Re: a few questions about moderator actions, please read
hi,
I did not want this topic to turn the way it had turned out, but we're relatively missing the original points.
I would like to know from the moderators under which particular community rules, regulations or implied guidelines the user had been issued a warning and the thread permanently closed?
do each moderator represent himself/herself while declaring moderations?
do the actions of a single moderator indicate an absence of representation among the moderation team as evident from "I", "i'm", or "me", rather than "we", or "us", or "'ed"?
had an ordinary user posted a general thread regarding the subject, is it highly likely the thread would be locked out as well, on the pretext of the matter being discussed earlier?
now, what I was intending to find out is, if we look at the scenario from the community point of view, and in case a user was being confrontational about the issue in previous threads, why the urgency to conduct a preemptive strike on the entire topic instead of warning the user within a personal capacity. as he seems to have received a warning anyway, he is expected to abide by the community rules or face further consequences. in real life, does your police force, on spotting a known offender, come out and swoop down on the place and evacuate the entire building including the offender, instead of swooping down on the offender and ushering him out of the building itself?
actually, the question is not about the authenticity of the moderators intentions; it is about the approach adopted to exert the intentions. looking at the above example, suppose a new customer is about to set his foot on the bar which is being evacuated along with the offender, will the customer be further inclined to visit that place in future? Will the customer ever encourage or promote the place on being asked by his contacts? Had the police force surrounded the offender himself and given him blatent warning with a series of hostile glares demonstrating a "no fucking around" policy, wouldn't the citezens admire the police force and feel secure?
now, if we look closely, the users of this type (offenders as per the above example) might enter another topic, spread toxic substances, and the topic is likely to be locked in response. do that particular action act as a deterrent to users who don't learn from their misadventures? (unlikely)
also, do we really need to cling on to their boots with that amount of desperation?
as of recent, another such user was banned as far as I'm aware, but it is equally significant to look at the amount of time and effort exhausted in order to get him where he belongs. I'm not trying to come down on these people; they deserve to be a part of the community as well, but this forum can't afford the extreme amount of tollerence towards the offenders.
on one hand, the current moderators act out of their own judgements and preferences to deem a discussion not fit for the forum based on an anticipated behavior of a single user or a group of users, on the other hand, they lock the thread for everyone and further shield such confrontational users because there is nothing to stop them from going on another thread, spoil the thread, and get it closed for rest of the members. I understand that the moderators would prefer a maximum amount of patience before issuing official warnings and handing out temporary and permanent bans to users, but going soft on them had produced a forum which has far more closed threads on a single page compared to at least out of 10 similar pages 5 years ago; which suggests something is wrong. Also, as far as past moderators are concerned, they had opened their backpacks, pulled their moderation hats and wore them before going on with their moderation business, and removed the hat and put it back in the backpack as soon as the moderation business was carried out. this behavior seriously helped them to separate their personal preferences and desires from the moderation duties. if we look at the kind of words used in the message, I'm afraid that phrases like "death and beyond", "resulted in me essentially confronting people", "why the heck", "Rather than re-engage that discussion", "to me at least", "bordering on personal attack, not just toward myself but toward others as well", "You think you have the right to", "Speaking personally, this is getting very tiresome", "it's warning time", "And I'm locking this thread", "We do not need this discussion right now(with a special emphasis on need)", don't seem to be coming from an actual moderator who is appointed for the benefit of the forum and the community at large.
In essence, it is practically hard to find that level of personalized content in a single moderation post if one wanders as far out as to look at general moderator warnings and explainations issued by our past moderators including dark, aprone, lukas, arqmeister and aaron. Unfortunately, regardless of the amount of positive intentions behind the post, it sounds like a member trying to be involved in a discussion and moderating the very discussion at the same time. in real life, people do not wear their uniforms all the time; nor they perform their duties without wearing one. as dark and others have previously commented on numorous occasions, on a platform as obscure as the internet, often the true intentions are buried and the way the written content is being presented is what causes the content to be understood the way it is understood.
It is beyond me to understand what kind of loss would befall on this forum and community if a couple of these individuals are banned off the forum. there are precedences as far as dealing with troublemakers is concerned, whether it is bladestorm who went on a drunken rampage, whether it is figment who got banned in a manner as swift and polite a user will ever get banned from this forum, whether it is fastfinge who was banned by moderators, whether it is ethin who got banned a couple of times in past because of his childish behavior and writing incoherent posts, whether it is a user who got banned after asking for tips to crack shades of doom by pm, and countless other bans. it is equally ridiculous to see the way it is getting extremely hard for the current moderation team to hand out punishment specially in case of guys like simter who not only cause trouble almost wherever they post but also attract a tremendous amount of unwanted attention. is that the forum and moderation all about? is harbouring a bunch of teenagers in the garb of curtailing discussions the next developing trend in the audiogaming community? can a legitimate forum member be assured the right to free speech in future where these threads are prone to be highjacked and locked? Would any other moderator have taken that road both in terms of content and actions?
and, last but not the least, is there any logical official explaination to the first question raised in the original post (along with the third question) about the particular forum rules being violated if one looks at the content of the quoted post?
as i mentioned in the first post itself, explainations are welcome; no hostility required.
Regards.
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