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.
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, letâs stick in this topic. I would suggest you rename the topic title to better reflect what the discussion/request is about âWatched words processâ.
Thanks!
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.
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Some people may say the title is incendiary 
, but political correctness should not suppress reality.
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Iâm sorry, but I honestly donât know what are your concrete suggestions to improve accountability and trust in decision making in these forums. Thatâs 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)
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Do you genuinely believe that there is a âcabal of dark adminsâ? If so, can you point to actual evidence that backs your theory up?
If you donât genuinely believe that, then frankly you are the troll here.
Edit: For completeness, this post was âhidden by community flagsâ and then ârestored by staffâ.
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I already did concrete suggestions. If you wonât 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 âdark censoringâ, 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.
I donât believe if a âcabal of dark adminsâ exists. It could, without transparency there is no way of knowing.
I do believe they use âin the darkâ methods.
If the admins (dark cabal or not), add transparency and make the secret words public and donât add words without user input, then everyone will know there is no censorship going on in the shadows.
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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 âŠ
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 âdarkâ affairs, âcabal of adminsâ or âcensoring dissidentsâ.
Anyhow, the community you claim to be talking for apparently is not too much interested in these âdark affairsâ 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.
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Your post reminds me of flat earthers, no relationship with the post, neither is yours.
nukeador mentioned âlower efficiencyâ not useless, try to be truthful.
How do you know the âcommunityâ is or isnât interested if the moderation happens in the dark with secret words.
The âcommunityâ 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.
@rimugu Hi, Iâm 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
Iâve 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 âsecret wordsâ 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
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Good day @Firefishy. You say âThere is no âsecret wordsââ
But @nukeador (RubĂ©n MarĂn) mentioned in in the LCCWG Moderation Subcommittee chat that âwatched wordsâ exists and are secret.
On this topic he then said there was only one word (and referred to another topic without mention of âwatched wordsâ at all).
Is @nukeador lying?
These is not about authorization or forum authentication. But for âmoderationâ.
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?
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.
I wish OSM wouldnât entertain the OPâs fantasies and get sidetracked by word games.
Yes, transparency is a good thing, but itâs not an end goal to be achieved for its own sake, and itâs absolutely not a universal goal with no limits.
Instead, transparency one of several means to some other end that is desired: in this case, itâs a welcoming community with administrators trusted by the members, and where the place runs smoothly.
Thatâs a goal I think most of us can get behind.
So anybody arguing for âmore transparencyâ has to demonstrate how it helps achieve the better end goal - for everybody, not just the OP; absent that, itâs 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 whatâs been posted.
For instance, I presume thereâs 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 âtransparencyâ. Right?
Second, âcensorshipâ is a loaded word designed to generate defensiveness (âNo, weâre not censoring!!â), 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 âcensorshipâ if that post were auto-held by a watched-word list? Or if a human just decided to delete my post?
Answer: doesnât matter what word you use, itâs entirely proper moderation, and thereâs only one person in this thread who doesnât 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 isnât 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, Iâm 100% clear that the OP is not engaging in good faith.
Were I an admin here - and I am not - Iâd 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
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Here is the screen recording showing the watch word that is set:
The image is hosted on my dev site, because it is too large to post here 4MB and taking too long to re-compress.
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Though my suggestion was concrete, it wasnât serious 
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Thank you @Firefishy knowing there is someone with authority willing to put some transparency on this, it gives confidence someone will stand up for abuse if it happens.
This does not create a whole process to add words, but just keeping it transparent restore some measure of confidence things wonât just happen in the dark an the community has to take it.
Hopefully the moderators can be more open and work with community instead of against it.
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