Discussion of Moderation Process and Principles

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I am glad to see the developments on this matter. First and foremost, I’d like to acknowledge the moderators’ humanism, patience, and ability to deal with tricky situations. I have nothing but praise for the moderators and most of the community members.

I’m contributing here to clarify some fundamental points that may not be evident to everyone. The “Code of Conduct” (CoC) represents the ethical standards of our programming/creative community. I hope my perspective is clear. I often feel uneasy when I hear the word “enforcement” mentioned without a corresponding emphasis on “ethics,” as this can lead to misunderstandings.

Perhaps we should reconsider how we interpret the CoC to emphasize its ethical principles more accurately rather than focusing on “law-like enforcement” (language used in some discussions here and on GitHub). The CoC should not be about setting boundaries or enforcing punitive measures, as a state civil code, legal system, or any state or international court would. Instead, it should aim to foster an environment where every member feels respected and heard.

This doesn’t mean avoiding complex topics or masking disagreements. Instead, it’s about expressing our differing viewpoints with genuine consideration for one another. While it requires extra effort, especially when we disagree, I believe our community can handle this level of thoughtful discourse.

Ethics is far more nuanced than law, and this discussion pertains entirely to ethics, not law enforcement or judicial proceedings. In my view, moderation should strive to be context-sensitive, considering the specifics of each case.

I believe the interpretation of the CoC could benefit from a more explicit commitment to therapeutic measures, focusing on addressing harm and helping all parties move forward. This approach would frame mistakes as opportunities for learning and growth rather than merely offenses to be punished, thus avoiding the marginalization of individuals based on limited information. The CoC would foster a more ethical and compassionate community environment by emphasizing repairing relationships over penalizing infractions.

Based on my experience, another area for refinement is transparency in how decisions are communicated and how members can respond. While the current system allows for appeals, the process often lacks the clarity and accessibility it should have.

A more ethical approach would ensure that members have the right to appeal and are given equal space and visibility to present their replies. Silencing one part will not help healing and can have harmful consequences. The dignity of all individuals should be preserved throughout the process. The CoC should explicitly communicate this right to reply, providing clear guidelines on how members can contest moderation actions with equal publicity and encouraging them to seek healing over pure defensiveness, ensuring a more transparent and fair system beneath the “good sense” and organization of the moderators regarding each case.

The expected response to being called out (not a “punishment” except in extreme cases) is to apologize and adjust behavior, prioritizing healing over defensiveness. Again, everything is context-sensitive, and people doing this work should be sensible of the ethics of the community at the time. I understand it’s not so straightforward.

Thank you all for your awareness.

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Thanks for this @smoge. I moved this to a new topic, as I had really intended the post SuperCollider Moderation to be documentation, rather than a place for discussion. Sorry, I should have locked it.

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I’ll just say that I think that the issues with viewing moderation as similar to law enforcement or legal proceedings have been discussed both amongst the moderators group and elsewhere. I think there’s a fair amount of understanding of the ways in which that can be problematic.

I’d describe the current approach as being more in line with trying to create resolution where possible, and encourage better behaviour and a better environment, rather than dispensing punishment. One can take issue with that of course, but I’ve found it a more productive strategy. Flagging and the forum tools are really helpful for managing this efficiently and quietly, so much so that I think most members might be quite surprised at how many disputes were resolved before they even started.

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One thought that came to mind today is the distinction between a more libertarian style of moderation (hands off unless things are clearly going in the wrong direction) and what we could call “broken windows” moderation, where minor transgressions (borderline cases) receive attention as a way to set a tone that leads people toward better behavior.

I’ve tended to favor the hands-off approach – but I’m also aware that libertarianism tends to work out well for people in a privileged position, and badly for marginalized groups. Our community serves white tech guys very well. How are we doing with women or different ethnicities? (At least our community seems to be free of overt homo- or trans-phobia, or racism – if such did become overt, none of us on the mod team would hesitate to act.) Women in tech speak of the importance of women-only spaces for technology because Men™ just… can’t… help… getting bossy. I’m sadly aware that I do this myself, probably more than I’m even aware of.

So one point may be: we need moderators who aren’t white guys – not as an empty quota, but because there are posts where I might read it and say, “it’s a little spicy but not over the line,” but another perspective can point out aspects I wouldn’t notice.

It stings to read Lucile say she’s leaving because she doesn’t feel safe here. As she didn’t raise specific instances, I’m trying to make sense of that and not sure I’m succeeding. If one is unhappy with the moderation here, I guess there are two ways to go with that. One is to invest time and energy into improving things here. The other is simply to exit (effectively, declaring “lost cause”). The second option is certainly easier, and depending on one’s time/energy constraints may be the only option. I certainly understand insufficient time! But if you’ve got a plant, and you don’t water it, then you can’t expect it to grow.

I’d also like to paraphrase a point that muellmusik made in another discussion – that moderators are volunteers, and as volunteers, don’t have an obligation to handle things Right Now, in exactly the way an aggrieved person wants. Even if someone did you wrong, projecting that frustration onto moderators and treating mods disrespectfully (this has happened…) will lead to worse, not better, moderation.

I for one would like more feedback about moderation, especially about edge cases that aren’t exactly violations, but which may be good to keep an eye on.

hjh

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RMS wrote an email raising precisely these questions you wrote now. It might give some perspective. Instead of laying down strict rules, RMS took another approach. They also were worried about women feeling pushed away from GNU projects and wanted to do something about it. They looked at how people were talking to each other and figured out what might be scaring folks off.

They decline to develop a “code of conduct” and favor using “Kind Communications Guidelines.”

They did it as an idea that was open to improvement.

LINK: https://lwn.net/Articles/769167/

I would like to know more about what causes some people to feel unsafe in this forum. Many things can cause this, and it would help to have more insights, which may differ for each person.

A friend has told me that many women use masculine nicknames in the gaming community, and there are reasons for that.

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With my moderator hat on: If anyone is aware of an issue with a post, please do use the flagging mechanism! This is the best way to get action. Our biggest problem at the moment is lack of time/moderators. We don’t have time to read every post here to see if it’s okay, and flagging directs moderator attention directly where it’s needed. A crucial idea of moderation is that it hands off potential conflicts to uninvolved moderators so that members don’t need to address them in the thread. In many cases flagging might be the only necessary response.

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I disagree with this.

If people feel bad or intimidated about certain behavior and ask others to stop this behavior there is no need for discussion.
If someone dares to speak about an unwell feeling due to certain behavior, we should respect, honor, listen and act accordingly to this openness and not discuss and may even question it.
The “victim”[1] in this case does not have to be open to give somebody lessons or to be open for discussion, to be a teacher of according behavior. The “victim”, like every user of this community, has simply the right to demand to be treated fairly and in an compassionate way.
Respect the feelings of other users and be aware that this is an open platform which includes “passive” users who contribute through reading, but may also be offended or “turned off” by certain behavior.

A good way to respond to an, hopefully accidental, offense is to apologize, avoid this offending behavior and continue in a respectful, friendly and open exchange. This is the learning process. Both parties can be part of this process, but only one party must be part of this process. It is beneficial if both parties believe in good faith of the other party, but this is something we can’t demand.

Although I’d appreciate if the SC community would become more diverse in certain regards, it already hosts a variety of people with different backgrounds, mother tongues, age, gender, social structures, nationalities, daily-realities, timezones and of course emotional baggage. I think we are too often not aware of this circumstance when engaging in discussion here.
Combining this with online-communication where the text in between the lines can is difficult to transport and perceive, this can easily lead to conflicts which would may not come up in a face-to-face situation.

Therefore respect with each other should always be the top priority on these open online platforms like scsynth.

  1. Using quotation marks here as labeling someone as a victim can also be an act of imposing power structures, but for the sake of clarity I decided to stick to this term. ↩︎

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I’m sorry, but I think we said the same thing. I said, “Apologize and adjust behavior, prioritizing healing over defensiveness.”

I agree that we should respect everyone’s honor and dignity. My comment was about something else. It would be contradictory to apply punishments that are worse regarding honor and dignity than the offense. We are talking about ethics, and this is a collective construction.

I think we are saying more or less the same thing, maybe?

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I think it’s everyone’s right to express if they feel targeted, attacked, offended etc. I’m also sure the majority of situations occur as you describe - a person is hurt by inconsiderate conduct, they are ideally brave enough to speak up about it, and hopefully the person who behaved inconsiderately apologises and works on it. And certain people leaving the forum would suggest that this hasn’t worked ideally in the past.

However, I do think there are some cases where it is less clear cut. Eg. I’ve often encountered situations where two people from politically conflicted ethnic groups accuse each other of racism. Or when there are mixed power dynamics between two people. (If anyone wants more concrete examples of what I’m talking about, send me a private message, I don’t want to post a bunch of potentially triggering hypotheticals on a public forum.)

I don’t think that every case is super simple, or that a person is automatically right just because their feelings are (unfortunately) hurt.

I don’t know if this is actually relevant to the scsynth forum and I don’t want to derail. It’s just an issue that has occurred in my experience of trying to develop intelligent structures to deal with potential conflicts and criminal offences at festivals and concerts.

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(Hard to talk about abstract situations)

What I don’t see as positive are public accusations, summary public “trials,” and all sorts of other things that only escalate what is already wrong.

The same human beings can have disagreements with respect for years, and they say terrible things out of nowhere. It can happen in real life with humans, although I would like to think that’s kind of rare.

PS: What stands out to me about the situation you’ve described is that, in my home country, racism has been considered a severe crime for some time now. The actual law enforcement and legal professionals there would intervene. In this forum, there is no law enforcement for the real meaning of the term. The question is of another nature.

How will the moderators and the community deal with most of these situations? Frankly, I failed to see severe conflicting ideas in this thread. Let’s try not to overcomplicate.

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I see a problem in hot topics as I think these are exactly the things that drive people away from this community. I don’t want to argue every time about basic rights, which are set via the CoC, when they are violated. If people fail to comply with this request to act accordingly, especially deliberately and repeatedly, there needs to be some action in order to protect people in this community. I think this is what happened when people decided to leave this community.

Of course certain topics don’t have a clear solution - but discussing them here is simply out of scope for this community.

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I don’t recall any discussion around universal human rights or respectful communication encoded in the CoC. This is not a debate; it is a settled matter.

I meant disagreements in general; I imagine they will relate to the forum’s typical topics.

Am I missing something?

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Perhaps helpful to say from a mod perspective:

I think we all believe that well-meaning people can disagree over important issues. In general it’s great if there is a space to do that respectfully.

That said:

a) the CoC is something we all agreed to abide by when we joined this forum and community. Things will be better if we are careful to respect it whether we think it’s perfect or not.

b) It’s important to remember that people come here to talk about SC. People can debate any topic they like, but please consider if this is the appropriate place for it. If the moderators feel something is out of scope in that way, they may suggest that conversation be conducted elsewhere.

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Similarly, if someone is offended by something, we strongly encourage them to flag it and pass it off to the moderators as uninvolved parties. In our experience, appeals from someone outside a dispute tend to be far more successful in de-escalating than responding directly.

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I agree. It would be bizarre to start random topics out of nowhere here.

There was a debate regarding tangential discussions in the Haskell discourse, and they found a solution. Whenever a military-oriented industry job is offered (around 20 or more of them in the forum’s history, all highly paid) in the Haskell discourse, it triggers many talks. The moderators nowadays move those conversations to a particular place and forget about them (well, they need to be respectful in this other category/space as well; they can’t mix the two conversations in the job post thread). Many find it good, but many find it wrong. But it solved the problem regarding forum moderation per se. Nobody is censored, and the job offer stays in the forum, separated from political debate.

It worked for them. And we are close to finding our arrangement, too. Each community finds a way to accommodate. I believe punishing posts that touch on the ethics of working on that particular corporation would harm the community. There were cases of people leaving the platform before this arrangement took place.

Nowadays, there is one place for people who don’t care about the kind of job and ask specific questions and another for people who want to question something beyond computing as it is not isolated from the world.

I don’t read either today after the second or third time they happened to be a bit repetitive. I’m not able to follow that; not very interesting.

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Hm, this is a bit of a conflation, isn’t it? Topics are distinct from basic rights.

Certainly this community will not accept direct racial, ethnic, gender/sexual-orientation slurs. It’s happened, rarely, and I’ve never seen that kind of thing pass without any action.

What is harder to deal with is a hidden -ism. For example, if a frequent poster were unfailingly polite to men, and curt to the point of rudeness with women, at least an official warning would be warranted; if the pattern continued, a temporary suspension or a ban. If somebody’s going to be banned, then it has to be an observable pattern – which takes time to emerge. In the meantime, women may be feeling like it’s not a safe space. So there’s a conflicting demand: a measured response, vs a rapid response. (To toot Scott’s horn again – flagging helps moderators to identify such patterns quickly – if the community sees iffy behavior and just scrolls on by, “not my problem,” that’s part of the problem too.)

It’s a very difficult balance. Mistakes will be made. All the mods have seen both a/ yelling over moderator (in)action, and (occasionally) b/ thinly-veiled unconstructive criticism from people who are on the way out the door. Sometimes that “criticism” has itself taken the form of direct violations of the CoC. That kind of climate makes me think twice about intervening, which isn’t effective moderation.

hjh

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I’ve always thought the code of conduct was actually quite hard to apply practically. The ‘unacceptable’ behaviour is clear, but the rest isn’t so clear. Could you flag a post for not following the ‘expected’ behaviour?

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Please flag a post if you’re concerned about it. It’s okay if you’re not sure. The moderators will make a judgement call. Of course it is helpful if it’s recognised that this cannot be perfect or satisfy everyone. But we will do the best we can. It’s a process of hopefully making things better.

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