Moderation policy revisited

When we began as the Slacktiverse, we continued the moderation policy run by Fred Clark, which is to say that The Board Administration Team (TBAT) only removed from the board comments that were obvious spam. This was the policy decided upon based on community discussion.

After a year and some months, however, this policy has become unsustainable. Controversial articles attracted a more vicious species of troll; TBAT members have come in for unexpectedly high levels of personal harassment. The community hasn't seen the worst of this, because in line with agreements reached in later discussions it was also agreed that we'd remove obvious trolls and bullies. To give you some idea of what we're dealing with, we've gathered a sample, which can be read here. (Trigger Warning: Almost everything that can trigger including profanity, rape, misogyny, violence, homophobia, racism and more)

We have to read and decide what to do about all of this. We have to read all posts, no matter how vile. Even more wearing, from our point of view, are the less obviously disgusting posts that simply aggress on us to a relentless degree, secure in the knowledge that we can neither identify the harasser nor walk away from the board. There is, for instance, a recurring pattern that is getting us all down:

1. TBAT member makes a comment during a discussion thread that reader X takes exception to. (Very often on some feminist issue.) X goes after the TBAT, not with civil disagreement but with a personal attack, very often focused not on the subject under discussion but on attacking the TBAT for considering herself entitled to make observations or have confidence in her opinion


2. TBAT responds, often with exasperation, having seen this too many times before.


3. X escalates attack to the point where it violates community standards.


4. X finds himself (and it is almost always a 'he') in the spam trap, as he would no matter who his post was directed against. TBAT reads his abusive comment, discusses policy and decides that we're not called upon to publish standard-breaking posts of any kind, and the fact that this one is directed against us doesn't make it an abuse of authority to stick to that.


5. X decides this is a personal vendetta between himself and TBAT, considers any attacks on the TBAT a blow for justice against illegitimate authority, and delivers a series of impassioned, personal and vindictive tirades, usually for several days.


6. These comments wind up in the spam trap, generally because they've gone well past the level of abuse we'd expect anyone to take. We have to take it, though, because we have to read the spam trap, and then we have to discuss what to do about it. Stuck with a policy of 'avoid censorship as much as possible', we have to waste our lives reading all these insults and debating what to do this time. Freed from community scrutiny and well aware that we have to take time combing and pondering over the spam trap, X lets rip.

These are not the most extreme attacks, but they are the most common, and we have simply had enough. The old hands-off moderation policy is being used against us by posters who wish to punish us for having opinions they don't like, or for having opinions at all.

We never wished to abuse authority, and we constructed policy entirely in line with that wish. The upshot is that our lack of authority is being used to abuse us.

We cannot carry on like this.

When we started out, we preferred the hands-off policy and hoped the community would police itself. However, what has since emerged is that there is a reason why most moderated sites have rules about attacking the mods. It's not because the mods want to be dictators of their little kingdom; it's simply because being a moderator attracts a lot more personal abuse than being a community members, and it attracts a heaped measure of it if you happen to be female.

We can't do this any more. A moderation policy that suited a male, non-commenting blogger is simply unworkable for female community leaders. We have had enough, and we gather from comments that quite a few community members have had enough too.

We are proposing some rule changes.

The fine-tuning of the changes is up for discussion, but the need for new rules is not. We have to be clear about this: if we cannot get some new policies to protect ourselves, we are quitting. All of us. We do not say this to threaten or manipulate; we say it because we cannot live like this. We will cease to run the site, return the address to Fred Clark, and call it a day.

We tried the hands-off policy. It has failed. This site either continues with a different policy, or it cannot continue at all.

So what we suggest is this: a 'yellow card/red card' policy. For those unfamiliar with soccer: getting 'carded' is a referee's penalty for fouling. Two yellow cards equal one red card; one red card equals a ban. We suggest the following applications, but this can be discussed:

1. Not using appropriate and specific trigger warnings after being asked to by any member of the community = yellow card.
   
   Exception: if a trigger warning is requested that other community members consider frivolous or manipulative, they should raise it for discussion. TBAT will make a final ruling.


2. Hate speech, including victim blaming and offensive slurs = yellow card.


3. Excessive discourtesy to someone based on disagreeing with their opinion = a warning. Continuing in the excessive discourtesy after being warned once = a yellow card.


4. Sockpuppeting = yellow card


5. Giving TBAT grief about their rulings = yellow card. If people feel they have been unfairly carded, they should send a private e-mail to TBAT explaining why. If this e-mail is courteous, it will be considered; if it is discourteous, it will get another yellow card and the sender will, consequently, be on at least two yellow cards and find themselves banned. If people feel a third party has been unfairly carded, they should likewise send TBAT a private e-mail; again, it will get a yellow card if it is rude but be considered seriously if it contains good points.


6. Threats or violently abusive language = red card.


7. Deliberately attempting to trigger people, including deliberately graphic or mocking trigger warnings = red card.


8. Using anonymizing and redirect services without explanation and a consistent name/email address = red card. After this has happened, a notification will be posted on the relevant thread explaining the banning and linking to this policy page. If the person who has received the red card was using the redirect ISP company because they weren't aware of the policy, they can contact TBAT to explain their situation and set up a system for using one.

Proposal H needs some further explanation; it is one of the ones we are most insistent upon, as we shall explain.

It has been a problem for some time that certain posters have been using anonymizing and redirect services to conceal their identities. For those not familiar with the term, these are companies/services that bounce a post or comment around different countries before letting it appear, with the result that it is almost impossible to identify where it originally came from. This is a useful and necessary service for political dissidents and whistleblowers trying to preserve free speech in the face of violent threats; unfortunately, it is also a tactic beloved of cyber-bullies.

For some months now, for instance, the atheist roundtable has been delayed, largely because of the regular threats and harassment that began on an earlier post and have never stopped. Likewise, harassers of TBAT almost universally favour using such companies. Because such people are using redirect services, we have no way of:

1. Knowing how many people are threatening and harassing us


2. Reliably preventing them from appearing and continuing to bully the community or individual members thereof at any time

This both hampers us from publishing certain posts liable to bring out the harassers, and obliges us to read extremely abusive posts directed either at ourselves or our friends.

Basically, we have some cyber-bullies who have fixed either on the whole community or on particular members of it, and because they are using redirect ISP companies, they can cause us a lot of stress and trouble at no risk to themselves. And we are fed up with it.

What we suggest is this: nobody is to use an anonymizing or redirect service unless they have genuine reason to fear that there would be serious consequences to being identified. We have posters, for instance, who are being stalked in real life or who have reason to fear physical violence if their religious views, sexual orientation or other personal qualities were known to their neighbours, and it's natural and fair that they should have the right to protect their identities. People who simply want to insult other people in complete comfort are another matter, and we see no reason why we should indulge their cowardice and spite.

Someone who has a good reason to anonymize/redirect their posts should contact TBAT to explain their need for anonymity, and should thenceforth use a consistent pseudonym so we know who they are. If it looked as if they were at risk of being identified, they would be free to change their pseudonym; they just need to notify us. We would guarantee complete confidentiality in such cases; should the membership of TBAT change, we would not disclose the details to any new members without the express permission of the poster concerned.

We believe it will make it easier, not harder, to have free speech on the board when the cyber-bullies are not silencing people.

So that's one policy change: no using anonymizing or redirect services without a good reason, and 'I want to harass people in a consequence-free environment' is not considered a good reason. Others can be discussed in the thread.

Please do NOT use this thread as yet another excuse to harass members of TBAT. As per our new resolution to live a more bearable life: policy suggestions are welcome, personal attacks will be deleted. And if you really cannot distinguish between the two or discuss issues here without insulting people, then you are one of the people who is ruining it for everyone else and this discussion is about how to reduce your impact, not how to benefit you. Enough is enough.

--hapax

--Kit Whitfield

--mmy

---

 

The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Comments

[Literata]

I approve wholeheartedly of the suggested policies.

There may be debate over this because it requires us to trust TBAT to make judgment calls off-board. I think that their year-plus of service, combined with the way they continue to hold themselves to the highest standards after being attacked in the lowest possible ways, have shown that they can be trusted. Given the nauseating evidence of what they're dealing with, I don't think we need to weasel around with what precise definitions of "discourteous" are; this crap is way, way, way over any line anybody wants to draw anywhere, and they deserve their lives back. We need to make that happen.

[kisekileia]

For the most part, I am completely on board with these new rules. I absolutely think all of the things listed as offenses should be offenses.

What I'm not sure about is whether they jump to a ban a bit too fast. I'm wondering if maybe three yellow cards rather than two should equal a red card. I think I would probably also prefer a somewhat more specific definition of "violently abusive language", because:

(Trigger warning: example of violent language)

There's a difference between "go fuck yourself" or the sorts of interesting and colourful insults Izzy comes up with--which I don't think should get an auto-ban--and the sort of graphic, grotesque vitriol that has shown up from trolls on this site. I think it would be helpful if TBAT could clarify where the line is that separates the sort of intense language that sometimes comes from respected regulars here, and the really vile stuff that is worth an auto-ban.

[Anonymous]

I agree wholeheartedly and support this decision. Much love to everybody involved <3

[kisekileia]

Yeah, to clarify what I said in light of Literata's point, I'm not worried about the definition of "discourteous"--I'm comfortable trusting TBAT's discretion on that, for all the reasons Literata stated. It's the definition of violent abuse warranting an auto-ban that I'd like to have specified a bit more.

And TBAT, thank you for your service, and I agree with Literata that you have earned tremendous respect and trust from our community.

[Literata]

Well, kisekileia, I think we already have an example of that from community consensus:

TW: flaming

I am under the impression that things like "go fuck yourself" and other amazing Izzyisms are acceptable, especially when the color or graphic language comes from creative applications of metaphor, but things like "go hurt yourself in X way" that's a lot less metaphorical is a problem. For example, "go fuck yourself with XYZ thing" starts to cross the line, and I think we can safely trust TBAT to apply that community consensus based on their long experience.

End TW

If the TeaBats want to refine the definition, go for it, but I don't want to pretend to create some kind of pseudo-objective standard that will simply trigger more "you carded me unfairly!" emails that argue about the fine points of the standard rather than addressing the behavior.

I don't know about three vs two yellow cards. I don't need to see three examples of hate speech to conclude that someone shouldn't be commenting here.

[kisekileia]

I'm not sure if we should be banning people who give TBAT grief about rulings twice or omit trigger warnings twice. I'm good with banning for two offenses with hate speech and sockpuppetry, though. Maybe we should have orange cards, and three yellow = two orange = one red = ban. Or is that too complicated?

[Mmy]

@kisekileia: It's the definition of violent abuse warranting an auto-ban that I'd like to have specified a bit more.

The stuff we included "under the cut" is but a selection of the things posted and some of the stuff is so vile that there is no way that I would be willing to ever post it on the board even with TWs and rot-13d. There were a few comments that were so filled with long and detailed descriptions of the violence the commenter wished to visit on a member of the community (not one of TBAT) that I actually felt physically ill reading them. The idea that any member of our community should have to read that about hirself is unacceptable to me (personally.)

@Literata: I don't need to see three examples of hate speech to conclude that someone shouldn't be commenting here.

Exactly. There have been moments when board regulars have lost their temper and said something intemperate -- but those never stray into hate speech and if someone has been posted for 5 years and never lost their temper before -- well then we do contextualize things.

Scary thing -- TBAT have, as individuals, been around this board for years and years and years. I actually read the first post about LB within a few days of it going up. Which is making me feel like I need a cane and an ear trumpet.

[Anonymous]

@kisekileia: The problem with a very well and clearly defined line is that some people will try to get as close as they possible can to the line, without crossing it, while still being as much of a nuisance as they possible can be. If I were a moderator, that is something I would be concerned about.

But on the other hand, I can see people with innocent intentions being worried about whether or not they will cross the line by accident. In my experience, the people who are genuinely concerned about this tend to be nice people who wouldn't cross the line anyway. I think the yellow cards will help as well, since we'll all see what sort of actions get yellow cards and what sorts don't. We've been seeing moderator notes on certain comments and comments rot-13'd by the TBAT for months now and I think it's clear that an Izzy style "go fuck yourself" doesn't get rot-13'd with a moderator notice but really vile stuff does if it's not removed entirely. I doubt that will change with the new system. The line seems to be "don't be a jerk". And "attack ideas, not people." and "don't be a bigot."

I think that the yellow cards shouldn't have an auto-expiration date, but I do think it might be worth considering allowing people who, got a yellow card early in their days at slacktiverse, but have since become upstanding citizens, to be able to write a private e-mail to the TBAT saying "X months ago, I posted a comment which was inappropriate because $reasons. I'm truly sorry for anyone I might have harmed by that comment and I have learned $stuff from this experience. I'd like to get the yellow card taken off my record, because I'm worried that I might a mistake in the future." If enough time had passed and the person had been behaving well, they might get the yellow card rescinded BUT if they made the exact same mistake (e.g. refused to use a trigger warning for the same topic as last time) again, they'd get a red card (to prevent people from appologising just for the sake of getting a free opportunity to break the rules).

[automaticdoor]

I completely agree with the proposed changes. Thank you for your service, TBAT. <3

[Mike Timonin]

Those comments were gut churning, and I thank TBAT for not forcing us to read those. I must confess that, while I believed there were abusive comments being screened, I hadn't anticipated how graphically abusive they were.

I look forward to some interesting debate about the specific application of cards and bans, but I have no problem agreeing that some sort of system needs to exist, and I amazed that it's taken this long for the issue to reach this point.

[Literata]

It's not just omitting trigger warnings, it's doing so twice after being asked use them. And I think there will be room for honest mistakes - if a thread is going fast and furious and it's possible that somebody really didn't see the request, it's not like they're getting banned after one mistake.

TBAT, would you like to address how you plan to show "being carded"? Personally I'd like to see something visually noticeable so there's no mistaking it, like posts with the TBAT icon are. If that's a discussion for after policies are settled, no problem.

Another question that may merit discussion at another point: do yellow cards "expire"? I don't know that this is a big concern, since most of the problem people we've been seeing have escalated rather than deescalated their attacks, and have done so in a short time span, but it might be worth asking. It also might get too rules-lawyer. Personally, I'd put the scale for "expiring" as something on the order of months if the person is contributing other non-carded comments in the meantime.

[inge]

Just somt thoughts, maybe ideas:

I am one of a pack of mods on a large forum where they have temporary bans for users who just get overexited in an argument. It saves constructive, but occasionally contrary users from getting kicked out in the heat of battle, and the mods from an all-or-nothing decision. I do not know if the system on this site would support this, though.

They also have a very strictly enforced policy on "No Discussion About Modding". That also frees the mods from having to justify themselves if they leave a respected but not especially soft-spoken regular alone but come down like a ton of bricks on a troll.

Otherwise, while I might be inclined to niggle over details, do what you need to protect yourself. AFAIAC, blogs are like pubs: Everyone can come in, but the owner reserves the right to kick anyone out. Their place, their rules.

[Cathy W]

Would yellow cards ever expire, or would that be at TBAT's discretion? I'd like there to be some room for the notion that anyone, no matter how generally thoughtful, has the potential to stick their foot in their mouth occasionally, and while you don't want to start people over with a clean slate every thread, you also don't want to ban someone because she said something rude two and a half years ago, and again today...

[Literata]

The other thing is that since we need to help TBAT, and they're getting worn down from retroactively applying trigger warnings and dealing with abusive complaints about their policies, those are as important to the purpose of the policy as cutting down on the crap that the community as a whole might be exposed to with things like hate speech and violent abuse.

[Literata]

Cathy W, it's not just "saying something rude." All of the instances above are examples of behavior that people ought to know not to commit. It's reasonable to hold them responsible for these things; hate speech and abuse of mods doesn't happen accidentally.

[MercuryBlue]

*reads redacted comments* I'm astonished that TBAT haven't thrown in the collective towel already. I would have. I'm glad you haven't, mind, but I'm surprised.

Are the yellow cards going to have an expiration date? Because it is possible to not know that all the slurs in the world are slurs--I'm thinking of the recent incident where somebody said something about 'Tranny the Transformer' and was utterly floored when it exploded on him. (He has been educated, he has apologized, he has sworn never to use the word again, all is well.) And while unknowing use of a slur deserves a warning, I don't think it should count towards a ban, or at least there should be a statute of limitations after which it doesn't count towards a ban.

[MercuryBlue]

this is what I get for spending fifteen minutes composing a comment.

[Literata]

MB, don't think of it as a problem for you but as a positive sign that the community is vitally engaged with this topic. :)

[Kit Whitfield]

TW: using the b-word

The problem with a very well and clearly defined line is that some people will try to get as close as they possible can to the line, without crossing it, while still being as much of a nuisance as they possible can be. If I were a moderator, that is something I would be concerned about.

This, I think, is a very important point. One of the main reasons we've reached the limits of our endurance is that the harassers include a fairly high proportion of people who are deliberately taking advantage of the rules; if we move the line to anywhere too easy to haggle, it's a pretty safe bet that they'll take advantage of the new rules just as they did of the old ones.

As has been pointed out, we're basically asking people to trust us. With moderating, there's always an element of 'We probably can't define it to absolutely everybody's satisfaction, but we know it when we see it.' We need a degree of agreed-upon authority to use our judgement - if for no other reason, than because a great deal of the harassment has been some variety of 'You uppity bitch, how dare you have faith in your own judgement?' Some of this is just personal harassment - I tend to get a lot of 'How dare you like yourself?' attacks, for instance, as you'll see under the cut - but there's enough of it to indicate a general problem with people who resent us for having any confidence in our own opinions, and who will for a dead sure bet try to lawyer us any which way they can when we moderate.

Hopefully the fact that it's taken this long and this level of abuse to get us to this point will reassure people that we do no, in fact, want to end up cackling and crazed with power. And hopefully the way we've handled things in the past will give people some faith in our judgement, perception and commitment to good faith.

But we do need to be able to use our own common-sense definitions of concepts like 'abuse', otherwise the trolls will continue to game us. And we need the community to trust that we will do this fairly.

--

As regards yellow cards having an expiration date - I personally much prefer the idea that they can be withdrawn after the cardee has spent some time demonstrating their good faith and contacted TBAT to ask. In other words, I prefer a case-by-case basis rather than a fixed expiration period. I do not trust that the worst harassers wouldn't make a game out of acting badly enough to get a yellow card, waiting the precise period for it to expire, then acting badly enough again, and on and on until we have to have another one of these discussions to make a new ruling again. I'd bet actual money that it would happen, and I feel exhausted just thinking about it.

--

As regards accidental slurs: I think the difference between an accidental and a deliberate slur is usually pretty clear. As we're defining it, it comes under the heading of 'hate speech', which by definition is deliberate. We wouldn't card someone for a mistake.

[MercuryBlue]

I personally much prefer the idea that they can be withdrawn after the cardee has spent some time demonstrating their good faith and contacted TBAT to ask.

I like this.

[Literata]

I personally much prefer the idea that they can be withdrawn after the cardee has spent some time demonstrating their good faith and contacted TBAT to ask.

I agree. Thank you, Kit, for expressing the reasons so clearly.

[Froborr]

I fully endorse most of this, but I'm uncomfortable with policy c. The reason is that one of the comments behind the cut seems to me to be significantly less bad than the others, and not particularly worse than some of the harsher Izzyisms. Which does not, to me, mean that that comemnt actually is or is not more acceptable than the others, just that it's may be hard to pin down what the community standard for "excessive discourtesy" is, and disentangle that from feelings about individual commenters, so that we don't end up with a different definition for "excessive discourtesy" for people posting in their first thread as for people posting their ten millionth comment.

I sincerely hope that sentence made sense, as I mentioned in the preivous thread I'm running on extremely low sleep.

Anyway, I think I would feel better if warnings and yellow/red cards were posted publically, maybe as a note from TBAT on the offending comment? A minute ago I had an idea of why that would mitigate the problem I was talking about, but it fell out of my brain. Hmm. I think making the warnings and cards public is a good idea in general anyway, hopefully I can remember why I thought it would resolve my concerns about c.

[Leum]

I agree with the case-by-case expiration of yellow cards. I also think it would be a good idea to post the less-triggering examples that resulted in carding (the more-triggering stuff, such as what TBAT posted UTC is so obviously out-of-line that I see no reason to inflict it on anyone).

Also, I think B should be amended to read "Hate speech - which includes but is not limited to racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, and ableist (sp?) [word]*; victim blaming; and offensive slurs."

*Not "language," since that's covered by slurs, but the sort of comments that convey the same idea as those slurs while being wrapped in words that are, taken singly, not offensive.

------------------

More generally, I'd like to thank TBAT for staying on board this long. This stuff is far more hateful than anything I've seen on the forum that I help moderate.

[Jordan]

I originally wrote a long rambling note here, but what it really comes down to this this: based on this post, I think everybody is taking everything far too seriously for a website with the word "slack" in its URL. It's mostly in my feed reader because I was too lazy to update my subscriptions when Fred Clark moved to Patheos, but based on what I've read here, I think I'm going to go ahead and get around to that. There doesn't seem to be much slack to go around, between "anonymity forbidden without prior permission" and a policy that endorses, enforces, and regulates trigger warnings. Maybe it's just not my kind of joint, but that definitely makes me feel like I'm in a bad neighborhood. You may or may not care, since I generally don't wade into the comment section, but I thought I'd share the perspective of a long-time lurker.

[cjmr, who is HOME!, on her son's netbook]

*wonders how many more comments there will be before I finish this*

I agree with the items defined as being unacceptable behavior.

I'd also like to see 3 yellows=1 red, rather than 2. I can easily see a situation where someone could accumulate their second yellow before they've received notification of the first one.

Might we want to add a 'commonly needed triggers' FAQ as a separate side bar item from the rest of the FAQs for the assistance of newbies who aren't familiar with some of the less-common triggers we use here. (e.g. transhumanism)

I don't envy TBAT, who are going to have to implement this with impartiality and fairness.

----

I'm sure I'll think of more to say as I cook dinner...

[Literata]

Jordan, if you don't care, I won't miss you.

[Kit Whitfield]

Anyway, I think I would feel better if warnings and yellow/red cards were posted publically

That was always the intention.

When we say 'excessive discourtesy' ... the issue is that we can sometimes see trouble coming, but without some kind of warning system we can't head it off. Not just Izzy-style cussing, but someone who's acting in the pattern we described: a person who takes an intense dislike to someone (usually one of us) and decides they're going to take them down. So they charge in with an attack based as much on an attempt to undermine the human being as disagreeing with anything they've said - and they get more persistent the more their target stands up for themselves.

We need to be able to warn troublemakers. A warning often sorts the malicious from the merely impassioned or the clumsy. 'Excessive discourtesy' is a deliberately flexible term because there alots of way of being malicious. Again, we need people to trust us.

[Froborr]

I will NEVER understand what some people have against trigger warnings. Seriously, I don't get it; what's so bad about them?

[Leum]

There doesn't seem to be much slack to go around, between "anonymity forbidden without prior permission" and a policy that endorses, enforces, and regulates trigger warnings.

Um, we've had trigger warnings here since Day 1 of Slacktiverse. They're a part of the culture already, and if you have a problem with trigger warnings, which exist for reasons that have been explained repeatedly and at length all over the internet, including our own Frequently Needed Explanations section, then I don't think you really understand what the Slacktiverse community is about.

And really, you think TBAT are taking this too seriously? Did you read the ROT13'd comments? Did you see where mmy said that those weren't the worst ones? Do you know what it's like to read stuff like that day and day out. After a month of hearing homophobia proclaimed during public testimony just once a week I began to be triggered every time I saw a red shirt (the "uniform" adopted by the homophobes) or heard a certain quotation from the Declaration of Independence. It was awful. And that was just once a week and only for a month. TBAT have been getting this flung at them daily for months.

[Mmy]

re visual cues -- if we go with this plan we can have visual red and yellow cards (like the mod hat.)

re accidental slurs -- more than once someone has written something and then realized that their words are hurtful/offensive and asked that the moderators go back and insert TWs. If someone is having a bad day (and if they do not make a habit of this and thus wear the mods out) I personally don't see it as a problem.

There is something else that is hard to describe and cannot be illustrated to someone unless they read all the comments every single day -- and that is the way that certain forms of abuse can have a cumulative effect. If every time someone posts a commenter posts a rude, dismissive or derailing comment then it eventually makes the environment unpleasant for that poster. And for the moderators.

It is, in fact, a silencing tactic. It is the internet equivalent of heckling. Not "heckling in at the improv" heckling -- heckling at a movie, a lecture or a sermon.

[Akallabeth]

Been lurking since before sheep were issued...

De-lurking to thank TBAT for all their hard work maintaining this site, because I'd never before realized just how sisyphean of a task it was.

Cyber-hugs to those to want them.

[Kit Whitfield]

Let's not have another bloody haggle about trigger warnings. Jordan, if you don't like the idea of a place where the mods are free to implement rules to protect themselves, then move on, this is not the place for you. End of.

Let's not have a derail about whether we're too sensitive or not, or whether this or that comment is excessive. We are not willing to live with them any more, and that's all there is to it.

[Anonymous]

off topic:

Trigger warnings are like tags for posts on a website that has lots of posts on all different topics. You might not want to read the articles on about knitting because you don't know how to knit, so you skip them and you are glad that they were tagged "knitting" so that you could know to avoid wasting your time on something that doesn't interest you. Trigger warnings are the exact same thing, except the consequences of not having them are more severe than "I wasted my time reading an article riddled with arcane terms like k2tog. I can't even tell if it was in English!"

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I'm on the side of, Do whatever you feel necessary to maintain your mental health. (I had a look at those comments. One or two or three of them could be lived with, but the amount you're dealing with would be somewhat soul-destroying.)

I did initially, almost instinctively, react with No, it should be three yellow cards to make a red, but I'm not at all sure why I thought that.

TRiG.

[Sixwing]

TeaBats, thanks for your time and clarity in expressing the changes you want.

I am all for it.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, Kit, I didn't see your post when I commented.

[hapax]

Totally off topic

@Anonymous -- I don't knit, but for some reason I now have a strong hankering for a knitting post.

[Anonymous]

off topic

@hapax: This isn't knitting specific (it's about yarn, so applies to crochet and weaving as well), but I recently came across this beautiful description of what different yarn colours look like, written by a knitter who has been blind since early childhood.

Light and dark are contrasts. If you’re musically minded, think of light as one octave above middle C and dark as one octave below it. Think of muted, a dull version of the color, as quiet (piano), and think of vivid or saturated, a bold medium dark to dark variation, as loud (forte).

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[Froborr]

My apologies, Kit. My point was not about whether the three of you can be trusted to wield card and banhammer responsibly--I really do trust you to do so--but rather that if I see one of those comments as less bad than the others, while TBAT clearly thinks they're all card-ably bad, then it makes sense that (for example), there might be a comment I think is cardably bad and no one else here does, or so forth. But now that you've clarified what rule c is for I don't think that's a relevant concern, and I withdraw it.

I completely agree with all the rules now, though I'm agnostic to questions like how many yellow cards make a red--my instinct is to trust the three of you to identify that, since it boils down to setting boundaries for what you're willing to deal with.

[Froborr]

Oh, one request: I don't know if anyone here is color blind, but in case some people are, would it be difficult to make the yellow card and red card graphics be different shapes as well?

[Caretaker of Cats]

*reads UTC* Er, that's.... specific. Yeesh.

Looks like a good policy to me, and thanks for everything you've done previously to keep the place going. I also had the 3 yellow = 1 red reaction, but I'm not sure how much of that is being culturally accustomed to the idea of three strikes you're out.

[Mmy]

@Froborr: I don't know if anyone here is color blind, but in case some people are, would it be difficult to make the yellow card and red card graphics be different shapes as well?

Sounds like a good idea --

[Emily Cartier]

I have a mild problem with two parts of the policy.

Speaking as a female mod... parts d, e, and probably h should allow moderator discretion to go straight to one form or another of ban. Not all bans are created equal, and the blog software probably supports several sorts. Knowing how the various sorts of bans work and why to use one over another is very useful, even tho to us commenters the end result will look pretty similar. In my experience as a mod, those sorts of rule violations can be performed in a way that is a screaming red flag, and it is more prudent to swing first and ask questions later in those cases.

For part a, my mild problem is if the post has trigger warnings, and your comment fits 'em... sometimes the mods will apply trigger warnings to the comments individually anyway. To me this is somewhat excessive. A trigger warning on the post that applies to me pretty well uniformly means comments to that post will be unsafe as well. And as someone who reads quite quickly, a trigger warning that does not make use of spoiler space or some form of hyperlink protection is um... really not terribly useful. Trigger warnings can be useful, and I really appreciate ones that are well done. But badly done ones range from irritating to actively unhelpful. Trigger warnings are a team effort, and if I am not following a warning that applies to me, having more warnings will not help.

Really, both comments boil down to: "please save your energies for real problems."

Not a problem, but a comment. If you're engaging in more proactive banning, you will (unfortunately) sooner or later have an unban request. Eventually one will actually seem reasonable. It's a good idea to think about what would cause the team to consider a second chance, even if you don't have a clear idea on what unban policy should be used right now. It doesn't matter that 90% of the time the right answer is no... You don't want to spend 3 weeks of thinking and a ton of energy on unbans.

[Mmy]

@Emily Cartier: Not all bans are created equal, and the blog software probably supports several sorts.

Actually the existing software for this blog (which we inherited) doesn't really support a wide range banning options. If we brought in (retroactively) the most flexible and useful commenting software it would, unfortunately, prevent access to all the comments from the years before the new system came in.

I have been experimenting with banning options for some time (on a dummy blog that I have running with copies of the posts/comments here) and so far the results are very unsatisfactory.

[Dan Audy]

Overall I think that rules are a strong method of protecting you guys from abuse and maintaining a healthy community. I'm not thrilled about the anonymizing/redirect services rule because I often use them for completely unrelated reasons and happen to want to post at that time (still under my user name) since I'm unable to run particular services through the redirect and others without. However I do understand why you feel the need to take that action but I hope you will be reasonably kind to those of us who use these services and may make a mistake and post without remembering that we happen to have that active at the moment when we use our standard pseudonym and are posting in good faith.

Also, I'm not trying to be contentious here but is there more context to the attacks on Kit? Taking them alone both seem to be within the spectrum (albeit pretty much at the far end) of violent disagreement that occurs within the community. So was there a pattern of harassment from these people or is violent disagreement with members of TBAT when the aren't wearing their mod hat unacceptable (given that TBAT gets a disproportionate amount of opposition) where it would be acceptable to say to another member of the community?

[Mmy]

@Dan Audy: I'm not thrilled about the anonymizing/redirect services rule because I often use them for completely unrelated reasons and happen to want to post at that time (still under my user name)

Dan, there are actually a number of people who use those services and for whom it isn't a problem because they keep the same name/email address and they don't sock puppet or write drive-by problematic comments. Or, put another way, not everyone who uses those services is a problem but almost everyone who is a problem uses those services.

So, you have nothing to worry about unless you plan to have a personality change and start being problematic and contentious. Just write an email to TBAT and let us know you are doing it and make sure we have a "good" email address to go with your name.

Also, I'm not trying to be contentious here but is there more context to the attacks on Kit?

It is hard to describe the attacks on Kit for someone who doesn't read the board constantly. Generally people get away with being far ruder and more argumentative with the individual members of TBAT since we tend to err on the "don't use your power" side.

What happens with Kit (and sometimes with me) is that people either totally overreact to us--for example, treating a comment from us as an order when it was an offhand suggestion and then accusing us of bullying or, and this happens quite a bit, derailing the thread by returning to "issues" they have with Kit (and sometimes me) that are at best tangential to OP or the current comments.

[Amaryllis]

*reads UTC comments *

* jaw drops *

TBAT, do what you have to do. Somebody's got to make the "I know it when I see it" judgments. If we ask you to do the work, we can't deny you the authority.

Thanks for keeping this place going.

[Sheila]

Maybe what you need is to have a little LESS bias in your favor. I'm not sure why you're so dreadfully afraid of abusing your mighty authority over this wee little blog community thing, but if somebody is making a personal attack on anyone, they should not be handed a Banhammer Avoidance Card just because the person they're attacking is a moderator. If it makes it easier, try shifting your brain as if you really ARE the power-hungry nobody-messes-with-my-friends sort and then just extend that benefit to everybody on the board at once (even the ones you might not like very much.)

No problem with the IP screening, either. There are lots of other places people can go off and be anonymous. No need to track the smell in here.

Note that I'm coming in as someone who commented much more frequently in the Fred Clark days and has no dog in any fights that went down. (I haven't even seen the fights in question--this is the first time I've read comments here in quite a while.) Whether this lends me any credibility or detracts from it is entirely up to you to decide.

[Froborr]

Okay, that's the second person to come into this thread with an attitude of "I don't consider this community to be important, and therefore you are dumb for taking problems that threaten its existence seriously."

So here's a blanket response to anyone planning on commenting to that effect: Fuck off.

[Mike Timonin]

To be fair, I think that Sheila's point is not at all the same as Jordan's.

[victoria]

would it be feasible to increase the moderation team? i'm thinking along the lines of a second-tier of grunts who would not necessarily take an active role in the administration and banning decisions, but who could help with some of the monitoring of the spam trap once the moderation guidelines discussed above are in place. perhaps having more folks able to take a turn at moderation would help prevent burnout.

[Mmy]

@victoria: One of my principal concerns with allowing anyone else to get "underneath the hood" so as to speak is the issue of confidentiality. As far as I can determine the way this build of TypePad is configured there is no way to allow anyone to have access to moderating the comments on a post without giving that same person access to all the information that TBAT can see about commenters.

Which seems like a small issue except for the fact that there are several people who have commenting at one time or another here who have had been cyber stalked. And TBAT has given the absolute assurance to them that no one other than the current members of TBAT will ever be given access to any information that might be usable by a stalker.

My other, honest, answer is that there are very few people I can imagine trusting to the extent to which I trust and admire hapax and Kit.

[Rowen]

Oh, one request: I don't know if anyone here is color blind, but in case some people are, would it be difficult to make the yellow card and red card graphics be different shapes as well?

What sort of color-blindness are you referring to? I'm color-blind, and what it means for the majority of people with color-blindness is that it's hard to distinguish between certain colors (for example, when I play Peggle, I can't tell some of the pegs apart). In this case, you'd be looking at red/green color blindness (not to be confused with the Red-Green Show), or blue/yellow. Since there is no red/yellow color blindness, there shouldn't be a problem.

(there's a VERY SMALL portion of the population with a more. . .monochromatic vision, but even in that case, you learn to distinguish by shades, tones and tints. Actually, I can see a lot of colors and STILL had to do that to pass my color theory course in college)

[hapax]

@Anonymous -- that's a lovely knitting post. Thank you.

@victoria -- that is a very kind and thoughtful suggestion, but unfortunately Typepad doesn't really allow for that kind of set up. There are confidentiality issues with some of our commenters which we all take VERY seriously, but to be honest, there are confidentiality issues among ourselves, as well.

I'm really not trying to kvetch here -- I love this community and I am both happy and honored to do what I can to help keep it alive -- but the sheer behind-the-scenes nuts-and-bolts stuff requires that Kit and Mmy and I stay pretty much in constant contact. As a result, well, we also have to share a lot of personal stuff (you know, like "I won't be available for the next two days, I have to have XYZ yucky medical procedure" and that sort of thing) and I'm NOT entirely comfortable with sharing that sort of information more widely.

[Froborr]

there's a VERY SMALL portion of the population with a more. . .monochromatic vision

My cousin Philip, for example. So that was the kind of colorblindness I was thinking of. And yes, has learned to tell the difference by shades, tones, and tints, but there are still shades of yellow and shades of red he cannot distinguish, and it's somewhat subject to monitor settings, so...

[Kirala]

My only modification suggestion would be to give TBAT stated authority to use their own judgment in any direction. I wouldn't worry about two yellow cards vs. three yellow cards for a red if TBAT has clear authority to decide "you know, this individual has clearly earned two warnings but equally clearly doesn't merit a ban." TBAT's word would have to be law and haggling impermissible, but I find that most rules work best when enforced by people who give themselves permission to override as necessary. I want TBAT to have the freedom to ban a troll who shows his colors in two posts but also the freedom to allow an inexperienced foot-in-mouther to forget trigger warnings in two different contexts in the course of a year. And I don't want rules to be laid out for the lawyers.

Perhaps there could be a form to request unbanning/loss of yellow card/etc and more than one use of said form within a year merits an automatic permanent ban? Give people the freedom to remind but hopefully not harass TBAT?

[Silver Adept]

Given what was under the cut, I'm in favor of TBAT implementing whatever rule set they feel is necessary, with the reserved right to go straight to the ban hammer where warranted. I don't comment much (little time, unfortunately), but I consider this pace to have consistently high-quality posting and commentary. It is a testament to TBAT and the community.

Sanity-saving measures are always in order.

I also like the idea of card removal being by request. We trust the mods to use excellent judgment, just as they have been so far.

[Kit Whitfield]

Also, I'm not trying to be contentious here but is there more context to the attacks on Kit? Taking them alone both seem to be within the spectrum (albeit pretty much at the far end) of violent disagreement that occurs within the community. So was there a pattern of harassment from these people or is violent disagreement with members of TBAT when the aren't wearing their mod hat unacceptable (given that TBAT gets a disproportionate amount of opposition) where it would be acceptable to say to another member of the community?

Sigh.

I'm not going to cut and paste those comments here, but the fact that you consider them merely 'violent disagreement' is something I'm simply going to have to disagree with, and frankly makes me feel slightly sick and fairly afraid.

Neither of them are 'disagreements' with something I said. Both of them are a litany of insults because somebody disagreed with what I said - but reacted by leaving the disagreement far behind and savaging me as a person.

There's a difference between the two. And it's a difference I've gotten a massive amount of since I've become a TBAT.

One of the comments boils down to 'You have no right to use your own judgement respecting issues of feminism and rape.' The other boils down to 'You are a bad writer and have no right to express your own opinions regarding writing.' In other words, in one case I said something on a feminist point and in another I said something about writing, there was disagreement, and it escalated to furious personal abuse because I stuck to my opinion rather than letting someone else tell me what to think. And that is what happens to me: I express an opinion, someone tries to correct me - and it generally is trying to correct rather than persuade me - and when I continue to act like I'd rather use my own judgement than theirs, the person flips out and starts abusing me for thinking I have the right to use my own judgement.

As I said above, a lot of the abuse I get boils down to 'You uppity b****, how dare you like yourself?'

These are not comments disagreeing with me. These are comments by people so offended that I disagree with them that they've decided to take me down, and are doing it by trying to undermine my self-respect.

You can read these comments and think, 'No matter what Kit said, there's no excuse to talk to her like that.' Or you can read these comments and think, 'Wow, she must have done something to bring that on herself.' If you think the latter, I'm not going to factor in your opinion. I'm tired of being told I was asking for it.

And if you think I'm being too sensitive, you can go jump. And if you want to know the context, try this: the context is that this happens to me so often that I often stay out of discussions because I simply can't face any more of it. And also the context that my name, face and city of residence are public knowledge. Last month I got an unexpected parcel and was genuinely concerned about opening it. Being hated by strangers to this extent has an effect on a person.

And that is all the justifying I'm going to do. As I said, the bottom line is that it is affecting my quality of life. If you don't think it should, that's your problem; I am not going to make it mine. I cannot take any more of it. If I do not have the freedom to protect myself from it, I am quitting, and the three of us are agreed that if one goes, all go.

There are elements that we're benefitting from discussing. 'Did Kit do something to deserve that abuse?' and 'Is Kit being too sensitive when she reckons that aggressive insults are damaging her quality of life?' are not among them.

I think we all need to make it clear: if a comment makes the job intolerable for a member of TBAT, then that is a reason for it to be ruled against. A complete and sufficient reason, in and of itself. Even if some individuals who are not members of TBAT don't think it would make the job intolerable for them. You are not us, you are not doing the job - and if we cannot protect ourselves, we won't be doing it either.

[Dan Audy]

I never said, nor suggested, that you were asking for it, deserved it, or even that I considered those comments appropriate. I simply wanted to know whether that type of comments which I have seen unmoderated when targeting other members of the community (generally those who disagree with the consensus) are verboten when directed towards TBAT members or whether there was information that we were not privy to that made them more unacceptable than similar speech directed at others.

A simple response of 'Yes, because of the amount of opposition and anger that TBAT disproportionately receives and must cope with in order to do our job, we hold commenters to a higher standard of behaviour when disagreeing with us because if we don't the frustration and fear that this creates will render this so unrewarding that this will no longer be a place to comment'.

[Kit Whitfield]

I'd like to point something else out about Izzy, as she keeps coming up.

Izzy doesn't throw personal abuse at someone because she doesn't like their opinion. She does it when she doesn't like their behaviour - most commonly when somebody is being passive-aggressive or disingenuous. She doesn't flame people she disagrees with, she flames people she thinks are acting badly towards the community.

And as a member of TBAT, whose judgement people are agreeing to trust, I say that's different, and that's fine, and I don't think we need to make a special rule about it. Izzy has proven good faith towards the community, and she also has social skills and perception and judgement that mean she doesn't need rules about how she can and can't apply it.

Izzy can be aggressive, sure, but she's aggressive in defending people. Sometimes defending the whole community. She isn't aggressive in the kind of petty, personal, spiteful ways we're talking about here. She is happy to own the word 'mean', but she isn't mean-spirited. The most you can usually say is that she's openly unsympathetic to those who act victimised because they don't get the deference they think is their right.

So in this context, saying 'Stop acting martyred because people don't agree with you' is not 'excessive' discourtesy. It's open and proportional discourtesy in response to covert and unwarranted discourtesy, and all it does is make explicit the aggression that the target of her flame was trying to sneak into the conversation. Izzy swings hard, but she doesn't start things, and the only kind of 'starting' she reacts to is people either acting bigoted or passive-aggressive, both of which are more insidious kinds of aggression than hers.

If we need a rule about it, it's just this: Don't try to be Izzy unless you are Izzy. Aggressive language is a skill. Some people have the social insight and the articulacy to use it without stepping over the line, some people don't. If you're not sure you can do it right, don't do it. Izzy can: she's a professional writer and a smart woman who knows what she's doing. Lots of other people don't and can't. But it's the same basic principle of 'Know it when you see it': what we're talking about is social interaction, social interaction is far too complicated to be properly managed by any rule brief enough to suit an Internet site.

The unspoken rule has always been 'When it comes to confrontation, stay within the limits of your own social skills. If you have subtle judgement and verbal flair, use it; if you're not good at fine distinctions, err on the side of questions and courtesy.' Everyone who's a regular here does that automatically. We really don't need a new rule about it, and it's not a source of the problems we're talking about.

If somebody else with Izzy's judgement and flair comes along and flames people at the same proportional-response level that Izzy does, we won't need a new rule. We'll know it when we see it. And if someone uses some of the same words as Izzy but with less regard for community standards, we'll know that too.

But the fewer lawyerable rules we have about it, the fewer headaches for all of us.

[Kit Whitfield]

Do not dictate my response to me, Dan.

[Nick Kiddle]

On colourblindness: vision issues aren't necessary to have difficulty telling colours apart on the computer. If I'm running my laptop on battery, the screen is so much darker that I can't tell red from black at a glance (I noticed this one because I play a lot of solitaire, but I'm sure there are others). As the resident football obsessive, I'll observe that some referees use cards where the yellow card is square and the red circular, which might form the basis for distinct symbols.

On the UTC comments: what is WRONG with some people? Is it just internet anonymity, or do they consider that reasonable behaviour in face-to-face interactions too? (Not expecting anyone here to have the answer, just that's what went through my mind.)

On the policy: I trust TBAT to know the difference between someone forgetting to TW a comment because they're posting on the fly and someone deliberately neglecting to TW as a matter of their warped principle. And considering how much TBAT do to keep things running, anyone who can't trust them will probably not be a good fit for the community anyway.

[Dan Audy]

I'm not dictating your response Kit. I was demonstrating how you could have summarized the exact same message without accusing me of things I didn't do and blowing off on a rant. You don't need to take a simple question requesting some clarification and start treating it as a personal attack. I know you are stressed out by this but try to give people a little credit instead of immediately going towards retaliation when there was never an attack against you in the first place.

[Slow Learner]

TBAT:
The policy suggested seems like a very sane and sensible one. I assume that, like in football, the referee will be able to go straight to a red card for particularly egregious offences.
I would also, personally, add that disputing a ruling by TBAT in comments rather than by email = yellow card.
I know that e) says to question rulings via email, but I would feel it useful to specify, in the same way that 'dissent' is an offence in Rugby Union - it means that people are more civil to the referee (TBAT with their mod hats on) because they know that questioning decisions already made is, in itself, an offence. It means anyone who makes an honest mistake or has genuine questions about a ruling knows damn well that they need to think, and be polite, not go charging in, and that anyone who isn't making an honest mistake can earn their inevitable banning all the more quickly.

That minor alteration aside, good policy, I'd be in favour of it going into force ASAP.

[Mmy]

@Dan Audy: I was demonstrating how you could have summarized the exact same message without accusing me of things I didn't do and blowing off on a rant.

Just step back for a moment and look at what you just wrote and consider it seriously. Really.

You just told Kit that you know better than Kit how to say what she was trying to say to the point that you can communicate exactly the same message without making the errors that you have decided that she made and you characterized her response in a dismissive and minimizing way blowing off on a rant.

I simply wanted to know whether that type of comments which I have seen unmoderated when targeting other members of the community (generally those who disagree with the consensus) are verboten when directed towards TBAT members or whether there was information that we were not privy to that made them more unacceptable than similar speech directed at others.

What we have stated before (and often) is the opposite. People have in the past gotten away with saying things directed at members of TBAT that would have been verboten if directed to anyone other than a member of TBAT and, if you think about it, we are never going to show you some of the stuff that was aimed at other people. Further, since no one else has to comment here there is no one else who can't get away from needling jibes that undermine from weight and constancy.

So -- let's put this in a different way. The question that I am putting to the community is not whether I should or should not trust my judgment (or Kit's or hapax's) -- the question is whether the way in which we have proposed to enforce our judgments seem workable to the community or if the community can suggest some small tweaks.

What isn't up for discussion is this:

1) that comments such as those in the UTC piece are unacceptable and need to be removed from the board.

2) that those who post such comments should (usually) be given a few warnings and then, if their behaviour continues, they should be banned

3) that there are comments that merit instant and permanent banning from the board

4) that I will not tolerate an environment which is toxic for hapax and Kit. If either one of them tells me that this board has become to unpleasant for them then I will walk. I won't attempt to tell them how they could better say something or question their feelings -- I will walk.

[cyllan]

TW: Cursing.

I know you are stressed out by this but try to give people a little credit instead of immediately going towards retaliation when there was never an attack against you in the first place.

Allow me to translate this sentence:

"Gosh, Kit. I mean, I know that you've had your skin removed and all of your nerve cells exposed, but why the hell are you telling me to fuck off when I was just going to give you a hug? Give me a little credit for having good intentions, sheesh! What a b*****"

And then allow me to translate this one:

I'm not dictating your response Kit. I was demonstrating how you could have summarized the exact same message without accusing me of things I didn't do and blowing off on a rant.

"Really, Kit. I don't think you understand how words work. It wasn't that I was telling you how you should have responded to me. I was telling you that your response was clearly not the response you intended to make. You obviously don't understand what you did, so I am graciously showing you the error of your ways. I'm sure that language isn't something you bother your silly little head with, so I'll just take care of all that hard stuff for you."

If you need a demonstration of how you could have said these things without accusing Kit of being a b**** who doesn't understand how language works, let me know.

==================================================================================================================================

Moderating policy seems fine. Honestly, I would also support a "We're taking a 2 month break from spam and will be flushing the spam trap instead of reading it" policy. I don't know if it's possible to delete the whole thing w/o sorting through it though.

[Kit Whitfield]

I would like to identify Dan as an example of the kind of deniable disrespect that means we need the authority to use our discretion rather than open ourselves up to rules lawyering. There's always going to be someone like him, and I am not prepared to put up with endless demands to justify myself to them.

Especially as his 'question' was actually a piece of manoeuvring to get us to 'admit' to double standards. Which we are not proposing. The whole point is that NOBODY should put up with the insults we've been getting. We've just been getting more of them, and on less provocation.

Dan: you misunderstand your position here. You are not here to coach me on how to deal with people like you. You are here to understand what hapax, mmy and I will no longer put up with. You are not the teacher, and you are not in the driving seat.

And if you think the best response to me saying your comment made me feel sick and afraid is to lecture me, you are part of the problem. Reread the last paragraph of the post: this discussion is not for your benefit.

[GHN]

One of my favorite blogs, and one where it is actually fun to also read even the more vigorous comment threads, is John Scalzi's Whatever. He has his Mallet of Loving Correction hanging right there, and he is not afraid of swinging it, and often puts a sarcastic little comment on the deleted post in its place, which practice is probably excessive here.
This may not entirely keep the riffraff away from his blog, but they had better behave themselves there, or get booted out and banned.
A strong moderation policy, firmly enforced, makes for interesting comment threads. So keep that mod hammer ready to use! If your guests decide to abuse your hospitality, you are IMO perfectly justified in telling them to get out and stay out!

[Mmy]

@GHN: Yeah, I have enjoyed Scalzi's sarcastic comments re the deletions. Scalzi has also written a couple of pieces pointing out that he almost never gets the types of comments/spam that female bloggers/moderators get all the time.

@cyllan: Honestly, I would also support a "We're taking a 2 month break from spam and will be flushing the spam trap instead of reading it" policy. I don't know if it's possible to delete the whole thing w/o sorting through it though.

Oh do we wish :)

There are some "technical" problems with the way this board is configured that a) we cannot change and b) make it substantially more work for any moderator to run a board with our community consensus.

For example, to prevent people from misusing/refusing to use TWs there are some words/phrases that will get one exiled to the spam trap. Yet those same phrases need to be used by members of the community attempting to seriously discuss matters which we all want to discuss. Thus the serious comments end up in the spam trap until rescued by a member of TBAT.

And what do we do when someone simply shows up to taunt at members of our community. For example there is someone on the board (not a member of TBAT) who seriously upset a group of people who turn up every time that person posts anything like "I am feeling sad" or "my SO is having a bad day" or "they have been laying off a lot of people where I work" to post things like "serves you right" "you should be the first to be fired."

Imagine trying to comment if you know that is going to happen to you.

That poster didn't complain to us -- we removed those comments and I doubt anyone other than us could ever get why they were so offensive.

One of the difficulties facing us when making the UTC selection was the fact that some unacceptable comments cannot be fully understood as unacceptable without providing context that either takes hours and hours of work by one of TBAT or violates the very spirit of protecting members of the community that caused the comment to get deleted in the first place.

[Literata]

Dan is a brilliant example of people questioning your judgment in a way that makes your lives more difficult. Not sure that's what he set out to do, but there you go.

[Kit Whitfield]

Oh, probably not. He's probably genuinely convinced he was just being reasonable. Some disrespect is buried to deep for the owner to see.

But really, I don't care. Whatever the cause, I'm done putting up with the effect.

[Literata]

Whatever the cause, I'm done putting up with the effect.

Good for you!

[Mmy]

This comment is both tangential and relevant :)

As hapax commented last night, the three members of TBAT are in almost constant contact with each other. Which means we know each other fairly well.

Since we took over the board only one of us has ever posted a comment that the other two thought was intemperate, over the top, and perhaps even incendiary.

It was me.

I wasn't wrong to be angry but I am not the word smith that Kit is nor am I as good at explaining matters of ethics as is hapax.

I cannot tell you how many times I having written a stinging comment and run it by Kit and hapax before posting it to the board -- and then Kit masterfully rewrites it so that its meaning is clearer and yet less "in your face."

One of the joys for me, over the last year, has been to watch someone who is a really, really talented editor work. One of the joys for me has been to read the really witty, insightful and entertaining emails that hapax and Kit send back and forth about books and movies and political events.

Having watched Kit edit things so that their meaning is clearer, having watched her take the edge of my own comments before they go to the board I read what she posts with the knowledge that she has probably weighed her words carefully and scaled everything down so that there is not a scintilla of exaggeration.

[cjmr, who is HOME!, on her son's netbook]

I may be a bit more tender on the 'no one should have to bear personal insults' issue than most, but it isn't the current administration's fault. I'm *still* stinging from the years of personal abuse/vitriol that 'Scott' was allowed to dump on myself and husband (with little to no defensive support from any other commentor) before he turned it on Fred instead and got banned.

That said, what do TBAT propose to do in the event of a situation (to continue the soccer/football analogy) of an argument that escalates, in the course of a few dozen comments, from two players having stiff words to whole teams piling on? Give the 'away' team commentor a yellow card? Give both of the two instigating players yellow cards? Give all the participants yellow cards?

[Kit Whitfield]

Oh, I know I don't always phrase things perfectly. I just don't need self-interested 'lessons' from people whose real goal is to see me more helpless.

@cjmr - I think it's probably best to judge situations like that on an as-and-when basis. If people are feeling harassed, they should be able to appeal to TBAT, I think, so they don't wind up in your position.

[Mike Timonin]

TBAT:

You've said a couple of times that the system we are currently using prevents you from doing things in the most optimal ways. I understand that we want to preserve the existing bank of comments, and that the simple solution of imposing a different commentary system on the existing blog will render those comments inaccessible. Are there any other, bigger, options? Could the existing comments be moved somewhere else prior to putting in a more TBAT friendly comment system? Could this site be preserved as a comment museum while we move the conversation to another venue? (These are clearly Really Big Proposals, and would almost certainly need to be implemented along with the above rule changes.)

[Beroli]

I have no objection to the rules in principle and am all in favor of TBAT protecting themselves.

That said, I find c) problematically ambiguous, and would suggest that, if at all possible, it be made more concrete. Perhaps that isn't possible.

[Thia]

Since a couple other lurkers have already spoken up, I'm going to stick my head out of the shadows as well. The rules seem reasonable to me as-is. Even the apparently-problematic (c), which basically seems to rest on whether one trusts the mods. Which I do.

[Kit Whitfield]

That said, I find c) problematically ambiguous, and would suggest that, if at all possible, it be made more concrete. Perhaps that isn't possible.

I'm not married to that particular phrase, but when it comes to finding a substitute it's very difficult to find a way of making it clearer without making it open to abuse. We could have 'being a jerk to someone' or something similar, but we do need something broad enough to take in the many, many ways in which people can be unpleasant to each other. If people can think of an appropriately general phrase, we might try that, but otherwise we need something general for the rule to function.

Possibly just 'An unacceptable level of being a jerk gets a warning (the unacceptable level to be determined by TBAT)' would more explicitly indicate that there's going to be a know-it-when-we-see-it policy. mmy, hapax? Other people?

[Mira]

I agree with GHN that strong moderation policies often lead to interesting comments sections, this makes sense. And thanks for your hard work in keeping this site and its discussions running, TBATs.

Someone mentioned above, "Might we want to add a 'commonly needed triggers' FAQ as a separate side bar item from the rest of the FAQs for the assistance of newbies who aren't familiar with some of the less-common triggers we use here. (e.g. transhumanism)"?

This is perhaps a good idea! I read posts but don't usually read through all the comments, and even more rarely comments myself, and could see myself accidentally making this mistake or being guided by such a list. Trigger warnings are an important part of posting etiquette and sensitivity here, and the FNEs explain that clearly, but that's not common practice everywhere on the internet, so it's not unimaginable to me that new or less active commenters might overlook the need for a more unusual one at some point. My understanding of the example given is incomplete enough that I really don't know why it would need a trigger warning; I must have missed some discussions or references noting why in the past and need to go look it up, but I wouldn't have realized it without that note. Perhaps a crowd-sourced list added to the FNEs would be helpful?

Of course we should be gracious about immediately correcting omissions if noted, but having a handy list to reduce omissions when posting in good faith would be good. It might also be easier for mods & active members if it meant there were fewer comments that needed to be called out (again, assuming people posting in good faith who would actually bother to read through, not jerks and trolls).

[Mmy]

@Mira: Ah, trigger warnings are "interesting" indeed :)

I am usually the person who does the formatting for the blogaround post on the weekend and I try to look at the links submitted in order to add trigger warnings. It is not uncommon for the commenter who sends in the links to suggest some triggers and then write something to the effect "and any other TWs you think are needed."

Have you ever seen the Criminal Minds episode where the psychologist is using his patients phobias to scare them to death? I remember seeing that episode and thinking "wow, those are mundane fears compared to those of some of our community."

A list of TWs does sound like a useful idea to me -- although I suspect that some would use that very list as a way to trigger people and to game the system. One of the really disturbing things is people who seem to think that as long as they put at TW at the topic of their comment they can include truly vile material in the comment.

And some people don't even realize that something is a trigger for them till the first time it gets posted. There was one time when someone posted a comment that so disturbed me that I was having trouble breathing (I have asthma) and thought that the strange glitches happening as I tried to immediately unpublish it we could decide whether to rot13 were due to my shakiness. It turned out that another member of TBAT had the same response and the glitches were due to both of us trying to deal with the same comment at the same time.

I would never include that subject in a list of TWs because I doubt that anyone on the board would ever make a comment of that nature -- except someone who was purposefully using the list in order to figure out what disturbs this community.

So, given that, what would I put into a list of TWs used in this community? Without looking back over all the stuff posted in the last year the ones that stand out to me a perhaps unusual or specific to this community would include transhumanism and detailed descriptions of religiously restrictive childhood/households.

[Mmy]

@Mike Timonin: Are there any other, bigger, options? Could the existing comments be moved somewhere else prior to putting in a more TBAT friendly comment system? Could this site be preserved as a comment museum while we move the conversation to another venue?

Hmmmm, interesting.

The last option (leaving this as a comment museum) is probably not something the community would go for. As I understand it some of the other blogging platforms tend to be inaccessible to some people from their workplaces AND the layout of this site (which would be hard to exactly duplicate somewhere else) has been honed so that it maximally readable for members of our community.†

You first suggestion (move the old comments elseboard) might be more workable. I'll look into it seriously.

† one of my own, personal, complaints when Fred moved to Patheos is that I hate, hate, hate the layout of the blogs at Patheos. I dislike the page design. I dislike the colour scheme, I dislike the way the sidebar works. Almost all of these are things that Fred has no control over--they are consistent across all the blogs on that domain.

[Mike Timonin]

I dislike the way the sidebar works [at Patheos]

100% agreed - I love that, here, I can click on the most recent comment in a thread and be taken to that comment without having to scroll through a long list of comments I've already read.

/derail

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Another unusual trigger warning which I recall got some mocking from trolls was pregnancy used as a metaphor. It took me a bit of thinking to get that one, but it makes sense to me now. (And even when I didn't understand it, I still understood that it was necessary, just not why.)

If we were to move to another board, I'm sure the layout could technically be duplicated at WordPress* or various other places, but that might not be legal, as it may be copyright by TypePad. Does anyone know? Not that it matters unless we do decide to make a move, which would be a big step and is, I imagine, not going to happen without a lot of discussion.

TRiG.

* I really want to learn how to build WordPress layouts.

[Leum]

I haven't seen anyone raise the point, but I suspect it's only a matter of time, so I think it needs addressing:

There's a really common trend of people who are issued warnings, told to use trigger warnings, or told that certain words are off-limits to treat this as a highly offensive attack on their right to free speech. This can often lead to a gigantic derail, often a fairly abusive one, and one that I imagine is both frustrating and draining to whoever moderates the blog. As such I think a modified version of this part of Greta Christina's comment policy might be a good idea:

If you think the specifics of my moderation are unfair or inconsistent, then by all means, email me and let me know. And if you’ve been put in the doghouse and want to be let out, email me and let me know. But don’t treat the very fact that I moderate my blog as censorship or a violation of your rights. It’ll result in you going straight to the top of my Think Hard About Banning This One list (not a long list, but I do have one), and may even get you banned immediately. And it’ll result in me giving you the giant horse laugh.

This may already be implicitly covered by what's already in the policy as proposed, and I suspect TBAT don't want the policy to become overly long, but this particular problem is really common and becomes incredibly annoying.

[Mmy]

@TRiG: I'm sure the layout could technically be duplicated at WordPress* or various other places, but that might not be legal, as it may be copyright by TypePad. Does anyone know?

The layout is an adaptation of one of TypePad templates -- one that is no longer offered. Who "owns" it isn't clear. Fred handed it to this community HERE but since it is built on existing TypePad templates ownership is a muddy issue. We couldn't simply copy it and use it at WordPress although we could create something that looked much like it since this layout attempts to duplicate a layout that existed long before TypePad.

I really want to learn how to build WordPress layouts

Yeah, I am in the process of learning how to do that. But, given that I poke and prod away at the internal workings of WP to build a blog layout from scratch we would then have a long, long, long discussion about the final product.

If we are just interested in a fairly standard out of the box WordPress blog that archives the comments since Fred left for Patheos we could probably get that up and running in a few weeks.

However people should remember that none of us get paid for our work here. It took more than 3 weeks of work for us to save all the pre-Patheos comments and posts in a form that could be transferred to Patheos. At a certain point the amount of work necessary outweighs the value of the work being done.

[hapax]

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but we did discuss at length the kind of comments we wanted to excerpt UTC as samples of what we were dealing with.

As Mmy noted, we deliberately left out some of the most vile and specific, because they didn't add much to conversation but shock value, and we didn't want to make anyone here feel unsafe knowing the kind of Internet creeps that might be reading over their shoulder.

But as Kit also pointed out, it's the cumulative effect; and over months, I have found that those sorts of things don't bother me quite so much (honestly, they become like a toddler shouting POOPY BUM! over and over).

Rather, it's the insidious escalating effect of the ones that "don't look THAT bad." Because again and again we're reminded that we're not ... quite ... people to those particular posters. That because I might have a different opinion about feminism or science fiction or lima beans, and because I am one of THEM, a TBAT -- some sort of mythical shrieking harpy-thing that dares to hold opinions in one claw and authority in another -- I am transformed from a person to be argued (even passionately) with, to a person to be attacked, to be "cut down to size", and by any means acceptable.

And that's *scary*, to know that someone "out there" feels free to go after me in a very visceral, personal way. It's scary to me, and I keep strict grip on my anonymity -- I don't think that I have EVER used the RealFirstNames of my children online, although they're laughably common. If I were using my public name and face and everybody knew where I lived, I'd be a wreck.

[Kit Whitfield]

I agree with hapax. After a while you get used to the 'I'm going to say NAUGHTY WORDS' stuff. It's the people who conceive grudges and try over and over to lower your self-esteem that are the real problem.

Because they're persistent.

Because they actually pay attention to what's important to you so they can use it against you.

Because they're not motivated by the joy of their own naughtiness, but by deep and intimate hatred.

Because what they want is not to shock or provoke, but to destroy your ability to be happy being who you are.

Because you don't know how far they'll go.

And because there's always That Guy around to whine about how they're really not that bad whenever we take steps to defend ourselves.

I don't much care any more if trolls swear. That's just trolls. But being hated like that by could-be-anyone strangers is disturbing. And having self-declared 'reasonable' people defend them is soul-destroying.

[Amaryllis]

a TBAT -- some sort of mythical shrieking harpy-thing that dares to hold opinions in one claw and authority in another

In a hurry, and I hope this isn't taken the wrong way-- but that is a beautiful picture. Go harpies!

Not that you ARE, I mean, I just don't see why you shouldn't have both opinions and authority.

... damn, gotta go...

[Mmy]

what hapax said. underlined. highlighted in red. Neon red.

It wears one down to realize that anything one says -- even something as neutral as "makes one think doesn't it?" may result in one being accused of being a domineering male-bashing feminist. I post in the knowledge that even the most offhand of comments may be dredged up as me attempting to lay down the law.

And heaven help Kit from ever having an opinion about anything literary.

Although I have to admit, like Amaryllis, I rather feature myself as one of Hesiod's Harpies fair-locked and winged maidens.

[Leum]

Can we start calling TBAT "the Kindly Ones"? Please?

[Mmy]

@Kit: I don't much care any more if trolls swear.

It's been a while since I shared a "my mother" story -- but people imagining that I am some sheltered person who is struck speechless by BAD WORDS always reminds me of something I heard my mother say about swearing

Trigger Warning: swearing

I overhead my mother explaining the following to someone who twigged her about admonishing high school students who constantly yelled fuck and called people dicks and cunts.

"It isn't someone saying fuck that really bothers me," quoth my mom, "it is the paucity of their vocabulary that disturbs me. They just yell the same two or three insults back and forth at each other as if they knew no others."

Context: my mother had been a duty officer in Halifax during WWII when it was one of the busiest military ports in the world. She had handle drunken sailors who hadn't seen a woman for months. She had to break the news to young men and women what the results of their Wassermann tests had been and explain to them the likely course their syphilis would take.

My mother had heard words (and seen things) that would have profoundly disturbed most of those teenagers. She was being honest. It was the meager and unimaginative nature of their speech that really, really disturbed her rather than any specific word they used.

[Kit Whitfield]

I don't really want to be a harpy, but honestly I think we might get less grief if we just preemptively owned the label.

Sod it. SCREE, SCREE, PHINEUS YOUR ASS IS TOAST AND YOUR TOAST IS MINE.

[anamardoll]

Am I signed in? This is being unweildly.

[The Board Administration Team]

Hi Ana! Yes you are signed in.

[anamardoll]

Ah. There we go. Sorry for the spam comment. *sheepish*

I haven't been able to comment much lately because of personal house-bound-surgery-stuff that most of you know about. However! I wholeheartedly support a stronger moderation policy.

There are basically three places online where I feel safe in the comments. Here. My own blog. And Shakesville, which has survived in large part because Melissa and her team have a Do Not Get On My Tits policy. They don't even often bother to explain rules anymore because it's too spoon-spendy; if you're behaving rudely, you get a quick "you are being rude, check the comments policy" comment and then (depending on the level of badness) an insta-ban or a one-time chance to walk away from the thread and behave better next time.

If I understand the current proposal, the Shakesville policy is even stronger than what is being proposed here, because there's more moderator leeway for insta-banning in egregious instances. But I'm in favor of whatever makes the job of the TBAT easier: whether they want to go with the proposed policy or something even stronger is fine by me. I've gotten enough hate mail and grief on my board -- only a fraction of what the TBAT have had to deal with -- to nearly send me into a nervous breakdown at least on one occasion and no one should have to deal with that.

I feel like I'm rambling, so I'll just wrap this up. I support the TBAT, I'm thoroughly grateful that they're keeping this place running, and I want a policy that costs the least amount of their spoons to keep this place going well. *cheers*

[anamardoll]

EDIT: "I've gotten enough hate mail and grief THROUGH my board". For some strange reason, the bulk of the really bad stuff comes straight to my email instead of in comments. But I've come to reflexively dread my Fat Acceptance posts because I always get at least two really hateful emails afterwards. Since I can't IP trace emails like I can comments, I've no idea if they're the same persons or not, but either way my point is: the TBAT should not have to deal with that stuff. No one should.

[Laiima]

I just read the UTC comments. What the everloving fuck?!@# I'm frankly astonished that TBAT has been putting up with all of that for so long and are just now saying they can't take MORE.

I approve of all your suggestions for change/improvement.

[Wednesday]

Another lurker coming out of the woodwork to thumbs-up the proposed TBAT moderation policies, for whatever it's worth. Y'all do what you need to do to protect your mental and emotional health. The "one can request removal of a yellow card with an email explaining what one did wrong" sounds like more work for you guys, but an excellent way to make allowances for people who actually learn from their mistakes.

To avoid the potential rules-lawyering/line-toeing that a TW list could engender, but to still allow people to have a resource that includes a list some less-obvious and easily-forgotten TWs with explanations, maybe the FNE entry could be supplemented with a link to a community discussion on the subject? That way there's an easy way to learn about/refresh one's memory about less-obvious topics that need a TW without having an Official List that trolls could use to Toe The Line.

[bixbee]

I, too, am a holdover from the Fred Clark days.

I usually lurk and only post every now and the substantive changes re content wouldn't affect me much, especially since I've never had one of my posts deleted.

But I always connect to the internet via proxies and I don't feel the need to get anyone's permission to protect myself.

So, goodbye folks and good luck with the forum.