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I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day and oh man did I learn how a few people can make your life hell. One th

I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day and oh man did I learn how a few people can make your life hell. One thing not mentioned many times in these discussions are the poor moderators. Having to look at all that stuff, some of which can be very disturbing or shocking (think death, gore, etc as well as the racy things) really takes a toll on the mind. The more automation the less moderators have to deal with and then usually its the tamer middle ground content.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
saas_sam 5y ago
There have been a bunch of articles lately about the horrors that Facebook moderators have to pour through. FB has been forced to pay $MMs to some of them for mental health: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52642633 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52642633
echelon 5y ago
> I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day Similar experience, though I'll say that the worst was dealing with other teenagers that threatened suicide when you banned them. That always took a lot of effort to de-escalate and was a complete drain on personal mental health. I could deal with porn, shock images, and script kiddie defacements, but having people threaten to kill themselves was human and personal. It hurt, especially when the other person was legitimately having a personal crisis. I still think about some of these people and wonder if they're okay.
- xwdv 5y ago
  Several years ago a popular gaming forum with a significant teenage audience I used to read had declared a simple policy toward threats of suicide. If you were threatening to kill yourself, do it, and stop messaging the mods, they are not here to talk you down from a ledge. It seemed pretty effective.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    That's horrible! Did you run that plan past any lawyers?
    - rfrey 5y ago
      Your parent said they used to read the forum, not that they ran it.
  - getlawgdon 5y ago
    Oof. That is a genuinely terrible and cruel approach.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Pointing to a mental health crisis service would be far more advisable. I'd stick with the ban if the threat was in response to moderation actions.
    - xwdv 5y ago
      Most these threats weren’t serious, just some problematic teen looking for attention. Showing them that some strangers don’t give a shit about them or their antics could be a real eye opener.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        And what of the threats which were not? Responding "just kill yourself already" is simply beyond the pale.
ericd 5y ago
Even without seeing that stuff, seeing a constant stream of bad behaviors with the probably-good behavior filtered out can subtly change your priors about people - it makes you start thinking people suck more in general, kind of like how watching news where they show the worst of the worst makes one trust people less. I definitely used to notice this after some time working on our moderation queues.
Goronmon 5y ago
I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day and oh man did I learn how a few people can make your life hell. I was also a mod for a popular gaming forum way back in the day. It was pretty miserable looking back. Personally, for me, the extreme/shocking content wasn't the biggest issue. That stuff was quick and easy to deal with. If you saw that type of content you just immediately deleted it and permanently banned account. Quick and easy. What was a lot harder were the toxic users that just stuck around. Not doing anything bad enough to necessarily warrant a permanent ban, but just a constant stream of shitty behavior. Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users.
- zy0n911 5y ago
  This forum, didn't happen to start with a T and end with a G? (Shortened acronym)
- sroussey 5y ago
  We had some of the crazy people track us down and call in bomb/death threats to our office building. So many though we were in collusion with a specific forum moderator (out of a million forums) and got to incensed. And this was in the early 2000s that we think was a saner time.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    A close friend of mine is a primary contributor to an extremely popular console emulator. He learned quickly to author under an alias which he keeps secret – even from most of our friend group. It's bizarre that he has to keep this real love of his, which he's devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours to, so close to his chest. But sadly The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory holds true today.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  > What was a lot harder were the toxic users that just stuck around. Not doing anything bad enough to necessarily warrant a permanent ban, but just a constant stream of shitty behavior. Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users. What people find out, again and again, is that you just ban those users. Don't need an excuse. Just ban them. Even if they are popular. Your community will be much better once you do.
wainstead 5y ago
> Having to look at all that stuff, some of which can be very disturbing or shocking Yup, was the designated person to report all child porn for our photo-sharing website. It was horrific. Some of those images still haunt me today, they were so awful. And the way the reporting to the NCMEC[0] server worked, you had to upload every single image individually. They did not accept zip files or anything at the time. It was a giant web form that would take about forty image files at once. [0] https://www.missingkids.org/HOME https://www.missingkids.org/HOME
wffurr 5y ago
Someone still ends up reviewing images for the ML training dataset. That's still a huge improvement over every mod everywhere seeing the same images repeatedly, but someone has to make the call at some point.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

saas_sam 5y ago

There have been a bunch of articles lately about the horrors that Facebook moderators have to pour through. FB has been forced to pay $MMs to some of them for mental health: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52642633 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52642633

echelon 5y ago

> I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day Similar experience, though I'll say that the worst was dealing with other teenagers that threatened suicide when you banned them. That always took a lot of effort to de-escalate and was a complete drain on personal mental health. I could deal with porn, shock images, and script kiddie defacements, but having people threaten to kill themselves was human and personal. It hurt, especially when the other person was legitimately having a personal crisis. I still think about some of these people and wonder if they're okay.

xwdv 5y ago
Several years ago a popular gaming forum with a significant teenage audience I used to read had declared a simple policy toward threats of suicide. If you were threatening to kill yourself, do it, and stop messaging the mods, they are not here to talk you down from a ledge. It seemed pretty effective.
- fragmede 5y ago
  That's horrible! Did you run that plan past any lawyers?
  - rfrey 5y ago
    Your parent said they used to read the forum, not that they ran it.
- getlawgdon 5y ago
  Oof. That is a genuinely terrible and cruel approach.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Pointing to a mental health crisis service would be far more advisable. I'd stick with the ban if the threat was in response to moderation actions.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    Most these threats weren’t serious, just some problematic teen looking for attention. Showing them that some strangers don’t give a shit about them or their antics could be a real eye opener.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      And what of the threats which were not? Responding "just kill yourself already" is simply beyond the pale.

ericd 5y ago

Even without seeing that stuff, seeing a constant stream of bad behaviors with the probably-good behavior filtered out can subtly change your priors about people - it makes you start thinking people suck more in general, kind of like how watching news where they show the worst of the worst makes one trust people less. I definitely used to notice this after some time working on our moderation queues.

Goronmon 5y ago

I'll never forget having to be a moderator for a somewhat popular forum back in the day and oh man did I learn how a few people can make your life hell. I was also a mod for a popular gaming forum way back in the day. It was pretty miserable looking back. Personally, for me, the extreme/shocking content wasn't the biggest issue. That stuff was quick and easy to deal with. If you saw that type of content you just immediately deleted it and permanently banned account. Quick and easy. What was a lot harder were the toxic users that just stuck around. Not doing anything bad enough to necessarily warrant a permanent ban, but just a constant stream of shitty behavior. Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users.

zy0n911 5y ago
This forum, didn't happen to start with a T and end with a G? (Shortened acronym)
sroussey 5y ago
We had some of the crazy people track us down and call in bomb/death threats to our office building. So many though we were in collusion with a specific forum moderator (out of a million forums) and got to incensed. And this was in the early 2000s that we think was a saner time.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  A close friend of mine is a primary contributor to an extremely popular console emulator. He learned quickly to author under an alias which he keeps secret – even from most of our friend group. It's bizarre that he has to keep this real love of his, which he's devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours to, so close to his chest. But sadly The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory holds true today.
user-the-name 5y ago
> What was a lot harder were the toxic users that just stuck around. Not doing anything bad enough to necessarily warrant a permanent ban, but just a constant stream of shitty behavior. Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users. What people find out, again and again, is that you just ban those users. Don't need an excuse. Just ban them. Even if they are popular. Your community will be much better once you do.

wainstead 5y ago

> Having to look at all that stuff, some of which can be very disturbing or shocking Yup, was the designated person to report all child porn for our photo-sharing website. It was horrific. Some of those images still haunt me today, they were so awful. And the way the reporting to the NCMEC[0] server worked, you had to upload every single image individually. They did not accept zip files or anything at the time. It was a giant web form that would take about forty image files at once. [0] https://www.missingkids.org/HOME https://www.missingkids.org/HOME

wffurr 5y ago

Someone still ends up reviewing images for the ML training dataset. That's still a huge improvement over every mod everywhere seeing the same images repeatedly, but someone has to make the call at some point.