Hello Admins! I’ve been recently banned because I broke down and called someone who had 70 downvotes and was already acting like a troll a “dipshit”. As punishment, I’ve been banned for 7 days from the site, and permabanned from the politics community. I feel like this was a little harsh, given the content that stays up on that community, but it felt especially weird because I was banned by a mod who was losing an argument on why voters voted for a specific law. This to me felt like someone was annoyed with me, so they looked at what comments I made in other communities they moderate and banned me accordingly.
I tried to find a moderator code of conduct for this site but there wasn’t one created - only mention of one being created and a link to a boilerplate legal document which doesn’t mentio a code of conduct for mods.
Another moderator didn’t like a take I had on some topic so he decided to troll me for 3 days, trying to bait me with emojis.
If this is what trolling truly is (caling someone a dipshit) then I need to recalibrate my reports and there’s LOADS more people on this site that troll. I didn’t think simply calling someone a name would constitute trolling but if it does, whoa boy: be prepared for many more reports.
If instead, these moderators are abusing their powers, how can I report this?
Moderators make this site work, and they need to exist. Abusive moderation wlll only make people angry and cause the site to be even more difficult to moderate (not a threat by me, just understanding how people operate when they are upset at forums online). FWIW, I’m not a troll, but boy do trolls find me.
edit: Also, I’m not being mean-spirited here. If the mods I referred to earlier wanted to reverse their actions because they made a mistake, that’s fine. No harm, no fowl. I can and did survive 7 days without access to this site, I can do it again but I do try to avoid bad behavior. I’m also not asking for special treatment, so if the actions these mods took weren’t mistakes, I just ask that they enforce the code of conduct of their communities accordingly. Nothing wrong with making rules for a space and enforcing them. If I’ve still managed to upset folks, sorry? I would love to know what for so that I could make a real apology, but I recognize that it might be outing you. If you want to create a burning account and DM me, DMs are always open. As a human, I do want to be decent. I have some strong opinions (and can be an ass at times) but I strive to be good.
This is tricky too… I haven’t looked at your comment history so I’m willing to accept that maybe you did something somewhere to upset this mod. This may not be the case but if it was and that was the reason you were banned, that presents a few problems:
Or to pose the question another (hypothetical, not referring to you) way: should we let a nazi/far-right/facist remain a contributor to a leftist tech support community so long as they are not antagonistic to other users / abide by the rules of that community? I don’t have a clear answer here. I think most people would agree that it’s fair to allow this if the person is truly not antagonistic and is adding value. Other people might say that that person doesn’t deserve to exist in polite society no matter what “value” they might add.
That’s an extreme example, but I’m trying to strongman the mod’s possible reason for banning you.
Another thing for a moderator code of conduct might be to provide adequate ban reasons, possibly generalizing some only in cases of safety / legal reasons. I mean, mods / admins shouldn’t need to write a novel, but it also wouldn’t be technically too difficult to create a page that would link to the specific posts which were removed or which lead to the banning. I realize I’m butting up against outing reporters, so it would be important to maintain that aspect of privacy. I’m just saying when someone says something like “repeated” in a mod report, it would be handy to see the multiple instances. Otherwise, a mod might just look at someone’s moderation history, see mod reports (which may be unfair) and determine those reports constitute “repeated” behavior.
Could you take a look at my comment history? You’ll find my comments in the post I mention (but the post no longer exists for me).
I do not engage in politics, and the only lightly offensive thing I can think of that I might have done a couple of times is probably engage in some tomfoolery around Linux. Things like “system admins swear by Slackware” and “You’re not a real Linux user if you don’t know how to exit from Vim /s”. Needless to say, such expressions were accepted with due mirth as one would expect. If the mod doesn’t like this then he should say that.
I can but as a user and not a moderator or admin it won’t make much difference. I also don’t expect mods (volunteers with a stack of work to do in front of them) to take the time to understand every user before reporting them, though it would be nice if there were a system that facilitated that!
For example, if users (not just comments) were able to be upvoted/downvoted, they could gain or lose “standing” in a community or on an instance. Depending on how much standing they have, their posts / comment would have a visibility in line with their standing. Good standing posts might be promoted slight more than regular posts. Poor standing posts might be shown to users half as much as regular posts. The scope of this would be per community, based on the users’s interaction with that community and the community’s opinion of the user.
That way, less of the moderation is placed on the human moderators. Those moderators will still be needed because no automated or crowd-sourced system is perfect but the goal would be to lean on moderators less and less.