Subject: Shh, you lot! You're spoiling it!
Author:
Posted on: 2016-08-08 08:00:00 UTC
The plan was supposed to be that we get them to make us all moderators, then turn the entire channel into a permanent street party slash gladiatorial arena slash temple to our (individual and collective) excellence! Honestly, I can't work with you people!
Uh, that is how moderators work, right? Just, uh, asking for a... friend.
hS
At the end of a chain of events, I ended up with ownership of the PPC's Discord channel (which can be found here). I think that it definitely needs a mod since it's the most active in what's the wee hours of the night for me. How do we go on about this? Elections? Someone volunteers? Something else entirely?
PS: If anybody has duplicate nicknames on the channel, please tell me so I'll be able to kick the dupes (in the interest of an orderly user list).
Main reason is that we vote over everything else important, so why not this?
After that, there's the question of what the mod powers actually are. I figure long bans (> a day, or maybe a week tops) need a community discussion and a vote. That sort of thing might even need to happen on the Board for clarity's sake.
The mods are there, I think, for fast-acting deescalation of unconstitutional things with warnings, then kicks, then if someone un-kicks themselves and keep behaving badly, a short ban.
Now, there's the question of who to give kick/ban rights to. I would nominate Iximaz, since she's in chat a lot and I figure she's a sane, level-headed person who would be responsible with these sort of powers.
Though possibly it should be Discord folks who vote, no? And I agree that anything as or more severe than a week-long ban should be mentioned on the 'Board, with pertinent logs.
(I am not a fan of obsessive log-keeping, but without hard evidence, this stuff can get he-said-she-said very quickly.)
To give the mod(s) the ability to pin and delete messages, kick people, ban people and manage the server's channels.
If we're going to have an election, we need people campaigning. Here's my speech: .
I'm not a PG. I don't even have Permission -- because I've been working and reworking the concept for my spinoff since March (Larfen can vouch that this is approximately true), looking at the same two characters from different angles and in different scenarios. I don't like to do anything hastily, which is a good quality in a mod: I won't ban people willy-nilly.
But lest you think me a wimp who will let trolls slide by, I am an adamant rule-follower. For instance, I believe I have adhered perfectly to the Constitution during my five months here. If you want another example, one of my agent bios is just about finished and I would be happy to post it; I worked hard to make sure he fit the rules of PPC canon and can field any and all questions.
I will ban a user after all other methods of de-escalation have been tried -- steps which might look something like this: once one or more parties have been established to be behaving irrationally and/or rudely, asking them to take a break (politely, or course). If they refuse to comply, I would begin with a temporary ban (if the software allows), and if they are still causing problems after their enforced holiday, a permanent ban. Of course, with particularly egregious violations such as a user threatening harm, some of these steps may be skipped, and the community will probably have to convene to discuss the incident.
The above is not intended as a proposal for a specific system for banning users, but rather as an illustration of what I think being a mod means (maybe I should've gone for some rhetoric about upholding the spirit of the community, but that kind of warm-fuzzy-make-everyone-feel-superior politics nauseates me a little bit. Which is probably why I tend to lose elections. I believe in fairness, how about that? It's true and should be deducible from my above descriptions of how I would behave as a mod).
Perhaps most importantly, I'm on the channel fairly frequently -- not constantly, but often, especially at the times Des isn't on. Sometimes I lurk, sometimes I post, but I downloaded the Discord app just so I could get notifications for this channel.
I hope you, the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, find me worthy of this responsibility.
I'm Key, and I approve this message.
But I never let any of that age or law bollocks get in my way.
I reckon she's already proven herself in the field of duty. Totally reasonable all-around, good grasp of the rules, interacts all friendly with the community.
If I had to choose the person who will inevitably ban me from the PPC, and I couldn't choose Jim Theis, I would most certainly choose Key.
Right, okay, maybe I'm a bit biased.
But I'm biased because Key's a kool dude, and kool dudes get votes.
Also, that mention of her spinoff is most certainly approximately true.
Thank you for the endorsement. Getting banned is serious business, though. Don't think you'd get extra leeway because we get along so well. I would ban you if I had to.
I'd be too ashamed to use my real voice to ban a friend, though. I might have to announce the ban in the style of Jim Theis. :)
--Key
Sweet? Oh, no, sweet? No sweetness here, nossir, not an ounce. Sweet as a lemon, I am.
Just making observations, really. Could probably find examples for all of those on this here front page, alone.
Credit where credit's due, y'know? And credit's due.
Really, though, you're doing a pretty bad job of convincing me to not get banned.
I mean, I'd love to get banned in the style of Jim Theis.
- Larfen is prepared for no extra leeway.
Makes the most sense, I think.
I recommend rotating moderators. Give three or four people a slot on a rotating schedule of mod-powers, to be changed out once a month or something like that. Or make a mod-persona (like the Nameless Admin) which multiple users have the key/password to.
I also recommend a system of checks and balances, however simple, just in case. Something like a 3/4-majority of the room can overrule the mod. Just something to keep all sides balanced, make sure the mod and ...what, constituency? Something like that? remain on the same page about what is cool with the other party.
VM, literally always an advocate for decentralization of responsibility and power
That sounds needlessly complicated, and there's little point in mods if you don't trust them. Letting three fourths of the room overrule the mod means exactly that, and frankly I wouldn't want the job if the channel-goers wouldn't be willing to trust my judgement. (As it happens, I have the job anyway, but nobody told me my judgement shouldn't be trusted. So.)
If you don't think it's a good idea, don't take it - no harm no foul.
Essentially, I think it's easy for mods and not-mods (ie, the rest of the population) to eventually get out of sync (on what rules should be, how they should be enforced) and wind up with different values. If this is left unresolved for long periods of time, it leads to a huge split, wherein both parties feel wronged by the system.
I do think putting one person indefinitely in charge of any amount of people is a bad idea for that reason - despite the best of intentions, sooner or later it gets tiresome, and then there's Drama. Regardless of who it is. What if you feel that someone is being offensive in stating their opinion*, but the rest of the channel disagrees? If you kick them off the channel, for a small or long period of time, people will start wondering "If that's all it takes, who's next?"
I know this sounds like over-complicating things. But if you don't set up a way to spread authority for rule-enforcing around the population, sooner or later the discontent will set in, and fester, and that never turns out well. That's why we have The Nameless Admin - so that doesn't happen here. Nobody is "in charge," and elections for new PGs are semi-regular. It's always better to be prepared.
*If this sounds like a stretch, consider the following scenarios. A PPCer who is from the West Bank. A PPCer who believes, staunchly, in Mao and Stalin era communism. A PPCer who believes - and this is the one that would disqualify me from Permanent Mod Status - that the recent US shootings were faked. See what I mean?
We talked on Discord a bit, and agreed that the Board-at-large should have a say in choosing who moderates the channel.
I suggest that the PGs be the mods.
I'm not sure if inertia is an appropriate way to select a leader; The Nameless Admin has always seemed to me to be a janitorial position. The Board just needs the occasional sweeping, and that's really not the same style a real-time system with a strong permissions model needs.
PGs works, I'd also nominate (and vote for!) Tomash; he's a regular on the Discord, knows his way around the technology stack, and is a level-headed person.
On a procedural level, I think that Neshomeh is right; this is more a question for the Discord regulars than the Board at large. Fortunately, I don't think it's a huge risk; the crowd that shows up most nights is really quite reasonable, I'd trust at least half of them with moderator status.
-Δ
I can think of three, maybe four of us who will probably never be in there regularly, if at all. I'd recommend that those of you who hang out there often choose someone from among you that you'll respect and listen to when any active modding is required. Maybe hold a nomination and election process, like we do when voting for PGs.
~Neshomeh, who is so very bored at work right now, she's butting in on things that aren't particularly her business.
Aside from myself (I can already mod the channel because owner but I usually sleep at night), PG-wise right now only Iximaz and DJ frequent the channel, with PC showing up sometimes. But, yeah, I agree with Nesh: I think someone people will respect and listen to is the best idea. If nobody will say anything, then I will fall back to this idea, assuming any or all of the above actually want the post.
I'm actually on fairly regularly myself, I just don't post all that much.
Otherwise, I feel like Nesh has the best solution of the ones proposed so far: have regular Discord users vote on who they think would be the best mods. They have seen what goes on and so have a good idea of what is needed. VM's rotating system seems too complicated, and the 3/4ths override goes against what mods are supposed to do.
You shall have place of honour in the arena.
Less seriously (because what can be more serious than the Temple of Partyrena?), why would that be a good idea? PGs were chosen for our writing/PPC-understanding ability, not for our capability as moderators. You want to give someone whose sole qualifications for the position were 'talks a lot' and 'wrote seriously popular stories' (ie, me) the power to decide who's allowed to stay in a chatroom? With no override available?
If your answer is yes, then frankly the lot of you deserve the Temple of Partyrena. ^_~
hS
"Writing/PPC-understanding ability" is selling the position of Permission giver a bit short. PGs are tasked with determining who will be allowed to officially write for this organization. In effect, we are already mods—albeit in an extremely limited way. Surely that implies that those who voted for us already trust our judgement at least a little bit.
PGs also have to serve as examples beyond that specific situation. Because we were selected by the community, we therefore have the obligation to do our best for the community. That should mean stepping in to uphold the Constitution, or helping those who need it.
But, like I said in my previous post, direct elections by the Discord users would probably be the best method of those proposed. I was merely saying that if Des falls back on to using PGs, I'd be okay with it.
For one, I don't see PGs as deciding who can write for the PPC so much as who can't. I realise that sounds like semantics, but to my mind, the default assumption is that most people will get Permission. We should be a filter for the bad stuff, not an exam board only the best will pass.
Does that make us a form of moderators? Ehh... at that point it really would be arguing semantics. But I don't think it's reasonable to assume 'trust us to say what's good writing' translates to 'trust us to say what's an acceptable topic of conversation'.
As to your second point: I vehemently disagree. In fact, a claim of that nature is what led to GreyLadyBast leaving the PPC - she was told she should act to a higher standard, because she was a PG and a respected figure. She took it very badly. Just because we've been voted into a position of mild authority, does not mean we have a responsibility to be an example.
Upholding the Constitution is everyone's responsibility, and it's no more mine than it is InvokerTheElementalist's. We were selected by the community to do a specific job; we have an obligation to do that job as best we can. But when we're out from under the hat, we have no more rights, authority, obligations, or responsibilities than anyone else.
hS
While I agree with what you say about it being everyone's responsibility to uphold the Constitution, I do think there's more to PGing than just knowing good writing from bad. Theoretically, everyone in the PPC should know that. It's why we're all here.
We were chosen rather than anyone else not just because we know a period from a hole in the ground, not just because of PPC knowledge, but also because people trust us to make fair judgements and not be jerks. At least, that's what I'm thinking about when it comes time to elect new PGs.
The fact is, we've earned the respect of the community, and whether you like it or not, that means they do look to us as examples of what to do and how to behave. You may have noticed that if we do things in our stories, other people tend to want to try them, too, yes? And you can bet that if we stopped respecting the Constitution ourselves, it wouldn't be long before everyone else stopped, too.
It may be, at least as far as you and I are concerned, that this has more to do with us as oldbies than us as PGs, but it's not a coincidence that the two often go together. It's not much good electing someone as PG if they're just going to wander off in a month or so, and you don't earn the trust of a community overnight anyway, so we've also picked people who have been around for awhile and look as though they'll be around a while more. It's all entangled together.
And furthermore, we don't deny permission solely based on writing skill, either. We block people who behave badly enough to hurt the community, too, because—as we're so fond of saying—we're a community first. We don't want people playing in our sandbox if we don't trust them not to pee in it. Therefore, we DO have to be judges of character and appropriateness. See above point about people trusting our fairness and good natures.
Now, whether that extends to dictating that we MUST moderate everything, everywhere, is another question. I think it's quite fair to say that's not what we signed up for, so we shouldn't be forced into broad moderation if we don't want to do it. Arguing that we're not qualified doesn't work for me, though.
~Neshomeh
I can't argue with most of your points, but:
You may have noticed that if we do things in our stories, other people tend to want to try them, too, yes?
Not yes. The most-copied person I've noticed is Tawaki, who's not a PG. On the flipside, I haven't noticed strong trends of people spinning off ideas from Phobos, or PoorCynic, or VixenMage (or sundry others). Mostly, people of late have imitated Iximaz, and I think that's far more to do with her volume of writing and tendency to cowrite than it is her Permission Giver hat.
I agree that it's not concidental that being an active writer and being elected a PG go together, but nor should it be - it takes a special kind of person to be known for their knowledge of good writing without actually writing themselves. Though, as you say, it's all very much tangled together.
And: We block people who behave badly enough to hurt the community, too, because—as we're so fond of saying—we're a community first.
Again, not really how I'd put it. Mostly people are denied permission because they haven't contributed enough. It's not our job as PGs to decide whether they're harmful - that's a matter for the Constitution, and so for the Board at large. On occasion, a Permission thread has turned into a Constitution thread, but that doesn't make it the same thing.
Yes, there is an element of character judgement in being a Permission Giver. But it's a minor part compared to the writing/PPC parts, and I'm uncomfortable with the suggestion - discussed almost entirely by Permission Givers themselves - that being elected a PG means you'd make a good moderator.
Because I know I certainly wouldn't.
hS
But it's because a) I don't go in the chat; can't moderate if I'm not there; and b) I can't keep up with real-time conversation in large groups, which is why I don't go in the chat. By the time I form a coherent response to anything, the conversation tends to have moved on by two or three topics. {= P
What I meant is that I object to the implication that I (and any other PG) wouldn't make a good mod because I lack fairness, good judgement, etc., which I'd like to think isn't true. We all exercise those qualities as PGs, I hope.
But like I said, whether that means we ought to be chat mods by default is another question, to which I say no.
And yeah, it is a little odd for all of us to stand around talking about how good/not good we are. >.>;
I suppose the copying thing is more correlation than causation, isn't it? That makes sense.
I will come out and admit that I wish I could deny Permission solely on the basis of behavior every now and then, though. Maybe it's a good thing that I can't, but I really don't like those times I'm just hoping and praying the writing is as unpromising as the individual's personality so I don't have to say yes to someone I don't even want to be around. Fortunately, that sort of situation only comes up once in a blue moon and tends to get resolved by the Board at large anyway.
~Neshomeh
I wasn't saying that you (or any other PG) don't have fairness and good judgement - or if I was, I didn't mean to! I was saying that I don't think it was (necessarily) a prominent factor in our elections/appointments, and that therefore assuming that all present, past, and future Permission Givers are moderator material would be a bad idea.
I don't think any of our currently-active PGs are people I would say no to as a moderator, either. But I have no idea (since my problems with chats are roughly the same as yours) whether they're the best candidates.
Also: some of my initial reaction comes from a remembered conversation where someone said PGs should be made moderators of any prospective New Board. Which hits at least three topics I'm categorically against, and I'm afraid some of that bled over to this topic. I'm sorry.
hS
I didn't think you actually meant that, hence beating around the bush with "logic" and "reason" like I always do. I think there's probably a lesson in this about being honest with our feelings...
Anyway, now that we've had the traditional squabble over details, perhaps we can just get on with agreeing with each other. {= )
~Neshomeh
a) Being a PG means the community trusts you, otherwise they wouldn't have voted for you.
b) Moderation is similar in that regard — a community should trust its mods.
c) Mods should be answerable to the community. Not in the overly-complicated way VM suggested; rather, if a mod ...s up, they should be told as much. We don't need (and can't implement in the channel, due to technical limitations) something like "three-fourths of a room can overrule a mod"; we need the mods to exercise common sense and decency just like everybody else.
d) I'm not going to force mod-ship on anybody. Aside from not wanting to, it's not like I can force someone to use their own mod permissions, can I now?
e) Shouldn't the channel-goers start nominating people?
f) Assuming nothing happens till next week, I'll give all PG users on the channel (except Iximaz, who seems to not want to be a mod) — that is, PC and Delta Juliette — mod rights; if/when mods are elected, I'll remove their mod rights (unless, of course, they are elected mods anyway).
... would you immediately grant me mod rights, too?
Curious about your mindset here.
hS
If you'd sign up and actually participate in the channel? Yes. There's little point in granting mod rights to someone who doesn't show up at all.
That said, the mindset is "I trust the PGs not to go pants-on-head crazy with mod rights", but I'd rather much have mods that the community chose to put its trust on them since for this the community's discretion is better than mine.
I'm on fairly often, I just don't know if I'd be able to get anyone to listen to me if that became necessary.
I personally think you'd be great for the job. I know I respect and listen to you, and I'm almost certain I'm not the only one who does on the discord channel.
I don't know how to make people listen to other people, but mods have the ability to kick or ban people from the server.
The plan was supposed to be that we get them to make us all moderators, then turn the entire channel into a permanent street party slash gladiatorial arena slash temple to our (individual and collective) excellence! Honestly, I can't work with you people!
Uh, that is how moderators work, right? Just, uh, asking for a... friend.
hS
The desktop account I use is #1229, I believe. The first time I used Discord, however, I signed in with a mobile account, which is #1047.