Removal of off-topic comments in "OSM’s 20th Birthday" thread

[WarpathPeacock (Logan McGovern)]

@AmyCupcake

Why are the people who didn’t create the thread allowed to report something as “off-topic”, this should be entirely at the discretion of the thread creator and only then have moderator mediation if appropriate.

I think this is an excellent idea. I would full-heartedly support the implementation of this mechanism, albeit with the caveat that if we receive multiple reports that something is off-topic from separate users, then we can step in for that circumstance too.

[SomeoneElse (Andy Townsend)]

@AmyCupcake

Why are the people who didn’t create the thread allowed to report something as “off-topic”

Generally speaking, I don’t think that this would work. Lots of threads here are fairly long and rambling, and cover lots of issues around the initial first question that was asked. Who on earth should “own” this thread for example?

What happened here seems to have been a bit of a “moderation cockup”. To be fair, it’s worth mentioning that Discourse’s moderation tools are extremely user-hostile and appear to be entirely undocumented**. When something turns up in the moderation queue from memory there are only binary options available and it isn’t clear to a new moderator*** what they do.

** at least, a search for “moderation tools” in this forum does not find anything. There seems to be nothing here or here.

*** and given the age of the site, we’re all “new moderators” here.

[WarpathPeacock (Logan McGovern)]

@jumbanho

Maybe we need an for people to respond to your pleas.

I did not participate in this moderation action. I also have a higher threshold for intervention than Allan, but I understand why other community members like @jumbanho found it irritating. I agree Emojis would be invaluable in helping us to express disagreement less directly. Please consider this may degrade the quality of conversation, so we have something more akin to that of Facebook.

@Mammi71

I agree with Allen on this point: mods can’t read every post themselves. Mods can only comment and intervene if they know that moderator action may be necessary. For mods to know this, a user who notices it has to send a flag to the mods.

99% of my interventions are prompted by the message or flag of a community member.

@courtiney

The gray area lies in when one person is getting “taken to task”, repeatedly about something.
Sometimes a tough question is answered very appropriately, but the person who asked doesn’t like the answer, so they keep asking it again and again in different ways, with opinions mixed in to the querying. To me, that is bullying.

I will share my reasons @courtiney for why I did not intervene in the thread I believe you are referencing.

• The two main participants are both highly esteemed community members. They each have a degree of influence that exceeds most other contributors, and therefore they should expect to be scrutinized more closely.

• If this discussion is rehashed with the same arguments or same people party to the original conversation, we can point to the thread and say “you said this previously, no need to do so again”

• While I agree the conversation became very granular and difficult to follow, some details were demystified and we now have a record (including current and former board member testimony) to refer back to as needed.

• Disagreements concerning funds/donations/money are especially sensitive. An overly proactive moderator risks bias and corruption accusations. In such conversations, when someone approaches but avoids avoids plain or clear-cut violations of the etiquette guidelines, it is possible the moderator decides their intervention will not have a net benefit. This should always be the last consideration.

I was happy with the outcome because I believe free discussion alleviated tension over this topic in the long-term.