ID:132454
 
Someone explain how our blogs Yay/Nay system is supposed to work. I spot checked a few blogs and feel there is some inconsistency in which once get hidden and which don't. One blog with -3 might be hidden while a blog with -4 remains.

How does that work?


It's not automatically done, it's moderator done. Some pragmatism is required on our part. Obviously some members are nay'd more than others while still actually providing useful content, and so moderator discretion comes into play. Some blog posts are in fact hidden despite being positively yea'd, because of content.

The author of the post receives notice of the reason of hiding. Again of course you may have caught us at a bad time with your spot check, and content stands which perhaps should not.
In response to Stephen001
OK. I'd like to present what I think is a challenge. Here's an example blog posting:

"Hi, my name is George and today is my 23rd day on BYOND. I hope to do great things here. I'm a big fan of anime."


Within 8 hours of posting, George accumulates 1 yay and 7 nays on this post. There are no comments.

What guides the moderators on making a decision here?

As a side... Do we have a list of active moderators and can we see a history of when and why they stepped in to moderate?

I assume we don't make that information public. Would it be a horrible thing if the moderator needed to add a public comment (even if canned) to the page so we all knew why a blog was hidden? I see this as a reasonable counter-measure against potentially unjust and/or biased policing. To be perfectly clear, I'm not making any claims at this time. In all honestly, I'm just not feeling very cozy inside about the inconsistencies I'm seeing.

Obviously, humans are going to be a little inconsistent and that is to be expected. However, how do we (the public) know when the line has been crossed from inconsistent to unfair?

ts



In response to Tsfreaks
For guidelines, http://www.byond.com/ members/?command=community_standards_popup what you see is what we see. As for interpretation, that's up to the moderator in question.

I'm not aware of a list of moderators, active or otherwise. I presume someone has one, though. As a real ballpark guess though, the numbers (not necessarily active) sit at 10 - 20.

As moderators we don't even get to see the history of moderator action, it has been a much requested page to allow us to cross-validate.

Could you at least point us to these inconsistencies you feel you are seeing? If the inconsistencies are making you feel concerned, believe me the lack of support for moderators and prospect for reasoned, mature and open discussion on moderator behaviour and guidelines concerns me as a moderator.

It's pretty well accepted that moderators are by definition "bad people" as our job by it's very nature involves taking action against individuals who would not appreciate action being taken against them, and intentionally entering into heated exchanges where we are not welcome to end this exchanges promptly. No-one enjoys being told off, whether they in hindsight see the mistake they made or otherwise. However on BYOND it does feel as though we're positively stuck between a rock and a hard place as our activities are usually the target of people who have nothing better to do with their time, and our framework (although definitely helpful for making sure we don't get caught having to argue the toss over technicalities) offers moderators no real protection beyond anonymity, which in itself is a double-edged sword.

Our challenge for the blog front page is actually really simple, and doesn't regard moderator transparency. No-one can agree what the blog front page is for. Without even that, moderators will always be in the wrong when moderating there. Most moderators don't touch the place with a bargepole as a result.