The question of the purpose of Politics Unchained and obvious modding issues have been brought up in a few different threads lately. So here's a proposal for how it could work. This is just a starting point but feedback is welcome.

Here's the proposal in a nutshell: The person starting a thread decides on how their thread will be modded.

Mods will only enforce the will of the person starting the thread and the basic site-wide rules (SMP style interpretation, so a bunch of racist **** is allowed). Personal attacks are allowed on anyone that is 'active' in PU but not on other 2+2 posters.

Some practical implications:
* Only people with > 100 posts can start a thread. (Doesn't need to be software enforced, but a <100 post OP gets normal modding, not self-modding)
* OP can only request posts be deleted, posters be temp-banned, or posters be banned from their thread. Bans won't be software enforced.
* If someone 'banned' from a thread continues to post in that thread than a mod can step in and give a real ban.
* You can send a mod only one PM a day with a list of the actions you want taken in your thread.
* You can only request modding action for 2 threads in a single day.

Seems like this may be a fairly large logistic burden on the mods so I'd be willing to volunteer to try this idea out for at least a couple of months.

Gross over complication of something that should be very simple.

It's only simple because you have your very strict defined view of how this should work. Lots of smart people disagree with you.

ffs, I quit posting and just lurked for a bit but do you people not get the point of an unmoderated forum??? Stop whining, and if someone crosses the line - deal with it yourself.

I kinda like jj's proposal, tbh.

Re: rightonwrong

I agree. But that doesn't seem like its possible. So what better way for people to get what they want than let them make their own rules?

An OP doesn't own the thread any more than a moderator does. Modding the forum should be a simple matter of deleting spam, locking stupid redundant threads, and reigning in hate speech. If the person making the hate speech wants to try and defend it they should get a chance. If they succeed good on them, if they don't the posts go away. If the speech is indefensible it goes away faster. If a poster continues to spout hate speech that they are unable to defend they get banned or exiled. It should be clear in the thread if the speech is defensible or not or if it was defended successfully.

easy peasy.

if people agreed on rules, we wouldn't have a politics forum.

My contention, especially after the last week, is that the idea of if 'hate speech' was defended successfully or not is a highly subjective thing.

I don't disagree, there will be mistakes made around the edge cases until things get dialed in, but the most egregious cases will be dealt with quickly. Nothing is permanently deleted so mistakes can be unmade. No one would be banned or exiled for one post but for a body of work.

The nebulous nature of what's considered hate speech is best dealt by having good mods to enforce the One Rule.

The only problem with the modding here is that one of them is a blithering idiot.

Kurto is excellent, thoughtful, and even keeled. He's all we need.

You can be like most every other site on the web and ban such people, or you can be the place where they are challenged, and ridiculed. It works here because its not the primary function of 2p2. Racists wont join "shameracists.com" but they will join 2p2 and post in politics unchained... which at first sounds bad but they get confronted head on...

Kerowo,

No, my point is there is nothing to "dial in" since everyone has a subjective opinion on what the right limit is and will complain when the forum is modded at a level not consistent with their opinion.

I support term limits for mods across all forums.

The amount of complaints would be a good enough yardstick.

Sort of. It has three problems though:

1. People complain at very different levels. So you have the silent majority problem.

2. We have a politics forum already. This was meant to be an alternative to that forum. But a lot of the people that like that modding style are now here and want some of the same rules applied. Which loses the point of being an experiment in a different type of forum.

3. The same problem with all democracy - minority opinions are suppressed. The proposal above let's everyone try what they think is the right solution for modding.

Edit: We'll call it Agile Modding!

Exactly. Are we argueing? I'm confused.

The first step to shaping a community is being part of the community. The community is for the posters not the lurkers.

Let them eat cake as long as they don't say hateful things about the baker's race, sexual orientation, or hair color* it's still unchained.

The only opinions that would be suppressed are those that revolve around hate speech and the authors would have a chance to defend it.

And I'd like a shot at being the scrum master.

ban

rightonwrong - I believe we agree on what the correct style of modding of Politics Unchained would be.

The issue though is that other people don't share that position (fair enough). But instead of endless bickering on what the right level of modding is, I'm saying let's try to find a way to try lots of different modding styles all at once and see which ones actually work.

I didn't mean silent as in lurking. I meant silent as in not complaining about moderation. The strong silent type vs. the whiner.

But this is where we disagree, 'hate speech' and whether it was successfully defend or not have many different interpretations. I don't want to pick one interpretation and enforce it on everyone (well, I do, but I realize people don't like my interpretation for valid reason) so lets try lots of different interpretations and go from there.

Edit: Actually, to be fair, I had an earlier proposal where I mentioned letting the community vote on issues of whether someone should be banned or not for things like hate speech. I still think that's an interesting idea, but not as good as this OP.

Lets do this! I would start 20 threads a day and ban everyone.

.

Every occurrence would be a separate event, the interpretation would be done by those in the thread. If a mod had a problem with what was in the thread they would raise it there and see if it was a problem. If the mod is the only one in the thread with a problem then it's probably an overly sensitive mod.

Edited:
It would also be a hell of a lot easier than dealing with the action requests from OP.

Yes, but lurkers need to be welcomed too if you want the community to grow. Also, advertising probably hits more lurkers than posters.