[Meta] /v/Conspiracy Community discussion: Moderation Policy Document (Conspiracy)

submitted ago by Mumberthrax

A Policy for Moderators to Follow

Hi folks, Mumberthrax here. I have another boring post for you today about... Moderation Policy!

Yes that's right, another moderation policy post. I bet you're getting tired of those and want fun stuff, eh? Well if we have a good mod policy document in place, then mods will hopefully be better empowered to implement fun stuff like AMAs and quality sticky'd topic discussion posts. At least that's the supposition ; )

So I drew up this rough draft of a moderation policy document (based on the suggestions from the previous community discussions: 1, 2, 3) and ran it by the mod team for any critiques. Now we'd like to present it to the community for review.

Here it is!

https://github.com/Mumberthrax/VoatConspiracy/blob/master/ModerationPolicy.md

It is mostly common sense stuff, but I think it's important to have it laid out just so everyone is on the same page, especially for when new moderators are added. Think of it like a constitution that guides your public servants in the manner you prefer - because this document is intended to be part of our "open source" moderation project on github, where anyone may submit proposals for changes to be incorporated into it. Basically, you the community get to help shape the policy that you the community follow when you take on the role of moderator.

Your feedback is important

So if you would, take a look and share your opinion on it in the comments below. Please feel free to be as critical as you like (though offering specific suggestions for solutions is ideal!). There are a few spots where there are unanswered questions relating to the addition of new moderators - these questions are not urgent, and a community discussion on that specific topic is upcoming so they don't have to be answered just yet.

If there's no opposition to this document as it exists currently, then we'll go ahead and make it our official moderation policy for now.

Thanks for your time, and thanks for being a part of our community here at /v/conspiracy! :D

Upcoming community discussions:

  • How we select new moderators: challenges, options

  • Racism and bigotry, Conspiracy theories about specific races or peoples, and how we want to handle these things

  • Subverse rules: updates, possible additions/changes.

Some random things you may be interested in (Please accept this content as an apology for boring meta stuff!):

Edit: Yes, I unsticky'd @AssuredlyAThrowAway's post about /v/nottheonion. Yes, you're welcome to ask about it in the comments here.

Mumberthrax ago

Hey thanks for the feedback. What specifically is bad about it? What would you like to see different? Do you have anyone in mind for a different author?

gatordontplaythatsht ago

This guy moderating is the same guy who cherry picked a post of mine to feed an srs sub here on voat. I don't trust him at all and feel like he's going to be a problem for the conspiracy community here on voat.

Here's his post attempting to mock me and other users with lies that weren't even true: https://voat.co/v/TopMindsOfVoat/comments/324662

He's a cancer and shouldn't be modding this sub, do not trust him!

Mumberthrax ago

It's true I posted to the topminds subverse. I was frustrated by you going on a witch hunt against someone with little to back it up. It's people playing fast and loose with the facts that harms our community.

That said, who would you prefer be a moderator here? How would you like to see them selected?

gatordontplaythatsht ago

You already admitted you were, wrong there was no witch hunt, and many voaters found my finding to be true. You are not to be trusted, and are trying to make a mockery of posters on voat.

That said, who would you prefer be a moderator here? How would you like to see them selected?

In a perfect world the community would vote moderators in and out, that's my hope for the future.

Mumberthrax ago

In a perfect world the community would vote moderators in and out, that's my hope for the future.

Alright, so assuming that I am bad and need to be removed, how do we go about that? /v/subverserequest could be used to make a plea for me to be removed. But selecting a replacement would be tricky. There are a few issues I think about in relation to a popular election for the level 1 position:

  1. How we do protect against bad people like me from pretending to be good, getting voted to the top, and then eroding things?

  2. How do we protect against astroturfing, malicious people slandering good candidates and promoting bad ones?

I suppose an alternative to having a single person in the level 1 position would be for moderator elections to be built-in to Voat directly. That's something that isn't yet a part of the site, and would probably take some careful planning to implement. Maybe there is some alternative you've got in mind?

gatordontplaythatsht ago

How we do protect against bad people like me from pretending to be good, getting voted to the top, and then eroding things?

By putting a system in place that gives users the power to change leadership at any time.

Mumberthrax ago

Ok, now we're getting somewhere. So something like an official moderation policy?

Right now only one person on each subverse has the ability to add or remove moderators. This means that someone has to have that responsibility. Who do we trust to do it fairly and according to whatever policy we establish? Is this person allowed to say anything critical about a community member?

And how do we prevent people like obama and bush from getting added as moderators by a popular vote? People who suck big-time, but somehow they managed to get enough supporters to get in? And how do we remove them?

gatordontplaythatsht ago

These are all concerns a good voting system would address. I am by no means a developer, so i cannot answer many questions you have about the system or its weaknesses/strengths. I think this is something we should speak to devs about and see if it's possible, and what type of guards we could add to the system to ensure a vote couldn't be brigaded, maybe by verifying each vote with a time stamped paper listing the username. Like I said I am no developer, I just think this could be done with relative ease.

Mumberthrax ago

Alright, so you're thinking more of doing something mediated by software/technology built into the site itself, not necessarily a vote mediated by whoever is the level 1 moderator at the time?

I agree that this might be a good arrangement (though I know my opinion matters little since I'm an evil SRS person apparently :P ), and I'm not certain how we can do anything about this in the meantime.

Like, ok, I'm willing to help facilitate someone else taking my spot. Seriously. But I want to make sure that I'm doing the right thing. So how do we pick my replacement? If you were in my shoes, what would you do to find someone to be the next level 1 mod?

gatordontplaythatsht ago

Maybe, not necessarily though. If there was an open source, simple software that could be made to tally votes and authenticate voters I wouldn't be against that.

So how do we pick my replacement? If you were in my shoes, what would you do to find someone to be the next level 1 mod?

I'd make a post to the sub asking for advice, I'm not the only subscriber and I'm sure there are a great many tech-minded people on the sub who could suggest/build a concept we're all happy with.

minusthebearplus44 ago

That is sorta what this is.

gabeh73 ago

So it seems the moderation discussion is very highly centered around the term that the CIA decided to popularize in order to denigrate people who didn't believe the government was telling the truth about JFK's murder. People who questioned why Dulles who was fired by JFK would be put in a key position to whitewash the murder by being appointed to the Warren Commission.

At Reddit "conspiracy" was used as a label to help segregate news that didn't shine a positive light on the official propaganda being pushed in the government controlled media. It would be nice if that misinformation technique was not employed at Voat.

RedHawk ago

Thanks again, so far its looking good. Although we have to be careful when adding new mods, I think we already are being trolled by certain users.

Mumberthrax ago

I definitely agree caution would need to be exercised there, and yeah I've seen a few people hanging around who appear to be just here to disrupt. We have no rules banning trolling or being a dipshit so I've not done anything in an official capacity for it yet. My best advice currently is to confront and downvote disruptive conduct. If everyone did this, it may help.

RedHawk ago

I agree and thanks for replying, I am against banning them - and like you said we all have to be active in this and downvote those that actively troll us.

fuckyousantorum ago

Have read it. Looks good. We're lucky to have you.

Mumberthrax ago

Thanks. I am not so proud of it - I think it could use some serious revision to make it more concise, but I think it gets the basic sentiment across: "if you're a moderator, be responsible; don't be a dumbass" :P

gabeh73 ago

how about we go meta. No mods at all. Just user voats...but make it so not all voats are equal...we also can voat on the voat power of users to some degree...so when all the people already in a forum see that some guy is a shill we can downvoat them to 1/4 power or something...never all the way to zero...just to help give a edge to those who have already proven themselves to not be shills or trolls or operation mockingbirds..and then even if a mod is show to be a shill...we shown it out in the open and we basically voat their power away.

gabeh73 ago

i finally left reddit because I couldn't comment on oddities with ISIS any more without getting banned...those mods were corrupt and nobody could do anything about it...except leave...which is what has happened.

stealthboy ago

In my humble opinion, "moderating" is becoming too much of a thing that is seen as important in itself. This is what caused the downfall on that other site. Mods are seeing their "job" as something with power and import. Does it really matter? There is an upvoat and downvoat button. That's what it's for - to let the user base decide what they want to see. Is something posted that is offensive, stupid, or off topic? Hit that down button and be on your way. If something that is inappropriate has many upvoats then obviously the community wants to see it. The mods need to stay out of the way.

This is all just my opinion on the matter. I appreciate that you're trying to do something, but I just don't thing that something needs to be done. Mods need to be unseen.

minusthebearplus44 ago

I would have to a agree with this far more then how that document sounded. You raise a very valid point IMO.

Mumberthrax ago

Alright, so we could have a completely anarchic subverse - just let the votes do what they do.

As someone with an interest in conspiracy theories and related things, I want to go someplace where conspiracy theories are discussed in an intelligent way, where my contributions (and others' quality contributions) are seen and not buried under mountains of junk from sorcha faal or alex jones fearmongering (not to say jones is always fearmongering, but it happens a lot). I don't think anyone would deny that there is a LOT of garbage that gets spread around - misinformation and disinformation, not to mention astroturfing and hasbara fucking up votes and the conversations with flaming and attacks.

To be clear, as a user I want to see three things in a conspiracy theory discussion community:

  1. Quality information organization. I want to see the dots connected in a rational and well-sourced way, or at least articulately argued, and i don't want this information to slide out of sight with the next wave of posts.

  2. High resilience against disruptive elements. Astroturfing, flaming/trolling in the comments, disinformation, black propaganda, spam; all of these are problems that /r/conspiracy suffers from. It's my contention that the moderators there are not interested in remedying them, or are uncertain how to do so, or are afraid to try anything to limit it.

  3. An active, engaged community. I want to see people who stick around and talk with each other, who are involved in running their own projects to help sort information and educate each other.

So how can I find these things? This subverse was pretty good before the influx of people from reddit since the FPH/AMAGeddon incidents. How will we prevent it from becoming /r/conspiracy?

nokilli ago

Admins need to give you the option of making upvoats cost a CCP to tackle that, and they're not going to do that because they're already thinking about...

4) Profit!

Mumberthrax ago

I don't understand. Could you elaborate on the connection between that feature and a motivation for profit?

nokilli ago

Well if what they're saying about reddit's machinations is correct then it's all about appeasing advertisers.

Will advertisers be as interested in voat if the site better allows its users the opportunity to moderate? That means more "speaking truth to power" stuff and less fluff.