Unofficial poll on moderation #2

[Goodspeed]

Pls no lock

This poll is an independent effort and I have no reason to believe it will be used as a basis for ESOC to change its policy.
The previous (much longer) poll was in September 2017. Results of that are here.

The new poll
Results

[EAGLEMUT]

The poll contains a link to staff-only accessible thread.

[Goodspeed]

Whoops. Fixed

[Jaeger]

Just wanna say I love Duck (@Vinyanyérë ) as a moderator. Very fair, thoughtful, and transparent.

[Jaeger]

Same for @Cometk

[edeholland]

Nice poll, thanks.

Gotta ask, what prompted you to make this poll now? Was it the recent Tit/Kynesie drama? Or are you just bored at work? Nowadays there seems to be a lot less controversy about moderation.

[Snuden]

I like it the way it is.

[Mr_Bramboy]

thanks guys

Also, Trump did nothing wrong and Trump-related discussions should be encouraged in off-topic. My posts keep getting deleted for some reason.

[edeholland]

thanks guys

They just want us to have a vacation.

[Sargsyan]

Goodspeed the new breeze, loved the Garja option

[Mr_Bramboy]

"Lock and disallow discussion until the official statement is posted (the action taken)"

Unless I'm reading it wrong, that's not the action that was taken. We kept the thread with the recorded games open until the statement was posted. The reason was that it would be a bit ominous if the thread in the recorded games section was locked without explanation. We did, however, remove other threads about the issue both before and after the statement was posted to keep the discussion centralized. The thread has over 50 pages now; we did not want those posts to be spread out over 50 threads.

[Goodspeed]

The thread that was specifically about the controversy was locked and I suppose later archived to a staff forum, which sends a clear message that discussion about the subject was not allowed. "Hey, don't talk about this!"
There was no discussion about it in the rec thread at the time.

It rubs me the wrong way because there were obviously a lot of people who wanted to discuss it at that moment. Personally I oppose and have always opposed any efforts by staff to in any way prevent the community from discussing any subject, most of all a subject that is begging to be discussed.

Why didn't you heavily moderate the twitch chat, which was wild with speculation for the duration of the game, but then did prevent discussion on the forums?

[Goodspeed]

By far the most shocking result here so far is that a whopping 2/17 people liked GoT season 8

[Imperial Noob]

The threads getting locked one after another where citizens had casual conversations looked like a sudden police state grown out of everyday bureaucracy. It was legitimately frightening.

I half expected ESOC to come and confiscate radios next.

[Kawapasaka]

Why didn't you heavily moderate the twitch chat, which was wild with speculation for the duration of the game, but then did prevent discussion on the forums?

It was streamed on Escape's channel, wasn't it? Didn't think esoc mods have any power there.

[Goodspeed]

Ah true. Does it seem likely to you though that the chat would have been heavily moderated if it was on ESOC's channel? I hope not, because the chat seems to have been the primary reason to pause near the end of the game for an IP check.

Either way, censoring discussion on the forum after the subject already came to life in twitch chat is just not the right decision imo. And ESOC has been known to do this, although threads like these have been less frequent recently. Not as much drama these days But it's not a one time thing, in any case.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Yea, as a result we had to discuss this topic on lukas' twitch chat.

Had it happened 2 years ago, people would have discussed that on the council discord.

[Cometk]

To be absolutely sure, the locking and archiving of threads related to the Tit and kynesie incident was not done by the Community Team, but rather the Media Team, and more specifically Bramboy and myself, who do not regularly moderate the forums whatsoever. Of course, when it comes to breaking and time-sensitive event-related issues is when it’s time for the tournament administration to step in in moderating the forums, but thankfully these incidents are exceedingly few and far between. In fact, even the community team itself preferred that I and Bramboy had chosen a different course of action, as it was happening!

But it serves no purpose for 1) unsupported accusations or 2) discussions of the methods of cheating to be allowed to spread through the forum willy-nilly. For the sake of thoughtful moderation, it makes sense for there to be an admin confirmation of what actually happened first and then then a conglomerated discussion of the event in one place.

Additionally, the impact was smaller than you think. Two errant threads were archived and two more threads were eventually merged into the primary thread for discussion of the incident. The results thread was locked after the admin decision thread was posted.

[Goodspeed]

But It serves no purpose for 1) unsupported accusations or 2) discussions of the methods of cheating to be allowed to spread over the forum willy-nilly. For the sake of thoughtful moderation, it makes sense for there to be an admin confirmation of what actually happened first and then then a conglomerated discussion in one place.

Again, this is all just my opinion but I would argue any and all discussion about any subject serves a purpose. Unsupported accusations are not as big a deal as ESOC seems to think, imo. It's fairly easy for the accused to come and set the record straight, and a disproven accusation reflects poorly on the accuser. People don't just accuse others for the fun of it.
And I guess I like to think the community knows which kind of accusations to take seriously and which to discard.

[[Armag] diarouga]

To be absolutely sure, the locking and archiving of threads related to the Tit and kynesie incident was not done by the Community Team, but rather the Media Team, and more specifically Bramboy and myself, who do not regularly moderate the forums whatsoever. Of course, when it comes to breaking and time-sensitive event-related issues is when it’s time for the tournament administration to step in in moderating the forums, but thankfully these incidents are exceedingly few and far between. In fact, even the community team itself preferred that I and Bramboy had chosen a different course of action, as it was happening!

But it serves no purpose for 1) unsupported accusations or 2) discussions of the methods of cheating to be allowed to spread through the forum willy-nilly. For the sake of thoughtful moderation, it makes sense for there to be an admin confirmation of what actually happened first and then then a conglomerated discussion of the event in one place.

Additionally, the impact was smaller than you think. Two errant threads were archived and two more threads were eventually merged into the primary thread for discussion of the incident. The results thread was locked after the admin decision thread was posted.

You knew that it was kynesie before the 3rd game ended, so you did know that it wasn't unsupported accusations, so your first point is irrelevant.

[Cometk]

You knew that it was kynesie before the 3rd game ended, so you did know that it wasn't unsupported accusations, so your first point is irrelevant.

?

[[Armag] diarouga]

The last game sorry (so seventh). You understood what I said anyway lol.

[Cometk]

The last game sorry (so seventh). You understood what I said anyway lol.

Yes, just to be sure. Regardless, anyone else's accusations at that point were unfounded if they didn't have evidence. And if they did have evidence, that should be taken up directly with a tournament administrator, that is me or any one of the people listed here.

[fightinfrenchman]

There was no 'well' option for some reason

[Cometk]

But It serves no purpose for 1) unsupported accusations or 2) discussions of the methods of cheating to be allowed to spread over the forum willy-nilly. For the sake of thoughtful moderation, it makes sense for there to be an admin confirmation of what actually happened first and then then a conglomerated discussion in one place.

Again, this is all just my opinion but I would argue any and all discussion about any subject serves a purpose. Unsupported accusations are not as big a deal as ESOC seems to think, imo. It's fairly easy for the accused to come and set the record straight, and a disproven accusation reflects poorly on the accuser. People don't just accuse others for the fun of it.
And I guess I like to think the community knows which kind of accusations to take seriously and which to discard.

Upon reviewal, the only threads that were removed from public view were two unsubstantive shitposts. The other threads, like I mentioned, were merged into the the admin decision thread, which serves as a megathread. You can take a look at the shitposts yourself in the private forum -> media board. Not much of value was lost.

You also have to consider that this is in regards to an Escape event. We were pretty prompt with posting the admin decision thread after the incident, but it also needed to be reviewed by the folks over at Escape before being released. With respect to the people whose money and full-time job it is to host the event, a little damage control seems fair.