This topic has come up a bunch of times, ever since moving from mailing lists to a modern forum, in September of 2014.
There has been the occasional discussion coming into this subject in the side, but nothing to ever address head on in a public fashion.
So given that we have had two years to test the waters, how is it going?
Here is the first indication I have seen that we might want to change things up a little:
Along with a summary of the vague strategy that has been in use:
There’s an automatic list of anyone with mod bit here.
It’s been an ad hoc thing - ask.
The process for locking a thread has usually been to go on slack and go “holy shit, this thread seems headed for the cliff, any objections to locking it?”.
if the rough consensus is that it’s already devolved past the point of no return, lock it, before people start being instructed to self immolate, or other quaint VHS traditions like that.
It’s not a one-way process, and threads can trivially be unlocked.
So I guess this discussion can be split up into a few topics:
1) Does anybody have any issues, questions or suggestions for the admin list?
Would anyone like to be made an admin, or want someone to be removed? PMing me (or any other admin) is totally okay.
It’s worth noting that our forum software, Discourse, keeps logs of every admin action, and everything is reversible. Posts can be undeleted, settings can be reverted, everything. It looks like this:
Over the last two years, there has been one single minor admin abuse, and the person responsible has had access quietly revoked.
2) Political topics?
This is obviously directly related to this thread, and while I don’t agree with its locking, I do agree with it being moved to the members-only category. Would someone like me to unlock it? Or would somebody like me to move it back to General?
Political threads and general discussions have been gone over in this thread, which is a good summary on my personal thoughts. Again, that is what I personally think, but I don’t have any more say into how VHS is run than you, dear reader.
3) How open to the public?
Much like the mailing list, it was decided to make this forum open to public indexers, and posters. Because this community is more than just the people paying for physical access.
Here is a (very) early thread discussing that.
So how do we feel about all of this? Not being seen as a heavily-moderated space where people can share opinions without judgements is important, along with balancing that with shutting down goliath flamewars that accomplish nothing, and burn everything out. Where are we falling on that line? What changes should we make?
edit:
I totally thought there was a thread about this already, but couldn’t find it. Just found a private message between me, Ty, and Jon about it in February 2015 (5 months after Talk was started) where nothing conclusive was resolved, but it was obviously on our minds. I wrote:
So I think there’s a bit of an elephant in the room regarding moderation for Talk.
While it’s been pretty reasonable and good so far, the whole idea of censorship is somewhat antithetical to the idea of VHS.
A topic entitled “How should moderation on Talk be handled” would be a good idea, in my opinion. The topic above, along with “who gets to be a moderator” and “what should people do if they feel there is an abuse”
That thread never got created, but perhaps I should have at that time. My apologies.