Secret Moderator Guidelines?

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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Tesseracts » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:05 pm

I felt the need to clarify her authority because she mentioned writing the first draft and didn't mention that she has not been a mod for a while and has no inside information.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby sunglasses » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:12 pm

Guidelines are not rules.

Just wanted to throw that in there.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Learned Nand » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:13 pm

I don't think that requires a change in any of my arguments.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Tesseracts » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:13 pm

aviel wrote:My concern isn't that anything nefarious is going on. I don't think the moderators would deliberately do something problematic, but they might accidentally, and as such it's reasonable that users know about this. Again, nobody has provided a compelling reason why the guidelines shouldn't be released. Tone certainly doesn't count.

I don't think it's a good idea to give everyone the authority to police our behavior like this. We waste enough time arguing among ourselves. There's no need for or utility in members having the power to pick apart our behavior. It's better for us to be held accountable to ourselves when it comes to the minutiae of moderation. You're free to complain if you see anything you dislike but I see no reason why you should have access to our internal conversations.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Learned Nand » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:17 pm

First, I want to say that I'm glad you addressed an argument I was making. I've been on about this all night and that's hardly ever happened.

The reason this kind of transparency is important is that it's important for users to know how moderators will behave and what their protections are. There is a chilling effect if users can't anticipate what moderators might do, because they don't know what actions they take might get punished. And if there is moderator abuse, users need to know what that would be and how they could deal with it.

Imagine, for example, that the fourth amendment were secret. Police may have to abide by internal guidelines to secure a warrant, but if they violated them, people wouldn't even know they had recourse.

Or say that Supreme Court decisions were secret, and they just said something like "We side with the plaintiff." Then legislators wouldn't know what was or wasn't Constitutional, and citizens wouldn't know how to abide with the law. Transparency is important so users know how to behave.

I'm kind of surprised I have to make the argument that transparency in authoritative decisions is a good thing, but nevertheless.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby SilverMaple » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:24 pm

I'm honestly not seeing what the problem is here. If I understand correctly, the "secret" guidelines only pertain to how the mods should interact amongst themselves (so as to avoid a Mad Max-type scenario where one of the mods takes over and hoards all the thumbs for themselves, and then gets to watch the unwashed masses huddle underneath the daily thumb-fall and desperately try to catch as many as they can in buckets).

As such, it's not really useful or relevant to regular users, so why is not being able to see the guidelines such a big deal?
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby CarrieVS » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:33 pm

Avi, you're misrepresenting this. The rules mods have to abide by are public. Any extra guidelines must not allow any moderator action not permmited in the published rules, and if they do you can call them on it and the existence of a guidline saying they can won't be any defense.

Your analogy
aviel wrote:Imagine, for example, that the fourth amendment were secret. Police may have to abide by internal guidelines to secure a warrant, but if they violated them, people wouldn't even know they had recourse.

is completely inappropriate.

The analogy here is if the Fourth Amendment was public but a particular police department had more detailed guidelines on when to apply for a warrant, that fell within the situations the constitution says they can and if they didn't people would have the normal recourse if an unreasonable warrant was granted, plus instructions about the actual process of applying for a warrant and details of their internal procedures like recruitment and assigment of duties and how much everyone chips in each month for the teadoughnut kitty. And they didn't make all that public.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby DamianaRaven » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:37 pm

SilverMaple wrote:As such, it's not really useful or relevant to regular users, so why is not being able to see the guidelines such a big deal?


If you get him started again, I'm chaining you to his wrist.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Marcuse » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:39 pm

Imagine, for example, that the fourth amendment were secret. Police may have to abide by internal guidelines to secure a warrant, but if they violated them, people wouldn't even know they had recourse.

Or say that Supreme Court decisions were secret, and they just said something like "We side with the plaintiff." Then legislators wouldn't know what was or wasn't Constitutional, and citizens wouldn't know how to abide with the law. Transparency is important so users know how to behave.


Okay, so here's a specific point I want to address: TCS is not a government.

I know that seems a no brainer, but time and again I see comparisons to the US government and the Supreme Court as though the principles and practices of a government are either good or workable methods of running a comparatively tiny internet forum. The fact is that the bureaucracy of a government takes significant and costly work to administer it. For a private forum of a few hundred people, run solely on a volunteer basis, it's both inappropriate and unfeasible to draw comparison from government when looking at the administration of such. In effect, where they are not comparable, no valid argument can be drawn from comparison from such.

The reason this kind of transparency is important is that it's important for users to know how moderators will behave and what their protections are. There is a chilling effect if users can't anticipate what moderators might do, because they don't know what actions they take might get punished. And if there is moderator abuse, users need to know what that would be and how they could deal with it.


TCS is a private entity within the internet, as such, we have no overt obligation to provide information about our working. The argument that there will be a chilling effect if we refuse to publish such private information that does not relate to users, I find poor, given the last time that argument was employed, it led to nothing.

As has been previously stated several times, no hidden information pertains to users whatsoever. Guidelines that exist for moderators to moderate are purely operational information designed to make sure we work in the same way, and as such there is no benefit to providing this information. Indeed, such information may provide a security risk if it were made available to people with the intention to troll us, maybe choosing times where we're short handed, or allowing people with knowledge of our habits and practices to act against us at times we're not directly available to address this.

So, in summary:

The information you are requesting does not pertain to you, or any other user.
The information you are requesting would constitute an unreasonable burden upon staff to provide.
TCS has no obligation to provide the information you are requesting.
There appears to be no general call or desire for this to be published.

As such, I cannot support such a call to publish internal information for staff.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Learned Nand » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:41 pm

They absolutely should make that public Carrie, and I believe would be required to under an FoIA request if it were a federal Executive department, which it isn't. But it's important that people know the recourse they have if the police do not follow those procedures, even if there was only a statutory rather than a Constitutional violation. If the issues are as mild as you say they are there should be no problem releasing them.

Marcuse wrote:So, in summary:

The information you are requesting does not pertain to you, or any other user.

I can't know that unless I see it.
The information you are requesting would constitute an unreasonable burden upon staff to provide.

Ctrl-c, ctrl-v, "submit" is not an unreasonable burden. Even if you have to do it several times.

TCS has no obligation to provide the information you are requesting.

No legal obligation, but a moral obligation. I detailed the reasoning for this. I recognize TCS isn't a government, but moderators are an authoritative body, so many of the same principles apply.

There appears to be no general call or desire for this to be published.

Both I and BBDD agree that this should be done, but that isn't necessary as it's a moral obligation regardless.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Kate » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:53 pm

I'm confused; you say you don't believe there's anything nefarious, yet you don't trust that this doesn't really pertain to you or provide any new information about mod abuse and forum rules, yet you DO trust us to provide the guidelines accurately and honestly?

As others have pointed out better than I have, and as I have been saying for hours now, you DO know how we will behave. These guidelines do not provide any new information in that regard. I know you're about to say, "but I don't know that if I can't see it," but see Marcuse's point about security risks, and beyond that, it makes no logical sense to trust that we will provide you with our real full unedited guidelines but not trust what we say about them, unless you think we are idiots who don't know what we have written and don't understand the legalese of it.

I'm not sure how you reconcile trusting us to provide the guidelines in full with not trusting what we say about them.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby CarrieVS » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:57 pm

Kate wrote:I'm not sure how you reconcile trusting us to provide the guidelines in full with not trusting what we say about them.


What he means, I think, is that if you publish a copy of the guidelines then if you act outside those published guidelines users can call you out and seek whatever redress you can seek against mod abuse.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Kate » Wed Jul 22, 2015 3:06 pm

I understand that, but when we say that it doesn't really provide new information, he says he can't trust that unless he sees them.

But he does trust us to provide the guide in full.

Either that means we're lying to him in the first place and the guidelines would prove we're wrong, or it means we're mistaken about what our guidelines mean.

If it's the first, then why trust us to publish the full guide? If it's the second, well, we would have to make some pretty big mistakes to have that happen. Regardless, that would mean he does not trust our judgment about enforcing the rules which is problematic.

My point is more that it is an illogical request. If we are lying, why trust us to honestly release the guidelines? If we are mistaken about what they mean, it means our judgment is probably off on everything we enforce, collectively, which is a problem. The only thing that can make this request logical again is if it doesn't matter to him that this doesn't pertain to him beyond making it easier for us to do our jobs effectively and fairly by outlining operations. In which case it doesn't matter if he can't tell that they don't contain new information he's concerned about unless he sees it.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby sunglasses » Wed Jul 22, 2015 3:07 pm

I also disagree that it's a moral obligation.
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Re: Secret Moderator Guidelines?

Postby Ceiling_Squid » Wed Jul 22, 2015 3:42 pm

M-mommy, daddy...please stop fighting...

:cry:
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