2024 AT 06 Staff and Mandemon discussion thread.

Nyvis said:
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.
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That could be the case, I'm definitely talking about from the point of view of a tribunal before councillors.
 
In this context I am the inventor of toaster strudel while you are, at best, a hobbyist commentator on puff pastry. The first port of call for appeals is an arbitrator and arbitrators will both consider your post against the rules and have the power to dismiss your appeal if it doesn't meet minimum standards. Stop giving out bad advice.
 
I'm not giving out advice in the first place. I'm making a cluster of claims about how I think things ought to be, how I would rule on it hypothetically and why I think certain things are true. Not one of them is 'you should definitely do this in an appeal.'
 
Despite all the lawyer LARP to the contrary, neither the Moderators, the Arbitrators nor the Council are bound by their past decisions. They are also not bound to judge you for the specific rule you were originally infracted for. If you want your appeal to be successful, you've got to convince them on the individual merits of your specific case, because that's the only thing anyone is going to be looking at.

The best argument to make in an appeal is the affirmative case that your post is the sort of post that should be allowed on Sufficient Velocity.

The second best argument to make in an appeal is that you understand the rule you broke and promise not to break it again.

The third best argument to make in an appeal is that your post wasn't THAT bad, but the Moderator read a bad intention into it that wasn't really there.

The worst argument to make during an appeal is whichever one clearly shows that you don't understand the site rules and either can't or won't follow them.

Bringing up other people's infractable posts is just a special case of that last one. The process for reporting bad posts is really easy: you just click the report button and type what was wrong with the post into the little box that comes up, thereby creating an entry into the Moderation queue. Arbitrators are not Moderators and neither have access to the report queue nor to the infraction button. There is literally nothing they can do about posts that haven't been taken to Appeal that you can't do for yourself via the report button. Bringing up other posts is the rhetorical equivalent of submitting quest votes via direct message: annoying, unlikely to count for anything and clear evidence you don't get how this all works.
 
Delirium said:
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.
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In the case where one post broke the rules and got infracted while multiple similar posts also broke the same rules yet didn't get infracted, the ideal resolution is for those other posts to also become infracted. But neither the Arbitrator nor the Council are empowered to do that, and it probably wouldn't be good if they could. Thus, we've had (and will continue to have) a number of tribunals that seem to come to unfair results due to the Council being unable to address the fact that some posts in a rule breaking situation were not moderated properly. Which sucks.

But I don't think any of that is a good reason to allow even more posts to break the rules without infraction.

(There's no good way to deal with "this post that clearly broke the rules wasn't infracted like it should be". Maybe a few people make threads in Ask A Private Question, but whenever I see it happen I just give up.)
 
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This is getting a little tempest in a teacup-y. The Council does have means of addressing a situation as described. There's like a million options for communication, including almost literally getting us on the phone every fortnight lol. If it's seriously a big deal then it's open to at least mention it in the context of a related tribunal.
 
Derpmind said:
In the case where one post broke the rules and got infracted while multiple similar posts also broke the same rules yet didn't get infracted, the ideal resolution is for those other posts to also become infracted. But neither the Arbitrator nor the Council are empowered to do that, and it'd probably wouldn't be good if they could. Thus, we've had (and will continue to have) a number of tribunals that seem to come to unfair results due to the Council being unable to address the fact that some posts in a rule breaking situation were not moderated properly. Which sucks.

But I don't think any of that is a good reason to allow even more posts to break the rules without infraction.

(There's no good way to deal with "this post that clearly broke the rules was't infracted like it should be". Maybe a few people make threads in Ask A Private Question, but when it happens to me I just give up.)
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I think there's two ways to look at this. From the PoV of a system that's reasonable to exist I think my preference is for one that delivers the resolution of 'all uninfracted, but everyone is on notice and we'll do better next time.' In an ideal vacuum universe though you're right, it would be preferable to infract all of the posts.
 
Ford Prefect said:
This is getting a little tempest in a teacup-y. The Council does have means of addressing a situation as described. There's like a million options for communication, including almost literally getting us on the phone every fortnight lol. If it's seriously a big deal then it's open to at least mention it in the context of a related tribunal.
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Bear in mind this is entirely obscured to regular users though, so it's not too surprising they don't think much of it.
 
Ford Prefect said:
It sure is lucky that we implemented something to address that, too. It's called the Community Council, which you may have heard of :p
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Most SV users don't really keep up with council discussions outside tribunals even when we update them, and the updates are only for the official meetings. It's easy to think something you mentioned to a councillor so they bring it up to staff just got lost, when actually it got a rejection argument instead.
 
Nyvis said:
Bear in mind this is entirely obscured to regular users though, so it's not too surprising they don't think much of it.
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This is particularly awkward with the dynamics of normal appeals, I feel. The appeals that are the most visible to the community-at-large, get scrutinized, and generate user impressions of the appeals systems, are the ones that go to the council. But these are by far the minority: my estimate is that only like 10% at most of appeals that get filed end up moving on to Tribunal, because the rest get dismissed procedurally and the user doesn't bother fixing it, or the Arbitrator finds in the user's favor and Staff doesn't appeal (afaik Staff appealing an overturn has only happened one time like two years ago), or the Arbitrator doesn't find in the user's favor and the user takes the L and moves on (which happens a lot). So... the datapoints that are publicized and help the userbase understand the system are all datapoints that are, definitionally, exceptional.

I don't know of a good solution for this. Certainly I would oppose any proposal for the Appeals forum to become generally legible, even in retrospect the way Tribunals are: I think there is a lot of value in appeals being private as a rule for everyone involved in the process. The best I've got is "I keep an eye on all the Tribunal discussion threads and pop in to talk about my Advocate-eye experience of the system whenever it seems like it might be useful," because, well, the Advocate experience of the system is probably the one closest aligned with the general userbase? But most users who wind up wanting to file appeals are not habitual readers of these discussion threads, so this feels a little like bailing with a thimble.
 
picklepikkl said:
This is particularly awkward with the dynamics of normal appeals, I feel. The appeals that are the most visible to the community-at-large, get scrutinized, and generate user impressions of the appeals systems, are the ones that go to the council. But these are by far the minority: my estimate is that only like 10% of appeals that get filed end up moving on to Tribunal, because the rest get dismissed procedurally and the user doesn't bother fixing it, or the Arbitrator finds in the user's favor and Staff doesn't appeal (afaik Staff appealing an overturn has only happened one time like two years ago), or the Arbitrator doesn't find in the user's favor and the user takes the L and moves on (which happens a lot). So... the datapoints that are publicized and help the userbase understand the system are all datapoints that are, definitionally, exceptional.

I don't know of a good solution for this. Certainly I would oppose any proposal for the Appeals forum to become generally legible, even in retrospect the way Tribunals are: I think there is a lot of value in appeals being private as a rule for everyone involved in the process. The best I've got is "I keep an eye on all the Tribunal discussion threads and pop in to talk about my Advocate-eye experience of the system whenever it seems like it might be useful," because, well, the Advocate experience of the system is probably the one closest aligned with the general userbase? But most users who wind up wanting to file appeals are not habitual readers of these discussion threads, so this feels a little like bailing with a thimble.
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The council has in fact brought up the idea of publishing some non tribunal appeals (with agreement of the appellants) before but I don't think it ever really got a reaction. I still think it's the easiest solution.
 
It's a problem of scale, really. The website's too big for everyone to know the mods and councilors and admin by name, let alone personally. A perennial problem for internet communities. No user is ever going to be comfortable with, or ascribe human motives and sympathies to, the archetypical admin/mod/councilor in their imagination, and while you can present opportunities to address that it's really just a mitigation strategy.

Plus, "but why I am I being singled out when everyone was doing it" is an extremely natural argument from a user perspective, no matter how inconvenient that is. That moderation can't be seen to be bullied into infracting people's posts is an important thing, especially since most of the time users are most likely irritated about posters they were arguing against, but it's not surprising it keeps getting used as a starting place.

The other version of that argument, "I should not be infracted because no one else was" is an argument for like, fitting into the localized thread tone, but incentivizes everyone to be as nasty to each other as possible to cover for everyone at once. People seem to instinctively avoid that one, but it actually sometimes has success, at least when the council brings it up on their own, and the post in question was kinda borderline.

Double plus, it's not unreasonable for users to want to use precedent in their arguments considering it is often used by staff, council, etc against them, whether their own previous actions or the way the council ruled on similar events in the past. The issue is that the argument for precedent from the user side is more like proving a negative, they can't know why a specific post they point to got passed over, it could even be being discussed at that moment! A post is never affirmatively "not infracted" in a way user-visible, so they have very little else to point to. The asymmetry of precedent is part of why Advocates are so useful, they likely know of a case that was similar that got overturned, if it exists.

This is part of why I think the arbitration step should be publicly posted also, not just tribunals. Users would have more examples to draw from that could actually be acceptable comparison arguments, and seeing how often Arbs reduce or overturn infractions would probably be a huge benefit to the use of the appeal system.

Edit: Err, I mean... Bargle bargle I'm a goblin!
 
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So uh, despite two pages of whatever that was, it is also the case that "other people broke the rules too" wasn't a factor in this appeal? Either as a failed defense tactic or otherwise? We brought up other people's posts sure, but only to illustrate that Mandemon's tack wasn't wildly off-topic and rather that he was responding to specific claims. Ford et al are completely correct that "other people were naughty too" didn't work when we were two, and it won't work now.

That said, it can be blastedly difficult to work out why some posts get hit and others don't even with the increased visibility one gets as an Advocate. I can only imagine how intimidating it'd be for Joe Q. User to figure out what they're supposed to do.
 
Fey'lya said:
That said, it can be blastedly difficult to work out why some posts get hit and others don't even with the increased visibility one gets as an Advocate. I can only imagine how intimidating it'd be for Joe Q. User to figure out what they're supposed to do.
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I sincerely don't want to make any waves or anything for obvious reasons but this comment speaks to my very soul.

SV is a confusing place. There are such an incredibly rigid, byzantine rules that are enforced with extreme prejudice. Sometimes. Othertimes they seem to be ignored. Sometimes the same exact thing can be said, one is an infraction, one is not.

This is an oddly unique community in that regard. I've never found a forum that was so downright confusing on what is allowed to be said and what is not. Not trying to excuse any of my past behavior, i've done and said some dumb stuff, but in general this place very much feels like walking on egg shells and trying to find the correct position to have on something.
 
Yeah to get banned you really have to give it a good try and deliberately refuse to back off even when you know you're close to it.
 
Evilchumlee said:
I sincerely don't want to make any waves or anything for obvious reasons but this comment speaks to my very soul.

SV is a confusing place. There are such an incredibly rigid, byzantine rules that are enforced with extreme prejudice. Sometimes. Othertimes they seem to be ignored. Sometimes the same exact thing can be said, one is an infraction, one is not.

This is an oddly unique community in that regard. I've never found a forum that was so downright confusing on what is allowed to be said and what is not. Not trying to excuse any of my past behavior, i've done and said some dumb stuff, but in general this place very much feels like walking on egg shells and trying to find the correct position to have on something.
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I honestly think this isn't the case at all.

There are years worth of examples of moderators and site staff explaining the reasoning behind why certain things get infracted and why others don't. There is a subforum dedicated to asking the staff questions, you can appeal 90% of site punishments.

On most forums you are given a list of rules that are usually quite bare bones, punished when you break them and sometimes even punished for questioning them at all. A lot of sites don't give you any sort of second chance before banning you, and the nice ones might give you 3 strikes. On SV you can ask why a thread is locked or a topic is banned, and you will get an answer (even if you don't like it) Disagreeing with the staff also doesn't lead to bans and the staff are held to their own rules. To me, SV is a very lenient forum with lots of resources to allow you to understand the rules.
 
Hologram Killer said:
On most forums you are given a list of rules that are usually quite bare bones, punished when you break them and sometimes even punished for questioning them at all. A lot of sites don't give you any sort of second chance before banning you, and the nice ones might give you 3 strikes. On SV you can ask why a thread is locked or a topic is banned, and you will get an answer (even if you don't like it) Disagreeing with the staff also doesn't lead to bans and the staff are held to their own rules. To me, SV is a very lenient forum with lots of resources to allow you to understand the rules.
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We may have different experiences with forums, which is ok. I have never encounter a forum such as what you described. I'm sure the exist, but I have not encountered them personally. My experience at SV has been one of the more draconian forums I have encountered, which is also ok. I have certainly found it much more difficult to not break rules here on SV than in any other community I have been a part of. Which makes temp bans less constructive... as I will frequent less restrictive boards in the meantime and have to almost relearn the very deliberate form of speech required at SV.

That's all ok. It's just a confusing place. Thank you for your perspective. SV as a whole please take no disrespect, despite what I see as outright draconian moderation, I keep coming back, trying to piece it together more and more and try to be as deliberate and mindful of every single word that I type so as to ensure there is no offense that could be interpreted. I hope I am successful. Thank you.
 
I think SV moderation is also surprising to some people because it has a fairly behavior-focused set of rules that can be very permissive of content if it follows those guidelines, which is different from narrowly content focused moderation which is more common on very large boards or on small/young communities.
 
Potato Anarchy said:
I think SV moderation is also surprising to some people because it has a fairly behavior-focused set of rules that can be very permissive of content if it follows those guidelines, which is different from narrowly content focused moderation which is more common on very large boards or on small/young communities.
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Perhaps that is why it's confusing, because not even anything involving me, but i'll observe that X thing is said and is totally fine one place, and then x is said somewhere else and it's infracted. There seems to be inconsistency in moderation where sometimes something is ok, sometimes something isn't. My brain might be just more ordered in that way to see the world as " if x thing is wrong, x thing is wrong". Let's be entirely honest with ourselves, SV has a very clear political alignment/culture. There are certainly times where if somebody is not completely aligned with that, what is an "obvious" rule violation to some wouldn't even register to another. That's also ok... it just illustrating where some of the difficulty of understanding could come from. I know I personally have said things that got infracted for Rule 2 that in a million years I would have never even remotely considered to be hateful in any way. But by SV's measure, infraction. Again... perfectly ok, that's the board, but it's not quite as easy to integrate if you don't share very close political alignment.

I think I have said what needed to be said and I am thankful for the opportunity to have done so. Part of what I generally need to learn is when to stop, and when to avoid a derail. This feels like an appropriate time, so thank you for all for hearing me. Appreciate you.
 
You typically only get infracted for combatposting, inappropriate hornyposting, or being a bigot, TBH. It really isn't hard to avoid being dinged if you post like a normal person and don't let anger or horny - or bigotry - overwrite your sanity. It also is not hard to learn how to post appropriately, unless you have never learned a filter.

And yeah it's significantly more transparent and understandable - and challengable and reasonable - than any other forum's moderation I've ever seen. It's nowhere near perfect, of course.

(My two infractions have been due to the 'anger overriding sanity' thing. I don't like Nazis or genocides and that makes me post angry occassionally!)
 
You also need to remember that the Mods are not always watching. The only way to know if something is okay is to report it and have the report rejected. It's almost an SV meme that you can have threads develop an entirely different culture that's vastly different from the rest of the board, often in rules-breaking ways but the staff only get a report once it's hundreds of pages long and then have to draw straws about who has to go in a clean it up.
 
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