We want to come to a conclusive opinion on moderator transparency. This is an open discussion. We (mods) have varying opinions on this issue, and we would like to see what the community thinks as well as questions you all may have. Posts from one mod do not reflect thoughts of another, again we have varying opinions on this issue.
one of you deleted general discussion, it's happened before and there was no dos to blame although there's still nothing to blame because that isnt how this works
i literally publicly announced why bdog was demodded as soon as it happened
that was a decision we came to all of us as one, it wasn't just me being biased we thought she was the best person for the job
wasn't us, randomly happened after the ddos
literally when was this? when i ban my irl best friend equity for evading?
her application was better than anyone elses, she's more active than anyone on the list and she fills a timeslot we currently don't have covered, we overall thought she was better for the job, sorry.
The fact that people needed to have an issue like this happen to support the movement for change is insane to me. I have been spitting facts for days about how toxic the clique is to Sandbox and I have been labeled a troll and a sh*tposter for trying to get people to stand up against this toxic moderation team. It's unfortunate that someone had to suffer for people to understand, but finally the movement for change is being sparked. We will not stand for a toxic moderation team! We will not stand for the clique controlling Sandbox any longer!
The moderator clique is a serious issue and it is an issue that needs to be resolved ASAP. Bebop appointed his friends to be moderators because they think like him or are too scared/nice to speak out against him. The clique only has the clique's best interest in mind. The clique does not care about us. see: the cases of questionable use of power in the past. Nothing is done about that, not even a warning is issued because Bebop doesn't want to punish his friends. Quite frankly, the moderation team needs to be balanced so that we don't have moderators that are biased, impulsive, are a hivemind, and abuse their power. As far as transparency goes, the reasons for punishing someone needs to be clearly stated before they are punished. If sl0 is harassing someone in the chat, Merlot should say to sl0 that if he does not stop then he will be banned from the chat. You cannot just freely do as you please with the powers you have. It is a privilege which certain members of the moderation team do not deserve.
there should be full transparency on all ban and violation issues UNLESS the user who gets banned/ noted in question asks for the mods to keep the issue private
if the person in question, or any other person really, asks for "why ban???", there should be full transparency, and you should tell everyone who wants to know, so why limit public transparency?
deletedover 8 years
Congrats to our glorious new sandbox owner.
deletedover 8 years
in regards to merlot being modded: wasn't she added to the mod group chat before she was modded? if that was the case, then she was given an unfair advantage (which, she already had an unfair advantage anyway in being the owner's girlfriend) in the form of the ability to contribute so other mods would see her as trustworthy already. i'm not "salty" about not being modded, all i'm saying is that if merlot had that advantage and no one else was given it, then that means that it was essentially predetermined that she would be modded, and the whole "application" process was a facade/not transparent at all.
I sort of answered the first part of this because it correlates with what Amelio said as well. Unfortunately I am not able to provide a clear answer for you at this time. But i agree that having some time of form showing those who are banned and duration an etc is beneficial. I did mod under kenny and we had a doc for this stuff. Helped us keep track of bans. (I wasn't aware of the thread until Amelio mentioned it earlier) it will be talked about though, because I am more open to providing something like this if it puts everyone at ease.
Derailment in that that the thread is shown to spiral until people are just arguing and throwing insults at eachother because someone does not agree with them, which at that point isn't a discussion thread at all and theu become locked as a way to end the conflict before it becomes even worse. Error locked the trans-woman thread unilaterally, while some may had agreed a few did not so if you want to know details I suggest asking him. As far as bebop goes I do not control him. Val put out a statement that reflected I believe what we all were thinking at the time.
As for you last point, I get that, but I am also a person that likes to keep private matters private, at least when it comes to short bans. If there was ever a genuine interest and I was PM'd about it I would say why. Complaints forum, depending on what it was I would either pm them my reason or post on the forum.
My personal opinion on how transparency more or less goes that if a person wants an explanation as to why they have received punishment, such as a temporary chat ban or the like (anything under, say, twelve hours), it should not be required of the moderation team to publicly announce and discuss with the community, and only between the user and moderator; the community should not necessarily be privileged to the interaction between the two, though if it is something that another user wishes to know about, sure, go ahead and ask. However, it shouldn't have to be archived in any one place particular.
As for bans and actions that require harsher action in order to correct them, I believe that it would be for the best for the moderation team to organize some way for these bans to be easily accessible for the average user. This is a benefit for both community and moderation team, as the former will be able to understand why action was taken without having to question the exact reason, and the moderation team will have a more organized system in order to deal with the bans and keep up with users and their past punishments.
This, ultimately, was why I issued a one-hour ban against sl0nderman. They are aware of the rule they broke (as they have been punished for it before) and know better than to break it. However, this information was not available to the community; without a formal archive of bans and punishments, how would the average user know this fact? That's why my best suggestion for the moment is to work on creating a better system to punish rule-breaking.
In any case, this is also a formal apology for acting rashly in my punishment of the user in question. Though they were aware of the rule and knew in their action they were breaking it, a warning should have been issued beforehand. I apologize for failing to issue one to the user and will make sure to work with more clarity in action in the future.
Obviously this is an issue, and we want to be as transparent as possible without exploiting anyone. We have started a discussion about it, but unfortunately not everyone on the team is around atm so I can't give you a clear answer on what we're going to be doing, as far as documenting our mod actions.
For modding, we were looking to fill a specific time slot that isn't covered by most of us, as well as considering their overall activity on EM. I find merlot to be cooperative and trustworthy, which isn't to say that other choices are not the same. But for me it came down to how and if time/activity/professionalism came together.
Bdog was very open on why he was demodded. So I'm not going to talk about that.
The fact that one can hold any opinion other than "Every action should be catalogued somewhere in the lobby" says to me they shouldn't be a moderator. Either everything should be on display or nothing should be on display, there's no difference between a temporary ban and a permanent ban, it's still a ban.
By the way, the mods haven't been open about why threads have been locked. Your arbitrary "this topic has been derailed" means nothing, conversations are living and flowing. Plenty of threads have been locked without even being derailed (see Terry's trans women in sports thread.) When questioned on Terry's initial Orlando thread Bebop had nothing to say.
If you can't provide a simple reason in the chat box or a complaints thread of why a user was temporary banned then why were they temporarily banned in the first place? It doesn't take a half-hour to type out "User said X which violated Y rule."
Transparency
