Overmoderation.

Necere

Shrink Ray Wielder
Original poster
NCASE
Feb 22, 2015
1,719
3,281
In my humble opinion some of the moderators here have been overzealous in exercising their moderation duties, and in particular in regards to thread locking. These are threads that, from my perspective at least, and in threads I've been personally involved in, barely register as lukewarm on the flame-o-meter.

It's one thing if there are insults, flames, or otherwise unproductive comments being dispensed with abandon, but I personally make great effort to make my arguments succinctly, and without resorting to ad hominems or any other type of personal attack. I also don't feel I have ever been personally attacked here, and have felt the discussion to be generally productive and respectful. And yet, a handful of discussions I have been directly involved in have been the subject of moderation, often without any warning given from a moderator prior.

Now, I don't want to tell you how to run the place, but it seems to me that if you're really on board with a philosophy of open and honest discussion, of vibrant debate and the airing of a range of perspectives, you may want to rethink some of the moderation policies currently in effect.Perhaps dispense warnings judiciously at first, and reserve thread locks for the most egregious offenses. As it is, it's hard to express opinions that are even a little bit controversial without feeling like a mod might step in and censor you. Is that really the kind of community we want to be?
 
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John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,129
7,057
sff.network
Hi @Necere,

Today's thread locking was done by a mod pending a review of the situation by the Senior Mod team. The thread has now been re-opened and moved to the General subforum.

Many of the mentioned threads are locked pre-emptively pending team review - where we take into account not only the content itself, but input via the report tool and via PM (both of which are supplied in confidence) and overall behaviour by involved users. Sometimes more information is provided in a way that isn't visible to the wider community that leads us to keep a thread locked. Sometimes threads are kept locked because users have had a habit of flying off the wall, trolling, or derailing threads.