Framework for Moderation

Since the purpose of this thread is figuring out whether improvements can be made to conflict resolution and moderation process and policies, can you describe generally what your other efforts tend to look like and how they tend to go?

No, especially given you're one of the people I've historically muted. I find it inordinately tiring to (endlessly) debate this stuff, and find requests to explain why I'm opposed to what I believe to be anti-vaxxers and Nazi enablers very frustrating.

This is how good instances turn into bad ones IMHO; I'm one step away from quitting social.coop ( http://social.coop ) for the second time.

I did not see the posts in question, but I just looked up Jem Bendell's writings on COVID and this is definitely someone with a history of misrepresenting data to downplay the efficacy of vaccines.

From https://jembendell.com/2022/10/09/theyve-gone-too-far-with-the-children-so-what-do-we-do/

UK data from the Office of National Statistics for the year until the end of January 2022 showed that confidence about the effectiveness of vaccines against hospitalisation and death was premature. Although being doubly vaccinated reduced likelihood of death for most of 2021, after Omicron arrived the death rates in the doubly vaccinated but unboosted rapidly grew to higher than in those who had never been vaccinated (across all age groups). This was graphically represented by the ONS until early April 2022 when they removed the graphs, so we can see them using the wayback engine for their website at the end of March 2022. Is this an anomaly? Official data from USA finds something similar.  Vaccinated Californians had a higher rate of hospitalizations (severe illness) than those who were unvaccinated but had prior immunity from a past infection. The government did not do that analysis of its own data, but it is easy to do for yourself. That is enough reason for us to keep watching this issue – and one of the best places to observe this issue is Australia, because it still collects and releases decent data.

This is a classic data misuse technique where you start with one claim "confidence about the effectiveness of vaccines against hospitalisation and death was premature," change the topic slightly to a different question, "Vaccinated Californians had a higher rate of hospitalizations (severe illness) than those who were unvaccinated but had prior immunity from a past infection," and then cite data that actually refutes the original claim as if it supported it.

The latter citation leads to this graph, which shows that vaccination provided 6-8 fold protection compared to unvaccinated in the Fall of 2021. Yes for the Omicron wave specifically (but not any previous wave, BTW), those who had previous suffered COVID did enjoy similar and likely even better protection compared to those who were vaccinated, but that's a different claim. That's the question of "are the vaccines more effective than previous COVID infection" which is entirely different from the stated claim of "the effectiveness of vaccines against hospitalisation," which the cited data clear show they were.

Also consider the conclusion of the article that was cited:

What are the implications for public health practice?

Although the epidemiology of COVID-19 might change as new variants emerge, vaccination remains the safest strategy for averting future SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations, long-term sequelae, and death. Primary vaccination, additional doses, and booster doses are recommended for all eligible persons. Additional future recommendations for vaccine doses might be warranted as the virus and immunity levels change. 

So my point here is that @Matthew Slater 's comment frames it like it is a foregone conclusion that the removal of Jem's posts was an undesirable moderation result, but based on this history I don't think we should accept that framing.

Thanks for looking into this Will.

I think it is perfectly acceptable to cite data in an article which draws different conclusions from the data. I've seen papers which draw wrong conclusions from their own data because they are only written for the headlines.

I see how Bendell makes one claim and then switches to a closely related claim, but he says what he is doing and why - because the UK stopped publishing that data. I don't see what is being misrepresented here, and your assertion of 'misinformation' seems very strong. I know Bendell very well and I know that he acts in good faith and professionalism.

I would rather be confused and undecided about these technical matters than have them filtered for me by people who, for all I know, might have different standards of truth for different opinions. Wouldn't you agree that claims for vaccine efficacy were criminally exaggerated in the early days and hence siding with the skeptics was/is quite a reasonable course of action?

Doug, I don't know what conflicts we've ever even had, and I'm barely active on Mastodon. I would really love to somehow clarify misunderstandings (or whether even you are mistaking me for someone else). I'm struggling with plain text to guess how much I could even say effectively. I take it you feel exasperated right now, and I just want to express my sympathies.

I deleted a longer reply I first posted. It's for a discussion between people willing to discuss. Would you please clarify whether you are at all open to discussing here on Loomio what we as a co-op can do to improve the experience you are having in this community? I don't want to add to your frustration by presuming your willingness. I appreciate you for sharing your thoughts and feelings here.

To just point out one bit of clarity for anyone reading: I was not in any way asking for explanations about objections to vaccine-skeptics etc. I was asking whether people are doing anything besides muting, blocking, or replying. The things suggested by the conflict resolution guidelines (https://wiki-dev.social.coop/Conflict_resolution_guide ) are private communication to posters (not to argue about the topic but to express feedback/requests about the conduct issues), asking for help, and filing formal CoC report. I think we can expand that with more specific guidance and other options. So, my question was whether people are only muting, blocking, replying, or nothing. Are people asking for help and reporting issues, and if so is that not working well?

I saw that in Jem Bendell's posts, too, and this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. To be clear, I think the document Emi initially posted is terrific, and it's a great resource in a small group of people who are committed to enlightened interactions. Unfortunately, this group is already too large for that and we already have "challenges," so that document is like the obelisk at the start of Kubrik's 2001.

We need a more complex protocol. The question is, how do we determine if a person is willing and able to build a bridge? Frankly, I looked at Jem Bendell's posts, one of which included a link to Rumble, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to build a bridge with him, or people like Mathew Slater who are shilling for him. We'll just end up going in circles and waste time.

I think a sound policy, or the beginning of one, could be to check posts against resources like this:

https://realityteam.org/factflood/

If a post is demonstrably false, already debunked, etc, I think moderators need to be able to issue a warning, one warning only or we risk a bad actor stringing us along. Then, moderators delete the post (or add a content warning, if that's technically viable and appropriate). If there are repeated offenses, then the person gets kicked out of social.coop, as in excised, out the airlock. This would send a very clear message both to people testing to see what they can get away with, and to regular users who might feel that this site isn't moderating effectively.

Strong agreement. We need to be proactive at blocking harms right away. Then, we can have processes for restoration/resolution etc. once it's clear that contentious risky things are limited. Otherwise, we lose people and the community degrades. What I want to see is the enlightened-small-group-ideals etc all in place for what happens after the initial stop-harm actions.

So, newcomers should find out right away that they do not get away with almost anything problematic. However, we don't then just feel done then. We then want to onboard people with human connection and understanding and support people in becoming constructive co-op members and building skill at discussing controversial things with due care and sensitivity.

So, it's a yes-and approach I'm suggesting, not a dichotomy of passivity vs blunt blocking as the only choices.

I've been vaguely paying attention to this discussion for a while, and haven't wanted to get involved, beacuse it's not my field, but it feels like things are getting a bit crazy in here right now. To suggest that someone like Professor Jem Bendell is in some way a 'bad actor' seems nonsensical to me. He's a respected academic who, as far as I'm aware, is focussed on an objective and rigorous scientific approach. And to use pejorative language to describe Matthew Slater, someone who I know and have a lot of time for, indicates to me that this debate may be losing its grip on common sense.

Yes, we all want social.coop to work well and be successful, and that means having a useful policy framework that can help moderators to do their work fairly and in the spirit of cooperation and tolerance in which I hope this place is founded, encouraging users in turn to be cooperative and tolerant. If the intent is instead to ensure that social.coop stops people like Jem and Matthew from contributing then I fear that cooperation and tolerance are long gone. And if that's the case, then I will most likely go too.

It is January 2023. We are no longer "in the early days", and the context and data around Covid vaccines and the associated discourse has vastly changed.

Lest anyone think that @Doug Belshaw is an outlier, I'll say that I, too, have recently been forced to start muting and blocking folks in the social.coop timeline, and have started to strongly consider moving instances. social.coop has never been perfect, but it feels like we are not trending in the right direction.

I made an attempt at engaging on this thread early on, wanting to try to give Matthew Slater the benefit of the doubt. It's clear to me now that he is a right-wing troll -- "anti-woke", in his own words (for anyone who might want some context on the term, see e.g: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/20/anti-woke-race-america-history).

Since this thread, despite being titled "Framework for Moderation", actually seems to be about Matthew's complaints on moderation of Bendell's posts, and since I do not think that trolls can actually be appeased, I shall do my best to stay away from this conversation from now on. (Pray for me, y'all.)

But perhaps we do need a separate, serious discussion on what is our collective stance in the face of such members.

Much love to the folks of the CWG, who have to deal with this shit all the time. 💗