A Gustav 30 in 30, #23: I Hate the Mods

[Gustav 6,322]

 

I don't often have problems with people in the VHL--and when I do, I generally keep it to myself. Not in the case of league moderation for some time, though. I'm pretty sure I used this exact GIF at the top of one thread or another at one point.

 

 

This was all in good fun even though I'm pretty sure @fishy was still a mod at the time. I could always count on our ability to have a good conversation about league happenings, even despite that circumstance.

 

 

I've been in positions of power here, mainly as a GM, that have required me to uphold certain moral standards. Running my own locker room was almost never something I had to do in an active sense. Thankfully, the worst it ever got in my own server was sometime in S68 when I had to yell at two of my players over DMs to stop fighting with each other, and I've only ever come across one situation in the league as a whole where I needed to escalate things to the mod level. It helped that, for the most part, I had control over the players that joined my teams and my servers in the first place. Most of the time, any given player would never be an issue. But, the times I chose to specifically avoid someone, something would usually happen later on that made me glad I did. 

 

Mods, on the other hand, don't get this choice of who to deal with. Everyone is welcome to post on the forum and to join the league's Discord server. There's no conveniently avoiding people who create issues when the nature of the job is to deal with issues created by people. For that reason, I completely understand why the need to take any sort of official action comes up more frequently for a moderator than it does for my own probably-less-than-yearly.

 

In fact, the VHL had only a couple people with the mod role on the forum, who I never saw do anything, and zero officially designated moderators on Discord until mid-2020. That was when I said this in a BoG thread that I don't remember at all:

Quote

I'd be in favor of increased moderation, doesn't have to go to GMs or to recruitment by default but maybe add a mod role in Discord and merge it with the red mod role on the forum? That's what makes the most sense to me.

 

By that time, the VHL's Code of Conduct had already existed for a while. I know this without checking because in that same post, I call for Discord to also be subject to the rules set forth therein. On the surface, I do think that this is a good idea. I agree for the most part with what the actual Code of Conduct has to say, and I think for logistical reasons that it's best to make sure that what doesn't fly in one part of the league also won't in others. 

 

If you've known me for a few years, you know that the next logical progression of words out of my mouth starts with a pause and finishes with some sort of hand motion and a very pointed "But..."

 

...because here's where I tell you all about how many issues I had with league moderation. I'll have problems with league policy and very enthusiastically attack the system itself, but there's only been one issue over which I will take to the forum and tell people directly (and repeatedly) that the actions they have personally taken are wrong. Unfortunately, that's all been a result of the thing I suggested in BoG in 2020 (it would have happened anyway)--a sharp increase in mod power in the league's public spaces.

 

I won't act like the VHL was a perfect place prior to the Code of Conduct and prior to the moderator job meaning anything at all. It's not my opinion that the league as a whole was out of control and that most of us ran around all day slinging hate speech at each other (as some would have you believe for some reason), but the fact that the league had a strange level of tolerance for things like a certain since-banned member telling first-gen me to go kill myself on Discord was an example of something I had a problem with. I have pretty thick skin, but those words can really hurt under the wrong circumstances and they were being used indiscriminately on far more members than myself. The league could have used a bit of cleaning up, and I was very OK with it happening. At first, this was a very good thing, and I think that the overall effects of the Code of Conduct and its enforcement have been a net positive for the league.

 

Let's just say that the mod team's vision of what that enforcement was supposed to look like wasn't in line with my own. I want to make it clear that most of what I'm saying here is a matter of my own personal thoughts, but I will say that I noticed more agreement with them than disagreement from those outside of the mod team. My opinion is that league moderation should be more reactive than proactive, and that mods should have nothing to worry about unless something that is harmful to someone else goes down. My opinion is that the VHL should not be trying to restrict the free speech of its general members and that things that are not directly harmful to other members should not be held back, regardless of mods' personal takes on the things at hand. My opinion is that the Code of Conduct should be a tool that is used to standardize the moderation process of things where common sense already dictates that something should be done, more so than a checklist of criteria that every single post must run its way through to avoid punishment. My opinion is also that moderation actions be taken with as much transparency as possible, with details only omitted to respect members' privacy, so that the mod team remains accountable to the community that implicitly agrees to be part of the system. And my opinion is that, at various points throughout 2021 and 2022, the VHL's mod team failed completely to live up to this set of expectations. 

 

I was not at all afraid to raise my voice about this. I did for this article what I find myself needing to do for many others, which is to search through my old posts to jog my memory about these things, and by just searching up the word "mod," I find:

 

• Me speculating in October of 2021 that a controversial forum thread was hidden or deleted. After being told by a huge amount of people with more power than I had at the time that this wasn't for any malicious reason, I apologized. That said, I was still clearly frustrated with league moderation at that point. As one of my posts in that thread, I said:

Quote

I can think of at least one other example of a thread that was hidden for what I thought was not much of a reason, though, and there seems to be a recent tendency to lock things as soon as they start to escalate--which helps nobody and really just leads to people holding grudges when they can't talk it out. I'm not pointing at anybody in particular but I feel like the line has slowly been pushed farther and farther up without any real discussion or agreement.

 

• A mod update thread from 2021 where I complain about an incident I'd seen on Discord. I actually remember this happening--a member was banned with no real information about the infraction being given in the corresponding post. One member (I don't remember who) asked in genchat for more info, reason being that the league doesn't know where the line is if it's never defined. Immediately, at least two mods very rudely responded, saying no in a much more sour way than the situation deserved. There are much better ways to do this (@Grape has a post in that thread in favor of keeping things under wraps that's worded in a way that I actually really appreciate), and I felt the need to advocate for someone who I thought wasn't being treated respectfully.
  • Interestingly, things get a bit tense in that thread between myself and @Horcrux, one of the VHL's most bizarre stories. Horcrux was super active all over the league around this time and was purportedly a woman from Seattle with a strong passion for progressive causes. Horcrux was also never afraid to back down from an argument and also had a tendency to fight for strict, active moderation to keep the league as "progressive" a space as possible. This actually led to lots of increased awareness of lots of things, some of which I really appreciated, but the community ended up mindblown a few months after this thread when it was revealed that Horcrux was actually an alter ego (and an alt account) of @Kachur, a controversial member from years past. Because Horcrux's actions were directly tied to a big spike in the wielding of mod power, sometimes I wonder how much the mod team was essentially manipulated into acting in ways I had issues with.

 

• Another thread from November of 2021 that concerns @Hogan talking about being punished for something that I don't remember. I do remember the situation he describes in general and can verify that it's true--Hogan was (probably maliciously) reported for something he said in a draft stream months prior to that thread and was punished for it. I don't see any comment in that thread, apart from those made by the blue team, that claims that there is nothing wrong with this. I'd call this an example of a big problem I had with the situation in a general sense--as representatives of the community, the mod team is meant to act in ways that are representative of the community. If those with power rush to defend a decision, while everyone there without power expresses dissatisfaction with it, then something needs to be done to evaluate whether the use of power is correct in that situation.

 

• My most recommended reading material on the subject, the results of a survey I put out regarding league moderation. The survey itself received one criticism that I think is fair (surveys in general tend to draw in people who feel strongly about their content, and those who don't generally won't take it, so maybe it isn't perfectly representative), but there wasn't really anything I could do about that and the results were very informative. At least among those who took the survey, a majority identified Abuse of Power/Unnecessary Punishment and Favoritism/Lack of Consistency as issues with moderation. Some other comments caught my attention as well. @thadthrasher had a lot of very fair things to say about how he experienced faith-based discrimination in the VHL, and how the mod team's focus on enforcement for progressive reasons had left this mostly unaddressed. Multiple people left comments specifically objecting to the Hogan punishment. And overall, @Spartan  contributed lots of things for every question that I still think are valuable today.

 

• A general discussion thread started by @Moon where he talks about some of the ways that Discord specifically is moderated. Lots of the discussion focused on one specific situation where someone found one specific GIF and kept posting it, and multiple members of the mod team cracked down hard on that and anyone else who dared to post it (for reference, it was this. I understand being creeped out enough to not want to see it, but today I also think it's pretty funny that something so stupid turned into a situation that serious). I purposely linked to one of the more egregious complaints I've ever seen, which was @fonziGG describing how some mods would delete his posts for no reason and with no explanation, but I have a lot to say earlier on in the thread as well. 

 

• A media spot I wrote about something that still upsets me a bit to think about--the sheer amount of over-policing of topics in the league's general chat extended to new members joining the server, immediately finding themselves in general chat, and asking a question in general chat, only to be told that this wasn't allowed and that they needed to take it to the newcomers' chat. As I say there, I understand diverting it to the newcomers' chat if there's potential for it to be buried in surrounding conversations, but something I saw on multiple occasions was someone's question being shut down by a mod in genchat and then not being answered by anyone, including the mod who was clearly online enough to immediately notice it, after it was asked again. I still think that--instead of taking the time used to swing the hammer to just answer the question--is a terrible thing to do and those who did it should know better, but who am I to judge?

 

• A complaint thread started by another member detailing attempts made by the mod team to enforce rules related to trivia that weren't even on the books at that time. I talk a lot as usual.

 

• A BoG thread from April of 2023 that's my last time talking extensively about my issues with the mod team. I took major issue to a suggestion therein that perhaps mods could have some freedom by which to take official action based on personal moral systems--something that still blows my mind as to how anyone could possibly think I'd just let it go. Good news: as far as I'm aware, that part was never officially put into place.

 

 

I do think that most of what I wrote was a bit more fiery than I'd be willing to present myself today. Looking through some of it, I also think there were times when perhaps what I said was a little hyperbolic. But I don't think I opened up anything where I now think I was dead wrong. I think back to that time in league history and I remember forum threads being locked the second any disagreement popped up, mods hanging around Discord only to try to hold every other message in check, and punishments being handed out often without any transparency at all and with a heaping load of personal bias-based inconsistency when we had any idea why they happened. I was an influential member at that point and saw lots of people "lesser" than myself being treated with far less respect than I'd prefer to receive myself--and in a league where everyone is supposedly equal under the magical, perfect Code of Conduct, I felt the need to make as much noise as I could to raise awareness of situations where I didn't think that equality was fully present. I'm not sorry for anything I said then, and that feels good to say.

 

I will also conclude by noting that I don't think I have many issues with moderation today. Maybe it's because I'm less invested in Discord, but I don't really hear about anything happening over there. Speaking from the forum perspective, at least, things like trigger-happy thread locking are certainly no longer prevalent. As with any new system, the Code of Conduct and the role of mods on Discord took time to figure out and ran into some difficulties along the way, and I understand that it couldn't have been immediately perfect. I was certainly one of the loudest voices in pointing out where the team fell short of that perfection, and I like to think that if someone were punished out of spite or ego or a perceived need to crack down on a nonexistent issue, I would stick up for them today as well. Things have improved a lot, though! And maybe it's out of my own ego, but I hope I was overall a positive influence on that being the case.

 

 

 

Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience:

 

#1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name

#2: Can't We All Just Get Along?

#3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway?

#4: The House That I Built

#5: Can We Fix It?

#6: American Beauty

#7: The Kids Are Alright

#8: Dogs In A Pile

#9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake

#10: This Old House

#11: Go Directly to Jail

#12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball

#13: How I Messed Up Davos

#14: Ello Gov'nor

#15: Weewoo

#16: Jolly Kranchers

#17: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 2

#18: I've Been Everywhere, Man

#19: The Sun Also Rises

#20: Ripple In Still Water

#21: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 3

#22: I Hate the Meta

[N0HBDY 1,108]

I won’t forget my time on Chicago when you sent the burning cat gif after a sim and being yelled at by moderators for spam

[N0HBDY 1,108]

Also this is your 2nd article starting with “I hate” starting to become a certified hater, get original smh

[Daniel Janser 2,111]

4 minutes ago, N0HBDY said:

Also this is your 2nd article starting with “I hate” starting to become a certified hater, get original smh

Waiting for Gustav being banned for 'hate speech' 

[Gustav 6,322]

6 hours ago, N0HBDY said:

Also this is your 2nd article starting with “I hate” starting to become a certified hater, get original smh

I see you’re the first to notice my “I Hate” series-within-a-series 

[Beketov 8,937]

5 minutes ago, Gustav said:

I see you’re the first to notice my “I Hate” series-within-a-series 

So I can expect the MS about me any day now?

[Gustav 6,322]

13 minutes ago, Beketov said:

So I can expect the MS about me any day now?

I mean we’ve certainly disagreed on enough but we’ve never had any personal issue. These are more about things I don’t like; I’m sure you can imagine what at least one of them will be 

[Baozi 1,658]

@Gustav  How did I not get a single mention in here?

[Gustav 6,322]

1 hour ago, Baozi said:

@Gustav  How did I not get a single mention in here?

I considered it but I don’t think I ever had issues with anyone specific as much as I had a problem with how things seemed to be in general. 
 

At the end of the day it’s all love and I appreciate that the league is in a place that I like it; I may have disagreed with lots of mod stuff over the years but I recognize the time and effort it must take to keep everything going nicely. 

[frescoelmo 1,268]

4 hours ago, Baozi said:

@Gustav  How did I not get a single mention in here?

Because you are no longer head mod