this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Well, one group gets paid to put up with you and the other group doesn’t, so maybe disentangle that a tad lol
I honestly don't think mutual respect should be predicated on whether one is being paid or not, so...I'm not sure I'm going to do that. Or at least, very loudly for reason of grammatical accuracy instead of that one.
You'd be suggesting u/awkwardtheturtle — an unstable, camping powermod with a habit of pinning their own wildly sexist comments to the top of every thread and then insta-banning anyone who had a problem, whose shittiness caused a whole petition about it — should be ok, actually, because they're not (officially) paid, and that I should do whatever strikes my fancy here as well.
If any person doesn't want the stress of abiding by the social contract, they really shouldn't be interacting with others, but instead they deliberately accepted a position of power.
I'm not sure where respect vs. disrespect figures in this discussion. Are you saying that removing comments/banning is inherently disrespectful?
I did not say or suggest anything of the sort. Please show me where you are getting that idea.
I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. Being a mod or an admin is not about "the social contract." It's about enforcing rules either as a paid employee of the site or as an unpaid community volunteer. Being a jerk is just being a jerk, regardless of what position you're in as you act like a jerk. I just don't see the relevance here unless you're trying to claim every action taken by mods/admins against a user (such as removals/bans) is somehow violating the social contract. But seeing as that is a ridiculous assertion I'm going to assume that is not what you're saying.
I think we're talking slightly to the left of each other, yeah. I think if it was intended as a casual joke, it didn't come off that way to me, especially coming as it did in response to my remark that both groups had a near-identical reputation for acting shitty.
Banning someone is just banning them, we agree. The logic I took from that was that, though both admins and mods could be ass, only one side was paid not to be ass and that fact alone should be reason to separate them.
Which obviously I'm never not going to fight about, because it leads to stuff like
• Bezos: revolting person, paid to look after his employees but makes them piss in bottles because he's hiding a piss kink.
• Political/religious group of your choice, every abusive parent, etc.: good people, being utterly shit to everything around them til they blessedly die is more of a hobby.
The saddest part is this is a completely believable position for an internet stranger to take, so I just went ahead and believed that.
The context also probably comes off WAY differently if you happen to have been a mod yourself, e.g. implied wartime flashbacks I hopefully never have to relate to.
I would argue that it is about that. Your ability to inspire confidence in and work with the people you're supposed to be moderating hinges in part on your ability to act fairly and decently.
80% of us are here because the CEO of Whatever Platform couldn't do that. Reddit still works. My old boss lost her entire workforce in a day sans one person because she couldn't manage that, even though she was technically able to run a store without hitting bankruptcy. Perfectly kingly rulers have died because they were pieces of shit.
Not discounting that modding a large community seems a horrendous experience, that doing that unpaid is probably wrong, and that trolls don't reproduce the way zombies do.
I am saying if you want power at all, it's to everyone's benefit that you know how to handle whoever's at your mercy. It's implied in the job
Right but this isn't the workplace or a regular social interaction. Most users do not know each other or keep track. Hell 99.99999% of my (former) community probably had no idea I was a mod. The relationship just isn't there to even exercise a social contract "as a mod." It's all hyper individual moments and one bad mod interaction is usually enough to sour someone against all mods. It's an impossible game to play. So I just tried to enforce the rules as best I could, as the community asked me to do, and stay out of flame wars in my own backyard. I explained my reasoning when asked, which usually led to me being called a slur or something similar. So this ideal you're asking for - which I don't even really disagree with - does not and will not take place, unfortunately.
This doesn't even touch the issue of people who swear they were "banned for literally no reason" and then run around reinforcing the reputation of "mods are power tripping jannies who hate free speech."
Ah, my daily reminder that I really can't stand people and cruelty scales with intelligence. I really wish you didn't have a point. The one time I ever was irreversibly banned, it was over something moronic: I had referred to myself as stupid, and "stupid is a slur," and that was the end of the decision. I can't even make that shit up, it's the event that made me stop caring about being downvoted, etc. because no one was taking this seriously anyway.
But 95% of people who have to ask...probably already know, yeah. I don't envy that in the least.
I appreciate your willingness to hear me out. It's such a weird gig being a mod. Most removals/bans are justified - basic stats will tell you that unless one truly believes most or all mods are inherently power tripping egomaniacs who get off on removing people from forums. The people who remember their interactions with mods are fewer than those who don't, because like your lights at home, you don't notice them until something is wrong.
I'm sorry someone was heavy-handed with you. It's a bummer they blew an opportunity for a good dialogue. I think in some communities calling someone "stupid" is correctly not allowed, so I'd need a little more context, but calling people "stupid" is also pretty common (even though I don't like insults to people's intelligence/allusions to "people being slow" as it's often rooted in some ugly stuff) so they need to be a little more patient with people and better present the reasoning. Get you to buy in as opposed to "shut up and stop doing it" and all that.
Trying to dig through a couple years of notifications for proof mostly just told me I got a LOT more awards than I realized, and I eventually gave up. But it wasn't aimed at someone else, or I wouldn't have had a problem with being reprimanded for it. I make it a point to try to be as civil as I can be, and I was literally being derogatory towards myself.
I am not allowed to be mean...to me....for fear of being ostracized. This decision was ~~stupid~~ enough that I pretty much just consented to say whatever I stood by from now on, since all punishment was being treated like a toy anyway. As a generally anxious person, I consider it a significant character improvement if we're being honest.
I should thank you as well, and I'm glad this didn't just devolve into the standard internet interaction, since I was originally only seeing it from my angle and we did definitely start on the wrong foot. I think after spending so much time on kbin, the shock of checking up on my one kebble sub and seeing how deliberately shitty the kind of places I used to frequent really were really stood out to me a LOT. As in, there are subs I used to check frequently that I would block if they came here.
It would take a lot to make me start slinging insults at anyone except myself, but I recognize there's a fine line between "enjoys debate" and "tends to pick fights" and I've been making conscious efforts not to bring the performative reddit snark over here. I still have to deliberately backspace over things now and again and edit things that came out unintentionally harsh the first time, but it's the person I prefer being.
Man you are insightful, truly. If I look at my old comments I’ve clearly engaged in my own “Reddit performative snark” over here (Kbin for me). I appreciate your helping me notice that. I’m glad we corrected the course of our conversation here and I look forward to many great ones in the future. Thanks for sharing all this.
Funny to see you with the Loki take by the way. Didn’t realize you were the same person.
As much time as I spend thinking about social motivations/interactions, I'm a little aggravated at myself that I let it get to me as much as I have. It really shows to me how insidious it can be. People only really interacted with each other to prove their opponent was wrong and stupid and bad, and because doing this was the easiest way to be rewarded on reddit, of course that's going to make it seep into things.
Being a dick is a fun activity that makes you a part of a group, and humans love being liked more than they love most things in this world. Being empathetic just makes you feel really bad and kind of confused. By making me consider the other side, you're making me feel bad >:(
So the rare times I got downvoted a lot, it was usually me telling people to look after/stop being assholes to each other. Sarcastic know-it-all comments? Popular if they were short and quippy, unpopular if they were long and academic. People like to be liked, and if you want most social media platforms to like you, you have to be really mean and borderline illiterate.
I'd been meaning to respond to this thread for maybe a full day before I saw you around over there, and that was apparently the reminder I needed. It was amusing. This place has already gotten large enough in a month that I've lost track of some people I used to see positively everywhere, and knowing that's the way of things makes me a bit sad, but I'll enjoy being able to recognize people while I can. I look forward to it too, I hope you have a nice weekend :)