Unibot, neither Kris nor myself has said any of that. I just asked you what you want to see, and you decide to give up and call this a dog and pony show? If I had known I would be criticized and pilloried for presenting a moderation policy without simultaneously presenting an administration policy, I wouldn't have bothered to post this. We would go another month, two months, three months.. without any kind of policies. That's the road we were headed down, because the only person who actually bothered to take any action was me.

The Assembly didn't do anything, because we're fighting over whether the Assembly should even get to do anything in the first place. What the hell are Kris, Tsu, and me supposed to do? We get criticized for not writing these policies, and then we get criticized again for finally trying to put something down in stone. By all rights, we could have simply ignored everything and gone for a very long time without any proposals, because the Assembly was in no rush to do anything itself.

Just stop for one damn minute with this B.S. about evil admins. None of the admins have done anything to earn this automatic disapproval. We've been nothing but willing to work with everybody to create rules. But every time this discussion comes up, you come out swinging with this stuff. We are still trying to work with everybody, including you. Yet you decide to mock, instead of sit down and be constructive. How is this going to help anything, Unibot? I know you were the target of capricious mods and admins in the old forums, but you need to realize that it wasn't me, or Kris, or Tsu, that the forums are under new administration, and that we want things to be different. What you're doing right now is throwing your hands in the air and saying, "Welcome the new boss, same as the old boss," while we're giving the opportunity to give everybody input. Why squander that?

This is the Assembly's only chance to give constructive criticism. If everybody decides to dwell on the past and be dreadful instead of constructive, then the requisite week will pass and this will become the official mod policy anyways.

Moving on to Belschaft's post... I don't know how rules 1 & 4 delve into "political" issues. Flaming and being an asshole aren't political issues. It doesn't matter if you're debating a Charter amendment to getting into a fight with somebody in the RP forums. Flaming is flaming and should be addressed.

I honestly don't get this whole "vagueness" critique. I'm not going to write a tome of forum rules. We are all well versed in how people should properly act. We all know we shouldn't flame. We all know we shouldn't derail threads. We shouldn't need rules in the first place. We're certainly not going to reinvent the wheel. Neither do we need to mimic the One Stop Rules Shop and delve into every possible example of how a rule can be broken.

Lastly, not all moderator decisions are subject to appeal. And, no, it's not unconstitutional to write that mod decisions are final, except when regional law says otherwise. That is the very opposite of unconstitutional. Anyways, there are 7 specific moderator actions that cannot be appealed, so those actions are indeed final. In general, all mod decisions are final and can be appealed only if you can argue the punishment was excessive. If we use a pre-defined points system, then we won't be dishing out excessive punishments, which is the entire point of that type of system.

I already wrote an administration policy. It was decided it would be better to let the administrators talk amongst themselves about how they could best not implement one.

As for a moderation policy, it has to be vastly more specific than this document. It seems to only cover "insults" and "respect". "Respect" is a vague concept that is obeyed by almost no one consistently. Almost anything can be an insult.

It would be wiser to focus on concepts like flamebaiting - attacking a player maliciously (i.e., "Go fuck yourself"). Name-calling (i.e., "Buttshaft" - I'm so using this). The official forums has a full moderation list which we can borrow from.

Quote:The Assembly didn't do anything, because we're fighting over whether the Assembly should even get to do anything in the first place. What the hell are Kris, Tsu, and me supposed to do? We get criticized for not writing these policies, and then we get criticized again for finally trying to put something down in stone. By all rights, we could have simply ignored everything and gone for a very long time without any proposals, because the Assembly was in no rush to do anything itself.

Excuse me, Glen, but I wrote a fucking policy - and got told the Administration should handle it instead. And the Administration came to the conclusion that they couldn't agree on anything and ... oh, well then, no administration policy!

"Let's just send them a check list of ambiguous do's and don't instead and hold ourselves to no account on paper..."

"If anyone complains will just say how dare they..."

Telling somebody to go fuck themselves and calling them names is insulting that person. An insult is a flame. I could change "insult" to "flame, flame-bait, or troll" and it would mean the same thing. But if you guys prefer those terms over a term we all understand in everyday life, then whatever, we'll use those.

First of all,

Quote:This is the Assembly's only chance to give constructive criticism

This is bullshit.

Absolutely horseshit.

The moderation shouldn't be above the Assembly. If the Assembly thinks you need to clean up your act, it should be able to provide oversight to your rule if need be.

This shouldn't be a "one time deal". This isn't Soviet Russia.

We can't have a decent and constructive discussion if you already come with the fixed idea that we are here to impose policies, Unibit. We are here to talk things through, but we need willingness on both sides to do that. Let's go over the ideas you have proposed:

(05-26-2014, 07:44 PM)Unibot Wrote: 1. All staff are expected to be,
Citizens of The South Pacific. X
Law-abiding. X
Trustworthy. X
Responsive and active. X
Observant. X
Objective, fair and non-partisan.X
Tolerant, patient and reserved. X
Helpful to new players. X

2. All staff should apply policies uniformly without favour or prejudice. X

3. All staff should recognize all internal policies. X

4. Punitive measures and the closure of threads should only be exercised insofar as necessary and justifiable in a free and fair democratic society. X

[...]

1. Moderation policies should be simple and freely available to all (i.e., even those who do not have access to the forums). X
2. Warnings should elapse or decay over a fixed, reasonable amount of time. X
3. For first offences, players should be given an unofficial warning. X
4. All warnings should be recorded and documented. This process should aim to be transparent and open. X
5. A free and fair system of appeal shall be open for all members of the forum to seek recourse over staff decisions. X
6. Policies and bans should not be applied retroactively (i.e., ex post facto). X

1-3. Sound reasonable. I have no problem with that.
4. I get where you are coming from with that, but I'm not sure that it's really necessary to include this. I feel like it's too restrictive, but I'd be willing to work on a rewording.

1. Sounds reasonable. I have no problem with that.
2. We'd have to work on details, and depending on the specific warning, but I don't have a problem with that.
3-4. Sounds reasonable. I have no problem with that.
5. I'm not sure if this is already covered in the Charter? If not, then we sure can discuss it.
6. Sounds reasonable. I have no problem with that.

Moderation policies are negotiable, both legally and in practice, but there is a difference between opening a discussion on how to improve policies and just ignoring them if I don't agree with what they say. What we want to avoid is the latter, which I think is a common sense measure.

Please, let's all try to do this the right way. I know we can have a constructive debate.

(05-26-2014, 11:30 PM)Unibot Wrote:

Quote:The Assembly didn't do anything, because we're fighting over whether the Assembly should even get to do anything in the first place. What the hell are Kris, Tsu, and me supposed to do? We get criticized for not writing these policies, and then we get criticized again for finally trying to put something down in stone. By all rights, we could have simply ignored everything and gone for a very long time without any proposals, because the Assembly was in no rush to do anything itself.

Excuse me, Glen, but I wrote a fucking policy - and got told the Administration should handle it instead. And the Administration came to the conclusion that they couldn't agree on anything and ... oh, well then, no administration policy!

"Let's just send them a check list of ambiguous do's and don't instead and hold ourselves to no account on paper..."

"If anyone complains will just say how dare they..."

You did not write a moderation policy. You wrote an administration policy that dealt with the inner workings of the administration team. Let's stop confusing the two. The two are fundamentally different.

Also, I'm not sure where you heard this, but, no, the administration didn't disagree on an administration policy. The Assembly disagreed on one. The admins haven't gotten around to discussing administration policies at all, let alone disagreeing on what they should be.

(05-26-2014, 11:35 PM)Unibot Wrote: First of all,

Quote:This is the Assembly's only chance to give constructive criticism

This is bullshit.

The Charter puts the responsibility of creating a moderation policy on the Administration Team. That policy is then presented to the Assembly, and goes into effect 7 days later. If the Assembly isn't constructive in those 7 days, then these policies will go into effect regardless. The admin team is in agreement with the policies as they are. We are willing to change them, but that can only happen if the Assembly actually sits down with us to do it. But as it is, I'm sure we're fine with these policies going into effect as they are, if the Assembly doesn't want to play ball.

I didn't post this here to say, "Accept it or GTFO." I posted this and gave a specific point of debate we could have. I'm open to changes. However, I do want this document to be another dusty old law. What I've written in conversational, and that's how I would like this to be. These policies are meant to read by humans, not lawyers.

That means I don't want to include articles admonishing the admins and mods to "recognize all internal policy" or other hand-holding, "you can't be trusted to run the forums without explicit and stern instruction" language. We can include sections on what makes a good moderator -- which is fairness, consistency, and professionalism -- but the wording needs to be very different from what was in the proposed law.

Quote:I get where you are coming from with that, but I'm not sure that it's really necessary to include this. I feel like it's too restrictive, but I'd be willing to work on a rewording.

You need to consider why it is "too restrictive". I believe the reason it seems too restrictive is exactly why we need this clause: to get moderators to rethink what is a legitimate use of a lock (versus a less intrusive thread split) in a democracy.

It became a very common political reflex in the Hileville days to just lock a thread if the discussion was not going in a direction that the players in the mod team wanted it to go.

The proposal I linked was designed as a "guideline" from the Assembly to the Administration. It does cover the details of policies (the minute for discussion would be specific warning decays).

What also needs to be discussed is:

1. Is the constitution above moderation or is moderation "separate" (i.e., above) the constitution?

2. Do players have a right to pursue a court case to defend their freedom of speech?

3. How will administrators and moderators be appointed?

4. How can we review their behavior?

Last time we discussed the later, Todd McCloud came out of nowhere and said "administrating was a duty" and everyone cheered - as if this excused the lack of oversight in regards to administrators. OF COURSE, administrating is a duty, which is why administrators have responsibilities to the region to fulfill certain expectations.

As for the Code of Conduct. I'll think about how to organize it to be brief but better defined.

Unibot, those are all important questions to ask, but they aren't relevant for the Moderation Policy. This is a policy about what behavior is expected of forum patrons. That's what a moderation policy is. This isn't where we get into how admins are chosen and what the relationship is between the administration team and the Charter. The former is what an Administration Policy is for and the latter is what the Charter and the Code of Laws are for.

Sigh. If we can go back in time a bit ago ... I'd like to point out that this was the EXACT thing I was concerned about happening.

Anyhow, I don't think any of the administrators have done anything outside of their governmental roles in regard to closing and/or splitting threads.

Keep 4 or leave 4 -- I don't really care. It's not particularly restrictive since it says it should be justifiable, but we don't have means of justification so ... whatevs.