Also, I find it fascinating to get to witness a microcosm of people without power responding to chronically unjust treatment by striking back in ways that are distasteful even to the milieu in which they operate, and the corresponding immediacy and intensity of the backlash to that by the authorities they defied.

 

Come on DR, as our resident government schill, you of all people should support the paperwork

 

Ah, but as the resident LE person, I also appreciate the siren song that is DLP's swift, arbitrary, capricious, and entirely unsympathetic meting out of terrible justice.

 

Honestly, I would be happy if this whole debacle could be solved by NMB and Xiph agreeing that they both went too far, and apologised to each other and to DLP as a whole (NMB breaching trust as archivist for the C2, Xiph for breaching trust as a staff member). I don't even think there needs to be any discipline if it's decided that we can solve problems like this like adults - if no one was truly harmed and there isn't a pattern of horrible behaviour, I think it's fair to say that bygones can be bygones.

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking there needs to be a punishment, but sometimes it's fine to just agree that mistakes were made.

 

Honestly, I just want the confidence that if I fuck up I'll just be banned and that's that, instead of having the Discouragement applied to my account.

What happened between Xiph0 and nmb is done and dusted. It's not like nmb's been banned from the Internet. If you want to talk to nmb, get in touch with him on FFN or Discord.

 

...Didn't we just go through an entire page of mods saying they didn't want to ban NMB?

 

I respectfully disagree with an intentionally 'longer form' made with the intention of turning a ban into a chore.

The staff does a thankless job, lets not needlessly screw with them. Should the admins decide having an internal form system for making revisiting bans, noticing abuse of moderation powers, etc. then that is one thing. But making the ban process extra tedious will just make things harder for our mods with no real upside.

In my experience (moderating forums/irc regarding other interests than fanfiction) mods don't like to ban people, and any that do wont stick around. In my opinion the DLP mods act appropriate, albeit sometimes with excessively foppish language, and this thread have not changed my opinion.

I do mirror the general opinion that the Discouraged options should be limited to plagiarists etc. A clear 'you have been banned, it will be lifted DATE' is doing exactly what we want regarding time limited bans.

 

I think this is the crux of the issue. There doesn't need to be sweeping changes to the way moderation works on the forum, just some reduction in the arbitrariness and the "us" and "them" way it's done right now where mod actions are opaque and seemingly arbitrary from a pleb's perspective. I consider DLP to have some of the best moderation I've seen. It might not be r/AskHistorians level, but DLP has been and remains one of the few bastions where you can go and not be bombarded with low effort shitposts constantly. Posts on DLP have to meet a certain unspoken standard, and although the moderation may not be perfect, I think there has to be some level of autonomy and case-by-case management to maintain this quality. Sweeping overhauls and formalized procedures seem to be going away from what makes DLP a place I've been coming back to for over 10 years and intend to keep coming back to for many years to come.

Some level of escalation starting with a verbal warning in conjunction with some place that you can go to air your grievances and the mods can publicly discuss, or even just render final judgment and reason seems plenty to me. From the logs, it looks like Enembee was caught off guard entirely with his temp ban and right now the backlash is largely due to the apparent lack of recourse and the opaqueness with which judgment is meted. Even within this thread there is some confusion as to how the appeal process works. Can you go to any mod or can't you? Can any mod reverse another's decision, or can only Raven?

In this case, I think most people can agree that both Xiph0 and Enembee made mistakes and kept escalating things, and I think we can all agree that both of them are vital members of the community that we would only be significantly worse without, never better. Regardless of which side you think shoulders more of the blame, if both of them are amenable to sitting down, apologizing, and working to make amends, that would be ideal. But from the logs I haven't seen anything from either one of them that they're truly remorseful for their actions or believe they were wrong. Not knowing either of them particularly well, it looks like both sides are riding high on their egos, and that's just a shame.

P.S., discouragement should be the modding equivalent of going nuclear, not a "come back in a week" button.

 

I don't see what's so tedious about a form that is like the following:

Mod Name:
Banned User Name:
Date:
Reason for Ban: 2-3 sentences stating what occurred.
Length of Ban:

That's literally a 5 minute task. If that.

 

Your suggestion were quite clear.

The form were to be an inconvenience in order stifle unjust bans. If I were a moderator on this site I would be slightly miffed about such a suggestion.
If the problem is moderators abusing bans (which doesn't seem to be a problem here), getting rid of unfit moderators is the cure. Not making everything harder for the moderators who contributes to the forum.

Edit after Artellion's reply:
The initial tone of my last reply were not in the spirit of the thread, me calling my interpretation of Artellion's suggestions to be 'quite clear' is really not helpful in any way. I am sorry if I put words into Arhellion's mouth.

In order to avoid cluttering the thread I sent him a PM and edited my post to add this apology.

We all want the best for the forum, carry on while I take a moment to repent for my sins.

 

Yes, ,my suggestion exists to stifle unjust bans, but you were making what I suggested sound like a ridiculously long process. It's not. It's mean to prevent things like a mod banning someone because they don't like what's being said in the conversation.

Respectfully, what has happened with Nmb and Xiph0 has happened before. Mods have used their mod power to win arguments and bully people. This is just the first time someone has had the ability to do anything about it. (which i don't support Nmb's first reaction honestly. Nuking the C2 is harmful to more than just Xiph0. Nmb should've contacted jon and if that failed, then made a public post in the forum to the rest of DLP).

In this I would agree with you, but no one is going to ask for any mod to be demoted and other mods do not keep each other accountable.


Edit: @illya_ and I are good fam.

 

Consider a trip to Arizona in early fall.