[DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

Summary:

Minimizing burnout and communication issues.

[DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

AriadnesThread 03 Aug 2023 19:29

Over the past several months, the SCP Foundation Official Discord (19cord) has seen a surge in growth in both user numbers and activity. This has resulted in a strain on the moderation team, as well as possible issues with the team's structure and overview by Staff admin, prompting a discussion surrounding the following:

• Moderator Team Structure, particularly with regards admin oversight and interaction with other relevant Site Teams.
• Recruiting more moderators to minimize burn out and support healthy activity.
• Encouraging an activity audit of active moderators to ensure enough coverage.
• Minimization of communication issues with other teams and general users to combat perceptions of unfair bias or interference.

Any other relevant topics or related issues are free to be discussed as well!

This discussion will remain open for one week.

Mainsite Mirror

Last edited on 03 Aug 2023 19:34 by AriadnesThread Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

divinephobia 03 Aug 2023 19:47

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record at this point, but I strongly support the activity audit. Even if it's just a poke in DMs to check in, we really need to optimize our team. The problem that happens here is how do we measure activity, do we take into account activity outside of moderation channels, etc.

With recruiting, it was mentioned in a discussion channel in staffcord, but would it be worthwhile to mention recruitment for 19cord staff on-site, particularly in staff spaces? Allegedly some people on staff have expressed interest in assisting, though at the same time there isn't much point in mentioning recruitment outside of 19cord as being a 19cord member is kind of a prereq to being modstaff.

And of course, I think written guidelines as to how/when to escalate disciplines and such would really help, especially with dealing with accusations of unfair bias. I know this is in progress in a thread in the private server moderation channel, but it might be useful to modping in there or something to try and get discussions going again. (I know I'm part of the problem as I haven't contributed either).

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

ParallelPotatoes 03 Aug 2023 19:55

I agree with div in that there should be an activity audit, as there are several mods and jmods that haven’t talked in months. I don’t think this will solve any fundamental problems, but it’s a nice start.

I think there needs to be some sort of recruitment drive. A lot of the moderation issues seem to fall on the same few people, and it seems like it would help for there to be more people taking up those issues to dilute the burnout. It might be a good idea to directly reach out to wiki staff who are active in 19cord.

I think a good feature would be a dedicated place or person to contact for wiki staff to comment on concerns they have about how moderators are acting in private-server-moderation without dragging the issue to a place where all of staff can see.

Last edited on 03 Aug 2023 20:15 by ParallelPotatoes Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

Mew-ltiverse 03 Aug 2023 20:34

I definitely think removal of inactive staff is a good call, and recruiting new staff. There have points where I only noticed like 6 staff members across admins, os, and js as a whole were active and for a server with so many members and especially since it opened to the public, more staff to help out and prevent the current active staff members from burn out could really help.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

AvocadoMilk 03 Aug 2023 20:44

First of all, there's been a lot of confusion about what offenses require what moderation (i.e does [rule violation] require a ban or a warn) and I feel like a bit more clarification about this would be helpful to both myself and the rest of the moderation team. I understand that the team is still young and we haven't really worked out all the nitty gritty things but this is would be a good start.

Second, a lack of professionalism while talking about users. This has been brought up multiple times by many people, and mods have been called out for this, but I feel we need to crack down on this more. It would help if observing staff would call this out more. (Not saying it's their responsibility)

Thirding ParralelPotatoes and Div here that a lot of the inactive moderators need to be removed. There was a successful vote done in the past that detailed the fact that during every promo cycle, the inactive moderators would be let known of their inactivity and if it persisted, they would be removed from the team. This was not done last promo cycle as it was thought that the inactive moderators would become more active during phase 7, but needs to be done next cycle.

Lastly, we need a team captain, as the admins just aren't enough, especially since only 1-2 of them are usually active.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

Prime Girl 04 Aug 2023 04:59

As one of the Discord Team's Server Admins, and think it’s fair to say one of the more actively engaged ones , got a lot to say here, and have thought a lot about some of this when working on the Discord Team Guidelines doc.¹ Going to link a sandbox with the content from the incomplete google doc here and will put thoughts on this thread in collapsibles below that: http://05sandbox.wikidot.com/discord-guidelines-partial

1

Moderator Team Structure, particularly with regards admin oversight and interaction with other relevant Site Teams. 

With regards to the current structure we’ve got Junior Moderators, Server Moderators and Server Admins.This is separate from the overall staff structure of staff generally which is for the most part Junior Staff, Operational Staff, (OS with Mod Tools) and Admins. The two don’t really intersect. You can have an Admin Junior Moderator (and we do) or a Junior Staff Server Moderator (and we do). Can’t have a JS as Server Admin though (talked about this hypothetical prior) because, to quote the hub “Server Admins serve as a stand-in for "Captain" of the team when necessary” and JS can’t be captains.

Anyway, for the most part, we think that a custom hierarchy does make sense. While personally we trust the Wiki Admins very much, for example, it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to drop them in with the ability to accidentally do irreparable harm to the server by accident, with no prior moderation experience or guidance. Similar to how being an admin doesn’t inherently give us knowledge about doing crit, or how the magic of Wikidot CSS works, staff ranking doesn’t have bearing on what one already knows re:Discord server moderation and its tools.

There’s also, in a way, a similar philosophy for why we don’t just pass every member of staff mod tools or admin tools. The team’s roles, the internal promos, how permissions are set up, general resistance to permission creep, to our understanding this is all to decrease the chance of say, an accidental everyone ping or the deletion of a channel, or creation of an unnecessary channel without care.

There are a few problems with the way we currently have with the hierarchy however. Though we’re a bit biased because this has kind of been our own personal frustrations here.

Firstly, the promotions. Last time there were promos, had to deal mostly alone with this, for the vast vast majority of it, with both the internal promos and on-site promo, and recruitment which happened at the same time. It was too much for one person to handle. As previously stated, we believe the idea of a Discord Team exclusive hierarchy makes sense in terms of permissions, but the labor here is way not worth it. Having to set up the questions and send out the recruitment document, having to discuss candidates among the whole team and then turn those responses into a ranking, and then having to choose how many of those to pick, and then putting them up for a vote. Simultaneously discussing current Junior Moderators, seeing if any of them want to go up, approaching them individually to see if they want to go up, putting them up for a vote. Same deal for Server Admins if any candidates. That’s a lot worse than it sounds, the way we have it set up, especially if it’s only one person doing it. There’s also the demotion vote which we can choose to put up during promos, and look, we tried last time to discuss that but it with the on-site promos happening, being the only one writing the blurbs for those pretty much, the whole issue with our 1 year old policy allowing any 16+ server member to apply which caused us to have to pause things, message all the people involved to let them know they have to be 18+, etc etc…

Of course it doesn’t have to be at the same time as on-site promos, and there hopefully will never again be complications with recruitment of that sort but things happen.

One possible avenue for this is that personally think we’re a bit too democratic with this. Some teams the captains just decide on the new recruits, that’d be so, so much simpler. It’s a very nice idea, letting people, server users, vote to this extent but it’s such a hassle.

Thirdly, server admin =/= captain. Definitially it just isn't. To quote the hub “Server Admins serve as a stand-in for "Captain" of the team when necessary.” The Site Promo before last we didn’t put anyone up. Not because we didn’t think any member should be put up, not because of any reason, really, we didn’t even discuss it, don’t think. At that time we were a server admin but didn’t really even understand that putting people for on-site promos was a thing we had to do, at the time didn’t really understand that Yossi wasn’t just The Captain, if that makes sense. Which, that’s our bad, really dumb of us but we think that confusion kind of makes sense given that definition. One of our fellow server admins didn’t want the captaincy role in Staffcord for the use of the adcap channel, as another example which felt representative of the problem.

Since understanding that, kinda pushed ourself to do more of the captaincy type duties, hence undertaking the various promo junk, and bringing them up again this time (though Guaire kindly offered to help with these upcoming ones, which was nice). Also kind of pushed people to consider the position more as being just captaincy by another name (mostly just via language, also as part of 05Updating updating things to reflect that the four server admins are captains), because otherwise, we’d say, there will end up people in the position unwilling or unable to help with captaincy duties, and those voting for server admins won’t think of the captaincy aspect of things necessarily when voting.

But, we digress, feel we aren’t all on the same wavelength, the server admins, in terms of what all we need to do, or what we need to consult with each other before doing, or what stance to take on certain moderator behavior, what we need from each other. Doesn’t remotely feel we are on the same page, would say. Something clearly isn’t working here. Have had multiple of our fellow server admins talk about stepping down or leaving staff too which also adds to this feeling.

Back in May a member of staff approached server admins about concerns over the then current moderation team and how the mod team could evolve in the future. Factionalism and the like. During discussion, made concerns about “not being on the same page” known, brought up the idea of separating the server admin position from the captaincy position in some way (i.e. can be server admin without being captain, something we’ve mentioned a few times), requesting help with the server guidelines, feeling generally unsupported. Our fellow server admins, to our understanding, weren’t into that, promised renewed activity, and left it at that.

Personally the idea of separating server admin from captaincy has not left us. If people generally think that’s a good idea, that may be something worth trying. Maybe having server admins as vice captains, one main captain, along the lines of what crit seems to do? Something, imo, needs to change in a leadership capacity, am open to ideas there, personally.

If nothing else, would like to do internal promos soon to add more server admins.

In terms of relationships with other teams. Not entirely sure what you mean by that, so will generally talk about that.

Have had some ups and downs with Discord Crit, though hopefully we’re good currently? Have messaged and worked with Pedagon and OriTiefling on multiple occasions to try to get everything copacetic there, wanting to get things sorted with overstepping Discord Staff going into crit channels, and generally trying to be mindful of not being a barrier to crit staff by unintentionally depriving them of powers and tools they need to act effectively, or having undue influence over them by an uneven power dynamic (something somewhat inherent with permissions the way they’re set up). We still aren’t perfect, there’s always going to be some measure of compromise, but for the most part, think we’re doing better than we were.

In terms of Community Outreach, there has been times where CO hasn’t approached Discord Team about announcing contests, SCPD for instance has been informed first, Discord Team (ourself a few times) have only announced it because we found it out ourselves (sometimes informed BY SCPD). Ya know, we’re an official platform, it’d be nice to be thought of going to about announcements like that. Talked about this prior so it’s hopefully in mind for next time. Heck, would be willing to give announcement permissions to certain members of CO or the contest committee if that’d help, we think.

In terms of Disc and AHT, there’s been talk regarding purview, which if there is conflict there, disagreement, that’s something we feel should be defined within those teams as well. Discord isn’t really a traditional disciplinary team like we’ve had on the wiki, and really can’t be thought of that way IMO, though will discuss that in the next section to a degree.

In terms of staff generally speaking, we have kind of at times been considered “not really a staff team” and that’s affected how people judge how the team’s doing IMO, which, no, we definitely are a part of staff, but again that’s something we see less of now. Have some thoughts there but that’s less on the subject of the Discord Team itself and more on staff as a whole

2

Recruiting more moderators to minimize burn out and support healthy activity.

Firstly, wanna address the idea we’ve seen that because the Discord Team is disciplinary in nature, we should only recruit from staff, and only from OS+.

No absolutely not this is a terrible idea, which will vehemently disagree with at every opportunity. These teams are apples and oranges, for one thing. As a member of all three times we’ll say: Disc and AHT are slow, they get little in the way of reports, little in the way of activity the vast majority of the time, certainly compared to Discord Team, and still they let things go through the cracks, go multiple days without actioning things they should have, or let things just … never happen even if we all agree they are important, even if someone keeps poking and poking about it or puts in a fair bit of work and asks explicitly for help (cough cough at both teams). Anyway, Disc and AHT have their share of, to us very concerning problems, ones which we’d like to see addressed (would do it ourself but only so many hours in the day, and only got two hands) but this isn’t about them, point is, these problems stem in part from unwillingness to recruit, and these problems would only be amplified on a platform like Discord which has many more complaints to go through, many more moderating actions to take. Absolutely think we should not shrink our recruitment pool, that would only make things worse.

Secondly, As mentioned in the prior collapsible, recruitment and internal promos are currently a PAIN, certainly for only one person to handle. We could do with changing that up, let people sign up whenever, just have captain(s)/server admins sign off on it, because as it stands it’s a whole affair. At the very least we plan to do that soon, and team members can just bring up the prospect whenever, and personally we’d be like okay it’s time to recruit!

Thirdly, (somewhat ironically given it probably looked like we were doing just that) can’t just throw bodies at the team and make all the problems disappear.

Gotta have active members, gotta have good onboarding and guidelines/standards for people to follow, make sure everyone’s on the same page, gotta have people willing to be involved in things outside of just day to day moderation: writing those guidelines, updating rules, logging on O5, mirroring bans, making sure server initiatives (Crit, Reading Club, eventually Seminars) have what they need to function, etc

Have tried getting people involved in certain parts of that with very limited success. Would very much like to see people comment more on proposals in server-moderation, or comment on stuff like the FAQ, the Discord Team Guidelines, etc… if yall know of a way to get people more involved let us know. One thing that’s been suggested is that it may be better to post more about certain internal Discord policy matters on O5 to get people engaged, may try doing so in the future, though not entirely sure that always makes sense.

Point being we think that’s just as important if not more so than recruiting (though we should make recruiting far simpler)

3

Encouraging an activity audit of active moderators to ensure enough coverage.

Ahhh, activity checks.

For those unfamiliar, as we alluded to in collapsible one, there is a mechanism that allows team members to begin a demotion or removal vote for team members they believe are inactive (well nominally, if a vote passed because a Junior Moderator, Moderator or Server Admin were thought to be doing a poor job, personally that seems like a valid, if technically unintended, usecase). This has not really been used. It’s a difficult ask, for people to create a vote to remove or demote fellow team members, especially so since it’s an uncommon occurrence.

Did try to potentially get one going during the last vote, but we burnt out and nobody picked up the thread.

That’s just to say that the mechanism exists. The easier, and more common among staff teams, way of doing things, which we too can do, is for captains (or in our case in lack of a captain, server admins) removing people from the team. After burning out on the demotion/removal, decided we should just do this. Talked to fellow server admins about this, instead of removing it was decided to ask the inactive moderators if they’d intend to resume moderating.

Personally, we completely agree about pruning the team to an extent, there are a fair few on the team who rarely if ever do work for the team. Was intending to broach that conversation after, or during, the next round of recruiting, in part via the demotion/removal vote, if server admins as a whole continued to disagree.

4

Minimization of communication issues with other teams and general users to combat perceptions of unfair bias or interference. 

Mostly touched on communication issues in collapsible one.

In terms of “combat[ing] perceptions of unfair bias or interference” would like to take this opportunity to discuss a related situation, bear with us a moment.

The Discord Team is a very transparent team, the most transparent of the discipline related teams (Disc, AHT) and we have the highest disciplinary output. Let’s be real, nobody likes being banned, or warned, or kicked, or talked about behind their back or judged.

There’s always going to be people unhappy about copping a punishment, there’s always gonna be people who think they’d run things better, them’s the breaks.

Discord Team is in the unenviable position of having to judge Wiki Staff alongside average users. Sometimes that means banning Wiki Staff who do work inside the server. Nobody’s happy about that, but sometimes it’s necessary, that’s just the nature of things.

There’s been a lot of talk in the past about how to treat WIki Staff on the server. Are they just normal users, treat them no different? Are they held to a higher standard? Philosophies differ (that’s what was meant earlier by factionalism, and not being on the same page, in part)

Whatever the case may be, it’s definitely a lot more of an event to do that. Wiki Staff can all see the private-server-moderation channel, they can see every report of the Mmenosyne bot, every discussion of ongoing situations (we should know, we see a lot of comments, reports or direct messages by wiki staff about it). If someone reports a staff message with the bot, staff sees it (this is something we keep meaning to bring up, gonna try to do it after this O5 message, though this has taken a lot out of us lol) if we ever don’t realize that someone is staff, or talk about them in the context of an ongoing situation, oh boy do they see it and want to talk about it.

So we have to make individual private threads, make sure we’re all in there, ping admins, look at O5 and ping their captains, make sure to ping any new recruits when they join the team so they can see the thread too and any new admins, and any new captains of those staff members.

And then we discuss, like we would any other user, except admins and captains get a bit more involved sometimes, and we take action like any other user, and they face the music like everyone else.

Except sometimes they do staff duties in the server or people wonder about purview, if we needed to go to Disc or captains or what have you, if there’s alternative solutions that lets people continue doing staff duties in the server. And then people say oh we didn’t punish them enough, or soon enough, because they’re staff, preferential treatment, and we get people saying oh you’ve overcorrected, you’re only punishing them because they’re staff.

Or even if it doesn’t get that far, like we said, people don’t like seeing themselves talked about, if that happens accidentally (and it does). It’s a lot.

Even beyond staff discipline, ee get a lot of external staff interference from staff as a whole. Wiki Admins coming in and weighing in on just, typical user infractions we were handling anyway, people telling us we’re talking about a user with the wrong sort of language, staff and users alike taking issue with the fact that we aren’t machines that all act exactly the same way, every time when dealing out disciplinary measures. Transparency is good, policing us and our language, that’s good too, keeps us accountable, keeps us fair. But it’s exhausting and it’s stressful, to have that level of scrutiny, and that sort of bureaucracy to abide by.

Honestly, personally, it feels at times less like staff as a whole is a helpful support system and moreso like it just makes running the server more difficult.

Which, yeah, transparency, fairness, recordkeeping, all good shit even though it’s difficult, but you can see why a lot of team members express feelings of burning out.

That, don’t know that we can solve, don’t know that it is a problem to solve, it’s just a side effect of all those noble goals.

But it renders things difficult, hope you can understand why. Not asking that people stop this, or change anything really, just tired, and talking about the situation.

Man, that took a lot out of us. We know that that's long and a bit rambling, and that the Guidelines document is too, but hopefully y'all get something out of it, been thinking about some of these problems for a while now, as I hope is apparent. But fixing any of them is a lot of work and requires people to want to do it, and actually follow through.

Footnotes

1. Which is in an incomplete form, and have been super burnt out so haven’t worked on that in a while, though Ari has done some work on that a bit more recently we know (thank you Ari).

Last edited on 04 Aug 2023 20:24 by Prime Girl Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

LORDXVNV 04 Aug 2023 05:34

The Discord Team is a disciplinary team.

Here are the rules of the site's Disciplinary Team proper, as listed on its hub

• Stopping disruptive conversations that occur on the forums.
• Editing inflaming or offensive posts to prevent harm to users.
• Delivering warnings to members who break rules.
• Reporting bannable offenses to the administration.
• Voting on and contributing to disciplinary discussions.
• Maintaining the Site Rules, with assistance of the administration.

What does the typical Discord moderator do in a staff capacity beyond variations on these?

I don't think having a larger, more mutable userbase is any reason to loosen the existing expectations for membership of a disc-like team. People conducting disciplinary actions should be held to the same standards as other disciplinary staff. If anything, as highly-visible publicly facing individuals, they should be held to stricter standards because malfeasance, perceived or actual, on their part will reflect poorly on the site and its brand as a whole, while history tells us that malfeasance on the part of the Disciplinary team can largely come and go and have little effect after 2 years. Perhaps I'm wrong, though. Perhaps any perceived malfeasance can still be swept under the rug and ignored and the site will go on fine.

Staff Composition of a Disciplinary Team

I think elected moderation via direct democracy was a bold experiment, but frankly has shown its flaws and should not be continued. I think it's entirely inviable for a server of 10k+ people, many of whom are casual fans, some of whom have less-than-ideal opinions on pride logos. The burnout is a symptom of this. Electing moderators from people who "seem cool" because they hang out in the server a bunch, saddling them with responsibility, and then they drop out of the server entirely because being responsible for a server is entirely different from enjoying time in it. Conversely, a cool person could be an absolute tyrant once given the pettiest scrap of power. The argument is that "junior moderators" are trial staff. This on its head seems as absurd to me as "junior disciplinary staff" or "disciplinary staff on a trial basis." The site proper does not give people power and ask them to prove that they are worthy of it; we ask them to prove they are worthy of it and then give them power. I understand there are concerns that Discord staff feels "different" or "siloed" from "Staff"; I believe this is a reason why. It's a staff team with disciplinary power without the usual process of building the trust that they won't abuse that power.

(An aside — how many people voted in the last mod promos, and how much of that as a fraction of 11,580 is that? I think it's hardly representative and at this point a robust system might be more valuable than the facade of representation.)

I think this is a security risk. A minor, unlikely one, but a possible one. All that stands between the average user or a bad faith actor and sensitive disciplinary records is a popular vote. Bad actors have been able to join staff before, but they were swiftly removed, and because everything sensitive was essentially locked to OS+, they only found largely mundane policy discussions. Now, I have little idea what's in the truly sensitive staff channels. I'm unsure if there's anything actually damning in there, or that could do someone harm if released widely. Most of the disciplinary channel of staff chat isn't harmful in this way, except for 1 or 2 very sensitive subthreads ever few months, so maybe I'm being paranoid. But people would blanch widely if I suggested that every several months we post a thread on the forums asking people to nominate themselves for the right to view the disciplinary channel of staff chat, and have their approval hinge partly on a democratic vote of their peers and a staff committee containing JS.

I think it's ridiculous that a site admin has to sit at junior moderator until the next promotion cycle (only to be promoted regardless of actual activity level (this is my prediction, not something that has already happened)), and that individuals can keep discord moderator status after having only 24% "yes" votes to promotion to OS if you ignore abstains, 14% if you count them. By being voted as an admin, presumably site staff have indicated that they largely trust this person, and by rejecting an OS promotion, site staff have shown that they largely do not trust this person. (For reference, only 60% of voters and quorum would have to be for a VONC to go through.) I think this is a clear legacy inherited from the dual system of "chat staff" and formal Discord staff. I think this distinction should have been revisited when the decision was made to make Discord Staff an official staff team. If you aren't trusted as OS you shouldn't be trusted as a full moderator. If you're trusted as an admin with the power to do immeasurable damage to the site with a few clicks, you can probably be trusted as a full moderator. Trust isn't something that dissipates between mediums.

It's silly that bans from the server are worded in terms of rules in a channel that the banned user can no longer view. To my understanding there's a list of server rules on 05. The least ban messages could do is link that page.

As a disc-like team, warnings and logs should be publicly available, or at least available to the users who did them. I can't see a good argument for why chat statements should be subject to an equivalent of the AHT blackbox, and for offenses on the site, we have two entire forums dedicated to publicly facing record keeping.

Moderation on Vibes vs Moderation on System

I think there's an argument to be made that the current system of moderation relies on "vibes". There's not significant hierarchy. Whether an action is offensive depends largely on how offended the moderators currently in chat are. Whether a ban goes through similarly hinges on which moderators are awake and active at the time.

The rules are largely subject to interpretation of individual moderators. This was fine in a small server. It is not fine in a server 10k strong.

The punishments for offenses however, to my recollection, has a flowchart of standard escalation. The punishment is solid and inflexible. The offenses are decided case-by-case; the punishments are set in stone.

In my view, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to codify punishments, you must also codify the crimes. "Anger issues", "picking a fight with a moderator", "refusing to say your opinion on trans people" — all of these should have a minimum and maximum punishment defined. If this seems impossible and unviable, then get rid of the standard escalation system with no lenience and no fall-off of offenses, because a system where the crimes are arbitrary and the punishments are strict is, as Americans would say, unconstitutionally cruel.

Other proposed solutions:

Recruit more people to do moderation

I view this as a "throw more people at the problem" style solution. I'm opposed to lowering standards to get more people onboarded as moderators. I'm opposed to recruiting more moderators just to have them without giving them any actual direction. I'm opposed to recruiting more moderators without coming to a consensus on how to vet them properly. If the Discord team was run like any other staff team, an existing staffer would be able to join on a trial basis by talking to the captain. Because of its design, this is not possible.

Moderators aren't robots, nor should they endeavor to be. Getting more of them won't make things more efficient or make the problem go away unless they have an actual instruction set to follow. The rules should be robotic, sure. The humans responsible for enacting them shouldn't be.

TLDR:

• The reason the Discord team feels silo'd from the rest of staff is because it's not structured like any other staff team; my view is that this gap will continue unless the Discord team is reformed to be like the rest of staff.
• The Discord Team is basically a disciplinary team without any of the traditional measures taken to build trust in the Disciplinary Team
• The rules are unevenly enforced and largely at the whim of whoever happens to be active; but when they are enforced, the escalation tree may as well be set in stone.
• Adding more people to the team won't fix the problem if the scope and responsibilities of the team are unclear.

Disclosure

:
As of now, I can't check exactly what the flowchart says; it's possible that a chart of maximum and minimum punishments has been developed in tandem. My knowledge of the exact problems is also roughly 25 or so days out of date. This is because I have been banned from the server for "Breaking rules 0 and 2". That is the entirety of my ban message. To my knowledge, it has not been ported to https://05command.wikidot.com/forum/c-7524284/official-discord yet.

I have no idea what rule 2 is. I have no idea what "rule 0" is in the context of the Discord. I was able to find out by looking at http://05command.wikidot.com/discord-rules, but this is not backlinked anywhere.

I will be upfront and say that I have some temper issues on par with say the stories I've heard of some long retired staffers. That said, because of the lack of robust systems on the Discord, I cannot be 100% sure that there was no retaliatory element in my ban. The day prior to my sparse ban message (with minimal human communication post ban, I might add), I pinged a Discord moderator in staffchat asking them if they were aware I could see the disciplinary discussion they were starting about my actions in private-server-moderation. They replied that they could not. (I think it is laughable that there are moderation staff that don't understand the platform they moderate yet feel qualified to dictate the mores of it.) This was then followed with a fairly heated discussion of my problems with the moderation philosophy of the Discord. Frankly, I don't know whether I was banned for my actions in the server itself, or for expressing concern with its direction in a different server.

I'm not going to argue that my ban was unjustified (though uneven enforcement of rules means any ban can be justified). But the lack of transparency and arbitrariness of enforcement gives me pause. Upon my return to the server at some unspecified time in the future, will I be watched like a hawk for the slightest step out of line so I can be handed a perma for a comparatively minor offense, because I laid out my beliefs as to the dysfunction of the Discord's systems in this post? I have no reason to believe that this will not occur.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

Ethagon 04 Aug 2023 11:20

As a disc-like team, warnings and logs should be publicly available, or at least available to the users who did them. I can't see a good argument for why chat statements should be subject to an equivalent of the AHT blackbox, and for offenses on the site, we have two entire forums dedicated to publicly facing record keeping.

seconding this concern.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

Lt Flops 04 Aug 2023 05:43

I want to bring up an issue that, if dealt with appropriately, should serve to help both Discord Team and 19cord's userbase. It may not seem immediately relevant to Discord Team's needs, but I promise that it is.

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+ Open the Long Post

I have an issue with the moderation of "backseat moderating". From a basic Google search:

Backseat moderating is when people who are not moderators try to enforce the [forum] rules.

(This includes "mini-modding", which describes the same.)

In public channels, I found 18 direct instances in which current or former moderators specifically asked that users not backseat moderate/mini-mod. There may be other instances involving indirect mentions that would not readily appear in a search, and more instances still of discussions in private mod channels about taking action. The number doesn't matter per se; this is simply to show that it's a point of concern within Discord Team.

What I intend to argue is that this "backseat moderating" is much less of an issue than it seems on its face. Because, whereas the act of "baiting" problematic users is considered unideal because of its propensity to inflame chat climate and create more work for mods, the act of "backseat modding" those same users (among others) is simply an attempt at being helpful. Now, it's true that acting with good intentions doesn't always lead to good outcomes. But it would be highly cynical to say that it can only contribute to bad outcomes.

To anticipate a response: I've moderated servers before (though none of this size), and I recognize that not everything needs to be explicitly codified into a ruleset. I can understand that exercising basic rules with expansive and fluid interpretations actually helps make moderation easier overall. I also get that, from the perspective of a moderator, having to assess and re-assess the rules to decide whether a prospective interpretation is valid, is arbitrary and difficult.

A message can be considered backseat moderating according to whether it contains wording that attending mods think is an unofficial enforcement of server rules. Except there's a problem. When we look at the moderation of backseat moderation (say that five times fast), there's never a consultation of rules involved. Because a prohibition on backseat moderation, itself, isn't in the rules. Instead, warning users for backseat moderation is, in many instances, an act of micromanaging users without any specific reference to rules. In some instances, it collapses "being annoyed" into "needing to discipline". It's making a statement: That the moderators exclusively are the users who can decide on and mediate interpersonal affairs on the server, and nobody else.

All of these reflect a potentially unhealthy relationship to server moderation. I would also argue that clamping down on backseat moderation isn't what is leading to what I described at the end of that last paragraph, but is instead a symptom of it. You might see where I'm going with this.

There are a finite number of moderators versus a server with 11,000+ users and growing. When it comes to moderating, there is only so much energy to go around, and it's comparatively decreasing every day. And by underscoring a numbers game, I don't simply mean that there are few mods and plenty users. I also mean that mods are being put against users.

What is actually happening when backseat moderation is treated as against the rules?

Sometimes, when a user is accused of backseat moderating, it is because they have the appearance of adopting an authoritative role in the server that they do not otherwise have. But other times, these are users genuinely trying to keep a semblance of sanity and healthy interactions in this space we all share. To enforce a prohibition on "backseat moderation" in name alone, means stretching the limited energy of each moderator into more marginal areas. It also equally means taking forward-thinking and conscientious users and judging them alongside the users who actually cause trouble!

To illustrate what I mean by that last point, let's look at the latest server action against "backseat moderation". Server user and staff member basirskipreader (also known as basirgamerpleb on Discord) informed another user (who was later banned for bigotry) of the inherent problem behind using joke pronouns, and asked them Not To. However, both users saw discipline in #server-moderation. I'll put forth a question with an obvious answer: Is expressing anti-gender or gender-critical views the same as asking users to refrain from expressing those hurtful views? And a question with a not-so-clear answer: Then why do the rules treat them with the same level of concern?

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Because it would be inappropriate to solely criticize (this discussion is meant to help, not hurt Discord Team), I'll move onto proposals.

Here is what I'm not proposing. I'm not saying the rules should namedrop "backseat moderation".

What I'm proposing is this. Instead of warning users not to backseat moderate, why not take a more proactive approach?

1. If a user is giving unhelpful information phrased as a command, correct the user's mistake.
2. If a user is giving helpful information phrased as a command, and it's during a problematic scenario, ask the user to send a report next time.
3. If a user is giving neutral or helpful information, there should be no reason for mods to interfere.

All three instances of users doing these things have happened and can happen again.

I agree with the users above that Discord Team should recruit more members. But within the current paradigm? I believe that adopting this approach to "backseat moderation" will have a twofold effect. It will narrow the domain of things Discord Team will feel burdened to address. It will also give users a sense of having actual power to exercise mobility within the community space of 19cord.

When users feel they have the trust of the Discord Team to manage their own mutual affairs with more freedom, this should have the eventual knock-on effect of raising the floor of positive interactions, thereby making it easier to moderate. Thank you. 🫡

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🌱 Plant the seeds of tomorrow in the soil of today ❤️

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

AstersQuill 04 Aug 2023 17:08

I wanted to voice my suggestions as someone who uses 19cord fairly often as a member of the Discord Crit team, as I believe there are a lot of things that we do on our end that could be transplated to the Mod team.

First and foremost, I think the current style of structure for modstaff makes sense for the needs of the platform it operates on. However, with the lack of a direct captain, a lot of complaints and other issues brought up fall squarely onto the most active server admin (Prime) in a way that unfairly places more work on her than the rest of the team. Now, I know Yossi does magic with Mnemosyne and the server would not run without it, but there are times where there are multiple server admins are online but are not providing support to their team. Oftentimes, these admins will hop in once in a while, say something in the mod channel or in chat, and then disappear again. There needs to be a direct captain for the Discord team, with server admins taking the role of vice captains. This heirarchy will help address the complaint and suggestion issue, with activity being a complete other issue I will talk about shortly.

To say there is an inactivity issue is a slight understatement of the problem. I constantly see the same few names in chat and moderating, with other staffers being completely gone from the server for weeks on end. I understand that people have lives and stuff to do outside of SCP and that this is a volunteer position, but there is no marked sign of inactivity from these users nor any warning that they are/will be disappearing. I think a pruning of the mod list is well in order, as suggested by Div above, in order to help deal with these issues.

Using the frame of being a Discord Critstaffer, I wanted to offer these points so it doesn't seem like I'm complaining without offering solutions:

Backseat Modding: I think Lt. Flops did a good job at covering a majority of points that I was thinking about bringing up, but such a system already partially exists in the Discord Crit spaces. Although we still review cases about it, we don't step in when users give information or staffpost someone with authoritative tone. Every other time though, when framed as a suggestion or question, we find no issue with messages that are just trying to be genuinelly helpful. It makes our job easier, makes that person feel more connected to the space; everyone is happy. People have a tendency to want to care about the spaces they choose to hang out in, and I think if done correctly it can lead to people getting vibe checked and leaving the space without a mod needing to be involved.

Horizontal Hierarchy: This is something I think the Discord team does well already, and something I want to see more in the future. The team does a good job at operating without the input of server admins most of the time, with mods and jmods having the power to do their job (and confidently so) without the need for input of someone from a higher rank. Moving forward, once manpower and inactivity issues are solved, I would actually like to see the server admins disappear from day to day work and focus squarely on how they could improve the 19cord and moderation experience. I have faith in the current members to keep the ship straight, and I believe freeing up the admins to work on and implement improvements would be beneficial to the space overall.

Accountability: This is going to seem like a pivot from my previous opinions on the topic, but instead of other staff members directly commenting on the messages and reports of Discord staff, members should work to hold each other accountable. From how they talk about users they are reviewing to mod actions I feel like all tiers of the heirarchy have members that are guilty of doing this. Now, it would be unfair to state that there are people who are genuinely working to improve at these shortcomings. This point isn't about those people. This is about the users that post unproffesional reasons in actions as well as reactions to reports. Within the team, members should be empowered and supported for holding one another accountable, something that Dagon has preached to us on the crit team, with the server admins acting as support or the person to deliver that feedback.

All this said, I still have a lot of faith and trust in the Discord team. I would argue, despite this threads creation, the really active members are doing a fantastic job with the hand they've been dealt; creating and fostering a space with (usually) constructive conversation. I hope this discussion helps get the team the help they really deserve, and I hope that some rest will come to them soon.

Last edited on 04 Aug 2023 19:51 by AstersQuill Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

DrBleep 08 Aug 2023 19:42

Some things that have become immediately apparent to me just from a few incidents today:

• Lack of standardized logging procedure.
• Logging of disciplinary issues is extremely delayed, some logs weren't uploaded till months after a decision was made/a ban was made, making tracking down information by date difficult if not impossible.
• Ban reasons do not reflect the actual reason a ban was made. In one example, the ban was made pretty explicitly for a user behaving in a manner indistinguishable from underage, but there were 4 or 5 other ban descriptors attached that made the incident look so much worse.

These are all problems which cause issues with trust and transparency for a forward facing team, and stem from the larger structural issues.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Discord Staff Team Needs & Restructure

DrBleep 08 Aug 2023 22:16

Adding to this:

• Logs are not publicly available to users to review to understand their behavior and why they were banned. (IE, see older chat logs). I understand this is a burden on Discord staff to have to log, but that's why I believe discord staff needs more than just moderators, and needs record keepers too.
  • This in turn impacts transparency in the why of the bans and hurts Discord Staff's credibility in sensitive disciplinary action.

Last edited on 08 Aug 2023 22:17 by DrBleep Show more