[Discussion/Announcement] NSG's "Wing" Megathreads

[Diopolis]

Just to add to this, it'd also be good if to DEAT a nation it required two Mods to do it, rather like two operators both needing to turn separate keys to fire a weapon.

That would make dealing with spammers a lot harder.

It would be pretty easy to make an "except for spam/DOS/pornbots/commercialism" exception. After all, those rulings are pretty uncontroversial.

[Zeritae]

Just to add to this, it'd also be good if to DEAT a nation it required two Mods to do it, rather like two operators both needing to turn separate keys to fire a weapon.

That would make dealing with spammers a lot harder.

This. If a DOS Nation is on, and there is only one mod awake, than there will be no way to deat it with this plan.

[Hunzali]

Also;

Why are the 2 possible biggest and most popular mega-threads on NS being shut down, but something as ambiguous as "The Food Discussion Thread" still allowed to be up?

The right and left threads which are being shut down have been here since I arrived on NS in 2018 (as a different account) and from my understanding, had been going on for years ahead of it's time.

[The Reformed American Republic]

I see the problem, yeah. I would like the system to make the reporting user visible to the mods, but not the userbase. I'm not sure if there's a way to enable that in the current forum software; perhaps an update would help?

You could also take that away from players that make enormous numbers of reports that don't turn out to be actionable.

I know forums that do that for a temporary amount of time.

That would make dealing with spammers a lot harder.

This. If a DOS Nation is on, and there is only one mod awake, than there will be no way to deat it with this plan.

Maybe make every DEAT or Puppetsweap subject to a review by another moderator after the fact, when one becomes available. A DOS can be dealt with quickly, while still addressing the community concerns raised.

[The New California Republic]

Just to add to this, it'd also be good if to DEAT a nation it required two Mods to do it, rather like two operators both needing to turn separate keys to fire a weapon.

That would make dealing with spammers a lot harder.

Deleting spammers and adbots and DOS nations is a different kettle of fish from deleting users who are at the end of the line in terms of warnings, and it'd be no problem to say that in the former case just one Mod is needed, but two is needed for the latter.

[Luziyca]

That would make dealing with spammers a lot harder.

Deleting spammers and adbots is a different kettle of fish from deleting users who are at the end of the line in terms of warnings, and it'd be no problem to say that in the former case just one Mod is needed, but two is needed for the latter.

Then what's stopping the mods from just claiming the DEAT nation was a spambot to avoid having the two-person requirement apply?

[Joohan]

Also;

Why are the 2 possible biggest and most popular mega-threads on NS being shut down, but something as ambiguous as "The Food Discussion Thread" still allowed to be up?

The right and left threads which are being shut down have been here since I arrived on NS in 2018 (as a different account) and from my understanding, had been going on for years ahead of it's time.

Dude, the decision was tailor made to shut those two threads down ( mostly RWDT ) because we constantly pointed out what a terrible job the mods did all the time. They don't actually care about mega-threads taking on conversational tones, otherwise they would have closed the Writing Discussion thread and the Food thread too. They just can't handle criticism.

[The New California Republic]

Deleting spammers and adbots is a different kettle of fish from deleting users who are at the end of the line in terms of warnings, and it'd be no problem to say that in the former case just one Mod is needed, but two is needed for the latter.

Then what's stopping the mods from just claiming the DEAT nation was a spambot to avoid having the two-person requirement apply?

That'd be Mods breaking rules and procedures, and the Admins would end up having an inquiry, and ultimately shit on the rulebreaking Mod from a mile up.

[Valrifell]

Also;

Why are the 2 possible biggest and most popular mega-threads on NS being shut down, but something as ambiguous as "The Food Discussion Thread" still allowed to be up?

The right and left threads which are being shut down have been here since I arrived on NS in 2018 (as a different account) and from my understanding, had been going on for years ahead of it's time.

Dude, the decision was tailor made to shut those two threads down ( mostly RWDT ) because we constantly pointed out what a terrible job the mods did all the time.

This is technically partially true insofar as how discussions about how awful moderation is bolstered arguments that the WDT devolved into chat threads.

[Valrifell]

Please feel free to outline these suggestions in a post that doesn't contain a massively bad faith opening. You had some good ones.

If they're that good, why not get rid of the bad opening with an edit reason, and discuss the suggestions?

Here, I'll just copy and paste the relevant section of that post with a bit of snark edited out:

The userbase, particularly that of the RWDT, does not trust moderation because of its imbalanced application of the rules and because of the poor structure of the same rules. One example of this is how [REDACTED] manage to skirt moderation action for years while good-faith posters whom the ruling moderator dislikes are given lengthy bans.
...
Therefore, my point is that you need to prove that the moderator team is willing to engage with the userbase in good faith (there's clearly an "us-vs-them" attitude among both the mods and the users and you need to stop that), apply rules consistently, and revise the ruleset to help improve community relations. I'd also suggest that you reevaluate the moderator status of several of your team members. If you want to help counteract the insular "no reporting" culture we see in the RWDT, have Violet upgrade the ancient forum software that this website uses so that reports can be made directly from a post and the reporting party is not visible to everyone else. This is a feature that exists on the vast majority of modern web forums and it will prevent the griefing that reporters get within the threads in question (e.g. everyone getting upset at Fahran the other day in the RWDT for reporting a post).

Lastly, I don't know how you expect me to provide evidence in a GHR when you — these are your own words!! ­­— put all of it in the "evidence locker," where not even the person who posted it can access it. This also factors into what I'm talking about here — I have absolutely zero faith in the moderation team to actually take any sort of action on this topic. You've been made aware of my complaints (which, I might add are not unique to me, they are shared by many RWDTers); I see no reason that putting them in a special form would make you do anything about it, particularly given that only one or two mods have ever been dethroned in the 18-year history of this site and given that the problems we're discussing penetrate deeply throughout the entire moderation system of this website and cannot be traced to any one individual.

To elaborate on my suggestions here:

• A clear issue that a ton of users have pointed out is that the moderation team is very opaque in its operation. Obviously you can't be completely transparent — we can't expect you to list the tools you use to identify DOS players, for example. But it's really damaging for you to be discussing massive policy changes that'll affect a large number of frequent posters behind closed doors without giving us any details, as you've done with the *WDT decision. You should be informing the userbase when such a discussion is raised and providing updates on its status so that we have time to prepare and offer potentially valuable input into the process. This will help the userbase, but it may also help your decision-making process, as users can occasionally make actually helpful suggestions.
• Another transparency issue is that we have to make actual requests to see our own moderation history. If I want to see the notes that have been placed on my own profile, I have to go through a difficult-to-access form and wait potentially hours to days. Your own moderation history should be easily accessible from your User Control Panel (rather than just a warning level that resets every 6 months); if players have a clear view of what has gotten them in trouble throughout their history on the forum, this will help us improve our behavior.
• Queries on the reasoning behind DEATs and similarly opaque actions by parties involved in the community of the DEATed player should be answered by moderation rather than ignored, unless there is some legal requirement that prevents you from doing so.
• The moderation team should stop putting posts in the evidence locker for mentioning moderation's issues with the forbidden topic beginning with the letter P. Furthermore, the moderation team should acknowledge its previous mistakes in dealing with this matter and set out a concrete plan for dealing with it in the future, which should be combined with modifications to the OSRS to contain a clear zero-tolerance policy for advocacy of P.
• Exhibit a willingness to evaluate player complaints about moderators, even when they're not filed by GHR. As with above, this means don't put posts into the "evidence locker" for criticizing mod actions and being brusque.
• As with final appeals, use a panel to determine the action that should be performed on reports. Complaints of bias in warnings resulting from individual moderator grudges and differences in moderation style can be avoided if multiple moderators are weighing in on each report. I realize that this will greatly increase the workload on moderators, but you can get new team members at any time to help reduce the workload per mod.
• Provide a unified, anonymous reporting interface accessible from individual posts rather than requiring that users post in Moderation. Moderators should be able to see who enters reports in order to punish constant bad-faith reporters, but the reports themselves and the author of the report should not be visible to the rest of the community. This is what most other forums that I use do - if you'd like to see an example of how this works, you can check out the LinuxQuestions.org forums. Users won't be griefed by the rest of the community for reporting under this system; additionally, all reports on a particular post should be grouped under that post, so we don't have a situation like with my most recent warning (the post was reported twice and Farnhamia ruled the first report as "not actionable," but Giovenith didn't see that ruling and warned me, which was rather confusing and inconsistent). The Moderation forum can still exist for discussions on moderation policy, reports on things like threadjacks which can't necessarily be tied to one post, announcements, etc. I realize this will require a lot of work and potentially a change in forum software, but it will have an immeasurably positive impact on the community and may improve moderation's jobs as well.
• This is a suggestion for a general change in mod culture: mods should engage more in the community and try to foster positive relationships with users so that we can avoid the us-vs-them mentality that we have now.

These are all good suggestions and, imho, should seriously be considered by the staff.

[The Church of Satan]

Dude, the decision was tailor made to shut those two threads down ( mostly RWDT ) because we constantly pointed out what a terrible job the mods did all the time. They don't actually care about mega-threads taking on conversational tones, otherwise they would have closed the Writing Discussion thread and the Food thread too. They just can't handle criticism.

It takes quite a massive ego to come up with a conspiracy theory that self-centered.

Is it really so difficult to believe that their decision was justified?

[Fartsniffage]

Also;

Why are the 2 possible biggest and most popular mega-threads on NS being shut down, but something as ambiguous as "The Food Discussion Thread" still allowed to be up?

The right and left threads which are being shut down have been here since I arrived on NS in 2018 (as a different account) and from my understanding, had been going on for years ahead of it's time.

Just before the whole lockdown thing really happened I PM'd on the the mods to suggest they had a discussion about allowing things to be just a little more chatty with the Covid thing was happening. I assume it happened because they've been much more lenient on that kind of thing from what I can see. A food discussion thread is uncontroversial and so there's no reason to shut it down.

The weekly drinking thread is another example. The mods do listen, sometimes people just don't like what they decide when people talk to them.

[Joohan]

Dude, the decision was tailor made to shut those two threads down ( mostly RWDT ) because we constantly pointed out what a terrible job the mods did all the time. They don't actually care about mega-threads taking on conversational tones, otherwise they would have closed the Writing Discussion thread and the Food thread too. They just can't handle criticism.

It takes quite a massive ego to come up with a conspiracy theory that self-centered.

Is it really so difficult to believe that their decision was justified?

Who are you and how did this relate to the current topic of discussion?

Edit: Nvm, I don't care either way.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Here, I'll just copy and paste the relevant section of that post with a bit of snark edited out:

The userbase, particularly that of the RWDT, does not trust moderation because of its imbalanced application of the rules and because of the poor structure of the same rules. One example of this is how [REDACTED] manage to skirt moderation action for years while good-faith posters whom the ruling moderator dislikes are given lengthy bans.
...
Therefore, my point is that you need to prove that the moderator team is willing to engage with the userbase in good faith (there's clearly an "us-vs-them" attitude among both the mods and the users and you need to stop that), apply rules consistently, and revise the ruleset to help improve community relations. I'd also suggest that you reevaluate the moderator status of several of your team members. If you want to help counteract the insular "no reporting" culture we see in the RWDT, have Violet upgrade the ancient forum software that this website uses so that reports can be made directly from a post and the reporting party is not visible to everyone else. This is a feature that exists on the vast majority of modern web forums and it will prevent the griefing that reporters get within the threads in question (e.g. everyone getting upset at Fahran the other day in the RWDT for reporting a post).

Lastly, I don't know how you expect me to provide evidence in a GHR when you — these are your own words!! ­­— put all of it in the "evidence locker," where not even the person who posted it can access it. This also factors into what I'm talking about here — I have absolutely zero faith in the moderation team to actually take any sort of action on this topic. You've been made aware of my complaints (which, I might add are not unique to me, they are shared by many RWDTers); I see no reason that putting them in a special form would make you do anything about it, particularly given that only one or two mods have ever been dethroned in the 18-year history of this site and given that the problems we're discussing penetrate deeply throughout the entire moderation system of this website and cannot be traced to any one individual.

To elaborate on my suggestions here:

• A clear issue that a ton of users have pointed out is that the moderation team is very opaque in its operation. Obviously you can't be completely transparent — we can't expect you to list the tools you use to identify DOS players, for example. But it's really damaging for you to be discussing massive policy changes that'll affect a large number of frequent posters behind closed doors without giving us any details, as you've done with the *WDT decision. You should be informing the userbase when such a discussion is raised and providing updates on its status so that we have time to prepare and offer potentially valuable input into the process. This will help the userbase, but it may also help your decision-making process, as users can occasionally make actually helpful suggestions.
• Another transparency issue is that we have to make actual requests to see our own moderation history. If I want to see the notes that have been placed on my own profile, I have to go through a difficult-to-access form and wait potentially hours to days. Your own moderation history should be easily accessible from your User Control Panel (rather than just a warning level that resets every 6 months); if players have a clear view of what has gotten them in trouble throughout their history on the forum, this will help us improve our behavior.
• Queries on the reasoning behind DEATs and similarly opaque actions by parties involved in the community of the DEATed player should be answered by moderation rather than ignored, unless there is some legal requirement that prevents you from doing so.
• The moderation team should stop putting posts in the evidence locker for mentioning moderation's issues with the forbidden topic beginning with the letter P. Furthermore, the moderation team should acknowledge its previous mistakes in dealing with this matter and set out a concrete plan for dealing with it in the future, which should be combined with modifications to the OSRS to contain a clear zero-tolerance policy for advocacy of P.
• Exhibit a willingness to evaluate player complaints about moderators, even when they're not filed by GHR. As with above, this means don't put posts into the "evidence locker" for criticizing mod actions and being brusque.
• As with final appeals, use a panel to determine the action that should be performed on reports. Complaints of bias in warnings resulting from individual moderator grudges and differences in moderation style can be avoided if multiple moderators are weighing in on each report. I realize that this will greatly increase the workload on moderators, but you can get new team members at any time to help reduce the workload per mod.
• Provide a unified, anonymous reporting interface accessible from individual posts rather than requiring that users post in Moderation. Moderators should be able to see who enters reports in order to punish constant bad-faith reporters, but the reports themselves and the author of the report should not be visible to the rest of the community. This is what most other forums that I use do - if you'd like to see an example of how this works, you can check out the LinuxQuestions.org forums. Users won't be griefed by the rest of the community for reporting under this system; additionally, all reports on a particular post should be grouped under that post, so we don't have a situation like with my most recent warning (the post was reported twice and Farnhamia ruled the first report as "not actionable," but Giovenith didn't see that ruling and warned me, which was rather confusing and inconsistent). The Moderation forum can still exist for discussions on moderation policy, reports on things like threadjacks which can't necessarily be tied to one post, announcements, etc. I realize this will require a lot of work and potentially a change in forum software, but it will have an immeasurably positive impact on the community and may improve moderation's jobs as well.
• This is a suggestion for a general change in mod culture: mods should engage more in the community and try to foster positive relationships with users so that we can avoid the us-vs-them mentality that we have now.

These are all good suggestions and, imho, should seriously be considered by the staff.

I also agree.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Also;

Why are the 2 possible biggest and most popular mega-threads on NS being shut down, but something as ambiguous as "The Food Discussion Thread" still allowed to be up?

The right and left threads which are being shut down have been here since I arrived on NS in 2018 (as a different account) and from my understanding, had been going on for years ahead of it's time.

Just before the whole lockdown thing really happened I PM'd on the the mods to suggest they had a discussion about allowing things to be just a little more chatty with the Covid thing was happening. I assume it happened because they've been much more lenient on that kind of thing from what I can see. A food discussion thread is uncontroversial and so there's no reason to shut it down.

The weekly drinking thread is another example. The mods do listen, sometimes people just don't like what they decide when people talk to them.

Yeah I was honestly getting a little worried about whether anything was going to happen to the happy hour thread in light of this, so much so I nearly created a backup discord just in case.

[La Xinga]

Wait, Reppy, if Admins deal with Mods abusing their powers, who deals with requests of admins abusing their power?

[Indo-Malaysia]

I didnt even know there was a left/right wing megathread

In all fairness... I dont think the merge is a good idea simply because they each were supposed to debate either leftist or rightist stuff.. but now it sounds like a civil war thread that's likely gonna have lots of bad faith posts and bans

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Dude, the decision was tailor made to shut those two threads down ( mostly RWDT ) because we constantly pointed out what a terrible job the mods did all the time. They don't actually care about mega-threads taking on conversational tones, otherwise they would have closed the Writing Discussion thread and the Food thread too. They just can't handle criticism.

It takes quite a massive ego to come up with a conspiracy theory that self-centered.

Is it really so difficult to believe that their decision was justified?

I don't think so. The mods doing something that annoys most of nsg is something that seems to happen every few years.

[Valrifell]

Wait, Reppy, if Admins deal with Mods abusing their powers, who deals with requests of admins abusing their power?

Max Barry.

[La Xinga]

Wait, Reppy, if Admins deal with Mods abusing their powers, who deals with requests of admins abusing their power?

Max Barry.

Is he ever online?

[Greater vakolicci haven]

I didnt even know there was a left/right wing megathread

In all fairness... I dont think the merge is a good idea simply because they each were supposed to debate either leftist or rightist stuff.. but now it sounds like a civil war thread that's likely gonna have lots of bad faith posts and bans

What merge?
They've just been closed.

[Valrifell]

Max Barry.

Is he ever online?

He might run a secret nation, I remember an old Q&A where he's said that but I don't know if that still holds true. Nevertheless, as the owner, he has to at least be somewhat aware and involved. I'm pretty sure that the admin group reports directly to Max, but obviously \notamod, so.

[The New California Republic]

Wait, Reppy, if Admins deal with Mods abusing their powers, who deals with requests of admins abusing their power?

Max Barry.

Pretty much. If Max doesn't want someone or something on the site then that's how it is going to be.

[Forsher]

Wait, Reppy, if Admins deal with Mods abusing their powers, who deals with requests of admins abusing their power?

[violet]'s been warned before.

Abuse of power... I guess if mods catch it, mods, but maybe it'd go to one of the other admins or even Max Barry (Our Author Who Art Somewhere).

[Atheris]

Max Barry.

Is he ever online?

I assume he works like the great [violet.], where he doesn't actually own a nation but still has an online forum presence.