RFC: Should I start handing out 1-day "cool off" bans to thwart flamewars?
OK peeps, I am seeing a lot of flamewars lately which go off-topic of this comm. I am also getting dozens of reports about people reporting each other for "rudeness" or "trolling". I don't want this comm to start becoming a drama haven, so I want to try and prevent people getting worked up like this.
What do you think about me starting to deploy strategic 1-day bans for people who I notice are getting into flamewars? If not, what else do you suggest to help people remain civil?
Don't just upvote/downvote. I won't take these into account, I want actual comments about this to better make a decision.
74 replies
What would that timeframe be though? A week? A month? A day? Ultimately, what would that matter even - why is it bad to respond to something three months later, e.g. asking a follow-up question "was this matter ever resolved - did you manage to get in contact with the admin/mod and what did they say?"
The problem with that approach is that it penalizes people other than the offender (I assume here you mean locking the entire post, not just a comment chain underneath it?), e.g. if you take time to think about the scenario, read it thoroughly, go gather some additional references, type out a reply, and not even necessarily to the person inflaming the conflict but others who happened to respond more quickly, but then bam, your well thought out and crafted message is rejected, bc you did not deliver it quickly enough, and because while you were treating the matter seriously, a flame war was breaking out, but it's not like a chatroom where you can see the messages coming in live?
It makes sense for the people involved in spreading drama to be affected/penalized, but why discourage discourse elsewhere by others in the community? And all the more so the ones delivered more slowly, while allowing the most hot-headed quick replies to go through before the post can be locked.
Any abuse reporting or appeals system will invite some general "they're saying things I don't like" complaining, that's just human nature for some people. And the fact that this is a open forum makes that a hundred times worse, and makes it harder to keep an outsider perspective.
That said, some people just need to think before typing. I don't think locking stuff would work on such a small community
I’m ok with a penalty box. Pointless bickering gets this sub off topic. It’s tough because people come here ready to air grievances so I think that pre-charges the atmosphere and makes it that much easier for things to get off the rails
You put in to words what I was struggling to find. People are often already a little charged up when they show up here, that's the nature of this kind of board.
Happy cake day!
Well, this is drama heaven because it's for users who aren't legible to post in fedidrama (because they're involved themselves) and then they end up here. And IMO the posts kind of set the tone. You often start out with a negative impression after reading the post, and then you're likely to be negative. And it doesn't help that other comments are negative or low quality as well... Then it's super easy to drop what's left and just shitpost.
I'm not sure if I want to continue reading anyways. It's several posts a day of people whining about something they brought upon themselves. Often something completely insignificant like one removed post/comment or a one day time-out from shitposting. And half the people don't listen or get anything, neither does OP, and the commenters just flame about arbitrary things, or attack each other for their strongly held opinions... I'd say a bit more moderation would be worth a try. But don't listen to me, I'm probably not the target audience of this community.
I think you got it down to the exact issue at hand: Do we want moderated communities, or do we want a free speech platform without limits. I would prefer the former, and I think you're arguing for the latter. That's kind of fundamentally incompatible. At least on some levels I can't see how we'd reach an agreement here. There is one way, and you brought it up, and that's technical means. Have the software separate us into distinct spaces so I don't have to read low quality posts, hear people whining about stupid things, and I get just tech-related stuff in a tech community, and all other spam and off-topic ramblings get removed.
I'm not really for unmoderated platforms. We've seen several attempts at that fail miserably. And we kind of have 4chan for circle-jerks, you could as well just go there. But I'm liberal. I'd like to just peacfully co-exist with people holding different opinions. If that's possible.
It's just very hard to agree on the exact amount of moderation, because that's individual preference. And we'd need to agree on which community has which policy and make it more obvious to the user. I think that's another issue which gets obvious when browsing this community. A lot of people complain about something getting removed, while the community has clearly stated the rules. So I'd say if we go with that, most posts here are automatically invalid complaints...
My point is just, this is really hard to impossible to implement this. Due to the way things work (as of now), and human nature.
Yup. 100% a perfect tool for the situation.
And I say that as someone that has likely deserved a few of them here and there.
It won't stop report abuse, but it will reduce the in-thread drama.
Hell, it might reduce drama in general since the serious drama queens are going to get butthurt and not come back.
If the only offense is that people are getting heated, a cool-off ban as a reminder to take a walk and come back later works wonders.
Honestly, I personally haven't seen any of these flame wars. And I'm not sure restricting engagement on a service already trying to increase engagement is productive even for a good reason.
If it's off topic or getting personal, sure. If not, I'm neutral on it.
That's what flame wars are. Getting personal or just exchanging insults
Then I agree with you, a day at least of cooldown. But not without interaction. As another's suggestion here covered, see if they'll stop? Then a cooldown based on their reaction.
PTB. I should be allowed to be as mean as I want to whoever I want. But make sure you permanently ban everyone who is mean to me because that's bad.
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, I’m the only one that people shouldn’t be mean to.
(This is a joke if it wasn’t obvious >.>)
banning people for reporting seems like a way to discourage reporting.
but banning for flaming and trolling sounds reasonable, especially if it's a short ban. even a 6 or 12 hour ban might send the right message.
Eh, you'd be amazed how many people use reports to say "I don't like this, and it's your problem" instead of it actually being a community rule violation. I don't moderate any busy lemmy C/s, but I did some high traffic reddit subs, and I'd even say that half of reports were just trying to get a mod to shut down the other person in a slap fight. Then they're amazed when you shut both parties down lol.
I definitely think that anything more than a one day ban for single reports is way over the line. And I'd prefer warnings with an explanation be the default.
Is it if they're flooding your feed with nonsense reports? That stuff takes time to sort through, and the time spent sorting through it takes away from other moderation duties.
Besides, if you're only banning excessive reporters like that, aren't you only discouraging people who are actively abusing the report button?
EDIT: to be clear, I mean a temp ban, not permanent one
it's my feeling, and I'm open to disagreeing about this, that it should be encouraged to report bad behavior, and the only use of the report button i would characterized as "abuse" is something like actual automated spam or opening a users page and reporting everything regardless of content or context.
being wrong about whether content does or should break community standards should not be a bannable offense.
I mean, that's a fair way to look at it, but if I was going through a bunch of reports about what were clearly innocuous and inoffensive posts, and someone was reporting them simply because they were upset over each of them somehow, I'd still feel like my time was being wasted.
People have a right to feel certain ways about things, but they don't necessarily have a right to dictate to an admin/mod what is "reasonable" and if that mod feels like they're reporting posts unreasonably (like an excessive amount of what are clearly meant to be inoffensive posts), it may not matter how the user feels if the mod feels its a waste of their time. It's definitely at each mods discretion how they choose to deal with such things.
obviously I can't tell a mod what to do, but I think they should keep the channel open.
does the moderation backend need sorting and batch tools? it should not be arduous to moderate a flame war.
I don't know, I don't do a ton of modding myself (only mod one dead community, go Joe Pera!), I'm just trying to visualize being an unpaid moderator who has limited time in their day and is dealing with a user who is being unreasonable. I don't think a temp ban for that is an unreasonable response, but that's just me and I can see why you'd want people to feel like the channel was open to them.
Also, I'm trying to think of the particular mod who posted this, who moderates many communities as well as being the admin (and I think owner) of the entire dbzer0 instance. I just think they probably already deal with a flood of stuff already, and I personally do think silly egregious reports eventually can begin to bog someone down with what I would call "unnecessary work" when the work is having to take the time to read the report, evaluate it, and just to file it away doing nothing.
Maybe the backend is cleaner than I expect, maybe it takes less time than I expect, but it's part of why I personally really only try to report truly egregious stuff and not waste moderator time. I just worry about their real lives and how much effort they put into these communities for us for free and don't like to see them bogged down with more when it can impact their mental health make them burn out.
Lemmy's mod report feature sucks absolute ass. It is simply one big long list of each report one by one, with zero ability to sort or filter or do anything else useful besides separate those that are "resolved" already vs. those not yet. And also you cannot even access those reports from your home instance, unless it is the same identical one to where the community is also located.
There is a reason why so few people are willing to become mods on Lemmy: the tools are barely functional for the job. Which is how we end up with super mods who handle many communities at once, like if they have a job situation where they can quickly check in on things every ten minutes or so.
this is really good feedback. maybe a client could be developed for mods, that would do client side sorting.
First, make it a rule. This community is for discussion about moderation, not about whether a cat can be vegan. If you see off-topic discussion, nip it in the bud and remove the comments. If users continue to knowingly violate the rule, progressively longer bans.
It's really not hard to stay on topic and avoid a flame war. I know fighting is stimulating, but sometimes it's better to just put your phone down and walk away.
Tbf, if something were removed for "misinformation", like Russia has invaded Ukraine "for its own good" or whether cats can be vegan, then evaluating whether the mod is acting appropriately or is a PTB depends on those facts?
Though that should not be the focus - as you say the point here is the moderation.
Didn't know about this community, just read the description to understand its title, and I immediately thought that it was going to be a trolling mess. So my first thinking is that you created a banquet for trolls, and now you're dealing with the consequences. Do you have the magic mental power to deal with this?
If yes, then I would make it very clear from the beginning in the rules that uncivil discussion will be moderated, that continuous incivility will lead to a 1-day ban and that attempts to bypass the temporary ban will lead to a permanent ban.
Get ready for motivated trolls spending days creating new accounts to harass your authority, or you, after they have been banned.
We don't have a huge troll problem tbh. Mostly people taking things too personally and seriously
How did you find it, All feed?
Yeah, isn't that the usual way?
It is, just curious why today, this community has been active for a while, and got pretty popular a few months ago with the first vegan drama
I guess this post went higher in my feed that the others at my checking time.
Does Lemmy provide a council/consensus type voting system on bans? How do you arbitrate it by yourself on what is or isn't "rudeness" or "trolling"?
Imo let downvotes and reports sort it out, instead of being proactive, until there is a multi-headed arbitration system in place.
Do it. But please be self-aware and remember that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lets not get bogged down in analysis paralysis. Do it, gauge the feedback, adjust, iterate (the beatings will continue until morale improves).
I think short cooling bans are a great idea. And I think they help prevent permanent bans by allowing people to cool off.
Why can't people argue in peace? Why do you have to moderate that?
I find it hilarious that every single time I've been admonished about civil conduct, it's because I'm reacting to a bunch of assclowns who somehow evade any oversight.
maybe start taking the reports as self indicators?
Yes please I need one 🙏🙏🙏🙏
Tiny one-day bans are barely a slap on the wrist, which some people need to help them cool off. The usual caveats apply like perhaps driver a warning first and all of that, but obviously depending on severity you may not want to wait for that to develop further, at which point a quick ban along with explanation should at least, again, allow them the time they need to cool down.
You'd be surprised how seriously people take even a 1-day ban. There's a lot of ND people in these comms who feel passionately about their position, and you can easily hit someone with RSD or with ASD and get a bad reaction. I try to tread lightly because I know how these peeps can be affected but it cannot always be helped unless people have already internalized you're not trying to power-tip but to maintain civility.
Yeah that's a good counterpoint to consider. I think one of the issues is that the only way to implement such is a "ban", which is kind of a scary word. If it were called a "time-out", to "cool off", it could be taken differently, while to call it a "ban" seems so much more serious.
Perhaps a message delivered to them directly, e.g. as a reply, could allow them to see that first rather than just stumble upon the modlog entry later. But I'm not certain how those work: can the recipient still access the community in read-only mode to see that, and is the button to reply greyed out or could they type a long reply but then not be able to deliver it, thereby generating frustration?
And ultimately it's a juggling act: how to handle the needs of individual new (or old) contributors who want to be free to speak, while also showing consideration for those who may not enjoy what the community becomes whenever the former crowd are allowed free reign to do so.
In Reddit we had similar issues of a community trying to be all things to all people. Post flairs helped a bit, like people could literally filter out those that they did not want (e.g., "yet another Lemmy.ml site-wide ban"). Perhaps you could go the route of offering a megathread, allowing people to post such as comments rather than making full posts? Though it was always an eternal struggle to get people to pay attention to such - like just about every single new post to r/Android was always "which phone should I buy", even despite the two other posts within the last hour asking the identical question (perhaps mods removed those, in which case the problem was even more intense as those were simply the ones that made it through the cracks).
But whatever you do, please make it clear in the sidebar what the desires are for the community so that people are aware prior to posting. Like right now it reads to me as being receptive to all instances of potential power tripping mods, similar to AITAH.
You have a keen mind. I trust you to find a vision for the community that you are comfortable with, that will be compatible with what can be implemented in Lemmy:-).
I dont like the idea of banning people for speach that isnt calling for actionable violence.
U could just delete the whole comment thread (from point of off topic onward) for reason "off topic" and that would solve almost everything.
Im not sure how reporting works never done it and nobody has reported anything on the community i mod. But i can see that people would abuse it it an attempt to silence their opposition. I think bans for clearly bad faith reports is fair.
U think people should at least be warned prior to being sent to the sinbin.
None of these already as clear but as you suspects. Neither will simply deleting comments pass uncontested (there's a post in ytpb right now about me doing exactly that) nor is "bad faith reports" obvious to those making them
LOL
Moderator reports are currently not federated with remote Lemmy instances - so with your account being on Lemm.ee and the ![email protected] being on a different instance, whatever reports are being made you are not able to see them. This is only one of the many ways in which moderator tools for Lemmy suck ass atm. Another way is how that list of reports cannot be sorted or filtered in any way, besides resolved yet or not.
I’d rather mod reports not be federated. A lot of mods are power tripping and who the hell wants to earn a reputation as being a problem from some dick head mod across the entire federation?
I know it has downsides but I’d rather things stay decentralized.
The power tripping mod is the one who will be earning a bad rep across the fediverse. Why should they get away with it.
And you don’t think as someone who isn’t a mod, but also isn’t a liberal, won’t end up getting auto blocked from instances just because they have a backbone and threaten capital?
You’re just asking for a new Reddit. Block stupid mods and don’t go to their communities.
Well thats incredibly annoying. I suspect its not federated cos the devs dont want that much moderation transparency hence modlog doesnt tell u which nod did what (it shoukd default to transparent and if people have issues change the settings)
That is intentional - the modlog used to say who, but then it changed and now it just says "mod".
Though the lack of federation of reports is planned to be fixed, somewhere in like 0.19.20 iirc (the current version is 0.19.18).
Ik its an instance setting u can change. Why should mods not be accountable to their actions im yet to hear a valid justification.
Welp will be good once reports federate at least.
I think I am not a fan of that "feature" either, though tbh I don't really care. It's not like you can have a conversation with any of the mods to find out why something happened, if they ban you or lock the thread - even Reddit had modmail, but here we have... uh... ah... well, this <gestures around>.
If we want something different, then we need to build it. As PieFed, Sublinks, and K/Mbin have all been doing, but they haven't even approached reaching feature parity with the likes of Lemmy yet, much less Reddit. It would take a lot more contributors to the code to make that happen. Fortunately PieFed is in Python and Sublinks Java, or something like that, whereas Lemmy is in Rust that so few are willing to learn.
Right now the best thing that someone can do to help contribute, other than writing code, is to create & mod a community that is better than sucky alternatives, and/or contribute to existing communities to offer actual content that would make this Threadiverse worth visiting.
e.g. there was ![email protected] and ![email protected], but OP created this community to be a bit different from those. And we who come here often appreciate that :-).
I didnt realise piefed was python. Does it federate with lemmy and have lemmy style votes? Also does it use flask?
I am posting to you from it now, so yes:-). It also has a ton of other features not in Lemmy - Categories of Communities, hashtags, the ability to block all users from an instance without needing admin approval, YouTube embedding, and so much more.
On the other hand, it's not really ready for people without the early adopter mindset bc some of the foundationals are missing - searching is primitive, notifications are often wonky, the ability to tag a person with @ is non-existent, etc. I use it as my daily driver, but I also revert back to Lemmy alts daily as well to use those features missing on PieFed, i.e. I wouldn't yet recommend it to someone who has never tried Lemmy.
Unlike Mbin it does not connect to Mastodon or have an alternative voting scheme. PieFed connects to Lemmy using the same ActivityPub protocol - the same communities, posts, votes, users, etc. It does have an option in testing for fully anonymous voting using faked server names but I always thought it was an odd concept and so never opted into it.
I did not personally know what Flask is until you asked and I looked it up, but anyway the codebase says yes.:-)
Here's a test for a PieFed community link: ![email protected]. This is where options for the upcoming roadmap for 2025 are currently being discussed. I've already voted and commented but you can test to see voting working first-hand from Lemmy if you like:-). Edit: oops, I meant to link to ![email protected]. Ofc just like any community on a Lemmy instance, since surely nobody from your instance has joined this new community yet, it won't have any posts - but that still shows how the behavior is identical to that of Lemmy!:-) I did subscribe to it from Discuss.Online in case you want to see how it looks from Lemmy in the meantime.:-)
Maybe, but it does serve as a warning to knock it off, so if that happens then a stronger response is warranted next time.
The other user (at least, the one you responded to) was just trying to define where they would draw the line, saying both:
But also:
So they aren't fully against banning people.
How about a automated system if someone downvotes a comment and then responds to that comment (or reverse), then they get tar-pitted and banned from the community for 1-hour
It would slow down people being nasty to each other and egging on a fight.
That would be nice
Rather than going straight to bans (except for egregious trolling, or repeat offenders) I think that maybe removing off-topic discussion threads in their entirety is probably the way to go. If they are discussing something that isn't directly related to the OPs original complaint, then it's off topic imo. That would cover 90% of the problem. Personally, I don't mind some strong language and argumentation so long as it's about the actual topic. While I know drama isn't everyone's jam, it can be entertaining for some folks. And I agree with @[email protected] that maybe a 24 hour or 48 hour post lock rule would also be helpful so people aren't going back to dredge up drama again in older posts, while still allowing time for folks to discuss the issue?
The problem is that people don't have agree with what is "directly related". Just see the point about PTB in ytpb
True, but you can't please everyone.
Being mean to someone else because of what they said is fine, unless someone threatens someone or is mean because they're discriminating
I generally allows some of level of hostility, but when it gets to the point of the just trolling and insults I think it's time to pause
If its just insults, let the community deal with it with downvotes. No need to get ban happy for something like this.
I disagree. Downvotes don't have any effect and I don't follow a complete hands off approach
Downvotes affect the algorithm of comments that are displayed. They do have an effect.
I'm not saying to be hands off. Definitely you should ban accounts who post misinformation or racism, for example. But bans for "being mean" is an overstep of your privileges.
My privileges are what I say they are. There's no natural law on how to run a comm. 😅
It kind of reads like you posted this as a question then accepted no feedback and pushed back on anyone with a different view. Not saying that's what's actually happening, it's only been a few hours, but you've responded exclusively negatively in these comments.
like this?
The fact is that I haven't responded to most comments because they make good points. There's nothing to argue against good points. I'm not going to go around saying "good point" to everyone
If the issue is too many reports and we're just letting people fly, then the reports won't stop coming. Downvotes don't stop repeat responders. It will just be a chain of 100 back and forth comments reporting each other.
The downvotes don't stop how many pointless reports the mod has to sort through, do they?
There's no reason to be mean, honestly. That's how many of these slap fights start.