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by Washington Resistance Army » Wed Jun 24, 2020 3:54 am
by The Archregimancy » Wed Jun 24, 2020 4:49 am
by Valentine Z » Wed Jun 24, 2020 4:54 am
Washington Resistance Army wrote:I'm doubtful this one will get in but it would go a long way in making moderation look better to the userbase. People who are primarily active on the game side should be barred from being game mods and should be sought after to be forum mods and those active on the forums should be barred from forum moderation and should attend to game side. As I've touched on previously people from most every side of NSG believe moderation is biased in one way or the other and having outside people unconnected to the ongoings they moderate would make the idea of bias a much harder one to sell and would ideally improve faith in the team.
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by Grenartia » Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:05 am
Washington Resistance Army wrote:I'm doubtful this one will get in but it would go a long way in making moderation look better to the userbase. People who are primarily active on the game side should be barred from being game mods and should be sought after to be forum mods and those active on the forums should be barred from forum moderation and should attend to game side. As I've touched on previously people from most every side of NSG believe moderation is biased in one way or the other and having outside people unconnected to the ongoings they moderate would make the idea of bias a much harder one to sell and would ideally improve faith in the team.
by The New California Republic » Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:17 am
Valentine Z wrote:And then you have the Senior Mods / Admin, who could overlook all the forums and will need perhaps at least 2 of them to make a ruling on more serious stuff like losing Editing Privileges (that's actually a thing, from what I have seen), Signature Privileges, DEATing, DOSing, or to overturning rulings.
Exceptions still apply to adspam or obvious DOS, of course.
by Vistulange » Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:43 am
Valentine Z wrote:Washington Resistance Army wrote:I'm doubtful this one will get in but it would go a long way in making moderation look better to the userbase. People who are primarily active on the game side should be barred from being game mods and should be sought after to be forum mods and those active on the forums should be barred from forum moderation and should attend to game side. As I've touched on previously people from most every side of NSG believe moderation is biased in one way or the other and having outside people unconnected to the ongoings they moderate would make the idea of bias a much harder one to sell and would ideally improve faith in the team.
Again, just my 2 cents on this bit. I am a bit doubtful of this and thought to myself "Will this be inefficient because the gameside player won't know much about forum ongoings?" Then I realised that you make quite a fair point, since Moderators, I assume, are trained on handling all aspects of things, from Gameside to Forum Moderation.
One concern I have of this idea, if it came into fruition, would still be on possibly needing more mods to make up for the areas they cannot touch (and the inefficiency that might come into play due to timezones, among many other factors). Take an average NSGer, for example. They obviously cannot mod NSG itself, but they can still try to mod other sub-forums because of their unfamiliarity with, say, P2TM (Portal to the Multiverse) users.
Would you say that it will be feasible for your suggestion to include sub-forum Mods to rule each of the places whose users they have no familiarity with?
- Gameside Mod to deal with GHRs and RMBs, or flag / custom field violations.
- Sub-Forum Mods for, well, each of the sub-forums.
- And then you have the Senior Mods / Admin, who could overlook all the forums and will need perhaps at least 2 of them to make a ruling on more serious stuff like losing Editing Privileges (that's actually a thing, from what I have seen), Signature Privileges, DEATing, DOSing, or to overturning rulings.
- Exceptions still apply to adspam or obvious DOS, of course.
Trouble comes when you are rather hard-pressed to find a nation/user that consistently stays in one sub-forum all the time, be it with their main nation, or puppets.
Again, just my $0.02. I am not going to claim my own suggestions as superior, and I am simply throwing it out here out of some interest.
by La Xinga » Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:45 am
Vistulange wrote:Valentine Z wrote:Again, just my 2 cents on this bit. I am a bit doubtful of this and thought to myself "Will this be inefficient because the gameside player won't know much about forum ongoings?" Then I realised that you make quite a fair point, since Moderators, I assume, are trained on handling all aspects of things, from Gameside to Forum Moderation.
One concern I have of this idea, if it came into fruition, would still be on possibly needing more mods to make up for the areas they cannot touch (and the inefficiency that might come into play due to timezones, among many other factors). Take an average NSGer, for example. They obviously cannot mod NSG itself, but they can still try to mod other sub-forums because of their unfamiliarity with, say, P2TM (Portal to the Multiverse) users.
Would you say that it will be feasible for your suggestion to include sub-forum Mods to rule each of the places whose users they have no familiarity with?
- Gameside Mod to deal with GHRs and RMBs, or flag / custom field violations.
- Sub-Forum Mods for, well, each of the sub-forums.
- And then you have the Senior Mods / Admin, who could overlook all the forums and will need perhaps at least 2 of them to make a ruling on more serious stuff like losing Editing Privileges (that's actually a thing, from what I have seen), Signature Privileges, DEATing, DOSing, or to overturning rulings.
- Exceptions still apply to adspam or obvious DOS, of course.
Trouble comes when you are rather hard-pressed to find a nation/user that consistently stays in one sub-forum all the time, be it with their main nation, or puppets.
Again, just my $0.02. I am not going to claim my own suggestions as superior, and I am simply throwing it out here out of some interest.
Do mods receive training? I thought they were just members of the community who the moderation team deems okay and just asks if they want to be a mod, gives them a rundown of stuff, and boom, orange name. Training seems a bit far-fetched, seeing the whole team is made of unpaid volunteers on a random internet site.
by Aureumterra » Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:46 am
Valentine Z wrote:Washington Resistance Army wrote:I'm doubtful this one will get in but it would go a long way in making moderation look better to the userbase. People who are primarily active on the game side should be barred from being game mods and should be sought after to be forum mods and those active on the forums should be barred from forum moderation and should attend to game side. As I've touched on previously people from most every side of NSG believe moderation is biased in one way or the other and having outside people unconnected to the ongoings they moderate would make the idea of bias a much harder one to sell and would ideally improve faith in the team.
Again, just my 2 cents on this bit. I am a bit doubtful of this and thought to myself "Will this be inefficient because the gameside player won't know much about forum ongoings?" Then I realised that you make quite a fair point, since Moderators, I assume, are trained on handling all aspects of things, from Gameside to Forum Moderation.
One concern I have of this idea, if it came into fruition, would still be on possibly needing more mods to make up for the areas they cannot touch (and the inefficiency that might come into play due to timezones, among many other factors). Take an average NSGer, for example. They obviously cannot mod NSG itself, but they can still try to mod other sub-forums because of their unfamiliarity with, say, P2TM (Portal to the Multiverse) users.
Would you say that it will be feasible for your suggestion to include sub-forum Mods to rule each of the places whose users they have no familiarity with?
- Gameside Mod to deal with GHRs and RMBs, or flag / custom field violations.
- Sub-Forum Mods for, well, each of the sub-forums.
- And then you have the Senior Mods / Admin, who could overlook all the forums and will need perhaps at least 2 of them to make a ruling on more serious stuff like losing Editing Privileges (that's actually a thing, from what I have seen), Signature Privileges, DEATing, DOSing, or to overturning rulings.
- Exceptions still apply to adspam or obvious DOS, of course.
Trouble comes when you are rather hard-pressed to find a nation/user that consistently stays in one sub-forum all the time, be it with their main nation, or puppets.
Again, just my $0.02. I am not going to claim my own suggestions as superior, and I am simply throwing it out here out of some interest.
by Ghost in the Shell » Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:53 am
Esternial wrote:If I'm not mistaken, Moderation made it clear to the impacted communities of the megathreads that they were threading on thin ice. This came to everyone else as a surprise, sure, but was it a surprise for the parties involved?
by Valentine Z » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:10 am
Aureumterra wrote:This opens up a whole new can of worms, I believe mods are allowed to participate in threads like any other player, which will make this a little too complicated when that happens
Vistulange wrote:Do mods receive training? I thought they were just members of the community who the moderation team deems okay and just asks if they want to be a mod, gives them a rundown of stuff, and boom, orange name. Training seems a bit far-fetched, seeing the whole team is made of unpaid volunteers on a random internet site.
♪ If you are reading my sig, I want you to have the best day ever ! You are worth it, do not let anyone get you down ! ♪
Glory to De Geweldige Sierlijke Katachtige Utopia en Zijne Autonome Machten ov Valentine Z !
(✿◠‿◠) ☆ \(^_^)/ ☆
♡ Issues Thread ♡ Photography Stuff ♡ Project: Save F7. ♡ Stats Analysis ♡
♡ The Sixty! ♡ Valentian Stories! ♡ Gwen's Adventures! ♡
• Never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.
• World Map is a cat playing with Australia.
by Diopolis » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:14 am
Esternial wrote:The Archregimancy wrote:
Right; out of bed. Good morning from Cairo.
GVH's suggestion of a 'general organised conference' is not, I think, appropriate at this stage. It's not an idea I would entirely dismiss for the future, but I don't think under the current climate this is presently the way forward (stressing that I haven't discussed this with the rest of the team).
What I would do, however, is challenge those of you who genuinely want to improve NS to use this thread in a more organised fashion to present constructive ideas on what you would do to improve the site. So long as it's not 'let site users elect the moderation team'; assume that's a non-starter.
While I recognise that I'm oversimplifying, and I won't attempt to quantify the different groups, contributors to the present thread can likely be broadly broken down into the following categories:
1) Posters who believe the mods are petty and vindictive people who have made a terrible decision that deliberately targets a specific group, and are all actively lying about that decision. There can be no negotiation with the mods.
2) Posters who believe the mods made a terrible decision that deliberately targets a specific group, and are perhaps not being entirely truthful about that decision, but who still care about the site enough to see if there's a way to move forward.
3) Posters who believe the mods made a poor decision and communicated it badly, but accept that they nonetheless acted in good faith while making that badly communicated poor decision; perhaps there are ways to help avoid this happening again in the future.
4) Posters who broadly support the decision, but think it could have been communicated better.
5) Posters who support the decision and don't really see what the problem is.
6) Posters who don't have much of an opinion on the rights and wrongs of the decision, but think some of the rhetoric on all sides is maybe getting a bit overheated given that we're talking about a couple of threads in an online discussion forum.
Any attempt to engage with category 1 is likely a lost cause (though no doubt we can expect further fulmination on the iniquities of the lying moderation team) so these next comments are addressed to the rest of you....
We've now spent several days and dozens of pages rehashing the rights and wrongs of the decision, and why we think it was terrible/not terrible but badly communicated/absolutely fine. I think we can safely assume that, at this point, almost one one's minds are going to be changed.
So why not use this opportunity to offer your suggestions on what could be done better in the future, whether on this type of decision specifically or across site moderation generally, in a more organised fashion.
Starting a post with 'these are my ideas for improving the situation', or similar language, will help signal that this is your specific intent. If you've already made suggestions in this thread, feel free to make them again - there's a lot of thread to wade through, after all, even for those of us who've read every page.
I'm not going to insult your intelligence by claiming that we'll treat every suggestion equally, or that suggestions will inevitably lead to action; but I'm offering you an overt opportunity to at least try, and for all of us - at least those of us who don't believe moderation is already a lost cause - to move past mutual recrimination and see if there might not be a way to build some bridges.
I think the challenge here (to me), for "improving communication", would be to identify what acts would require Moderation to "check-in" with the larger community first.
If I'm not mistaken, Moderation made it clear to the impacted communities of the megathreads that they were threading on thin ice. This came to everyone else as a surprise, sure, but was it a surprise for the parties involved?
by Souseiseki » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:22 am
Esternial wrote:I personally have my doubts whether this would be an impactful change.
I think there's a subset of users that don't see much meaning in the "second opinion" of Moderators (see also: Archregimancy's definition of the "first group" above). Having the same procedure but moving it up the workflow will likely not resolve that overall sentiment, and people that don't have this sentiment likely trust the second opinion to reverse a DEAT if it is truly unwarranted.
Washington Resistance Army wrote:I'm doubtful this one will get in but it would go a long way in making moderation look better to the userbase. People who are primarily active on the game side should be barred from being game mods and should be sought after to be forum mods and those active on the forums should be barred from forum moderation and should attend to game side. As I've touched on previously people from most every side of NSG believe moderation is biased in one way or the other and having outside people unconnected to the ongoings they moderate would make the idea of bias a much harder one to sell and would ideally improve faith in the team.
Vistulange wrote:Do mods receive training? I thought they were just members of the community who the moderation team deems okay and just asks if they want to be a mod, gives them a rundown of stuff, and boom, orange name. Training seems a bit far-fetched, seeing the whole team is made of unpaid volunteers on a random internet site.
The Archregimancy wrote:We've now spent several days and dozens of pages rehashing the rights and wrongs of the decision, and why we think it was terrible/not terrible but badly communicated/absolutely fine. I think we can safely assume that, at this point, almost one one's minds are going to be changed.
by Souseiseki » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:23 am
Diopolis wrote:Esternial wrote:I think the challenge here (to me), for "improving communication", would be to identify what acts would require Moderation to "check-in" with the larger community first.
If I'm not mistaken, Moderation made it clear to the impacted communities of the megathreads that they were threading on thin ice. This came to everyone else as a surprise, sure, but was it a surprise for the parties involved?
As an RWDT regular, the mods did, after the last round of warnings/bans, post a rant about a toxic rulebreaking clique. It came off as venting and honestly seemed like it was directed mostly at a few posters who nearly threadjacked it into an anti-moderation diatribe(although I won't claim to have had no part in the culture of omerta, I wasn't a part of that). I expected a few deats, maybe a DOS for questers/TEM/nap, and possibly a three day or so lock of the thread.
It was never communicated that we were on strike three, nor was it communicated to us that the general chattiness was an enormous part of the problem.
I'm working on a condensed set of my suggestions from earlier; if there's a poster who's interested in collecting a set of our suggestions in a megapost that may not be a terrible idea.
by Grenartia » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:27 am
Souseiseki wrote:though i think having gameplayers mod the forums and forumites mod the gameplay would be a step too far because their lack of familiarity would prevent effective moderation. admittedly this will probably come as paristan, childish and cranky but i do get a little pissy when someone that has never posted in general comes into general and starts handing out warnings because i generally assume they're gonna make bad calls. and i would assume that equally someone who has spent the entire life on the forums isn't going to fully understand the nuances of how to deal with gameplay's own issues. do you have any idea how hard it was to write this post without throwing in multiple digs at... certain... groups of gameplayers? that's why you don't want predominantly forum people modding gameplay lmao.
by The New California Republic » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:32 am
Souseiseki wrote:i know the UK politics megathread had a similar post (though a lot less severe) complaining about perceived insulation from the rules at some point in the past but i can't find it unfortunately.
by Diopolis » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:37 am
by Cisairse » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:38 am
by Diopolis » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:44 am
Souseiseki wrote:Diopolis wrote:As an RWDT regular, the mods did, after the last round of warnings/bans, post a rant about a toxic rulebreaking clique. It came off as venting and honestly seemed like it was directed mostly at a few posters who nearly threadjacked it into an anti-moderation diatribe(although I won't claim to have had no part in the culture of omerta, I wasn't a part of that). I expected a few deats, maybe a DOS for questers/TEM/nap, and possibly a three day or so lock of the thread.
It was never communicated that we were on strike three, nor was it communicated to us that the general chattiness was an enormous part of the problem.
I'm working on a condensed set of my suggestions from earlier; if there's a poster who's interested in collecting a set of our suggestions in a megapost that may not be a terrible idea.
do you happen to have a link to this for reference?
by Souseiseki » Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:53 am
The New California Republic wrote:Souseiseki wrote:i know the UK politics megathread had a similar post (though a lot less severe) complaining about perceived insulation from the rules at some point in the past but i can't find it unfortunately.
Rule violations in UKPol are smacked pretty promptly, and always have been as far as I'm aware...
by Grenartia » Wed Jun 24, 2020 7:00 am
Diopolis wrote:2) Require two mods for DEAT(at least the first one) or long term forumbans(two weeks+). I would think this is probably better to do in advance- after so-and-so gets a ban where it seems like the next step is something more drastic, go ahead and raise it for discussion.
4) Provide a notification to reported posters to allow a better opportunity to defend themselves. Making second opinions prompt would also be nice, but I'm not sure how to do that.
by Diopolis » Wed Jun 24, 2020 7:03 am
Grenartia wrote:Diopolis wrote:2) Require two mods for DEAT(at least the first one) or long term forumbans(two weeks+). I would think this is probably better to do in advance- after so-and-so gets a ban where it seems like the next step is something more drastic, go ahead and raise it for discussion.
I already tell you this is probably not going to happen, because mods don't want the added hassle when it comes to killing spambots.
by Grenartia » Wed Jun 24, 2020 7:12 am
Diopolis wrote:Grenartia wrote:
I already tell you this is probably not going to happen, because mods don't want the added hassle when it comes to killing spambots.
Writing in an "except for spam/DOS" exception would be pretty easy. Even making it an unwritten rule like the not moderating threads they're participating in would be a step in the right direction.
by Hakons » Wed Jun 24, 2020 7:15 am
by Frisbeeteria » Wed Jun 24, 2020 7:46 am
Valentine Z wrote:I have no insider knowledge, but I mean, they probably are given some form of training even for volunteers. Like a crash course on "How to do Moderation", give warnings, use the warning tag, write records...Vistulange wrote:Do mods receive training? I thought they were just members of the community who the moderation team deems okay and just asks if they want to be a mod, gives them a rundown of stuff, and boom, orange name. Training seems a bit far-fetched, seeing the whole team is made of unpaid volunteers on a random internet site.
by La Xinga » Wed Jun 24, 2020 8:20 am
Frisbeeteria wrote:I've mostly stayed out of this discussion, but I wanted to address this point:Valentine Z wrote:I have no insider knowledge, but I mean, they probably are given some form of training even for volunteers. Like a crash course on "How to do Moderation", give warnings, use the warning tag, write records...
There is extensive training for new mods, including quite a bit of mod ethics and practices in this game. The core ethics and practices docs were written by Max and [violet], so we absolutely have direction from the top. There is documentation on not only how to use the tools, but when to use them, and how to try to avoid impacting innocent players.
Every new moderator has a different starting point and comprehension of using the tools. They start as forum mods doing simple stuff like spam removal and thread moves. Mentoring is always available from more experienced mods, and is often called upon both in discussion threads and our Staff Discord channel. No mod is required to do any specific tasks - they tend to gravitate towards their personal interests. Once they've been here awhile, they're usually given the opportunity to get "a bigger toolbox", i.e. game mod status. That allows mods who are mostly into the forums the ability to DEAT adbots and spammers without asking a GM do help. Mods who wish to engage in Gameplay or don't want the extra responsibility / opportunity can and often do refuse the 'promotion'.
There's a massive pile of other tools, most of which require special training. As a professional process writer in past jobs, I wrote process documents for most of them. It's not all about trolls and spammers - for example, we have processes for creating and verifying Class Regions and for issuing API keys.
tl;dr: No, we don't just hand them a toolbox and a title and push them into the fray.
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