[Retracted]
I'm temporarily retracting this discussion thread, due to various concerns, most prominently being that enough discussion has not elapsed on the first thread's details. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Staffchat Recaps Part 2: The Recapening
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» Policy & Voting / Policy Discussion
» Staffchat Recaps Part 2: The Recapening
Summary:
🎵 Only this time I'm smiling at your side, / To know that I would someday be gratified. / So here I lie, in our imperfect paradise, / A eulogistic lullaby. 🎵
I have a few issues with Pedagon's placement on the team, primarily regarding impartiality and a recent incident where his rhetoric towards a certain staffer veered precariously close to (what seemed to me to be) personal attack. It's not enough for me to reject the proposal if he's still on it, however.
The SCPD townhall channel which precipitated virtually all the action we're seeing on these issues is a detailed record of Pedagon's impartiality. I've read everything he said in there, and can testify that despite his being easily the most consistent and engaged presence in those discussions, he kept his cool in difficult situations at least as well as the actual staff members did.
Pedagon was the only indispensable single member of those townhalls. He provided detailed and thoroughly neutral summaries of the long and complex conversations taking place — which is the job described in this proposal. Both staff and non-staff considered his summaries invaluable, accurate, and fair, and none of them stepped up to do the job for him. The discussions simply would not have progressed as quickly, efficiently and with such nuance without Pedagon.
If a single incident is worth bringing up, it should be brought up with context. In this O5 thread, Kufat suggested that staff members venting about the userbase is both acceptable and no different from teachers complaining about problem students in the break room. Pedagon is a committed educator with experience in how damaging it is for teachers to write their students off because of perceived "difficulty," and how unproductive it is to share negative preconceptions of people over which you have power with other people who are also in power. On this one single occasion, at the tail end of the extremely long and fraught overall townhall period, he responded in extreme anger to a staff member expressing a toxic opinion on education and then applying it to something to which it manifestly does not apply: staff's relationship to the userbase. He apologized for the anger and amended down the message very quickly after reconsideration of his tone, but the point he made remains fully legitimate. Infantilizing the userbase and dismissing their concerns triggered Pedagon's commitment to the community and his career as a teacher, leading to him losing his cool for approximately .05% of the time he spent tirelessly progressing the SCPD townhalls. If he was partial, it was only to the appropriate exercise of community trust.
He got angry because he's conscientious. That makes him even more qualified for this team.
Pedagon was instrumental in getting us to this point. He is not a weak link in this proposal, he is potentially one of the most integral.
I'm also concerned with Pedagon being a member of this team. They made comments about another staffer which I felt was untoward, as it could've made the same criticisms while being significantly less ad hominem than it was. I feel that users in this role should be those who ensure their communications are diplomatic while still being able to bring up relevant information and criticisms.
Everyone else proposed for the team seems good to me, and the proposal itself is fine.
Edit: im dumb
I have had ample experience to see the four non-staff users engaging with the community, and with staff. Every one of them is conscientious, impartial and willing to work for the improvement of inter-community relationships. I am comfortable saying that you would have immense difficulty finding a non-staff member with any, any reservations about any of them.
A lot of people have worked hard and persistently on the issue of staff-to-userbase trust recently, but Pedagon is the equal to literally any of them and has been remarkably persistent despite near-constant setbacks in the SCPD townhalls. I am personally of the opinion that his patience has been near-saintly, and this in the context of performing non-staff volunteer work for no personal gain whatsoever. There is a reason he was overwhelmingly one of the most popular choices for the liaison position, which he was not selected for. PlaguePJP is a recent junior moderator in SCPD and has already done good work keeping the space safe and respectful. J Dune was also a frequent presence in the existing discussions, brought up several pertinent points, and has sufficient trust there to have become a junior moderator as well. GremlinGroup has accrued so much goodwill in his time on the site that I can't think of a person less likely to be engaged in inflammatory conduct. I have zero reservations about the ability of these individuals to fairly summarize and recap staff work, and consider the threat they pose to be absolutely nil.
I am, of course, in favour of the proposal as presented. As I am under consideration for the recap team as Junior Staff, I would myself do my very best to justify the trust inherent to the position.
Edit: while I was among Pedagon's nominators, I wasn't able to get hold of Dune, Plague or GremlinGroup beforehand so my unqualified support is not presently counted in their numbers, which would actually be 13, 7 and 5 respectively.
The Recap Team would likely operate in a separate discord, where the work would be coordinated similar to Collections. Non-staff users (who will be given the role of Junior Staff) will have read-only permissions to both main staffchats on IRC and Discord (save for places where JS can speak, as per this thread).
Against this. If they’re JS, they don’t have access to OS+ spaces. There are going to be OS+ on the team.
I personally nominated Dune and Pedagon for this role. If I had remembered, I would have nominated Plague as well, but I just kinda forgot.
I think all the candidates, without commenting on myself for obvious reasons of self-bias, are excellent for the team. All the non-staff candidates have been integral to the greater conversation, are recognizable members of the community, and have my personal confidence. All the staff candidates have my confidence as well, particularly Mod, who was deeply important to the conversation and communication in SCPD, and Yossi, who has, at least from what I've seen, been indispensable in developing and hearing commentary on the policies we've seen in the past several days.
I will briefly touch on the concerns regarding Pedagon's impartiality and comments. His outburst was, like many outbursts of similar nature, not cool. It was, however, in response to a comment which struck a personal nerve with him, and I can't say I blame him for responding negatively, even if the particular details and methods were less acceptable. I've spoken to Pedagon and he recognizes that it was a mistake, and while apologies do not always equal complete repentance, I believe that the public apology he gave was sincere. Additionally, he has done amazing work in helping to summarize and document long-running discussions in SCPD for later reference and for those who were unable to tune in to the long, fast-paced conversations. His commentary has also been valuable, and while the concerns others have brought up do have degree of validity, I don't think one incident is enough to overwrite his contributions, and I do not believe that the one aforementioned incident is enough to discount him as a qualified candidate.
Edit: duplicate post, please disregard. Thanks wikidot
/forum/t-14126208/staffchat-recaps-part-2:the-recapening#post-
