Positive Feedback & Complaint About Moderators

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Hello OSM Community,

I’d like to address a recent experience I had with a thread I created. While my initial approach was in bad faith due to heightened emotions, the interaction allowed me to see firsthand the varying moderation styles. In this thread, I’d like to commend one moderator for their professionalism and also raise concerns about another.

Commendation

First, I’d like to appreciate @iandees. Their initial remarks highlighted some issues with my commentary - which I have challenged. Upon further clarification from them, I was able to understand and rectify my missteps. Their approach led to a deescalation of the situation, prompting me to edit my responses for a more respectful tone. Kudos to @iandees for maintaining objectivity and professionalism.

Complaint

My interaction with @WarpathPeacock, however, left me disconcerted for multiple reasons.

Quoting out of context

In one instance, they isolated my quote, “With respect, are you closing issues for stats?”. Without its surrounding context, the standalone quote presented me in an unfairly negative light. To ensure clarity:

Given your 1st response under that post, you anticipated further discussion, yet you closed it down. At the time of posting, I believe, you were the only person who noticed it. With respect, are you closing issues for stats? ref.

In its entirety, it’s apparent that I was not rashly accusing, but rather challenging a pattern I observed.

Unwarranted Thread Closure

I found the closure of the thread questionable. Labeling it as an effort to cool things off was misleading, especially since there was merely one new post in the preceding 24 hours. This action felt more like an attack in my direction and abuse of power than an actual deescalation effort.

Misrepresentation in DMs

During our direct conversations, @WarpathPeacock’s claims, like my supposed refusal to distinguish between “budgeting” and “spending”, were inaccurate. My initial assertions were based on public data available at that time. To claim that I lack understanding based on revelations made much later in the discussion felt both misleading and injurious.

Alteration of the Thread Title

The decision to change the thread’s title post-factum distorted the essence of my original concern. While the revised title might echo the later revelations in the thread, it misrepresents the initial context and the premise upon which I based my concerns.

Closing Thoughts

While I deeply respect the tireless efforts of our moderators, it’s paramount that we hold ourselves to a standard of fairness, transparency, and objectivity. Feedback, both positive and constructive, is crucial in ensuring that we continue to foster a culture of open dialogue, mutual respect, and community growth.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

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Perhaps it wasn’t meant as such, but even in-context I think most people would interpret that post as a bad-faith accusation.

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Thank you for your response and perspective. Upon reflection, I see how my initial comment, even within its context, could come across as confrontational or in bad faith. Let’s not consider this point moving forward.

However, I still believe that the manner in which it was addressed by the moderator did not help in deescalating the situation. It’s crucial for moderators to approach such instances in a way that fosters understanding and constructive dialogue rather than furthering contention.

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Moderation is generally a very unsatisfying task, and in the ideal case it requires someone with extreme amount of patience and empathy, as well as extended amount of time to spend on explanations and fixing communicational deficiencies of this digital media.

I would guess that a very few moderators actually possess these traits. The probable problem is the limited amount of volunteers in many cases, and actually reviewing existing moderators when there are enough spares. :wink:

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@Northcrab I did not observe any decrease in tension that you attest to. So, in fear of it escalating, I closed down the thread. With regards to the activity level of the thread it appears messages 76-88 were published on the day I closed down the thread (8/15), 6 of which were posted by people other than you. I consider this a high level of activity for any thread. I also will have you know that I ignored at least one request to directly censor your posts. I do not like hiding people’s messages.

Furthermore, the closure of the thread was not in any way an effort to censor you. My purpose was to let perceived tempers cool. I did not anticipate the post by Firefishy less than an hour later. In all honesty, I forgot about Firefishy’s special status and did not consider the possibility his status exempts him from thread-locks. There has been no communication between him and I with regards to this whole matter. I was in fact very dismayed by the post because I feared you would retrospectively think that was planned or intentional, which you assert in your post above. Rest assured there was no collusion.

I don’t have the time right now to answer every charge because I have personal matters to attend to, but moderator @apm-wa also chastised you as well in a vein similar to me, even if he did not use your own words in an attempt to demonstrate your bad-faith engagement. I will answer the other charges in more detail later. To close out this message, my closing of the thread as a whole was an attempt to foster positive future engagement and avoid/mitigate the need to directly censor people for lashing angrily out at each other.

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Speaking as an average netizen, and not specific to any mentioned case: if the other party close the debate on me (basically muting me) it is extremely frustrating, and it causes the opposite of cooling down. If it was an involved party I would consider it as an abuse of powers.

It sometimes (rarely) works when an uninvolved third party closes the debate, but without a conclusion it still leaves tensions behind.

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@northcrab Resuming my overview of your post, here are some observations:

you admit in this thread that your initial approach was in bad faith. In the context of this forum, ‘initial approach’ includes composing the title for a thread, which is a crucial tool for influencing the perceptions of readers. Your self-admission of initial bad faith is very awkward and precarious when examined alongside your complaining that my revision of the title does not reflect your initial premise or concerns.

The ‘revelations’ you talk about were only revelations to you. Many people from very early on in this thread attempted to provide context for you by differentiating between budgeting and spending (as early as post 27 by Tijuro, and then again in post 45 by pnorman), and even before that you received confirmation by Firefishy that no funds had been spent on AWS services. Instead of listening to the pleas of the other participants to lower the perceived combative tone of your rhetoric and calmly engage with them you insisted on continuing with your self-described “assertive approach.”

In general, you greatly exaggerate your adoption of any sort of conciliatory engagement with other people. While you interacted positively in a brief fashion with Ian Dees, they are merely one person. It seems clear the majority of the thread seems to have perceived you as resorting to emotionally loaded, accusatory statements for the majority of your participation.

It’s clear nothing would dissuade you from your initial thesis. I will end this post with the same thing I said to you in our direct messages: anyone who says statements like “I will need to reconsider how much involvement OSM should have in shaping my future self,” are not going to be able to examine their own biases in any healthy way.

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I’m not someone with a stake in this discussion, except as a community member who cares about the quality of discourse here, and the mailing list etiquette guidelines say that moderate people need to speak up so that extreme opinions don’t seem the norm. So, that’s why I’m saying anything at all here.

I think the moderation was minimal and appropriate. Nobody was censored (despite claims elsewhere) - no accounts were locked or closed, so everyone could still participate in other discussions, and it was a very short lock. The few interventions I’ve seen from the moderation team have felt appropriate and like a light touch that try to let the community hash it out first. That seems reasonable to me.

This thread feels like it’s trying to revise what happened in the budget thread by making it not seem like an unfounded and unsubstantiated attack on the operations team who has demonstrated that they’ve been operating in the best interests of the community - when keeping that in mind, the very light moderation feels especially reasonable. Both threads could have been handled better by asking questions to understand rather than lashing out and starting fights. It’s unfortunate that in that revision of events, NorthCrab is again attacking another set of community volunteers who are also working well and where there’s no evidence of them acting in bad faith. I won’t think much of NorthCrab’s opinion in the future and think the community should do the same.

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NorthCrab, in my honest opinion, it would be better if you just leave peacefully and not engaging in any more arguments.

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Thank you for sharing your perspectives. Communication on public forums can get tricky, and I appreciate the patience.

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Upon reflecting on your words, I see the inconsistency you’re pointing out. When I examined the thread initially, the dates I observed for these last few messages showed Aug 16, not the 15th, as you mentioned (hours were not affected). This discrepancy genuinely confused me at the time, and I made sure to check it multiple times. Could it be possible that there’s a bug or an issue with the timezone handling in the platform’s system? In any case, I am grateful for the clarity you’ve provided, especially around the censor situation.

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On the note of

I do acknowledge the difference between budgeting and spending. But, when I initiated that thread, this specific detail wasn’t public knowledge. My contention is that the title should encapsulate the primary concern, rather than the eventual findings from our discussions.

For example, when a thread is started with the question “How do I map ABC?” and the answer is provided during the conversation, you shouldn’t change the title to “You map ABC by doing 1, 2, 3”.

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I have already admitted I might have come off as such.

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This took me by surprise as it does not align with what I discussed.

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I appreciate your perspective on that matter. I understand that everyone has different opinions.

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In this thread, I wanted to express my opinion and make a complaint, which everyone should have a right to. I do not expect anything to be done about it.

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You have the right to express opinions on this forum. You do not have the right to express yourself on any topic in violation of the Etiquette Guidelines. If you have complaints, it is best to articulate them dispassionately, citing facts, in compliance with the Etiquette Guidelines. Such an approach increases the probability that a complaint will receive a response and not simply be ignored or brushed off. This is a community-oriented, volunteer-operated project, and volunteers have little patience for people who are rude or abusive toward them.

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Most of my key statements do have a citation (see hyperlink).

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Here’s probably what happened:

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When examining 2, it shows “5d” and “6am”. However, upon going back to 1, we observe “6d” and “12am” (a larger number), which led me to believe there was a difference of over 24 hours between the two. This misunderstanding is my responsibility, but I hope you can see the source of the confusion.