Be aware this site implements in the dark "moderation"

[Firefishy]

@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]

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]

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 (Steve Friedl)]

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]

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.

[SJFriedl (Steve Friedl)]

Though my suggestion was concrete, it wasn’t serious

[rimugu]

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 won’t 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.