2024-AT-11 Staff and Starmaker764 overturned

Tithed_Verse

Tithed_Verse

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2024-AT-11: Staff and StarMaker764 Overturned

I wish to make an appeal aganist the infraction in the stanford professor thread, however I am having issues finding advocates due to the current period being the holiday season and real life constraints, so I am requesting a week extension if possible.
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I really don't like talking about the Israel situation with people, because it feels like the loudest voices are "Kill the Jews" and "Kill the Muslims" with the voices for moderation and a rational approach being drowned out ;.;
 
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Yeah seems fairly open and shut? Honestly it's kind of weird it didn't get overturned at arbitration, or at least that the Arb didn't switch it to being a purely Rule 4 infraction. They didn't seem to really even attempt to justify why it was a Rule 2 infraction?
 
Cool tribunal. Absolutely correct outcome. Couple of people I REALLY didn't expect to vote Overturn on such a charged topic went for it, so this probably shouldn't have made it this far to begin with ?

This was absolutely a 'posting while X' infraction. Star can be careless with his rhetoric, but I've never known him to be deliberately antisemitic.
 
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Embarrassing reach on the infraction. Good that the council saw a quick conclusion.
 
Yeah…this was so blatantly not an infraction that I am kinda side-eyeing the mod who hit them with this and the arbitrator who upheld this.
 
Definitely a reach on the infraction. Glad to see the infraction was overturned.

We've all seen our share of boobs who botch an appeal to the council and end up with an *increase* in their infraction, yes, but I think those individuals would've shown their ass eventually anyway and such cases are remembered precisely because they're vanishingly rare. For everyone else, the worst that'll likely happen is the council votes to uphold. Tough, but you're neither in a better or worse position than what you started in. Best case you might get it reduced or overturned. Definitely always worth it to appeal to council, imo. At least that's my takeaway.
 
Absolutely an overreach on both the infraction and the arbitration. Both the infracting moderator and the arbitrator should be ashamed of themselves.

Glad the council saw through it.
 
I think it's reasonable to change the rule on which the infraction is based if a different rule is blatantly applicable, but there should be a strong presumption that the rules ID'd in the infraction are the only rules that are relevant. The Council shouldn't be digging for rules to infract on, but where it's clear-cut? I think that's different.

Like, fundamentally, the issue is about whether the appellant has fair notice of how their post was rule-breaking so they have an opportunity to argue against it. If the problem is blindingly obvious, it's more fair to assume that the poster knows what they did. The appellant should absolutely still get a chance to respond if a different rule is brought up, but they're not really getting blindsided by it.

Silly example: if the post is just a collection of slurs in allcaps, and it gets hit under Rule 4, the Council should be able to say "yeah uh this is a Rule 2 violation." If it's the much-more-commonplace (and thorny) "spicy post gets hit under Rule 3 vs. Rule 4" scenario, the council and the arbitrator should respect the rule the infraction was levied under.
 
Rhymes said:
Like, fundamentally, the issue is about whether the appellant has fair notice of how their post was rule-breaking so they have an opportunity to argue against it. If the problem is blindingly obvious, it's more fair to assume that the poster knows what they did. The appellant should absolutely still get a chance to respond if a different rule is brought up, but they're not really getting blindsided by it.
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I mean, if it's blatant then the moderator can just... infract also under that rule to begin with ?

I feel that it's fundamentally unfair to expect the council - or the arbitration ! - to do the moderations job for it and possibly even catch Flugabwehrgeschuetzmunitionsfeuer for that.

Arbitration is user recourse against infractions made in error by the attending moderator. The council tribunal is the control valve for that process. These are good systems to have because no moderator or arbitrator, no matter how well intentioned, is unbiased and flawless, especially in the slightly nebulous framework of SVs rules, and they will have bad days, or bad months, and they'll infract people in error. Neither should exist to, or attempt to, cover for moderators erring by being too lenient; their purpose should be the exact opposite of that. If their job was to moderate SV they'd be moderators.
 
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hghwolf said:
I mean, if it's blatant then the moderator can just... infract also under that rule to begin with ?

I feel that it's fundamentally unfair to expect the council - or the arbitration ! - to do the moderations job for it and possibly even catch flak for that.

Arbitration is user recourse against infractions made in error by the attending moderator. The council tribunal is the control valve for that process. These are good systems to have because no moderator or arbitrator, no matter how well intentioned, is unbiased and flawless, especially in the slightly nebulous framework of SVs rules. Neither should exist to, or attempt to, cover for moderators erring by being too lenient; their purpose should be the exact opposite of that. If their job was to moderate SV they'd be moderators.
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Bluntly, I don't really trust the moderators to get it right even when it is that obvious, and I don't think the Council should universally trust the moderators on that front. Borderline posts getting let go because the moderator fucked it? Fair. Really bad posts getting let go because the moderator somehow fucked it? Not so much.

That said, this is definitely an area where reasonable minds can differ, so *shrug.* The main point either way is that the Council should not be doing the "is this Rule 3 or 4" dance. We've gotten away from that shit and it should stay gone.
 
There are at least two tribunals that took place during the current Council term in which the Arbitrator changed the rule under which the infraction was given and the result was an overwhelming majority in favour of Uphold and from what I recall little-to-no complaint about it from users when the tribunal was published.

I don't say that to call anyone in particular out, but it's easy to focus on times when you think the infraction was illegitimate and the Arbitrator's reasoning was faulty or at least a stretch, and ignore the occasions where it worked out. I do understand concerns about 'infraction-hunting', especially when a rule like Rule 4 can kind of be stretched to encompass all kinds of posts, and I think it's important as an Arb to be a little cautious about that sort of thing, but I'm not convinced that we'd get better outcomes if we decided to never change the infraction basis. It doesn't happen often enough for the change to be significant; you'd just get a few more overturns every year.

And I think it's worth noting the flip side of this. SV staff in my experience get just as much flack from the users and Council about people not getting infracted and 'escaping justice' as we do for people getting infracted wrongly or unfairly. It'll only take one dumb technicality case for everyone to be like "well, why didn't you just infract them under rule X instead?" and get mad about that. Obviously it would be ideal if Moderation simply 'got it right' every time and made Arbitration redundant, but that's not a reasonable expectation to place on them.
 
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BurnBright said:
Yeah seems fairly open and shut? Honestly it's kind of weird it didn't get overturned at arbitration, or at least that the Arb didn't switch it to being a purely Rule 4 infraction. They didn't seem to really even attempt to justify why it was a Rule 2 infraction?
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Yeah I think the council might have tried to thread the line if the arb had made a strong argument for a case of wrong infraction. We discussed if we wanted to change it to rule 4, and even the philosophy of rule 4 changes, but in the end we judged that it wasn't over the line in that way either, just keeping with the generally unpleasant but not rule breaking heat of the thread.

Rhymes said:
Absolutely an overreach on both the infraction and the arbitration. Both the infracting moderator and the arbitrator should be ashamed of themselves.

Glad the council saw through it.
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The advantage of having a formal appeal process is that errors are not as bad as under another system. I don't think we need to shame everyone involved, though some reflection on why mod and arb thought that was rule 2 worthy is warranted. If they had ruled this a breach of rule 4, I would have understood even if I disagreed but there was very little ground for rule 2, which is usually quite clear cut.

CallMeIsmail said:
There are at least two tribunals that took place during the current Council term in which the Arbitrator changed the rule under which the infraction was given and the result was an overwhelming majority in favour of Uphold and from what I recall little-to-no complaint about it from users when the tribunal was published.

I don't say that to call anyone in particular out, but it's easy to focus on times when you think the infraction was illegitimate and the Arbitrator's reasoning was faulty or at least a stretch, and ignore the occasions where it worked out. I do understand concerns about 'infraction-hunting', especially when a rule like Rule 4 can kind of be stretched to encompass all kinds of posts, and I think it's important as an Arb to be a little cautious about that sort of thing, but I'm not convinced that we'd get better outcomes if decided to never change the infraction basis. It doesn't happen often enough for the change to be significant; you'd just get a few more overturns every year.

And I think it's worth noting the flip side of this. SV staff in my experience get just as much flack from the users and Council about people not getting infracted and 'escaping justice' as we do for people getting infracted wrongly or unfairly. It'll only take one dumb technicality case for everyone to be like "well, why didn't you just infract them under rule X instead?" and get mad about that. Obviously it would be ideal if Moderation simply 'got it right' every time and made Arbitration redundant, but that's not a reasonable expectation to place on them.
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I think I agree on rule 4 being the worst one to change to because of infraction hunting. I don't think there'd be much objection if you argued something is actually rule 2 breaking to the council because that tend to be much clearer to establish or dismiss.
 
When Arbs change the rule, the appelant gets to argue to council under the new rule when they appeal.

When council changes the rule they kind of don't get a chance to make a reasoned response, though?

So those two situations do not seem analogous to me.
 
Sotek said:
When Arbs change the rule, the appelant gets to argue to council under the new rule when they appeal.

When council changes the rule they kind of don't get a chance to make a reasoned response, though?

So those two situations do not seem analogous to me.
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Strictly speaking, the appellant can still respond to councillors during the tribunal, and they have until the 10 days of discussion elapse to develop a response to any new arguments that come up, assuming those new arguments come up earlier in the deliberative period. Of course, unlike with a formal appeal there's the temptation and possibility of getting stuck into an argumentative back and forth with one or two councillors rather than taking a step back and putting the time into a more holistic defence.
 
Sotek said:
When Arbs change the rule, the appelant gets to argue to council under the new rule when they appeal.

When council changes the rule they kind of don't get a chance to make a reasoned response, though?

So those two situations do not seem analogous to me.
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Yup. That's one of the reasons why my stance is that the new infraction should be very obvious for the council to go for it. The other reason is that it's very easy for the council to find small rule 4 issues with every vaguely argumentative post if they search. A standard of obviousness means you don't get overzealous.

CallMeIsmail said:
Strictly speaking, the appellant can still respond to councillors during the tribunal, and they have until the 10 days of discussion elapse to develop a response to any new arguments that come up, assuming those new arguments come up earlier in the deliberative period. Of course, unlike with a formal appeal there's the temptation and possibility of getting stuck into an argumentative back and forth with one or two councillors rather than taking a step back and putting the time into a more holistic defence.
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It's very rare for that to improve your odds though.
 
We have generally resisted imposing substantive rules on the appeals process. The Council changes at least partially every year, which would impose a significant training burden, and they would be awkward to enforce, because any attempt to enforce substantive rules - specifically to the point of changing the outcome of rulings - would likely be seen as administrative overreach.

In short, I don't think it's going to happen.
 
Moderation is a purely volunteer effort that's exhausting and confusing and involves a lot of comparative reading of posts and rules and trying to discern where a blurry line stands. The thread in which StarMaker was infracted has a list of reports multiple pages long and StarMaker was infracted as part of a multi-hit salvo infracting several users after discussion had broken down. In these circumstances, it's easy to make mistakes and either overlook infraction-worthy posts or overreach and infract posts that do not break the rules, especially while trying to solve a sudden influx of reports from a thread that needs quick action.

The Tribunal process exists to assess whether an infraction was in error, not to judge the morality of the infracting Moderator. Issuing an infraction in error isn't a moral fault. I voted to overturn this infraction but I don't think issuing it in any way reflects negatively on veteranMortal's character or anything. An infraction was issued in error and the Tribunal process correctly saw that and remediated it by overturning said infraction. This the system working :V
 
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Not sure if users are allowed to ask this but, considering how...open and shut a case this was, I'm surprised no advocates bit. Did they just figure that it was so open and shut they trusted StarMaker could defend themselves? Was it just that it was during the end-of-year holiday period and thus there just wasn't anyone available? A combination of both?
 
Omicron said:
The Tribunal process exists to assess whether an infraction was in error, not to judge the morality of the infracting Moderator.
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What about the Arbitrator who has to evaluate a single case and then make a judgement without those mitigating factors?

I'm not claiming it was a moral failing that this infraction "got this far", but I still don't think it should have.

I'm quite sure everyone in the process was acting in good faith, but (And this is only my opinion) something went wrong along the way because this just...doesn't rise to any standard of infraction I could justify in my mind.
 
always_confused said:
Not sure if users are allowed to ask this but, considering how...open and shut a case this was, I'm surprised no advocates bit. Did they just figure that it was so open and shut they trusted StarMaker could defend themselves? Was it just that it was during the end-of-year holiday period and thus there just wasn't anyone available? A combination of both?
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I can't speak for anyone else but for me it was a combination of "very busy at work" and "don't feel comfortable handling infractions in the Israel thread". The rules in there are complex.

Note that it was apparently only open and shut at the Tribunal level, the Arb disagreed and from where I was sitting it could have gone either way.
 
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