On Tuesday, 30 April 2024 at 10:03:25 UTC, NotYouAgain wrote:
> On Monday, 29 April 2024 at 14:46:28 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>> ...
>> What do you think?
>
> I think that people inserting themselves into what was at the point a resonable discussion, and the calling people discussing it 'oo-philes' (clearly meant to be derogatory), is not helpful to the discussion.
>
> That's what I think.
>
> https://forum.dlang.org/post/txagkzyhiajbwjdyraxl@forum.dlang.org

You accused me of bad faith after a single line, I consider accusations of bad faith to be a nuclear option. I hit back after insults and feel no shame about this.

Please do not bring me up out of context.

Having a written moderation policy is a lot like trying to define the difference between porn and art, which has failed utterly since the invention of writing. But we all know the difference when we see it.

Rather than mire ourselves in endless debates about this, we have Mike Parker. Mike is in charge of moderation, and I can't think of a better, more evenhanded moderator than Mike. He adjusts policy with the evolution of the D community. If you disagree with decisions he's made, he'll listen to your appeal and adjust course as he feels is appropriate.

Mike has my full confidence and support as moderator.

On 01/05/2024 1:44 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> Having a written moderation policy is a lot like trying to define the difference between porn and art, which has failed utterly since the invention of writing. But we all know the difference when we see it.
> 
> Rather than mire ourselves in endless debates about this, we have Mike Parker. Mike is in charge of moderation, and I can't think of a better, more evenhanded moderator than Mike. He adjusts policy with the evolution of the D community. If you disagree with decisions he's made, he'll listen to your appeal and adjust course as he feels is appropriate.
> 
> Mike has my full confidence and support as moderator.

I too have full confidence in Mike to make the best choice he feels that he can make with the given information that he has.

There may be things that we differ on, such as this precise topic, but over all he does do his best to do right by everyone.

However I do want to point out, that we have a derived set of rules for our Discord server based upon the principles that you brought to the N.G. and that has worked for many years with minimal modification without any such concerns about its application for the same group of people.

In saying that, the N.G. is quite a different beast, so it could be that we are all wrong and that is the rub, you either try it and find out or you don't and it's all guess work either which way.

On Wednesday, 1 May 2024 at 04:35:23 UTC, Richard (Rikki) Andrew Cattermole wrote:
> 
> However I do want to point out, that we have a derived set of rules for our Discord server based upon the principles that you brought to the N.G. and that has worked for many years with minimal modification without any such concerns about its application for the same group of people.

counterpoint I have never read the discord rules

On Tuesday, 30 April 2024 at 15:35:49 UTC, Dom DiSc wrote:
> ..
> .. I fully agree to this. Pure text communication has a strong tendency to get out of control as important other channels like voice and mimic are missing, which give a short-time reaction to the words someone uses. Without this immediate reaction people say things they never would face to face. That is why moderation on such low-band media is so essential. Unfortunately.

There's certainly 'some' truth to that. But face2face can be just as vicuous sometimes.

i.e. you're missing perhaps the most important truth here: Sayre's Law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

Being passionate and arguing your case, in the face of intense opposition, should not be discouraged.

But calling someone an oop..phile. . well that really should be frowned upon.

On Wednesday, 1 May 2024 at 01:44:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Having a written moderation policy is a lot like trying to define the difference between porn and art.

I agree on the analogy. I could well see myself, let alone multiple people, being unsure how to classify a borderline case. I definitely can't claim I 100% know when I see it. It's maybe futile to try coming up with a fully generic definition. But if you need a policy to classify between them it's useful to have rules how to make the classification for the sake of the policy. For example, a picture someone swimming naked, when stated reason and... details... for the picture are [imagine something you feel would make it borderline]. The rules can't be 100% precise like a switch statement, but they are still better than having no idea what's the aim.

>
> Rather than mire ourselves in endless debates about this, we have Mike Parker. Mike is in charge of moderation, and I can't think of a better, more evenhanded moderator than Mike. He adjusts policy with the evolution of the D community.

Mike decides the policy, not only enforces it? Okay, let's call this a proposal for Mike then.

> If you disagree with decisions he's made, he'll listen to your appeal and adjust course as he feels is appropriate.
>
> Mike has my full confidence and support as moderator.

I don't have any issues with decisions Mike has made, and I agree he is doing a great job.

I'm writing this because there are two parts of moderation: the policy, and it's enforcement. I'm very happy with the enforcement part (although see Razvan's idea earlier in this thread), but I suggest a change to the policy.

Also it's not that I'd think there's anything wrong with the current policy. There are many possible policies all right and reasonable, it's only about what works best for each community. I feel my proposed policy might work better - reasonable poeple can disagree of course.

On Thursday, 2 May 2024 at 10:47:49 UTC, Dukc wrote:

>
> I'm writing this because there are two parts of moderation: the policy, and it's enforcement. I'm very happy with the enforcement part (although see Razvan's idea earlier in this thread), but I suggest a change to the policy.
>
> Also it's not that I'd think there's anything wrong with the current policy. There are many possible policies all right and reasonable, it's only about what works best for each community. I feel my proposed policy might work better - reasonable poeple can disagree of course.

The policy I operate under is basically two items:

1. Is there an obvious personal insult in the post?
2. Is the poster disrupting the thread?

Some people have a lower threshold for what constitutes an obvious personal insult, and they sometimes let me know. These days, I tend to act when they do let me know. In the past, I would often try to convince them of why we should let it go.

Given my timezone, threads unfortunately tend to get disrupted while I'm in bed. Then I wake up to several emails and DMs on Discord. So I do sometimes step in when it looks like things are heading that way.

The thing is, though, we have limited moderation tools available to us because of the nature of our forums. I can't put anyone in a timeout, I can't suspend an account, I can't lock threads or move posts, I can't DM people to give them private warnings...

The biggest problem is that once I delete a post, it's gone. I can't restore it. So because of that, I always prefer to give people more leeway than I would if I could restore a post I shouldn't have deleted.

I've been accused of censorship and I've been accused of letting trolls run rampant. I've been accused of bias and I've been accused of allowing overly negative people to ruin our image. I'm never going to make everyone happy. I've adapted my approach over time based on feedback, so I'm always open to that.

In this case, what you consider combative, I consider annoying. Some people are just abrasive in their online communications. But they still can further a discussion or debate.

What I suggest is that anyone who thinks a poster is being combative, please email me and let me know. I've take a closer look at the thread in question and, if I don't agree anything should be deleted, I'll ask that the language be toned down. Then I can start deleting if it isn't. Does that sound better?

I've been deleting posts in the new DIP forums that don't contain any information relevant to the discussion. I could also start doing that in other forums for posts that are just angry rants. But again, some posts that raise red flags for some people raise any for me, so I encourage others to let me know if they see something like that.