As a former moderator on a Reddit subreddit, (1M), and a moderator on a Discord community (400k) and who is on a deeply needed sabbatical, the granularity of moderation tools on this forum is very good.
I have a few gripes centered on the fact that it shows who has been suspended or had comments removed. This is because it forces the moderated person to publicly either admit wrong, or double down. I think growth should be allowed to be quiet if the individual so chooses, or their position should be something they affirm in their own way, voice, and time.
Public viewing of the moderated, and its impact of permanently tying someones identity to a moment of a post on some online forum isn’t a great thing in my experience.
(I don’t mind people keeping records, but I like it to preserve sincerity. Using personal records to keep something inflammatory in its inflammatory status, however, is destructive and deserving of moderation. Granted, if you want to move from the forum to your personal blog that’s fine. And, if you’ve created a 50 comment thread where you are all but 5 comments it’s probably a sign that your thread may be better suited for a personal blog.)
So while I’m not actually answering your question, hopefully it adds a perspective regarding your question of what “forum”[‘s] are out there.
@tim.one I would love for you to elaborate on what could be improved on regarding moderation actions taken, why, and evidence behind your ideas of what is the better course.
Regarding Franz, it was visibly a tough decision to balance ensuring a platform was equally offered, while trying to remove the code of conduct violating insults that were present in the same posts which contained platform information.
What did the moderation team do wrong? What should have been done? Given your thread on analyzing the PSF Board election votes: you’re familiar with academics. Are there papers which address your moderation ideals in a supportive, evidence based fashion? What kinds of papers cite the ones you use as supporting evidence?
You have this needling stab of, “Oh the PSF says just trust us”, but I’ve yet to see examples of what should be done. Particularly absent has been structural suggestions in anything you’ve said save discussions of voting structures, which you (at present) protected yourself from responsibility by saying, “After all this, don’t trust the algorithms I’ve suggested”. Simply sewing distrust, but refusing to own anything impactful.
From my experience moderating, if I say something hateful, or targetedly hateful/reductive/unfounded, while also saying something of my platform in the same sentence: it is difficult to choose between full removal, or subsecting removal of the comment that violated the CoC. It gets increasingly difficult to address when there are comments replying to the CoC violating section which are made prior to when I get a chance to moderate.
A portion of moderation is understanding the volatility of the community at a given point in time. and that means responding to certain behaviors differently: often the words in a post is not the focus of some individuals, but the impact they cause: ie some folks just want a flame war. And as such, the impact necessarily varies based on the community climate.
To make an analogy: A cold front means significantly less to the plain states of the US in the middle of winter compared to the late spring.
Moderators, similarly, need to look at what replies to a comment could be and understand how the same comment could cause different reactions at different times.
If the community, like d.p.o., is focused on developing the future of python: petty flame wars are probably not something which should be hosted there.
You have your personal blog, your voice exists. But putting something hateful/divisive in a space which has a goal of collaboration means alienating a lot of potential collaborators.
From that, in a climate of volatility (even a manufactured one by a single or couple of voices), it means recognizing that in cases where the last weeks of conversations on this topic which have only served to create a divide, and not sway anyone in a hegelian process, are topic spaces which only harm a community developing a project. At some point in the future it’s often worth revisiting a topic to explore nuance, but in a volatile time that nuance is often not accessible given the heated nature of emotions.
How do you propose we fix this? At present, I have no means to measure what people want besides a vote. Those who vote are probably the folks who have a vested interest in the community, so while it may be a small subset of folks who can vote, it’s probably a core representation of those who care about the community, and aren’t here for the cryptocurrency that python enables. Sorry, NFTs. Sorry, GPTs. Sorry, LLMs.
If there are demographics this is missing: please outline them. I desperately want to make an argument for nominating PSF Contributing Membership by *Nomination*. So any insight into my blind-spots is very important.
Building from that, I’ve suggested PSF membership changes, and python .org infrastructure changes. And I’d adore being comfortable suggesting such changes on a larger public scale. But I, in full sincerity, do not want to propose, or navigate further conversations here after a year of watching this forum.
Tim: you are directly why I don’t like talking here. While you are smart, and I am itching to talk about voting coverage and other mechanisms with you. (“Term frequency, inverse document frequency” is a topic space which I would enjoy watching your perspective in regarding covering voting weights for ‘out groups’.) Your presumptive attitude towards many things, including this:
Which feels very similar in ‘familiarity’ to:
Where you Direct Messaged me, I never replied, but you framed your very public comment as if we had a private correspondence.
This forces me to feel uncomfortable bringing up anything because I am conscious of the opportunity of an attempt to reframe (intentionally or not) fragments of some one sided conversations if it suits you.
This thread is suppose to be focused on the suspension of Franz, and I feel the implementation of his suspension was only delayed due to his candidacy for the PSF board. If there’s discrepancy regarding those circumstances, and the moderation action that was taken, it would help to clearly lay out the issue.
I struggle to frame your engagement here regarding that core goal to address the topic at hand.