Framework for Moderation

As members of a co-operative, we each have one vote and a duty of care to exercise that vote. Beyond the CoC, regulating individual behaviour is a collective responsibility. We each are our own authority and different from other individuals, what is offensive to one person is mildly irritating to another. When a reader of a post to social.coop finds the post to be offensive or affronting or otherwise violating the CoC then the first thing for the reader to do is to Mute the author. If the author becomes obnoxious then the next step for the offended person is to Block the author.

In this way, the membership of the co-operative quietly exercises its voting power against undesirable behaviour, without immediately involving the CWG. Ultimately, the community will sequester obnoxious behaviour by its collective voting power through the sanctions of Mute and Block.

When the number of Mutes and Blocks against an author rises to an appropriate level, the CWG can then intervene to banish the obnoxious author or instance, without getting involved in an argument about what’s good or bad.

So, perhaps the CoC needs language that says community members must actively engage in moderation by first Muting or later Blocking posts they find offensive.

I agree about collective responsibility. I strongly disagree about muting and blocking as the recommended defaults. They are options people should feel free to use, but they do not help anyone learn, do not resolve any misunderstandings…

What you're suggesting easily looks like a poster not even knowing they were being misunderstood or offending anyone until the CWG comes along and tells them they are on the verge of being kicked out of the co-op. This is dysfunctional and goes against everything that restorative justice and co-op principles stand for.

We need resolution mechanisms that include some place for assumptions of good faith, for people to know that people are reacting negatively, to get feedback, to learn…

Also, we need mechanisms where harmful posts can be muted more quickly for everyone. It is not okay for me to see some hateful post and then just mute/block for myself and leave it to everyone else to have to see the harmful post. The first people who see a harmful post should have a way to reduce the entire co-op's exposure as quickly as possible. Then restorative process focusing on learning could be done afterwards. And people joining the co-op should understand this so they aren't shocked or scared, so they know that if they get moderated in some way it doesn't mean their co-op standing is threatened. Any public debate about problem posts is liable to cause more defensiveness and escalate things. We should be stronger in our pro-active moderation and hiding of problem posts and more gracious and patient with resolution and learning.

https://wiki-dev.social.coop/Conflict_resolution_guide tries to go in a healthy direction.

In short: YES, the enforcement mechanism and the co-op onboarding process needs to make it clear that we are all responsible for responding to problems. Our response options should include ways to more quickly hide problems from everyone and should emphasize restorative resolutions after that. Just adding up blocks and mutes on the way to bans is not restorative at all.

Thank you, that's something I hadn't considered.

There is something in @Andrew Shead's idea about metrics regarding who gets Muted or Blocked, and as well with @Aaron Wolf 's point that no one should be suddenly surprised or shocked by a CWG message about posting content or behavior. "Harmful" is tricky since that's very much defined by the "receiver" - what hurts me may not hurt you. But I'm not in support of a blanket "mainstream consensus" as @Nic Wistreich suggested - there's much that is presumably common sense or mainstream that is in desperate need of challenge and change. Patterns of communicative behaviors that seek understanding and perspective are preferable to those that seek to rile folks up, yet sarcasm and dark humor are tools in service of necessary change, too. Is there a way (or need) to better describe the characteristics of patterns of posting that could be described in the CWG? Too much in the weeds?

While it's good to try to be as clear as possible, there's a limit to what can be accomplished with formal rules, especially when dealing with malicious people who go to great lengths to subvert the intent of formal rules. I think we should rely on the moderation team acting on its best judgment of the intent of the membership in general, under the supervision of the membership in general.

This statement is too vague and needs to talk about categories of harm. Also, people who have been kicked off social.coop, or have left before being pushed, should no longer have Loomio access IMHO.

In response to @Alex Rodriguez helpful points and questions: I did not want to mean "comply" as that gives me a sense of unidirectional orders. My suggestion of "cooperate" means to be in constructive communication, hearing what the CWG is saying, responding, making agreements, and so on. Examples of not cooperating would be ignoring, responding with defensive aggression such as denial or sarcasm, making a public stink, reposting flagged content, and so on.

As I am not on the CWG, I'm not quite on top of the current process. I imagine their process will continue evolving and improving and getting better documented over time. Whatever the status, the co-op has elected them to do the work within the bounds of the agreed policies. So, whatever their process, that's what it refers to. If their process has problems, that's a separate issue to fix outside of the CoC. I did/do have some worries about worst case scenarios where the process has problems, and for that I really want to see a solid appeal process. I just don't think that's a blocker to updating the CoC for now.

As to "guidance", I was imagining that the CWG might make specific suggestions in their communication with people. Cooperating with guidance I imagine as hearing it and telling the CWG whether the person agrees or has concerns, and if they don't agree, they discuss that with the CWG to get to agreement rather than disregard the suggestions. "Guidance" is different than process because process would be the steps they take in communicating (such as keeping things private, being patient in waiting for replies, etc.), removing posts, adjusting privileges or similar.

Note that I carefully wrote "my role" in a conduct complaint because I imagine this cooperate-with-CWG line to apply to everyone, including the people complaining or people who are tangential. For example, even if I was only part of an argument where someone else's post was reported by a third person, I still have responsibility to cooperate if the CWG asks for my involvement or input in resolving the issue.

If having clarified this, anyone disagrees or has questions or suggestions for editing the proposal, please share your thoughts.

@Nathan Schneider The purpose of adding "resolving" to the heading was to make it logical that the items below include more than reporting. Do you have a suggestion for better heading? I think it's important for the CoC to not be limited to the stages of normal behavior (before there's any concerns or conflicts) and reporting. Member conduct includes what happens after something is reported. The CoC doesn't currently say anything about post-report conduct. I suggested "resolving" to be in the heading (again, it's just a title describing what the section is about) as a term for the post-report stage of things.

I removed "fully" from "fully cooperate" because I agree it sounded too absolutist. I agree 100% with the concern about what to do if someone disagrees with CWG. I think removing "fully" really does help, though appeals process is still needed. Is removing "fully" enough for now though? Or you really think we need to get an appeals process nailed down as a prerequisite? Do we really want to say that until we have a clear appeals process we do not expect members to necessarily cooperate with CWG?

To be blunt, I'm imagining that if the CWG actually abuses their role or something, that it's okay for people to speak up about this in violation of the CoC. Just like in civil disobedience, if the law is wrong or breaks down, people might escalate to breaking the law as part of protesting. There are real-world ways for people to bring the community's attention to unjust behavior by the CWG even if that requires violating the CoC. The community can probably tell the difference between someone whistleblowing on really unfair CWG behavior and someone just being belligerent and uncooperative.

All in all, I don't think we need to block helpful CoC updates by requiring we finish setting out the appeal process first, though we do need to get such a process. In practice, I expect the CWG will include being open to hearing constrictive feedback and concerns as part of the process. As long as the communication is in private channels with the CWG and the members involved, I trust the CWG to hear the members' concerns if they have a problem with CWG decisions and guidance. I also trust the CWG to come to the overall membership (as they did here) when they feel the need for extra support and perspectives to keep a healthy restorative approach to their work.

I look forward to your further thoughts. I greatly appreciate your concerns.

@Andrew Shead I appreciate the intent here, but I think you're missing a very important dynamic that Social Coop is one community in a federation of communities. If we were to all mute & block a toxic user on our instance, but allowed that user to continue their behavior towards users on other instances, we would very quickly, and justly, find our entire community ostracized and defederated

Hi Aaron, thank you for what you're doing. I think maybe it might be useful to phrase "cooperate with their process,and guidelines" in a more specific way

Thanks, do you have any suggestions or any other thoughts that might prompt me or others to find a superior phrasing? Are you willing to consider whether the proposal is still a positive, worthwhile step even if we do not come up with ideal phrasing yet?

I like the way you explained the concept: "constructive communication, hearing what the CWG is saying, responding, making agreements".

Hmm yeah. So maybe more specifically spelled out like this:

"If the Community Working Group (CWG) contacts me about my role in any conduct complaint, I will cooperate with their process and guidance, communicating respectfully and working with them to make clear agreements for resolving the situation."

What do you think? Any suggested improvements?

I considered adding wording about refraining from other actions around the issue during the resolution process, however, I think that can be part of the CWG process rather than put into the CoC. So, the CWG themselves can state, as appropriate, that they want someone to put other actions on hold… I think that concern might vary from case to case.

This is a pretty tricky one to nail down. I'd be interested to see a list of claims that would violate the proposed policy. I'm also curious to know how irony would be treated under this policy.