Tesseracts wrote:The following is my personal political opinion.
Lindvaettr wrote:As an infrequent contributor...
JamishT wrote:I have at least one thought about this, though there may be more. And I guess I should say that I am speaking as a person, not a mod (because we all know that mods aren't people).
Marcuse wrote:Okay, let's clarify from the start that I'm speaking as a member of staff, on behalf of staff, in response to the concerns that have been raised regarding the moderation of the "Police Instantly Kill Innocent Man Over Prank Call" thread.
Lindvaettr wrote:Damiana, from one user to another...
Kate wrote:And I'm not posting as an admin because I literally got my new, not broken computer like an hour ago and my first thing I did after installing chrome and getting rid of IE and downloading Steam (priorities, guys) was come on TCS and this is the first place I ended up. Actually, it's inaccurate to say I'm not posting as an admin as I'm reading this response over; this is from the perspective of a staff member, but not an official staff position, if that makes sense.
sunglasses wrote:Edit: To be clear, I'm speaking as a user foremost.
Just to be clear, I'm speaking as an ornamental cactus.
To address the question about why the problem wasn't reported: I personally haven't complained to the staff about the situation because I don't think mod intervention is the right solution. I'd been meaning to address the matter myself by talking it over with
Damiana Jenna at an appropriate time, but life has had me on the ropes since November thanks to a rapid series of frankly unsporting sucker punches and ensuing mistakes, so IRL matters have taken precedence.
As far as this turning into a "trial" and Marc's apparent concern that an angry mob is assembling, frankly I like Jenna. She's relentlessly enthusiastic, thoroughly vulgar, and doesn't have much of a filter--reminds me a lot of two of my best friends, in fact. I think she often goes too far in the grip of anger, but my impression is that the cause is a hyper-developed "mama bear" instinct, and I have a lot of instinctive sympathy for someone whose error is trying
too hard to protect the vulnerable.
Yet, I was still bothered by those inflammatory titles and OPs, just as I've been bothered by similar behavior from completely different users in the past. I'm sure the staff can attest to that, given that exhausting battle over the "Social Justice Absurdity Thread" back in the Before-Time. :)
I can't answer the question of whether gisambards has some personal animus toward Jenna. I can certainly understand suspecting a grudge in light of the personal attacks they've thrown at each other recently, but it's also true that people can fight and get frustrated with each other without actually disliking each other as people. I am certain that it's possible to like Jenna just fine and still object to one-sided and inflammatory discussion prompts on principle. I am also certain that assuming ill intent on gisambards' part is just as unfair as assuming ill intent on Jenna's part.
In light of that, I think I can help pinpoint what gis found unfair about the staff response. Here's two specific remarks I noticed early in the thread:
Marcuse wrote:this is driven less by a broad concern about the state of moderation and more to do with anima against a particular user. We're not here to prosecute the personal grudge of one user against another.
(context)Marcuse wrote:The claim that we should "discourage" such thread, notwithstanding the point that thread title was found to be within the guidelines based on the information at the time of its creation, appears to be caused by a complaint against a user and their actions, not a general problem with thread creation.
(context)If I'm reading them correctly, both of these passages contain an explicit assertion that the cause of gisambards' complaint is personal animus toward Jenna, not any broadly applicable principle. Moreover, in context these were both cited as reasons not to act on the underlying complaint, which could give the impression that an unfair assumption of malicious intent by a staff member was then allowed to affect an official staff decision. That could easily infuriate someone who already felt wronged and was already frustrated to begin with.
And if I'm not reading them correctly...well, what do you want from me? I'm a cactus.
"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn