I’m posting with some trepidation here, as:
- This discussion has become very heated and accusatory.
- I don’t want to be labelled as speaking from some sort of “privileged white guy” perspective, even though that’s exactly what I am. I’m certainly trying to see things from a broader perspective.
- I genuinely do appreciate the work the moderators do, and I absolutely wouldn’t personally be willing to take the amount of criticism they take for doing an unpleasant and stressful job.
Having said all that, yes, I think a significant improvement here would be if there were some more explicit and strictly adhered to rules that the moderators followed:
- Hiding or removal of any post must be accompanied with a separate post describing what was removed and why. Some details are needed, to allow the community to be aware of what went on - for example “Two posts by X were removed because they contained hostile comments directed at another participant”. This post must be made by the moderator who took that action, which adds a level of transparency and accountability.
- Moderators should never edit posts under any circumstances. My words are my expression of what I wanted to say. They should not be changed by another person, even with the best of intent. Even innoccuous changes like fixing typos are problematic, simply because they undermine the trust that what I typed will remain what other people see[1]. This isn’t an academic report, it’s a community discussion - typos and suboptimal wordings are fine, and don’t need fixing (unless the original poster chooses to do so).
- Wherever possible, advice or correction should be done in public, with both the moderator and the poster being identified. Clearly, that’s not always possible, but for many instances, the advice given may well be of benefit to others as well as the offending poster. There’s been an example quoted here of the “wink” emoji being problematic - I have no idea why, and I like to use it as a “not completely serious” indicator, so it would definitely be of value to me if the problem with that emoji had been aired in public rather than via some private communication channel.
- I’m reluctant to make this particular point, but I think it would be helpful if there were a channel for community members to raise concerns about moderation issues. It’s at least as difficult for community members to flag problematic moderation as it is for moderators to flag inappropriate posts, and the risk of escalation is far higher (it’s way too easy for a complaint about a bad moderation decision to turn into a witch-hunt - moderators are humans, doing a very difficult job, and they have to be allowed to make mistakes).
- It would also be good to have some public clarity on how one becomes a moderator. There have been comments here about “self-appointed custodians”[2] and while I don’t think that’s particularly fair, it does suggest that the community here don’t feel represented by the moderators. Heck, I don’t even know how to find out who the moderators are! I could probably find a way to do so from the Discourse documentation, but it feels like a failure if I have to consult a software manual to know who’s responsible for upholding[3] the values I want to see in my community…
Transparency is critical here. It’s clear from the discussions that the moderators are at risk of losing community trust (if they haven’t already done so) and once lost, trust is really hard to regain. So stronger measures now will avoid worse problems in the future.
I appreciate that the above makes the job of a moderator significantly harder. But surely the power to control who is allowed to say what in a public discussion forum is a significant one, and should be wielded with care and involve a certain cost?
One final point regarding the CoC. I support the CoC, and I accept that this is not the place to be lobbying for changes to it, but I had intended to point out that “assume everyone is acting in good faith” was a core principle - and I was surprised to find that it’s not explicitly stated in the CoC[4]. Regardless if that fact, I think it’s a crucial attitude to foster in any community, online or not, and to be perfectly frank, I don’t think any of the discussions here have lived up to that principle. Whether it’s been too much focus on “worst case scenarios”, or vaguely expressed concerns about “hidden activities”, or the assumption that moderation is about prevention rather than cure, it’s very hard to read this discussion and come away with the impression that we’re a community with shared goals and a respect for everyone’s approach and attitudes. And that honestly says more to me than any CoC rules or moderation policy statements 
There’s more I could say, but this is all I have the energy for right now. It’s a shame that important discussions like this are so emotionally draining (for all participants) because we end up with polarised, “sound bite” style comments where nuanced views are often too exhausting to express.
I made a typo in that sentence, and I was very close to leaving it in, because I felt the typo lightened the tone a little. A well-meaning fix would have left what I wrote looking a little more blunt than I wanted it to. In the end, I decided the humour was too subtle, so I didn’t do that - but how would a moderator know any of that? ↩︎
sorry, I haven’t got the time to find actual quotes, but that’s a clear impression I’ve got from the discussion ↩︎
Yes, I know “we’re all responsible for upholding the values”. I didn’t want to say “enforcing” because I don’t think moderation should be equated with enforcement. I picked a not-quite-right word that avoided implications I didn’t want to make. I point this out in support of my earlier comment that “suboptimal wordings are fine”. I explain it here, because I’m concerned that people don’t forgive suboptimal wordings as much as they should… ↩︎
or if it is, I missed it… ↩︎