To AR Is Human . . .

[Scylla Rhiadra]

 A recent misunderstanding (sort of) with another poster here has me thinking a bit about how we use abuse reports here in the forum.

In theory, I like the idea of tools like abuse reports -- not because I like to report people, but because they represent something a bit like "community policing." In theory (again), we, as a collective, get to decide what is acceptable and appropriate to our forums -- and enforcement of those standards of conduct is left up to the mods.

In practice, of course, it's a somewhat different story. There is a really wide range of views of what is "acceptable" here, and we have no "constitution," other than the rather vague ToS, CS, and forum guidelines, that lay out what constitutes allowable free expression, and what doesn't. And, of course, all we can do is "report" -- we have no say over what is actually acted upon, or what measures are taken. (And that's probably a good thing.)

The AR system is also very opaque. We can't see who is ARing whom, so there is no public accountability, and we have no way of knowing what affect, really, our ARs have. This also means that maybe the system is prone to "gaming," although I think more importantly it means that it's impossible to disprove those who believe, without proof, that it is being gamed, that there are "AR parties," gang-ups, exclusions by the forum "elites," etc. (And there are certainly people who have suggested that these things happen here.)

There are good reasons for all of these, and it's not my intention to question or critique the system as it currently exists.

Rather, I'd like to know how you use ARs.

Do you have a "philosophy" that guides how you wield this tool (if at all)? A "standard operating procedure"?

Do you have views on how others should, or shouldn't use it?

One important note: please do not use this thread to question or criticize forum moderation. Apart from being against forum rules, this is also not terribly constructive, as we have no say over this. But I think we can learn from each other, which is the real point of this thread.

And now, I'm going to AR myself for bad puns . . .

[Silent Mistwalker]

This space reserved for future pontification. If I ever get a round tuit.

Question: Should we include ARs of every kind or just the "personal" ones? By personal I mean things like targeted harassment (individual on individual), not things like RedZone level necessitating "AR parties" in order to bring it to LL's attention.

 

[Rowan Amore]

16 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

forum "elites

It's a cabal to be more accurate.  😁

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

This space reserved for future pontification. If I ever get a round tuit.

Question: Should we include ARs of every kind or just the "personal" ones? By personal I mean things like targeted harassment (individual on individual), not things like RedZone level necessitating "AR parties" in order to bring it to LL's attention.

 

Well, I'm just the OP; I don't make the rules. But I should think both.

Surely AR parties aren't really a thing anymore, here or in-world? Red Zone was the last really coherent threat to bring people together like that.

And I assume that lots of people use ARs for things other "harassment"? No?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

It's a cabal to be more accurate.  😁

Well, yes! And even more sinister, a cartel!!

Bwahahahah (*cue lightning and thunder *)

One of the things we might do here is help dispel that toxic and inaccurate little fiction.

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, I'm just the OP; I don't make the rules. But I should think both.

Surely AR parties aren't really a thing anymore, here or in-world? Red Zone was the last really coherent threat to bring people together like that.

And I assume that lots of people use ARs for things other "harassment"? No?

 

Ah ha! Ok then. That's gonna be a loooooong write up.

But long story short... if you don't wanna be ARed, don't piss me off! 😁

You're just trying to get me to log in so I have to look at the list of "reportable offenses". 😋

On a more serious note, as a rule of thumb, I don't normally AR someone unless it's a fairly major infraction. The rest I just shine on and either block/ban or just go about my merry little way without another thought about that person. Mostly it's the idiots that IM me out of the blue expecting me to carry on some weird conversation with them and when I refuse, they get abusive. 

Tl:dr Doing the above will get you ARed every time. No ands, ifs or buts about it.

[Garnet Psaltery]

I seldom do, but I might AR where there's a clear breach of the guidelines or ToS, or where I see a train-wreck about to happen.  I try to be specific about what's wrong and leave it up to the mods.  It's been a while since I sent one in though, as the mods seem to have been quicker off the mark and more visible recently, so if there were something up I might feel as though I'm just adding to the in-tray unnecessarily.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

I rarely AR.  Never for ideas I don't agree with.

Mostly I AR when a random new account logs in and starts spewing hate, racist comments, or seems to have no purpose but to abuse someone else.  If those posts don't get removed quickly, I'll work to move them to page two so they're less disruptive.

I don't think I've ever AR'd a regular forum poster.  I recently used the ignore option on a few people I thought had no purpose to their positions except to be argumentative.  If I don't believe that YOU believe the crap you post, I will just not read your posts anymore.  I won't, however, try to deprive others of reading your posts.  That is their choice.

[Kiera Clutterbuck]

I've always thought it was flat out creepy that we can in effect 'call the police' on each other. Appealing to higher power within the community feels like an abuse of power. It creates a sense of distrust among forum members (for many anyway). I wouldn't call the police on a friend so why would I do so here? (barring extreme infractions, of course, either here or in real life).

Edited July 10, 2022 by Kiera Clutterbuck

[LittleMe Jewell]

41 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

the forum "elites,"

 

23 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

It's a cabal to be more accurate.  😁

 

18 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

a cartel!!

 

Shhhh - We do not talk about the FIC

 

 

On a more serious note, I will often report a post if it actually is a personal attack on someone, and occasionally if someone insists on taking a thread way off track.  And I always report advertising type posts.
 

Inworld:
For Bellisseria, I will AR anything that is against the Covenant.  My take on it is that most people like Bellisseria specifically because of the Covenant and that is one thing that LL should enforce.
For Mainland, I only report major TOS violations -- extremely obvious Adult stuff on General or Moderate land, something rezzed over a public area in a way as to disrupt usage of said area, and other things like that.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

9 minutes ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

I seldom do, but I might AR where there's a clear breach of the guidelines or ToS, or where I see a train-wreck about to happen.  I try to be specific about what's wrong and leave it up to the mods.  It's been a while since I sent one in though, as the mods seem to have been quicker off the mark and more visible recently, so if there were something up I might feel as though I'm just adding to the in-tray unnecessarily.

This is, I think, how it is supposed to work -- and how it probably does most often work, in practice.

LL -- the governance team and forum modes -- rely upon what is hopefully a well-informed and reasonable base of "citizenry" (we've all read the ToS, the CS, and the forum guidelines, right?) to flag content that they are too busy too catch, mostly. And then they apply both the judiciary function -- deciding what is an actual violation -- and enforcement and discipline.

The sort of negative side to this is the "AR 'em all and let God sort them out" approach, which likely overburdens governance and forum mods.

I don't agree with every decision the mods and governance make, by any means, but I do think that, overall, this system makes it much more difficult to "game" ARs, and much less likely that "coteries," "elites," "cabals," and "cartels" can use the system to exclude others.

God help us if we ever go to a fully automated approach: in the final analysis, we're always going to depend upon the exercise of human judgement. Our mods here are mostly engaged enough in the community that they likely have a pretty good sense of how we, as a community, function, what we find acceptable, and so forth. And I think that they are very reasonable and fair-minded, even if I don't think that they are always "right." (Neither, after all, am I.) That's an important component, obviously, of the system: so faith that it "works" and works fairly.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

19 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

On a more serious note, as a rule of thumb, I don't normally AR someone unless it's a fairly major infraction. The rest I just shine on and either block/ban or just go about my merry little way without another thought about that person. Mostly it's the idiots that IM me out of the blue expecting me to carry on some weird conversation with them and when I refuse, they get abusive.

Yeah, this seems the right approach?

I don't even block very often, and I never ignore here. I'd far rather know what the miscreants are up to, and what they're saying. The only blocks I've used inworld of late have been of people trolling some of my group messages. When I get obnoxious IMs, I mostly just close the window, and let them rant on.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I don't even block very often, and I never ignore here. I'd far rather know what the miscreants are up to, and what they're saying. The only blocks I've used inworld of late have been of people trolling some of my group messages. When I get obnoxious IMs, I mostly just close the window, and let them rant on.

I used to do short-term Ignore here in the forums whenever I would find myself getting into a direct battle with someone -- using it as a means to help me walk away.  These days I am much better at just ignoring the threads themselves.

All of my inworld blocks are on obnoxious objects that I couldn't get to stop sending me messages and a couple of Residents that are actually Bots that continually send out spam.  LL doesn't handle ARs against that stuff very well, IMO.

[Love Zhaoying]

If someone's posts indicate a potential crisis - mental health or otherwise. 

For example, if their tone and words are "threatening", with cursing, (uncharacteristically if a familiar poster) poor grammar, spelling, choice of words..

I will assume that person may be in "crisis", and I will report their post - hoping that for their own future benefit, the posts do not remain so as to cause them embarrassment.

That's one example of when I will AR a post.

If I can tell someone is intentionally derailing a thread which I am engaged in, I also may AR a post.

Edited July 10, 2022 by Love Zhaoying

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

5 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I don't even block very often, and I never ignore here. I'd far rather know what the miscreants are up to, and what they're saying. The only blocks I've used inworld of late have been of people trolling some of my group messages. When I get obnoxious IMs, I mostly just close the window, and let them rant on.

I used to do short-term Ignore here in the forums whenever I would find myself getting into a direct battle with someone -- using it as a means to help me walk away.  These days I am much better at just ignoring the threads themselves.

All of my inworld blocks are on obnoxious objects that I couldn't get to stop sending me messages and a couple of Residents that are actually Bots that continually send out spam.  LL doesn't handle ARs against that stuff very well, IMO.

Blocking became unsatisfying, since you still see evidence of their posts. So I stopped blocking, and just try to "get along".

[Coffee Pancake]

I AR every 16th post on religious grounds.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

10 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I rarely AR.  Never for ideas I don't agree with.

Mostly I AR when a random new account logs in and starts spewing hate, racist comments, or seems to have no purpose but to abuse someone else.  If those posts don't get removed quickly, I'll work to move them to page two so they're less disruptive.

I don't think I've ever AR'd a regular forum poster.  I recently used the ignore option on a few people I thought had no purpose to their positions except to be argumentative.  If I don't believe that YOU believe the crap you post, I will just not read your posts anymore.  I won't, however, try to deprive others of reading your posts.  That is their choice.

This is more or less my approach here, and my way of thinking about the subject -- which means, of course, that it's the exactly right approach.

I will AR in-world, but only something that is really clearly either hate or griefing. I don't remember the last time I ARed someone for the former; the latter I've had to do to protect my group parcels.

In the forums, the only things I'll AR are, again, really egregious violations of the CS, or outright and very overt spam. Your comment about pushing posts to the second page reminds me that the only "AR parties" I've ever seen or been involved with have been dealing with hate- and profanity-laced spam posts here. And those "parties" were very public: we talked about what we were doing on the Peeve thread, I think.

"Not depriving others" -- that is to say, not making decisions for them about what they should or shouldn't read is a really excellent point. One might argue that over-zealous ARing here is a bit like pulling books (albeit, probably really horrible books) out of a library to prevent others from accessing them. Thanks: this is something I'd not really considered before!

The other aspect of that is the principle of letting people with really horrible viewpoints or personalities publicly expose themselves for all to see. Sunlight, they sometimes say, is the best disinfectant. That's not always true, and you have to balance it against the harm that such discourse can do, but it's certainly a principle that applies sometimes.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I AR every 16th post on religious grounds.

Numerology, yeah!!!!  Be sure to AR yourself, while you're at it. Otherwise, hypocrisy! 

[Rowan Amore]

One tends to blame a 'hive mind', cartel, cabal, yada yada, when they're opinion/post is just dislike by so many people.  It's what people do.  "It's not me it's them!"  " No one likes me! "

It's like those people with a pick to Haters in their profile.  Ever think about WHY you seem to have haters? 

I don't report posts I disagree with.  Isn't the debate the point?  Why would I, or anyone for that matter, silence the other side.  Now, if they're posting personal attacks (sorry, guilt a few times of that) or something truly offensive, sure I'll AR. 

Inworld, I've rarely made an AR but it's usually for blatant ToS violations or in a few cases, personal attacks from forum sock puppets.  We ALL remember those horrid posts?  They continued inworld with some offlines.   

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Numerology, yeah!!!!  Be sure to AR yourself, while you're at it. Otherwise, hypocrisy! 

[Silent Mistwalker]

16 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

(we've all read the ToS, the CS, and the forum guidelines, right?)

More or less. Probably more less than more.

[Blaise Glendevon]

21 minutes ago, Kiera Clutterbuck said:

I've always thought it was flat out creepy that we can in effect 'call the police' on each other. Appealing to higher power within the community feels like an abuse of power. It creates a sense of distrust among forum members (for many anyway). I wouldn't call the police on a friend so why would I do so here? (barring extreme infractions, of course, either here or in real life).

Because if a forum isn't moderated, it becomes an 8-chan-esque dumpster fire, with everyone feeling free to fly the banner for their pet bigotries under their anonymous internet identities. Moderation makes community possible. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I used to do short-term Ignore here in the forums whenever I would find myself getting into a direct battle with someone -- using it as a means to help me walk away.

I've heard you talk about this before -- it's actually a very clever approach. I don't know that I feel the need very often to do that, as I'm usually (not always) pretty good at just deciding to skip over someone's posts, but this is something I might try one day.

 

10 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

All of my inworld blocks are on obnoxious objects that I couldn't get to stop sending me messages and a couple of Residents that are actually Bots that continually send out spam.  LL doesn't handle ARs against that stuff very well, IMO.

Yes, this is something I hadn't considered in my OP, but you're right: it's a very legitimate use of the AR. I wish, as you say, that it worked better.

[Kiera Clutterbuck]

Just now, Blaise Glendevon said:

23 minutes ago, Kiera Clutterbuck said:

I've always thought it was flat out creepy that we can in effect 'call the police' on each other. Appealing to higher power within the community feels like an abuse of power. It creates a sense of distrust among forum members (for many anyway). I wouldn't call the police on a friend so why would I do so here? (barring extreme infractions, of course, either here or in real life).

Because if a forum isn't moderated, it becomes an 8-chan-esque dumpster fire, with everyone feeling free to fly the banner for their pet bigotries under their anonymous internet identities. Moderation makes community possible. 

Oh I know it has to be moderated.

If you look at the last line of what you quoted you'll see I stated "barring extreme infractions, of course", and that means I'd need for the bad behavior to be severe before I'd feel okay about attempting to stop it.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

27 minutes ago, Kiera Clutterbuck said:

I've always thought it was flat out creepy that we can in effect 'call the police' on each other. Appealing to higher power within the community feels like an abuse of power. It creates a sense of distrust among forum members (for many anyway). I wouldn't call the police on a friend so why would I do so here? (barring extreme infractions, of course, either here or in real life).

This is a valid viewpoint, I think. In essence, because I generally AR only what you might call "extreme infractions," it is what I sort of do.

But I think Blaise has a valid point about dumpster fires too. Some of us will remember times when this forum was unmoderated, or very poorly moderated. It can get really toxic here, to the degree that even regulars stop posting.

And arguably, permitting content that makes people so uncomfortable that they are essentially silenced isn't doing the "democracy of voices" any favours.

ETA: To be clear, I'm not really disagreeing with you here, at all. Just using this as an opportunity to talk about what an unmoderated community can look like, and how counter-productive that can be.

Edited July 10, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra