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Would you be happier about it if they didn't try to explain how they operated? Because most places mods finds way of "working around" the rules for behaviours they don't like but that may not technically violate rules. There's slack and ambiguity in any wording.
I don't know if you've ever moderated a large community, but if you do it by the letter of any law, people will endlessly probe for loopholes and argue over edge cases. I'd imagine the wording you quoted is there to head off such issues, not because the moderator loves vagueness for it's own sake.
It's much better to be flexible and operate case by case within some common framework. The people who look would accuse you of subjective favoritism also do it when you enforce to the letter of the rule, so you're going to get flack for it either way.
The question for a moderator is, who is giving you the flak? If it's the sort of people you don't want in your community, whoever that may be for your community, then you seem to be on the right track.
A private message to the mods from an asshole pulling every psych trick out of the book to hurt you in that private message is not a sign of failure; it is a sign of success. It can take a bit of emotional adjustment to feel that as a success and not a failure, but it's doable. The more vicious they are in that post the more they are proving you didn't want the there anyhow.
No matter how precise the rule, it's possible for someone to make the baseless accusation that you're deliberately singling them out to apply the rule to them, while letting the behavior of others slide.
> That’s why I mostly now make quasirules like “don’t be a dick” or “keep your vitriol to your own blog“. The general expectation is still clear, and it’s obvious that I reserve the right to judge individual cases — which, in the case of a small community, is going to happen anyway. Let’s face it: small communities are monarchies, not democracies.
> I do have another reason for this, which is based on another observation I’ve made of small communities. I’ve joined a few where I didn’t bother reading the rules, made some conversation, never bothered anyone, and then later discovered that I’d pretty clearly violated a rule. But no one ever pointed it out, and perhaps no one even noticed, because I wasn’t being a dick.
> So I concluded that, for a smaller community, the people who need the rules are likely to be people who you don’t want around in the first place. And “don’t be a dick” covers that just as well.
Very simple: articulate new rules which cover the behavior, and publish them.
Alert the user that their former behavior is now against the rules.
Have a meta-rule that anyone who triggers the above workflow more than twice will be banned.
There is also this alternative: say that there are hidden rules that are completely unrelated to the written rules, even in "spirit". You can be removed from the community for any reason, without any explanation, by the powers that be, due to any behavior they find displeasing.
You essentially argue for common law: an enormous corpus of precedents that is impossible to navigate without dedicated lawyers, is a pain to arbiter and still does not preclude injustice.
As the manager/moderator of a community, I appreciate that this person is just trying to help. However, having somebody disregard your question and then tell you you’re doing stuff wrong can be a major turnoff to newcomers. In this specific case, it’s against the spirit of the rules because it’s a one off scenario. Now, this rule is helpful for the members that like to post memes everywhere, or talk about school or politics or religion in random channels. For these repeat offenders, I can point to the rule and politely ask them to move the discussions to a more appropriate channel. As with all laws in even real life, the rules are great for the black and white areas, but the majority of situations are gray. And it’s in those gray situations where we can operate within the spirit of the rules rather than the letter of the law.
Edit: also, to respond to your last statement. The code of conduct is there so that moderators have something to reference to repeat offenders. It’s much easier to tell somebody they’re banned because they repeatedly broke a specific rule rather than ban somebody because of personal distaste. I don’t see how having a code of conduct could ever be harmful to a community? How would that harm a community in any way?
It harms the community precisely because it's easier. A moderator will ban someone they don't like, blame it on something ambiguous they twist into a code of conduct violation, other people will point out that there's a double standard because they didn't ban someone else who broke the same rule much more clearly, pretty soon allegations of discrimination are flying.... And you also get the opposite problem where a moderator won't ban someone who's doing a lot of harm to the community because "well, they technically haven't broken the rules yet...".
Actually applying human judgement and taking responsibility for it is psychologically harder, but it's vital for moderation that's actually going to work and be respected, IME. I think we're pretty much on the same page about what moderators should actually do with what you said about "grey situations" and "spirit of the rules". But if you pretend you're following a clear written code when you're actually expecting to have a lot of ambiguity and exercise personal judgement, you're creating a mismatch of expectations that causes problems (like your example of community members micromanaging each other). Better, IME to make it clear that while you may have some agreed guidelines, moderation isn't going to be according to a legal code.
Yes. Some would say, it’s almost like using the spirit of the rules ;)
In all seriousness, your theoretical example of why code of conduct can be harmful to a community has nothing to do with the code of conduct. It sounds like it’s just an unhealthy community with unhealthy moderators. Remove the code of conduct and the same scenario would play out. The only difference would be members crying out about how one member was banned for such a reason and another member who did the same thing wasn’t banned.
And lastly, in my community at least, it doesn’t come down to personal judgment. Unless a user is spamming or spewing racial slurs, the moderators meet and discuss whether or not the behavior of the user is ban-worthy, temp ban-worthy, or inconsequential (in the former case, the moderator who notices such abrasive action can take immediate action). This way we can at least remove some level of bias by ensuring that there’s consensus.
Who knows, my community might just be small enough and inactive enough that I haven’t run into the flaws of the code of conduct. This is all off topic anyways though, so I’ll leave it at that.
Well, yes, but if your "rules" are intended to be applied more as sort of guidelines, then better to call them that and have everyone be on the same page.
> In all seriousness, your theoretical example of why code of conduct can be harmful to a community has nothing to do with the code of conduct. It sounds like it’s just an unhealthy community with unhealthy moderators. Remove the code of conduct and the same scenario would play out.
It's not a theoretical example, it's a real experience from a community I was part of, and the breakdown happened immediately after the code was introduced. Bad moderators will be bad with or without a code and good moderators will be good with or without a code, but in reality most moderators are somewhere in the middle, and these details can make a difference on the margin. Just like even though locks don't stop professional thieves, locking your door makes a big difference as most theft is opportunistic.
> Unless a user is spamming or spewing racial slurs, the moderators meet and discuss whether or not the behavior of the user is ban-worthy, temp ban-worthy, or inconsequential (in the former case, the moderator who notices such abrasive action can take immediate action). This way we can at least remove some level of bias by ensuring that there’s consensus.
That kind of process sounds like a good thing. IME thinking through and tuning the procedures of how you moderate is a lot more productive than spending time codifying the "what" that you think you're moderating.
This is not even anywhere near settled either, thats why various legal experts apply multiple different interpretations of the law, which is the ultimate form of this argument.
And no, just because you say it is so, does not make it so.
This highlights (in a small way) one of the issues with codes of conduct in an international context. A lot of things are culturally, linguistically or generationally specific.
So a code of conduct, unless it is very loose, has to pick a dominant culture that sets the rules.
The rule he wrote literally does not prohibit a non-Brit from using 'fag'; it addresses itself to Brits and thus doesn't apply to anyone else. That is left to the "spirit", presumably.
If I see a rule like "pregnant mothers, don't smoke weed", I can ignore it, since I'm not a woman.