Tbh, the lag option seems petty and outdated, as someone who has been on the wrong side of it before, its basically just a ban but more annoying.

It should be gotten rid of and staff should just use a ban or a mute any time its relevant.

 

I never bothered mentioning it or complaining about this before, for reasons that other members have already discussed in detail - namely just accepting the culture of the board. At one point we were having a discussion on IRC, around the time of I believe the Paris terrorist attacks. Xiph0 mentioned he would ban anyone that was muslim, and I took it as a joke and said that I was. He banned me from IRC. An hour or so went by (where I did what enembee should have done in this situation, no disagreement there) and PM'd Raven. Whether because of that or otherwise, I was unbanned almost immediately. I also had the forum lag thing, although I didn't realise at the time until I absently mentioned it to I believe Sree, that the website seemed to have a lot of issues these days. After that conversation, while he didn't say anything directly, the problems never happened again.

Overall I just took it as a joke that went slightly over the line, but I didn't hold much of a grudge. I just didn't tend to visit IRC much after that. If however, as it seems, this is a consistent pattern with multiple users of abuse of moderator/admin powers then I do think it's worth mentioning so a way forward can be sought.

EDIT: The above happened I think 4 years ago so my memory is a little hazy, but I recall a separate yet similar incident where another member of staff (who knows who he/she) is PM'd me separately and spoke to me on a different platform. Their advice, much like @Arthellion received, was simply not to argue with Xiph0 because it was only going to end up with me getting banned. This was despite them agreeing that what he was saying did in fact significantly cross the usual (very generous) DLP line of what is offensive by some margin. I'm all for letting people talk as much shit as they want, censorship free, but at the time it really seemed pathetic that I couldn't do the same just because the other person was a moderator and they wouldn't like having their dominance or whatever challenged.

To finish i'll clarify one thing, i've got no issue with any member of staff and it's obvious to me that 99% of the time they thanklessly keep this site running and make sure it's the community we all like and come here for.

 

I hear that, and for the most part, I'm all for it. I don't think anyone realistically expects (or should want) DLP to swing the pendulum all the way over and institute a 20-point Code of Conduct and have a public moderation log where staff are put under a microscope for every decision they make, and the site dissolves into an incoherent blob of rules lawyering.

That being said, there's a balance to strike here.

Sites, communities, and people grow. The rules that exist in your head, in the staff's heads, change over time. My sense is that staff using their powers to fuck with people was perhaps subtly encouraged back in the day, and that slowly it's grown to a more neutral stance, live and let live, mods don't interfere with what other mods are doing. I could be wrong on that, lord knows I'm not exactly speaking from a position of inside knowledge or authority here. If that's how things have gone, though, then maybe it's time to give that internal stance a little nudge and start privately internally frowning on this kind of use of staff powers.

My problem is essentially this:

The more time and effort I put into being a part of an online community, the more I value the fruits of that labor, and those fruits essentially boil down to friendships, connections, and reputation. The more I value those things, the more actual, real impact it would have on me if they were to get messed with, or taken away. On most websites, I have a 100% confidence level that my fate is entirely in my own hands - I understand the line, written or unwritten, and I know what stepping over it will mean.

When I see things like this happen on DLP, it erodes that confidence. It makes me think that if a bad comment I make happens to coincide with a mod sitting on his balls, that could end up messing with my whole day. It makes me think that if a staff member happens to just like, chemically not get along with me, it could meaningfully impact my life on the site. And the only way I have to protect myself from this, the only real power I have, is to lower the impact of that happening. And the only way I can do that is to lower my engagement in the site. Care about my status here less, and there's less that can be taken from me.

We're not talking about huge, overarching concern. We're not talking about something that weights on me constantly or something to be hugely dramatic about and raise a black flag. But it's there. A pebble in the shoe.

I had my own run-in with this, back in the day. I've honestly forgotten the details, but I made some comment in IRC that a staff member didn't like, they kicked me, then kicked me again hours later, then kept doing it and messaged me that I needed to say or do X or Y to come back. I messaged a few people, and was told that there wasn't really anything to be done, to just suck it up, wait it out and let the staff member get bored, or try to confront them directly and roll the dice.

I waited it out, rejoined a few weeks later, and it was fine. But it was never quite the same.

I don't think the site is or should be a democracy. I don't have an issue with the staff taking a hard line against what amounts to blackmail. I think that "no rules but what exists in our heads" is actually a pretty solid way to run a small, tight-knit site like this. I would hate to see this site turn into spacebattles. I like and enjoy the fact that the staff are basically just regular users who won't hesitate to tell you to go fuck yourself if you're being a twat.

But you gotta realize that there's a cost to doing it that way - when a mod tells you to go fuck yourself, they're doing so in a way that's symmetrical. They're using words and you can shut up, or take a step back and PM them, or change the subject, or even go way over the top and be ultra defensive and get banned. But whatever you do you're on the same level, you're playing the same game. When a mod mutes you and fucks with your forum settings, it's just... not that, at all. And it feels really viscerally terrible.

I don't think you should meaningfully change the stance that the only rules are in your head. I just think you should (slightly) change what's in your head.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend I have all the answers. It's your site, you'll all know far better than I if there's a way to do this, and how you might go about shifting your mod culture a little, holding each other accountable a little more. More likely than not, any such change won't be, and shouldn't be a public thing.

But if there's any way to publicly inject a little bit of that lost confidence back into the site, any way to say not just that this shouldn't have happened, but also that it won't happen again, we're on it, we're doing something about it, that would mean a lot to me personally.

 

I only participate sparingly in DLP, but I've been here since almost the beginning and I've got to say this piece.

The fact that you handed out punishment to others for not being civil, is rich in both irony and hypocrisy, considering the vitriol that has spawned from you these past fourteen years.

 

Dude, we've known each over a decade now. I get what you're saying, but that's not the problem and it's not what we're talking about here.

If a staff member is abusing their power the answer is not to go behind his back and get it all sorted out hush hush. The answer is to not have the staff member abusing their power.

I'm not advocating for a spacebattles mods vs users type thing. I'm saying that if you can't handle power responsibly then you shouldn't have it in the first place. Keep the trust so that the community doesn't end up in a position where people distrust the mods.

 

I ain’t got much to say except that the moderation of DLP is excellent. It sucks that we’ve lost Vlad and NMB in just a few months, but the mods were right in their action.

Seems to me Xiph was hazing NMB a bit. I’m not saying he should’ve done it, but NMB was a member of this forum when hazing was a rite of passage and as someone who was most certainly hazed before he should’ve been able to handle this situation differently. Just an email or DM to a different Mod would’ve fixed everything.

 

I think we are a reply short of the full picture, but if he did just straight-out said 'no' then I suppose what followed was inevitable.

 

Again, I don't super want to be a prominent voice here, but there are counterexamples to "fixed or mitigated" just in this thread. Or at least with fixed or mitigated beyond "just do something else for a couple days and they'll forget".

I don't think anyone is saying there aren't any options to reach out to someone, but rather that with the site as it is it is often easier to tell members to just wait until the staff member chills out rather than coming to a direct confrontation. And that does often happen. They got over it with Newcomb, presumably Arthellion has account control back, TMD is free to do as he will, etc. And I'm not dragging anyone for that - sometimes it is a lot smoother to just let things self-resolve.

But as Newcomb said, that's the sort of thing that encourages people to not care about the site. And it's just a bit of an... unforced error, I guess, to let something like that happen to people that are engaging in earnest with the site because a staff member was mildly but not horrifically dickish.

DLP has always been a place with the highest of standards. Is there any reason why we shouldn't strive for them in use of staff powers same as we do anything else?

 

@Rahkesh Asmodaeus I did bring it up with another staff member (palindrome I think)and was told just to deal with it.

I dealt with it, I moved on. But that doesn’t foster trust between the community and authority.

A mod using their powers to win a petty argument is crossing the line.

 

Epeen escalation?! Blackmail?! Hostage taking?! Murder of said hostage?!

I haven't seen an HP fandom dramabomb this juicy since the great msscribe debacle.

Well done DLP. Topkeks.

 

I remember getting temp banned by Jon about a decade(?) ago when we got into a very heated argument over if I knocked him off the edge of a cliff in Minecraft. teenagers lmao

Somehow that still seems like a more mature argument than whatever happened here.

 

This is a great idea @Lord Ravenclaw

 

Heh. This brings back memories - Xipho banned me on IRC using the ircbot about five years ago (so I couldn't see who did it) and didn't see fit to provide a reason or duration of the ban. Imagine my surprise when I come back the next day and I still can't get on the IRC.

I ended up bypassing the ban to ask why I was banned and when it would run out. I was, of course, immediately banned when I asked staff about it (Oz or Minion, I can't remember) because I was dodging a ban. So, I PM'd someone and told them that if they didn't want me around, I'd fuck off, but I was hoping to be informed of exactly what I was banned for and how long the ban would last. Eventually I got the ban lifted:


Fun stuff.
EDIT: forgot to mention when this was

 

I'll go out on a limb and say that no one is clamoring for a public moderation log (what are we, Reddit?), just that the majority of concerns expressed point to Xiph0 being overly dickish when people think it's not warranted.

@Xiph0 because I'm not gonna say this shit and hope like a rat that Xiph0 misses the post.

@Lord Ravenclaw A publicly viewable log is, on one hand, a generous move. On the other, moderation on the site is, and consensus seems to agree, in great majority a successful operation. I for one would rather the mods feel free to mod as they believe they need to without having to come up with notes for the mod log like a mandatory diary in rehab.

 

I made a suggestion post about being able to see how many stars you gave to a story October of last year. No feedback. Nothing. (Ironically enough Enembee gave me a thumbs up for the post)

The fact that shit had to hit the fan between Enembee and Xiph before anything approaching a "How can the site be improved?" discussion was had is the most troubling thing about all this.

 

The approach of transparency, can resolve most of the trust issues.
By all means, don't turn DLP to some other sites with rules and appeals.
I assume the assumption here we are all mature enough and should chill out.

If someone think he got punished in unjust manner or it was too harsh.
Having someone to contact to speak with, should be enough.
Off course same person need to be mature and civil, which is always expected.

I doubt DLP need more than that, it is enough for small community/tribe.

Hazing on the other hand, that is an entire Pandora box, best left unopened and avoided.

Edit:
Where is Minion ? and what happened to Vlad (I assume the Inhaler ?)