Do you think it would be detrimental to LWs fun if I am able to dig up what he’s saying?
Yes. Because moderation is exhausting, and every time we have to rehash it costs moderator time and attention, leading to things ranging from “less attention for more important things” to “moderator burnout.” This is in fact essentially my whole point in the first place.
If you have the posts visible in the moderation log—where everyone can see that they are, indeed, the same old Eugine comments, reposted over and over—then there’s no reason at all why we’d have to rehash anything. Everyone can scroll through the log, see the same lame comments posted over and over, and feel secure in the knowledge that all that’s happening here is that a troll is being rightly kept out of the garden. No one will need to comment on this, and no one will.
Whereas if they’re hidden, then folks begin, quite rightly, to wonder just what it is that you have to hide so thoroughly.
“No one will need to comment on this, and no one will.”—bets please, lizardman constant, etc etc.
Tradeoffs. Do the mods have to deal with more BS because they show the text and a handful of people are like “but reeeeaaaallly? I got something good from that one comment!” or because they hide the text and a handful of people are like “but reeeeaaaallly? What if you’re acting in bad faith?” I assume that’s what’s going on here.
Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. “What do we have to do to make Eugine just go away forever and we never have to talk about it again?” ==> disappear everything and hope
Tradeoffs. Do the mods have to deal with more BS because they show the text and a handful of people are like “but reeeeaaaallly? I got something good from that one comment!”
This, basically. A lot of individual Eugin comments look fine. It’s only when you know the entire history of him that it’s clear how important it is that he banned and stay banned. He optimizes his comments for soaking up as much time and attention as possible.
We delete about 10 Eugin comments around once a week. It’s a pain. Everything that makes it more of a pain is detracting from our ability to do things like:
give friendly responses to newcomers who look like they have something to offer but could use some help understanding the site culture
resolve disputes between longterm members
actually code stuff (since several of the mods are also developers)
A lot of individual Eugin comments look fine. It’s only when you know the entire history of him that it’s clear how important it is that be banned and stay banned.
But I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t ban him. I agree that you should ban him. I agree that you should delete his comments. I have zero quarrel with this.
What I still don’t see is how any of that implies that the text of his deleted comments—much less that of deleted comments in general—shouldn’t be visible in the moderation log.
Everything that makes it more of a pain …
But why would having the moderation log show the text of deleted comments, make it more of a pain to delete Eugin’s comments? I’m not trying to be dense here, but I’m afraid I just don’t see any connection…
Here’s a question, that might make me better understand your view on this. Is the issue here that you, for some reason, specifically object to having Eugin’s comments be displayed at all, in any way? And if the answer is “yes”, then would it be reasonable to suppose that you would have no objections to displaying the text of deleted comments in general, but having a special “Eugin exception” (i.e., where the text of the deleted comment would normally be, there might instead be some text in the vein of “REDACTED, because this was a comment by a Eugin.”)?
(Similarly, perhaps there could be—as I think I might’ve suggested in the past—a “doxxing exception”, and a “the contents of this comment violated U.S. law exception”, etc.)
I don’t have strong opinions on whether Eugine’s comments should or shouldn’t be visible in the deletion log, but here (I think) is the best argument for making them not be: It’s about incentives. Eugine wants LW to be his soapbox; in so far as his actions still have any motivation to them beyond mere malice, his goal is to propagate his opinions and punish those with conflicting opinions; the best hope of making him go away is for him to get nothing from posting to LW. If his comments’ text is preserved, then that gives him an incentive to keep posting them.
(I fear that in fact there is nothing left but malice, and the mere knowledge that he’s wasting moderators’ time is enough for him. But I hope he hasn’t gone so far down the path from “reasonable human being” to “entity of pure malice” for that to keep him at it indefinitely.)
[Note on spelling: definitely “Eugine” rather than “Eugin”, though I believe neither is his real name.]
If the mods want to enforce “no one comments on topic X”, they can easily do so.
The two alleged alternatives you list are not at all symmetric. In the former case, there’s simply a disagreement with a moderator decision; the response to that is “yep, you’re entitled to your opinion, but this is the way it is”, and further discussion after that can simply be disallowed. If anyone doesn’t like that, they can leave; but everyone knows where everyone stands.
Whereas in the latter case, you’re eroding the trust of your user base, in a quiet way, a way that will slowly corrode the administration’s relationship with the users, lead to interminable, vague arguments (because there’s no clear, public, specific decisions and actions to talk about—just suspicion, innuendo, suppositions, and conjecture), and take up far more energy and use up far more good will than simply a firm but public stance.
Yes. Because moderation is exhausting, and every time we have to rehash it costs moderator time and attention, leading to things ranging from “less attention for more important things” to “moderator burnout.” This is in fact essentially my whole point in the first place.
But why would we have to rehash it?
If you have the posts visible in the moderation log—where everyone can see that they are, indeed, the same old Eugine comments, reposted over and over—then there’s no reason at all why we’d have to rehash anything. Everyone can scroll through the log, see the same lame comments posted over and over, and feel secure in the knowledge that all that’s happening here is that a troll is being rightly kept out of the garden. No one will need to comment on this, and no one will.
Whereas if they’re hidden, then folks begin, quite rightly, to wonder just what it is that you have to hide so thoroughly.
“No one will need to comment on this, and no one will.”—bets please, lizardman constant, etc etc.
Tradeoffs. Do the mods have to deal with more BS because they show the text and a handful of people are like “but reeeeaaaallly? I got something good from that one comment!” or because they hide the text and a handful of people are like “but reeeeaaaallly? What if you’re acting in bad faith?” I assume that’s what’s going on here.
Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. “What do we have to do to make Eugine just go away forever and we never have to talk about it again?” ==> disappear everything and hope
This, basically. A lot of individual Eugin comments look fine. It’s only when you know the entire history of him that it’s clear how important it is that he banned and stay banned. He optimizes his comments for soaking up as much time and attention as possible.
We delete about 10 Eugin comments around once a week. It’s a pain. Everything that makes it more of a pain is detracting from our ability to do things like:
give friendly responses to newcomers who look like they have something to offer but could use some help understanding the site culture
resolve disputes between longterm members
actually code stuff (since several of the mods are also developers)
But I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t ban him. I agree that you should ban him. I agree that you should delete his comments. I have zero quarrel with this.
What I still don’t see is how any of that implies that the text of his deleted comments—much less that of deleted comments in general—shouldn’t be visible in the moderation log.
But why would having the moderation log show the text of deleted comments, make it more of a pain to delete Eugin’s comments? I’m not trying to be dense here, but I’m afraid I just don’t see any connection…
Here’s a question, that might make me better understand your view on this. Is the issue here that you, for some reason, specifically object to having Eugin’s comments be displayed at all, in any way? And if the answer is “yes”, then would it be reasonable to suppose that you would have no objections to displaying the text of deleted comments in general, but having a special “Eugin exception” (i.e., where the text of the deleted comment would normally be, there might instead be some text in the vein of “REDACTED, because this was a comment by a Eugin.”)?
(Similarly, perhaps there could be—as I think I might’ve suggested in the past—a “doxxing exception”, and a “the contents of this comment violated U.S. law exception”, etc.)
I don’t have strong opinions on whether Eugine’s comments should or shouldn’t be visible in the deletion log, but here (I think) is the best argument for making them not be: It’s about incentives. Eugine wants LW to be his soapbox; in so far as his actions still have any motivation to them beyond mere malice, his goal is to propagate his opinions and punish those with conflicting opinions; the best hope of making him go away is for him to get nothing from posting to LW. If his comments’ text is preserved, then that gives him an incentive to keep posting them.
(I fear that in fact there is nothing left but malice, and the mere knowledge that he’s wasting moderators’ time is enough for him. But I hope he hasn’t gone so far down the path from “reasonable human being” to “entity of pure malice” for that to keep him at it indefinitely.)
[Note on spelling: definitely “Eugine” rather than “Eugin”, though I believe neither is his real name.]
Alright, I suppose that’s an argument. Thank you.
In that case, my question about the “Eugine exception” approach stands.
seems reasonable to me. (including also tags in comment text if necessary)
I’m afraid this really makes very little sense.
If the mods want to enforce “no one comments on topic X”, they can easily do so.
The two alleged alternatives you list are not at all symmetric. In the former case, there’s simply a disagreement with a moderator decision; the response to that is “yep, you’re entitled to your opinion, but this is the way it is”, and further discussion after that can simply be disallowed. If anyone doesn’t like that, they can leave; but everyone knows where everyone stands.
Whereas in the latter case, you’re eroding the trust of your user base, in a quiet way, a way that will slowly corrode the administration’s relationship with the users, lead to interminable, vague arguments (because there’s no clear, public, specific decisions and actions to talk about—just suspicion, innuendo, suppositions, and conjecture), and take up far more energy and use up far more good will than simply a firm but public stance.