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@Barney
1. What can we do to make your job(s) easier?
I often find that users report content which is clearly not against the rules. Based on context, I assume that this content is reported due to the reporter's personal objections to the content or due to the fact that the content is somehow offensive. However, reports of clearly licit content--even when that content is offensive--waste time and are not acted upon. I would urge users to be circumspect in their use of reports and to familiarize themselves with the COC.
2. On voting, what are your thoughts around increased difficulty in point accumulation?
Not entirely sure what you're asking here, but when debaters choose the point system, they are choosing to ask voters for a holistic judgement. It is therefore entirely appropriate for a voter to award more points to the debater who lost arguments if that debater legitimately outperformed in the other point categories.
2. On voting, what are your opinions of skimming arguments we are too familiar with?
Voters should read every argument in a debate. Skimming is inevitable and acceptable, but it is important not to be too lax. Often there is important nuance or deviation which is hidden in an otherwise boilerplate-looking argument. If the voter doesn't read carefully enough, they may miss those details. But, as a time- and effort-saving function, I sympathize with skimming, and I think it's alright, esp. for less dense debates.
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@RationalMadman
If I am so wrong, why not tell us the fair approach you use to judge people, rather than keep it secret?
I am certainly willing to tell you my approach. But I am not going to identify specific users as being under consideration. Fundamentally, I am looking for a user who is going to be consistently active, who has no history of COC violations, who is fair-minded, who is reasonably well-liked by the site usership, and who is willing and able to consistently do the work required of them with little prompting. I would prefer someone with experience in modding or site leadership, but I recognize that is difficult to get. I will come to my own decisions on which individuals, based on these criteria, are most suitable. I will then discuss those names with the moderation team, and, factoring in their input, make a decision. I will then clear my choice with Mike.
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@RationalMadman
You are not in a position to know who I am or am not considering, and, while I have given the matter some thought, it is not for me a matter of urgency. I will wait until the right candidate comes along.
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@Speedrace
Will you consider more mods or are you happy with the current number? How often do y'all get stressed with the load of work you have?
I am hoping to add 1-2 more moderators to the team eventually. I don't get too stressed right now, but there are some days where the workload is daunting.
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Plus, DART sounds cooler and is more specific. DA could mean Deviantart, as already mentioned. And DART just has a kind of adventuresome feeling to it...
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DA will always mean Dumbledore's Army. I am not Harry Potter, ergo, this is DART.
#soundreasoning
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@RationalMadman
Bsh1, why did Mike trust a total stranger who he claims he's never met or observed socially before as he had zero prior interaction with those on DDO, with entire backdoor-access to users, IP, PM, email etc? What level fo insanity woukd it take to trust someone within a couple of weeks of website-lifespan who simply posted a few rule ideas with that degree of access and power? I think I know the answer, but I'm curious what you'll say.
I am not a mind-reader. I represented myself to Mike as someone willing to do the job, who was familiar to and knowledgeable of the community, and who had served in elective office on DDO. Moreover, I don't think Mike was particularly worried, because he has the ultimate authority on whether to remove me or not from my office. If I conducted moderation business in an unsatisfactory manner, it would have been easy for him to replace me. Ultimately, you'll need to ask him what was going through his mind, though. Again, I am not a mind-reader.
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@Christen
I have a question why were King_8 and Dr Franklin banned
King_8 was permanently banned for multi-accounting, and using those alts to vote for himself on his own debates as well as to circumvent temp-bans. Regarding Dr.Franklin, as the ban log states, "Moderation will not offer public comment on the reasons for temporary bans unless and until either (a) the banned user returns and raises the issue publicly or (b) public interest outweighs the banned user's privacy concerns." I will therefore not offer any comment on why Dr.Franklin has been banned. He will be back later today.
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@oromagi
if all goes according to plan, what does moderation on DART look like 5 years from now?
Much as it does now. There are no radical changes that we are hoping to implement.
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@oromagi
What was the most difficult decision addressed by mods over the past year?
Most permanent ban decisions are extremely difficult, and often equally so.
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@Vader
This AMA is solely for DART's main site. Discord questions are better hosted in a separate thread.
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@PressF4Respect
We're not considering appointing you to any moderation position at this time.
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@PressF4Respect
Formally, either I or the site owner would appoint someone as a mod. That is how one becomes a mod. What does it take? Patience, willingness to conform to the letter of the rules yourself, intelligence, maturity, and fairness.
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On September the 10th, it will have been one year since Virt and I were installed as Deputy and Chief Moderator, respectively, by Debateart.com, the site owner.
During this year, moderation has adopted a system of practices which allow a great deal of freedom of speech but which also protect the mutual civility which is necessary for reasoned debate to occur. Moderation has established rules in consultation with the general usership in order to allow the site public to have a say in determining particularly important and controversial policies. Moderation has, with every effort being made towards fairness and impartiality, enforced those rules and policies. And, moderation has attempted to be highly engaged on the site and to address legitimate concerns put to it by the usership whenever those concerns arise.
This AMA is being held to offer the usership a further opportunity to express concerns and ask questions such that moderation can address and answer them to the extent it is able. This AMA will also prove useful to moderation in helping us evaluate our policies and practices on year on, so that appropriate and considered adjustments can be made where necessary.
This AMA will last until 6:30pm, EST, on September the 12th. This will allow ample time for questioning, but will provide a point of conclusion to the process, hopefully to reign in any resulting drama (though I appeal to all members to be civil). I will be taking all questions not specifically addressed to Virt, Ram, or Castin. All four of us will participate as indicated. This is a moderation AMA, and so questions not strictly related to moderation issues (including personal and technical/features questions) might not be answered.
The AMA is now open, and I look forward to a robust discussion.
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@Alec
So please, next time you make one of these threads, check that you're not making much ado about nothing.
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@Alec
That's really not my business. As long as nothing fishy is going on (and I do check), I am willing to ban users who request their accounts be banned.
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@David
Please, for the love of God, check the ban log before making threads like this.
+1
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@Alec
As was clear from the ban log, Yitz asked for their own account to be banned.
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@Speedrace
In this case, you're probably being too sensitive.
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@Speedrace
Not like this is racially insensitive or anything like that, that would be craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy
In this case, slave has more to do with BDSM than American history.
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@TheRealNihilist
It is permissible to link.
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@RationalMadman
It's a call out of me, and therefore permitted, because mods aren't subject to protections against being personally attacked. I mean, what slave doesn't like getting booty-spanked in public?
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@Speedrace
I used to teach ESOL abroad, but now I am back getting a second masters. Teaching wasn't for me...but I did like my students.
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@Mharman
School has started up for me again, so until I get more in the groove, I am not willing to commit to anything. Sorry, Mhar.
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Locked for incitement (fighting words).
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Given the context of recent threads, I believe this thread is sufficiently problematic to be labeled a call-out. Mocking another user can be permissible, but when it becomes harassment, or when it becomes vicious, we have a problem. In this case, the mockery is harassing, and a form of cross-thread contamination. The thread will be locked, and I must ask you to cease from making similar threads for the time being.
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I am extremely disappointed in those who resort to harassment and mockery in an attempt to drive other users off the site. I am temporarily locking this thread to allow all parties to cool off.
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@TheRealNihilist
My suggestion is that the moderators are able to take down votes when the debate is finished
I am sorry that this happened to you, and I can understand your frustration. I completely agree that moderation needs to be able to remove votes from completed debates. However, the site owner has indicated that make such a change is technically difficult, and would require significant effort on his part. I will reach out to him again on this issue, but ultimately, whether such a change is made and when will come down to his ability to effectuate that change.
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@Trent0405
As a left-of-center individual, I cannot honestly say I like Stephen Harper. Trudeau is hot, but that hardly redeems his recent scandals. Not a fan of either, then.
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Interestingly, if I convert my SAT score to an IQ score (the two tests are highly correlated), I have an estimated IQ of 144.
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@Dr.Franklin
You're kind of making my point for me. If I were a dictator, you would not have the ability to criticize me as you just did. You have that free speech, and so I am not a dictator.
But let's consider for a moment two important distinctions between this site and the outside world. First, this site is privately owned. It is the prerogative of the owner and those he empowers to make rules for this site. You cannot walk into someone else's house and then complain when they impose rules on your behavior. Indeed, the rules are fairly lax. In most people's homes, they probably wouldn't let you insult them much before kicking you out. Here, you have the right to insult moderation and ownership as much as you please. Indeed, most households probably wouldn't let you espouse white nationalist beliefs before they threw you out, but here, you can espouse whatever beliefs you'd like, so long as you do not make personal attacks. And since any ideology can be expressed without making personal attacks, you can express any ideology you'd like. And most offending threads are not deleted (so they are not "censored"); they are locked (i.e. they remain visible, so your speech stays out there in the public domain).
Second, this site is not like the real world. It is a community which exists as a primarily discursive construct. The outside world exists in a more multidimensional space. It is discursive, but also physical, cultural, financial, etc. In our community, as opposed to the outside world, discursive harms take on an outsized importance precisely because they are (a) not diluted or outweigh by more prudential concerns and (b) because they threaten the very fabric upon which the community is built. For example, the spampocalypse is what ultimately destroyed DDO's viability. A purely discursive harm caused a primarily discursive construct to fall apart. So, it is only right that, in this space, discursive harms be more carefully regulated than they might be elsewhere. While, then, you might chafe at some of the rules and regulations you personally dislike, those rules are regulations are there for good reason: to protect the discursive integrity of DART.
In other words, your complaints lack merit at every level. There is no ideology or point of view you are unable to espouse and there is no person of authority you cannot vehemently lambaste, so you clearly have meaningful free speech. If the crux of your argument is that you cannot post 1,000 comments saying "REEE" in a row, then you have little substantive grounds for complaint; the restrictions on that kind of activity are such a minuscule limitation of your overall free speech as to hardly register as a limitation whatsoever. There reaches, ultimately, a point where your complaints turn into petty bouts of childish pouting. My advice is to stop pouting and to enjoy the immense amount of discursive freedom this site does allow, and that freedom really is substantial.
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@Dr.Franklin
That what this website is, locking threads because of fucking "spam", BS
If this site were a dictatorship, you wouldn't be able to say that.
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@RationalMadman
and that will cover the legal side of things.
The issue here is that there is no legal side to cover. There is no legal ambiguity or jeopardy here: it is not illegal to talk about or reference pornography on site's like this.
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Aloha!
Recently, as I have been moderating the site, I have noticed that there has been some confusion as to what counts as a call-out thread. I am posting this to clarify the issue for site users. A call-out thread is, per the COC, any thread "in which a purpose of the thread is to attack another user."
The definition of a call-out thread means a few things in practice. First, it means that not all threads calling people out are call-out threads as the COC defines the term. If I create a thread saying, "Calling Out Castin," and then in the thread I say only complimentary things about her, I have not created a "call-out thread" as the COC defines it, and so my thread has not broken any site rules. The COC certainly does not prohibit saying nice things about other people. Second, the call-out thread, in its purpose, OP content, or title content, must constitute a personal attack. Threads criticizing or parodying other users are not necessarily call-out threads. Not all criticism or mockery rises to a level which is actionable under the COC.
Therefore, a call-out thread is a thread created for the purpose of personally attacking another user. It is not a thread created for complimenting other users, nor is every thread that has something negative to say about someone a call-out thread.
Hopefully this adds some clarity to the issue.
- Bsh1
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@RationalMadman
It is the law that no pornographic content be hosted on this site, and that will be enforced vigorously. It is not the law that pornography cannot be talked about or referenced.
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@RationalMadman
Mentioning x-rated sites is itself not prohibited. Parody threads are not necessarily callout threads; however, I will discuss this case internally with moderation to determine a course of action.
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@TheRealNihilist
I saw that the posts were reported. I am not going to publicly discuss whatever actions I choose to take.
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@warren42
I also wanted to briefly address what you said in the mafia PM about confirming night actions.
It seems to me that mafia has an advantage over town in terms of inactivity. Suppose that 2 mafiosos were inactive, and that an equal proportion of town (6 players) were inactive. Normally, this would substantially disadvantage town, because town would be far less able to agree a lynch and it is possible some of their number would not submit actions even if they had power roles. However, mafia normally wouldn't be too hurt by this, because as long as one of them is active, they can still submit an NK target and night actions.
By requiring a majority of mafiosos to confirm all mafia actions, I feel like I leveled the playing field. Using the same hypothetical scenario of 2 inactive mafiosos and 6 inactive townies, neither mafia nor town would be any more likely to agree on a lethal move, be it an NK or a lynch. Neither would be more likely to submit and benefit from night actions either. In a game like this, a standstill is probably the most "earned" outcome between the teams, and I'd rather have that then see mafia cruise to an unearned lynch on the back of a single active player.
There is no reason, philosophically, that town should automatically suffer more as a result of inactivity, as it is not inherently town's fault that they got stuck with inactives. So, I decided from the outset that I would require a majority of you to confirm. I probably should have made that clearer from the get-go, but it ultimately did not end up hurting you or your team at all.
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@ILikePie5
I hated the Google Docs idea
The problem I had/have with Discord is that other users can, apparently, see who is active on Discord. This means that Discord can act as an indicator of affiliation. If three or four players out of a 12 person game are consistently on Discord, then it seems logical to assume that they are the most likely culprits for being scum. Google docs was something I knew how to use (I am decidedly non-tech savvy) and which I knew would not act as an indicator of affiliation. Hence, I chose to use Google docs to host the mafia PM. I am open to alternative suggestions, but I found that it worked well enough for this game.
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@RationalMadman
I am always willing to delete a post here or there or to ban a user's account at their own request, but I am willing to be a post deletion machine, either. I am willing, therefore, to remove up to 15 posts at your request if those posts are not of substantial public interest.
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@YitzGoldberg
I take it you would like your account banned? It is not possible to delete accounts, so banning is the closest we can get. If you would like it banned, simply reply to this message so stating, and I will ban it within 24 hours.
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