| 4 Nov 2021 |
 @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @jonringer:matrix.org
In my moderation RFC was going to define a banning process where people could be banned for 48hrs to 72hrs before making a longer more official one I'm not really a fan of timed bans, personally, for a few different reasons:
- they perceptually devalue bans from a "last resort" to an "obvious tool", because "it's temporary anyway"
- problematic behaviour does not magically become unproblematic after 48 hours; if the same person still has the same views and same (lack of) adherence to social norms, they will reoffend afterwards, and so the practical result of this is that you're just giving problematic people more 'free airtime'
- it also fails in the other direction; in the rare event that a ban is the event that makes someone go "... fuck. I really was in the wrong" (it does happen!), if the times are set in policy, one cannot be unbanned earlier without at the very least invoking the ire of the community who feel betrayed, and this in turn might make the banned person frustrated and turn their opportunity for reflection into an opportunity for their anger to build further
| 16:15:33 |
 @jonringer:matrix.org | I would still like a moderation process, where you can say. "Hey, one of our statutes is to do XXXX, and your behavior <here> is unacceptable" | 16:15:50 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | Jonas Chevalier: I've tried to avoid taking specific communities' policies as a 'model to follow' (with the exception of the PTIO comrep thing, for which I could present a full cause-and-effect chain), because realistically most people in here will not be familiar with whatever community you end up referencing, and so will not be able to judge for themselves how well their policies actually work - especially the more deeply-rooted problems 'under the surface' are often only visible once one has been an active member of a community for a while | 16:17:38 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | I think it can be informative to learn from other communities and their policies, but only in a context of "why specifically did they choose this policy, and what specific effect did it have", not in a sense of "these guys seem to be doing pretty well, let's take their approach" | 16:18:18 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | that's just another case of "understand, don't just clone" I suppose, which is a parallel to software dev I had not anticipated :p | 16:18:52 |
 @zimbatm:numtide.com | I know what you mean, we have to own our own policies and internalize them | 16:18:56 |
 Ellie | The desire for an explicit set of statutes has been raised several times. I think the general response has been that it invites people to tread right up to the line of acceptable behavior; consistently doing this could very much constitute a problem. | 16:19:07 |
| Ellie | * The desire for an explicit set of statutes has been raised several times. I think the one response has been that it invites people to tread right up to the line of acceptable behavior; consistently doing this could very much constitute a problem. | 16:19:14 |
| Ellie | * The desire for an explicit set of statutes has been raised several times. I think one response has been that it invites people to tread right up to the line of acceptable behavior; consistently doing this could very much constitute a problem. | 16:19:21 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | I meant it more in contrast to RFC98 who seems super defensive | 16:19:23 |
| @jonringer:matrix.org | In reply to @joepie91:pixie.town
I'm not really a fan of timed bans, personally, for a few different reasons:
- they perceptually devalue bans from a "last resort" to an "obvious tool", because "it's temporary anyway"
- problematic behaviour does not magically become unproblematic after 48 hours; if the same person still has the same views and same (lack of) adherence to social norms, they will reoffend afterwards, and so the practical result of this is that you're just giving problematic people more 'free airtime'
- it also fails in the other direction; in the rare event that a ban is the event that makes someone go "... fuck. I really was in the wrong" (it does happen!), if the times are set in policy, one cannot be unbanned earlier without at the very least invoking the ire of the community who feel betrayed, and this in turn might make the banned person frustrated and turn their opportunity for reflection into an opportunity for their anger to build further
I only gave a small blip of the idea I had. the timed banned was just to allow time for the other moderation member to agree in a more permanent solution. One of which, could be a permanent ban if they feel like that is the correct course of action. And there would be more transparency around permanent actions | 16:19:26 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | Jonas Chevalier: I feel like most of the complexity of RFC98 is honestly not in the rules, but rather in the mechanisms - it is essentially an attempt to establish a non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical moderation approach in the context of a world which does the exact opposite | 16:20:22 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | this is complexity that a project with a BDFL would not need to deal with at all | 16:20:38 |
| @jonringer:matrix.org | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
it reflects really well how nice Andreas Kling is as a person (if you watched any of his videos) I think that's fine if there's some way to ensure an alignment of values. But I don't think that's the case for nixpkgs. It's been demonstrated that we are polarized on the issue of moderation | 16:20:47 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | as it can operate on 'standard' social assumptions about hierarchies | 16:20:49 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @jonringer:matrix.org
I only gave a small blip of the idea I had. the timed banned was just to allow time for the other moderation member to agree in a more permanent solution. One of which, could be a permanent ban if they feel like that is the correct course of action. And there would be more transparency around permanent actions I think this is (better) achievable without timed bans; my own moderation policy is generally that every ban is a permanent one until there is reason to believe that either the ban was in error (in which case the unban obviously comes with apologies and justification), or that the banned user will not reoffend or at least do their best not to reoffend | 16:22:51 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | this also puts less pressure on the moderator team as a whole to cast a final decision; if more time is needed, that is possible | 16:23:23 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | (which is important especially if the 'permanent solution' is meant to be mediation/deescalation, which is really difficult to do under time constraints) | 16:24:19 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | of course, implicit in this is that the moderation team does their best to handle this in a timely manner | 16:25:03 |
| @jonringer:matrix.org | The timed ban was more or less meant to allow a "grace period" in which not everything is an emergency for the moderation team | 16:27:03 |
| @jonringer:matrix.org | people can be aware for periods at a time. And I don't think it's a sustainable model for permanent solutions to always be the one avenue | 16:27:37 |
| @jonringer:matrix.org | * people can be away for periods at a time. And I don't think it's a sustainable model for permanent solutions to always be the one avenue | 16:27:42 |
| @jonringer:matrix.org | I would also like to get away from instances like blaggacao's ban here it's like, "we made a long term ban, but don't provide any details." | 16:28:45 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | I mean, I call it 'permanent', but it's not really 'permanent', more 'untimed' | 16:29:21 |
| @jonringer:matrix.org | A long term ban should have enough "supporting evidence" that the community will also agree with actions taken by the moderation team. | 16:29:23 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | I have unbanned people in the past after everything from 5 minutes to 5 years | 16:29:38 |
| @jonringer:matrix.org | untimed and permanent are the same thing with less letters | 16:29:45 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | not quite; untimed bans have a terminal condition | 16:30:03 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | permanent bans do not | 16:30:08 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | In reply to @joepie91:pixie.town
Jonas Chevalier: I feel like most of the complexity of RFC98 is honestly not in the rules, but rather in the mechanisms - it is essentially an attempt to establish a non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical moderation approach in the context of a world which does the exact opposite Half of the issue is the undertone of the document, and the defensive attitude of the document. I think it's important to start on a positive footing like the SerenityOS rules. Of course we would need to tackle on an enforcement mechanism on top of it. | 16:30:15 |
