My concerns about Moderation

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Re: My concerns about Moderation

Postby cm9777 » Sat Dec 15, 2018 12:05 am

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Last edited by cm9777 on Sun Jan 10, 2021 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: My concerns about Moderation

Postby Aquinas » Sat Dec 15, 2018 12:56 pm

Everybody is forgiving of a situation where the Moderators overlook a request and then respond to it after being given a reminder, as occurred with regards to Barmenia's Cultural Protocol. Nobody here is making a big deal about that.

What some of us are more troubled by is a situation like that regarding the Badaran Cultural Protocol violation report, where it took 4 attempts over a 6 day period for one of the 3 Moderators to finally acknowledge the report.

More unusually, during this 6 day period, Moderators were seen responding to other requests, writing RP posts, playing in-game and chatting extensively on Discord. A reasonable person would presume they had more than sufficient time, opportunity and reminders to process such a routine and simple request if they had chosen to do so. As the reporter in question, the impression I received, and which several others received also, was that my report was being purposely ignored due to a poor attitude towards me personally.

It lacks credibility for CM to seek to deflect this incident (which took 4 report attempts over 6 days) by lumping it in the same basket as the Barmenia incident (which only took a single reminder).

This is particularly so given that when, as GRC Chair, James privately raised his concerns with the Moderators about this incident, they responded by trying to deflect the issue by launching into a series of unwarranted and completely irrelevant hostile personal comments about me.

Unfortunately, as we have seen already, Mr.God exhibited precisely the same behaviour when legitimate concerns were expressed about his actions with regards to Cildania's cultural status. CM is also clearly repeating this exact same pattern of behaviour right here in this thread.

There is, BTW, much, much more I could write here about the current unhappy situation and the regrettable and in some cases really quite shameful incidents which have been going on.
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Re: My concerns about Moderation

Postby lewiselder1 » Sun Dec 16, 2018 1:01 am

Since my resignation statement was linked here (as intended, no worries) I feel I should clarify my position on this matter.

Clearly there are valid concerns here: moderation has been regularly inefficient for a long while now, well before this administration, but certainly I would find this difficult to put down to mere incompetence and bad attitudes, but rather to a much more complex issue regarding the role of moderator.

Luis has touched on it here, and it’s clear that moderators are vastly overworked and put under high stress: the role of moderator is toxic and punishing, and in my view, this is worsened and supported unwittingly by a game community that doesn’t fully comprehend what the job means and contributes to a toxic environment (obviously, James does comprehend, but I don’t think James is trying to argue for the anti-moderation side here) — what I’m describing here is what I described in my resignation statement. From my own experience I sincerely believe that this problem with the role is the cause of any inefficiencies, not the personnel.

I think Luis has been welcoming and accepting of James’ criticism, and it’s clear that the mods will look into making this more efificent and responding to these concerns as they should. Anyone should be free to critique moderation peacefully and the mods should respond to that either by acknowledging the complaint and reviewing how to improve, inquiring further, or rejecting the complaint with some reasonable grounds. In all of these cases I think it should go no further and the discussion should cease unless somebody wants to appeal directly to the mods privately, or to Wouter if it’s serious enough.

Now, James has raised the concern that this situation wasn’t resolved after the issue was raised in private. Again, I’m willing to bet the mods are overworked, especially in this transitional period when everyone is still getting used to their role. However I’m not involved in the private affairs of moderation and don’t know specifics so I don’t intend to make some judgement and I encourage everyone else to essentially allow private happenings to be resolved privately through the channels I’ve discussed above.

I can see why a number of people have criticised cm’s responses here but I think they are perhaps missing out on what cm is trying to do. I don’t think cm is trying to invalidate these concerns: I think cm is trying to push back against the presentation of moderation in this game and to touch on the issues I raised in moderation and described earlier in this post regarding the game community and the role of moderator. I think — and I may be wrong, of course — cm is unnerved by the idea that mods are just outright incompetent fools is creeping back into the game. He’s not necessarily rejecting the complaints, I think he’s rejecting the overall statement he felt James was making or possibly kind of indirectly contributing to (knowingly or not).

Now, maybe you do think they’re incompetent fools, I don’t know, though I disagree, but that’s kind of besides the point.

Mods are genuinely put under high stress in this age of the and near-constantly dealing with issues amongst players and feeling powerless to stop the rumours, to stop the trolls, and seeing their decisions put on the court of public opinion when often players are ill-informed about the events that took place and how moderation actually works. While that might not be what is happening here, it’s easy to see why cm is concerned this might spark a new rise in those trying to push a false narrative of moderation as an evil, self-serving elite inner circle, immune to criticism, authoritarian and incompetent.

What I think Luis is saying is: look, you’ve pointed out some issues, here’s what I think has gone wrong, we’ll look at them and try to improve.

What I think cm is saying is: yes, those issues are problems, but we need to be careful not to play into this false narrative — we’re trying our best at a job that is often over demanding and incredibly difficult to maintain alongside a demanding real life. We’re human, we make mistakes, and we need to push back against the anti-moderation narrative that James’ post, wittingly or not (and I think not) could be contributing towards.

Again, I’m not trying to say that I know exactly what anyone is saying here, or why, or enough specifics to make a judgement, or trying to say that James raising these issues was right or wrong. I’m just trying to provide some clarity and perspective to what seems to be a relatively clouded debate.

Tl;dr I think cm’s point is that James’ concerns are valid and should be addressed but that we need to be careful not to let this incite the overzealous, uninformed anti-mod vitriolic nonsense that PT so often gravitates towards when it hears about even a hint of negative feedback — the game often latches onto any potential issues and uses those very solvable issues to launch some kind of absurd campaign that mods just can’t respond to because of their responsibilities to remain professional etc, and while these concerns here make sense that wider image that it might help to create is massively problematic and needs to be actively fought against and rejected by moderation, and understood and rejected by the community at large — I refer back to my resignation for more.
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Re: My concerns about Moderation

Postby Aquinas » Mon Dec 17, 2018 3:10 am

There has so far been no sign of "overzealous, uninformed anti-mod vitriolic nonsense" on the part of any of the individuals present in this discussion. Nor has there been so in any of the other recent public discussions.

I served as a Moderator for quite some time, and during much of that period, I was either on my own or almost on my own due to the inactivity of the other Moderator. During the latter part of my period, as many will be aware, there were a few quite nasty incidents of an "anti-Moderation" character, although I must add these involved a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people. From that personal experience, I know probably better than anyone what "overzealous, uninformed, anti-mod vitriolic nonsense" actually looks like, and as a close observer of this game, I can confidently confirm that this phenomenon has really not been on public display to any significant extent in recent times in this community. Lewis's comments here and in his resignation post reflect a lot of personal frustration on his part, which I do understand, but his statements are backed up with little in the way of substantive evidence, and the picture he paints of this online community and its management team is in my view not an accurate one. The most there has been has been some incidents involving a very few people, and from what I have seen, frankly even most of those cases were in significant part the result of a deficiency in professionalism and even basic courtesy on the part of various game officials.

There has unfortunately been, as James has pointed out, a tendency on the part of Moderators to treat perfectly normal constructive feedback as a personal attack, and to repeatedly attempt to deflect genuine and legitimate complaints by misrepresenting and making irrelevant and inaccurate accusations against the persons delivering them. The effect of this has been to create an unhealthy atmosphere where a lot of people prefer either not to publicly express themselves or to ask bolder people to express their points for them.

The combination of (a) over-sensitivity and over-reactiveness towards perceived criticism with (b) complacency and inefficiency with regards even to routine and basic functions creates a difficult situation. If It was only one of those we were dealing with, it would not be quite so bad, but unfortunately, what we are dealing with here is both. In fairness to the Moderators, I will add, as a few others have elsewhere, that two of the current Moderators are fairly new, and also that these problems have been going on for some while - I would say before any of the current Moderators came to office, in fact. However, we are now at a stage where the general deterioration is becoming more serious and more obviously noticeable, and honestly, I think it would take a significant amount of determination and attitude-shifting on the part of the current Moderation Team in order to get us to a better place. If we could get to a stage where Moderation finally stops casually using deflection tactics and starts just responding calmly and reasonably to the issues, then that would be a good start, but based on the attitude conveyed in CM's posts here, I can't honestly say I'm massively confident right now that there is any progress to be made.
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Re: My concerns about Moderation

Postby Reddy » Mon Dec 17, 2018 5:13 am

Aquinas wrote:Everybody is forgiving of a situation where the Moderators overlook a request and then respond to it after being given a reminder, as occurred with regards to Barmenia's Cultural Protocol. Nobody here is making a big deal about that.

What some of us are more troubled by is a situation like that regarding the Badaran Cultural Protocol violation report, where it took 4 attempts over a 6 day period for one of the 3 Moderators to finally acknowledge the report.

More unusually, during this 6 day period, Moderators were seen responding to other requests, writing RP posts, playing in-game and chatting extensively on Discord. A reasonable person would presume they had more than sufficient time, opportunity and reminders to process such a routine and simple request if they had chosen to do so. As the reporter in question, the impression I received, and which several others received also, was that my report was being purposely ignored due to a poor attitude towards me personally.

It lacks credibility for CM to seek to deflect this incident (which took 4 report attempts over 6 days) by lumping it in the same basket as the Barmenia incident (which only took a single reminder).


Actually with the Barmenian incident, it took more than one reminder (most of them were off-site on Discord) It also took about 4 days before the CP Removal request was processed. With the CP Approval, I actually deleted my first request after it has gone more than 24 hours without any response and posted a new one.

When the Mod uses the "view New Posts" function and see it and possibly leaves it, forgets about it or perhaps expects one of his co-Mods to address it, it's not impossible at all to do that. That is why I chose to accept Luis' explanation without any doubts. It's not about time, it's about disorder. What I think is that we need to fix that rather than speculating about conspiracy etc in it and what it might possibly imply. Is there any evidence that this is more than disorder and say, conspiracy/malice?

Let's not conflate all of this with what MrGod did in Cildania which was clearly wrong with general disorder. I believe that he understands that he made a mistake, has shown remorse for it and should be given another chance to prove himself. In any case, without accusing any specific person/s, this slide into personal attacks or negativity will not help much and only serve to discourage other from participating in this thread.
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Re: My concerns about Moderation

Postby lewiselder1 » Mon Dec 17, 2018 1:45 pm

Aquinas wrote:There has so far been no sign of "overzealous, uninformed anti-mod vitriolic nonsense" on the part of any of the individuals present in this discussion. Nor has there been so in any of the other recent public discussions.

I served as a Moderator for quite some time, and during much of that period, I was either on my own or almost on my own due to the inactivity of the other Moderator. During the latter part of my period, as many will be aware, there were a few quite nasty incidents of an "anti-Moderation" character, although I must add these involved a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people. From that personal experience, I know probably better than anyone what "overzealous, uninformed, anti-mod vitriolic nonsense" actually looks like, and as a close observer of this game, I can confidently confirm that this phenomenon has really not been on public display to any significant extent in recent times in this community. Lewis's comments here and in his resignation post reflect a lot of personal frustration on his part, which I do understand, but his statements are backed up with little in the way of substantive evidence, and the picture he paints of this online community and its management team is in my view not an accurate one. The most there has been has been some incidents involving a very few people, and from what I have seen, frankly even most of those cases were in significant part the result of a deficiency in professionalism and even basic courtesy on the part of various game officials.

There has unfortunately been, as James has pointed out, a tendency on the part of Moderators to treat perfectly normal constructive feedback as a personal attack, and to repeatedly attempt to deflect genuine and legitimate complaints by misrepresenting and making irrelevant and inaccurate accusations against the persons delivering them. The effect of this has been to create an unhealthy atmosphere where a lot of people prefer either not to publicly express themselves or to ask bolder people to express their points for them.

The combination of (a) over-sensitivity and over-reactiveness towards perceived criticism with (b) complacency and inefficiency with regards even to routine and basic functions creates a difficult situation. If It was only one of those we were dealing with, it would not be quite so bad, but unfortunately, what we are dealing with here is both. In fairness to the Moderators, I will add, as a few others have elsewhere, that two of the current Moderators are fairly new, and also that these problems have been going on for some while - I would say before any of the current Moderators came to office, in fact. However, we are now at a stage where the general deterioration is becoming more serious and more obviously noticeable, and honestly, I think it would take a significant amount of determination and attitude-shifting on the part of the current Moderation Team in order to get us to a better place. If we could get to a stage where Moderation finally stops casually using deflection tactics and starts just responding calmly and reasonably to the issues, then that would be a good start, but based on the attitude conveyed in CM's posts here, I can't honestly say I'm massively confident right now that there is any progress to be made.


To clarify, I’m not saying anyone here was trying to do that, but that I think this is what cm was trying to pre-emptively stop this from developing into that.

I understand that you have very different views on this based on your own experiences but all I can really do is say that your experiences are outdated. I can’t provide much empirical evidence, partially because some of it is private, partially because, even though some of it is public it would be questionable for me to start naming and shaming people all over the place. Ultimately, this was virtually the only thing I experienced in my tenure as mod, it’s the contents of my resignation statement, and as far as I can tell those in the same position around the same time and currently share my views. It would seem odd for this to be a purely personal viewpoint. If we look at the numbers of players total playing the game, it is a tiny tiny minority: if we look at the number of active players on say the discord and forums — the ‘main players’, if you want to call them that, though it’s a bit exclusionary — the numbers of active participants in this kind of behaviour is a bigger minority, and the number of players outside of the GRC / Moderation (who have to deal with these attitudes) who unwittingly contribute to this atmosphere is much, much higher.

By and large, though not always, moderation is not and has not, in my view, been over-sensitive — the difference is that they shouldn’t put up with people being dicks, basically. People who put across the views peacefully and calmly, as James has, a sense others have, typically are listened to and their views considered: sure, they don’t always get to ‘win’ if there’s genuine counterarguments, but that’s good. At least, that’s been my experience. Regarding complacency, again, the thing coming out of most recent moderator’s mouths is that they’re overworked or something similar to this. Luis touched on it, I’ve said it, cm said it... I think that the role needs to be refined significantly. Certainly, things could be improved, and I hope the mods madke a concerted effort to look into how to avoid these issues in future, but to present it as just complacency I think is just wrong.

To summarise, yes, I can’t give much evidence, but only out of principle and previous experience when I have tried to give some kind of evidence going rather unwell. All I can say that largely recent mods seem to agree and I expect times have changed since your tenure.

Ultimately, I’m not eager to continue this debate about the nature of the game, if only because we’ve debated this before and it’s not all that relevant. My point was more that I think cm is just trying to warn agains that epitential for this to happen, and I wanted to clarify what I felt like he was saying — and from what I understand it is largely what he’s saying.

I just think the game needs to be a bit kinder to its mods who cannot speak out publicly about their own situation — there’s a reason my resignation got linked, and not said outright. Again, not that James or anyone was trying it do this — just that perhaps cm’s concerns are a bit more understandable in context.
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Re: My concerns about Moderation

Postby Aquinas » Wed Dec 19, 2018 10:19 pm

Reddy wrote:Actually with the Barmenian incident, it took more than one reminder (most of them were off-site on Discord) It also took about 4 days before the CP Removal request was processed. With the CP Approval, I actually deleted my first request after it has gone more than 24 hours without any response and posted a new one.

When the Mod uses the "view New Posts" function and see it and possibly leaves it, forgets about it or perhaps expects one of his co-Mods to address it, it's not impossible at all to do that. That is why I chose to accept Luis' explanation without any doubts. It's not about time, it's about disorder. What I think is that we need to fix that rather than speculating about conspiracy etc in it and what it might possibly imply. Is there any evidence that this is more than disorder and say, conspiracy/malice?


I would really, really, really love to believe you, but unfortunately there very definitely has been a pattern of discrimination towards some community members. Perhaps it would be best for now if I simply say I am prepared to provide further information to anyone who would care to contact me privately.

What I will add though is that the disorganisation which you experienced with regards to Barmenia, and which you have been noticing generally, has actually been a problem for a long time, but has more lately become markedly worse. This can be seen with the report I made almost 10 days ago about the neglect of the Nation Renaming Guide, which has still not been addressed, despite a reminder 4 days ago. Something similar happened with James's query about the bungled renaming of Zardugal, which despite 6 reminders (4 from James, 2 from me), took over 12 days for Moderators to respond to (and even then they just changed the nation name without following the proper custom of announcing the change on the forum). To give another recent example, check out the saga with Keymon's renaming request, which required four interventions - three from Yolo and one from me - before Moderation finally dealt with it. Or to give another example, look at how Moderation has still not even acknowledged James's request to update the Real-Life Equivalents Index, despite the fact 17 days have passed and there have been 2 reminders. As Zanz accurately observed a few weeks ago over the inept handling of a Cultural Protocol violation issue, "this sort of thing definitely required less manual intervention from the community in the past".

Reddy wrote:Let's not conflate all of this with what MrGod did in Cildania which was clearly wrong with general disorder. I believe that he understands that he made a mistake, has shown remorse for it and should be given another chance to prove himself. In any case, without accusing any specific person/s, this slide into personal attacks or negativity will not help much and only serve to discourage other from participating in this thread.


Yet again, I would love to believe you, but honestly, you are literally the only person I have seen suggest that Mr.God "has shown remorse" for the unorthodox way he handled his Cultural Protocol proposals for Cildania. In reality, his indigant tirade at me conveyed the impression of someone who was indignant at having been called out, not someone who was genuinely sorry for the way he had acted. If he had wanted to say he was actually sorry then he could of course have done so, but he chose not to. He has also at no time since retracted or apologised for the negative and unwarranted personal comments he made towards me. There is also the fact that neither he nor any other Moderator has explained the troubling disparity between Luis's account and the version of events offered by Mr.God, which further confirms the general impression of complacency and lack of transparency.

lewiselder1 wrote:To clarify, I’m not saying anyone here was trying to do that, but that I think this is what cm was trying to pre-emptively stop this from developing into that.


With respect, I find that a sloppy and unconvincing attempt to try to deflect the real issues and make excuses for the unconstructive behaviour CM clearly exhibited in his responses on this thread.

lewiselder1 wrote:I understand that you have very different views on this based on your own experiences but all I can really do is say that your experiences are outdated.


As I made clear in my previous post, I am a close observer of the game and I was reporting my direct observations from recent experience. With respect, it really is simply not credible for you to try to present this as being otherwise, especially given you are personally aware of many of my concerns from the conversations we have had together.

lewiselder1 wrote:I can’t provide much empirical evidence, partially because some of it is private, partially because, even though some of it is public it would be questionable for me to start naming and shaming people all over the place.


But you've already done this, Lewis. Everybody who had been following things closely enough knew exactly who you were pointing the finger at when you made your statement, and just to make sure, you publicly not only named them but downright insulted them on Discord pretty much immediately afterwards. One of those individuals was actually directly named in your resignation statement right here on the forum, the name only being removed later on, after there had been a complaint.

lewiselder1 wrote:Ultimately, this was virtually the only thing I experienced in my tenure as mod, it’s the contents of my resignation statement, and as far as I can tell those in the same position around the same time and currently share my views. It would seem odd for this to be a purely personal viewpoint.


It would not remotely surprise me if the other Moderators share this outlook, or even hold to to it more belligerently than you do, because in this respect, sadly, they have very much been part of the problem. In the case of the two new Moderators, I am referring particularly to how they conducted themselves when they were GRC members, before they became Moderators, and in particular how they conducted themselves on Discord. One of those incidents, which was reported at the time to the Mods and also to Wouter, was sufficiently serious that the person should absolutely not have been retained in the GRC, let alone promoted to Mod shortly a few months later.

In your own case, as you know, and as most people who were regular on Discord at the time will know, during your Moderation tenure, you were repeatedly involved in online incidents where your personal conduct was inappropriate. This had become embarrassing, and you were also making some community members uncomfortable. There were two occasions when this even reached the forum (although interestingly those were actually comparatively mild compared to some of the other stuff!). The incident which directly preceded your resignation was honestly one of the most grotesque and shameful I have ever seen on the official Discord server, and involved you making derogatory personal comments with regards to a community member's alleged state of mental health.

We also had the time when CM used a sockpuppet account to join a community member's private Discord server, and manipulatively used the sockpuppet to interact with him and his other guests there under a false guise. Lewis was there with him, and later admitted he was colluding with CM in the enterprise. This was despite the fact CM and the server owner had a poor relationship, and both CM and Lewis knew full well that if the server owner knew CM's real identity, he would not have been happy having him there. After this had gone on for some while, CM accidentally posted on the official Discord server using the sockpuppet account, thus giving away the deception he was engaged with. Several players challenged him over his behaviour, and at least 3 and possibly 4 of those people (including the owner of the server that had been trespassed) were subsequently removed from the official Discord server by CM as a result.

There are numerous other incidents I could cite, but I hope I have done enough here to demonstrate that when it comes to inappropriate behaviour, the problem is not all one way, with community members acting inappropriately towards game officials. It has, regrettably, rather too often gone the other way round as well.

lewiselder1 wrote:If we look at the numbers of players total playing the game, it is a tiny tiny minority: if we look at the number of active players on say the discord and forums — the ‘main players’, if you want to call them that, though it’s a bit exclusionary — the numbers of active participants in this kind of behaviour is a bigger minority, and the number of players outside of the GRC / Moderation (who have to deal with these attitudes) who unwittingly contribute to this atmosphere is much, much higher.


I certainly do not disagree with you that there is sometimes poor behaviour amongst players, and there are some difficult individuals, but what I am genuinely more puzzled by is your myopic assumption that the behaviour problem lies entirely outside the realm of Moderation and the GRC. Respectfully, this does seem to demonstrate a lack of self-awareness and a degree of arrogance.

lewiselder1 wrote:By and large, though not always, moderation is not and has not, in my view, been over-sensitive


Observation and experience has repeatedly proved otherwise, unfortunately.

lewiselder1 wrote:the difference is that they shouldn’t put up with people being dicks, basically.


The language you are using shows something of your attitude towards members of the community you are not getting along with. Amongst game officials, this is far from just being confined to you, either. To give just a single example, some amongst us will remember an earlier incident on Marlon's server, where an administrator on the Particracy Discord said "anyone who is an arse to the mods need to suck a dick" and "fuck off", and a Moderator readily came forward to endorse that statement ("Agreed"). When challenged privately, the Moderator defended both the original comment and his own defence of it. There has for some time now been a serious problem in terms of how Moderators and also some of the individuals around them (GRC members, in particular) treat community members they disagree with or dislike.

lewiselder1 wrote:People who put across the views peacefully and calmly, as James has, a sense others have, typically are listened to and their views considered: sure, they don’t always get to ‘win’ if there’s genuine counterarguments, but that’s good. At least, that’s been my experience. Regarding complacency, again, the thing coming out of most recent moderator’s mouths is that they’re overworked or something similar to this. Luis touched on it, I’ve said it, cm said it...


Having run the administration side of this game entirely by myself for prolonged periods of time, and from close observation of how the game is being administered at present, I have to say that I seriously, genuinely struggle to accept your claims either that we are not experiencing a complacency problem or that the burden of Moderation work is unduly excessive for a team of 3 reasonably committed volunteers to handle.

lewiselder1 wrote:I think that the role needs to be refined significantly. Certainly, things could be improved, and I hope the mods madke a concerted effort to look into how to avoid these issues in future


Agreed.

lewiselder1 wrote: but to present it as just complacency I think is just wrong.


Again, I really, really wish I could agree with you.

lewiselder1 wrote:Ultimately, I’m not eager to continue this debate about the nature of the game, if only because we’ve debated this before and it’s not all that relevant.


With the greatest respect, the issues which have arisen are relevant. I do definitely appreciate how they may be difficult or uncomfortable for yourself and some others to read or to discuss, and I certainly agree we all have an extra responsibility to make an extra effort to be both civil and fair, but nevertheless, this is a legitimate and necessary discussion, and I think we need to try to avoid the temptation to smother it with vague/deflective/hostile suggestions about the people who care enough to bring legitimate issues to the table.
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Re: My concerns about Moderation

Postby Aquinas » Fri Feb 01, 2019 1:08 pm

One of the issues which has become apparent from the Kalistan saga over on the Moderation/GRC Queries thread is that the GRC, which was established in order to create, promote, organise and assist RP in the game, has now moved well beyond its original remit, and is now playing an active and important "referee" function which would previously have been the preserve of Moderation. GRC members, and so far it would seem Auditorii in particular, are now in effect Moderators. It is debatable as to whether in practical terms they may in fact be more powerful than Moderators, since under the new Game Rules, they have so much authority not only to interpret and enforce the rules of RP, but even to write and rewrite them. Section 8.3 of the rules document sums up this new situation succinctly:

"The GRC has the responsibility to manage the Global Roleplay Accord and its affiliated programs, organize, suspend, alter, supervise and judge RPs as they see fit, update the Particracy Game Rules RP rules (with public consultation for significant rule changes), rule on violations of the Particracy Game Rules RP rules, as well as generally judge and oversee all RP within Particracy".

That leaves the Moderators to focus on more mundane tasks like reactivations, inactivations, renamings etc..

For my part, in principle, I suppose I do not necessarily object to the RP aspect of the game being adjudicated by a set of people who are different to the set of people who handle all of the routine administration requests. My concern is more that we are seeing an unhealthy mixing of roles. The GRC is meant to be an active and dynamic force in RP, helping to create and direct RP in the game. If it functions as it ought to, it will very naturally come to have its own various RP agendas, at times. How compatible is this with the GRC also having this increasing "referee" role, with extensive powers to interfere with the RP of other players? There is an obvious potential here for conflicts of interest, real and perceived.

There was no public consultation with the community over the recently-introduced rules which brought in this new settlement. Mr. God has informed us multiple times that Particracy now has a "no consultations" policy. I have pressed him as to what that means. He says "discussions" are permitted but that "consultations" are not, but has failed to adequately define what he means by a "discussion" and what he means by a "consultation". A little while ago a thread James created was arbitrarily removed because Mr. God thought it was a "consultation" (which is banned) rather than a "discussion" (which is allowed). I am honestly not sure anyone, least of all the Moderators, really understand what the situation is now with regards to all of this.

Over recent months, a number of players - including some who have served in the GRC and/or Moderation - have expressed serious reservations about the GRC. Experienced and respected players have openly called for it to be abolished. It is a little puzzling that the response to this has been to drastically increase the GRC's scope of authority. A more obvious alternative might have been to first give it a chance to engage with the feedback, focus on RPing (which it still does little of, despite that being its primary duty) and earn the confidence of the community.

On the positive side, even the new section 8.3, which bestows sweeping new powers on the GRC, stipulates that before deciding to update the Game Rules, the GRC should hold a "public consultation for significant rule changes". When I first read that, I dared to hope that there had been a welcome outbreak of commonsense.

Except, of course, even this is not being followed. As we saw from Auditorii's post yesterday, section 6.2 of the rules has been changed from:

2. Large scale RP planning (such as wars, regional/continental conflicts, economic collapse, etc.) should be planned (as best as it can be) and should have consent of a majority of players involved. It is possible to RP smaller events without the consent of all players or others;


To:

2. Large scale RP planning (such as wars, regional/continental conflicts, economic collapse, etc.) should be planned (as best as it can be) and should have consent of a majority of players involved. It is possible to RP smaller events without the consent of all players or others;
-- 2a. Players are required to pass a bill authorizing the RP which must be passed by a majority of players with seats within the nation (for major, large-scale roleplays such as civil wars, wars, significant economic or RP-related political reforms, etc.) Players are required to create an OOC RP planning bill or forum post discussing the general outline and discussion for planned RP; it needs to include a link to the passed RP authorization bill (for all players);
-- 2b. Players who engage with RP via newspaper posts, in-game messages or other forms of in-character communications are generally accepted to be consenting to the RP. In the event that consent or authorization comes into question, players who have engaged will be counted as voting for or authorizing the RP.


This was done with no consultation whatsoever, despite the fact it concerns one of the key RP rules, which will significantly affect all players in the game, and is likely to particularly affect the more actively RPing part of the community. Furthermore, Moderation/GRC has not even bothered to properly announce the change. Most players will not even be aware of the change unless they have been monitoring the queries thread closely enough. This, despite the fact the new rules could affect whether the RPs they are engaged in will be considered legal or not.

Given that the need to change the rules resulted from the fact that Moderation/GRC failed to consult with players about the recent rules overhaul, one might have hoped that perhaps this time they would consult, but they did not. There are issues with the change, the most obvious of which is that the use of the term "required" implies that in situations where a RP authorisation bill has not been passed, the RP is rendered void even if none of the players with a legitimate connection to the RP are actually objecting to it. Another issue that could be mentioned is that it allows a majority of players to impose far-reaching RP against the wishes of the others, even if they do not actually have IC control of the nation (ie. a majority of the seats).

Actually, there are numerous problems with the new rules document. In some instances it is clumsy and confusing, as with the guidance on nation renaming in section 5.5:

5. Players are permitted to change the name of their nation, newspaper, cities and regions and post such a request HERE, to do this they must pass a bill with 2/3 majority of active players with seats. All re-naming requests must be within the Cultural Protocols of the nation in question. As a note, players must include the original name of their nation in parenthesis when giving the formal name of their nation. For instance "Zardic Empire (Zardugal)" would be appropriate whereas "Zardic Empire" will not be approved


Here, the first sentence tells us nation renamings have to meet Cultural Protocol language requirements, and then the second sentence goes on to approve an example of a renaming request which directly violates that (ie. putting Zardugal's nation title in English rather than Esperanto). Furthermore, insisting on putting the nation's core name in brackets when the core name is already clearly referenced in the demonym included in the nation title not only makes little sense, but contradicts the Nation Renaming Guide, which explicitly states "core names, or a modest alteration of them, should be included in any nation title proposal, even if it is only in brackets".

(For that matter, is the Nation Renaming Guide even considered officially valid now? It is not mentioned at all in the new Game Rules document. I would argue the NRG is helpful and should be retained, but if it has now been invalidated, then it would be best to remove it from the forum, in order to avoid future confusion.)

Another example of where the new Game Rules are poorly written is with the section dealing with Party Organisations, which says "Users can request leadership of a party organization if they are the only active member". This leaves the impression that in cases where a Party Organisation has multiple active members but no active leadership, Moderation will not give leadership to any party, which doesn't really make any sense.

I could go on to list other examples, but frankly the time investment involved in doing that would not be worth it for me, partly because I'm not sure it is worth it anyway due to the culture in Moderation of disregarding the Game Rules whenever it suits them personally, and partly since Moderation's poor attitude towards consultation and feedback generally has been made more than amply clear. It is, BTW, a general consequence of this poor attitude that many people, including many of those with the most experience of the workings of the game, have become averse to taking part in such discussions. For me personally, having put as much time and effort into the improvement of the game as I have, it is painful to see how, so carelessly and unnecessarily, the administration of the game has drifted into disorganisation.

FWIW, my honest advice is that the least worst option now would be to significantly simplify the game, so it becomes something more realistically suited to the capacity and capability of the administrators we are now left with. That means returning more to the way the game was originally. Scrap Cultural Protocols. Scrap RP laws. Scrap the Global Roleplay Accord and the rankings. Scrap the increasingly complicated system of rules around RP and return to the original system, where if one player involved in a RP withdraws consent, it becomes invalid. Either scrap the GRC or just let it focus on RPing, rather than bossing around everybody else.

All of this is very, very far from what I personally want, BTW, but in the circumstances, for what remains of this neglected game's twilight days, I really genuinely believe a move in this direction would be in the interests of this community, and most especially, in the interests of those responsible for administering it. Fundamentally, we all need to be honest with ourselves about the differences between what we personally would ideally like, and what we can now realistically be provided with.
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