Right and wrong matter. You may feel otherwise but majority of people over human history as well on this forum disagree with you

Regardless, it’s about making the forum better. It doesn’t have to be about morality. When you have a pillar of the community respond like Nmb, the question why needs to be asked. If this was just an isolated scenario, I’d be inclined to agree with you.

It’s not though. It has revealed institutional issues with DLP that needs to be fixed. Otherwise you’ll continue to see more people leave and move on. And unlike Nmb, there won’t be the chance to have these discussions.

 

I've reported your post for targeted harassment. You're supposed to be some big name here, some community pillar, so act like it. Don't act like a bully. Or is that the real point of you? You think you're so big and cool, with everyone knowing about you and looking to you in this community, that you think you can do whatever you want? Treat people however you want? No. You can't.

 

... what?

 

Wtf? Boi he didn’t do anything wrong!

 

...

Edit: Was apparently a reference to something else. lolz. S'all good.

 

Okay, so the way I read it NMB is essentially coming at the issue from a wholly different, perhaps even anachronistic perspective than Xiph, and his attempt to wave off the discussion is because he realises it would be extremely tedious, and perhaps even pointless to explain that he thinks that a ruler who condones death penalty for countermanding royalty, and commits genocide on the regular (i.e. pretty much every emperor in history) is a pretty shitty person/ruler by modern standards. A few other people seem to be hinting at that same thing in the IRC thread, where as Xipho is taking the discussion at face value and pointing out that Darius was a highly skilled and effective administrator.

At least, that's how I read it.

Edit: holy run-on sentence

 

It's a copy-pasted Reddit comment about Taure.

 

It seems people are in different camps about how to read this, but to me, this definitely reads less as a a taunt or bait, and more like someone trying to avoid an argument with a person who they know has power over them and whom they don't trust to use that power fairly. The 'taunt' is an expression of frustrated powerlessness.

It's a common dynamic between authority figures and populations that they're known to behave less than evenhandedly with. Authority figures have the ability to use disproportionate force against people that 'bait' them: the responsibility on them is to be aware of that, and to make the choice not to.

 

Respectfully Jon, the word preconceived implies that the notion is unfounded when the experience of some others reveals that there is some truth to this sort of thing happeneing.. YOU have worked and discussed things with certain people who approached you to work things out (and I applaud you for it), but Xiph0 literally said in his post that it's the policy of mods not to overturn each other's decisions.

My personal experience is that mods are not willing to challenge each other. I know people from other sites who were former members of DLP who were banned, approached another mod because they felt it was unjust, and were told that it wasn't any of that mods business what another mod did. (To be clear, i take these views with a huge grain of salt considering these were people who were banned and never allowed back so there is some obvious bitterness)

Personally, I don't think this would be an issue at all if Mods limited the use of their banning/muting etc. to actual offenses as laid out in the rules of DLP (which are in the numerous stickies). Mods of DLP have repeatedly used their mod powers to bully and "get the last word in" against users they disagreed with. Maybe that was okay in the past because that was the culture of DLP then...but I don't think that makes it okay now.

My question is, has Xiph0 agreed to apologize to Nmb for using his mod powers in a way that does not relate to DLP rules and guidelines?

If you really don't want to ban Nmb and have reconciliation, sometimes an olive branch is necessary.

 

Neat.

Oh, good.

Huh, I wonder why people might feel this way?

Ah.

 

Honestly, it's a damn shame nmb got banned, because he is one of the relatively few decent writers still doing HP fanfiction (or at least it seems that way sometimes.)

However, nuking the C2 should never be considered okay either. He deserves the ban for that.

Personally reading that log of IRC it sounds to me like nmb was just trying to avoid riling Xiph. Essentially saying he didn't want to get into an argument so let's just not.

Was he a dick? A bit, yes. Did he deserve to be muted? Sure.


But personally I kind of feel like Xiph went a bit too far. Muting him for as long as he did, discouraging, and working for as long as he did to mute him on Discord.

It gives the feeling that Xiph was trying to shut down a lot of avenues for nmb to interact.


Ultimately I wasn't on IRC/Discord, so I don't know the full story. I do hope the end result of this entire debacle is that the staff look at imposing some more strict rules on how to react to things.

 

I agree with you and would agree there is a need for flexibility. Personally, the change I would like to see is that before a ban/muting/dickery can happen, the mod has to fill out a longer form that is submitted in a public forum. Should have the date, name, reason for the ban,, everyone involved etc.

Not excessively long, but something like that kind of form should prevent mods from waving their dick around. IE Banning someone should be enough of an inconvenience for the mod that they only do it when it is justified.

 

Raven's suggestion of a disciplinary list should work well for that.

The only issue I have is that being a mod is a position of trust in the community. I don't want to have anyone replaced or demoted unless it's absolutely necessary because, well, I like all of you and don't want there to be bad blood between anyone. You're doing this on a volunteer basis and I get that it's a pretty thankless job a lot of the time.

That said, abusing mod powers damages the trust that exists between us and the mod team as a whole. I'd be satisfied with a promise for mods not to use their powers for the sake of revenge or getting the last word in and for there to be a way for users to appeal against it beyond the informal ways we've got now.

We don't need to go overboard, we just need to make sure that if a mod is being a dick to someone for no reason then they can be called out on it.

 

It's less about justifying the decision and more being transparent. I don't think a logbook is that much work. Which is what I think we're all mostly agreeing on.

We have the ability to have threads without responses.

This is where we differ I suppose. I don't trust the mods on this site simply because of the past. I'm here for the people, discussion, insights, and information. The actual mods and institutions of DLP? I don't. Let me be real, I appreciate the adherence to quality and standards that DLP espouses. I even appreciate the elitism.

But in the past, DLP Cyber-bullied people. DLP treated people like shit who did not deserve it. The mods who have been here for ages are directly responsible for cultivating and encouraging that in the past. People change and DLP is a much better place because of the changes. I fully recognize the mods have changed and are far more mature than when people were younger. Most people here recognize that what was done in the past is an unacceptable way to treat people.

So, while I'm hopeful that this will lead to new guidelines that hold mods to a standard of integrity, I do so because of what DLP is now...not because of seniority or the past.

 

My opinion honestly means very little, as I mostly just lurk here and occasionally browse the fanfic recommendations to see if anything good has popped up lately, but here's my take on things.

I think Xiph and nmb both crossed the line a little bit. Xiph probably shouldn't have banned nmb from everything, and nmb shouldn't have taunted Xiph repeatedly, but those were smaller offenses, and can mostly be swept under the rug as normal stuff that happens when people are too emotionally invested. Where I think Xiph crossed the line is in discouraging nmb's account, which to me seems like an action that accomplishes nothing but to spite nmb. Where nmb went too far is obviously nuking the C2, which is a project that a lot of people have invested a lot of time into, in response to an argument with one person.

Obviously, nmb is now banned as a result, which I think is a reasonable response to his actions that crossed the line. I don't know enough about this situation to say whether this should be a permanent ban or not, but if he were to apologize and consequently be allowed to rejoin the community, I would definitely not see anything wrong about it.

As far as Xiph goes, I do think he messed up. Completely demoting him is probably way too big of a knee-jerk reaction, but I do think that it should be stressed that he did do somethings that were not okay.

If there's anything that I want to see come from this incident, it should be this:

The "discourage" feature should only ever be used for trolls, spammers, and other accounts that were specifically created to add zero value to the community. It should never ever be used to punish a user who is participating in good faith in the community, even if they have done something wrong or was an asshole at some point. That's what bans and warnings are for.

Using the discourage feature on an actual community member doesn't really inform them that they've done something wrong, it's just sort of a dickish way to greatly annoy them. If you're interested in people actually reforming and becoming more productive members of the community, then you communicate with them and possibly give them a time out via a ban. The only people who should be punished via discourage are those who have very little chance of contributing positively to the community, such as accounts that were created specifically to troll people.

I wouldn't mind specific punishment guidelines laid out for the public as well, but I do understand if this is not easily implemented, given that sometimes discretion must be exercised by the moderator handing out the punishment.

 

You want them...to fill out forms.