Hey all,
Moderation philosophy posts started out as an exercise by myself to put down some of my thoughts on running communities that I’d learned over the years. As they continued I started to more heavily involve the other admins in the writing and brainstorming. This most recent post involved a lot of moderator voices as well, which is super exciting! This is a community, and we want the voices at all levels to represent the community and how it’s run.
This is probably the first of several posts on moderation philosophy, how we make decisions, and an exercise to bring additional transparency to how we operate.
This comment doesn’t seem to be in good faith. Can you elaborate?
It’s in good faith. Follow the link. Check that community’s modlog if the big tree of removed comments isn’t sufficient.
TL;DR - OC shit on people who don’t vote for Democrats. I replied saying the current state of affairs is thanks to people like them who vote for mainstream parties, with the same kind of snark they used against the implied target of anyone who doesn’t vote or votes third-party. The mod removal based on “needlessly antagonistic” started with me—the leftist—and left alone the reactionary liberal who blamed leftists and working-class voters for the state of U.S. politics. Removing whole conversation trees for the sake of people who want to defend the honor of Democrats looks an awful lot like a liberal “sanitized space”, I’d say.
From a meta point of view, sounds like you started the antagonistic comment tree; was it needed, or could you have addressed the issuse while trying to deescalate? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think some of the moderation philosophy docs address favoring deescalation and disengagement, as opposed to escalation, even when it is "in kind’.
Wrong. The original comment was antagonistic toward any and all users (as well as the broader population) who didn’t vote the way the liberal wanted them to. I guess it’s okay to be antagonistic toward a whole segment of a community, but being “antagonistic” back to a single user who’s doing that…that is a no-no.
I’ll quote @Gaywallet, Beehaw admin and OP of this thread (and, probably, the linked document) here:
Whatever “realistic” means here, I guess. But it sounds a great deal like responding “in kind”, as you put it, isn’t fundamentally something that’s expected to be moderated against. Allegedly, at least.
The original comment was yours… it seemed to include an attack onto everyone who doesn’t think like you, with nothing constructive to offer. At least the response included an explanation of their point of view, but then you kept derailing the discussion towards antagonism and personal attacks.
If I understand the rules correctly (any admin/mod feel free to chime in if I’m wrong), the right way to continue that conversation would’ve been to acknowledge the other person’s point of view, excuse yourself, and either try to work towards a constructive consensus, or just leave it be.
You can also edit your previous comments to add context or correct any mistakes to avoid misunderstandings.
Wrong. Here was the original comment. I’ve emphasized the bit that shits on anyone who doesn’t vote for Democrats, and anyone who knows enough about other political philosophies to know the two liberal mainstream U.S. political brands are basically identical in all but rhetoric (so yeah, that user “included an attack onto everyone who doesn’t thing like [them]” as you so helpfully put it).
Does that help clarify things for you? I hope so, because you’d honestly have to be willfully misreading things if not.