[Meta] Updated Moderator Rules (pizzagate)

submitted ago by wecanhelp

This post is going to be stickied for 48 hours. During that time, please click here for the usual sticky:
Fully Sourced Executive Summary of Pizzagate Evidence

About the Update

Moderator Rules, along with the new Submission Requirements, have been in effect for over a month now, and we have since managed to better understand the requirements and challenges involved in moderating the subverse according to these rules.

Unfortunately, the volume of rule-violating content that gets submitted to the subverse has repeatedly proven to exceed our moderating capacity, even with a generously sized moderator team that is often criticized for its headcount alone. As it became clear that the current Moderator Rules are not economically viable, we needed to find ways to make the moderator team more efficient while still preserving transparency to a reasonable extent. As a result, we're retiring the proactive explanatory moderator comment on deleted submissions in favor of on-demand explanations. Simultaneously, we're introducing a 2-week probation period for new moderators, during which explanatory comments on their deleted submissions will still be required, in order to provide new moderators a means to establish trust in the community.

Accordingly, new Moderator Rules are as follows, effective immediately.

Moderator Rules

(1) Submissions removed by a moderator will specify the following in the Reason field:

  • one or more rule numbers referencing the Submission Requirements that have been violated;
  • the username of the submitter (for later inspections).

(2) Submissions removed by a moderator on their probation period will, additionally, get a comment that will:

  • explain clearly which rule the submission broke;
  • explain what the poster needs to add/fix to resubmit or suggest an alternate subverse in the network to post it to;
  • provide a hotlink to the suggested subverse;
  • be distinguished as a moderator comment.

(3) Comments are to be off-limits to moderation, with the following exceptions:

  • illegal content (CP, direct threats against IRL entities, anything that you could be criminally charged for in US court);
  • doxxing;
  • adspam;
  • copypasta (the moderator will leave the first instance and remove the rest);
  • NSFW content (images, etc.) that has not been appropriately labeled as such;
  • hyperlinks to malicious URLs.

(4) Moderators are not required to vet submissions based on source quality, however, they can.

  • This ensures that moderators have the means to fight planned disinformation.
  • When cited sources don't plausibly back the claims, the submission can be considered unsourced.
  • When on the fence, the moderator should err on the side of free speech, and let the community self-moderate with votes.

On-Demand Explanations

Users can request a detailed explanation for the removal of any submission. In order to do so, the explanation request needs to:

  • be posted as a top-level comment on the deleted submission (for transparency);
  • ping at least one moderator (using the @ sign);
  • be specific and demonstrate a prior understanding of the rules cited as the reason of removal, requesting information beyond what the Submission Requirements already provide.

Examples for specificity on a submission removed per rule 1:

  • "Why has this been removed?" ✘
  • "This is related to Pizzagate, why has this been removed?" ✘
  • "@wecanhelp, I think my post complies with rule 1 as it is about the Clinton family, and I'm clearly stating that. What am I missing?" ✔

Moderators, regardless of these rules, are still encouraged to be supportive, and make helpful comments on removals where it makes sense and there is a realistic chance of improving a submission that is otherwise investigative in its nature.

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Blacksmith21 ago

Yeah - the problem is the mods forget that there is an empathetic component, a psychological component, and a sociological component to any investigation which a web-based quasi-academic environment (which I appreciate) can strip off a lot of the soft "meta", or whatever the fuck "meta" is - from a more "freeform" style of thread. Not sure if that made sense or not. Some stupid millennial term, I guess.

Anyhow, I like to understand the people, the motivations, the mindset, etc. behind an investigation. It helps to better understand all viewpoints. Some float. Some don't.

wecanhelp ago

For what it's worth, I would like to see some types of meta submissions that the current rules don't allow for, however, nobody has come up with a well-worded rule yet that will allow real quality content but filter out the noise. I think your best bet is sourcing everything that can be sourced, at least to illustrate your points, and focusing on making the post investigative somehow. We moderate against a strict checklist, but we try to be human enough to not remove something like that. If it's on the fence rule-wise, and it's popular with the community, we will more than likely leave it up. Hope that helps.

Vindicator ago

I agree, wecan. That's exactly what I told Blacksmith and he rewrote the post to comply. Here's what I said:

Hey Blacksmith21,

I saw your post and wanted to give you some suggestions for how to write it so that mods won't remove it due to Rule 4 (unsourced discussion posts go in v/pizzagatewhatever).

Almost every one of of your bullet points has an example you could link to (just highlight the relevant copy, click button #3 and paste the url in the little box, then click "create link"). If you do this with at least three or four of your examples, it should satisfy mods that this is not a Rule 4 violation. Your first bullet could link to the post by Isthisgameofthrones about the pegasus museum video and Alefantis death threats, for example. You could link to the timeline of pizzagate censorship linked in the sidebar, or the recent thread about media outlets that are Pizzagate Deniers. Regarding the points about depression and the consequences of cognitive dissonance, you could link to online sources that describe this and how to cope with it. Scott Adams may have something on this at his blog. You could also link to the recent FBIanon 4chan thread where he said "some may off themselves". Basically, the more points supporting your hypothesis that we need to prepare for the aftermath that you link to supporting material, the stronger you make the post and the more it qualifies as a "research-backed source-linked submission that advances the pizzagate investigation."

On another level what I'm saying is you need to give mods an excuse to leave your meta-ish post up without getting called shills for enforcing rules inconsistently. Rules 2, 3 and 4 are the ones that allow us to remove the crazy, bitchy shitposts from shills who try to undermine pizzagate with wild conspiracy theories, negative concern-trolling attempts to sow distrust of mods and other investigators, and just lame shit designed to clog the board and slide good content. So do everything you can to make your post satisfy those requirements and you should be good.

Here's the irony about that investigation and publicity strategy post by @Blacksmith21 that @SpikyAube removed as "meta": If Blacksmith had written it up on his own blog instead of here on Voat, with all of the links to the examples he was citing included there and then linked to it, we would never have removed it as a speculative "meta" discussion to be moved to "v/pizzagatewhatever". His post was no different than pretty much anything David Seaman or George Webb talks about in their videos.

Based on what Kevdude and Crensch have said here about Mod Rule 4, it seems like we mods can all get on the same page about allowing discussion of investigation/publicity strategy threads -- as long as they do fulfill the guidelines and link to references like Blacksmith did. As I see it, Rule 4 is there to protect the main board from concern trolls and shills who unwilling to back up their opinion rants with supporting sources; not prevent the community from discussing the investigation. (Those who do, we will have to take the time to downvoat).

@Millennial_Falcon @gopluckyourself @Phobos_Mothership @abortionburger @Kwijibo @SpikyAube @l4l1lul3l0 @belphegorsprime @rktyp What do y'all think? Can we all get on the same page that even when the shitposts are fast and thick, we take the time to make SURE a post hasn't made every reasonable attempt to satisfy the submission guidelines before removing for rule violations? Maybe apply the "George Webb/David Seaman test" -- i.e. ask ourselves "If the user had posted a link to a blog or video saying this, would I be removing it?" It's really hard for people when one of us says a post is okay, and another mod comes along a few hours later and removes it. And btw, thanks for all you guys do.

wecanhelp ago

@kevdude, we've talked about this problem in detail, and our conclusion is that mod rule (4) creates a discrepancy between Discussion posts and Link posts.

I think the post in question is speculative meta. I would have removed it. It doesn't further the investigation itself, rather, it makes predictions about the effects of the investigation, which is almost by definition meta. This is a perfect submission for /v/pizzagatewhatever.

I get to make that call since this is a Discussion post, and the main content of the post is in the post body.

However, had it been submitted as a Link post to OP's blog or, say, /r/conspiracy, suddenly the same speculative meta content would need to be allowed, since per mod rule (4), we don't get to decide if the original post author is a trustworthy source of predictions.

I'll go one step further and assume that the same content is written by David Seaman, and submitted by a Voat user as a Link post, with a title like "What might happen once arrests start happening". There's no way we can remove that, even though it's the exact same content.

We would appreciate if you could weigh in on the practical application of these rules.

CC: @Millennial_Falcon @Vindicator @abortionburger

hels ago

How about a weekly "open thread"? People like me follow and have questions but when the questions come to mind I know I can't ask them on /v/pizzagate since they will be deleted. I want to help and be a part. I know there are other subverses to post questions but they will be seen by few and what if the question was truly worth it? Would enough people see it to make it a research topic or could the downvotes make it a passover?

I want to talk on here but feel like I have nothing to give.

wecanhelp ago

People have made the choice not to subscribe to /v/AskPizzagate despite the encouragement to do so. Just like with money in real life, people on here vote with their subscriptions for what they do and do not want to see. If the majority of the community was interested in question posts, there would be a much larger interest in subs like /v/AskPizzagate. This is just to let you know why general questions are still not considered submission-worthy content on this sub.

Having said that, I like your idea of an "open thread" every once in a while, which is a single submission started by a moderator that doesn't take up a lot of front page real estate, with the activity taking place in the comments. We could do an experiment with the format, and see how popular or useful it is. What do you think, @Millennial_Falcon and @Vindicator?

hels ago

Thank you for including the mods in your thoughts. The more people who see and read the basics and add-ons to previous posts will only help build the cause, create more awareness and research dug deeper. I hope a weekly open thread gains traction.

wecanhelp ago

We'll see, but it won't hurt to try. I'll make sure to start one this Sunday, and we'll see what kind of feedback it receives. Thanks for the idea.

wecanhelp ago

Sounds good, @Millennial_Falcon and @Vindicator. I'll make sure to start the first one one of these days, definitely agree with not stickied, not sure about the weekly summary, I mean as long as someone wants to do it, it could be done in the comments for sure, but do you want to compose one of those every week as part of the submission, Vindi? Also, any particular suggestion for the day of the week for these?

Millennial_Falcon ago

Also, any particular suggestion for the day of the week for these?

Saturday or Sunday?

wecanhelp ago

Sunday was my thought, too, let's go with that, easy to remember and there's less activity then to distract from.

Vindicator ago

I think this would be particularly helpful for user strategy discussions about how to advance the investigation/public awareness of PGA. Could be combined with a weekly Roundup summary of great research/news posts.

Millennial_Falcon ago

I like the idea of a weekly general discussion thread. (Not stickied. Just let it get organically voted. That way we can get an idea how much interest there is in such threads). If there proves to be a lot of interest, maybe we could sticky one every other week or something, for a day or so.