Since my accuser hasn't shown themselves. I will provide some feedback I'm hope reaches your,
@Fisico and co. ears.
- Rules are too loose.
- Warning system is exploitable because the...
- Response is robotic as @KR_EP discovered and now deploys.
- Being chosen is not volunteering.
- Transparency needs to improve.
- Challenges shouldn't be treated as insolence.
I subscribe to the idea a picture is worth a thousand words. I may use one to start a conversation, that that could lead to substantive debate. I put a lot of effort into finding exactly the right sentiment to put into such a post. Kirby or Link climbing represents the rooting people are doing for those teams and their product. Some poor souls getting squashed by a sumo wrestler represents corporate capitalism at it's worse. An eye roll and a laugh at a comment filled with misconception or absurdity can be the doorway to a discussion that leads to data being dug up to support the opposing view points. Word vomits that are little more than tinsel (
@KR_EP) to me are less thought provoking than shorter, denser statements. One likes hearing the sound of their own voice, the other leaves room for other voices.
We're reading, but as I previously mentionned in some occurences (in my point of view at least), sometimes it's better to let different people express themselves and their opinions to have a better grasp of the different/overall sentiment for the case at hand (and here we already had 2 staff and 4 members with different takes).
I can adress your particular points above at least partially
1 - Rules are loose to some degree yes, mostly because we're showing a lot of leniency, the hard rules for sanctions/bans (which are a few months old) don't apply retroactively and are there as a form of deterrence for the future.
As for what post gets or doesn't get actionned there's bound to be an arbitrary moving line (once again, to some degree) on what is or isn't acceptable, it depends on context, interpretation, and the overall thread it's being posted on.
Looking back at the thread for your particular case the reason of the warning being "Low effort" I can hazard a few guess about the reasoning behind
- There's 0 character/word in your post, it's only a reactionnary gif
- It's also a negative one (probably some bias is bound to happen when things are negative instead of positive like the Kirby one you quoted earlier for example)
- It comes as a reaction to some Falcom news, something these threads liked to pile on, and on, and on for pages and pages
- We've already heard/read plenty of time of how some (respectable) users litterally don't feel welcome or avoid the threads/forum altogether because of the weird fixation these threads used to have on the Harada/Nagoshi/Kondo trio
- It would be an extremely time consuming affair, but I'm fairly confident that different mods at different times for months asked for it to be toned down (which worked at least)
- Sometimes we like to step in early on to prevent any further derail (I went and check there's slighty more than 1h between the post and warning)
Observing and doing nothing to see how things evolve is fine, but when there's a pattern of things going out of hand it might be better to step on from the start if the occasion arises, these warnings might end up being pointless if not given early on (eg. after we get half a dozen others posts on "lol Falcom" "pikachusurprised.jpg", I might be exagerating but that's the idea)
2 - I'm not sure the warning system is exploitable as is (it could in theory), it brings some posts to our attention but that's it, we're also reading the threads so if a post is judged actionnable things might happen whether it's reported or not.
Only a minority of reports doesn't get dismissed one way or another, a smaller one ends up with a staff member doing something, an even smaller one is dealt with with a warning
3 - Most (the vast majority) of any member reports on posts are not actionned as you can guess, responses are "robotic" because there's a limit on characters to answer to a report, it's not there to open a discussion/debate so things needs to be straightforward (also functionnaly speaking I imagine it also allows to preserve the anonymity of the mod who dealt with the report)
4 - It's both, moderators can decline despite being chosen, it happened in fact, also moderators can leave at any point, it already happened too. And it's very much volunteering as we do spend hours typing posts here, doing things for the forum in the background, trying to keep the discussions cool and steady when needed, reevaluate things
I did say a few times that I, as a mod, am also a simple member and don't want to be treated differently when posting here, but I also don't want the work we do as mods/admins here to be belittled either.
It's not fun to give a warning, it's not pleasant to enact a ban, there are also more enjoyable things things to do than elaborate lengthfully on what/why/how X mod action happened, however I do recognize it's needed for everyone (mods and members alike) and it also seems to be appreciated by the community as a whole
5 - With how much we try to lay out things here in public, in others threads, also in private on PM/Discord/others (because not every member post their questions/grievances here) I think at least we're making a decent effort.
Could it be better ? Always.
How ? That I don't know and that topic is also here for that, for your particular case I guess you wanted a more detailled explanation on the warning and its circumstances, posts above and mine are trying to do that.
6 - I think the main thing here is that there's a big discrepancy in how you perceive your warning and how moderation intended it to be.
We're not here to dictate you how to feel about anything, nor anyone should, but at least we can tell you the motivation behind the action and that it feels there's a strong dissonance between it and the outcome in this thread.
The crux of the matter though is that, overall, a post on IB which is made of only 1 gif is not recommended, it can be tolerated at times but it's not and shouldn't ever be the norm, that's something which is perfectly fine on different type of social networks, on Discord or various types or others instant messaging apps but Install Base is a message board, this is different and there are thus different expectations when posting on it.
In here you basically admitted yes that wasn't fair to the poster. So how are you going to solve it?
I don't think Lelouch said it wasn't fair, he said it's never 100% homogenous and fair and it's bound to be as moderation still relies in the end on a human decision making process which, by nature, will never be 100% homogenous and fair.
And as much as we can try to write rules to help us, as long as it's being applied by humans a 100% homogenous and fair process remains impossible, even in a theorical scenario where we tried to write an AI/bot to automatically apply warnings/bans, that AI would still have its own bias in its algorithms (most likely written by a human, or derived from something written by a human originally) one way or another.
We don't pretend to have a 100% homogenous and fair process, we try to be as close to it as possible, that's it.
Although that discussion is more on the philosophy's end than about forum and moderation anymore.
Non-issue to you, not the poster who was being targeted. Future posters like me saw that warning and thought it is still okay for us to post reaction gifs, just not from that one poster who was warned.
I'm not quite sure why you understood that warning was anything personal and it would be ok for you (or anyone else) to only post a reaction gif, there was no further post with only 1 gif in the thread as well.
I wouldn't mind you elaborating on the matter
You have to understand that every poster here are valuable.
Yes, that's what posters should think about as well, I went and explained above how the pile up on Falcom was keeping people away from the threads, every post that is on IB is tacitly endorsed by IB as a whole and representative of IB, the moderation here felt that we didn't want to endorse that post as far as quality (zero word, one gif) and tone (negative, mocking a developper that has been mocked for years to death) is concerned.
Every post also influences the whole discourse of a thread, moderation overall stance is to have a hands off approach as much as possible but if we think something might lower the quality of discussion we might step up which is what happened there.
