Constructive thread has a couple of people asking why tickets, the only acceptable way to discuss moderation decisions, are being rejected unanswered. B-Dubs eventually explains that they just no longer entertain these sorts of things so stop asking.
I posted a ticket because I had a weird interaction where I thought someone was overly hostile to me over a pretty minor nothing post, so I asked why that kind of insulting petty hostility is okay since my report was dumped without even a warning nor feedback to me why it was dumped.
We are repeatedly told in this thread that if you have any issues or questions about specific moderation, that you should open a ticket, so I did that.
Then I waited about two weeks patiently until my ticket was rejected without a single word of response.
You can't even offer people a one sentence "We don't see any problem with that post." Just flat nothing?
I'm not even THAT bothered by the original post, I just would have been happy with a "hey that's uncalled for" warning or something since I think leaving that behavior completely unchecked creates a really toxic environment. That original post is not why I'm posting about here in the community discussion thread.
Sincerely: Why do we have a ticket system, which allows users to privately communicate with administration over any kind of issues and have things explained to them without making it a weird public deal, if its going to get 100% ignored?
Speaking to tickets, I submitted a ticket yesterday that was rejected without a response, if I could get some clarity on why it was rejected, if I submitted it incorrectly or something that would be cool. I was polite and offered constructive feedback as is requested.
You don't want metacommentary on the forum, okay. I assume you don't want things posted here so it doesn't become some witchhunt bullcrap, which I have on numerous occasions spoken out against as being unproductive. That leaves submitting a ticket as the best option, but when it is rejected without a response when a member has a good faith observation about how the forum can be improved to make posting expectations more clear, it does leave you feeling shitty to be completely brushed off- any human being would feel the same way if they took time out of their day to be polite and offer something constructive.
I get moderating a forum is not a job for most people here, it's a hobby, and people tend to not consider that distinction often enough with the demands that get placed on mods so maybe there is no argument to be made for professionalism per se, but at least for generally respecting the time of another human being that obviously cares about this place and respects the work that has gone into it I feel like is not that far out as a consideration.
Anyways, thank you for your time and I hope everyone has a good day
I've come here a few times to post about Metacommentary, but I close out the page before posting. So, to piggyback and finally post on the topic a tad: I feel like I see warnings and thread closures because of metacommentary a lot more lately. It's left me confused more often than not, and sometimes I'm sitting here wondering if my definition of metacommentary is off because holy hell, the reason is used a ton for things that sure don't seem like it fits. And sometimes I see users warned for it while others in the same thread on the same page get nothing like the recently closed Tom Cruise thread.
End of the day: would it be possible to have the General Guidelines updated to include what the moderation teams sees as metacommentary the next time they are updated, and what posters need to avoid? I'm hoping not all metacommentary is seen as bad though...? But either way, I'd love some clarity on the whole thing.
They won't, it needs to stay nebulous enough so they can use it as an excuse to close threads the minute they get a whiff.
I posted a ticket because I had a weird interaction where I thought someone was overly hostile to me over a pretty minor nothing post, so I asked why that kind of insulting petty hostility is okay since my report was dumped without even a warning nor feedback to me why it was dumped.
We are repeatedly told in this thread that if you have any issues or questions about specific moderation, that you should open a ticket, so I did that.
Then I waited about two weeks patiently until my ticket was rejected without a single word of response.
You can't even offer people a one sentence "We don't see any problem with that post." Just flat nothing?
I'm not even THAT bothered by the original post, I just would have been happy with a "hey that's uncalled for" warning or something since I think leaving that behavior completely unchecked creates a really toxic environment. That original post is not why I'm posting about here in the community discussion thread.
Sincerely: Why do we have a ticket system, which allows users to privately communicate with administration over any kind of issues and have things explained to them without making it a weird public deal, if its going to get 100% ignored?
Reclib, I'm sure it was frustrating not getting a response, but we get many many many reports in a day and if we stopped to argue with each person as to why we rejected or actioned the reported post our day would never end. As such, we're not going to get into various back and forths over why we did or did not action specific posts. Every time we've done so in the past it's turned into a headache that never seemed to end, so now we just don't do it as a matter of policy.
Speaking to tickets, I submitted a ticket yesterday that was rejected without a response, if I could get some clarity on why it was rejected, if I submitted it incorrectly or something that would be cool. I was polite and offered constructive feedback as is requested.
You don't want metacommentary on the forum, okay. I assume you don't want things posted here so it doesn't become some witchhunt bullcrap, which I have on numerous occasions spoken out against as being unproductive. That leaves submitting a ticket as the best option, but when it is rejected without a response when a member has a good faith observation about how the forum can be improved to make posting expectations more clear, it does leave you feeling shitty to be completely brushed off- any human being would feel the same way if they took time out of their day to be polite and offer something constructive.
I get moderating a forum is not a job for most people here, it's a hobby, and people tend to not consider that distinction often enough with the demands that get placed on mods so maybe there is no argument to be made for professionalism per se, but at least for generally respecting the time of another human being that obviously cares about this place and respects the work that has gone into it I feel like is not that far out as a consideration.
Anyways, thank you for your time and I hope everyone has a good day
RedMurcury, you made a thread linking to, and complaining about user conduct, in multiple threads. Every single time we have hosted a thread along these lines they have become incredibly toxic and combative. Thus we do not host these sorts of threads. If you have a problem with someone's behavior, report them. We're not going to be hosting call out threads that will invariably be used by bad faith actors to target and harass specific posters that they do not like for posts that are more often than not totally benign. This has happened every single time a thread like this has popped up in the past and as such we're not doing that anymore.
EDIT: To expand on this last one, we've literally seen these threads turn into people accusing victims of sexual assault of not caring about sexual assault, attempting to chase victims off the site and out of the community for not agreeing with the OP's take. This is just one of a dozen examples I could pull up from the last few years alone, and keep in mind I'm downplaying the actions people took in these threads. They were truly disgusting and reprehensible. THAT is why we don't do these threads anymore, because no matter how hard we try there will also be people willing to be total assholes over literally nothing and use threads like yours as a battlefield to wage their petty and pointless wars. All those sorts of threads do are harm the community and allow bad faith actors to use the idea of moral grandstanding to protect themselves.
This does get RedMercury to, very gingerly, ask if they might please consider occasionally updating their guidelines with these unwritten rules so good and true posters like him can avoid warnings. If it's not too much trouble:
That's fine, for what it's worth I never mentioned anything about appealing the warning I got, I wrote in because I felt like what I received the warning for could be represented in the thread creation guidelines a bit better, I was legitimately offering some constructive feedback. The only mention of metacommentary in those guidelines is in relation to offsite drama. I was as polite as I could possibly be about it, so it was a bit disheartening to just have the ticket closed without any response was all.
For what it's worth, I did not mean to call out any specific users, I was pointing to instances of threads instead, I deliberately tried to make it a generalization but I can see how implicitly that would be taken as calling out users. I don't know how to call out a pattern of behavior without linking to examples but I understand now the answer to that is to just not have those sorts of threads, that's my bad and thank you for explaining.
Do you think it would be worthwhile at some point down the road to maybe update the guidelines to include examples like the thread I made as a sort of "what not to do" as far as thread creation/comments, or if not examples just some general guidance on what you are not looking to have?
