Jeremy,
Sorry I have not had time to respond comprehensively to these serious
questions. I apologize for the length of the response but I am trying to be
concise, and address a less well known approach.
First, Jeremy thanks for remaining open and prepared to discuss a
difference of opinion.
Perhaps first I can illustrate three philosophical approaches to community
moderation.
1. The First and most common is locking down most possible features and
asking administrators to implement exceptions eg; Only administrators can
Pin they must be asked
- A Subversion of this is where administrators do things without
explanation and are not seen to be accountable or working in the forums
interest. I had an experience of this where the owner of a non-political
Facebook group threatened to lock me out because what I said "tested" his
own political world view (although indirectly). I would thus have no
right
of reply (I was sent a lot of private support), the community was in his
image, not the members.
2. The second is totally laissez faire, with all features exposed and no
guidance or moderators who can reverse less appropriate use, eg; total
hands off
3. The Third lays between 2 and 1 maximising the features available to
all users, but administrators gently suggesting the best practice in public
comments for all to see, asking the user to alter their behaviour, and only
when necessary actually intervening on a per-post or user level. eg tell
people when they should use pins, unpin if misused but only with a reply or
post as guidance. For example I did not know that pins were public
(earlier), had I known I would have immediately changed my practices.
The third approach can reduce the admin required while maximising the
features to the community. It has the effect of building a culture, and all
members start to work together to encourage this culture, not just the
admins, thus democratising and distributing the curation. Occasionally
debates will occur about a particular feature but this is better that
having a limited group of admins or no curation at all.
The Third approach is an evolutionary one, and should be as permissive as
possible, and avoid "knee Jerk reactions".
How is option three different to current methods? - The community would
have more features available to self organise and the use of these features
will develop within the community. More features will help address many of
the limitations the community currently experiences.
> Are you saying that this community practices active moderation without a
> real need? Or that you’re afraid it’s going to start doing so?
>
Yes, I am both afraid it’s going to start doing so, and now features that
could help, are already switched off.
> It’s important that the community is welcoming to new users. I’ve said a
> few times that having open moderation provides a poor experience for
> new/rare users of the forum. Plus we don’t definitively know which features
> are controlled by the moderation permission setting, so we don’t even know
> what powers we’re handing out.
>
A Good forum culture with active users, we have many, I am one will curate
and support new/rare users of the forum even better than now. I am not
talking so open we loose control.
>
> and thus demanding more effort from moderators on the basis of "perceived"
> concerns. An agreed, transparent framework of decision should be based on
> evidence not opinion (including my own).
>
>
> What are the perceived concerns that you’re thinking of? What kind of
> evidence do you mean?
>
I think one example is the recent pinning issue. Apart from my own pins,
which could be argued were valid, as far as I can see only two other pins
occurred and yet the response was is to stop pinning. I and other users
changed out behaviour as soon as we had more information, administrators
could still unpin? and it was no longer a problem but locking it out
occured right away. We did not give this a feature to become part of the
culture. The evidence I speak of is the experience and what happens in the
forum, for example there was evidence that informing users of the
limitations of pinning was working.
>
> You invited us to comment on this and I know my suggestion may seem
> non-intuitive and contradictory to many groups, but I is based on my
> experience.
>
>
> I think I understand your suggestion, and I hope I’ve explained clearly
> why I’m not in favour of opening up moderation again.
>
Perhaps you can now see in my words the cost of this approach comes at a
feature and cultural cost. However I am not asking to open moderation up, I
am asking to open features and allow self and community with moderation
only intervening if something becomes unmanageable (after the community has
an opportunity to manage it, and asks for such help.
>
> People now migrate to largely unmoderated forums and social media because
> of the limitations the old fashioned forums and strict moderation.
>
>
> Can you point to some “largely unmoderated forums” as examples?
>
My own experience was a 45,000 member yammer network. Even the tiddlywiki
Discord forums are more like this, free to create or do many things but
expect guidance from participants.
>
> I don’t understand the second point. Social media is highly regulated.
>
> A google search can find dozens of, all but abandoned, forums all over the
> internet.
>
>
> How does this observation fit into your argument?
>
If you look at a lot of the PHP forums that have being around for decades
they had lock down features, and funneled moderation through a small number
of people. Many have died "on the vine", participants are low, there is
little culture and no innovation in using the forum. GG is somewhat
different but it illustrates how strict moderation, or limited features is
counter to the interests of the forums.
>
> Look at the TiddlyWiki Discord as an example for a lightly moderated forum.
>
>
> It has moderators! And they are active.
>
But *as far as I can see *not much, and plenty of opportunities and
features remain available but inactive.
>
> If I were employed by tiddlywiki community some may consider questioning
> the status quo as a CLM (Career Limiting move) but I naturally only put a
> strong and novel argument, if I have substantial experience to support my
> assertions, as I do on this occasion.
>
>
> The trouble is that you haven’t addressed the points I’ve made in response.
>
With respect I think I did, and hopefully have now. I believe the whole
"eco system" of a community forum is the answer, so perhaps I did not spell
out, what I hoped was readable "between the lines".
>
> Any way I have put my case, perhaps sufficiently outside the box that it
> is not understood. But as long as we maintain the current forum culture we
> should be fine.
>
>
> OK! What do you see as the threats to our current forum culture?
>
I think these are reflected in my above responses.
*In closing*
I know the approach I propose is perhaps unfamiliar to most, I believe it
has a strong basis and need only be tested to validate (Assuming no knee
jerk reactions).
Why do I think this approach is not widely adopted? (yet), because few
online communities know how to co-opt the very human understanding of how
we behave in an open society. Rather many resemble either anarchies or
dictatorships.
People are very good at learning, supporting and guiding each other and bad
players are very small in number, and few interested in our forum. However
faced with an anarchy or dictatorship we tend to see the behaviour you may
expect in such circumstances.
Another problem is "the technology wagging the cultural tail". When people
have a moderation or feature lockdown option in a forum, they have a
tendency to use it without testing assumptions and the culture. They treat
the settings as obvious but do not take full account of the intangibles
(understandable if still a big issue).
I can lead by example, and would appreciate participating more. Knowing
very well there is information unavailable to me, because I have not being
an administrator yet.
Regards
Tony
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