If you disagree with a moderator’s decision, or a policy set by the admins or the creator, you may want to gather public support for your case among the community. The forum is not the place for it. […] If you do not agree with the policies, then maybe other places may be more suitable for you.
Where is the place for it? This is the official forum for “Wolfery out of character discussions”. Would you prefer it on Wolfery? Are administrative policies simply not up for discussion, or is it just that people can’t seek public support – a distinction that seems meaningless to me, as any post to a forum advocating a policy change could be seen as an attempt to attract public support for it by offering up the idea?
I do get that you don’t want possibly-personal moderation matters relitigated, perhaps in a way you can’t officially respond to defend the decision, but it seems… oddly churlish to extend this to official policies. Moreover, many such policies have been discussed – and disagreed with – without obvious moderator action, so clearly it is permitted in some causes.
Saying “if you don’t like the policies, maybe you should leave” is a position that could be stated once a discussion had run its course – rather than, as suggested, being adequate justification for prohibiting such discussions entirely.
This post isn’t made with a specific policy disagreement in mind; I just think it’s an overreach for a community forum, where such matters will naturally be discussed by regular users.
For what it’s worth, I also feel that properly-marked links to mature or adult fictional content that has direct relevance to Wolfery would be reasonable to allow; they are, after all, allowed on the platform itself. The linked forum topic being one case where that would have been a reasonable accommodation to avoid hosting such content, but one which is forbidden by the current wording (“Keep it clean from … links … that may not be safe for a workplace.”). Possibly with a requirement that the target site itself require an account to access?
The mods also hide their actions. When authority hides its actions the safest thing to assume is that they are doing this because their actions would not be popular.
Being that the 6 folk I have invited here all left citing harassment from the mods…
It’s definitely concerning enough that I no longer invite folk here.
You hide the actions you take. That’s easily the biggest one. Moderation actions are meant to strengthen a community. If the mod actions being taken were good they wouldn’t need hiding. Mod actions effect everyone, because they affirm what rules are exactly and if someone is going to be removed from the game, that is effecting others who perhaps may not have wanted said person removed. Without some, “This person broke this rule so we did this,” it seems rather destructive to roleplay that folk just disappear.
Bin passing is the next big one. Folks will have an issue, and then reach out, then a mod won’t get to them for a while, then the one who does will pass them to another or say it’s something they’ve not the tool to do or fix.
Deleting posts on the forum is another. I don’t know how to explain to my friend why their questions about the UI got deleted. But they’re certainly not the first person I’ve heard such a complaint from!
If someone is breaking the rules - quite simply - they’re breaking the rules. All ‘removals’ are what we actually call bans and are done for fairly bright-line rules violations, most commonly evading a previous ban. It’s possible we could be more open about this, though a fair number of bans involve the reporting party and it gets difficult to fully share that information. In addition, as much as we do want to take player feedback into account, most bans aren’t something we’re going to want a public debate on the validity of.
Believe it or not the toolset of mods and even admins is quite limited, partly by design. As far as environments like this go we’re very privacy focused, and we can’t go digging too deeply into things. One of the hardest problems I have when someone wants to report an issue is getting them to properly report the incident with a log - otherwise we have nothing we can go on in most cases.
Unfortunately all these are general questions. If you ever have an instance where you have questions or want to know more, why not ask us? We won’t take offense or think ill of people for just wanting to know more. Again, keep in mind some things we can’t share about other players.
This horse has been flogged to death before, right here on the forums.
Moderation is not a public court. The decisions made there are not subject to a vote from the public, or input from uninvolved third parties. Moderation is done by the moderators, and the actions they take is between the user(s) affected and the moderation team. It’s not a court, and there is no jury of peers involved.
Yes, some places choose to publicly list their moderation decisions. We are not following that road. That does not, however, mean that we go jackbooted about and send people off to oblivion without good reason. If someone gets outright banned, there is a very good reason for it. If you feel that you must assume that means we are acting in bad faith, that is your choice. But the rules we work by, and the way we do things, is a mandate handed to us by the platform owner. As the owner of said platform, their word is the highest authority. Barring legal limitations (of which there are few that apply to how access or the lack thereof is granted to the platform), how we do things is dictated by them.
And if someone doesn’t find that agreeable… Well, the FAQ does state it. If you do not agree with the policies, then maybe other places may be more suitable for you.
Since June 1st, the following types of posts have been deleted:
Spam bot posts: 5
Meme image posts without any other contributing text: 6
Self-requested deletion: 1
Active moderation to remove post by a user: 0
Active moderation editing content in a post by a user: 1
I have found zero posts regarding UI in our moderation log. Perhaps you need to provide a more concrete example of what posts exactly you think were removed. A general pointer as to the contents, or the username that posted it would help. My inbox is open if you have any to share.
I personally do not believe that moderations issues should be made public. The only people who should know anything about a disciplinary action should be the mods and the one’s affected by the action.
We don’t need a stockade system designed to humiliate anyone who would dare break a rule because we are the great and all powerful Wizards and anyone who disagrees with us should be punished and made example of so that all others know to fear us. We don’t need to be Tapestries.
Making these decisions public is just asking for even more drama.
While I don’t defend our system as perfect: The humiliation of the stockades and the mod blotter posting board that too often descends into mockery of the user being disciplined are two things that I and some other moderators did not want to emulate.
I remember a certain someone was intensely displeased that GreenKai was roleplaying in there, let alone protesting her innocence over Grand Theft Timat to anyone who’d listen. Apparently it was missing the point of being put in an IC-ly described stockade situation…
True, the FAQ rules are restrictive.
But friendly discussions are still allowed on the forum.
What that rule goes against is agitation (the rule is called “No agitation”).
Like what I perceive @Kookierhondje does in this thread; making claims how 6 people have left due to mod harassment? What sort of discussion is that? It contains no examples, no context, no nothing. It is just an agitating claim. That is not friendly discussion on how things can be improved.
Discussion about changing the rules for the forum in regards to the NSFW content restriction? No problem!
I am open for such.
