I didn’t realize each community on there could have its own Code of Conduct and moderators. That’s definitely helpful as OSM US has its own standards for that, which are not necessarily the same as the ones in this forum.
There’s a lot of discussion going on at the global level about what shape this forum and the interactions on it will take. Just a recent example I was reading about is disabling badges. But there are bound to be other, more consequential discussions about how this forum is run, and that will impact this suggested sub-forum as well.
In particular it would be important to figure out if “global” moderators could / would override a decision made by the moderators here, or the other way around, if a global moderator could ban someone without consulting our moderators here, for behavior displayed in this community?
I think it’s very important that we as a US community are able to host our community discussion on our terms. Our ideas on accepted conduct and moderation have not always been in line with OSMF-level ones.
In particular it would be important to figure out if “global” moderators could / would override a decision made by the moderators here, or the other way around, if a global moderator could ban someone without consulting our moderators here, for behavior displayed in this community?
It’s unclear to me. @nukeador, do you have any additional context on this?
My understanding is that category moderators for a region/national subcategory do not have all the same abilities as global moderators. Here’s a table showing the difference between Moderator and Category Moderator permissions (and the trust levels):
If my understanding is correct, then moderators of the US category would mainly be content moderators and wouldn’t be able to suspend users or take other user level actions. It looks like full moderator status is required for that.
So if I understand this correctly, in case someone would need to be banned from this community you would need to work with @nukeador and / or other global moderators to do so, and they would be banned from the entire platform, not just OSM US.
If this all seems a bit nitpick-y I apologize, but I know OSM US has worked hard on a reasonable and enforceable CoC, and it would be a shame that, if push came to shove, there would be no clear path to enforcing it.
Moving the conversation to a separate topic under This Site Feedback for visibility
In order to request a ban for a user (since user accounts are used for the whole forum) category moderators will have to communicate with the @forums-governance team. For the few categories that have defined their own etiquette OSM Etiquette Guidelines has been more “complete” than the local ones.
I’m sure we can work to align with the OSMUS CoC when required and tackle bad actors.
