Not so silly ....
Varda said:
The entire assumption that mods have no influence on the content of the forum is incredibly silly.
Our basic jobs describe very basic duties: Stop spam; intervene in harmful situations (e.g., threats, stalking); keep discussions in motion.
Yes, that last is a little vague, but that's where the members come in.
Most of what falls under keeping discussions in motion, when it doesn't involve the two explicit conditions I mentioned, depends on the members. There are still plenty of members around here who remember when this was sort of a free-wheeling, wild west sort of place with its own tacit code of honor.
Well, okay, code of honor is probably an overstatement.
But people could dish, and if they dished, they were expected to be able to take it. Except many of of them couldn't. So they complained incessantly, and over time the moderators responded. Indeed, at one point, we set partisan quotas on political ideology as a criteria for WE&P moderation in order that our politically conservative members wouldn't feel so alienated.
And everything else is catch-up.
Consider, for instance, that we recently suspended a Muslim member for using the word
kafir. This was an interesting standard, since the person at whom it was directed wasn't offended, and the person who complained later explained that what made the word offensive was that a Muslim used it. I found the outcome problematic, at least. But the member would not have been suspended were it not for the complaint, and we would not have had a major policy discussion without the suspension.
To the other, examples of moderators setting the tone independently are often problematic, too. Consider racism. It's a hard accusation, right? Most certainly a personal attack if unfounded. Yet a moderator, facing accusations of racism, invoked a new standard in his own defenses:
To explain why one finds another's conduct racist constitutes a personal attack. The moderator essentially attempted to protect racists from having to answer for their racism. It hasn't really worked out well for that policy initiative, but that's what happens when moderators take the lead.
I had an occasion the other day to discuss with a member how a certain warning flag came to be. In and of itself, it comes down to a difference of opinion about how to represent the posts in question, but for a moderator, it also touches on an issue we've been wrangling over in the back room for, quite literally, years. We've suspended people in the past for doing what this member did. (If that member should find such a suggestion astounding, well, so did we, since the suspensions were entirely one-sided; that is, one side of an argument could, with virtual impunity, conduct itself in a manner considered violative if the other side did the same.) And that particular issue contributed to what appears to be the largest public dispute between moderators in site history.
The controversial policy evolved over a long period; part of the issue was the volume of complaints versus the accuracy of the complaints. The latter had little influence, compared to the former. The general outlook seemed to be to grease the squeaky wheel.
And from such disputes arose many others.
In the last week, the suggestion has come before me that even a single post of light banter deserves a yellow card. Presently, I find the proposition absolutely absurd insofar as we would be dropping a new hammer that has never existed before, and also because the complaint arose because the member was miffed about having received a yellow card. However, if enough members start to make that complaint, it will receive more serious consideration.
Even setting that sort of consideration aside—and remembering that moderators are also members—it is the membership that sets the overall tone. We used to have a standard against content-free topic posts. You know, post a link and then just say, "Discuss ...." Though less definitive than people's insistence on profane language over the years, the members insisted. We would have slain our membership base trying to prevent people from cursing. Indeed, you can look through my post history and find times when I used slightly censored versions of words, such as
f@ck, but eventually I gave up since people weren't taking the hint.
We also used to have a standard that said, "Attack the issue, not the person." Obviously, that didn't last, though it is a standard we would still encourage. Except, of course, that makes us tyrants. Apparently.
I'm of the opinion that if we really wanted to influence the direction of discussions, we would be even more active than we are.
If we wanted to be a "scientific" forum with respectable academic standards, we would start banning people who are unable to support their political assertions.
To the other, yes, we have influence over the content of the forum, such as setting limits on just how bigoted one can be, but it's a pretty broad standard. But if we were so determined to set the tone, I can think of any number of regular and prolific members who would not be here; we would have kicked their asses out a long time ago.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, we never do show people what real tyranny looks like. We've even discussed the possibility before, but never gone forward.
Moderators cannot set the context of topic posts. We can certainly encourage people to follow various lines of discussion, but in the end we cannot force it without a virtual bloodbath.
Meanwhile, I'll use myself as an example. I'm not above political vice in discussions. In part this is because that seems to be important to keeping discussions going. If people
really want a different standard, I'm happy to play along with that, too. That's why we're not slaying user names as far as the eye can see. If, for instance, we sought "
really rigorous investigation of scientific principles", that virtual slaughter would become a necessity, and then people would see what it looks like when moderators shape the community.
If people want to be so dispassionate and objective, great. But they don't. The history of this site and its membership makes that clear. So the moderators sit back, wait for the inevitable problems to arise, handle them—sometimes well and sometimes not, but people complain either way.
I can do more to influence the shape of this forum posting as a member than I can invoking my authority as a moderator. And that's how it's always been.
