@LJS9502_basic said:
Well it doesn't matter what you think of anime. You can't threaten people.
Pretty much all that needs to be said
chessmaster1989's forum posts
@DigitalDame said:
@toast_burner: Typically, a ban happens once an account has received 3 "strikes" for behavior that violates our rules. There are many, many examples of things that we moderate for, so I'll just link you to our CoC.
Nobody in this thread other than the mods seem to have noticed anything from him that would justify a ban.
This is probably because the moderators have what is called the "Law Dogs" forum, which is a massive queue filled with every flag that happens on GameSpot (that's for forums posts, comments, private messages, wall posts, etc.), which is limited to moderators and admins only. This is why we sometimes see content that users don't always notice. When a comment is deleted, it is removed from the view of a user entirely, which is another indicator that comments can be made, but then hidden from user view after they're made.
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Update: I also wanted to take a moment to say that I do really appreciate the respectful conversation regarding this deeper look into moderation. Thanks for keeping it classy.
A question, if there's already a forum devoted to every flag that happens on Gamespot, why couldn't this been adapted into the log I was suggesting earlier? It sounds like the infrastructure is already there. Or even just use that forum as the log.
@DigitalDame said:
@chessmaster1989: Just to be clear, this isn't personal. I'm not sitting in some large black chair wondering what poor soul should be removed next. Heck, I've welcomed back a fair number of older rabble-rousers in my time here as a CM. So, clearly, no. I would not want a system where people are randomly snuffed out should people want to know what happened.
Regarding PMs: 1) If the concern is anonymity of the non-banned user, then surely that user's name can be redacted.
This would have to be a manual process, which we simply don't have the bandwidth to do for every GameSpot account that gets banned for this behavior.
A true violation of TOU resulting in a ban should negate that user's right to privacy of those PMs.
I can try and run that concept by CBS legal, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be a fan of that idea. I've seen a lot of nasty PM's in my time here.
If the contents of the PM are deemed unsuitable for public display, then surely they can be shared privately (via PM) upon request at the requester's own risk.
Again, not sure if CBS legal would approve of this, but even if they did, I couldn't guarantee that the volunteers here would have the bandwidth to facilitate those requests. I would likely need a whole new team just to help manage that department.
At the same time, this quickly turns into a "give a mouse a cookie" situation. Furthermore, I am bound by CBS in terms of what information I can / can't share, which means in some instances the only justification I could possibly give would be that the user was removed for violating our Terms of Service and would have to leave it at that.
Here are some privacy concerns:
- Would people expect to know which moderator moderated each action? Can you see how that might cause possible issues (or worse, potential risk factors) for volunteers?
- How much information is considered "enough" information regarding the ban? Would users be able to accept that at some point, CBS doesn't allow us to give any more information regarding an account?
Concerns Regarding Site Functionality:
- While I agree that it shouldn't be hard to implement this sort of thing, unfortunately, Community hardly has the resources to fix the things that are currently broken, let alone roll out new features like a public log of moderations that track every action.
- That being said, I cannot expect the moderators to do this by hand, they're volunteers. The force is actually fairly limited especially when you consider the number of them to you.
- Where would this be hosted?
- What would happen if the information was wiped (say during a site change like when we moved from the old design to this current build?)
Out of curiosity, what other forums do you know of that publicly share justification for permission removal? If you have any sources to reference I'd be more than willing to contact their CMs in an effort to see how they manage their community and see if there are any pointers I can pull.
All references to "you" in my posts can be replaced by "one", that is their intended meaning - or rather, it is a general point, not directed at any individual, and to the extent that I mention "one" it is to argue against a hypothetical counterpoint. None of my points are meant to be directed to individual moderators, and to the extent they read that way is a result of my poor wording.
With general regards to the points that there is not enough manpower, I don't think that's a legitimate release from criticism of the system. I should clarify that with all my points, my critique is directed at the system in place, and not at any individual moderator. If Gamespot does not feel it has the resources to handle a more elaborate system, then it either has to hire more, or has to accept that it will face those criticisms.
With regards to legal issues, I'm curious that anything on here short of personally identifiable information would cause much legal issue. Can you give a hypothetical example of something that does not include personal identifiers (eg real name), that would not be able to be legally shared?
In response to privacy concerns:
1) I don't expect nor am interested to know which moderator moderated each action. Rather the reason for moderation is what's of interest. I have no interest in individual public accountability for the reasons you suggest. Rather if an individual moderator is problematic, that will be reflected in the public reaction to the moderations of that individual, and GS can respond internally to that.
2) Of course, we cannot expect to be given information that the legal department won't allow. I think at the minimum we should get a specific reason the ban was implemented, and indication of whether it was for privately or publicly available posts. If publicly available, at the least a reference to the relevant thread. Of course, I would prefer making as much information as is legally possible available.
Site Functionality:
I don't have much to contribute here because my knowledge of computer science is extremely limited. I merely meant to express an idea for consideration. Perhaps a user more qualified than I am can pick up here.
I only participate in one other forum (via ZetaBoards), and to my knowledge not much if any moderation occurs there because it's a fairly small community.
@DigitalDame said:
@chessmaster1989 said:
If people are upset because of a lack of transparency, that's more the fault of GS than that of its users, because GS has not explained nor justified why people should not be upset. So if you want people to respect the site and the mods (respect the mod status I mean), then you have to be open about why you should.
That's a very interesting point. For a long time (since before I can remember) it has always been policy to "not discuss moderations with other users," for various reasons.
Maybe the user was sending hateful messages via PM? What if (by sharing the reasons in detail) resulted in the user being targeted in other ways by users who feel that the action in question was scummy enough to justify an attack? Since when it turns into "prove it" the accepted norm would (eventually) evolve into "screenshot or gtfo," which is something that we would want to avoid.
Also, as I'm sure the majority of you know, the mods here are volunteers, not employees. So it's not always easy to ensure full coverage for disputes regarding moderation. I'm all for transparency regarding certain actions, and I'm also up for discussing just what the specifics of that transparency would include.
If you have any suggestions, I'm open to them and they will be discussed with the people who help maintain the community.
Regarding "screenshot or gtfo":
1) If the concern is non-technological reasons, please see the next two "ideas" ("Regarding PMs" and "Regarding forum posts") for a discussion
2) If the concern is technological reasons, I would ask what these technological reasons are. If it does not exist, surely it could not be difficult to implement a system whereby the contents of a flagged post are automatically recorded and saved, giving an easily-accessible means of providing users with the contents that led to a user's ban
Regarding PMs:
1) If the concern is anonymity of the non-banned user, then surely that user's name can be redacted.
2) If the concern is that PMs are fundamentally meant to be private and not publicly shared, then a true violation of TOU resulting in a ban should negate that user's right to privacy of those PMs. Rather at that point, since the user is no longer a member of the community, the rights of other users to see the reason of the ban should supersede that user's (who is no longer part of the community) right to privacy.
3) If the contents of the PM are deemed unsuitable for public display, then surely they can be shared privately (via PM) upon request at the requester's own risk.
Regarding forum posts:
1) The same point applies regarding anonymity of the targeted user.
2) The concern about privacy no longer applies
3) The same point applies regarding contents of the post.
Regarding my issue with the lack of transparency:
1) With the full understanding that the consequences of the two situations are on completely different scales, let me offer an analogy, with the purpose of demonstrating a philosophical point. Suppose that in place of the US legal system, with public jury trials and due process, we instead had a system in which public officials (or, if you prefer, a panel of citizens) would review in secret the details of an individual's case. Other members of society would not necessarily be told that person was under review. One morning, we would wake up and suddenly find that individual had been taken away in the middle of the night. Public officials would respond that they were unable to elaborate on what sentence that individual had been given, nor the details concerning that arrest. However, they would give full assurance that the proper process had been followed and justice had been served.
Now, my question to you is, would you accept that justice system? Surely you would not. However, in principle, this is precisely the system being applied here. If you consider this system to be unfair and undesirable in a justice system, then how is it redeemed merely because the consequences are less severe in a forum setting?
A final note:
Of course, there are more than likely issues I am overlooking. However, to the extent that there are, I would appreciate them being shared with me.
@korvus said:
@MarcRecon: Thank you for that, Marc; it helped me more than you know. It's truly disheartening that we spend so much time trying (and often failing) to help the community and trying to make people feel welcome and safe with users yelling at us that we are incompetent and don't get rid of problem users so we try our best to push through and be more efficient but when we do something we get people telling us we're abusing our power and have vendettas against users.
If we don't do something they threaten to leave, if we do something they threaten to leave. It really makes it hard for me to justify to myself taking so much of my time with my family for this community.
The reason that people get upset is that there's very little transparency in the whole process. I (and many other users) don't know why airshocker was banned, since he didn't seem to do anything ban-worthy - I even messaged with him off of GS and he didn't seem to know why he was banned either. The reason given in his Ask the Mods thread "Your account has posted too messages which contain targeted messages that are hateful, inflammatory, and otherwise inappropriate towards members of GameSpot's members, volunteers, and staff" just doesn't jive with what we've seen of him. So this leads to people thinking that the rules are being applied overzealously, hence accusations of mod incompetence.
Second, since there are other users who fit the above description much more accurately who have not been banned, it leads to accusations that the rules are being applied somewhat arbitrarily.
Third, GS seems (from my perspective) to be changing its stance on what's acceptable without much way of us knowing. I remember a couple years ago OT rewrote its TOU to be much more open to things like swearing and more 'aggressive' posting. It seemed like for a while, it was near-impossible to get banned. Is that policy then switching back, now that you're seemingly becoming more aggressive about banning users? If so, it has not been well-advertised that there is any change.
So I think people do have a right to be upset, until the site gives them a reason not to be. Threats to leave and so reduce site traffic are virtually the only recourse users have to problems, hence those threats.
I remember in one thread in Ask the Mods, a response was given in response to a request for information about a user possibly being banned, that information could not be shared about account status. That kind of policy needs to change. If people are upset because of a lack of transparency, that's more the fault of GS than that of its users, because GS has not explained nor justified why people should not be upset. So if you want people to respect the site and the mods (respect the mod status I mean), then you have to be open about why you should.
If she's not willing to do her job, perhaps she should find a new occupation.
@korvus said:
The staff and the mod team are, per request of the community, doubling our efforts to improve the quality of discussion across our boards, and sometimes that requires the removal of some members who violate our Terms of Use.
Every user in GS is equal, so regardless of how long you've been in the community you are still required to follow the rules and unfortunately Airshocker did not. He had a long history of hateful posts and disregard for moderators, our guidance and attempts to steer him in a less confrontational direction. The staff took notice of it and they decided that the removal of the user would be beneficial to the overall feel of the community.
We are aware we have our fair share of troublemakers and Airshocker might have not have been on top of your "we would do better without" list of users, but I can assure you that quite a few other users have been banned these last few days and none of them were banned on a whim or without discussion within the moderation team or the staff. In this case the ban came from the staff but speaking for the moderation team (as much as I can), expect to see a few more problematic users being given a long vacation or a permanent removal from this website.
Your help in identifying and reporting these users are appreciated; I'm sure you are as interested as we are in bringing OT (and other boards) back to a safe place to discuss, free of hate speech and disruptive posting. We may never reach that goal entirely but we will surely try.
Bullshit, airshocker was a decent guy who just had some strong opinions. If we start banning everyoe who gets a little carried away discussions, there won't be anyone left.
Oh wait, that's already what's happening.
Yes, what with our horrifying 2% annual inflation rate, our currency will soon be all but worthless
Owning both is definitely best in terms of having the biggest selection of games. For me it's about price vs increased access to games. Right now I have a PS4 for its exclusives and for console-only multiplats (of which there aren't as many anymore). So then for Xbox it becomes a question of whether it's worth it for the exclusives. Not being much of a Halo/Gears/Forza fan, atm it's not worth it for me (although I'm disappointed to miss out of Quantum Break), but that may change in a couple years.
The scientific consensus seems very strong on both, so unless that changes I accept both as real.
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