(also, increase some more the character limit maybe? 😅)

And i would like to talk to some mods about a number of things, not entierly specific to moderation (can i dm someone?)

I want to respond to what you said C00kie, but this also goes to everyone who's interested in this discussion. Any criticism on my points is welcome.

On threads going off topic (derailment):
There seems to be confusion around the issue. That's either because of a lack of clear line between what counts as derailment and what doesnt, or that line is poorly placed. The latter seems more likely acording to my experience. There have been instances where people percieve a clarification question (and the conversation that comes out of it) as a derailment. That should certainly not happen.



This is perhaps the most importand thing to talk about. You (the mods) are honestly doing an excelent job here, and i mean this sincerely. The cases in which a mistake happens from your side (and acording to the objectives you have as moderators) are too rare to account for the frustration people have.

To cut a long story short, i think the very goals of the rules, which you enforce, are not great. There is a lot of nuance that is not taken into account by them. I see that this domain (of community management) has been investigated on a very surface level only. Thats not specific to FF thought. The majority of online communities of all kinds seems to suffer from this. Its just that usually the problem doesnt manifest since conversations on issues that demand a more developed ability to think and communicate, dont really happen. But this also means that when such a conversation does take place, the reaction is usually to shut it down.



Again, thats the right uproach acording to the rules, but often the participands may end up going in the other direction, which is to settle the matter they disagree on!

And there is something else to be said here. Even if the argument escalates, shutting it down is nothing more than a symptomatic treatement. It doesnt solve any problems, and in fact makes them worse by making them more unoticeable (because the way to notice a problem is through the symptoms it causes) and thus reducing the likelyhood of them being fixed.

(I dont have something to add/say about the next paragrpah, i skip it here. The one after it contains multiple points which i will have to break down a little bit!)



Last point, any kind of self-moderation would be *massively* helped with a code of conduct that will go in adequate depth. We do not have tha

I know its a bit off topic, but im really curious. Have you investigated the ethics of something like that?

Can you provide sources?

I checked your profile to see who you are out of curiosity (first saw this post)

If you want some advice on how to get more attention from the ladies here, i think i could share an experience i had (a few days ago, ironically!) which hopefully will be insightfull.

(for context, take a look at my profile description!)

A girl had texted me here recently! (very unusual!) And we talked about lots of things! (Womens' issues, Men's issues, etc) And at some point i asked her what motivated her to dm me. She said that the openess in my account (and i suspect in the description, more than anything) was the reason she started talking with me in the first place.

So i would say, be open and explicit about your feelings, especially those that the "stereotypical man shall never show". (:

This is also similar to what Munchies says, i think. You have to expose your personality in such a way that other people can form an understanding on it. And that requires some volume of interaction, but also, and i think this is a problem here, these interactions should be such that will test you in some sense! The problem is that here in FF, there isnt much room for this kind of interactions which can really test people. So, do your best in your profile description too!

Good luck!!

We seem to disagree on if its "that deep" or not. Could we please resolve that (maybe in DMs)? Otherwise we wont agree on anything else either and we wont reach a helpfull conclusion.



I think i have much stronger reasons to opose censorship (except in a recent experience...) but to explain them would get us into my first point.

What you say i think is not enough. For example i wouldnt advocate the thread you mention to have remained open, even if the other cases you mention were in fact censored. A reason for not closing a thread needs to have to do with that thread, etc.



For the historical record, no thats false! 🤣
If you want me to explain what's going on, throw me a dm though!

Look, it is certainly even more deep that what ive described. The question, i guess, is is it worth the effort to get there, or is it preferable to ignore all that if its too... expensive, in the sense of time and effort. I assume, you would say it is not worth the effort?

I think ive formed a few thoughts and refined them enough to write them here now.

My first point is about conflict resolution. There has been no demonstration of an adequate understanding of what a conflict between two people or groups of people. So there needs to be a discussion / research on that. In an ideal world this should be done by all members, not a handful of mods who then are tasked to moderate a mass of people that dont have proper communication abilities. If you want me to clarify any of this, i can, at a later time.

The second point, which may be even more importand, is narcissists. Im not sure how aware the moderators (but also people in general) are of this, the society at large seems to be almost entierly unaware of the depth and scale of this problem. So, i think the mods need to be *very well* educated on this specific issue. This will take a lot of time, but if it is done, it will make them able to act in much better-targeted ways.

Both of these, yes, are theory and thought. But i think they can greatly help us in understanding the situations we are currently. I would like to hear the opinions of the mods on this.