Catra wrote:I was thinking about this a little at work, and I don't think most users want to see all of the warnings/bans given. I know I sure don't. I DO want, though, to see small updates, like bug fixes or rule clarifications, suggestions added, things like that. I think Simon agreed to do this pretty much, though.
Those are two separate areas of staff work, which is why I addressed them separately.^^ But let me elaborate a little on why I brought up moderation and privacy concerns (and putting a little disclaimer here right away that this is only about one specific issue related to moderation, and not about discussing issues with moderation as a whole):
If you've been around the community for a while, both on-site and on other websites that users frequent to talk about CS, you'll inevitably come across people sharing their experiences with staff, and a lot of times, those experiences are about situations in which someone has been warned or had their post deleted, or in some instances, been banned.
And while venting about that kind of stuff is normal, as obviously it's quite a bummer to receive a warning, it's inevitably a very one-sided conversation.
While plenty of people simply let off a little steam, and I'll be the last person to think ill of them for wanting to do that, you'll find just as many who try to get extra sympathy by letting out parts of the story, or people who actively lie about what happened to them.
This very quickly results in an overall image in which our team is painted worse at work than it is.
To contrast: Another community I'm in tends to handle these situations differently. The place functions very differently from CS, and a lot of times when people pop into our chat and complain about disciplinary action from staff, our mods just. Call them out for it if it's not truthful. For example, if someone barges in and complains about being censored and punished for having differing opinions, chances are a moderator
will publicly remind them that no, they haven't been warned for having opinions, they've been warned specifically for racist remarks, which are opinions we can do without.
I don't think this approach would work on a site that's structured like CS. But what I'm trying to say is that I see a lot less people going around painting the staff there as corrupt, toxic and incompetent, because staff being able to come out and confront liars easily halves the complaints.
And CS staff can't do this type of thing, because we consider it a user's privacy.
It's not so much a matter of users directly saying they want warning histories to be public. But when people get disciplined and go off to rant about it, it always creates an air of "ugh, that's unfair of the staff", and when staff cannot verify whether or not someone's complaint is justified or if they've been distorting the story, you end up with a lot of "unsolved unfairness". And that makes our team look worse than it actually is.
And I felt that it was important to address this, because I've seen posts in here that hit this issue.
None of us will deny that yes, our staff can make honest mistakes, and there'll always be cases in which a situation could've been handled better. (In the best cases, users send in a help ticket to discuss it and get to talk it out with some third opinions. If you are ever confused about a warning or similar, please feel free to send a ticket to inquire.)
But I do want to remind people who bring up moderation issues that when it comes to the topic of "mods are unfair", all complaints are created equal, and our mods have little to no power to point fingers and say "that one's got a point, but this one over here is lying", and that silence about accusations does not equal being guilty as charged.
We do our best to address and discuss all that we can, though! Like I said before, I've seen plenty of valid criticism that we do take to heart. So this wall of text isn't meant to say that people should not voice their concerns.^^ You guys have brought up points that can definitely be handled and improved on.
I wasn't originally gonna go any deeper into this particular topic, so I hope it doesn't come across as being dismissive of the discussion at hand. It's a reminder about perspective on a particular topic, and not intended to shoot down conversation as a whole.
Neither is it meant to say that you can't express when you feel you have been treated unfairly - it's just that, for example, we
can act on statements like "the rules are difficult to look up because they're scattered, I didn't know this rule existed" or "this thing I've been warned for is confusingly worded in the rules, vague rules are hard to follow", but we
can't act on "i get unfair warnings".
I hope that explained it a bit better^^ Sorry if it sounded confusing before.
This thread has brought up a lot of different topics simultaneously, so if you're here to discuss stuff like implementing suggestions or more updates, like you said, then yeah, this post and its content is probably irrelevant to your focus and interests.
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