I somewhat agree and apply a substantially higher bar to downvoting people I am debating, especially on non-moderation discussions (in the threads on this post, I abstained from voting for a lot of his replies to me, though less on his replies to others, e.g. the Vaniver thread).
As a site-moderator my job is often more messy and I think allows less of this principle than it does for others. In many cases where I would encourage other people to just “downvote and move on”, I often do not have that choice, as the role of actually explaining the norms of the space, or justifying a moderation decisions, or explaining how the site works, falls on me. In many cases, if I didn’t vote on those comments, the author would not get the appropriate feedback at all.
Another thing that I think is important is to have gradual escalation. It is indeed better for someone to be downvoted before they are banned. As a moderator, voting is the first step of moderation. Moderators should vote a lot, and pay attention to voting patterns, and how voting goes wrong, because it’s a noisy measure and the moderators are generally in the best position to remove the most distortions. Most moderation should be resolved via just the voting system.
There is a whole post I would like to write about trying to somehow grapple with the concept of “contempt of court”. A hugely common experience of any moderator on the internet is that you write some moderation message trying to pretty gently enforce some principle or rule, and are met with extreme contempt and aggression. Having some ability for moderators to enforce some level of cooperativeness in moderation discussion is important. The cost of someone being a dick to moderators is indeed very high, both in terms of the general ability of the site to have any norms and principles, and because moderator energy is often the limiting factor for a functional forum. I currently consider downvoting people who are dicks to moderators really important. Like, if I didn’t do it, a lot of my moderators would quickly quit, I would probably quit moderating myself, and the consequences for the site would be enormous.
And my current take is due to a bunch of underdog dynamics in online discussions, people get to be extreme dicks to moderators without naturally getting downvotes. Conduct that would routinely get someone downvoted and rate-limited to oblivion, when aimed at moderators or authority figures gets routinely tolerated. I understand people’s instinct to do it, but I can’t do my job that way, and if I had to give up the tool of voting in moderation discussion, I do not think I could do this job.
And to be clear, I have a lot of sympathy with concerns about “contempt of court enforcement mechanisms”. It seems like a pretty dangerous set of tools. The current set of tools on the site we have kind of suck, though also, I think Said is a huge outlier in how much he was contemptuous of any attempts to moderate him, so it might just be less of an issue in the future.
I somewhat agree and apply a substantially higher bar to downvoting people I am debating, especially on non-moderation discussions (in the threads on this post, I abstained from voting for a lot of his replies to me, though less on his replies to others, e.g. the Vaniver thread).
As a site-moderator my job is often more messy and I think allows less of this principle than it does for others. In many cases where I would encourage other people to just “downvote and move on”, I often do not have that choice, as the role of actually explaining the norms of the space, or justifying a moderation decisions, or explaining how the site works, falls on me. In many cases, if I didn’t vote on those comments, the author would not get the appropriate feedback at all.
Another thing that I think is important is to have gradual escalation. It is indeed better for someone to be downvoted before they are banned. As a moderator, voting is the first step of moderation. Moderators should vote a lot, and pay attention to voting patterns, and how voting goes wrong, because it’s a noisy measure and the moderators are generally in the best position to remove the most distortions. Most moderation should be resolved via just the voting system.
There is a whole post I would like to write about trying to somehow grapple with the concept of “contempt of court”. A hugely common experience of any moderator on the internet is that you write some moderation message trying to pretty gently enforce some principle or rule, and are met with extreme contempt and aggression. Having some ability for moderators to enforce some level of cooperativeness in moderation discussion is important. The cost of someone being a dick to moderators is indeed very high, both in terms of the general ability of the site to have any norms and principles, and because moderator energy is often the limiting factor for a functional forum. I currently consider downvoting people who are dicks to moderators really important. Like, if I didn’t do it, a lot of my moderators would quickly quit, I would probably quit moderating myself, and the consequences for the site would be enormous.
And my current take is due to a bunch of underdog dynamics in online discussions, people get to be extreme dicks to moderators without naturally getting downvotes. Conduct that would routinely get someone downvoted and rate-limited to oblivion, when aimed at moderators or authority figures gets routinely tolerated. I understand people’s instinct to do it, but I can’t do my job that way, and if I had to give up the tool of voting in moderation discussion, I do not think I could do this job.
And to be clear, I have a lot of sympathy with concerns about “contempt of court enforcement mechanisms”. It seems like a pretty dangerous set of tools. The current set of tools on the site we have kind of suck, though also, I think Said is a huge outlier in how much he was contemptuous of any attempts to moderate him, so it might just be less of an issue in the future.