Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-33668185-20181229231243/@comment-8-20190104171033

Okay, this is going to be a bit of an epic reply. I am going to try to address all points raised, although I may not catch everything in this giant thread.

Although we encourage people to use S:C for complaints about staff/admins/mods etc. I'm glad this thread was started. There's obviously a lot to look at.

This has been supplanted somewhat by Bert's announcement about our planned experiment of limiting chat hours for a while, but I thought it important to address the points in this thread.

Note: I will refer to "moderators" or "mods" throughout this reply. This includes admins who are moderating the chat.

As far as I can see the issues raised are:


 * Lack of ban reasons/not enough transparency in why admins block

I agree we could improve here. I would argue that "sockpuppet" is a valid reason, it explains the reason without giving publicity to the troll, but "misbehaving in chat" or "custom reason" would be better avoided when possible. Remember though that admins often have to work quickly, especially if there is a concerted attack on the chat. Custom reasons may not take long, but that time can mount up and slow moderators down when they need to deal with one of our regular, persistent trolls.

On banning a user who has not said anything, or banning immediately as the moderator enters the chat - I didn't see the incident Ozzy mentioned of course, but I would expect that what happened was that there was a sockpuppet in the chat that had been detected by IP or other tools, and one moderator asked another to pop into chat to ban - for example, because they were on their phone without full access. Admins ban socks without warning, and may know a user is a sock before entering the chat. As Qstlijku said, naming socks on bans is another way of giving them recognition, so we avoid that.


 * Moderators instructing people not to comment on bans.

There are sound reasons for not discussing bans in public. Many trolls will come straight back to chat with a new account. What we don't want is for them to see any discussion in the back-scroll that suggests that they have successfully disturbed the chat. We want to give them as little positive feedback as possible.


 * Moderators not replying to those asking about their bans, or giving overly brief replies.

In general, we have preferred to talk about bans privately. In the same way as global blocks, it's sometimes better to keep the conversation between staff/mods and the person banned - which often means sending them to S:C where the discussion is private. However, I think this can change somewhat and will ask moderators to ensure that they reply to message wall questions from the blocked user, unless they strongly believe it needs to go to S:C. So please don't direct people immediately to Special:Contact, the admin will direct people there if needed.


 * Inconsistency in dealing with bad behaviour.

This is always going to happen to some extent, much as we try to avoid it. It's not possible to have guidelines for every situation, and mods may differ in their assessment of the severity of an incident. However, I think the warn/kick/ban guidelines that I have given the mods could be more extensive and clearer. I will work with the team to improve that.

That said, the guidelines for racial, homophobic, anti-semitic etc. slurs are to give an instant ban. In fact, they are reported to staff for a global ban. Other severe swearing is also a reason for an instant block. Someone writing a stream of extreme language should know it's unacceptable and that doesn't need a warning.

Lesser swearing should usually get a warning. In some cases this may have been given some time ago - so the kick or ban may seem out-of-the-blue. I am not trying to say this is the case all the time, but it's a situation to consider.

Also mentioned was the problem of bans not being fast enough or users being given too many warnings. I think this illustrates well the difficulty in the path moderators need to tread. Are they not giving enough warnings? Or are they giving too many? Again, better guidelines may help with this.


 * Moderators should be more active on the wiki.

I always like to see mods involved on the wiki, but this isn't something I would enforce. They are generous enough to spend time looking after chat, I wouldn't want to put more requirements on them than that (here I am talking about those who are mods only, admins should, of course, be active on the wiki too).


 * Are actions on chat discussed privately between moderators/staff?

Yes, we have a Slack channel where admins and moderators can discuss their actions and get advice from each other and staff. For example, we commonly discuss lengths of bans and when someone has reached the point that they should be banned permanently. As Ozzy said, we don't discuss all bans, but it's a resource for moderators to use when they need a second opinion.

This channel has repeatedly been called a "cabal". Again, I reject that pejorative term (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabal). It is simply a necessary private space that allows us to talk freely about sensitive issues (and cats).


 * Chat guidelines should be more specific.

This is something that the chat moderators have been asking for some time. My concern is "rules lawyers" - people who stick to the letter of the rule, but disrupt anyway. It's like the "3 revert rule" on Wikipedia. I've seen people revert exactly three times a day for months. That's why I think that a rule like "do not revert excessively" can be better.

That said, I've been persuaded by the mods that we need to be more specific than we are currently.


 * "Another factor is that everyone on this thread clearly cares about Community Central and we all want to make this a better place."

Agreed.


 * Admins sometimes break the rules themselves (e.g. commenting on bans)

I agree that admins are not perfect. It's something they should (and do) strive for.


 * "We are human" and "we have other life things we need to do" are bad excuses.

I would say they are simply facts, it seems to me that some in the community expect more from moderators than is reasonable. We don't guarantee full coverage on chat, and even when a mod is in the chat, they may be multi-tasking. Despite that, they give a lot of time to chat, and do their best to make sure it's moderated most of the time. It may be an unpopular thing for me to say, but I'm okay with the amount of time the moderators give to chat.


 * Staff don't care

We care. I hope this massive reply demonstrates that.


 * Why do inactive moderators keep their rights?

I review that periodically - sometimes it isn't often. As there is no harm in an inactive person having rights, it's not a priority to remove them; the issue can wait until I have the time and space to review the team.


 * Is feedback actually passed on?

It depends on the feedback. Not all is passed on, but some is. Especially if it's specific rather than a general comment.


 * Moderators are biased or hold grudges.

I won't claim that any of us are completely unbiased - however much we try to be. Regular, trusted users are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt than new users. And conversely, someone who has shown bad behavior may be watched more closely than others. I think that is normal and expected. But overall, I agree we should try to be as consistent as possible and assume good faith.


 * Moderators are not open to feedback.

I would say that the active admins and moderators who have commented on this thread have been clear that they are open to feedback. And I know others have read the comments in full. I'm personally disappointed that there hasn't been more positive feedback, although there has been some (thank you!) but I recognise that more negative feedback is more common.


 * Moderators are negative.

It can be hard to be positive when you are constantly dealing with the negative aspects of chat. Or to be seen as positive in that situation. But I hope that moderators can strive to be as positive as possible in chat.


 * This thread won't change anything.

I've just got out of a meeting discussing the future of chat. Please see Bert's announcement about this.


 * Only friends of moderators are chosen to be moderators.

It can be difficult to avoid this, as these are the people that moderators know best and trust to do well in the role. I agree that we need to think further about this though, and have already asked the admins/moderators to look wide in suggesting future CCCrew members.


 * Staff should watch more choices of moderators more closely.

No new moderators are added without extensive checks by staff. It is definitely not the current moderators who make the final decision.


 * The nomination of moderators should have community input.

As mentioned above, staff have the final say in this. I don't think it would be right to ask for community approval and then have us decide anyway. That said, I'm open to consideration of this (alongside my fellow members of staff)


 * Ongoing problems need to be addressed and shouldn't be ignored. Change is needed.

That's what my reply here is about, along with discussions I've had with other staff here in the office.


 * There are problems outside chat.

Yes, we need more admins too, I'm aware of that and keen on adding to the team.

As I said, some of what I've written here is moot, but some applies to admins as well as moderators, and all of it may be useful when the experiment of restricting chat hours is over.

Thanks for reading.