h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There has been a lot of talk about moderators, what they do, and where they slot in to the rest of the volunteers. Unfortunately it's all been on several other threads, and my brain gets swimmy. Plus I'm not even subscribed to some of them (I'm not subscribed to Ask so I've missed a couple lately).

Apologies for those who have talked about this subject a lot, but can we try again here, in a dedicated thread?

Topics:

-what do moderators do?
-should they be completely anonymous?
-should they be overseen by the Community Editor(s) or someone else?
-how much say do they have when it comes to long-term bans and suchlike?
-Anything else!

Thanks,

Vip

I think moderators should be just a quick 'yes or no' for barn-door obvious decisions.

So a moderators job should be:

Recieve e mail about yikesed post.

Look at post (and context)

Decide if post is

1. Obviously bad - remove
2. Obviously ok - re-instate
3. Not sure - refer to community team - a group of them can make a consensus decision.


I would think bans should be a serious joint committee decision, not any one person. Though the community editors and moderators should have a say.

>>
Decide if post is

1. Obviously bad - remove
2. Obviously ok - re-instate
3. Not sure - refer to community team - a group of them can make a consensus decision.
<<

Sounds good. Would need clear guidelines, which would be dependent on House Rules.

I've been modded quite a few times where it's been hard to figure out why.


Bans... no community process then?

... and if a post is removed take care that an email is sent out to the researcher that says *why* it was removed. This could be done half-automatically I imagine, with the moderator ticking boxes to indicate the problem and possibly add a note if necessary.

paulh summarised the discussions to date at one point and emailed me a summary on April 6th.

Here it is:

Moderation Guidelines

The aim of H2G2 is to provide a place in which Conversations are constructive and mature, and Approved Entries are interesting and entertaining. To achieve this goal, we ask that researchers refrain from flaming, trolling, and spamming in the things that they post. Material that would be considered abusive is also forbidden, and would include anything unlawful, harassing, defamatory, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, or racially offensive. In the interest of encouraging civility and courtesy, we ask that antisocial behavior be avoided, which would include disrupting conversations by posting the same thing repeatedly, especially when it is off-topic. Posting in a language other than English may hinder the flow of conversation. Impersonating another researcher is even more antisocial, as is providing personal details about someone else. If you include links to other sites in your posts, please make sure that the sites do not run afoul of these guidelines. Please don’t post for suspended researchers. Copyright infringement is also forbidden, as are plagiarism and spitting.

Moderation Processes

Posts that violate the Moderation Guidelines may be removed, either temporarily or permanently. Researchers may temporarily “hide” these posts by clicking on the complaints button just below the post. This alerts one of the volunteer moderators, who will look at the post to see if it violates the guidelines. If it doesn’t, the post will be restored. If it does, the moderator will send an email to the researcher who wrote it, explaining which guideline it ran afoul of. A copy of the post will be in the email, so that the researcher can try to rewrite it in an acceptable form. Moderators will be H2G2 researchers, but they will not use their regular user accounts when acting as moderators.
Instead, they will use a separate Moderator Account.

Disciplinary Principles

For most researchers, the closest thing to actual punishment will be an occasional hidden post, and perhaps a request that it be rewritten to make it acceptable. A much smaller number of researchers may make repeated unacceptable posts, and therefore require stricter discipline. As a general principle, we need to avoid going to extremes.
We don’t want researchers to feel that we will allow others to abuse them with impunity,
but we also don’t want to come down hard on people for doing things that aren’t all that bad. The initial group of moderators will have a lot of responsibility, for they will be starting from scratch. They’llneed to be able to confer privately so that they can share what they have learned. The first key decision they make as a group will be a ranking of the severity of the offenses listed in the moderation guidelines section. The most severe offenses might justify banning the researcher from the site on the first offense. The least severe might have no cumulative effect. Those in the middle might
be handled in a sequence of steps: a quiet chat after the first offense, an informal warning after the second, a formal warning after the third, pre-moderation after the fourth, and a ban after the fifth. A string of low-level offenses by an otherwise harmless researcher might be handled by pre-moderation for increasing lengths of time: first one week, then a month, then six months, and finally a year. Banning might also be graduated.


Disciplinary Processes

It is not recommended that individual moderators impose discipline more severe than hiding or deleting posts and asking for corrective action from researchers. If a moderator sees a pattern developing, he/she should confer with other moderators. If the moderators as a group feel that a researcher should be banned for any period of time, they should propose this to the board of directors. Moderators themselves might be disciplined for being too partial toward or against a researcher. A researcher who thinks moderators have repeatedly wronged him/her can appeal to the board, which can randomly select three Editors who are available within a day or two, and this “jury” can vote on the merits of the researcher’s case.

Bans ... From personal experience and word-of-mouth from one other who met it, I really do think the return to the methods that Hoo/SoRB/Twiggster created years ago would be good. A community discussion, rather than a very tight group (one to three Italics) deciding the merits

Moderators, I know that context is important and should be considered. I would guess that most posts are pretty easy to determine on simple content, but indeed at times, if the guidelines encourage read back a minimum number of posts? Say atleast 10 posts prior to the one in question?

Whether moderators or others should be anonymous, I think maybe they should be. From the open community atleast. It would help to keep people from toadying up to the important folks, trying to curry favour. This has, unfortunately, been common enough and proven less than equitable

I think the community involvement in bans proposed by Hoov was excellent, though bans are a separate issue from day-to-day moderation.

Here's SoRB's "Modest Proposal" - it includes links to previous versions and what the Editors put briefly in place: A623288

My view is that if the Community Editors are members of the Community then we HAVE to have something like this.

(I admit that was something so obvious that it wasn't worth discussing.. )

Right..

Work

Z

Re: post #5, I especially like the final paragraph. It throws an awful lot more of fairness into what sometimes becomes a very messy game for some.

Clarity around moderation, suspensions and premod would restore alot of good faith in the community. It's been very messy for a number of years, with lots of researcher's claiming they haven't had an explanation as to why they've had that intervention. I also think it's much better for the community to know too, if someone has been banned or suspended. There's some confidentiality issues there too.

One proposed guideline said:
Material that would be considered abusive is also forbidden, and would include anything unlawful, harassing, defamatory, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, or racially offensive.
I hink the last two would be grey areas. I mean, say an article on Breast Feeding might be yiked by someone as sexually oriented while another person might consider it simple anthropology. Likewise articles like A53569506 might be banned if the rules were to tight.

I think "erotic" would be a better term than "sexually oriented" - I've always disliked that term as being way too vague.

B

re paulh summary - I agree in principle to all of that apart from the fact that it says that any researcher could hide another's post at the click of a button. I don't think we have that now, do we? I'm afraid, like Vip, to often yikesing advertising and such obvious stuff - but it always stays visible until the mods hide it. Usually quite quickly, but not instantly.

I think there might be temptation to press the hide button on your 'opponents' posts when tempers rise and sense is not prevailing, so therefore I suggest that it is only the mods that hide posts. This would give a chance for the person who wrote the offending post to alter it. Or if it was so blatantly against house rules, then the mods should just permanently remove it, giving the researcher a full explanation via email.

The other reason for not allowing any individual to go round yikesing and actually hiding posts is that it would give any malicious member an opportunity to vandalise a lot of threads, (just think how many old convos we have - it could seriously mess up a moderators day if they had gazillions of referrals by a of old posts that needed reinstating)


. . . I still have more to say . . .

I also think raically defamatory would be better than offensive.
Some people are easily offended when they have not been defamed.

back to you Lanzababy.

But that's how it used to be - when it got yiksed it was hidden until a mod looked at it.

From a point of view, one needs insurance against being sued for libel and such insurance is a lot cheaper if things are hidden immediately!

Perhaps "personally defamatory" vice 'offensive' ? Offence is often in the eye of the beholder, where-as slating someone is usally pretty clear to objective observers.

Defamatory is a much better word Shagbark.


I will offer to sub-edit the new Moderation Guidelines,if you like folks, once we get the go ahead to unlock the doors of the h2g2 slanted towers with our own set of keys.