2024 AT 06 Staff and Mandemon discussion thread.

Tithed_Verse

Tithed_Verse

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forums.sufficientvelocity.com

2024-AT-06: Staff and Mandemon Upheld

On 1.11.2023 I was given following infraction: On 1.11.2023, I was infracted by @veteranMortal for following: However, I contest this infraction. I was not minimising IDF actions, I was trying to point out how severe they actually are. @Fey'lya has, thankfully, agreed to help as an...
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Pretty self explanatory discussion thread.
 
Fey'lya said:
Me: "Are we still gonna hit him for it?"

Council: "Yes, actually."

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Yeah. I felt like several councilers didn't really engage with your point, just... eyed over it, saw who posted, saw what he was hit for, and maybe read the post in question without any context, then made up their mind that it was worth points without engaging with the actual argument made in the appeals thread by the poster nor the advocate.

Which, sure, is their right but... prob gonna vote some other fellows next election I think.
 
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In summary, we disagree that my client participated in the minimization or dismissal of ongoing atrocities, and is at worst guilty of posting sarcastically at people not listening to him. As "reasonable frustration" is no longer a defense, we thus request a reduction in points concurrent to that level of thread disruption, not one based around Active Conflicts Policy 1.b. Thank you for your consideration!
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This post is actually blatantly against the rules and if he asked me to appeal it I'd tell him not to bother. He calls other people liars, downplays terrible things, and generally acts as he's accused of being. However, I would caution against holding said history to be prejudicial in this case. Not because of his confusion or culture shock or whatever (though I'd still argue that if "honest frustration" was still a defense I'd just have to copypaste that line a couple times and be done with this appeal :V) but because he hasn't done any of that in this thread.
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How many years ago was the "reasonable frustration" rule removed, again?
 
Tithed_Verse said:
Yeah. I felt like several councilers didn't really engage with your point, just... eyed over it, saw who posted, saw what he was hit for, and maybe read the post in question without any context, then made up their mind that it was worth points without engaging with the actual argument made in the appeals thread by the poster nor the advocate.

Which, sure, is their right but... prob gonna vote some other fellows next election I think.
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(I apologize, but my quote-fu is weak)
Fey'lya said:
Thus we are not seeking a full vacation of points
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Fey'lya said:
As "reasonable frustration" is no longer a defense, we thus request a reduction in points concurrent to that level of thread disruption, not one based around Active Conflicts Policy 1.b.
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I thought 25pts was the minimum, a 0-pt infraction would be a full vacation of points, the advocate asked to consider the infraction by a different rule, and the councilors did assesss that a 25pt infraction was fair based on thread disruption (and the Advocate provided a quote from the defendant that the councilors had cause to consider disruptive)

They did engage with the argument, then gave the Advocate everything which was asked for.

In a less pithy manner of speaking, they absolutely acknowledged the Advocate's argument and engaged with it to the degree it was warranted - most of them acknowledged that without the "double-standard" callout they would've been more amenable to the appeal.

It's hard to state that they didn't engage with the argument when the advocate asked, functionally, to assess the infraction by a rule that wasn't 1.b and then they did so.
 
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I get how it can sometimes be frustrating to see councillors roll in, give brief explanations, and vote, rather than engaging thoroughly to refute all the arguments... but ultimately, the council isn't who you argue with to win points with the peanut gallery. That's the arbitrator. The council is the peanut gallery.

By nature, a lot of tribunal posting, especially in a 12 to 0 outcome, is going to be variations on "Here's some words to hopefully demonstrate I paid attention and thought about it. Here's some supplemental angle that you might not have considered."

Trying to demolish all the arguments isn't necessarily helpful. If the outcome isn't in question it mostly seems rude.
Derpmind said:
How many years ago was the "reasonable frustration" rule removed, again?
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I think eight...?
 
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'you infracted me under the wrong rule' has, IIRC, literally never worked, either, so I don't know why people keep trying it; all that happens is the charge gets updated to reflect the more accurate rule under which the infraction was issued.
 
poaw said:
A long time, but councillors still invoke it, if not by name then by intent, from time to time years after it had been removed, and ultimately they're the arbitrators soo...
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In my limited experience, the reason to appeal to the council is so that they can apply discretion and less-principled, less-legalistic consideration to an infraction. This is, IMHO, always in the defendant's favor, but a side-effect of this is that I don't consider the council as setting legalistic precedent. Their rulings are always more circumstantial and partly based on the user's history. (I believe this is part of the reason the council performs user review, IIRC, and not an arbitrator)

"I was frustrated and got careless with my argument" is also, on its face, an argument for leniency, not an actual defense. It makes sense not to codify this as a rule.

And in this circumstance, it was provided that Mandemon has a history of warnings, contentious behavior in contentious threads, and did break a rule in a thread that's set to a higher standard of behavior.

Edit: The reason I believe the council is expected to be less principled and less legalistic is because the arbitrator exists, whose role seems more about making sure the rules are applied in line with site principles. The council basically exists to second-guess them based on circumstances, and this is a good thing.
 
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Ralson said:
I get how it can sometimes be frustrating to see councillors roll in, give brief explanations, and vote, rather than engaging thoroughly to refute all the arguments... but ultimately, the council isn't who you argue with to win points with the peanut gallery. That's the arbitrator. The council is the peanut gallery.

By nature, a lot of tribunal posting, especially in a 12 to 0 outcome, is going to be variations on "Here's some words to hopefully demonstrate I paid attention and thought about it. Here's some supplemental angle that you might not have considered."

Trying to demolish all the arguments isn't necessarily helpful. If the outcome isn't in question it mostly seems rude.
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Yeah but... Maybe it's a wrong feeling but it seems to me that before, there were more exchanges between councilors about the infraction (except the case of permaban which mostly went very straightforward). Now (and I mean previous years too, not only this council), it seems that one or two councilors will made points at the beginning, and after, every others councilors will just roll with them, not challenging the arguments of the other councilors.

Maybe there are reasons for that, like now, the rules are being fixed since a long time, so they are clearer than before, or it's just that the overall population of SV understand them better. Or some other reasons.

Buuuuuuuuuut, the council should be a representative of the SV userbase, so, at least, the plurality of opinion should appear a little in it, except for very straightforward cases (like famous permaban). And here, I think... It doesn't seem that straightforward ? So, it mades me question if it's just me who unable to see the straighforward nature of the infraction or if it's the council which doesn't have enough plurality.

I suppose I will wait the other tribunals to see how things go.

As a side note, as I am running on an impression, I can recognize that this feeling can be totally wrong so and that I am totally imagining things or that my brain has already forgot everything that happened in the last tribunals or I am just missing old tribunals where councilors were writing wall of text to justify their position.
 
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Corti said:
Maybe there are reasons for that, like now, the rules are being fixed since a long time, so they are clearer than before, or it's just that the overall population of SV understand them better. Or some other reasons.

Buuuuuuuuuut, the council should be a representative of the SV userbase, so, at least, the plurality of opinion should appear a little in it, except for very straightforward cases (like famous permaban). And here, I think... It doesn't seem that straightforward ? So, it mades me question if it's just me who unable to see the straighforward nature of the infraction or if it's the council which doesn't have enough plurality.
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Evilchumlee's tribunals had some headache-inducing discussion in it - are those threads more to your speed? They were pretty recent and had a fair bit of back-and-forth.

I think the reason it was pretty clear-cut here was because it was a straightforward case of "you were being disruptive in a thread by these rules and you've been warned in the past for this behavior". It seems to be that nobody wanted to litigate the 'downplaying atrocities' angle when there was a chunk of the infracting post that was (in their eyes) in violation of a different rule, and the advocate literally asked for the infraction to be considered in terms of thread disruption.

Was there more that needed to be said by the council? I don't understand what you mean by 'you want to see the plurality of opinion appear in it' unless you're making an argument that the council doesn't represent the site userbase... unless you mean that you're weirded out that the argument was unanimous?

There was very little that was actually in contention by either the Advocate or the Council, I feel.
 
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To be fair there had been a bunch of tribunals where the those others should have been infracted too was a valid defense that worked.

Buuut considering the subject matter and the place it happened i.e. active conflicts where you must have an ironclad defense or be at you very best there was no way in hell Mandemon would not be hit.

A good defense @Fey'lya but it was lost from the get go.
 
Kadmus said:
'you infracted me under the wrong rule' has, IIRC, literally never worked, either, so I don't know why people keep trying it; all that happens is the charge gets updated to reflect the more accurate rule under which the infraction was issued.
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Incorrect. I succeeded in getting my infraction changed from rule 3 to 4 (or the other way around i can't remember) on that basis.
 
Tithed_Verse said:
Yeah. I felt like several councilers didn't really engage with your point, just... eyed over it, saw who posted, saw what he was hit for, and maybe read the post in question without any context, then made up their mind that it was worth points without engaging with the actual argument made in the appeals thread by the poster nor the advocate.

Which, sure, is their right but... prob gonna vote some other fellows next election I think.
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Infractions are in fact about the post infracted, not the post hoc justification for it. If the advocate can't convince us that what he's saying is relevant to the point, it's on the advocate, not on the council for not going down his argument line anyway. The arbitrator also did plenty of arguing with it which we didn't have to repeat.

In the end there's going to be clients you can't save in a lawyer's career.

LilyWitch said:
Incorrect. I succeeded in getting my infraction changed from rule 3 to 4 (or the other way around i can't remember) on that basis.
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If you make it very clear your only goal is to get the record corrected and you accept the points, I think it's often an easy sell. If you're also contesting the infraction in the same breath, though, good luck.

Eliar said:
To be fair there had been a bunch of tribunals where the those others should have been infracted too was a valid defense that worked.
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I've always held that "others weren't hit" should be a valid call, but only as a call to have others hit, not to exonerate yourself. Sadly the current system has no room for that and even when brought up through the council's channel, the answer is usually negative so it's hard to keep caring. The only cases I've seen acted on were when massive structural issues sat unadressed because staff had disengaged from a subject until complaints made them look again, like the Ukraine war threads.
 
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LilyWitch said:
Incorrect. I succeeded in getting my infraction changed from rule 3 to 4 (or the other way around i can't remember) on that basis.
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Sorry, are you saying 'the infraction I got was under the wrong rule' defence got you reduced points/an overturned infraction? Otherwise you're just agreeing with me that the 'the infraction I got was under the wrong rule' just gets the infraction changed to the correct rule and you still get the points.
 
Yeah I don't.. actually have an issue with the council's ruling given the totality of circumstances here. I stand by all my points, and I think that in a thread that wasn't on red alert it would have worked. But ultimately, it was in a thread on high alert and "better" doesn't always mean "good enough".

I do hope Mandemon takes this feedback as it was intended and continues to figure stuff out though.
 
A Small Bird said:
In my limited experience, the reason to appeal to the council is so that they can apply discretion and less-principled, less-legalistic consideration to an infraction. This is, IMHO, always in the defendant's favor, but a side-effect of this is that I don't consider the council as setting legalistic precedent. Their rulings are always more circumstantial and partly based on the user's history.
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Arbitrators and staff in general don't really go by precedent or principle (though principle is closer), so much as what I'd call policy. We don't look at old tribunals or other arbitrations when making rulings, and we are not bound to have the same interpretations of rules as other staff. What we are committed to in a way that council is not is staff policy: we try to move in the same general direction and achieve the same goals, using the same rules. That means while specific tribunals aren't binding, we know that if the council has consistently no-sold a particular angle in the past we will avoid it for the sake of a consistent and less-undercut approach.

Arbitrators also pretty regularly look at user history - one of the most common results from an appeal (which is never visible at tribunal) is that someone gets hit for something for the first time, appeals, and an arbitrator says "well, I do think this was against the rules, but you haven't had a problem with it or similar rules before and it's not especially egregious, so I'm going to reduce it to zero points" while explaining more of how the rule works in practice. (Truly most people have very little grasp of the rules, much less how we usually apply them.)

Council is generally outside of that shared agenda, and while they have a sort of fairness-based interest in not being wildly inconsistent, they get to vote based on their conscience. A common result of this (and of the group cultures) imo is that Council is often more focused on outcomes and staff are more focused on process; both perspectives have upsides and blindspots.

A Small Bird said:
(I believe this is part of the reason the council performs user review, IIRC, and not an arbitrator)
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To be technical, user reviews are done by staff (and are not actually visible to the council). They are a "let's step back and consider what the bigger problem is here," since most staff interaction with individual users is focused on specific incidents, and the review can lead to a bunch of different outcomes, most of which are private. It's when user review results in a desire for permaban that a special case is presented to the council. This is mostly about seeking a somewhat democratic form of sanction for the action.
 
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Eliar said:
To be fair there had been a bunch of tribunals where the those others should have been infracted too was a valid defense that worked.
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I mean, notably I still maintain that is not in fact a good defense or one that the council should care about. The answer to that defense is to report the others you think should have been infracted, nothing more and nothing less.
 
Kadmus said:
Sorry, are you saying 'the infraction I got was under the wrong rule' defence got you reduced points/an overturned infraction? Otherwise you're just agreeing with me that the 'the infraction I got was under the wrong rule' just gets the infraction changed to the correct rule and you still get the points.
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It depends. If you can make an rgument "Technically if this is an issue it's a Rule 3 issue rather than a Rule 4 issue" or whatever, and that issue is less serious, you absolutely can get a reduction on that basis. I can't recall if it was something the party has strictly argue, but there have absolutely been cases where I felt that the issue was another rule but it was a less severe rbreach than one that warrants points. Like, it's a dicey form of argument because the default reaction before looking into it absolutely be "Okay, we'll just hit you under that rule instead", but if you can actually make a cogent argument that it is another rule and under the logic of that rule it's a less big deal, there absolutely is a valid argument for reduction there.
 
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