Re: Community failure clause
Moderation:
Brad and Granny Cheese Wheel, I'm issuing you both a caution. Seriously, just leave each other alone. Neither of you is breaking rules, but the constant back-and-forth, which in this case has led to topic derailment, is pretty ugly. Cut it out.
This is not a statement of judgment on any specific positions you might hold, by the way. As it happens, I actually think both of you have brought up interesting points to consider. But please, if nothing else, just let this cool off and stop fighting with each other. Both of you have been around long enough to know how the other one reacts; both of you seem to have trouble letthing shit go (I do too sometimes, by the way, so this is just me observing a trait, not mocking or attacking you).
End moderation
Now as for the issue at hand, here's my angle on it.
We already have the community failure clause. We can already look at a situation and decide that even if the offender hasn't outright broken rules, it might be time to invoke the clause because they're skating on the edge, and have been doing so for a long time. No one admin or mod can enforce this clause, either; it's a team effort with a fair amount of oversight involved. We set it up this way precisely so that it couldn't be used as a weapon to follow through on a grudge or to squeeze someone out of play, so to speak. I trust that even if one individual had the power to use this clause, none of us would misuse it, but I still think it's important to put checks and balances on things, thus why it's the way it is right now.
When you say you want to be able to enforce this clause yourselves, or at least to have a much more active role in doing so, you are, in essence, saying that you don't think we're doing a good enough job at it. If you thought we were doing a good job using this clause for its intended purpose, you would have no reason to want to start witch-hunts yourselves. You already have the tools necessary to get the attention of the administration if you think there's a user flying under the radar that we need to investigate. To my eye, at least, this system is already basically working as intended. It's not meant to be abused to remove weird people from the forum. It's meant to crack down on people who may be crafty enough to mince around the edges of the rules for long periods of time, doing damage to the forum or its users in the process. Normally, bad apples get reported or just flat-out get noticed by us, and we deal with them when their behaviour crosses the line (Moonwalker, Simter, etc).
My advice: take a breath, and realize that all you're really asking for is to do more of the administration's job, which, in this instance, I think we're already doing fairly well. If you want to get our attention about something, you have the means of doing so. If we don't act, it's because we don't agree that the person or their behaviour warrants enforcement of the community failure clause. And even if a proposition like the one set out early in this thread went through, it would still ultimately come down to our judgment. It wouldn't matter how many of you voted someone off the island if we determined that there wasn't sufficient reason to enact this clause in the first place. Unless, of course, you're suggesting that a certain level of community uproar should compel us to act as you wish? And that's a whole other level of problem. Start down that slope, and everything turns into a vote. don't like someone? Vote him out. Don't like something the mods did? Overthrow their ruling by shouting loudly enough. Want an issue the mods are considering to just fuck off and die already? Vote loudly enough, and we'd be compelled to follow your lead. We would, in essence, be puppets, and that's not why we're here.
Like it or not, most forums - whether it's here, Reddit or elsewhere - are a form of hopefully benevolent autocracy. People have power over you, and can exercise that power perhaps against your wishes. You have a say in how that power is used, insofar as you have a right to plead your case, explain yourself or argue against a decision. The rule of law is neither uncaring nor ironclad. However, at the end of the day, the big decisions will rest with a person or people over whom you do not ultimately have full control.
Reporting someone who's dancing around the rules is totally okay. Asking the mod team to look at something is also okay. By all means, please feel free to keep doing this. But expecting a setup where the community makes decisions and the admins enforce them because they've got the tools while the community itself does not? I don't think that's going to work.
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