[This discussion is restricted to Council Members. Please do not reply. On the other hand, as always, you're free to use the Private Messenger (PM).]

I have never really liked the forum moderation stuff, but due to my position at BWL, it has been natural that I have had to moderate it, and get involved in such issues. I have always handled problematic situations without batting an eyelash, without complicating anything:

• If I see that a user intentionally makes trouble for any reason (fun, envy, etc.) and refuses the Terms of Use, it has never been a problem for me to block or completely remove the account.
• If I see that a user is doing something harmful unintentionally, e.g. because he or she didn't fully understand the Terms of Use, or simply a newcomer, I'm very patient, and helpful. Those who want the forum to be a clean, friendly, useful and (depending on the subforum) a funny place are always welcome here, no matter what they do or did.

This is a rather simplified approach, but I've always considered this "moderation" thing as something inferior to the actual mission of the BWL forum, which is supporting IE modding as well as providing a friendly, credible and clean place for on-topic and off-topic discussions. "Moderation" is only required when someone doesn't respect the mission of the forum. Respectful and benevolent users never have to meet "moderation" and similar things.

On the other hand, as I've written, it has been necessary for me to deal with "moderation" due to my position here, and during the years, I have actually started to wonder about a few things. About certain things I've noticed during my quick visits on other forums. Interesting phenomena. This thread is for discussing them and similar questions, for BWL Council Members. It's not hidden, because I decided to make it available for reading, so everyone interested can follow it.

It's important to note that by "moderation", I don't refer to moderator actions that aren't related with an actual problem (e.g. trolling is an actual problem). So, "moderation" in this post doesn't include splitting topics, moving posts to the appropriate place etc. Instead, by "moderation" I mean "moderation in exceptional/problematic cases".

Some months ago, perhaps I would have believed that threads such as this are unnecessary and useless, but at the moment, one can be interesting, because it can give answers to some questions. Although "case studies" & references are possible, this is about general questions and phenomena, and that's why it can be useful after all. Of course, any more threads in this topic would be useless and wouldn't serve the purpose of the BWL forum.

In this initial post, I bring up two matters.


1. Notions and misbeliefs of certain users about freedom of speech in online written communication

Usually, users don't question the right of a Terms of Use to exist, yet somehow certain users cannot accept that their "freedom of speech" is restricted by some forum rules. Somehow they don't realize that the purpose of rules of a forum is exactly to keep it clean and friendly for benevolent users.

Somehow, even if these certain people try to follow the Terms of Use, they often keep following their own guidelines. Sometimes this results in a problem, and when the Terms of Use is enforced (e.g. a post is removed), they become indignant and start to protest & grumble in various ways. Since protest against ToU isn't allowed in the same forum where the same ToU applies (otherwise the ToU would make no sense), they run to other forums and start grumbling.

And this is the interesting phenomenon. They run to other forums to express their objections against something that they can't influence, can't change. On top of it all, they do it after something which wasn't unfair towards them at all, as it was just the enforcement of the Terms of Use. Sometimes they start to make up false claims, for example, they accuse the forum's administration (with the ToU in question) of bias and dictatorship ("my post was deleted because I dared to disagree with the administration") -- while the reality is, they simply didn't obey the Terms of Use, so nothing unfair or surprising happened.

Nothing unfair or surprising happened, yet they need to run and complain on other places where they're free to complain. For some reason, they need the reassurance, they need the "support". They can't just say to themselves "I violated the Terms of Use, so the content I published was moderated", they somehow can't accept that "freedom of speech" isn't unlimited, it is reasonably restricted by the more reasonable ToU versions in order to keep a forum clean, friendly and a credible source of information.

So it's interesting that such people need to run somewhere and "prove" there that they *can* post if they want, and "nothing" can hinder them. It's interesting that they need to PUBLICLY complain about the "terrible injustice" that happened to them, they can't just say "I didn't follow the Terms of Use, so the content I published was moderated" and accept it silently like a gentleman.

It's even funnier when due to their anger ( towards the forum where they didn't follow the rules and thus were moderated), they start telling things such as "I don't care about that forum", "No one visits it", "There is nothing important there" etc., WHILE actually they keep reading the forum in question, they follow its discussions and keep talking about it on a different forum. That is, it actually remains important for them.

It remains important for them for some reason, probably because they still CANNOT accept that they don't have unlimited freedom of speech. It is a thorn in their flesh. The fact they can't say whatever they want keeps annoying them, but they try to disguise this in various ways (such as telling that the forum is "no longer important" for them). Very interesting phenomenon, about how certain people cannot overcome their misbeliefs.

They somehow confuse online written communication with their everyday talks in the pub with their pals. Really, sometimes it's funny how they try to fight against something they have no chance to change, and meanwhile try to disguise/hide their annoyance in various ways.



2. Policies of forums with very weak, non-restrictive Terms of Use

It's another important question why the rules of a forum that is dedicated to a particular activity allow things that disturb that particular primary activity. The way trolls are handled is a good example.

It's strange when certain forums allow trolls, and don't protect the benevolent users from the attacks of trolls. Instead of removing the troll, certain users/administrators ask users not to "feed" or "bait" trolls (example1, example2). In fact, I remember that the owner of the G3 site also said to users: "don't feed trolls". Why do the benevolent users have to worry about trolls -- why trolls aren't removed instead? For example, this thread can also be a good "case study" here: an empty-headed, bored, uneducated troll attacked a benevolent user who was discussing something that belongs to the forum's purpose (IE modding), and no moderator or administrator tried to protect the benevolent user from the troll. Did that benevolent user (Wounded Lion) "feed the troll" too?

Isn't it a bit grotesque and self-contradicting viewpoint (especially from forum administrators/owners!) that benevolent users should pay attention not to "feed" TROLLS, instead of forum rules PROTECTING benevolent users from trolls? No one should get me wrong here: I'm not criticizing particular sites here, I'm merely asking a question about an interesting thing. Because it's interesting that certain forums allow trolls, and they imply that if a troll is trolling, it's the mistake of the users because they fed the troll! Isn't this funny?

It's hard to find the reasons. Threads where trolls post tempt many visitors and readers (though usually not of the intelligent sort -- at least those who use the forum exclusively to read such threads are not intelligent users for sure), so perhaps they're good for those forum owners who prefer quantity (visitor count and traffic) to actual quality. If that's the case, then the "don't feed the trolls" advice is pure hipocricy, and the site leaders are actually satisfied that trolls help to keep the traffic of their general discussion forums or off-topic forums. But this is only one reasoning, perhaps there are better ones.

Interesting phenomenon for sure.

I have always considered topics such as this as useless, but this one contains questions that others may also be wondering about (at least, I'm somewhat wondering about the reasons), this is why this thread is an exception (where everyone has read access for the time being, and Council Members have write access).

By the way, I bet this thread will also trigger (and thus prove) a particular phenomenon.

Well, a lot of the problems stems from the general disrespect of any type of authority that is rampant in our society these days. One main reason that people in general have become so disdainful is because of the lack of any common sense in the lawmaking of governments and the way it is enforced. Ignorant laws that really shouldn't be passed have a way of channeling a dislike for anyone in power. Such as: parents can now be jailed for disciplining a wayward child. Now, is all this the result of the presence of power and authority? No. There is no type of society or group (be it a family, country, forum, social group, etc) that can run without it. If one would stop to take notice, he would see that each of those groups has a head.

Now, along with this disdain for proper authority comes the belief that one can say anything that he wishes without restraint. And this is referred to as "Freedom of Speech" and is regarded as a right. Well, technically, this would be a license, not a right. A license is something that is allowed under law, but not necessarily morally acceptable. For example, I have had a person threaten and curse me (I cannot repeat the words here ) and then tell me he had the right to do so under "Freedom of Speech". Now, is that acceptable behavior? Something that we should be proud to allow? OF COURSE NOT! So, as we can see, this so called "freedom" that many mistakingly believe we have is nothing more than permission to do anything with speech possible -- from indulging in casual conversation to spreading lies, to threatening others. Funny, though, that when we insult a police officer we pay for it. Oops. I guess we don't have freedom of speech. To put is simply, what we have in my country (U.S.A.) -- and probably many others -- is the LICENSE to say anything.

Fortunately, in our own little world of this particular forum, we can run things properly. Over here, one has freedom of speech as much as he wants -- but he doesn't have the license to say anything he wants. Remember, there is a distinct difference between the two.

Sir_Carnifex
BWL Department of Common Sense

Very concise and expressive summary, Sir Carnifex! And unfortunately, certain forum administrations just seem to encourage the attitude you've described (i.e. "freedom of speech = freedom to say anything to want, regardless of how it may affect, hurt or insult others").


Indeed. For example, BWL doesn't allow the of use swearing and cursing words, and doesn't encourage troublemaking, machinations and the spreading of lies about other users.

Fortunately, this policy results in a certain auto-filtering as well. Trolls and their sort usually don't register, because they can't find a good soil here for their perverted activities and machinations -- in other words, our Terms of Use filter them out.

Forums which allow trolls don't delete even the worst posts from such trolls, to "prove" their principles that they delete nothing. As if it was something one can be proud of. It reminds me to a (hypothetical) society which allows criminals and swindlers. As you've said to me once, it doesn't make sense for a forum to have moderators but no moderation rules ( = i.e. moderators have nothing to do, because everything is allowed, like in an anarchy).

I honestly don't know where I could publish my mods if our BWL wasn't here.

P.S.: Sikret has a very good post related to the present topic. It can be seen here. I can recommend it to everyone.

Heh...I always try to keep everything short and sweet. The less words there are, the less ways for others to twist them.

Good observation, Sir Carnifex! That's the problem of online communication with such type of people: they twist your words, and if you (unsurprisingly) clarify what you meant (so no one will get the wrong interpretation), they will twist your clarification, and so on. They take parts out of the context which they can twist, and ignore other parts which can't be twisted. Of course, eventually, such cases often degenerate to plain trolling.

Additionally, let me make an attempt to generalize one of your other great observations, quoted below:

In fact, many of them mistakingly believe they can do anything online that is possible. In the "real life", this is not true, because law restricts what someone is allowed to do. On the other hand, on the internet, they have a misbelief that the only things they can't do is what's "physically" impossible to do. Let me tell a good example.

When this thread was opened, I also got a private message where the sender reacted to some of my points in the initial post, and recommended that I should close this thread if it's meant to be an administrator discussion (since administrators can also post in closed topics). In other words, the sender found it wrong that the thread "physically" allows anyone to reply, but it's restricted by my initial note. This reflects that many people only accept "physical" restrictions (e.g. closed topic via the forum software), and they find it annoying when they could do something (= reply in the thread) -- i.e. they are not hindered "physically" e.g. by forum software -- but they are not allowed to do it. They aren't allowed to do it, which means they have to restrain themselves, on their own. Somehow they feel this as something unfair towards their "freedom" -- and they don't realize the truth.

The other purpose of this thread (apart from discussing these issues) is to create exactly such a situation, i.e. where visitors must refrain themselves, because "physically", they're not prevented from replying. It's like a practice, or something which may help certain online visitors to realize that they have a wrong, twisted notion about what "freedom" is in the internet.

So when I've written that this thread would trigger a particular phenomenon, I referred to the protest that would appear against this thread. And indeed it appeared, in more forms. One of them is the private message I received; another example is a thread at PPG (or G3? I don't remember), with title "[Restricted] Launch invitation" or something like that (I don't remember). It's a form of ironic/"funny" protest too, where they express their disagreement with sarcasm or funny statements.

This proves that threads such as this disturb them, and generally, any situation where they have to respect some sort of rule is annoying for them. If it didn't disturb them, they wouldn't keep writing about it, they wouldn't create and update whole topics about it etc. So despite their statements how they don't like and don't care about things such as this, they do care, because it disturbs them. They express their disagreement/protest in various forms, as we can see.

A part of them actually wouldn't dislike the atmosphere and rules of sites such as our BWL (where we communicate according to well-estabilished standards), but since they can't be the members of it, they rather accuse it of "elitism" (in a negative sense) and "dictature", while they are actually envious, because they would like to be members, but they can't, due to their own weaknesses. For example, such weakness is when someone refuses to accept that a community works according to rules, and those rules should be followed by everyone. They can't overcome this weakness, which prevents them from becoming members, so they are envious. Because actually they also feel that something cannot work without rules, and those rules are needed for a clean and friendly environment -- but they can't give up their own weakness "I can do anything that is possible", so only posts of envy & sarcasm on other forums are what remains for them.

To sum up, they do know that "elitism" ensured by reasonable rules is "positive" elitism (even if in their posts they try to imply that it's "negative"), and they want to belong to a place with such "elite" rules (they want to be the part of the "positive elite"). However, since they can't overcome their own weaknesses and wrong notions, they know they can't join the "positive elite", so only envy remains for them.

It's really funny when they dedicate complete threads on other forums to express their protest. It's funny because they spend a lot of time for writing meaningless posts, without realizing that it won't change on anything. As if they had a hope that their protest will have any effect. Instead, they should realize how wrong their "freedom" definition is. But they won't realize it. Why? I guess it has social & mentality roots, but discussing this would be far beyond the scope of this topic.

To connect those two quotes, allow me to say that it IS really tempting to post something sarcastic in that thread. Fortunately, I restrained myself (and it's hard to restrain oneself on a forum that encourages non-restraint!). If I didn't, well.... Let's just say that back on an old game server nobody ever beat me at cutting remarks. Then again, on that old game server, when players started rooms to protest my "elitism", I'd just close down the room and boot the players. Elitist? No. I just don't tolerate disrespect.

Ah, yes... the good old days.