I appreciate your want for a better community. I’m definitely just wary of us falling into the same pit that Nix did, despite us seeing them do it.
3 Likes
Just for a quick skim read, I really like this idea. It seems to prevent a “rally the troops” outcome whilst also staying very transparent.
5 Likes
If someone exhibits a pattern of minor infractions, I’m a fan of exponential backoff. First ban 1 day. Second ban 2 days, 3rd ban 1week, etc.
2 Likes
Yeah, it depends what the infractions were and how frequent. Certainly some moderator discretion necessary with the goal being a healthy community.
Yep, time inbetween the infractions and many other factors play a role and the moderator will have to use judgment. But if someone is, for example, sealioning
- I think there should be a warning. “You are doing X, it is disrespectful, you will receive punishment if you continue”
- We need logs of the warnings and infactions happening. Especially to say “I know THAT time looked small, but look at how many times its happened”
1 Like
I think those logs would only need to be presented in the case of public uproar over a decision.
While I think you’re right, its like open source security. Yeah, sure, probably 99.9% of people aren’t going to even look at the contents of the package let alone long enough to find a back door, but I still want it for the 0.1% of the time because the 0.1% can make all of the difference.
Let’s say we have a mod thats discriminating. If we haven’t kept logs on who was banned by who and why, it might go on a really long time.
1 Like
Oh, all moderation action is logged and is made aware of to other moderators (this is already the case currently, there is a moderator action thread for coordinating). This helps to prevent that case of a bad-faith moderator.
1 Like
Oh cool I did not know that! So it would have to be all mods acting against the rules.
In that case, if someone asks “hey what messges/reasons caused user X to banned?” Do the mods have like a list of messages/reasons per user?
1 Like
Yes. I actually used that as the example in that thread! If someone asks “why was X banned?” then any moderator would be able to look and see the reason and any prior discussion/notes that happened about it.
1 Like
There’s also the, perhaps less important, optics of a list of moderation actions. Having a public “hit list” can create more problems.
2 Likes
Yeah I can definitely see that.
1 Like
I very much want this discourse to be a place where, instead of avoiding topics, we can push forward cautiously and respectully in order to get to the other side.
And with that, I think its fair to declare this the only productive conversation about the Jon ban, and victory for Auxolotl!
(@srxl just wanted to make sure you to see the happy ending. Thanks again for your input. I won’t forget it)
6 Likes
I agree. Thank you for driving this discussion, Jeff. It is a delicate topic in light of recent events and I’m glad we have been able to have it productively!
4 Likes
And obviously thank you too for hashing it out @jakehamilton especially after saying you wanted to not talk about it
3 Likes
You’ll probably hear this from me again in the future because I say it a lot, but I am always happy to be proven wrong. It’s an opportunity to learn and grow. Thank you for the help here 
4 Likes
I’m more than happy to have been proven wrong on this one. 
Interactions like these give me a lot of hope for this project. I think we have a good foundation here - here’s hoping we can keep it solid into the future.
9 Likes
Prevents the case of bad-faith moderator and allows cross-check of decisions between moderators on one hand.
On the other hand, human memory isn’t perfect, and team members leave. Somebody who was banned 4 years ago asks for reevaluation now – why were they banned? Who banned them? If the moderator that has banned them 4 years ago is still on the team, will they remember all the relevant details?
If somebody in the community tries to ask about the ban (because they’re not aware of the behaviour that caused it) – can anybody (not necessarily the moderator that made the decision) summarize it?
Some bans will need reevaluating – to do that we’ll need a record.
It’s also not a huge overhead – person, timestamp, moderator making the decision, notes. Something like Toot.cat/blocks/domain - Mew (but not necessarily public) should be enough to protect agains imperfect memory and moderator churn.
I think we can certainly have an internal log (i.e. moderation team only). And that would likely bridge the remaining gap between these issue.
7 Likes
I think this is worth making a new thread about. My concerns with this thread were pretty much about “on what grounds will someone be banned/included in general”, which I think was addressed here. I guess would be good to summarize it to finish out this thread and be able to refer to it later.
So to be explicit:
Summary & Detail
- This thread intentionally does not decide/limit:
- Mods discresion on severity of punishment
- What evidence needs to be kept or where/how it needs to be stored
- A lot of other stuff
But (and this is kind of a question – say something if you disagree)
We recognize that:
- Right now (bootstrapping) we have no choice but to rely on YOU using good-faith interpretations when reading vague words here. Examples and non-examples help, but not everything can be defined concretely.
- Rules will never be perfect
- Moderators need to be empowered to protect AND held accountable to prevent abuse of protective powers
- Temporary (for example on the order of days, not months) exceptions may be necessary under extreme circumstances (such as not yet having a governing body, hacked accounts, impersonation, communication systems being down, etc, but not “its a holiday” or “I was feeling bad” or “everyone was downvoting”)
- Jon Ringer not being in the Discourse falls under this
With those in mind:
- If you break the CoC, you will get some kind of consequence. Both in the sense that
- A. Enforcement is not optional; nobody, regardless of how much they have contributed, is somehow above the rules.
- B. Enforcement is also not optional in the sense that “1mph rules” must either be enforced or revised. To explain what that is: my history teacher had a framed 1mph speeding ticket hanging on his wall. The ticket was issued to a black citizen during the Jim Crow era. For context for those not in the US, in the US everyone goes over the speed limit at least a little bit, at least some times, so technically everyone is breaking the law. But officers are not required to enforce the speed limit. People will drive 5mph over the limit with an officer right beside them. Everyone gets away with minor infractions – well, as the ticket showed, almost everyone. As a community, we declare that Aux is founded, undebatably, against discrimination. Rules that everyone breaks regularly are, not only, poorly designed but also empower discrimination under the guise of legitimate enforcement. Poorly designed rules will have no place in Aux. Either everyone gets a 1mph ticket, exposing the fact that its a bad rule and motivating people to do something about it, or the governing body, instead of enforcing it, will immediately change the rule (with due process)
- AND again the severity of the consequence (to fit the circumstance) is intentionally not discussed/limited here. A warning may fall within the definition of “a consequence” that is also not decided here.
- If you don’t break the CoC, but it is recognized as an issue by the community, the governing body is obligated to change the the CoC to address the general issue. Both in the sense that
- A. The governance cannot simply ignore something deemed important to the community.
- B. The governance shouldn’t merely create a consequence for this particular instance; either by-exception (a consequences without a supporting rule), or by adding a rule so stupidly specific that this instance is the only realistic time it could apply.
- Lasting punishments cannot be given without presenting evidence of breaking the CoC, and no punishment can be given without reason or for self indulging reasons (for example “they annoyed me” or “I think they’re lying and I don’t want others to see it”, but as a non-self-indulging example “They were making person A feel bad, and I know person A struggles from suicidal thoughs, so I took action”)
What is probably worth discussing in different threads next?
- What actions/info (warnings, bans, reasons, evidence) should be recorded and where
- What’s a “lasting punishment”
- When/where does evidence need to be presented, some evidence, like personal info, probably should be limited to mods
- Do people usually get warnings
- What’s considered “due process” for changing the CoC (probably need to wait till a phase 2 or later)
- How does the community “deem that something is important”
- What makes a rule “stupidly specific”?
5 Likes