How do we moderate the moderators?
How do we moderate the moderators?
Is this a good neutral place to spotlight poor moderation?
For example, my post to [email protected] asked what is a decent client for Debian was removed (per rule #3). While at the same time this “What's the best Android/iPhone app for Lemmy?” is not only not removed, it was actually started by the moderator themself, and stickied. So this is a case of a moderator /above the law/ breaking their own rules which they selectively enforce.
In principle there should be a record of this sort of conduct so users know which moderators to avoid (thus which communities to avoid).
The moderator posted the reason why he did what he did, and it sounds, well, reasonable.
Basically, the mod got tired of deleting the same question over and over (the eternal September effect), so, as a compromise, and even though is technically against the rules, he stickied that question so others just go there instead of asking the same thing again.
So, the mod didn't selfishly ask the question for his own personal benefit. He just compromised for the greater good, it seems.
First of all you’re nitpicking the example which doesn’t obviate the thesis (that mechanisms are needed to mod the mods).
W.r.t. the example, it was poor judgment because a discussion about what software exists is not “user support”. I specifically opted not to crosspost the question to a Lemmy support channel because it was not really a support question & might annoy those communities which are supporting the stock web client and stock server, not generally questions about what 3rd party tools exist which would be outside of the official lemmy support channel. But the question was perhaps one of few that was exactly relevant to the Lemmy community. So the moderator took this edge case and gave the worst treatment to a quite lively otherwise successful upvoted thread. If the community finds the post to be an off-topic nuissance, why are they upvoting it? The community is not there to serve the mod & what the mod wants to see. The mod should be a servant to the community.
In any case, if you need more examples I also have examples of abusive Reddit-style moderation. This is why I left Lemmy years ago when dev.lemmy.ml was the only option and admins were censoring like crazy posts that did not break any rules, and not even updating the rules after the fact, but rather just rolling with their own unpublished rules. All the same shenanigans we see on Reddit with controlling the narrative. When the embarrassment would take hold, the Lemmy admins actually completely erased the modlogs to hide the embarrassment of their own action.
It’s great that there are now a large number of Lemmy nodes. This is what brought me back. But this in itself is insufficient. There are just many little kingdoms with potentially negligent kings and abusive counts/barons. Users need the tools to keep them in check. The modlog is a good start but it needs to evolve.
Thanks for the explanation.
It sucks, but they are kind of above the rules of their own community. They could easily edit the communities description and make an exception for themselves. Moderators aren't above instance rules though, but admins are.
If moderators and admins broke their own rules often enough I'd expect people to leave those communities and instances.
If moderators and admins broke their own rules often enough I’d expect people to leave those communities and instances.
Bingo. Exactly my point. Users need a mechanism to be informed.
There’s a problem with the mod logs: the censored post is scrubbed. If a post is merely off topic & not CSAM, the worst that should happen is removal from the timeline, not scrub it to the point that users looking at the modlog cannot see what was removed.
Moreover, users should be able to add notes to the modlog- perhaps in a separate “user modlog”.
Well, Slashdot has meta moderation. Not sure if something like that is a good idea or a bad idea, just throwing it out there.
Put their name out there. If they’re a solo mod and it’s their community. Not much you can do.