Can Mods Be More Transparent When Enforcing The Rules?

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I guess the first question is, are the mods appointed to enforce the rules, or are they appointed to make their own personal judgements about what threads and comments should and shouldn't be on here?

If the mods are appointed to make judgement calls in spite of the rules, then the rules themselves become obsolete, and the rest of what I'm going to say here won't have any pertinence. If the mods are appointed to enforce the rules, then I think it's only fair that they are clear about what rule has been broken when shutting down people's threads, so both the poster and the community understand where the infraction was, and what to avoid doing in future.

Moreover, if the mods are here to enforce the rules without bias, and they're shutting down threads that aren't at odds with the rules, that seems to me to be an abuse of power. I've been puzzled by seeing mods shut down threads that I saw no issue with, and all they had to say was "I think this has gone far enough. Locked". How am I to know what to avoid in the future if I don't want my threads shut down? Shutting down threads that there isn't an obvious problem with and providing no explanation gives me the impression that there is no infraction of the rules, and the mod's own personal bias is the reason for such a thread being shut down.

Lastly, I've seen it said that whilst a member cannot single-handedly get another member's thread locked, that they do "have a say" in whether the thread gets locked or not. But if no rules have been broken, why should they? If I make a thread that is perfectly in line with the rules, why should anyone else have any sort of power to get it shut down? What if a bunch of people just don't like me, and decide to ask for every thread I make to be locked? Are we a democracy or a rules-based community? And if we're a democracy, what if the majority of members decide that hate speech is ok, or NT bashing is ok? Do we not enforce rules against those things either?

I'd like to see more consistency and transparency.

I second that.

Both , the latter is done based on the former.

So the mods are appointed to look at threads and moderate in accordance with their interpretation of whether the thread violates the rules? Would that be a fair statement?

Then what I say still stands. I think the community is owed an explanation when a thread is shut down for no clear reason. Surely if the decision to shut down the thread is based on a violation of a specific rule, then it's no hardship to cite that broken rule so the community understand the reasoning behind the thread being shut down. "This thread has gone too far. Locked." doesn't cut it when there's no obvious rule infraction.

And people agree with me on this. After the comment I made about the moderating on that other thread that you told me wasn't relevant to that thread, I had someone message me telling me that they feel the same way, and they implored me to do what you said and make a thread discussing it, which of course is this one. Then a different member has commented on this thread, saying that they second my sentiments. Clearly it's not just me who feels this way.

Had I not received the message of support for my comment on the other thread, I might have waited a couple more days to make this thread, but since I've been made aware that what I am saying is representative of what other people are feeling too, I felt it more important to make this thread.

Perfectly fair statement although it's not as basic as that , there are a lot of variables involved.

Alrighty,

Often, when a mod decides to lock a thread when there is no obvious rule breach, it's because the discussion has devolved into pointless bickering and is in danger of escalating.

As to why we would choose to shut down the thread, our other options involve sending individual warnings to people, and, when warnings start to stack up, they can lead to outright bans. We would really prefer NOT to ban people, so we often sacrifice the thread instead.

@TGI

After hearing from 2 mods here and via PM from me , do you understand a little more about the complexities involved.

Yes, thanks, both of you

Both, actually. If I understand moderating correctly, The Rules are guidelines for the mods to fall back on when a post or thread appears to be “over the line”, but they’re not quite sure if it actually is.

The Rules are useful for us, because (1) if we follow them, we’re less likely to be banned, (2) if we spot a questionable post, thread or practice (spamming, for instance), we can check The Rules and decide for ourselves whether or not to report it, and (3) complete knowledge and understanding of The Rules makes it less likely that we will report a post just because we don’t like it or the person who posted it.

Don’t knock our mods, please; they were appointed, and they are not paid for their services — which essentially amount to being day-care supervisors for childish adults.

This forum is a lot less strict than many I’ve been on.

FWIW, I've always thought highly of the moderation here. As a moderator myself (albeit on a forum rather less frantic than this one), I concur with XFilesGeek's point. The trouble with enforcing the rules too literally is that trolls will treat them as a game of brinksmanship - they'll try to frustrate members who are usually perfectly reasonable into relatively minor technical breaches of the rules while not quite crossing that line themselves, for the "lulz" of getting the less disruptive member into trouble or to undermine the authority of the moderators. It's certainly not an easy judgement call to make, but I agree that it's often better to intervene earlier and more softly, before things escalate into people doing things that they might regret. That's why it's called "moderation", not "policing".

I remember years back under the old staff team, it was impossible to not break the rules because the three mods would seem to find any reason in your post of how it broke a rule. Things would be fine for a while and then all of a sudden you start getting warnings because your thread or post would somehow break a rule. This was a common issue here because I would see members complain about it on other forums and they were either banned or would leave the forum and then it started to happen to me. I remember I decided to leave this place for a while but got banned anyway hours after I had quit posting here. This was 9 years ago.

I think the current staff team is fine. I never had any problems with any new staff. I still feel there was a conspiracy back then.

We're still out to get you LG

Threads are also often locked due to multiple reports. In those cases it's also basically a community decision.

Oh no, now I am scared.

Two quick things to add to what XFilesGeek says:

1) In addition to locking a thread sometimes being preferable to banning a user (obviously this depends on the user and doesn't apply to spambots for example), sometimes I'll lock a thread because I can tell that it is likely that a user will end up saying something that does require action. This is particularly the case in PPR when dealing with subjects like race or sexual orientation. Usually they'll get to page 2 or 3 unless the OP is a known provocateur.

2) Being overly specific can lead to people feeling attacked. I might say "this thread has devolved into bickering and personal attacks", but I would generally avoid saying "XFilesGeek's post here was totally unacceptable, BAD!". Just locking a thread with a general message helps avoid people feeling targeted. Sometimes that sort of thing is unavoidable (particularly when you're dealing with a user who has displayed a pattern of behaviour over time that some readers may not be familiar with) but generally I'd rather let people think that a thread getting locked was a "group effort" rather than call out anyone in particular.