rough start that resulted in deletions.

I can't say I speak for the team, but I would rather take longer (to better establish a pattern) to nuke a questionable case troll who is, at worst, really bloody irritating, than to start laying about me wildly with the banhammer whenever things get the least bit heated. In a forum as politically skewed as this one, a dissenting opinion (classic case: conservative users in a heavily left-leaning forum) is going to stir things up; but merely having a controversial opinion does not a troll make. The difference between controversial opinion and troll is an insanely blurry one that takes time to determine; not all trolls are going to march in with a conveniently blatant screed about "I'mma Nazi, lawl, kill teh Jews!" In practice, the more radical an opinion is, the harder it is to argue without running foul of the rules, but there are plenty of perfectly valid and non-radical dissenting opinions out there. So long as we allow those opinions to come into contact, there are going to be arguments and potentially baseless accusations of trolling. The only absolute solution would be to simply bar contentious topics (such as politics or religion,) which is something that we're never going to do, because there is no way in hell that would fly with [v] or with Max.

So what would be a desirable way to land harder on things, while still maintaining the flexibility necessary? Do away with slap-on-the-wrist unofficial warnings and cautions in favor of always going for *** the ominous red text? *** Default to 1-day bans on first offenses/greater use of short-term bans lower on the punishment ladder? These are the sorts of things that will give us helpful feedback. For instance, I would be okay skipping the unofficial cautions in favor of going straight to the official warning; unofficials largely serve the purpose of simply building up a picture of the user's habits, but the redtext could serve in that role as well. Heck, I'd even be down with more liberal use of short term 1-day bans, though I imagine people would still be unhappy whenever a bad day or flash of temper lands them on the receiving end of one.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

If unofficial warnings were to be replaced with more red-text warnings and short bans, would the later be stretched? i.e. rather than the warns-1-3-(5 sometimes)-week-DEAT with steps repeated if a while has gone past), including a 2, making 5 a bit more common, etc?

I'm personally okay with more liberal use of the red text, like it even. I do think that unofficial warnings do have a place. I've certainly seen threads where a general "knock it off, you lot, this is the topic, not that, get back to it and play nice" serves it's purpose, and/or reduces the complaints "no one told us we were going to far" when someone may eventually comb through and assign red-text. Specifically in mass like that, I think a heads up without official red text can be helpful, and save the time, trouble and complaints that come with locking a thread down and combing it, especially just for warnings. While I see the argument that after a few cases like that, the need for them might slow, I just don't think you always need to go single a dozen individual out, especially when it's all warnings, no bans.

I guess, kind of a singular-versus-mass thing. If a topic is just generally going off course, in a bad direction, etc, a little scarlet-colored note can knock it on track. If it's officially over the line, and a few in particular have crosses it, by all means, red-text it up.

I'm not saying that groups should be punished softer than individuals, just that there's a difference between "this is going nowhere good" and "they broke the rules" - one of which is a good place for a modly heads-up, but not warnings, for which they tend to use a bit of color to distinguish a mod-related note from a personal post.

(Little off topic, but for anyone thinking A&B's deletion was a "suppression of certain views" or anything, go check out the thread where it went down. That, and another thread in the same day, receive more red text than even a moderation-lurker like I sees in a week or two ( ), and one of the mods said it was the most deletions from one thread they could ever remember seeing, IIRC.)

[Tyrinth]

I don't believe there is a simple yes or no answer to this. I think some of the reports they both entertain and act on are nothing short of absurd, but generally I don't think things are too bad around here.

The problem may be with the userbase crying to the mods too often moreso than the the mods themselves being overly problematic.

That said, the potential for breaking one of the plethora of stupid rules around here keeps me out of many a discussion.

[Katganistan]

Well, some on here will disagree, but I also think the mods should have a bias in favor of established posters. Frankly I think we should take steps to restrict the ability of new members to post and make threads, but I'm told that would be too difficult to implement, so... oh well

So longevity allows one to break the rules and snark at newbies?

I think not.

How in the world is THAT consistent moderation?

[Farnhamia]

I don't believe there is a simple yes or no answer to this. I think some of the reports they both entertain and act on are nothing short of absurd, but generally I don't think things are too bad around here.

The problem may be with the userbase crying to the mods too often moreso than the the mods themselves being overly problematic.

That said, the potential for breaking one of the plethora of stupid rules around here keeps me out of many a discussion.

I'd be interested to hear which rules you think are stupid.

We could go straight to red-text on first offenses, I suppose. And there is a 6-hour ban, too, which might be used more often.