User blog:ShermanTheMythran/Chat Rules: Yet Another Comment

I'm sure everyone's sick of these by now, which is why I'm going to make this one different. You'll see how momentarily. I'd like to encourage people to not make a long chain of these, as last time someone blogged a major complaint, a decent portion of the community's users each created one of their own. This really watered down the coherence and in turn the effectiveness of the message. Before I go on, since this will include chat moderation as well as the rules, I want to say that '''I am not accusing chat moderators for anything. I am pointing out what is wrong with the current system of moderation that they use.''' This system does not apply to every moderator, and even the ones that it does apply to are not any worse people than anyone else in my own eyes. So please do not take it to heart, but instead embrace it with an open mind and do your part to make the community better for everyone.

I am a... Traditionalist Reformer Revolutionary It should be pretty clear to everyone by now that the current rules are ineffective. And the fact that they're rules doesn't make them infallible. If it's established that the rules don't work, which most everyone knows, where is the dispute? Simply put, the wiki is divided into three major factions: 1) the traditionalists, those who understand the fallacies of the rules but support and enforce them in light of their authority, 2) the reformers, who want to trim the ill-effective rules and beef up the good ones ones, and 3) the revolutionaries, who want to abolish the current set of rules and start anew with something that supplements the whole of the community. That is where the dispute is. I typically wouldn't like to classify everyone like this, but it will help us understand our differences in order to mend them.

I am a... Oligarch Liberal Conservative Unfortunately, the rules aren't the only ongoing debate. I'm not about to leave the subject of moderation out of this post. Everyone has their own thoughts on this as well, so I'll classify them accordingly as above. The first are the oligarchs, who generally believe that the number of moderators should be smaller than but roughly proportionate to the community, and consider user rights to be another level of community membership. Then there are the liberals, who understand moderation as a responsibility instead of a rank, but would prefer a wide team including most everyone who is capable and trusted. Lastly, there are the conservatives, who also see moderation as a responsibility, but support a tall team made up of only the few best for the job. As I said before, I don't like to generalize, but understanding our differences is key to mending them.

I myself am a conservative revolutionary, given the above classifications, but often times the differences are subtle. So I would like to take a moment to share what I believe moderation should and shouldn't be.

What moderation is:
 * A responsibility
 * Requires full understanding of the situation
 * Involves appropriately and maturely dealing with disputes
 * A reason-backed process
 * Digging to the root of an issue to find the motive

What moderation isn't:
 * A rank
 * Automatic prevalence in any dispute
 * An emotion- or experience- backed process
 * Acting purely on situation

Yes, it is bold to accuse moderators of acting out of situational requirement, but the way that I see it should be, motive prevails. And if you are sketchy as to what this means in the practical world, allow me to define an example: someone swears mildly, and after a few minutes of debate as to whether or not the word is offensive enough for a kick, the user is kicked, joins chat again, and a follow-up debate ensues. This is a terrible reaction on the part of the chat moderators, and sadly I see it far too often. Chat moderators are not only supposed to kick and ban people when necessary, they are supposed to analyze the motive behind the action to determine whether or not a disciplinary reaction ''is' necessary. Using the example given above, the moderator should think, "Did the user intend to cause a disturbance in chat? Or did they say it under the assumption that there would be no reaction?" Anything that is intended to cause a disturbance, the most obvious examples of this being trolls, calls for immediate action. No warnings aside from kicks are necessary, as they won't likely deter the user from acting that way again. On the contrary, if they didn't seem to expect a reaction from it, squabbling over whether or not they should be forced to refresh their page is a dreadful way to deal with things. Chat moderators are to politely and kindly point them in the right direction. If they repeat themselves, it is more likely that they have a rebellious or troublesome motive, therefore disciplinary action would be required.

While not entirely related to this blog post, I'd like to point out another going on that causes me grief: treatment of new users. I cannot express how flat-out rude it is to bring up dupes every time a new or unfamiliar user shows up in chat. Even asking them who they are on the LMBs is discriminatory. And no, adding a smiley face does not change your intentions. You be kind, you give them a welcome, and they'll tell you about themselves when they feel like it. If they aren't on the LMBs, who the heck cares!? Furthermore, if they really are dupes, there is no way they'd tell you that in response to a few simple simple questions. And since I know that someone is going to say that they ask new users who they are out of curiosity, I'm going to say now that this isn't wrong; but I see it go on with every single new user. At this point, it's beyond curiosity and into suspicion. Automatic suspicion is a dreadful policy towards new users, and I don't care what Norvik has done in the past. Also, this site is owned by Wikia, and anyone around Wikia can pop in and say hi, so don't go thinking that we're tucked away in our own little corner of the web where no one can bug us.

The last thing I want to say about chat moderation relates to the rules in a big way. The rules cannot be perfect. They are ineffective now, and should be rewritten to be made better, but they should never be followed word for word. The entire purpose of the rules is to embody moral code in a document that easily relates to the daily occurrences of chat. Yes, you may put that in your LMBW dictionary. Every single event that takes place in chat is to be held to the light of the rules and then decided upon by the professional discretion of the chat moderator (which is why admins need to choose chat moderators so carefully, an important point that I won't be touching on in this blog post). No rule is meant to be followed word for word without analysis of the situation at hand. Following the rules alone is a terrible way to moderate, every situation needs to be taken to light.

Now that the main problems with chat moderation are covered, I can move on to the rules, which I believe I'm transitioning to fairly well. As a "revolutionary", I stand by my belief that the rules need to be rewritten. So that's what I'm going to do now. Every single word of them is open to discussion, and the whole of them should be taken into account by administrators by the time the debate closes. Let's start out by analyzing the existing rules, shall we?


 * 1.0 - Use common sense!! Following this rule is very simple; all that you need to do is use your common sense. If something seems like a stupid thing to do, don't do it. If you are worried that your actions will offend another user, they most likely will.
 * I can see why this rule was put into place, but its wording also, in a loose sense, gives moderators the right to kick for goofing off and having fun.
 * 1.1 - No bad language, or anything that others may think of as bad language. A warning is not required for kicking or banning if you use profanity.
 * "Bad language" is poorly defined, what makes "bad" language bad?
 * 1.2 - No bullying, threatening, or teasing others.
 * Bullying and threatening understood, but teasing? If moderators started kicking for that, chat would be pretty empty.
 * 1.3 - No adding asterisks (*****) or other common forms of blocking words, unless you are simply referring to the word itself and not trying to use it as a swearword. If you are referring to the word, you must block all the letters except for the first 1 or 2 letters. If you are using the word in an offensive way (towards someone or something, or just by itself), it is still a serious offense, even if you block the whole word.
 * Agreed, but is currently enforced as such asterisks are their own special kind of offense, they're not treated as swears as implied by the rules.
 * 1.4 – All rules of the LEGO Message Boards must also be obeyed.
 * All of them? Even "no links to external sites"? If not, that needs to be clearly defined.
 * 1.5 – No giving away personal information on both public and private chat, even if both users agree on it. Personal information is considered to be any information that could be used to contact you, or personally identify or locate you. This includes real-life pictures of you, contact information, and your home address. You may not give any user a location that's more specific than your country or state. In addition, please do not give out your age.
 * This is more up to the administrators, but I would advise against personal information, and only take disciplinary measures if information given can be used to personally identify someone. Kicking someone for sharing their age or grade is uncalled for, unless they were merely doing so to defy the rules, in which case my notes about motive would come into play.
 * 1.6 - No posting YouTube links or any other external links unless given specific permission from an administrator or moderator. However, if you are linking to a site owned by the LEGO Group, and the content on the page you are linking to is suitable, you do not need to ask permission from a moderator.
 * This is the internet, and the internet is full of dynamic content. In a busy chat room, sending all links to moderators is impractical, but if profanities are prominently displayed on the page, the person who linked it should be held accountable for the content of the page. If there is something on the page, perhaps a minor reference, it should not be announced to chat to "warn" anyone. Chances are that other users will be blissfully unaware of the subjected content if it is not publicly announced.
 * 1.7 - No religious, political or suggestive discussions in public chat whatsoever. Religious and political discussion is allowed in private messages, as long as they do not get out of hand or offend any users. You may state what your political / religious affiliation is, but don't go much farther than that in public chat.
 * Religion and politics are perfectly fine, so long as discussions of them don't get out of hand. But when things get out of hand, hostilities likely don't have to do with religion or politics anymore; the cause of these hostilities should be treated as disrespectful conduct towards other users, not pinning everything on the subject of religion or politics.
 * 1.8 - No spamming or flooding chat. The chat moderator's opinion of whether your message is spam of flooding will always overrule yours.
 * Spamming or flooding to disrupt a conversation is bad. Using five emoticons in a row is not. If someone is spamming or flooding without the intent of disrupting the conversation, they are to be kindly confronted and set aright.
 * 1.9 - No disobedience or disrespect towards chatmods. If a chatmod gives you a warning on chat, stop what you're doing immediately, and discuss it with them calmly if you disagree.
 * Chatmods are not gods, and deserve no more respect than other users. Therefore, this rule is very misleading. Chatmods should be assigned their responsibilities based on their ability to analyze a situation fairly and react accordingly. If a user has a problem with the moderator's analysis, they are to rationally confront the moderator within PM, as it was that moderator's discretion that earned the user their warning.
 * 1.10 - No chat logs can be recorded and put into a blog, to avoid user conflict. If you would like to report a chat log, please put it under a non-mainspace page and link it to an admin. Exception - Humorous chat logs are an exception to this rule if they don't conflict with the chat rules.
 * To avoid user conflict!? So users don't have to assume responsibility for their own actions in chat? Anything said in chat is fair game for anyone to record and publish within its intended context, although once it leaves the jurisdiction of chat, it will have to comply with the community policies, in which case the person transferring the log will be held accountable for conflicts.

Hopefully all of those arguments seem reasonable. Taking them into account, these are the new proposed rules:

blog commenting will be withheld until new rules are made ready for viewing