FYI: Reporting is no longer anonymous.

Author: drafterman

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#1
drafterman
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I think the user base should be aware that one of the changes made to the moderation tools is now that reporting is no longer anonymous.

The ability to report behavior anonymously is a crucial element to being able to report in a secure and safe manner. I find it troubling now that moderation can now evaluate reports based upon who is making them.

Even more disturbing is that this change (as far as I can tell) isn't one that was made publicly aware. Stripping user's anonymity is something that should have been made very public.

Lastly, this is not just me chicken-little-ing here. Yes, I'm the one that has been reporting all of the debate votes. Guess what? Not disallowed by the CoC. Not prohibited behavior.

Yet, because of the stripping of anonymity, I now have a moderator breathing down my neck about it, telling me that "isn't ok."

Sorry, but that's the last straw. Moderation here sucks. There is no recourse to change it.

Moderators have lied to support moderation decisions. They have used personal biases to make moderation decisions. They have made threats of moderation when there has been no violation.

They refuse to consider alternatives or feedback.

They got appointed moderators while this site was new and there really wasn't anyone to object and now that they're the big fish in their little pond they've got control of the site.

1. This change needs to be rolled back and anonymity restored to reporting.
2. The moderation team needs to change. Either the current mods need to be replaced or supplemented with mods - equal in authority - that can provide diversity and alternative viewpoints rather than three mods just parroting blindly what the chief mod wants them to.
#2
Tyrone
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Amen. The current moderation team is blatantly incompetent.
#3
RationalMadman
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@drafterman

I am the one who said it was you reporting votes. I will always be a step ahead.
#4
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I support me for new head mod. I'll show you what fucking real moderation is. Don't think you'll be around here for long the way you talk to me and to mods. Goldtop and zeichen can get a perma too.
#5
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A right to face your accuser seems too American.
#6
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@drafterman
Wait, one of the stances crucial to Bsh1's discussions regarding moderation policy and behavior was that privacy of users was paramount and was the reason why transparency in bans was not only not necessary, but harmful in extent. 

Just to abandon those privacy concerns behind closed doors? It's kind of puzzling that privacy for those perma banned or temp banned who violated CoC was absolutely essential, but anonymity in whistleblowing and reporting potential violations of CoC isn't? Especially when that harm in transparency was based off of it making it too difficult to reintegrate into the site post ban. Yet, it being known who is reporting doesn't present difficulties in interaction? Upon what basis? Magical fairy dust? 

So called that this kind of inconsistency and behavior was gonna happen. It's what always happens when you remove transparency 😂. Almost as if people act differently when they can be assured it's unlikely anyone will notice 😂

#7
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@drafterman
I apologize for the confusion, I believe this one is one me.

So the logic is that the reports have never been anonymous BUT we didn't have a page in the admin panel where the mods could see the reports list, they could see only the number of reports and that's it. That's why the mods most probably thought that the reports had been anonymous. I should have done better to keep them informed in that regard.

Anyway, it changed a couple of days ago when I released some changes to the admin panel and introduced that list of reports, where it's possible to see who reported what. I had no idea that people thought that the reports had been anonymous, so please accept my apologies.

Now, I am not sure if the reports should be anonymous, I guess we'll need to discuss that and come to some decision, but one thing I'd like to note is that it's unavoidable that some users will abuse the reporting and it creates LOTS of work for the mods which don't get paid anything for that, they dedicate their free time to help keep the community healthy and if they don't see who abuses the reporting, there is no way to prevent that person from doing that endlessly. To report 10 forum posts, it takes like 5 seconds, for the mods to manage that, it may take up to 5-10 mins and we may have hundreds, or even thousands of those, if the users get really angry and report everything they see.

#8
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@Buddamoose
Please, read above.
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#9
drafterman
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@DebateArt.com
No, I don't want some random users who happened to be the first ones to raise their hands when volunteers for mod were requested to be able to see who reports what.

Major websites like reddit seem to function just fine with thousands of users and anonymous reporting.

I don't think you are considering how significant an issue this is. Like, immediately upon having access to this information, they're abusing it. If no CoC violation has been made, mods should not be contacting users about moderation issues. PERIOD. Yet, that's what we have.

This visibility needs to be revoked.
#10
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@drafterman
Well, you see, the difference between this website and Reddit is in, I'd guess, something around tens of millions of dollars of revenues.

This website makes no income whatsoever, not any single user here has paid a penny, so we can't hire lots of developers to implement advanced auto moderation systems and we can't hire people to do the manual moderation either. 
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#11
drafterman
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@DebateArt.com
What does that have to do with reporting anonymity?

#12
David
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Also the difference between reddit and us is that they have paid moderators and hundreds of moderators. We only have two. 
#13
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@DebateArt.com
Are you at all open to the idea of removing Bsh1 as moderator?

Has nothing he's done concerned you even a little?
#14
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Also I want to point out that changing mods won't do anything AT ALL, it's impossible to have the mods that everyone likes, even if we find Jesus righteous himself and make him moderate, people will hate him anyway. And in my opinion, the mods do quite a good work here, not many of you would be willing to sacrifice your free time to work for free for the good of the community here and do it with the same diligence that we see from @bsh1 and @Virtuoso.
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#15
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@David
Firstly, you are a fucking hypocrite. You're on record as saying that anonymity is a good thing, yet you're the first to abuse it when it's gone.

Secondly, It's the ratio. For example, one of the most active subreddits, r/AskReddit has 20.5 MILLION subscribers but only 23 mods. I can't think of any single subreddit that has "hundreds of moderators" let alone any significant number that are paid.

Thirdly, WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANONYMITY?! Are you suggesting that anonymous reports are harder to deal with than nonanonymous ones?     
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#16
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@DebateArt.com
Which is why my preferred suggestion would be supplementing them with people of diverse viewpoints so it isn't essentially a tyranny. I've already offered in that regard. So complaints about the workloard are right out, because otherwise you'd be willing to take on additional moderators to handle it.

But, again, WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANONYMITY?
#17
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@drafterman
What does that have to do with reporting anonymity?
As I mentioned before, anonymous reports can be easily abused without any means to prevent that and could simply flood the admin panel and paralyze the whole moderation process, coz it would be hard to find normal reports among thousands of fake ones. And we have no men power to handle that. 


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#18
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@DebateArt.com
How does making them not anonymous fix that?
#19
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@drafterman
How does making them not anonymous fix that?
As one way, we can simply forbid abusers to report things, simple as that. 


#20
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@DebateArt.com
I would gladly take on the responsibility of being a moderator.

And yes, it's true that no moderator can please everyone. But some moderators come much closer to doing so than others. Bsh1 has managed to piss of a majority of this site despite it having like 10 active members. I'm confident that I and many others could do better than that. 

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#21
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@DebateArt.com
That is completely unprecedented. I'm not aware of any website in the world that implements such an absurd policy.

If there are issues with workload, you get more workers.

But let's set that aside. Let me know if I have this right:

1. You see absolutely no problem with stripping users of reporting anonymity.
2. You are fine with mods using that information to contact users about behavior that doesn't violate any of the rules of the site.
3. You have no intention of preserving user anonymity when it comes to reporting.

#22
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@drafterman
Secondly, It's the ratio. For example, one of the most active subreddits, r/AskReddit has 20.5 MILLION subscribers but only 23 mods. I can't think of any single subreddit that has "hundreds of moderators" let alone any significant number that are paid.
My guess is that they have bunch of devs working on complicated (possible automatic) moderation systems that substantially reduce the amount of work for the mods, or something along the lines, it's a big company after all. 


#23
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Tyrone and drafterman would be among the first I'd ban as mod.
Reddit isn't anonymous, you can't even report unless you have an account.

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#24
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@DebateArt.com
I think you're confused as to what I'm talking about. Reddit moderators are simply people like the moderation team here: unpaid volunteers who have agreed to moderate a subreddit. Yes, they do have access to some tools to help with moderation such as an auto mod, but that has nothing to do with anonymity. They have to deal with the same issue of potentially frivolous reports as any other site does, yet they seem to deal with it just fine.
#25
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Naive fools get stomped on in life and take it out on website mods lmao. Reddit mods know everurever about you when they handle a report from you. They actively check is, habits and other things to prevent multiaccou ting and use that same tech when analysing how much of a shit to give about your report. Subreddit mods can't see the IP and stuff but they pay just asuch attention to who is reporting what.
#26
RationalMadman
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Drafterman is a naive fool or active liar here. 
^ bsh1 will tell me I can't say this but goldtop is free to bully who he wants.

Reddit mods see everything.

#27
Tyrone
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@DebateArt.com
I see Drafter has volunteered as well. So don't pretend that Bsh1 and Virtuoso are the only options. There is obviously a shit ton of discontent over their moderation style. If you care about being responsive to the concerns of your site's user base, then you can easily make a change to the moderation team.

#28
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@RationalMadman
Tyrone and drafterman would be among the first I'd ban as mod.
You are never going to be a mod.

#29
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@drafterman
That is completely unprecedented. I'm not aware of any website in the world that implements such an absurd policy.

If there are issues with workload, you get more workers.

But let's set that aside. Let me know if I have this right:

1. You see absolutely no problem with stripping users of reporting anonymity.
2. You are fine with mods using that information to contact users about behavior that doesn't violate any of the rules of the site.
3. You have no intention of preserving user anonymity when it comes to reporting.
Well, first of all, there is a difference between good workload and bad workload. One thing is to moderate actually problematic objects and the other is wasting hours just handling the things that were reported simply outta anger at the mods.

Answering your questions:

1) Well, as I pointed out before, we need to discuss it, I try not to go against the users if there is a way to avoid that. But I haven't given it much thought and at the moment, I am not sure how to handle the problem with abusing the reports, if somebody provides some good ideas how to keep the anonymity and prevent the mods from wasting their life on handling empty reports, then we'll go that way.

2) People abuse the reports creating unneeded work for the mods, that's just disrespect and the fact that they actually contacted the person and asked him or her to stop, or whatever it was, I have no idea, that's just showing how diligent they are, I wouldn't bother with this. Also it's important to understand that it's probably impossible to write some CoC or anything of the kind that people wouldn't be able to find loopholes in. And again, we don't have a dedicated department for that.

3) I have no idea what we're going to do, I realized it was a problem only like 30 mins ago, we need to discuss it and decide what to do.
#30
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@Tyrone
Tyrone you are a lucky bastard to even be here still after the shit you posted. Stop acting like an authority figure. I probably won't be mod but the probability of you being mod is legit 0%.