Boards Moderation - A Timeline
Hi everyone,
This is clearly a hot topic at the moment, so I figured I would lay out a few of the most prominent moderation-related threads throughout the history of the Community Beta/Boards. I will attempt to be as unbiased as I possibly can and purely present facts and some TL;DRs of those facts. This will have lots of quotes from Rioters responding to these threads and TL;DRs, so...stay tuned I guess? shifty eyes
#~ 1 Year Ago
Let's talk about moderation - CaptainMarvelous
Points Raised
- Moderation seems invisible
- Inconsistent rules
- Players having little say in the direction of moderation
- Suggestions for improvement
Riot Responses
Krylhos Within this community system, we're wanting to shift a lot of the responsibility of conduct encouragement to each respective sub-community (while still maintaining global moderators). For example, you might get away with a little more flaming in a community that tolerates it more than another. We'll be seeing this more and more as the platform evolves.
As for ban messaging, I whole heartedly agree that you should be told why you were banned (even if it is obvious, which it is in some cases). We're also planning on presenting delete reasonings, so if a thread is removed the OP can know why. To help educate and advocate for change in behavior, transparency is a must.
- We want to empower the community to handle the bulk of conduct encouragement.
- We want different boards to have relatively different rules.
- We want to provide detailed information to thread creators when moderation action is taken.
Heintzer: Great feedback. Moderation on a platform like this requires a vastly different approach from vBulletin, and I agree that our current moderation there can feel a little impersonal. To be frank, the scale of the community means that we've needed to focus on clear offenders like spam, porn, racism, and clear abuse - but there's a lack of a feedback loop, and that can lead to frustration and the sense that it's the wild west, with few rules and inconsistent enforcement.
It's something we're still working out and we'll likely need to figure it out as we build this platform with you guys.
In particular, I'd love to hear more thoughts about how a player moderation program would function. I really like the ideal of it, but I'm worried about the real life implications. What's the application and selection process like? How do we evaluate 'mod performance'? How do we evaluate what an "abuse of power" is? What kind of incentives are appropriate?
- There is a lack of a feedback loop which can lead to frustration, and it's something we're working on.
- I want your feedback on a player moderation system; how would it function, how would we regulate it, etc.?
Heintzer I'm personally most interested in finding a highly scalable, community-driven approach to moderation. I don't want Riot to necessarily be the bottleneck that prevents things from getting done (moderating inappropriate content quickly, recruiting and vetting new volunteer mods, etc.), nor do I want Riot to be the dictator (I'd prefer a more democratic approach).
- We want a community-driven approach to moderation.
- We don't want Riot to be a dictator (a more democratic approach).
Heintzer: I'm not completely opposed to a more hands-on, Riot-curated approach. Just need to understand what that would mean in terms of resources and time for the various community teams around the world.
But philosophically, the community should have the power to shape itself as it sees fit - that's kinda the whole point of surfacing content/discussions based on votes instead of chronologically. How does moderation/curation fit into that philosophy?
If you look at any popular forum in the history of the internet, you can pretty much guarantee there's been some manner of mod-related controversy or some grand debate over rules and enforcement. That's normal and healthy to an extent, but I think there's oftentimes a lot of unnecessary friction. How do we enable healthy debate around the rules and individuals governing a given community? It's some combination of transparency, processes/design, and human judgment.
- We aren't opposed to a Riot-curated approach to player moderation, we just want to understand the commitment.
- The community should have the power to shape itself.
- How do we enable healthy debate around rules and individuals governing a community?
#~ 6 Months Ago
[Feedback] So when are we getting visible Moderation? - Pryotra
Points Raised
- Moderators not accountable for their actions
- Request to do the bare minimum required for effective moderation
Riot Responses
Pendragon: I can speak to this for the community beta, but can't for general discussion
- We want to add visible moderation here, and we're having a meeting in the next week or so to "calibrate" moderator actions. This means we'll get into a room as a group, go over 20 or 30 different moderation instances and decide what type of handling is appropriate. That calibration can then be used to create guidelines which will be used by our moderators
- We need to develop some features to support visible moderation, most notably we'll have to make the ability to "de-list" a discussion so that you can't browse to it but if you have the URL you can still get there, as well as "lock" a discussion to remove the ability to post, and lastly the ability to sticky a comment
Combined that means that instead of discussions disappearing" - you would still be able to get to your own discussion and the moderator would have left a comment letting you know the cause for deletion. That does however mean we'll probably be more liberal with bans for reposts/spam (since you can't say you didn't know).
Things that are "TOS-VIOLATING" like offensive images, harassment, etc would probably continue to disappear into the ether.
I have no timeline for when we'll have these things, and there's a chance that plans will need to change - but this is what we're thinking currently.
Thoughts?
- We want to add visible moderation and are having a meeting to calibrate moderator actions.
- We need to allow de-listing (users with the link can still access content, but it's removed from the main page).
- Instead of discussions being deleted, they could be preserved.
- Moderator would have left a comment on your discussion with a comment letting you know the cause for deletion.
- TOS-Violating threads will continue to be deleted permanently.
Pendragon: The reply [on a de-listed topic] would show as an update
Remains to be seen [whether this will apply to comments as well as threads]. Hopefully the thumbs up/down should remove most anything really bad from visibility
For example - an immediately realizable rule would be that every discussion in the Site Feedback community should be about the community beta, and not about any other aspect of League of Legends. So lots of off-topic stuff would be deleted. We would not "move" things for a few reason
- Sub-Communities could have dramatically different rules and moderators. I would not expect the moderator of the source to need to know the rules of the destination
- Activity could vary dramatically from community to community, and this could be used to influence sorting maliciously
- It's totally appropriate for the same topic to exist in multiple subcommunities
Maybe [we might have a color for moderators]. Depends on our approach to moderator identity. For example - moderators may have opaque/vague "Riot Moderator" account names and be Riot staff, or they could be players.
- A reply from a moderator would show as an update on a de-listed topic.
- This may apply to comments, but ideally votes would handle it.
- Off-topic threads will be deleted, not moved.
- Boards can have totally separate rules/moderators from each other.
- The same topic can exist in multiple boards.
- Moderators may have a vague "Riot Moderator" account or be players.
#~ 1 Month Ago
@Tamat - Moderation a la JaGeX - Daen
Points Raised
- Moderators should have individual identity.
- Moderators should be part of the community.
- Moderators should be able to create their own interaction.
- Moderator action should be visible.
- Player Moderators are awesome.
Riot Responses
Tamat: I'm not opposed to moderators having their own unique identities, but until we're comfortable with the team, we're going to be keeping the footprint of the moderators to a minimum. We think that you having access to more Rioters is more important. Keep in mind, that our moderators are currently contractors, not Rioters, and though we spend a lot of time training them so that their actions are consistent and player focused, this hasn't always been the case, and we're in the middle of improving that.
No [moderation actions will not be publicly visible]. We've seen this request on and off, but this approach would not benefit the Boards, or most players. It creates a lot of unnecessary noise, would require development work, and the benefits don't outweigh the problems it would create. Individual players that have their content removed will get a moderator message, that's a pretty big step from what we used to doe may do something more down the road, but I can't see us doing what you proposed.
[Player Moderators] Absolutely! We're planning this down the road, but not in the ways you would expect. I can't go into a ton of detail, but we're putting a lot of thought into how this will work, and should have more information for you about this year. It's going to be badass.
- We are keeping the footprint of moderators to a minimum until we're more comfortable.
- Moderators are currently contractors, not Rioters.
- Moderation actions will not be publicly visible.
- Removing individual content and sending a private message is a big step from the past.
- We are planning to have player moderators sometime in the future.
Tamat: I know that moderation hasn't been awesome in vBulletin, but we are buckling down to correct this for the Boards. The challenge right now is that we're small team within Riot, and we have 1000 things we want to do. We're growing, but for now we're focusing a majority of the development resources towards other things.
Keep in mind that we're still in beta. I personally consider the Community Beta to be more of an Alpha of the Boards. That said, we're going to spend some more time as a team thinking about some of the points you raised in this discussion. We're not able to do all of it right away, but there have been some improvements recently, and that will continue over time.
- The Boards team is small with a lot to do.
- We will continue to work on improvements and consider the points raised.
#~ 1 Day Ago
Are moderators allowed to proactively regulate content? - Daen
Points Raised
- Are moderators able to take initiative?
- Subjectivity
- Activity of a thread contributes to moderation decisions.
Riot Responses
Pendragon: I deleted that first [thread in the OP] around the same time you posted this.
The second [thread in the OP] is more of a tossup, I probably would have killed it personally if I saw it early in its life.
we have to get better at snagging the more obvious ones before we can improve at the ones that are more grey though.
- I would have deleted the thread if it were seen at an earlier time.
- We need to improve at moderating clear cases before approaching edge cases.
Pendragon: Depends on lots of factors - how close of a call is it, how active is it, do I have someone readily available (maybe I'm reading from my phone at 3 AM), etc
Lots of it is subjective though. The subjectivity in my mind is what can often separate good communities from great communities. Making those hard choices sometimes is what makes you authentic, unique, special.
The problem is that sometimes that's not fair right? In my view if you strive for absolute fairness you sacrifice a lot.
- Factors that potentially influence moderation:
- How close a call it is
- How active the thread is
- Is a moderator readily available
- Moderation is subjective, and making hard choices is important for authenticity.
Pendragon: The question I have actually is - is there a context in which nonsense spam is legitimate discussion? I think one thing we're hoping to do really well on the boards here is compartmentalizing things.
There are a bunch of people who like to engage in [inflammatory] discussions. In my perfect world - the rest of us just don't have to see or know about them right?
[Deciding to delete a thread is] really about - what is the impact that a removal is going to have. Sometimes it's better for overall health to let something die naturally than to kill it and have the ripple effect generate even more nonsense than the original OP.
- Is there a context where nonsense spam is worth keeping?
- We want to be able to compartmentalize on the Boards.
- Different people enjoy different topics, but they should be able to be hidden from the view of those that don't appreciate it.
- It can be better for overall health to let a thread die naturally rather than deleting it.
I have no idea whether this thread will be useful to anyone or provoke discussion, but I felt like creating it regardless. If I missed anything please call me out on it!
