WP-mods correspondence 11 feb 2023

From: Curator <admin@mastodon.art>
To: david@tech.lgbt
Subject: Questions from Del / WelshPixie :)
Date: Wednesday, February 08, 2023 07:39

Hi!

Okay, some questions :)

1) The landlord/parasite issue. From what I understand, someone on tech.lgbt made a post where they called landlords 'parasites', and someone from w.e reported that for the word 'parasite' being antisemitic. Did a mod from tech.lgbt then send a report back to w.e for being pro-capitalist? 

Things that are concerning here:

Mods sending 'revenge reports'; is this how tech.lgbt handles disputes, how that one mod in particular handled that dispute, and if the latter, have you spoken with that mod about why that not might be a great way of communicating between admins that will only serve to drive wedges between instances that otherwise have common alignment? What's your moderation policy on handling disputes like that, do you have open channels of communication with other instances for talking through issues? (I know this isn't valid for *all* instances, there's no point trying to engage in conversation with the channer/edgelord crap, but for the instances in our 'social circle' of instances where we all generally align on our policies and standards).

2) A tech.lgbt user replied on a thread where the OP was talking about appropriating language, where they seemed to be trying to excuse language appropriation as *not* racist on the grounds that languages are full of loan words. 

I know you're latinx; what's your take on this, did you discuss it with other BIPOC, and was your user reprimanded at all for racism?

3) I'm not sure of the mod involvement from tech.lgbt's side here. I know a w.e account made a post  talking about .art and white users coddling nazis / giving leeway to Ukranians because they're white, and a tech.lgbt user reported them for being 'Russian Propaganda'. The w.e. post talking about suspending tech.lgbt mentions a moderator 'revenge report' and that the moderator is no longer a mod; can you provide more info? If it's the user I'm thinking of (that made the 'Russian propaganda' report), I know they migrated from techl.lgbt but was there any mod involvement with them around it being problematic to call out posts like that as 'Russian propaganda'?

On a more general note, are you planning to address w.e's concerns with a public post? I saw the conversation you were having with Distel in replies to the w.e announcement post but it looks like those replies have all been deleted. Usually what instances expect (I'm basing this on the admins from other instances I talk with when stuff like this happens, f.e. wanting to see a post from eldritch.cafe taking responsibility for what happened) is that the instance being 'accused' of poor behaviour makes some kind of public post to discuss the claims and address misgivings people might have about their behaviour/the behaviour of their mod team, note any areas of their moderation that might need improving on, admit when things might have been handled poorly (or defending if otherwise), etc. 

I've tried to be straightforward with my questions and hope they don't come across as hostile. I've seen you saying that it's a shame when similarly-aligned instances fracture their communities over issues like this, and I agree, would hate to see that happen. I think we're all 'the same' in that we want to provide a safe space for our users that's free from racism and bigotry and where issues can be brought up and discussed safely among mod teams.

No rush to respond - like I said on masto, I know we're all pretty burned out right now XD

- Del

(Feel free to share this with your moderators ^.^)

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From: david wolfpaw <david@tech.lgbt>
To: admin@mastodon.art
Subject: Re: Questions from Del / WelshPixie :)
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2023 5:14

Hello Del,

This communication was authored and vetted by the moderation staff as a whole with input from all of our members. We would like to start by addressing points 1 and 3. As you suspected, they were both involving the same former moderator. In the wake of the eightpoint incident, we decided to bolster our moderation staff and sent a call for those interested to apply. In that time, we brought in several new staff members; this moderator was among them. At the time, we found no reason to disqualify them from the selection, as on first glance their moderation insights were swift and helpful to the team. However, regardless, two bad judgement calls happened in relatively rapid succession (by their actions, within two weeks of each other).

In specific regard to point 1, the report initially received by our staff lacked any context (appearing only as the category “other” without any direct comment). The person being reported explicitly stated that the phrase was not intended to reflect religious affiliation or race, but rather to draw attention to the unethical behaviors of modern landlords. It is our understanding that the moderator who responded to this (who is the same moderator as pointed to above) was not aware of the antisemitic connotations associated to the word and assumed the complaint was directly based on pro-capitalist/pro-landlord sentiment. If they had done due diligence and reviewed all of the reported comments on the thread, then they would have had the context to understand the objection. We unequivocally rebuke antisemitism and all other forms of bigotry.

In specific regard to point 3, according to the same moderator, who was at the center of it, a phrase containing "Russia-gate" clouded their judgement at the time; they had seen an earlier report (#888) that was accusing one of our members of engaging in "a bunch of unhinged Russia-gate bullshit", on the #fediblock for soc.eu-fediland.de, and conflated it with a different, subsequently shared post (pointing to evidence of fascist tendencies from the same instance) that was shared with the team for analysis. They interpreted it as if it related to that report (#888), and the words “Russia-gate” bolstered them to take action immediately. With these conversations interleaved, they had correlated the two unrelated posts and filed the next report (#889) against the poster who was pointing out fascist tendencies, believing this second poster was the one who filed the false report (#888) to us. They should have taken the time to do additional research and gather additional context, in which they failed to do so and assumed it was associated with the Russian effort to propagandize the conflict with Ukraine as a “denazification effort”. A more tenured staff member would have handed the reports off to another mod, but in this case they acted solely, rashly, and in a way that upon review was totally unacceptable. While for any situation like this, we would have levied judgement and issued some form of reprimand, the moderator in question immediately took this action upon themselves, and voluntarily stepped down, citing this and the other recent mistake as the cause. The staff as a whole acknowledges that both of these situations were handled inappropriately. We have never and will never endorse revenge reporting as an acceptable moderation tactic.

(We can reveal the identity of this moderator on request, but they have been anonymised in the above paragraphs as a respect to their self-recognition in their moderation capacity, in the end.)

In regard to the 2nd point, with the value of hindsight and a more clear head, we’ve come to the conclusion that we should have removed the offending post. Putting aside the determination of whether or not it was inherently and/or intentionally racist, we agree that it at best did not contribute anything meaningful to the conversation, and at worst could be interpreted as directly aggressive. There was no merit in leaving the post there. However, we were also not afforded the opportunity to review the post in a meaningful way before dealing with the larger issue of the #fediblock message sent about said post. To expound upon our issues with the use of #fediblock, the user report was filed on Jan 2, 2023 at 9:04AM EST, and the message sent to #fediblock was sent a mere 4 minutes later at 9:08AM EST. Either there was an unreasonable expectation of immediate moderation action, or they intended to publish the #fediblock post regardless. Additionally, our understanding is that the #fediblock is not for interpersonal disputes and should be used only when talking about full instance blocking. The callout on the #fediblock tag, in turn caused 3 additional reports to be filed. It is the opinion of the staff that said callout was an unnecessary and immediate escalation to a situation that was not given adequate time to be resolved. There were several ways in which this could have been handled, between educating the user of why their position was incorrect, personal blocking, or reporting and giving the staff the opportunity to correct the problem. We are absolutely at fault for not removing the post in the aftermath, but we feel that the escalation made resolving the situation that much more difficult.

On to the larger issue of comms: We are fully willing to admit that our communications on these issues in particular were not handled effectively. This comes partially from the reliance on david to perform all of our server’s outward facing communications. The messages coming from their personal account exacerbate the problem as people take their responses personally and attribute moderation decisions they had no part in as being dictated or mandated by them. To address this, we've taken steps to reorganize part of our moderation process, including the creation of a centralized admin account for official comms. We intend to take a more cautious approach to actions issued by our moderation staff. Currently the staff act with some level of autonomy in their decisions; not every issue is a committee decision. We're actively working to ensure that reports are given the full attention they deserve and are taken with as much context as possible. It's with this in mind that we're encouraging our moderators to discuss serious actions before taking them, and to step away the moment they feel they've lost objectivity.

Additionally, we’ve reached out to the weirder.earth staff and have yet to receive specific feedback on what they would like to see changed about our moderation process. At the moment, we’ve made general changes but we are essentially swinging blind at what would appease them enough to reconsider their stance on defederation. It is not our desire nor intention for weirder.earth to want to distance themselves from us and we wish to participate in an amicable resolution for both of our servers.

- The tech.lgbt Moderation Team

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From: Curator <admin@mastodon.art>
To: david wolfpaw <david@tech.lgbt>
Subject: Re: Questions from Del / WelshPixie :)
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2023 01:36

Hi david/ all!

Thanks so much for this - this all definitely puts my mind at ease! <3

No need to divulge that first moderator's name, it's not relevant :)  The info about what happened is enough. I think the moderation changes you're making are good too, not only for communicating this stuff from your instance, but it'll help lighten the load between you and your mods, not just of work but of the weight of accountability. 

I don't know if it would be worth sending this email to w.e too (on the assumption that you haven't given them all this info already) - it might help.

Are you happy with me to share it with the other admins I'm in contact with?

What's the handle of your new admin account? ^.^

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From: Tech.lgbt moderation team <mods@tech.lgbt>
To: Curator <admin@mastodon.art>
CC: mods@tech.lgbt
Subject: Re: Questions from Del / WelshPixie :)
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2023 15:24 CEST

Hello Del, thank you for reading through our long message, and the patience that you have had with us, both in time to respond and managing this situation. We greatly appreciate how communicative you've been.

This response is now coming from our group email, mods@tech.lgbt, to open up communication to the rest of the team more easily. We also created an account, https://tech.lgbt/@mods, which we'll use to post important moderator notices. To start this off we've created a mod voting system for this account and announcements, to ensure that we should have some consensus before posting anything there.

We would like to restore communication with w.e and mend the breaks, and will try emailing them from this account. We hope that they'll read through and respond, since communication appears to have stopped.

We are more than happy with you sharing with other admins, as we're trying to find the best way to share changes that we've made with other instances, without some of the issues that have come from directly messaging individuals.

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From: Curator <admin@mastodon.art>
To: "tech.lgbt moderation team" <mods@tech.lgbt>
Subject: Re: Questions from Del / WelshPixie :)
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2023 12:39

Hi all :D

Please excuse the unsolicited advice and obviously ignore it if it doesn't apply - I've seen a lot of admins (and I've done this now too) set up a Write Freely / write.as account since they allow for long form posting, in order to share longer admin-related posts - with the bonus that it's off-site so also serves as a backup in case the instance goes down ^.^

I'll share the response I had from you with the other admins and let you know if any of them have further questions but I expect it'll be generally well received :)

- Del

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On Sat, Feb 11, 2023 at 11:24 PM tech.lgbt moderation team <mods@tech.lgbt> wrote:

Could we get a link to yours? It's not a bad idea for us to look into doing so

tech.lgbt moderation team

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From: Curator <admin@mastodon.art>
To: "tech.lgbt moderation team" <mods@tech.lgbt>
Subject: Re: Questions from Del / WelshPixie :)
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2023 22:51 CEST

https://dotart.blog/dotart-blog/ :D I got a Write Freely hosting package from Matt who develops the software, since a lot of people on .art wanted longer form posting for their writing or blogging, so it made sense to stick the Curator alt account on there too.