Boards›Boards Feedback

[Feedback] So when are we getting visible Moderation?

Pryotra··17 votes·1,518 views

I remember some reds posting that it was getting worked on, but till then mods are kinda power tripping.

Example of a lot of discussion being silenced.

Another example

Part of the reason that Visible Moderation is a necessity is that the above problem will exist in any forum you put up until their actions are visible, and therefore accountable. This is something that can indeed be fixed on your current GD, with literally 0 coding. Simple policy changes will fix this in many ways. For example, Requiring your mods to post with "Thread moved to Off Topic" or "Thread closed due to naming and shaming" when the action is taken would go miles to nullify this problem. And all that requires is making it a rule for your mods to follow.

A rule set stickied at the top of the forums, like there used to be, will go far as well. With that in place, you should see a lot less trash to clean up, as it shows that there are rules, and you can reference them in Moderation action posts. Again, this would take only the time to type it up, post it, sticky it, and close it to prevent further posts in it. That is like an hour tops, and you save your moderators a lot of trouble as all they have to do is point at the rules and say "Read the rules. Especially rule #3" when questioned.

Honestly, until you can succeed in doing the bare minimum when it comes to forum moderation on your CURRENT forums, you cannot expect to ever have success here.

14 Comments

Pendragon9 votes

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?

MackleDoge2 votes

I would much rather have more common moderation with solid reasoning and visibility then less frequent moderation done under the table. I want spam removed. I want reposts taken down. I want rules and guidelines for these forums so we can make this a success. That is going to require some sacrifice for those that have the "I do whatever the hell I feel like on the internet" attitude, and I'm honestly okay with that. I really hope that meeting goes well, and I'd really appreciate it if afterwords you or someone else from Riot could make a small post mentioning some details (if at all possible of course, I understand you can't share every detail for various reasons).

Pryotra3 votes

I like the direction of this, tbh. I'm kinda confused though, would a de-listed topic still show up as an update for the OP? If it doesn't, I don't see that being too useful. If it does, awesome.

Also, I am hoping that at least some of this applies to comments, as well as topics. Reason being that one comment could be pretty... aggressive, and the responses to that comment could very well be nothing but more bile. I feel that the comment, and all nested comments, be "locked" at the very least, but not the whole topic.

My only remaining thoughts so far is that I hope that the general "guidelines" do reach the players somehow. Not necessarily the punishments, but definitely the rules that dictate what posters can expect action to be taken against. This way it won't be a huge shock to post a seemingly OK topic, and have it closed because it violated some arbitrary rule that we couldn't have known about ahead of time.

I'm actually OK with TOS violations disappearing. That should actually be a policy on porn threads specifically, IMO. As I am about enforcing the no spam/reposts rule more thoroughly. I'm not against heavier handed moderation, so long as we can know what the heck is wrong and it be visible. I am against someone just closing threads and banning left and right with no apparent rhyme or reason.

I guess I would like to end with a suggestion. You know how wrenchmen are orangy-yellow, and Rioters are RED? Why not choose a color solely for moderators? This way they don't can be readily differentiated from Rioters, and don't really appear on the red tracker for closing threads.

Pendragon4 votes

I like the direction of this, tbh. I'm kinda confused though, would a de-listed topic still show up as an update for the OP? If it doesn't, I don't see that being too useful. If it does, awesome.

The reply would show as an update

Also, I am hoping that at least some of this applies to comments, as well as topics. Reason being that one comment could be pretty... aggressive, and the responses to that comment could very well be nothing but more bile. I feel that the comment, and all nested comments, be "locked" at the very least, but not the whole topic.

Remains to be seen. Hopefully the thumbs up/down should remove most anything really bad from visibility

My only remaining thoughts so far is that I hope that the general "guidelines" do reach the players somehow. Not necessarily the punishments, but definitely the rules that dictate what posters can expect action to be taken against.

This'll probably happen over time and start really simple. 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

I'm actually OK with TOS violations disappearing. That should actually be a policy on porn threads specifically, IMO. Clear TOS violations will be ban on sight with no appeal.

I am against someone just closing threads and banning left and right with no apparent rhyme or reason.

This actually happens a lot less than you might think, but I understand the not knowing piece.

I guess I would like to end with a suggestion. You know how wrenchmen are orangy-yellow, and Rioters are RED? Why not choose a color solely for moderators?

Maybe. 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.

Pryotra2 votes

This actually happens a lot less than you might think, but I understand the not knowing piece.

Only reason I even brought it up is because its become much more frequent on GD recently. Sometimes its obvious, but alot of times it just isn't.

I understand you aren't commenting about over there, and I'm not asking for it. Just explaining why it was even mentioned.

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

I actually like this. This way, the OT/Misc board won't become the garbage can of the forums, nor will any other board. It will also encourage better posting practices, as you will only really get the conversation you want to have if you are posting in the right area.

I'll wrap up, as here it is late. I like that this is getting seriously looked at, and really hope you guys have a lot of luck hammering out what you need to in that meeting. I know this is a big issue with alot of posters currently for a multitude of reasons, so I thought I would bring it up in it's own topic. Thanks for responding.

Sir ArmaMalum1 votes

Very glad it's on the table as well as a high priority. I do, however, have a few questions on the matter.

---Will there be a Rioter side requirement to give an explanation for de-listing, banning and such?

---How do you plan to keep up with the community size? Are there plans for community volunteer mods? (I volunteer as tribute!)

---Will there be any form of automation based moderation based on a high amount of reports?

---Where is this room of which you speak? I happen to be heading to good ol' California next week for Spring Break and if I happen to be in the area.....wink wink nudge nudge know what I mean? Know what I mean? XD

Sir ArmaMalum4 votes

I agree with the idea of visible moderation, and I have heard the horror stories of GD moderation. The nice thing is the new platform here allows for additional features to be added along with different avenues of attack to problems just like this that were previously constrained by the older forum's lack of adaptability. (I'm not a computer expert, this is just what's been said).

I can see the guidelines box being a very easy tool for the list of rules, but I don't pretend to know where the CB is at to post removal, bans and other forms of moderation right now other than the 'report' button. Except for the fact that it has not been needed yet here in the CB, although I am one of the many that truly believes it's only a matter of time.

Pryotra6 votes

I understand WHY these forums are created. I just find it dumb that they are reinventing the wheel, only to find that they still haven't tried making it round.

What I am getting at is these 2 steps I mentioned have been followed as staples of good moderation on just about every well or even decently moderated board. Even reddit does this, from what I have seen. Why would they NOT copy this?

As for post removal, that is something I feel should definately have a moderated comment on if action is taken. It takes 2 seconds to type:

Comment Removed due to Racism

or even

Comment Removed: See rule #2

So why hasn't Riot made this policy? This takes, tops, 3 hours to train the new policy, post the new rules, and begin implementing them. They both have proven their effectiveness everywhere they have been used. What has stopped this from being a thing here?

Sir ArmaMalum2 votes

I don't think anything's stopping it, I think it's just not come up as much of an issue as, say, the very public discontent with the voting system, people abusing insecure portions of code, and general incompleteness (which this is a part of). Right now, I can't really imagine the Beta Team (who is a relatively small team from what I have been told) simply being able to use this effectively enough to warrant putting it in atm. If there were amazing moderation tools out, if no one can man them it's still not visible.

This is all speculation though, I'm no Red.

Zero Ichimonji3 votes

I agree, forum moderation NEEDS to be visible, so you know who to fire when they start closing legitimate threads and banning people out of some misplaced lust for power.

NeoBluereaper1 votes

I disagree, seeing that this is the LoL community. Mods should not be named and shamed for doing their job.

When a gamebreaking bug is present they will try and cover it up as much as possible after finding it out and creating a hoxfix to reduce collateral damage of the bug (Rather than just shut the whole server down till the fix)

MackleDoge5 votes

All sorts of wrong. Policing without accountability is tyranny, not justice. Having mods be accountable for their actions isn't naming and shaming, its requiring them to use their ability responsibly and do their jobs maturely.

Sir ArmaMalum5 votes

Visibility actually helps mods more than hurt them. If they are required to explain their reasoning behind a post removal, move, ban or other such thing then they deny imagination. It's a lot easier to say that this or that Rioter is doing a horrible job yada yada off of an invisible action that could have been anything then to try to misinterpret and poke holes in what should be a valid reason.

HalcyonicHS5 votes

Visibility also gives a route for users to notify the moderators about their grieviances, which will also help link the moderators closer to the community, removing their image of tyranny.

This is important as one of the most important thing for any kind of moderation is trust between the community and the moderation staff. If there is no trust, then either people leave, or disregard the rules completely- GD being an example of the latter.

More from Boards Feedback

It's Time -You- Listen Riot:
Boards Feedback534 comments
1,727
votes
I think that the meeting went something like this...
Boards Feedback113 comments
611
votes
If This Reddit Style Goes Live, I'm Done
Boards Feedback203 comments
346
votes
An Open Letter to the Riot. With Pictures!
Boards Feedback211 comments
240
votes
New Board: Whining
Boards Feedback113 comments
208
votes
Did Riot really just...???
Boards Feedback104 comments
183
votes

More by Pryotra

@Lyte - Welp, you've offically made Prisoner's Island.
Gameplay51 comments
25
votes
Do you know what the Viegar Changes remind me of?
Gameplay16 comments
21
votes
Watch the DDoS attack live with detailed maps.
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous31 comments
18
votes
[Critical] This color scheme actually strains my eyes.
Boards Feedback11 comments
15
votes
So... where are the "levers of balance" on bard?
Gameplay28 comments
14
votes
[Feedback] After a few days mucking about here, I have a list of things that I think could be better
Boards Feedback31 comments
14
votes