Since I'm the one who redirected the discussion here (rightfully so I think) in the first place, allow me to intervene.
I should preface this post by saying I followed the exchange here yesterday and chose to not intervene in order to not lead where it should be going and let everyone some time to say what they wanted to say, I felt it was the right thing to do and looking at what's been shared so far (especially Ystad on my case) it feels like I was correct on that at least.
As usual in this topic, everything below will be my personal take, this is not a mod post nor is it endorsed by every staff member (although we probably do share at least some degree of common view on most of what I'm going to say below)
There were indeed only two, one which was dealt with properly with a post of mine (ironically, unlike what Lelouch0612 said, it only took 30mn between the report (from Gartooth) and the moderation, it was pure luck though as a "few hours" is more representative oh how long it takes usually), the second once was HFbob that came long after and once the matter was already dropped, all the other quotes weren't the problem in itself but part of why the user felt overwhelmed.
As one can guess it wasn't the first time such thing was happening, whether to Gartooth or some other members, it just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back in the least elegant possible way.
Three extra points I wanted to mention which are related
On the matter of timing of moderation, I must strain that nearly all moderation actions are decided collegially by few people (between 3-5 typically) because "slamdunk" warnings/bans are (thankfully) not that frequent, the thing is, as some of us are in different timezones, even though every report is read by someone rather quickly, it will take usually a few hours at least to be actionned unless it's very egregious.
It might lead to the feeling that moderation is being "slow" (not that long ago with the "crappy gamers" stuff on MC thread) but it also helps to avoid decisions made by an individual in the heat of the moment which could end up not being the wisest choice.
On strict moderation : I feel we are being extremely lenient overall, to a fault maybe even (see more on the next point), the usual flow of moderation usually go like this
1 - A post gets 1 or 2 reports : More often than not we aren't doing anything unless the thread gets derailed or the post really is doubtful, in a ideal world the best moderation is self moderation by the community
2 - This is the xth time a user gets reported, often for the same kind of reason, we try to use "soft" moderation as in a mod makes a post to kindly ask in thread for the reported user to stop (bad faith, agressive tone, ad personam etc.), or sometimes going through PM
3 - It happens again, this time a warning is due
4 - And again, second warning
5 - ... and again, we can escalade to temp ban or thread ban depending on the timescale of the events, temp ban ranges from 1 day to a couple weeks so far I think
6 - Permaban is the last step and an incredibly rare occurence (there are 4 of them currently, 3 which we have been very patient with and a self requested one which happened after multiple warnings/temp ban), there's only one perma thread reply ban
But above is just a theorical way of things to unfold, if
the wrongdoing is blatant it will go much faster, if
someone goes into a frenzy as well, we adapt the sanction case by case and after discussing between staff members as mentioned above.
In any case warnings are just that, warnings, multiple members received one or more because of what we judge as a misstep and are still doing fine there, it's not a surefireway to a ban afterwards, sometimes we make mistakes what's important is to know when to stop and recognizing we made those mistakes.
Overall the vast majority of the reports are akin to tone policing though, and this is where we are a bit uncomfortable on what to do (and reports take longer to deal with), it also often involves two or more sides where, more often than not, both have their own share of spiraling the thing into a bigger mess than it should be.
We don't want moderation to be used as a way to "win" your debate or beat into the ground someone who's already getting piled on, ok maybe that person was wrong (whether it's about data or the way he framed his argument, it doesn't matter) but she/he didn't get there alone and amongst the various courses of action you could take (like dropping the subject, trying to empathize with the other poster to find some kind of agreement, trying to reframe his/her own argument to better understand what he/she wanted to point out etc.) it's more often than not just people arguing back and forth and getting more heated while having no interest whatsoever to find any sort of common ground.
Honestly it just comes down to
Mind I ask who that would be?
Chairman comes to mind, Zenitora (who self requested his perma ban, to be fair it was a bit of a relief for us with the amount of concern/moderation we needed to have with him) after checking warning history I also see Bryank75, McSpeed and... that's it?
Ban is rare, multiple bans I think there are litterally only a few of them (more than a couple one could say)
It's clearly what happened there with HFBob,
it wasn't the first time either and I don't think this is a posting style we should endorse as a community, while clearly it wasn't the intended effect it was the direct cause of having one of our member (which we had 0 problem with) ask for a permaban due to not being comfortable here anymore.
This is a net loss for the community, and one we could have avoided and that I made a direct action for only for it to be squandered not long after.
I feel like this the right attitude to have instead of skipping the whole discussion altogether to reply to what's convenient for you while ignoring everything else
I'm not a big poster myself, and my total is being inflated by the number of mod posts I had to do lately so I get the feeling and... it's alright ? If you put your ego asides and come here with the intent of learning and exchange occasionnaly whenever you feel comfortable and/or legitimate doing so this is perfectly fine
In the end it comes down to what vision of a forum you wish to enforce, there is no secret that I'm more fond of having less but more valuable posts and I have my gripes with low effort posts, 1 line snarky posts (or reactionnary pics), double posts, and posts ignoring whole discussions altogether and jumping in late.
What we're trying to enforce is less of that whenever possible, of course it's still cool to have fun once in a while, but this is a forum, not 4chan, not Twitter, not Discord, not Facebook, we all have plenty of time to post whatever we want to post and it's not a real time live discussion happening. I guess it might not come off as too newcomer friendly, which isn't the aim in itself per se as I don't remember any newcomer with honest questions being shunned here ever, and be a bit time consuming but... I mean overall what's up to debate here is what kind of level of discussion you want/expect to have.
HFBob's posts at that point were like litterally the embodiment of many things I wish we wouldn't have
- Double post
- Barging in ignoring the matter was closed (only would have taken looking a few posts below)
- Misreading the original point
- Somehow missing the fact it was a mod post (not the most surprising fact considering the above points)
- Replying back after being told to stop and redirect him to this topic if needed (although considering my post I understand why he did it, doesn't make it right but I'll come to that later on)
In the end it also comes down to respect, like,
does that post need to be from a mod for it to make sense ?
If it's from a mod
you bow down to it only because it was written by some figure of authority, while if it's not the case then it's definitely something to be combative about ?
It does give more legitimacy but it feels like a terrible way of thinking, the crux of the matter isn't who spoke but what was spoken, I don't want anyone to blindly agree with me because I can enforce some punitions on the forum, I'm also a member first and foremost (even if being a mod has taken a toll on my capacity to being so due to the time investment at some points like here)
I agree with a good part of what you said and I'm glad someone pointed it out, it wouldn't have felt right to run away with it.
To be honest I wrote something even worse at first, but quickly edited some of it out, it's not hard to guess why and how I ended up posting that, just check
@Lelouch0612 post above.
On that particular moderation event I did the whole thing, stepped in for a mod post to try to stop the piling up on Gartooth, replied back to HFBob and enforced his warning, honestly I shouldn't have and it would've been better for me to step back at some point (another mod also proposed to enforce the warning, but as I was available first I did it myself) as it's something we have done before between mods to avoid making moderation feels like a personal affair, this is the kind of backfire that can happen when you deal with moderation tasks too quickly, lesson learned I hope.
Regardless HFBob warning is still 100% justified for multiple reasons mentioned above and in others posts as well, but don't worry about it, a warning isn't much.
Now on my case... if I were to follow the 6 points guidelines I layed above then... I had no report on my post (I think it's still possible to report mod posts) but we can think I didn't because I was a mod, so for the sake of the argument let's say you reported me there, which would be fine. It's certainly singular to report a mod but why not, that stuff might be needed at times in order to avoid power trips which most of us probably saw happening at least once in our life
Anyway the logical "punishment" I would take trying to take an outsider point of view would be some kind of slap on the wrist, there was no prior infrigement that I know off so that thing would logically be either a PM or a mod post in thread which is the usual first step, I can do self admonishment here all I want but that wouldn't look right, I can ask
@WestEgg @Coco or
@Hiska-kun too but it'd still feel a bit fabricated.
So yeah I don't know, unless you have a better idea you'll have to take my word for it, I did try to spend a fair amount of time explaing myself there, laying out as much as I could and take the blame where I feel like I should.
I hope this is not how you really feel, because as you can see we can share pretty much anything there, a mod, like any other member, can and should be criticized when it's needed.
Yes, not my best showing clearly and I'm sorry for that.