Be aware this site implements in the dark "moderation"

rimugu · 2022-07-19T16:15:26.803Z

If the issue is darkness and I advocate transparency, maybe starting to make the word list public.
Some words may be subject to discussion and only those words the community agrees should be included, no new words should be included or current words remain with only the admins input without the transparency described above.

nukeador · 2022-07-19T16:21:15.847Z

In your opinion, are there any pros and cons (including risks) of having this list of words public?

Who would you define as “the community”? If a group needs to agree on a decision, we need to define who is part and who is not. Something that is quite complex in a ecosystem like OSM.

Right now the changes to the forums are publicly discussed here and the final decision makers is the @forums-governance team (the current decision making approach can be discussed and changed)

rimugu · 2022-07-19T16:24:52.142Z

There are pros and cons to everything.
In this case the pros brought by transparency are greater than any cons.
The community is the participants in the forum
Some things may be publicly discussed but, the words are not public, they are secret, hence this topic.

nukeador · 2022-07-19T16:28:07.962Z

One issue that I can see making a list of watched words public is that it will probably lower its efficiency.

If a troll or a spammer wants to post something on these forums and knows the list, they can probably bypass the protection by avoiding or modifying those words.

Having said that, currently there is just one word we are watching related to the incident I’ve previously mentioned, and discourse has additional automated checks to detect spam.

rimugu · 2022-07-19T16:29:52.176Z

Sadly without transparency we have to take your word that there is only one word, in the secret list of words. There is no way to knowing if that is true.
A lower efficiency would be best than the potential of abuse. Abuse by members is easily flagged. Abuse by admins is not.

nukeador · 2022-07-19T16:34:19.172Z

Then I feel you are discussing two topics in here:

Process around watched words in these forums
Trust and ensure accountability in decision makers

About 2, we have a topic open to co-design and improve the current initial approach in decision making in these forums, and I would invite you to chime in there with ideas on how to improve accountability and trust, which is something relevant not just to watched words but any decision being taken.

About 1, let’s stick in this topic. I would suggest you rename the topic title to better reflect what the discussion/request is about “Watched words process”.

Thanks!

rimugu · 2022-07-19T16:40:11.902Z

About 2. The topic has 0 discussion and you already are aware of my suggestions feel free to comment in your topic.
About 1. The suggestion is good. But the tittle remains as it reflects the topic perfectly.
If transparency is adopted, then it can be a sign of times past that have been improved, but at the moment. There is no proof there is only one word in the secret list, or that is not used for censorship.

rimugu · 2022-07-19T16:42:33.781Z

Some people may say the title is incendiary , but political correctness should not suppress reality.

nukeador · 2022-07-19T16:50:35.894Z

rimugu:

About 2. The topic has 0 discussion and you already are aware of my suggestions feel free to comment in your topic.

I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know what are your concrete suggestions to improve accountability and trust in decision making in these forums. That’s why I ask for you to elaborate there.

On the other topic, the title includes a claim around censorship that unless you can demonstrate I would suggest to reword. Because if not, people would be able to make any kind of unproven accousations freely, which is not the kind of civil discussion expected here (See Act in good faith and Posting false or inaccurate information in the guidelines)

SomeoneElse · 2022-07-19T16:50:58.109Z

rimugu:

Bots should not be excuses to give a cabal of dark admins the permission to censor dissident opinions.

Do you genuinely believe that there is a “cabal of dark admins”? If so, can you point to actual evidence that backs your theory up?

If you don’t genuinely believe that, then frankly you are the troll here.

Edit: For completeness, this post was “hidden by community flags” and then “restored by staff”.

rimugu · 2022-07-19T16:57:32.790Z

I already did concrete suggestions. If you won’t want to work on implementing them, that is up to you. But the reality of secret words that can be used for censorship remain.

What false or inaccurate information have I posted? I you mean “dark censoring”, there is no proof it is no happening. Yes, it may not be happening, but there are secret words (in the dark) that can be used for censorship. If you can proof there is no censorship I would post that the initial situation has been corrected and no longer applies.

rimugu · 2022-07-20T15:57:37.369Z

I don’t believe if a “cabal of dark admins” exists. It could, without transparency there is no way of knowing.

I do believe they use “in the dark” methods.

If the admins (dark cabal or not), add transparency and make the secret words public and don’t add words without user input, then everyone will know there is no censorship going on in the shadows.

Map_HeRo · 2022-07-20T20:10:02.288Z

rimugu:

Bots should not be excuses to give a cabal of dark admins the permission to censor dissident opinions.

rimugu, your post reminds me of some conspiracy theories flooding the internet these days … cabals of bad people acting in the dark to do bad things to other people and so on …

From my point of view your accusation does not make much sense. A list of trigger words is useless if public as nukeador already pointed out. Moreover such trigger words in general do not contain any direct action per se (neither good nor bad action) - they are nothing else then a trigger to draw the attention of a mod to a certain post. The mod then has to decide if any action has to be taken.

So if you talk about transparency the target should be the action taken by one of the mods, not the list of trigger words. And, again, it would be helpful to formulate your message in a factual way instead of talking about “dark” affairs, “cabal of admins” or “censoring dissidents”.

Anyhow, the community you claim to be talking for apparently is not too much interested in these “dark affairs” as not many participants have shown up so far. To be honest I personally understand your topic as some kind of a troll thing.

Therefor no further comment from my side.

rimugu · 2022-07-20T20:29:43.476Z

Your post reminds me of flat earthers, no relationship with the post, neither is yours.

nukeador mentioned “lower efficiency” not useless, try to be truthful.

How do you know the “community” is or isn’t interested if the moderation happens in the dark with secret words.

The “community” is not very active in these new forums. The comunitry for my country got destroyed with the change and almost no one has returned here. I would advise them to not come here while lack of transparency remains.

Firefishy · 2022-07-20T22:28:23.601Z

@rimugu Hi, I’m the person who built and installed this instance of Discourse. All install config is managed here (except minor auth secrets): chef/cookbooks/community at master · openstreetmap/chef · GitHub

I’ve recently started working full time on OpenStreetMap Operations, after being a volunteer for 15 years. I am the only full time employee of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

How about we have a video call with screensharing, I will be more than happy to go through all the settings we have set. There is no “secret words” that I am of aware of, but let us hunt together
There are oauth2 auth secrets, and for obvious reasons I will not reveal those. What platform is your preference?

UPDATE: See post below, there turned out to 1 watch word set. See details in thread or screen recording to see the word

rimugu · 2022-07-20T22:51:52.625Z

Good day @Firefishy. You say “There is no “secret words””
But @nukeador (Rubén Marín) mentioned in in the LCCWG Moderation Subcommittee chat that “watched words” exists and are secret.
On this topic he then said there was only one word (and referred to another topic without mention of “watched words” at all).
Is @nukeador lying?
These is not about authorization or forum authentication. But for “moderation”.
This may as well be a misunderstanding, but Ruben has clear that a list of secret words (with only one word in it) do exist.
You say there are not, he says there are. Which is true?

Firefishy · 2022-07-20T23:17:21.166Z

I stand corrected, we have 1 watch word which was recently set, it causes a post to require approval. I will post a screen recording showing all these setting shortly. @nukeador post is correct and factual. It is related to the moderated talk list entries that where mentioned.

Some of @rimugu posts to community.openstreetmap.org have been flagged as inappropriate by other users.

SJFriedl · 2022-07-20T23:25:51.796Z

I wish OSM wouldn’t entertain the OP’s fantasies and get sidetracked by word games.

Yes, transparency is a good thing, but it’s not an end goal to be achieved for its own sake, and it’s absolutely not a universal goal with no limits.

Instead, transparency one of several means to some other end that is desired: in this case, it’s a welcoming community with administrators trusted by the members, and where the place runs smoothly.

That’s a goal I think most of us can get behind.

So anybody arguing for “more transparency” has to demonstrate how it helps achieve the better end goal - for everybody, not just the OP; absent that, it’s just being disruptive and stirring up trouble.

There are plenty of information bits that are not - and should not - be in the public view, and the nice people who run this place should not have to explain themselves beyond what’s been posted.

For instance, I presume there’s some private forum or channel where the admins here are able to talk amongst themselves about keeping the trains running on time, and OP would have no right to demand access to those private conversations in the name of “transparency”. Right?

Second, “censorship” is a loaded word designed to generate defensiveness (“No, we’re not censoring!!”), and that is automatically a victory for somebody trying to stir up trouble.

Instead, simply do not engage on the term: OSM performs moderation in many forums, and the forum could not run well without it.

I have no idea if there a secret / watched word list, but all thoughtful people understand that such a list would help with moderation, which leads to a better community experience, and that publishing the list would just make it easy to evade.

Seriously: if I dropped the N-word in a post here, would it be “censorship” if that post were auto-held by a watched-word list? Or if a human just decided to delete my post?

Answer: doesn’t matter what word you use, it’s entirely proper moderation, and there’s only one person in this thread who doesn’t understand that.

Corollary: whether there is or is not a watched word list should not be public information, so offers to show the OP that there isn’t one is playing exactly into the hands of the disruptive person.

The OP also raised these issues in the Telegram group for the subcommittee that drafted the Etiquette Guidelines, and OP was as difficult there as here. Though there are reasonable discussions to be had about how moderation is done, I’m 100% clear that the OP is not engaging in good faith.

Were I an admin here - and I am not - I’d simply close the thread and move on, cautioning OP about being disruptive like this.

Steve - not speaking for anybody, but is grateful for the volunteers who run this forum

Firefishy · 2022-07-20T23:29:32.284Z

Here is the screen recording showing the watch word that is set:

https://grant.dev.openstreetmap.org/tmp/osm-discourse-watched-words.gif(image larger than 4 MB)

The image is hosted on my dev site, because it is too large to post here 4MB and taking too long to re-compress.

Tordanik · 2022-07-21T11:04:14.963Z

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Knowing the Flag