Summary From 11/24/19 Meeting Involving TransEra Community & ResetEra Staff

[Kyuuji]

Yeah this is probably the hardest problem to address, but it's also by far the most annoying and exhausting. At least obvious transphobia is easily spotted. These Just Asking Questions jackoffs are usually good enough at pretending to post in good faith that they can avoid moderation. There are a lot of them here.

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That was my primary point to raise as I agree. It's something that people have to endure an amount of because it relies on being a pattern of subtle prods than an obvious transphobic comment. If it takes 5 posts to make a clear case, it's 4 people have had to put up with. Moderators only see one post from a report, and the others that we know are there somewhere because we've been the ones affected by them, might be buried in among 500 posts across 150 threads. So tackling it isn't simple, but I think some steps proposed could definitely help, alongside the increase in severity of bans around the topic.

One was in having links to threads like the Transgender 101 thread to direct people with good-faith questions to, so they don't congest the current thread while also allowing us to educate. Having to be diverted to troll in an old widely-used thread isn't as fun as the current active one, reducing the kick people get from it. If they continue they walk a thinner line as it's been made clear that general questions around identity etc. should be forwarded to the 101 (or other).

In addition a couple of staff members said they would be fine being a point of contact moving forward for reporting ones we did see. If I were to spot someone posting in bad-faith and knew they were only there to troll based on past history, I could put the posts in question into a PM to them, detailing some of the context and the pattern and these would be reviewed in addition to any reports. Hopefully over time this will help mods identify some of the behaviours we're affected by more keenly, while meaning we don't have to put up with them for as long.

Staff post I imagine will lay out the scope of the changes and implementations, but wanted to give some context because it's very much something that has been rife in the past and is extremely aggravating. Hopefully through the above and other changes we can both reduce the amount interested, and sooner identify those that still are.

I feel like im missing something, whats the back story here? Did something happen?

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These should help give some context: 1, 2 & 3.
As you can see from the OP, recent steps have been much more positive.

I wanted to to say thank you to all involved. Having just recently joined the TransEra community, I'm glad to see progress made to make the site more welcoming and safe. One good thing (of hopefully many) that came out of this, for me personally, was it got me to check out the TransEra OT, which then got me to admit some very important things about myself. Places like this matter and what people say here can have life altering effects, both good and bad. I really want this community to thrive, so more people like me can connect with others and know they aren't alone.

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[Deleted member 3010]

Glad to see the staff taking steps to make this place a welcoming one for everyone. :D

 

[Syder]

 

[LosDaddie]

Sounds lime good steps are being made.

My hope is that enforcement of the TOS is applied fairly to all.

 

[jdstorm]

Overall it sounds like some good steps are being taken.

It is concerning to see that the first Q&A answer is about giving Mods more individual power to rapidly ban posters with greater severity, and in a vacuum would seem to be a somewhat authoritarian move. When from what I could see the lack of accountability and authoritarian tendencies of the moderation staff was what was causing some of the issues.

The commitment to community liaisons and interaction is welcome. However it seems like if the process for giving bans is swift and severe then there should be a counterbalance in the system. What that is/should be I don't know.

At minimum I think it should be that all posters should get an unavoidable/unmissable warning. (Perhaps with something to click that says the user acknowledges that they have been warned)

Having some sort of appeals system and or rehabilitation process for posters who wish to undertake it also seems like a reasonable measure, although the logistics of what something like that would look like is clearly a very complex and difficult thing

 

[B-Dubs]

Overall it sounds like some good steps are being taken.

It is concerning to see that the first Q&A answer is about giving Mods more individual power to rapidly ban posters with greater severity, and in a vacuum would seem to be a somewhat authoritarian move. When from what I could see the lack of accountability and authoritarian tendencies of the moderation staff was what was causing some of the issues.

The commitment to community liaisons and interaction is welcome. However it seems like if the process for giving bans is swift and severe then there should be a counterbalance in the system. What that is/should be I don't know.

At minimum I think it should be that all posters should get an unavoidable/unmissable warning. (Perhaps with something to click that says the user acknowledges that they have been warned)

Having some sort of appeals system and or rehabilitation process for posters who wish to undertake it also seems like a reasonable measure, although the logistics of what something like that would look like is clearly a very complex and difficult thing

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Everything moderators do right now has to be discussed and agreed upon by multiple team members, and long ban lengths need to be reviewed and approved by even more staff. The community complaint was that this can lead to too much time being taken to remove obvious bad actors from threads. We'll be cutting some red tape in that regard.

 

[Sibylus]

A start. Interested to see what concrete steps emerge in the future.

 

[jdstorm]

Everything moderators do right now has to be discussed and agreed upon by multiple team members, and long ban lengths need to be reviewed and approved by even more staff. The community complaint was that this can lead to too much time being taken to remove obvious bad actors from threads. We'll be cutting some red tape in that regard.

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To be clear, I understand that. Being a Mod is a difficult job and I appreciate the efforts of the Era mod team in keeping this community functional and healthy.

In respect to moderating bad comments and removing bad actors, moderation is the equivalent of the Law Enforcement community. (Or in this case the Terms of Service Enforcement community)

Long bans being served by committee is something that to my knowledge has been in place publicly since May 26 2019. (FAQ post), And were in place before the present uproar that is currently being addressed.

I hope you can also see my point. What I am saying is that Era as currently set up is like the Justice System without any room for a defence, appeals or onsite rehabilitation.

The Era FAQ on moderation says that people can be removed/banned for ignoring warnings. There is not to my knowledge a clear cut process on a user knowing their own warning/flagged status and no way to guarantee a user has seen a warning post, and/or notification. especially if they participate in fast moving threads and have received a lot of replies/quotes in the time period between when they have checked

This is an area where I think things could be changed for the better.

 

[B-Dubs]

To be clear, I understand that. Being a Mod is a difficult job and I appreciate the efforts of the Era mod team in keeping this community functional and healthy.

In respect to moderating bad comments and removing bad actors, moderation is the equivalent of the Law Enforcement community. (Or in this case the Terms of Service Enforcement community)

Long bans being served by committee is something that to my knowledge has been in place publicly since May 26 2019. (FAQ post), And were in place before the present uproar that is currently being addressed.

I hope you can also see my point. What I am saying is that Era as currently set up is like the Justice System without any room for a defence, appeals or onsite rehabilitation.

The Era FAQ on moderation says that people can be removed/banned for ignoring warnings. There is not to my knowledge a clear cut process on a user knowing their own warning/flagged status and no way to guarantee a user has seen a warning post, and/or notification. especially if they participate in fast moving threads and have received a lot of replies/quotes in the time period between when they have checked

This is an area where I think things could be changed for the better.

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If you've been issued a warning it is impossible to post again without acknowledging it.

 

[Ellyshia]

I want to thank everyone for getting this to happen and especially sweetnicole.

 

[FliX]

Sounds like progress glad everyone could come to an agreement. Now to execute on that! Thanks everyone!

 

[Deleted member 5028]

Thank you. This is how to address community relations and concerns and I'm proud to be a member here.

 

[dreams]

Great work to the trans community and staff. This is a wonderful starting point, and I'm also choosing to remain optimistic. Looking forward to the more in-depth post.

I'm also very glad to see you will be looking to speak with other minority groups as well, because I know specifically Black-era and Asian-era have had major concerns for a very, very long while.

 

[squall23]

Will these changes also affect gaming side on topics that aren't socially oriented such as that one about people being warned and returning to the topic anyway?

 

[mutantmagnet]

I'll be happy to see the longer bans for bigotry across the board.

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This and I hope:

Q: Concern about bad-faith posters and how best to address them.
A: Communities tend to be more familiar with the threads that affect them, and therefore may be able to identify bad faith posters and subtle trolls better than staff. Users can send detailed reports to provide relevant context or example posts (either through the report system or by PM to a mod/mod captain). If a pattern of behavior can be shown, this makes it much easier for the mod team to address the issue.

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this leads to a basic attitude shift among day to day forum activity. Too many people speak in generalities when specific people should be named. If people are already taking the time to submit these detailed reports they might attempt to confront the problem cases directly. The discussions will usually still be toxic for the involved parties but for the entire community the atmosphere will be healthier because there is less room for interpretation about what is being cited as bad behavior.

 

[Weltall Zero]

Probably not the best place to suggest it, but I've often thought that a way to curb trolling on sensitive threads may be to restrict accounts with less than X post from posting in them. The "why women criticise sexualized female designs" thread used to be constantly trolled by obvious burner accounts with less than 100 posts, and even when bans are swift, it usually derails discussion for a bit, which adds up when there's a lot of them.

Sorry if this comes off as elitist but the number of times I've seen an account with posts in the single or double digits contribute and engage earnestly in these threads is pretty much zero (OK, some confirmation bias is in place as I don't check post counts of non-trolls, but still). This would, if not outright prevent trolling, at least greatly increase the effort and cost for the troll. The downside would be preventing new Era members that are actually parts of these communities from engaging in these threads, but perhaps the thread creator could exempt specific people from this rule if they've demonstrated to be genuine.

I have no clue about how customizable the software forum is and if something like this is feasible at all, but hey, it's just an idea.

 

[FeistyBoots]

Will these changes also affect gaming side on topics that aren't socially oriented such as that one about people being warned and returning to the topic anyway?

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I can't speak for the mods, but on the non-staff side my answer is "it fucking better"! If people are warned for being bigoted on gaming side and still persist in being shitbags, they should also be punished.

 

[Brian McDoogle]

Those all seem like good stuff and I hope it works out well, and I hope more people come into this thread to read the actual changes (the view count and post count for this is very low, especially when compared to the initial thread that started this off).

 

[Kyuuji]

Those all seem like good stuff and I hope it works out well, and I hope more people come into this thread to read the actual changes (the view count and post count for this is very low, especially when compared to the initial thread that started this off).

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An official staff post detailing the changes is upcoming, which should be a clearer and more visible statement 👍

 

[Prophet Five]

I don't know if this would be helpful in ERA's case but on another forum I frequent they have this:

Specifically, the part about only members being able to see their own posts but also allowing any members of staff to see it rather than it just being confined to a PM could possibly be appealing? I don't know much about forum performance and like permissions and stuff but I thought I'd throw it out there. :)

 

[FeistyBoots]

An official staff post detailing the changes is upcoming, which should be a clearer and more visible statement 👍

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When is the staff post coming?

 

[aerie]

When is the staff post coming?

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It should be in the next few days, most likely tomorrow evening.

Edit: Shouldn't have said "most likely tomorrow evening", but it is our top priority, and will be coming along soon. As always with these things, there is quite a bit that goes into it, and it's something we want to make sure we get right, and within a fair and reasonable time frame.

 

[FeistyBoots]

It should be in the next few days, most likely tomorrow evening.

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Thanks!

 

[Deleted member 25606]

It should be in the next few days, most likely tomorrow evening.

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Cool cannot wait to read it.

 

[dark_prinny]

Good stuff.

 

[jeelybeans]

Thanks for doing this and for being transparent about it.

(Please meet with Muslim Era as well).

 

[FeistyBoots]

Thanks for doing this and for being transparent about it.

(Please meet with Muslim Era as well).

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Yes! In addition to that, TransEra representatives involved in this discourse have strongly pushed for StaffEra to meet with other marginalized groups, starting with members of the black community here.

Staff committed to doing just that, so I'm hopeful this will happen soon!

 

[FeistyBoots]

I'm now calling for AutisticEra to also be heard. People on this site are advocating curing autism, which is not a disease.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

How the fuck you even "cure" autism

 

[Isabella420]

Hey my name is Isabella, I'm a 18 Y.O. Trans Demigirl and I go by Any pronouns, I love videogames and music.

 

[Isabella420]

How the fuck you even "cure" autism

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You can't, it's just that anti-medical propaganda spreaded by Autism Speaks and the Anti-Vax people. And as a person with ASD it's very offensive that people would spread that misinformation.