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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. I was

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.
- doublerabbit 5y ago
  > 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. Rule #1 of moderation. Keep it in an open transparent log and you'll find positivity.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  I have done this for years and it just works. You know these users give off a bad vibe and that others are put off by it. Just remove them and ignore the complaints from the user. They can find another space that accepts them. I don't even bother writing rules lists because they are pointless. I do give warnings out first but usually that does nothing to change behavior anyway.
nicbou 5y ago
That was also my experience moderating a medium-sized city subreddit. Bigger problems were easily dealt with. Toxicity was a lot harder to deal with, especially when it's so easy to create a throwaway account. I quit when one user decided to target me personally, and kept evading bans to cause more grief. All of this crap, and your reward is more complaints, more demands.
- specialist 5y ago
  > ...so easy to create a throwaway account Bingo. Why is authenticity so verboten? If u/gonewild can manage user verification, then any one can. Doubly so when surveillance capitalists like facebook and NSA already have (shadow) profiles for every person, living and dead. Facebook absolutely already knows the true identity of each and every troll. Not verifying account creation is a convenient fiction, willful ignorance, allowing their outrage machine to profit. "lalala", hands over ears, "i can't hear you!"
notacoward 5y ago
> What was a lot harder were the toxic users that just stuck around. In about a year as a mod on a semi-busy political forum, the trickiest situations always seemed to involve two users, neither generally horrible but both continually stepping over the line in their interactions with each other. And each had their own highly motivated allies, so any action would ignite a new firestorm of complaints about biased moderators. What a nightmare. Probably part of why that site doesn't exist any more. BTW, that's also where I learned some rules of effective moderation. Unfortunately, finding a forum where moderators know how to moderate is hard. Far more often, they fall into a pattern of ruling on technicalities instead of considering what will actually improve discourse, and they always end up getting manipulated by the community's worst members to drive out better ones.
hnbad 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. This is the problem with community guidelines being the be-all and end-all. Hard rules are great for catching insults or slurs. They're not so great for dealing with actual abuse or inciting very bad ideas. I think Innuendo Studios' video on this problem is one of the best explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g There's a reason white supremacists and literal nazis (yes, really with the salutes, genocide fantasies, Jewish conspiracy theory and all) have shifted from using obvious language to dogwhistles and "just asking questions". Erosion is a much more powerful force than a few direct impacts. If you want to moderate a community, you need to have a plan for dealing with toxic individuals, not just language. We tend to imagine "hackers" and (foul-mouthed) "trolls" but I find Molly's archetypes a lot more though-provoking: https://twitter.com/mollyclare/status/1254886822779502593?lang=en https://twitter.com/mollyclare/status/1254886822779502593?la... I think community moderation is a problem we tend to run into the Dunning-Kruger effect with because it seems like something we have an intuitive understanding of even if we have zero experience actually doing it and having ever learned what works and what doesn't.
- notacoward 5y ago
  > Hard rules are great for catching insults or slurs. Bingo. Hard rules encourage brinksmanship. There's always a class of "picador" users who will poke and prod and provoke just up to the line where the rules are, then flag the response. A moderator too wrapped up in rule by technicality (or too lazy to look at context) will then come down as harshly as they can on the author of the flagged comment, and give the picador a total pass. Problem is, the picador does this again and again and again, never making a positive contribution, while their targets are often chosen precisely for their prominence. Guess which one is encouraged to continue their behavior, and which one is encouraged to go away. Has the "moderator" helped to improve discourse on the site, or helped to ruin it?
simorley 5y ago
> Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users. If the "toxic" users were the most popular, how do you know you were not the "toxic" one instead? If the community is supporting the "toxic" material, how could it be "toxic"? In my experience, it's not the toxic users that's the problem. It tends to be the toxic mods. You can ignore toxic users. You really can't ignore the toxic mods. I also have a problem with the term "toxic". It ultimately means "something I don't like". Mods should never ban "toxic" content. They should ban illegal and perhaps non-pertinent content. But that's just my opinion.

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

doublerabbit 5y ago
> 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. Rule #1 of moderation. Keep it in an open transparent log and you'll find positivity.
SilverRed 5y ago
I have done this for years and it just works. You know these users give off a bad vibe and that others are put off by it. Just remove them and ignore the complaints from the user. They can find another space that accepts them. I don't even bother writing rules lists because they are pointless. I do give warnings out first but usually that does nothing to change behavior anyway.

nicbou 5y ago

That was also my experience moderating a medium-sized city subreddit. Bigger problems were easily dealt with. Toxicity was a lot harder to deal with, especially when it's so easy to create a throwaway account. I quit when one user decided to target me personally, and kept evading bans to cause more grief. All of this crap, and your reward is more complaints, more demands.

specialist 5y ago
> ...so easy to create a throwaway account Bingo. Why is authenticity so verboten? If u/gonewild can manage user verification, then any one can. Doubly so when surveillance capitalists like facebook and NSA already have (shadow) profiles for every person, living and dead. Facebook absolutely already knows the true identity of each and every troll. Not verifying account creation is a convenient fiction, willful ignorance, allowing their outrage machine to profit. "lalala", hands over ears, "i can't hear you!"

notacoward 5y ago

> What was a lot harder were the toxic users that just stuck around. In about a year as a mod on a semi-busy political forum, the trickiest situations always seemed to involve two users, neither generally horrible but both continually stepping over the line in their interactions with each other. And each had their own highly motivated allies, so any action would ignite a new firestorm of complaints about biased moderators. What a nightmare. Probably part of why that site doesn't exist any more. BTW, that's also where I learned some rules of effective moderation. Unfortunately, finding a forum where moderators know how to moderate is hard. Far more often, they fall into a pattern of ruling on technicalities instead of considering what will actually improve discourse, and they always end up getting manipulated by the community's worst members to drive out better ones.

hnbad 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. This is the problem with community guidelines being the be-all and end-all. Hard rules are great for catching insults or slurs. They're not so great for dealing with actual abuse or inciting very bad ideas. I think Innuendo Studios' video on this problem is one of the best explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g There's a reason white supremacists and literal nazis (yes, really with the salutes, genocide fantasies, Jewish conspiracy theory and all) have shifted from using obvious language to dogwhistles and "just asking questions". Erosion is a much more powerful force than a few direct impacts. If you want to moderate a community, you need to have a plan for dealing with toxic individuals, not just language. We tend to imagine "hackers" and (foul-mouthed) "trolls" but I find Molly's archetypes a lot more though-provoking: https://twitter.com/mollyclare/status/1254886822779502593?lang=en https://twitter.com/mollyclare/status/1254886822779502593?la... I think community moderation is a problem we tend to run into the Dunning-Kruger effect with because it seems like something we have an intuitive understanding of even if we have zero experience actually doing it and having ever learned what works and what doesn't.

notacoward 5y ago
> Hard rules are great for catching insults or slurs. Bingo. Hard rules encourage brinksmanship. There's always a class of "picador" users who will poke and prod and provoke just up to the line where the rules are, then flag the response. A moderator too wrapped up in rule by technicality (or too lazy to look at context) will then come down as harshly as they can on the author of the flagged comment, and give the picador a total pass. Problem is, the picador does this again and again and again, never making a positive contribution, while their targets are often chosen precisely for their prominence. Guess which one is encouraged to continue their behavior, and which one is encouraged to go away. Has the "moderator" helped to improve discourse on the site, or helped to ruin it?

simorley 5y ago

> Especially sometimes when the most toxic users were also some of the most popular users. If the "toxic" users were the most popular, how do you know you were not the "toxic" one instead? If the community is supporting the "toxic" material, how could it be "toxic"? In my experience, it's not the toxic users that's the problem. It tends to be the toxic mods. You can ignore toxic users. You really can't ignore the toxic mods. I also have a problem with the term "toxic". It ultimately means "something I don't like". Mods should never ban "toxic" content. They should ban illegal and perhaps non-pertinent content. But that's just my opinion.