Forum Moderation

I don’t think stuff should be deleted unless it is graphic or illegal/unethical. Even if someone is spreading FUD or being disruptive, I’d rather see their account locked with maybe a message implying what happened. It is more transparent and allows other users to decide their own opinions, with all the knowledge of the conversation. There can definitely be exceptions to this, just a general feeling I have.

This place is the sanest online privacy community I have ever been into where people actually know how to communicate, answer questions, and engage in healthy discussions. I have learned a lot since I started participating, and I hope this discussion will resolve in the best way possible.

-a regular user

Hey there, I would simply suggest to communicate more on your intentions.

Meaning, if you unlist a topic, state which rule it violated.

Same with deleting. Sending a pm can help.

This has been going for some weeks now (or maybe more I don’t know) and when we’ve asked questions, we weren’t provided with answers. We were provided with unlisted and deleted topics.

Also, kindness goes a long way in these communication messages.

However, I do understand that moderating can be heavy and it’s not fun to receive criticism when you do that for free and just to help a community you want to see thrive.

Please note that this criticism also comes from a place of love with a desire to protect that same community. I think people have good intentions, they’re not here to bring it all down We all want it to see it thrive.

Thank you for that.

Would PG have engaged in that discussion if some of us didn’t push for it? Hopefully, yes.

If yes, then I believe it should have been mentioned in my post (which is now deleted and I’m still not sure why) or other people’s post simply asking questions.

It isn’t nonsense if it’s a policy of PG though. Not saying it is, but they could decide to implement such policy.

It’s dismissive. It’s like saying “go back to your own country if you don’t like it here.”

hTahaCi was clearly in good faith throughout all that “Is Constructive Feedback on Whonix/KickSecure Being Censored” topic. Disclaimer: I have not seen the content of the first topic and I’m not saying the moderation action was the wrong one. I don’t even know what whonix is, and it honestly doesn’t really matter to this topic.

hTahaCi also explained it themselves:

I’m really sad — you gys have full control to remove posts, and my threads are automatically marked as “solved” without my input. I don’t feel I have any control over my own contributions here in this privacy community. I’ve always used a covert account during my vacation days to quietly share knowledge and help others. But the way I’m being treated is deeply hurtful. I’m genuinely trying to help, and it’s painful when that effort is dismissed. I think I need to step away.

The fact is that they opened a new topic to understand why they thought they were being censored. You can objectively say they were in good faith.

Then that topic got unlisted and deleted. Again. At least a reason was provided in that one. But it shouldn’t have been deleted.

I second this. The bar for permanently wiping the public records should be very, very high. Lock bad threads, ban disruptive posters. Only delete harmful comments (to do: define “harmful”)

Mods should also be required to disclose one piece of PII per each moderation action (pause for laugh)

This wouldn’t have moved the needle if it came from some normal dude. Odd to see the forum admin publicly tell a poster to kick rocks. I briefly thought I was on the GOS forum (pause for laughs)

I think that other user was me.

I don’t believe I replied to the off topic comments but my account was also silenced for two weeks. It was not obvious to me how to appeal the silencing either, so I reached out to you about it for an explanation since I remembered that statement you made about how people should flag posts more often and avoid engaging. I never received a reply. I attempted to reach out to the moderator team, which the site did not let me do. So rather than trying to guess who I should message, I just decided to wait out my sentence.

All this to say another issue is the appeal process and knowing who to reach out to. You receive a message from the automated system with an incredibly vague explanation but that’s pretty much it. The format @TinFoilHat describes sounds like a major improvement.

Needless to say I rarely flag posts now. Why should I go out of my way to help the mods in good faith if I risk being punished for doing so?

I do appreciate the (eventual) explanation from Jonah though that it is not necessary to flag more than one off topic comment in a given thread. I agree this should be in writing somewhere.

Well, I for one see what your problem was with that post, it was worded and framed not at all productively, but at its core there was a reasonable discussion to be had there of any issues others have had with Whonix recently. I think the most productive thing to do moderation-wise would have been to tell the OP to edit their post to be more conducive to a beneficial conversation and leave it up if they did so. I don’t think it’s good for the community to tell people to basically just go somewhere else because they swung and missed on one attempt at writing an OP.

In fairness, I think it becomes a lot more reasonable to tell the OP that if they had a history of doing such things without correcting it, and I don’t know if that’s the case here, but still maybe not in public because of how it comes across to others without that context.

Just my two cents.

This was also something I took away from the experience.

Fully second this. Had I known this created extra burden on the mods I obviously would not have done so. I thought I was being helpful by basically pointing them to each specific post I thought needed review. I have never moderated a forum like this so I recognize I was making an assumption that it seems turned out to be wrong though.

This seems like the most plausible solution. However, if the goal is to have PG forum be curated for well meaning discussion, then I can see the angle of unlisting as to keep keep the search and info digging of quality on the forum. But this should be an explicit well communicated intention of the forum.

Otherwise, locking is a pretty standard. (Public) deletion is frowned upon.

If anything, utilizing locking as a means to socialize why you are locking. Close a thread, say it violates XYZ and why, and now we can all learn. Or, utilize it as a teaching opportunity to guide biases towards a more open discussion. Unlisting hides this knowledge from users, and so there are hidden implicit edge cases we don’t know about. If something is funky with a decision, we can reach out and ask why. Can’t ask why if it’s not there, I have no reference to the thread in mind.

I’ll always say, forum rules are more like guidelines, and admin can always do whatever they want. But it’s generally a trust thing to enforce explicit rules and minimize handwaving (some amount will always exist, and doesn’t need to be a law book), and when enforcement happens it’s transparent. This is also speaking as a mod of previous forums, occasionally receiving flak for some decisions.