2024 AT 06 Staff and Mandemon discussion thread.

[Fey'lya]

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.

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I suspect that it's employed less as a defense and more of a "if this was an infraction in my case why was it not an infraction in these cases" - i.e. trying to figure out what the underlying principle is. It's not really the sort of thing you can work out pre-hoc, after all. SV's rules exist (by design) in the fuzzy world of implementation, so simple "just don't post slurs here, just don't insult people's dogs there" style clarifications aren't available. Thus users are left to interpretation, and also the explanation of people like our Arbitrator team.

That's still not to say that Council should care about it, but a touch of extra explanation can go a long way, even if it's just "I agree with the arbs".

 

[Sotek]

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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Yeah, but good luck pulling that off when you have a 25-point infraction and a history to start with.

As for this ruling: idk, seemed pretty obvious to me? That thread is harshly moderated, that post was hostile and inflammatory, Mandemon has a history...

 

[Nyvis]

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.

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I think it's a valid council action if they've already raised the lack of infraction for the other posts and staff has already stated they won't do anything about it. Reports aren't magical and you can read their output (doubly so as a councillor with report queue access).

But outside of that very specific context which should be driven more by the council than the appellant, don't try it kids.

 

[Exponent]

Honestly, this is why I get my appeals resolved in arbitration.

 

[Wind-Up Citrus]

Honestly, this is why I get my appeals resolved in arbitration.

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Would you mind elaborating? Tribunals have shown that Council does not unilaterally agree with Arbitration/Moderation.

 

[Exponent]

Would you mind elaborating? Tribunals have shown that Council does not unilaterally agree with Arbitration/Moderation.

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It's just a general statement that it's wiser to focus on resolving appeals in Arbitration rather than with the Council since you logically have convince only one Arbitrator why your appeal was either unfair or mistaken (which I've done a couple times) as opposed to making the same argument to multiple Councilors who may have different views and understandings of rules. That is generally why I put some effort in my appeals and making sure they're overturned or reduced.

I actually don't have massive problems with Potato Anarchy; she has generally been fair in my dealing with her and actually helpful.

 

[Delirium]

"Why didn't X get hit if I got hit" is a manifestly correct argument in my honest opinion and if the administration can't or won't answer it that's a significant problem.

Of course, a lot of the time the answer is as simple as 'that post didn't break the rules even though you don't like it.'

 

[Exponent]

"Why didn't X get hit if I got hit" is a manifestly correct argument in my honest opinion and if the administration can't or won't answer it that's a significant problem.

Of course, a lot of the time the answer is as simple as 'that post didn't break the rules even though you don't like it.'

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I feel like the Advocate or claimant could've not only highlighted that, but mentioned they were going to report the posts that should've been also hit as well to ensure the fair administration of the rules. Users can misinterpret what is and isn't actionable, but you've a got a clear incentive to do that. If the reports go through, fair treatment is meted out. If not, you've potentially got a double standard that can help your own case.

It basically forces the fair administration of the rules.

 

[poaw]

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)

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It isn't.

They once agreed amongst themselves that the user didn't break the rules and was wrongly infracted, but then banned him anyway because they hated him lol.

 

[Girlbonzo Bean]

"Why didn't X get hit if I got hit" is a manifestly correct argument in my honest opinion and if the administration can't or won't answer it that's a significant problem.

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I mean, the thing is that it's not arbitration's job to answer it. We can't read the mind of moderators and it isn't our job to adjucate every single post that somebody thinks might break the rules, this is something I think nobody wants for a lot of reasons, frankly,. If you have issues, you are free to provide feedback to a Moderation head or even general Administrator, post in AAPQ, there are avenues for at least raising this and it being heard (perhaps not agreed with or felt like it's a matter that needs to be dealt with, but certainly heard) by members of Administration whose job is actually to handle moderation issues. An appeal isn't the place to relitigate all the conduct of a moderator, or a group of moderators, and their interpretation of the posts that they consider it not rulebreaking. That is simply well, well beyond the scope of what an appeal should be. This is of course assuming those posts are reported at all, and very very frequently the people who talk about hwo Y should have been hit never even reported the posts in question. In which case the most I can do is shriug anyway.

 

[Delirium]

I mean, the thing is that it's not arbitration's job to answer it. We can't read the mind of moderators and it isn't our job to adjucate every single post that somebody thinks might break the rules, this is something I think nobody wants for a lot of reasons, frankly,. If you have issues, you are free to provide feedback to a Moderation head or even general Administrator, post in AAPQ, there are avenues for at least raising this and it being heard (perhaps not agreed with or felt like it's a matter that needs to be dealt with, but certainly heard) by members of Administration whose job is actually to handle moderation issues. An appeal isn't the place to relitigate all the conduct of a moderator, or a group of moderators, and their interpretation of the posts that they consider it not rulebreaking. That is simply well, well beyond the scope of what an appeal should be. This is of course assuming those posts are reported at all, and very very frequently the people who talk about hwo Y should have been hit never even reported the posts in question. In which case the most I can do is shriug anyway.

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Having never been to tribunal it's not like it's a huge concern of mine, but that said: In my mind the policy issue here is that if a post gets reported the mod investigating that report should not just be looking at the reported post, they should be holistically reviewing the context of the post in the thread. As someone who's been a forum moderator before I feel like it was almost universally my experience that even a single report indicated a thread had bigger problems. Aside from driveby shitposts if a post gets reported in a long-running discussion then chances are the problem really arose much further ago in the chain and nobody felt the need to report it.

Most people put up with a lot before they reach for the report button so their reports aren't, as a matter of targetting accuracy, trustworthy in and of themselves. They're an invitation to review the thread they happened in, not to perform a moderator action on the specific post that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

In that sense 'you didn't report this post right next to yours so we didn't action it' can never be an excuse. If it's a different thread or many hundreds of pages ago, sure, but if it's within the same context as what was infracted then it represents a serious procedural failure. And I think it's that procedural failure that gives grounds for raising it as an argument within a tribunal. If moderation isn't moderating equally (and to be clear this is a very high bar to clear), then speaking personally I would view that as grounds for an overturn if I were a councillor.

Just for extra clarity I don't think this has any relevance to the tribunal being discussed ITT.

 

[LoserThree]

"Another person's behavior also broke the rules," isn't a defense against being infracted because that argument says nothing about the infracted person's behavior (usually or maybe ever). I think most of those of us who follow the tribunals already understand that. We do seem to see it play out often enough.

But, "another person's behavior also broke the rules," also isn't generally accepted as a cause for action by administration and maybe it's less clear why. So here's some ideas.

• Mods already looked at the thread, obviously, and going back to look at other posters beyond the context of existing infractions is spending more time and attention resources for less return.
• People who are infracted are reasonably expected to be less able to identify infractions, so the odds of finding infractions where infracted people say there're infractions aren't great.
• Forum governance isn't about justice, it's about having a forum worth using. Justice is a tool for keeping the forum usable, not the end goal. The forum remains very usable with few and limited rebellions so obviously the current system is fine.
• Forum governance does not have time to run errands for infracted people. That's not why they're here.
• Maybe it turns out that, "another person's behavior also broke the rules," wins kind of regularly at the arbitration level but only when the infracted person or their advocate puts a whole hell of a lot of work into it and those of us who follow the tribunals won't ever see it and don't need to know about it.
• And maybe it turns out that, "another person's behavior also broke the rules," matters when it's true and it just isn't ever true.

I'm just throwing out ideas, here.

 

[Girlbonzo Bean]

Having never been to tribunal it's not like it's a huge concern of mine, but that said: In my mind the policy issue here is that if a post gets reported the mod investigating that report should not just be looking at the reported post, they should be holistically reviewing the context of the post in the thread. As someone who's been a forum moderator before I feel like it was almost universally my experience that even a single report indicated a thread had bigger problems. Aside from driveby shitposts if a post gets reported in a long-running discussion then chances are the problem really arose much further ago in the chain and nobody felt the need to report it.

Most people put up with a lot before they reach for the report button so their reports aren't, as a matter of targetting accuracy, trustworthy in and of themselves. They're an invitation to review the thread they happened in, not to perform a moderator action on the specific post that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

In that sense 'you didn't report this post right next to yours so we didn't action it' can never be an excuse. If it's a different thread or many hundreds of pages ago, sure, but if it's within the same context as what was infracted then it represents a serious procedural failure. And I think it's that procedural failure that gives grounds for raising it as an argument within a tribunal. If moderation isn't moderating equally (and to be clear this is a very high bar to clear), then speaking personally I would view that as grounds for an overturn if I were a councillor.

Just for extra clarity I don't think this has any relevance to the tribunal being discussed ITT.

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The fact is that the logical conclusion of this is that a moderator needs to review every post in a thread and whether or not it breask the rules, because if we aren't going by what's reported, there is nothing that makes one conversation more worthy 6of an examination than another conversation. And you can't appeal to the fact that the conversation was important e enough to warrant a report because you are also arguing that reports are not indicative of anything other than that the moderator needs to see what is going on in the thread. So why should their assessment even be limited to a specific conversation? As you say, users put up with a lot before they report anything, so clearly there coudl have been behavior that is at least borderline that was not engaged with at all vis a vis the report tool.

Mods do pretty consistently look at the thread's context, but they do so to assess the report. Assessing a single post can frankly be a substantial amount of work; sometimes in the context of Rule 3 or something of course, it is a matter of if something is a straight insult or not, but even that can be slightly more murky, and there can be contextual factors that can influence how severe the breach is considered in some specific contexts. An infraction is sometimes clear cut, but can sometimes be actively context-dependent. The rules are actively intended to be up for interpretation and be very case-by-case because we tried a stricter ruleset and that doesn't work, but it does mean that assessing whether or not a post breaks the rules requires more assessing of context and consideration and personal judgment.

Asking for a moderator to assess an entire thread, or even just an entire conversation, is a big burden to put on a volunteer when you're asking that they do it for every single infraction. There have been cases when a moderator has to sweep a thread, this is a tremendous effort that even if you split it into teams, which has occurred, takes a significant amount of time that could be spent on other reports or just, you know, doing anything aside from unpaid moderation work.

I respect that you have experience in this area, but it is you having experience in this area that confuses me as to this being your conclusion. And that's setting aside the fact that even if I accepted your argument, it still has no place in an appeal, it is something that you have several avenues to bring up, as I noted, and I didn't even mention discussing it with a member of Council who can then directly raise the point to Administration themselves, if yoiu don't want to bring that much attention to the issue or believe that doing so isn't productive from a user's end. Like even if I accepted your aregument, it simply isn't a good argument for an appeal, especially since "Administration" being able to answer that isnt' something that gets handled in an appeal, because the only party involved in the appeal process like, 95% of the time at this point is arbitration. Council doing it involves people who can't even defend themselves not only having their posts litigated, but litigated and debated in a conversaton that will proceed to be public and read by the entire forum, so I would think that that wouldn't be seen as ideal either?

 

[Sotek]

"Another person's behavior also broke the rules," isn't a defense against being infracted because that argument says nothing about the infracted person's behavior (usually or maybe ever). I think most of those of us who follow the tribunals already understand that. We do seem to see it play out often enough.

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Well, that's not actually the argument usually offered.

The argument, often somewhat implicit, is "If my post was rulebreaking, then X post should have also been considered rulebreaking. X post has not been judged rulebreaking, therefore my post should not be judged rulebreaking."

And I think that it would be good if that argument was engaged with more directly when it comes up - "no, that post is not rulebreaking and yours is" could potentially be a good way to explain what the distinction actually is, if there is such a distinction.

But it's not great for council, no.

 

[Ford Prefect]

This line of argument is asinine. In order for it to work you have to both establish that the other post is substantially the same as yours, that the other post is in violation of the rules, that it is in violation of the rules in the same way that your post is alleged to be in violation, that it has been brought to the attention of the moderation team and that the moderation team assessed the other post as not being in violation of the rules. If you are wrong on any limb of that argument then it fails, and two of those limbs turn on information which you are very unlikely to have. Even if this was the kind of argument which would definitely get an infraction reversed it's so difficult to mount that doing so is a waste of your time.

 

[Sotek]

This line of argument is asinine. In order for it to work you have to both establish that the other post is substantially the same as yours, that the other post is in violation of the rules, that it is in violation of the rules in the same way that your post is alleged to be in violation, that it has been brought to the attention of the moderation team and that the moderation team assessed the other post as not being in violation of the rules. If you are wrong on any limb of that argument then it fails, and two of those limbs turn on information which you are very unlikely to have. Even if this was the kind of argument which would definitely get an infraction reversed it's so difficult to mount that doing so is a waste of your time.

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It's really easy to have the information that a given post was brought to the attention of moderation and judged non-rule-violating, though, Ford - you just have to report it and get the report rejected.

Now, I've never been infracted, and I don't think I'm particularly likely to (... mostly because my reaction to anger in arguments is to instantly disengage, so I tend not to make dumb angry posts, I just vanish for a while, but still...) but if I was infracted and I thought that there were other posts in the discussion that were "at least as rulebreaking" as my own post, I would absolutely be reporting them.

 

[Delirium]

The fact is that the logical conclusion of this is that a moderator needs to review every post in a thread and whether or not it breask the rules, because if we aren't going by what's reported, there is nothing that makes one conversation more worthy 6of an examination than another conversation. And you can't appeal to the fact that the conversation was important e enough to warrant a report because you are also arguing that reports are not indicative of anything other than that the moderator needs to see what is going on in the thread. So why should their assessment even be limited to a specific conversation? As you say, users put up with a lot before they report anything, so clearly there coudl have been behavior that is at least borderline that was not engaged with at all vis a vis the report tool.

Mods do pretty consistently look at the thread's context, but they do so to assess the report. Assessing a single post can frankly be a substantial amount of work; sometimes in the context of Rule 3 or something of course, it is a matter of if something is a straight insult or not, but even that can be slightly more murky, and there can be contextual factors that can influence how severe the breach is considered in some specific contexts. An infraction is sometimes clear cut, but can sometimes be actively context-dependent. The rules are actively intended to be up for interpretation and be very case-by-case because we tried a stricter ruleset and that doesn't work, but it does mean that assessing whether or not a post breaks the rules requires more assessing of context and consideration and personal judgment.

Asking for a moderator to assess an entire thread, or even just an entire conversation, is a big burden to put on a volunteer when you're asking that they do it for every single infraction. There have been cases when a moderator has to sweep a thread, this is a tremendous effort that even if you split it into teams, which has occurred, takes a significant amount of time that could be spent on other reports or just, you know, doing anything aside from unpaid moderation work.

I respect that you have experience in this area, but it is you having experience in this area that confuses me as to this being your conclusion. And that's setting aside the fact that even if I accepted your argument, it still has no place in an appeal, it is something that you have several avenues to bring up, as I noted, and I didn't even mention discussing it with a member of Council who can then directly raise the point to Administration themselves, if yoiu don't want to bring that much attention to the issue or believe that doing so isn't productive from a user's end. Like even if I accepted your aregument, it simply isn't a good argument for an appeal, especially since "Administration" being able to answer that isnt' something that gets handled in an appeal, because the only party involved in the appeal process like, 95% of the time at this point is arbitration. Council doing it involves people who can't even defend themselves not only having their posts litigated, but litigated and debated in a conversaton that will proceed to be public and read by the entire forum, so I would think that that wouldn't be seen as ideal either?

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Ultimately this is a kind of 'thems the breaks' situation. Moderation is a lot of work, it just is. Good moderation requires the moderator to try and genuinely understand what a bunch of people who aren't yourself meant in the past, often exclusively via text. There's a really, really good reason that every single techbro in the entire universe wants to outsource it to an unpaid, mysterious algorithm that will do it for free: it costs a lot to do real moderation. For techbros it costs money in the form of wages but for forums like this it costs time in the form of unpaid volunteer hours. As Brad Pitt says in Moneyball, it's an unfair game. A moderator will in almost all cases take significantly more time to understand and properly moderate a post than the post's original writer spent on writing it. On top of that, there are more posters than there are moderators so in the time it takes a moderator to properly moderate one post a hundred and fifty more will have been written. The utility of a report is a signal flare, similar to an emergency call in the real world: hey, there's some kind of a problem happening here. And in the same way that I would hope a fire department doesn't just put the visible fire out and leave in half an hour, I would hope moderation doesn't just act on the exact thing they were called in to look at.

But this unfairness cuts both ways, and it's why the argument is valid when put toward a council imo. As far as I'm concerned the council exists to try the administration's argument that something breaks the rules against the userbase's interests in not getting arbitrarily infracted. Again, in most cases the answer will be as simple as 'okay but that post doesn't break any rules, you just don't like it.' But in some cases it won't be and in those cases, I think that's a strong argument for procedural error which is the kind of argument the council is both uniquely positioned to receive and adjudicate on (being the final stop), and also has a somewhat special interest in hearing about (being the counter-balance against unfairness). It goes without saying that the whole charade of the council exists at the mercy of the administration.

You could also argue that in a roundabout way this form of appeal is just another way of making a report so the user probably should receive a similar response to any other kind of report anyway, whether that be 'no action' or not. If the report is invalidated for not being raised through the proper channels that strikes me a bit too bureaucratic. The content was flagged, so moderation should review it. I think the reason the administration would be reluctant to do this kind of thing is a kind of statute of limitations due to how long tribunals can take; depending on the type of rule-breaking there's arguably no real good reason to go back and infract a post that's been sitting there for weeks. But that strengthens the procedural error side, imo. If one post is infracted and another not despite both breaking the rules because only one of them was reported quickly enough then there's a real issue of unfairness there.

In order for it to work you have to both establish that the other post is substantially the same as yours, that the other post is in violation of the rules, that it is in violation of the rules in the same way that your post is alleged to be in violation, that it has been brought to the attention of the moderation team and that the moderation team assessed the other post as not being in violation of the rules.

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I don't think you have to prove all of these. All you have to prove is that the other post is substantially the same, everything else follows quite naturally. If the posts are substantially the same and your post is in violation of the rules then the other post is also in violation of the rules and in violation in the same way. That's what substantially the same means. Whether it was brought to the moderation's attention is fundamentally irrelevant because whether someone sees you break the rules is immaterial, and whether they assessed it as in violation or not is likewise irrelevant because of the first point that the posts are substantially similar. All that tells me is that the initial moderators didn't agree the posts were substantially the same but that's no deal breaker because the whole point of an appeal is that you have a quibble with the initial moderators.

Edit: Ultimately the point of the argument is to highlight a perceived inconsistency in application and I think inconsistency in the application is absolutely fair grounds for an appeal. The inconsistency harms the user's ability to fairly argue their case. It's a procedural error in the same way that letting an appeal sit there for six months is a procedural error.

 

[Ford Prefect]

It's really easy to have the information that a given post was brought to the attention of moderation and judged non-rule-violating, though, Ford - you just have to report it and get the report rejected.

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Appeals are made under a time limit and there is no guarantee that your report will be dealt with before the deadline. This is not to mention that in the event that a moderator agrees that the post you're reported should be infracted then the basis of your argument disappears. Then you're stuck putting together a different argument with less time to do so. You would have been better served making that argument to begin with and spending more time with it.

Trying to loophole your way out of an infraction is pointless. Just mount the argument that moderator made a mistake in assessing your post.

Whether it was brought to the moderation's attention is fundamentally irrelevant because whether someone sees you break the rules is immaterial, and whether they assessed it as in violation or not is likewise irrelevant because of the first point that the posts are substantially similar.

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If it has not been seen and has not been assessed then it is completely irrelevant to the question of whether your post violated the rules.

 

[Delirium]

If it has not been seen and has not been assessed then it is completely irrelevant to the question of whether your post violated the rules.

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That's not really the point here though. The question isn't whether your post broke the rules as such, it's whether your post should have been infracted. I think there's a subtle difference there that makes it absolutely relevant. Whether this hypothetical other post has been seen or not is irrelevant to whether the other post breaks the rules, but it is relevant to whether the other post was infracted, which in turn is relevant to whether your post should have been infracted.

 

[Ford Prefect]

The question isn't whether your post broke the rules as such, it's whether your post should have been infracted.

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I have no idea how you've come to this conclusion but for your own good and the good of everyone happening to read this exchange this is absolutely not true. The appeals guide states If you believe that a Staff disciplinary decision was wrong - either because the Staff got the facts wrong or because they interpreted the rules incorrectly - you can challenge that decision. The basis of your argument should always be that the infracting moderator erred in their assessment of your post as rules violating. If you cannot mount that argument then there are others you can make (such as the moderator erring in the severity of the punishment, for example), but fundamentally the core basis of any appeal should be that your post didn't break the rules.

 

[Delirium]

I have no idea how you've come to this conclusion but for your own good and the good of everyone happening to read this exchange this is absolutely not true. The appeals guide states If you believe that a Staff disciplinary decision was wrong - either because the Staff got the facts wrong or because they interpreted the rules incorrectly - you can challenge that decision. The basis of your argument should always be that the infracting moderator erred in their assessment of your post as rules violating. If you cannot mount that argument then there are others you can make (such as the moderator erring in the severity of the punishment, for example), but fundamentally the core basis of any appeal should be that your post didn't break the rules.

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Councillors have very much argued on that basis before, however. Once something enters Tribunal it kind of becomes another thing entirely where the rules for what are and aren't reasonable arguments for appeal are quite different. I suppose you could compare it to the difference between a pardon and a not guilty at trial.

Multiple members of Council in this appeal for example argue on the basis that yes, the users posts factually broke the rules, but the infraction should be overturned because the user apologised: 2023-AT-11: Staff and Kingcrusader Overturned

In this appeal multiple members of Council argue that the user's post did not rise to the level of rule-breaking because the tone of the thread was already quite bad: 2023-AT-13: Staff and ChineseDrone Overturned

This appeal is fairly similar to the first, by my count at least two members of council argue on the basis of it being objectively over the line but the apology being enough to render it non-actionable: 2023-AT-08: Staff and FortePlus Overturned

This appeal even has a councillor (arguably two ) fairly directly reference this exact argument as grounds for an overturn 2022-AT-17: Staff and Jemnite Overturned

The council seems quite happy to discuss an appeal on grounds beyond whether something strictly does or does not break the rules. You can say that these are a minority of opinions amongst councillors, and certainly there are posts from councillors telling other councillors that they don't agree with this line of reasoning but... so what? The council is the council, it can discuss (within reason) what it wants, or so it seems to me. Maybe you disagree with that but it certainly seems to be how council operates in practice.

 

[Ford Prefect]

This isn't a matter of agreeing and disagreeing. I administer the entire system and I am telling you how it works.

 

[Ford Prefect]

I want to reiterate to any users reading this that if you are in a position where you wish to appeal a disciplinary action against you, you will be best served by making use of the resources we have provided to assist you. If you are unclear about any aspect of the process the arbitration team will generally be able to provide you advice, and if they cannot they can always bring your matter to the attention of someone who can.

 

[Delirium]

This isn't a matter of agreeing and disagreeing. I administer the entire system and I am telling you how it works.

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That doesn't really engage with councillors doing it though. Either they're arguing wrong, in which case okay but someone should probably tell them that, or it's fair. Or you're publicly disputing it along a kind of 'jury nullification doesn't legally exist' angle I suppose.

 

[Nyvis]

That doesn't really engage with councillors doing it though. Either they're arguing wrong, in which case okay but someone should probably tell them that, or it's fair. Or you're publicly disputing it along a kind of 'jury nullification doesn't legally exist' angle I suppose.

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I think you're just arguing about different things honestly? Ford is talking about appeals in general not council arguments, which can be anything, including humorous bits, if it's what the people voted in.