Tithed_Verse
Vainglorious
- Location
- Iowa
- Pronouns
- They/Them
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2024-AT-08: Staff and Delirium
- Thread starter Delirium
- Start date
- Location
- UTC+0
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They
This is why I will vote Random again the next elections! Surely this time he will deliver!
Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
Definition of insanity....
- Location
- Chimney Canopy, just offscreen
Huh. Neat. TIL Staff Notice is not the same as a 0-point infraction, both of which exist and serve different purposes.
Also, although it's not specifically relevant here, how are votes tallied?
Example: If 6 votes uphold, 4 votes staff notice, and 3 votes 0-point infraction (and whatever leftovers abstain, it's not relevant), is the result an Uphold, 0-point, or Staff Notice?
More directly, does vote splitting spoil the result?
Also, although it's not specifically relevant here, how are votes tallied?
Example: If 6 votes uphold, 4 votes staff notice, and 3 votes 0-point infraction (and whatever leftovers abstain, it's not relevant), is the result an Uphold, 0-point, or Staff Notice?
More directly, does vote splitting spoil the result?
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- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
In theory. How much difference it makes in practice, well, let's say it's valid to question it, at least.
Whoever runs the tribunal, usually Datcord, does try to consolidate votes, so that vote spoiling does not happen, though that has led to one or two disputed calls about how the consolidation was done in the past. The general principle here seems to be in dubio pro reo - you need an actual majority to sanction the appellant. But that general principle doesn't cover all cases of a split up vote, of course.
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I wonder how much of the recent abundance of votes for 0-point infractions is driven by the details of the consolidation. Formally, if there's already a majority of votes to reduce, an additional vote to overturn doesn't affect what it's reduced to but a vote to reduce to 0 points might, so the 0-point infraction bucket can attract additional votes by bandwagon. In practice, I think Datcord flexes the procedure to take that into account somewhat. But what I don't know is how much individual councillors take said flexes into account when deciding between an overturn and a reduction to 0 points.
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A bit belated and somewhat answered by others, but I have to make this note on the regular, so....
It needs to be understood that a 0-point infraction is still an infraction, just without points due to some mitigating factor. A rule was broken, but no points were given for whatever reason. A Staff Notice is just a notification that a user has NOT broken any rules, but their posting/behaviour should be considered in the future so they don't.
In THAT SPECIFIC example, it would be noted as an uphold. The the six (6) votes for straight uphold are easy, the three (3) for a 0-point are "The rule was broken, but a reduction is warranted.", and the Staff Notice is "No rule was broken, but it's something that should be watched out for in the future."
Next would be if the split was even between the three options: Equal votes for uphold, 0-point, and Staff Notice. In that case, it would still be majority uphold (a rule was broken), and from there I would probably default to the policy of "Least harm" that we try to stick to: Reduce to a 0-point.
After that... If it was something like 3 uphold, 3 0-point, and 6 Staff Notice... that would be treated as a tie, "Least harm" would apply, and I would reduce it to a Staff Notice.
All that said... Tribunal aren't quests. The goal isn't to hedge your bets. If someone tries to vote for two options, I will tell them to pick one. Council should vote for what they feel is right and what they feel the rules do (or should) support. If there is confusion, I will ask for clarification or I will try to make my best judgement as to the intent of their posts. (I honestly try to avoid doing the latter whenever possible, since I really really don't want to misread something and potentially affect an outcome of a Tribunal because I kan't read gud.)
There's no weighted voting or whatever, really. I prefer to just... count the votes straight. The only time I have to interpret posts if if someone doesn't explicitly make a vote in it. And, thankfully, that can often be handled by just... asking them on Discord or something.
EDIT: Removed the double post.
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Omicron is on council. They have no power over moderation actions
It's the admins who do this.
RogueIce
Noctis Æternæ
- Location
- New Lunar Republic, Equestria
From the context, I'm guessing in this case it has less to do with "special treatment" and more "how many people are reading this"
If someone makes a marginal/over-the-line crack at Joe Quester, then assuming Joe shrugs it off said post will likely never be reported and never come to the official attention of the mods. A similar/same comment directed at a Popular Author who gets lots of views, on the other hand, will almost certainly get reported at least once (if not more) which then brings it to the attention of Staff.
The comment against Joe Quester may be just as infraction-worthy but if the Staff never sees it, it won't get one most likely. At least until Xon unleashes AI ModBots on the forum
Exponent
A character.
Not yet. Copyright pending.
More seriously, though, how can 0-point infractions count against you?
From the context, I'm guessing in this case it has less to do with "special treatment" and more "how many people are reading this"
If someone makes a marginal/over-the-line crack at Joe Quester, then assuming Joe shrugs it off said post will likely never be reported and never come to the official attention of the mods. A similar/same comment directed at a Popular Author who gets lots of views, on the other hand, will almost certainly get reported at least once (if not more) which then brings it to the attention of Staff.
The comment against Joe Quester may be just as infraction-worthy but if the Staff never sees it, it won't get one most likely. At least until Xon unleashes AI ModBots on the forum
Exactly this, yes. Thank you.
Like, the time stamps going back that far don't have the level of detail I'd need to produce receipts for this, but I remember the infraction came down pretty damn fast, maybe an hour, which tracks pretty well with a bunch of thread readers leaping to the defense, and then a mod coming in to nuke from orbit whatever generated the flurry of reports. Not an unreasonable response if what's happening is like, a slur-filled tirade or whatever, but tying back to Fey'lya's comment, backsassing a popular author kicks up a dust cloud of similar size, apparently.
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- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
- Pronouns
- She/They
Basically it's just a note on your record that you broke a rule at some point. In theory, that could be referenced by a Moderator or Arbitrator when deciding whether to show leniency, or it could come up in a User Review (this is a bit of an extreme case) when we're talking about and evaluating your overall history or record. In practice, for all those circumstances we're going to be more focused on the points-carrying infractions if there are any. All of the above also applies to Staff Notices but a 0-point infraction is a little more 'serious' in that it's a record that you did, in fact, break the rules rather than just toe the line.
The most likely circumstance I can see it being directly relevant is if you get a zero-point infraction for something and then you do the exact same thing later, in which case you're probably just going to get the regular 25-point infraction. I do think in general users are sometimes a little overly worried about how these smaller penalties might appear on their 'record' when most of the time if we're seriously talking about someone's history it's because they've gotten several major infractions over the period of a year or two.
camloste
Corsair
- Location
- the dreams i left behind
that's just not true. i mean, i'm sure y'all do your best to do that, mostly, and it's a good thing to aim for, but that's not an achievable thing.
like please don't take this as me alleging malice or anything, that's not what i mean in this case, but just based on subconscious social biases and the like, there's always gonna be an imbalance to this.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thus it was a violation of the only rule that matters.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm a head of a department and as far as I know I don't even get any spicy conspiracy theories
This isn't a thread for staff and users to get into a slug match, so I will not respond except to potentially clarify questions/statements of fact, but as the person who tried to explain in-depth the distinction in the tribunal, I'm curious what you mean by this?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Notices and 0 point infractions show up on the same lists and are both used for the purpose of assessing whether there is a pattern of behavior in order to justify harsher punishments for a user who's accumulated a number of them.
There is clearly an intent for there to be some sort of distinction, but they're not wrong to question whether that intent is actually resulting in a distinction in practice. Especially when you were apparently having to explain what the distinction was supposed to mean, in real time, to the people who were in the process of deciding which response was appropriate.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
From a user end, I can see where you're coming from here, sort of? I don't want to dig too deep into the technical weeds, but A Staff Notice is distinct from an infraction in terms of the weight that would be put on it. I tried to explain this in my post in the thread, but a Staff Notice is like if you're stopped because you're going 50 and are going to accelerate, when the speed limit is about to be 60, and you get warned that you were going to be speeding, so be careful in the future. A 0 point infraction is essentially receiving a ticket that indicates "This is not serious enough to get you into major trouble, and/or there are factors that complicate it- maybe you were going because your partner is pregnant or something, the analogy is getting away from me- but you did kind of violate the rules here. Don't do it again."
Forum rules are not the same as laws for a bunch of reasons of course, but hopefully this analogy is relatively clear?
As Susano is a former councilor though, he has seen much more of the backend than an average user, so I was wondering what caused him to say that.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That you intend for there to be a distinction was never unclear. What is unclear is if that distinction actually works out the way it is intended.
In my experience elsewhere, someone with a record of "dances right up to the line a lot but doesn't cross it" is treated more harshly in review than someone with a record of "breaks the rules a lot, but there's always enough mitigating circumstances that we decide to let things slide".
Thus I would question whether the weight of "staff notices" versus "0 point infractions" ends up on the side of the scale that is intended.
I don't know what procedures or guidelines you use behind the scenes to ensure that things are weighted in the way you clearly intend, with the 0-point infractions being weighed more heavily. Maybe they're sitting in different internal lists on your end but not on ours so most of the time when you're doing a cursory review, you'd only look at the 0-point infractions and would only open the list of staff notices if you're doing a deeper dive. Maybe there's a set of guidelines for how many of each type would be cause for alarm or harsher judgement that you've got circulating internally amongst yourselves.
But if it's an informal thing, and you open a single list and just see a pile of entries, and need to drill into each to see whether it's a notice or an infraction, that significantly diminishes the distinction that's likely to be applied. And if you're just relying on people to just agree that "technically breaking the rules is worse than technically not breaking the rules" I have way too much experience with that just plain not working out.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sure, I don't really interact on the moderator end, so a moderator would have to address that aspect, I think? I can say that on the arbitration end, if I were looking at Hypo Thetical, who has a 0 point infraction for Rule 3 and a Staff Notice for Rule 3, I'd certainly take the 0 point infraction more seriously, which I think makes sense. Last time in Scenario 1, they were just kinda at the line but didn't cross it. In scenario 2, they crossed the line but there were mitigating circumstances, which I think is more problematic. That said, Arbitrators pretty much always act on their own volition, so I can only comment on how I personally perceive and go about things. There is no Department Standard for this stuff, and I think there being one would be a mistake.
If it helps, Staff Notices are clearly marked as Staff Notices. So even a moderator just skimming infraction history would know to separate that from an infraction. Now, what weight they would put to that as a non-moderator, I can't really say, though my assumption would be that it's a bit case by case or at their discretion.
In the case of something more serious, like a User Review, I can't imagine 0 point infractions being taken into consideration pretty much at all, because there's clearly going to be bigger problems there. The times they actually got points would speak for themselves. Staff Notices would definitely not be.
Also I do want to say that perhaps that Classified Information thing could be taken more seriously than intended. There isn't really that much I can think of that would be too private outside stuff about users we don't want people in public knowing about, but I do want to try and use discretion, both because sometimes I can communicate not as clearly as I want, and as somebody who has been on Staff for... god, 4 years now, I can maybe flub up what is common knowledge and what is not. Don't want a situation where I talk about Squishy's Drone Strike List because to me that's just part of the procedure, only for people to go "WAIT SQUISHY HAS WHAT???" You know? So I lean toward caution.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I sympathize.
In this case, I apparently failed to communicate that I was trying to answer your questions about why someone might have misgivings and suspicions since you seemed confused about where such a sentiment could possibly be coming from. I didn't intend this to be asking for information or reassurance, but apparently that's how my posts came off.
Still, hopefully the information you've provided in response was helpful to anyone who was looking for information or reassurance.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
All good! I think that these are issues that many users might have, so I thought it might be worth clearing things up, since it didn't seem like it was liable to result in an argument.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
I've been campaigning for the council to just stop using 0 pts infractions. They're just nonsense to avoid committing, honestly.
Exponent
A character.
It allows leniency while warning the offender for minor offenses, like this one.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
You either don't think it's above the line and a staff notice is fine or you think it's above the line and it should be worth points.
Exponent
A character.
Nuance is a thing. It gives staff and the CC a way of telling users they did cross the line, but there were forgivable circumstances, while also noting it in the record. Which is to differentiated from first-time offenders who may not have known their actions violated the rules of the site and get a staff warning.