To be clear, not talking about this community, obviously ๐.
What's the point of writing down rules, if mods just do what they want? But I suppose that's the risk you take when you call someone a liar in a small community; they might be a mod.
Edit: I'm not trying to say that mods suck, they perform a useful and often thankless job. Just that it can be difficult for small communities to get a healthy number of good mods, which can become a problem.
Often the mods are arbitrary and inconsistent. Moderation can really suck sometimes
Many many years ago I modded a few small reddit subs, and it was a horrible job. You'd set up these rules, and some tween edgelord d-bag would test you to see how much they can push. Some comments deserve an insta-ban with no warning and no debate.
I don't know what happened to OP, and plenty of mods let the tiny amount of power inflate their heads past the point of reason. But I think of modding like I think of parenting. I'm not going to criticize someone else's methods, because I'm sure as shit not going to do it for them.
You can just call those people buttheads and hit them with short bans until they get the message. Really, you can hand out 3-day bans like candy. It's infinitely more useful than any form of 3-strike punishment game or kneejerk permaban.
I think this is good, as long as the user gets informed a) they they're banned and b) what rule they broke.
A warning first would also be nice, especially if it's in the community rules ๐
Reddit's automatic mesages on mod action were a positive and arguably necessary feature.
But if bans are long enough to annoy and short enough to frustrate, they basically are the warning. Less gun-to-your-head, more spritzing a cat in the face.
I modded a Discord for a Gamesworkshop video game and it was like that. It really boils down to whether or no people see it as benefit or nevessary burden. I was offered the mod by devs for making some guides and took it because i knew my discomfort with weilding that power would be for the benefit of the community. I would bend over backwards to not take things personally or react but alot of edgelords still made it into an "us vs them" mentality.
I've also been permabanned from a steam game hub by power tripping mods who couldnt handle someone calmly disagreeing with them and thought they had the right to insult me and ban me for standing up for myself, then pretend like i was the one who was in the wrong for not eating their shit with a smile. (Distant Worlds 2/Slytherine Games)
It's like being in politics, you gotta find people who feel obligated to do it as a public service and not those who have any desire for power.
Arbitrary is fine - there's a reason we have humans do this. But any enforcement of bad rules will always suck.
"Be nice" is a bad rule.
"Be nice" is a recipe for failure, and it always winds up protecting mildly cautious assholes. If you see someone reply 'so you think [insane garbage unrelated to parent comment]?' and the accused shoot back 'shut up,' and you only remove the person brushing off that troll, your forum is for trolls. That is who you've protected. That is what you've encouraged. That is how things will go.
If you think the right answer is to always expend great effort peeling apart that disinformation, you do not know what trolling is.
It's outright insane, in communities about serious topics. If your forum's about knitting - yeah, you can expect and demand televisable language. The vibe is properly casual. But if you deal with politics then you're going to get people being called subhuman, and if you don't come down ten times harder on sneering bigots than their pissed-off victims, you're not preventing abuse, you're enabling abuse.
Trying to enumerate all the ways someone could deserve a time-out is a fool's errand. You can be mercilessly rude with nothing but a thumbs-up emoji. Or "Great Save!" More importantly - some vitriol is justified. Be human, god dammit, and spend thirty seconds figuring out if someone's being a crank or merely dealing with cranks. If you think there's never any reason for one user to tell another where to shove it, then you are wrong and you should quit.
Being able to call someone a fucking asshole when they are being one is a valuable thing, especially when they dodge filters in doing so.
I've never seen "be respectable" rules that haven't been in service of protecting nazis, so I always go out of my way to be as thorny as possible.
EVERY single ban i've caught so far has always been the result of going against the mods/admins (usually calling them out on their contradictions) or, more often, for being openly antifascist. They're going to look for an excuse to ban me anyway and if they don't find one they'll just make something up, so why bother being nice?
I don't expend effort trying to be rude, but I rarely bend over backwards to reign in my default blunt tone. Not that gentle honesty seems to matter. I will argue the ethics and efficacy of well-meaning censorship with randos and moderators alike. Some of them are definitely Nazis in disguise. Some of them are not in disguise.
But most simply do not know what trolling is.
It's like the Twitter generation thinks it means harassment, or vulgarity, or just being mean to people. No: trolling is fucking with people to get an emotional reaction. Sometimes that emotional reaction is extremely justified. Think of any "just a prank, bro" bullshit. That is trolling. That is violating the social contract to laugh at people for having sane responses to your inexcusable behavior. It is being an asshole, as bait, so you can pretend to be shocked, shocked!, and then play the victim while continuing to be an infuriating asshole.
Any moderator who expects polite discourse, and does not create an environment where words matter, is actively making the internet worse. You want an easy time pruning a worthwhile forum? Aim for a cocktail-party atmosphere. Screaming rants no, casual banter yes, tell people to take five if they're starting shit. But if someone lays out why another user is completely full of shit - you had damn well better come down against being full of shit.
Yes! I didn't wanna say mods suck. It is an important and often thankless job.
Just that small communities without many mods are at risk of getting a bad apple.