# Moderation Clarification: Is there a change of policy



## lowkey13 (Mar 27, 2020)

*Deleted by user*


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## aco175 (Mar 27, 2020)

I would guess that someone was reading an old thread and reported it rather than staff going through your posts.  I know that I try to watch what I say to more of a social talk rather than the locker room talk I may have at my home table.  If someone told me that they hope I get cancer and die over something I said, I can take it and most likely not report them, but others may be more sensitive than me and report it.


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## lowkey13 (Mar 27, 2020)

*Deleted by user*


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## Umbran (Mar 27, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Which brings up the following concerns that I have regarding moderation, well, two really. The first is that I was unaware that any of you three were going to be going through my old posts (or is old posts in general) to moderate them. The second is that, quite frankly, if that post is "jackassery" that should get me booted, then I will either be booted shortly for my old posts, I will be booted shortly for my new posts. I want to be clear that I am not arguing with moderation, I am just making an observation.




Dude.  One post twigs a moderator, and suddenly you're concerned there's going to be a pogrom against you? You have admitted, more than once, that you ride the ragged edge with sarcasm.  With that admission should come the realization that, on occasion, you _will_ step of the edge, and get a finger wagged at you.

This was not a change in policy.  We do not frequently go back and plumb an individual user's post history to find wrongdoing.  We don't have time to read everything that's currently being posted, much less go back and dig around looking for trouble.  If someone reports and older piece, however, that older piece may get attention.  That's what happened here.

Also, booting is generally about banning you from a thread, not the site as a whole.

As a general note - crapping on things that other people love is a pretty jerky behavior.  It is beyond sarcasm, and into hurtful.  When you have a signature (like gnomes and paladins), we can see a pattern and usually overlook it if it generates more laughs than ill-will.  That doesn't really apply to entire editions of the game.


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## lowkey13 (Mar 27, 2020)

*Deleted by user*


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## Umbran (Mar 27, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> There is a _big_ difference between when I'm being sarcastic because I'm angry, and when I'm just kidding. I own up to my angry _sarcasm_, and this wasn't it.




Whether _you_ were angry or not is really beside the point.  We don't moderate people because they are angry.  We moderate people because of their impact on others.

Rather than own your anger, try owning that occasionally you hurt folks when you don't intend to.



> I don't think I should have to explain all my tropes, all the time. But the reason I use 2e (for example) is because most people understand instinctively that it is a joke.




_MOST_ people.  Not all people. This is a pretty open forum, so not everyone is aware of your personal brand.

And, of course you are aware, "I was only joking," is like, the worst defense for hurting people ever, right? 

If you want to merrily go about poking things with sticks, if you poke someone in the eye, giving an explanation of how, really, the playground monitors shouldn't tell you to be careful and how really, that eye should not have been there to be poked, is probably not your best play.


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## lowkey13 (Mar 27, 2020)

*Deleted by user*


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## Umbran (Mar 27, 2020)

If you feel that's necessary, sure.  You do you.

I think there is some irony there that everyone else is supposed to have a thik skin and realize that you only hae the best of intentions, but one moderator pointing a thing out has you going off in a huff.  Maybe you'd like to look at the asymmetry of that.

Or not.  As I said, you do you.


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## Bardic Dave (Mar 27, 2020)

Umbran said:


> If you feel that's necessary, sure.  You do you.
> 
> I think there is some irony there that everyone else is supposed to have a thik skin and realize that you only hae the best of intentions, but one moderator pointing a thing out has you going off in a huff.  Maybe you'd like to look at the asymmetry of that.
> 
> Or not.  As I said, you do you.




Dude, you threatened him with being booted; that's hardly "pointing a thing out". You've got a pretty heavy hand as a moderator, and considering the way you also actively wade into controversial topics as a poster and take sides (usually on the side I agree with, but that's neither here nor there), I'm not sure you're really being very fair here. If I were Morrus, I would ask you to either moderate with a lighter touch (e.g. admonish people less harshly), or stop being such an active and opinionated poster. The fact that you do both really gives the impression of a lack of fairness, no matter how pure your true intentions might be. But whatever. You do you do, man.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 27, 2020)

aco175 said:


> I would guess that someone was reading an old thread and reported it rather than staff going through your posts.



For the record, this is exactly the case.


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## DammitVictor (Mar 27, 2020)

It's worth pointing out that if you're asking posters to model more civil and respectful behavior, calling them "jackasses" seems like exactly the wrong foot to start off with.

I recently praised a moderator for being civil and respectful while correcting me-- when I was angry and clearly out of line-- and well... if you want a polite and friendly forum, it starts from the top. Being rude, snarky, and dismissive when you're asking posters to stop being rude, snarky, and dismissive undermines both the purpose of the admonition, and your moral authority in all future interactions.

I'd suggest people check out RPG.net for a perfect example of this, but I don't want to give them the traffic.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 27, 2020)

Bardic Dave said:


> Dude, you threatened him with being booted; that's hardly "pointing a thing out". You've got a pretty heavy hand as a moderator, and considering the way you also actively wade into controversial topics as a poster and take sides (usually on the side I agree with, but that's neither here nor there), I'm not sure you're really being very fair here. If I were Morrus, I would ask you to either moderate with a lighter touch (e.g. admonish people less harshly), or stop being such an active and opinionated poster. The fact that you do both really gives the impression of a lack of fairness, no matter how pure your true intentions might be. But whatever. You do you do, man.



Point of fact, I was the Mod whose action is in question here, not Umbran.


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## Celebrim (Mar 27, 2020)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> For the record, this is exactly the case.




I've always thought that the long term peace of the boards would be improved if people who report people much more often than others were banned.


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## DammitVictor (Mar 27, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> I've always thought that the long term peace of the boards would be improved if people who report people much more often than others were banned.




Thin-skinned people who report every post that slightly rubs them the wrong way are a massive problem... but banning people from using the Report Post button _too much_ has a chilling effect on reasonable people using the Report Post button _at all_.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 27, 2020)

FaerieGodfather said:


> It's worth pointing out that if you're asking posters to model more civil and respectful behavior, calling them "jackasses" seems like exactly the wrong foot to start off with.
> 
> I recently praised a moderator for being civil and respectful while correcting me-- when I was angry and clearly out of line-- and well... if you want a polite and friendly forum, it starts from the top. Being rude, snarky, and dismissive when you're asking posters to stop being rude, snarky, and dismissive undermines both the purpose of the admonition, and your moral authority in all future interactions.
> 
> I'd suggest people check out RPG.net for a perfect example of this, but I don't want to give them the traffic.



What I said was “Jackassery?”,  but it remains a fair point.

We don’t really call out Edition Warring by name these days, but I _could_ have just issued a warning for “threadcrapping.”


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## Son of the Serpent (Mar 27, 2020)

I think by now most people are well aware that im very anti censorship, very pro free speech, and that i laugh at the very idea that one SHOULD tone down humor (or any other speech) because people have thin skin.  That said, if there are rules and you dont follow them (intentionally) being banned or restricted or contacted by monitors is an expected outcome.

That said, when THIN SKINNED PEOPLE are the very ones who hypocritically complain about getting the screws put to them when the situation is turnes around, i laugh with mirth.  How can the easily offended be offended when someone curtails their speech in the interest of the sensitivity of another's skin?

Such irony...


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## Umbran (Mar 27, 2020)

Bardic Dave said:


> Dude, you threatened him with being booted;




1) Some folks do feel I am heavy-handed.  But, point of fact, this wasn't me.  I was merely the one available to field the question about it this morning.
2) He was informed that it would have gotten him removed from the thread in slightly different circumstances, but that he was not, at this time, in any danger.  

Kind of hard to call it a threat when you are admitting you aren't doing it.


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## DammitVictor (Mar 27, 2020)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> What I said was “Jackassery?”,  but it remains a fair point.




It's a mild criticism, something to be aware of. I was a forum moderator-- and a damned good one-- on an American political forum for over a decade, covering three Presidential elections before I went insane-- for unrelated reasons-- and had to step down because I couldn't enforce rules that I couldn't follow.

I've seen how easy it is to get frustrated with repeated offenders and habitual boundary pushers, and how easy it is to start treating them _how they deserve_ instead of how the rest of the forum deserves-- I ain't implying nothing 'bout noone here-- and how easily that filters into every staff interaction with posters and the forum culture as a whole.

I haven't had a real complaint about moderation on EN World in fifteen years. I'm not starting now, and I'm only speaking up in the hopes of not having to start in the future.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 27, 2020)

FaerieGodfather said:


> It's a mild criticism, something to be aware of. I was a forum moderator-- and a damned good one-- on an American political forum for over a decade, covering three Presidential elections before I went insane-- for unrelated reasons-- and had to step down because I couldn't enforce rules that I couldn't follow.
> 
> I've seen how easy it is to get frustrated with repeated offenders and habitual boundary pushers, and how easy it is to start treating them _how they deserve_ instead of how the rest of the forum deserves-- I ain't implying nothing 'bout noone here-- and how easily that filters into every staff interaction with posters and the forum culture as a whole.
> 
> I haven't had a real complaint about moderation on EN World in fifteen years. I'm not starting now, and I'm only speaking up in the hopes of not having to start in the future.



I’m not just a Mod, I’m a trained mediator.  I know better.  But I’m human.


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## billd91 (Mar 27, 2020)

No "Good day, sir"? I thought ragequitting was supposed to be accompanied by a "Good day, sir!"


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## Son of the Serpent (Mar 27, 2020)

I could make a REALLY good joke about the above post but i dont wanna get banned.

Aslo, heh, former sentence is relevant to this thread.


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## CleverNickName (Mar 27, 2020)

Ugh, I should have known better than to encourage discussion of old editions.  I was feeling pensive and nostalgic, and I wanted to help people relive their memories of the days of yore with me.  Remember filling in the numbers on your dice with a crayon?  Remember the first time you saw that dinosaur in _The Isle of Dread_ and you were like whaaaaaaaaaat?!  Remember your first failed save vs. poison?

I guess I should have seen this coming.  Some folks take this game too seriously--or at least, they take it a lot more seriously than others might.  What makes me roll my eyes and chuckle, probably makes someone else furious enough to complain to management.

I'm not a moderator, and I would probably be a terrible one if the job somehow came to me.


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## billd91 (Mar 27, 2020)

CleverNickName said:


> Ugh, I should have known better than to encourage discussion of old editions.  I was feeling pensive and nostalgic, and I wanted to help people relive their memories of the days of yore with me.  Remember filling in the numbers on your dice with a crayon?  Remember the first time you saw that dinosaur in _The Isle of Dread_ and you were like whaaaaaaaaaat?!  Remember your first failed save vs. poison?




Whether or not people act like jackasses when some topics come up isn’t your fault. Reliving memories is perfectly fine.


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## TwoSix (Mar 27, 2020)

Overreaction or no, I don't think the general reaction should be "Ah, well, what you gonna do?"  Lowkey was a highly visible and highly interactive poster over the past 5 years, and it's not like his posts were any sort of actual edition war malfeasance.  It was dramatically overwrought bashing of an edition virtually no one is invested in for humor reasons.

I mean, I don't think anyone rationally thinks his displayed "hatred" of gnomes and paladins is actually inflammatory.


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## GlassJaw (Mar 27, 2020)

TwoSix said:


> Overreaction or no, I don't think the general reaction should be "Ah, well, what you gonna do?"  Lowkey was a highly visible and highly interactive poster over the past 5 years, and it's not like his posts were any sort of actual edition war malfeasance.  It was dramatically overwrought bashing of an edition virtually no one is invested in for humor reasons.
> 
> I mean, I don't think anyone rationally thinks his displayed "hatred" of gnomes and paladins is actually inflammatory.




Agreed. I'm sorry to see him go. Seems like this could have gone differently.


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## Umbran (Mar 27, 2020)

TwoSix said:


> It was dramatically overwrought bashing of an edition virtually no one is invested in for humor reasons.




That's really a secondary argument.  Let us be clear on a major point here - a point we all should have learned in kindergarten, or the equivalent.

When you offend someone, you don't _start_ by trying to prove at length that, in fact, what you just did was actually okay, or should be allowed.  You don't stick by your guns with no remorse, trying to prove your entitlement when you are repeatedly told that someone was hurt.  That is not persuasive.

You start with, _"I'm sorry."_  You can work out whether the issue was overblown or an error afterwards.


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## Blue (Mar 27, 2020)

Umbran said:


> That's really a secondary argument.  Let us be clear on a major point here - a point we all should have learned in kindergarten, or the equivalent.
> 
> When you offend someone, you don't _start_ by trying to prove at length that, in fact, what you just did was actually okay, or should be allowed.  You don't stick by your guns with no remorse, trying to prove your entitlement when you are repeatedly told that someone was hurt.  That is not persuasive.
> 
> You start with, _"I'm sorry."_  You can work out whether the issue was overblown or an error afterwards.



Umbran, @Dannyalcatraz  you both have my respect as moderators and as posters.  Please take the below as as comments just on this, not as any larger critique.  You two do a bang up job.

If someone doesn't feel like they have done something wrong, then they are hypocritical to start with "I'm sorry" - because they are not. I think lowkey13's was attempting to explain why he felt moderation of "jackassery?" and threats to boot were out of line.

He's long been one of our "class clown" regular posters who shares his sense of humor - I'm sure if you look at his HaHas that's been one of the ways he has contributed frequently to the board. It seems like he was trying to show how he regularly brings smiles to people reading his posts. _A vocal minority with a Report button should not overwhelm a regular positive rating from the community as a whole._ That's assuming this was an isolated case - I don't have all the information.

In this thread Umbran came down pretty hard on how his posts affects others, but really only focused on the negative. How he affects others seems a net positive - a lot more likes and hahas then reports.

Everyone is under a lot of stress right now.  It saddens me to see him go.  He was an active and contributing member of the community.  He's made his choice, you and the other mods did not ask him to leave.  But I do think he was left in a position where he felt it was inevitable with booting already on the table from the mod comment, and hsi long time posting style being cut down in this thread as unacceptable, and so cut his losses and left.


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## Celebrim (Mar 27, 2020)

Umbran said:


> That's really a secondary argument.  Let us be clear on a major point here - a point we all should have learned in kindergarten, or the equivalent.




So, anyone that disagrees doesn't even have the wisdom of a kindergartner?



> When you offend someone, you don't _start_ by trying to prove at length that, in fact, what you just did was actually okay, or should be allowed.  You don't stick by your guns with no remorse, trying to prove your entitlement when you are repeatedly told that someone was hurt.  That is not persuasive.
> 
> You start with, _"I'm sorry."_  You can work out whether the issue was overblown or an error afterwards.




In my experience, when there is an argument and someone says how offended that they are, it is at least as likely that the one saying they are offended is being unreasonable as it is that the one accused of being offensive is actually in the wrong. Taking the stance that someone has been offensive is a really good way to justify throwing temper tantrums, which in my experience, is a strategy most kindergartner's have figured out. 

What we have in your opinion is that of a kindergarten teacher that always rewards the fist pounding temper tantrum and running to the teacher when he doesn't get his way: "Tommy won't let me play with the truck! He said I was a meenie, waaaaaaagh!"

Let me be clear on the major point here, a reasonable person might ask whether Tommy had the truck first, and whether little Mikey tried to snatch, before insisting Tommy apologize. Your take on this is not reciprocal nor complete. You're all about how lowkey13 is supposed to apologize (to whom?). But the moderators offense to him is not treated the same way. So maybe a little more refining your opinion and a little less lecturing how we don't have the maturity of kindergartners would be in order, because it's clear at some level you don't even believe what you are saying else the moderators would have just apologized and that would have been the end of it.

A reasonable person might have looked at the post that started this thread and concluded that it was neither intended to be offensive nor actually likely to be one a reasonable person would find offensive. Nor in fact did it at the time cause any real stir.

It's not escaped my attention that the mods have been unfairly picking on lowkey13 for the last 6 weeks or so, and so I'm not surprised at this outcome.  Not really my affair, but I'd be interested to know if that program was organized by one more posters who decided they had it in for him and were going to pull the board equivalent of SWATing a poster to avenge themselves for some perceived slight.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 27, 2020)

I will point out:

1) I had no problem with lowkey’s gnome & Paladin humor.  I generally had no personal issues with lowkey at all.

2) I agreed with the reporting ENWorlder that the general bash on 2Ed was out of line.  At the height of the Edition Wars, it probably would have earned not just booting from the thread (as I pointed out but didn’t do) but an actual ban from ENWorld.  Just because we don’t enforce like we used to, it does not follow that certain behavior will be given free reign.

3) See posts #15 & #19: unlike lowkey, I did not attempt to defend my error.  I admitted it, and stated I should have handled it differently.

4) unlike actual SWATing, there has to be underlying behavior worthy of moderation to actually get a poster in trouble.  You can’t disavow your own posts to claim injustice.  If there were some group trying to get lowkey banned by reporting posts, he would have been tried on the merits of his own words.  Just because you or I didn‘t have a personal problem with someone’s postings, it doesn’t follow that others didn’t.


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## Blue (Mar 27, 2020)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> 2) I agreed with the reporting ENWorlder that the general bash on 2Ed was out of line.  At the height of the Edition Wars, it probably would have earned not just booting from the thread (as I pointed out but didn’t do) but an actual ban from ENWorld.  Just because we don’t enforce like we used to, it does not follow that certain behavior will be given free reign.




Thank you for explaining: when I saw the "boot", it wasn't clear it was just from the thread -- I had assumed it was from ENworld as a whole.  But I now see you use the terminology "ban" for that.


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## Lanefan (Mar 27, 2020)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I’m not just a Mod, I’m a trained mediator.  I know better.  But I’m human.



Does that make you a Moderediator?

It does now...


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## Morrus (Mar 27, 2020)

Well that certainly escalated quickly.

I’m sad to see Lowkey go, as I like him, but it’s entirely his decision. He’s not banned, and he’s welcome back.

We have historically given him some leeway when he’s exhibited impatience and frustration with other posters. He is very much not ‘picked on’; rather the opposite.

And we certainly don’t need a dogpile on either him or the moderators right now. We’re all stressed right now, dealing with vulnerable family members during a pandemic, and locked in our homes. I think it’s incumbent on us all to show a little patience with others at this time.


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## Lanefan (Mar 27, 2020)

The line that's just appeared through lowkey's name on his posts etc. - is that a system-generated thing when someone closes their account, or is that something he did, or that was done by you or another mod?

Asking because I've never seen it before.


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## Morrus (Mar 27, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> The line that's just appeared through lowkey's name on his posts etc. - is that a system-generated thing when someone closes their account, or is that something he did, or that was done by you or another mod?
> 
> Asking because I've never seen it before.



Yep, he’s deleted his account.


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## DammitVictor (Mar 27, 2020)

Blue said:


> Thank you for explaining: when I saw the "boot", it wasn't clear it was just from the thread -- I had assumed it was from ENworld as a whole.  But I now see you use the terminology "ban" for that.




lowkey13 made the same mistake, which was key to this whole sorry affair.


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## PabloM (Mar 27, 2020)

Honestly, it seems to me that saying "I use sarcasm" or "they know I am joking" does not exclude you from being considerate of the thoughts of others, which, in my personal experience with Lowkey in this forum, he usually doesn´t have
I understand when he makes jokes about gnomes, paladins or 2e, but many times the line of the joke is blurred and obviously it is not so clear.


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## Morrus (Mar 27, 2020)

OK, I don’t think we need to talk about somebody who is no longer here. I’ll close the thread.


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