Avatar2go wrote:You've said that part of the motivation for this decision is that the moderators are here for aviation, and don't want to deal with the conflict in the political discussions. While I understand that, may I ask if you have considered appointing a dedicated moderator for that purpose, to free yourselves of it?
I think there might be those here who value these discussions sufficiently, to serve in that role.
For what it's worth, I participate in another technical forum where this is also an issue. The moderators are constantly trying to kill political discussion, because they don't want to deal with the conflicts that result. But there as here, bad behavior is the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of threads may contain arguments, but they are mostly civil.
In that forum, the users have appealed to the admins, and at least until now, the admins have said they don't want to suppress all political discussion, they just want it to be reasonable. The moderators have argued that it's inevitable that the threads will blow up. And while that does happen, it's by far in the minority of threads. Most threads just peter out as the topic fades, without moderator intervention.
Also in that forum, there is a timeout feature, in that a rambunctious user can be blocked for a period of hours or days, to cool things down. If they receive too many times outs, they are booted. There is no provision for thread locking, as there is here. Instead the moderators time out the offenders and tell the others to calm down. That seems to be effective because no one wants to be timed out, and excluded from the discussion. But of course there as here, moderators feel they shouldn't have to fulfill that role.
Just wondering if there is another solution here. I realize that from the perspective of the moderators, this section is more trouble than it's worth. Again I'm not discounting that viewpoint. But from the perspective of the users, it's among the best alternatives there is.
My view has always been, that the undercurrent of technical proficiency here, due to the aviation interests of the users, is the reason why. Users here more or less follow the rules of logic and science and debate. Not everyone to be sure, but the majority do.
That is actually a very valuable attribute. I've had other users here ask me privately, where can we go if this ends? And the truth is, I don't have a good answer.
We have actually thought about it, but absolutely none of us want to be dedicated to moderating Non Av, and frankly I'd be weary of taking on a new moderator that did. Irrespective of that, it still wouldn't absolve us of the criticism and attacks that we're biased and pushing agendas. I don't care if people accuse me of something so long as I'm confident that I've done the right thing and that I retain the confidence of the moderating team, but it honestly does wear you out to hear these things on a regular basis for years. One former user in particular contacts us on a near weekly basis with threats and profanity to the point that we've had to get VS's legal team involved, particularly after he tracked down my personal information. That's not what any of us signed up for, and I can't think of a logical way to separate us from dedicated Non Av moderators just to keep political discussions going. It isn't worth it.
We have warnings and bans that we can issue. Heck, we can permanently ban people. But when it's a free membership, there's not much of a consequence. It's like playing whack-a-mole with some users. Our most notorious generally only come here for political discussions. We deal with it in the aviation forums too, but they're typically easier to track. It's just another layer of complexity that we don't really want to be involved with. It was much easier to deter bad behavior when there was a membership fee. Maybe they'd try creating a new account, but they can't keep that up forever. When there's no buy-in, it's difficult to stop.
Revelation wrote:So, IMO the rationale being given in this thread is somewhat inconsistent and needs some polishing.
IMO it's ok to just say the contentious and often inflammable nature of political discourse goes beyond this site's ability to police it and the site administrators have made the decision to ban it, and not say it's due to the aviation focus of the site, specifically because that does suggest non-av will be nuked when that is not the intention.
I've seen other sites make similar decisions. Often they are just announced with immediate effect and without discussion, at least here there will be a transition period.
I'm not pretending that we have this all figured out yet. It's easier to lay down a blanket ban and then determine where the line of acceptability lies. We just know that we're at our wit's end with this crap. That said, we felt that we owed it to everyone — but the longtime and respectful users in particular — to have a transition period and to be open with our rationale. I think that it will take time to work out how best to approach these discussions. If nothing else, a cleanse for a little while might provide the reset needed to bring some civility to the forum. For now, we'll do what we need to do and go from there.
bluecrew wrote:Well-meaning posts are deleted because a user quoted it and flamed the poster. (Ex. one of mine deleted because someone made a crack about Cambridge, MA... nothing factual, just a one-liner, and my entire post was deleted)
We don't have any flexibility on this. We hate doing it, I know I certainly do, but we don't have flexibility. I have requested work-arounds in the past, like editing the referenced comment to replace it with "deleted", but the other moderators and head moderators believe that we will be open to further criticism for editing posts, and they're not wrong. If we remove a comment, we are required to remove all references. There's not much else that can be done.
bluecrew wrote:Workshop it a little, before killing it.
We've been discussing this for six years. We're a little past workshopping. This was far from a spur of the moment decision, this is something we've discussed for years and only recently received approval.