Good morning. Welcome to The Hiddens, my ongoing series of diaries for reporting and discussing moderation activity on Daily Kos. My name is T. Max Devlin, and I will be your facilitator.
Yesterday the inaugural edition of The Hiddens adopted a verbose message-by-message breakdown of all the comments on DK that have been hidden recently. I'd like to try a briefer presentation here, but there is one comment that requires quite a bit of consideration, because it indicates a fundamental issue for "community moderation" and how it will work. Or not, as the case may be. So I'll just deal with it as it comes and try not to go on too too long.
Comments are open for discussion and questions about moderation policies or related occurrences throughout the site. Please join me below to see what you can't see, if you don't have enough mojo. (Speaking of which, the author has noticed he's down to three bars, so tips are greatly appreciated; tell your friends.)
Picking up from yesterday's appearance (or disappearance, as the case may be) of the commercial spammer account "travelchacha" when its third tip jar in a row got hidden, we pick up today with an aptly titled comment:
"Ah, too bad you got your cherry popped...", "What the wobblie is yelling at the lefties about..", and "You talkin' about me, meathead?" is a series of intemperate comments by a TU in an Anti-Capitalist group diary, all hidden by the same two moderators. I'd like you to go look at as much of the thread as you have time for, if you can, because to me it clearly exemplify the issue of 'bullying' that I described in this comment. Certainly the target could have tempered their rhetoric, but that is much like saying that bullying kids is acceptable if they're annoying, or that women shouldn't wear tight clothing to avoid getting raped, if you ask me. Had the other side of the exchange shown some sort of exemplary maturity, civility, or reasoning, it would be perfectly acceptable to hide these comments. But that isn't what happened; this was an "escalating-insult pie fight" as I described in my suggested guidelines, and the TUs should have refrained from trying to quiet only one side while ignoring the insults of the other.
The issue here isn't entirely to be calm and unemotional, but simply to be fair. When rhetoric gets heated, it almost always gets heated on both sides. You can't even use key words, the "namecalling" of our standard moderation policies, or other obvious language to make the call. The more subtle insult is the worse insult, and trying to stomp someone for "going off" three or four comments down the line is not helpful. The repeating of the inflammatory responses by the hidden user can appear to be trolling, certainly, but the case is not strong; a careful consideration of the user's participation in the thread overall, not merely the comments at issue, is necessary, which is why either a zero-tolerance policy towards insults or a high-tolerance policy towards insults is required to prevent moderation from becoming suppression of dissent. Certainly we can demand that dissent be expressed in a civil manner, but our judgment on that point is suspect.
In a very real way, moderation is about excluding unpopular opinions and impolite presentations, but not doing it too much. That's what makes the task difficult, and why good judgment is more useful than vehemence.
Now for the important part of this diary. This next example is a critical test of community moderation. As I understand it, the ideal is to have the Admins of each group provide the moderation authority. This is a direct outgrowth of the habits of diary series back on DK3. Notably, the IGTNT diaries, and to a lesser but no less important extent, LGBT and RKBA diaries. The previous example (be sure to check the context of that "meathead" comment, it is entertaining as well as informative concerning the exchange) ended with a Kossack saying to the offender "Do not come back to this diary series or group again, you are not welcome here."
If we take this to heart, the ability of a user to unilaterally ban another user from responding to diaries, without limiting it to the most extreme examples, it is little more than authoritarianism, oppression, fascism. The following instance addresses the same issue.
"David is the millionth pundit who needs to STFU" was the subject line of a new comment (not a reply to a previous comment but a response to the diary) with currently five hides and one rec. The "David" referred to was the diary author. What makes this a critical case is that the diary was in one of the first diaries for DKE, the Daily Kos Elections "subsite" formerly known as "Swing State Project". The response (from someone other than the diarist) to the hidden comment explicitly addressed the concept of community moderation, without naming it:
This does not seem to be an appropriate post here Dke is a subsite with its own way of doing things, and standard decorum. I recommend you read the mission statement if you would like to continue posting here.
I read the missions statement. The closest I could find to anything which would indicate that there was some explicit prohibition that would encompass the hidden comment (which wasn't nice but had a point to make) was this:
We also always try to support our arguments and opinions with evidence, rather than make flat, conclusory assertions.
Which, like the "no insults" guideline of general moderation, is all well and good, but only if it is applied evenhandedly. The point in the diary (which was not supported by anything but assertion as far as I can tell) which the commenter seemed to be addressing, however, was this:
First we had Barney Frank repeatedly slagging Newton Mayor Setti Warren, who recently announced his candidacy.
I think it should be obvious that the term "slagging" is inflammatory, and the tone is dismissive. But don't dare responding with that same tone, because that isn't an "appropriate post here". Had the commenter been someone familiar to the DKE crew, would the response have been the same?
In one of my early drafts of my "moderation suggestions" effort, I tried to develop some guidelines for 'community moderation', and ran into some trouble with the logic. It involved explicitly identifying categories of groups/diaries which would indicate general comment guidelines. In that system, IGTNT diaries would be labeled 'support group' diaries, and given the emotional nature of the subject, extreme suppression of even mildly disruptive rhetoric would be acceptable. In a 'discussion' diary, however, such as an open thread, hiding mildly disruptive rhetoric would itself be considered disruptive and open to rebuke if not reprisal. One of the difficulties I saw with that scenario was the issue of 'subsites'. As far as the DKE group is concerned, their diary list is "a blog" in which they are free to moderate contributions according to their local standards. But as far as the rest of us are concerned, for good or ill, they're just diaries. There isn't any way to know for sure what the guidelines are. This itself wouldn't be an issue for contributors, comments simply get hidden when they are not appropriate and don't get hidden when they are appropriate. There are two related mechanisms that cause problems and can provide solutions if we change how we use them that relate to this point. This 'diary identification' issue has subtle implications that may not be immediately apparent. As I said, getting a comment hidden shouldn't cause more disruption than it avoids, but there is the related issue of mojo. Average users who are not TUs are also effected, but TUs are more conscious of it. Either way, the response to being hidden is rarely calm and civil on the target's part. But with a TU as a target, it can turn things quite sour quite quickly even if the offense was inadvertent (because the poster was not aware in advance of the restrictive or even arbitrary 'guidelines' being used to moderate.) Another issue which might not occur to you at first glance is that diaries now get published by more than one group. Who's rules take precedence?
To make this scenario work, as I mentioned in the comment about "bullying" I linked to earlier, TUs must take responsibility for ensuring that either social moderation (comments in response, often ridiculing when it seems appropriate) or community moderation (hiding comments) is being used in response to disruption but not both.
The first reason there are conflicts in community moderation is because there is no mechanism to easily identify what rules apply to a diary or thread you wish to contribute to. And while we might consider it assumed that a TU should take the time to find that out before posting, I don't think it is feasible to expect an excessive amount of CYA investigation before posting anything anywhere, particularly when that effort must be repeated for every context, not even for TUs but certainly not for average users.
The second reason there are conflicts (on top of the inconsistent application of guidelines described previously) is the officially promoted technique of explaining the hiderating in the thread, generally by replying to the hidden comment. I've already strongly suggested that this practice be abandoned; rather than informing other TUs of the issues, it is usually just used as an opportunity to take some shots or throw some condescension on the target, who is then primed to respond angrily and invite escalation (refer to our first example above.)
The two suggestions I have for easily supplying the circumstances necessary to allow community moderation are Discussion Categories and identification of offense.
Each diary posted should include, in a prominent place in the diary itself as well as the tip jar, an identification of the "contribution and moderation guidelines" that will prevail in the comments section, by category. Suggestions for categories will be part of the next diary in this series, but it is important to have a minimum number of them and that the differences between them are as clear as possible. If each diary/group becomes a "special case", that is effectively just our current LotF (Lord of the Flies) method.
When a comment is given its first donut, the TU doing so is responsible (solely) for posting a reply to that would-be-hidden message. It should contain only boilerplate text. Such as:
"Your comment did not present your argument using acceptable language according to the guidelines in use in this diary. Please rephrase your ideas using less inflammatory or insulting language." No other mention should be made of the content of the hidden comment.
My suggested practice is to then come here, to the current diary for The Hiddens, and post a comment with a link to the comment, if there are any issues of concern. The offender can then be directed to that discussion, rather than engaging them in argument about the moderation call in the thread where it occurred.
Moving on to more of yesterday's hiddens, we have a "good discussion for whitehousevoice.com" troll (six HRs) under the username clarkm, already banned.
Disposition: commercial troll Status: user banned
Following that we have a comment titled "They don't HAVE to do anything" which was hidden with five donuts and one uprate. These last two hiddens clearly exemplify the moderation task. The last one was a clear troll; the account only existed to try to direct traffic to another web site. Regardless of whether it is a for-profit site, this qualifes as 'commercial trolling'. But this hidden is as different as possible from that. There isn't anything insulting, ad hom, or unreasonable about it. The crux of the message, four decent paragraphs, was summed up by the final line:
If all we do is say that someone HAS to provide for us, then we live at their mercy. And that doesn't usually turn out to well.
That summary doesn't do the comment justice. I urge all TUs to go read it. If it were still open for tipping, I'd uprate it myself. I'm not even going to bother checking the context; the tone is simply too even and reasonable.
Disposition:
HR abuse Status: of interest
The tip jar of the troll diary "Will Black America Embrace CNN’s Don Lemon’s Coming Out??" has finally been hidden, with six recs and 36 HRs. I think it is ambiguous what the official rules are on tip jars under standard moderation. My suggested rules are less so: uprating of HRs on a tip jar are encouraged. If you agree with the diary, or simply disagree with the pastry, it doesn't matter. Tip jars are a special case in my mind; the only problem may be that they're not in terms of the algorithms. Like I said, standard moderation is ambiguous.
I described the diary as a troll diary, and I want to say more about that (again; this is a point I'm going to repeat many more times as well.) That means it is a diary intended to be a troll, not (necessarily) a diary written by a troll. The same terminology is used in The Hiddens; when I write that some comment is "a troll", I am referring to the comment, unless I make it more explicit that it is the user that is a troll. The vast majority of troll comments and troll attempts and trolling are accidental trolls; Kossacks (nominally in good standing) who are acting like trolls, but aren't really. The author of this troll diary is a case in point. Every diary he has posted, save perhaps one, has effectively been a troll. He posts things that are purposefully and even pointlessly provocative, has admitted to enjoying the sometimes heated responses, but has not responded himself for the most part. In fact, he's only posted six diaries, but all in the two weeks or so since he registered, and only posted five comments (apparently hidden comments don't count against that displayed statistic.) Most of the others were simply ignored apart from recipes and such. But this one was obviously and thoroughly a "let's you and them fight" game. It used simple rhetorical manipulation and emotional maneuvering to try to pit the LGBT Kossacks against the BK Kossacks. Perhaps simply to illustrate the issue of gay blacks using a provocative pseudo-socratic approach. But that right there is trolling. That it might well be explicitly what the author intended to do might easily make it worse. But what if they are themselves a gay black Democrat?
The ultimate point of this is a meta-rule that I have always applied myself (as much as possible; disputes will arise about whether I've ever thrown a retributive donut) is "HR the comment, not the commenter." Other than the (hopefully rare) exception of a public HOS, you should base the decision to hiderate a comment based only on the contents of that comment, not who wrote them. There is a bit of wiggle-room in there for tip jars, as always. It makes sense that it is acceptable to use your overall impression of the diarist in interpreting their work if you want, since it is ludicrous to pretend it can be avoided. But for comments, we must insist that they be as blind as possible, or they're just ad hom, bullying, and stalking (in the general vernacular, not the special DK sense of 'outing', another bit of traditional terminology that I've seen cause problems and confusion btw). It shouldn't make any difference (it will, because we're human, but we can try to transcend our subjectivity and should) which Kossack posted it, the comment should be judged by the text. It is simple and easy to "know someone is kidding" because you know them and are familiar with their history. Is everyone who comes across that comment on this board (not just Kossacks but anyone) going to know that context? Or is the only context they're going to see the text in front of them? Shouldn't we be using that as our measure, then?
Another issue that impacts this call; the reason the tip jar went 'over the top' into hides was because the diary got republished by the "Trolls" group. Just the kind of tricky call I worried about earlier. Republishing someone's diary involuntarily is a dubious practice. Up to now, the "Trolls" group hasn't made any tough calls, I don't think. But the practice is little more than "call outs" and ad hom in absentia in even the best cases. I think the idea was a worthy (and recent) attempt at inspiring "community moderation", but suffers from confusion about what that means and how it differs from "social moderation". Still, in this case it might well have served its purpose admirably, though I doubt anyone is bothering to make clear that it is the diary being labeled a "troll", not necessarily the diarist.
Enough babbling. On the tip jar of the "Will Black America" diary:
Disposition: troll. Status: not a troll.
Again I'm going too long so there will be spill-over to tomorrow's edition. Will there ever come a day when I will catch up to real time? But let me pop in one more, because it is worth dwelling on overnight.
Under the subject line "This smacks of self-rationalization", a comment in a diary discussing the Bin Laden operation received nine HRs and one uprate for referring to it as an "illegal assassination".
Disposition: ? Status: ?
See you in The Hiddens.