Would the Moderation team be able to divulge their general policies and culture on enforcing the rules?
Separately, whether they would be able to introduce a suspension of powers for suspected mod misconduct.
Would the Moderation team be able to divulge their general policies and culture on enforcing the rules?
The policy is the Community Guidelines.
The culture is a fairly broad topic (and some of it is currently under discussion). It would be better if you ask more specifically about the aspects youâre interested in.
Separately, whether they would be able to introduce a suspension of powers for suspected mod misconduct.
We are able to do that as-is.
Sure, Iâll probably add more questions in as time goes on, but for now:
Do RMB mods and Forum/Discord mods agree on what steps to take for identical or very similar transgressions? If not, where is the split and why? I understand certain things require different handlings, such as the ability for Discord to timeout users while the RMB can only suppress singular posts and eject or ban, but Iâd like to see if one side is more restricted than the other for no particularly good reason.
Do mods have enough trust from above and confidence in themselves (mildly rhetorical) to apply the community standards and take actions, including more aggressive actions such as kicks or ejections, on their own?
Can an appeals process be more formalized and centralized to cover all aspects of TSPâs coverage? In other words, I would like to see an appeal for an RMB action go the same place as an appeal for a Forum action, as the mod team is the mod team across the board, and should be able to cover the facts regardless of where it was.
Can suspensions of moderators be put into place when they are undergoing an investigation into potential moderator bias, abuse, or other misconduct? To be specific, I believe Drystarâs moderatorship should be suspended until the final release of whatever the mod/admin team is investigating regarding his conduct last week. If he committed misconduct, then he should be removed as a mod, and if he did not, then he should be reinstated as before.
These are good questions - thank you. Some of those things are going to be announced fairly soon as-is, so this is in a way a sneak peek.
Do RMB mods and Forum/Discord mods agree on what steps to take for identical or very similar transgressions? If not, where is the split and why?
Itâs pretty much impossible to make it 100% clear-cut in one direction or the other in every situation, so there will be differences (this applies generally, not just TSP - NS moderation for example faces the same thing). What exacerbates it further is that we often have the situation that there is a somewhat limited overlap between those having the RMB experience and those having the off-site experience (be it forum or Discord), for a number of reasons that would take probably the length of this post to specify.
So to answer the question itself: In some (not all, and not even most) cases, there are and have been different views which can be broadly grouped into RMB mod views and Off-site mod views. Weâve recognized that this is in part structural, so as of a few days ago weâve moved away from having a set contact point and toward having a dedicated channel for these matters in Discord. Weâre also going to update the dispatch, since thatâs currently still on HSâ nation, and that will distill and clarify some of those. Additionally, (as alluded to below) weâre going to draft up some internal policy to help align things.
I understand certain things require different handlings, such as the ability for Discord to timeout users while the RMB can only suppress singular posts and eject or ban, but Iâd like to see if one side is more restricted than the other for no particularly good reason.
Not sure I know what you mean with ârestrictedâ. In the hierarchy as described in the Community Guidelines, the RMB team is below the off-site team, but the extent of the restriction there is merely that the RMB teamâs jurisdiction is the RMB only rather than the entire space (off-site plus RMB).
Do mods have enough trust from above and confidence in themselves (mildly rhetorical) to apply the community standards and take actions, including more aggressive actions such as kicks or ejections, on their own?
Youâve correctly identified one of the issues which weâre clarifying with internal policy.
Can an appeals process be more formalized and centralized to cover all aspects of TSPâs coverage? In other words, I would like to see an appeal for an RMB action go the same place as an appeal for a Forum action, as the mod team is the mod team across the board, and should be able to cover the facts regardless of where it was.
Yes - youâve already seen some of the discussion in the #rmb-moderation channel, I assume. This is one of the items weâre working on, moving towards something thatâs fairly simple and most likely unified as you just stated.
Can suspensions of moderators be put into place when they are undergoing an investigation into potential moderator bias, abuse, or other misconduct? To be specific, I believe Drystarâs moderatorship should be suspended until the final release of whatever the mod/admin team is investigating regarding his conduct last week. If he committed misconduct, then he should be removed as a mod, and if he did not, then he should be reinstated as before.
We had already discussed this internally before your question. Suspensions are a perfectly legitimate tool to use, but in this case we donât see an imminent danger of mod power abuse during this process, so we donât feel the need to suspend him. Note that this shouldnât be interpreted in any way as endorsement or denunciation of any of Drystarâs actions (including the one that has led to the litany of criticism in the past few days).
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Like theyâve self-inflicted a restriction based on available information and belief that theyâre able to do their thing without needing a whole lot more (blank). Was kinda answered later on in your post, though, so no worries.
This is a bit unconscionable to me. Hypothetically, if I were singularly responsible for a moderation team and I got reports that one of my mods was threatening action against users for non-enforcement reasons that they only had access to because of their mod power, then I would briefly investigate the report, determine if it was justiciable and then suspend the mod if so. It doesnât matter if the mod in question never intended to follow through, the fact remains that someone in a position of power was making that threat and that it needs to be addressed for the lapse of judgement it was. The clearest signal that such comments are not acceptable to the wider mod team is a suspension of the mod in question until after some words are spoken, a time for suspension is formalized if it needs to extend beyond the time already passed, and to comment, publicly, that âwe are placing this mod in suspense while investigating a claim of mod misconduct.â The response and the PR both have been utterly abysmal.
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The sun set and rose again. You guys re-hired one of the best PR folks in the region and thereâs still been nothing of actual value communicated out. What is hamstringing the efforts to talk with us on the variety of actions that yâall should be doing, doing simultaneously, and a short reasoning for why yâall did it?
Yeah, getting a first statement out is taking longer than it should. Fair criticism there.
One of the first things I did was talk to Drystar about it, who plausibly and believably explained his thought process* which precluded an actual intent to threaten a ban over criticism of his moderation actions. Now of course that doesnât excuse the problematic manner of his replies - thatâs something weâre still working through internally, and will involve at the very least internal policy for these situations and possibly more.
If we thought he really did threaten a ban over criticism of his moderation actions (as it looked like at first, even to us), we probably would have suspended him.
(*) I know I didnât include what the actual thought process was and that itâs a bit difficult to believe since it really does look like this kind of threat when viewed from the outside - Iâd happily write that out but Iâll have to check with the team if I can write that out on my own or if that comes as part of a team answer.
Honest answer? We had one written three days ago, had minor comments here and there on wording and then kept having to amend what we already had written because we made progress independently of it. A boring but very human reason.
Regarding the progress: Weâre discussing appeals process on-site and off-site, new mod guideline internally, some process changes to the Community Guidelines, new dispatch for the RMB, possibly a sort of simplified informative version of the ruleset specifically for the RMB, and other things.
To elaborate on what Roavin said:
We are in an odd spot where we simultaneously want to communicate clear progress in the short-term while also doing some long-term reworks to prevent these issues from reoccurring (e.g. mod procedure rewrites, developing new ways of doing internal communication, bringing the RMB mods into direct conversation with off-site ones, empowering individual mods to deal with obvious infractions themselves, re-evaluating team composition, etc.).
In our conversation about the public statement to put out, conversations about some of those long-term items comes up â and thatâs good! We follow up on those items, and it results in the statement not coming out so we can discuss further, because if we change a small part of our approach then we need to change part of the statement. And thatâs good! We should communicate clearly with the region while also taking due care in handling the long-term parts of this.
The reality, which we recognize, was that this crisis wasnât caused by one issue â it was caused by structural issues in our approach. Weâre trying to take the time and care necessary to address those â and thatâs better than rushing something out the door.
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