Why I'm leaving discuss.python.org

[brettcannon]

@holdenweb

Stev

As an example of editing, I normally would have fixed Steve’s typo of his name (and I know it’s a typo as I have never communicated with Steve when he left that second “e” off). But since “Stev” made it clear his view on editing, I’m leaving the typo.

@DavidMertz

the frankly abysmal behavior of moderators.

I’m going to leave this post up, but the PSF CoC does ask folks to be " open, considerate, and respectful." I personally think that sentence is not being “considerate” or “respectful”. Nor is that statement a fact in spite of its phrasing based on the private feedback the moderators have received about how we have handled the various threads in question (obviously some of the feedback has been on the other end of the spectrum as well, making everyone’s view of how us moderators have handled things an opinion).

While I suspect some will argue that the mods aren’t being “open”, I’m trying to counteract that a bit with this post.

@kknechtel

It’s already bad enough that we weren’t initially told (and technically are still only inferring, I think?) that there were already names up for consideration for delisting via this process.

I believe someone is inferring. I’m personally not aware of any list of people to act against that’s waiting in the wings (but this is off-topic for this thread).

@thomas

I believe posts were removed. I do not believe any posts were removed by moderators, which you seem to imply here.

It actually depends. Everyone has a weight to their flags based on their trust level and previous flags that moderators (dis)agreed with. If your weight is high enough the hiding is automatic, otherwise it gets raised to the moderators to handle which can include choosing to hide the post, delete the post, as well as suspending the user.

@pitrou

I would suggest to require a quota of N flaggers (with N significantly larger than 1) before a post is actually hidden.

As I said above, it’s based on weights. A handful of people trigger an automatic hiding on their own, but in general it takes multiple people flagging.

@Rosuav

@MegaIng

I disagree with this: Sometimes content is actually offensive[1], or spam and then something should happen quickly to reduce further harm.

That sort of harm is almost exclusively from brand new users.

That’s actually not true. Even some people who have participated for a long time have an off day and stray from being cordial. And if a post is off-topic you want to deal with it quickly to minimize derailing an entire topic, and those sorts of posts easily come from long-time participants (myself included ).

@barneygale

I’d prefer if moderator actions were taken mostly against posters rather than posts

We do both. But we don’t want to leave posts around violating the CoC as they are, well, violating the CoC. And that can be important to act on if the post is insulting, harmful or triggering for a vulnerable group of people, etc. This is actually a key reason I personally argued we move away from mailing lists as it leaves “bad” posts in everyone’s inbox and online forever.

@tim.one

Surprise! A mod did restore my light-banter post with David. They did that on their own - thanks

That was me. To help pull back the curtain on moderation I will explain what happened:

1. The post got flagged as off-topic and the weight of the flag(s) was enough for an automatic hiding
2. I saw the moderation notification that the post was flagged
3. I read the post and in fact agreed it was off-topic, but since it was a “thanks” post and the rest of the post seemed unlikely to trigger more off-topic posts (please don’t make me regret that decision ), I rejected the flag to let the post show up again (I sometimes get a “agree but keep post” option which I would have chosen as I think the flag was right but the auto hide wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t get that option this time).