Mod Outreach

Here at Gamefaqs Users Against Censorship, we pride ourselves on giving a fair hearing to all sorts. Over the past few weeks I've made an effort to reach out to moderators for their take on things when I had questions. So as Screw the Mods month dies down, let's unscrew a little bit and take a look at what they have to say. Their comments are greatly appreciated.

When this blog made some waves, a few readers mentioned the name of Admiral as an example of a conservative mod. Having had little to no contact with this mod before, I decided to ask a few questions.

TaiIs82:
What has your experience been like with other mods when it comes to their beliefs? Do you find that they tend to lean a certain direction when it comes to their political stance?

 The Admiral:
I think it's important to distinguish between a moderator's personal bias and a moderator's moderating bias. Certain mods are definitely more right or left oriented than others, and some of them make this known through through their posts on the boards. There is nothing wrong with that, and, in fact, some diversity is valuable in our discussions on determining moderation polices.

However, the mods, in general, are very good at detaching their personal politics from their moderation decisions. Most moderators (myself included) will enforce rules they might not personally believe in because they've made a commitment to uphold this site's rules, and that's part of the job. Others simply avoid handling marks if they disagree with them on a political basis, and this is fine. We always encourage mods to refrain from handling marks if they don't feel they can be objective. Since my time as a mod, we haven't had any issues with moderators pushing their own personal agendas through moderations.

All that being said, there is definitely a disparity over the types of comments that are marked. The user base on this site tends to be more liberal on social issues, so comments criticizing the left or left-wing policies are marked more often than comments criticizing the right. However, this is a byproduct of the community-oriented moderation system, not a result of any bias at the mod level.

The response was supportive of the idea that moderators place their political views aside, but I had some more questions. What exactly was meant by a community-oriented moderation system? I've seen some people claim that if enough users mark a message for trolling, the moderators would have to do something about it. Is there any merit to that, and are unpopular views at risk? There's also the old "your party's political opinions are no different from trolling." When a mod decides whether something is trolling or offensive, aren't there subjective judgments to be made there? My inbox is open if any mod wants to take a crack at those questions.

 Next up I wrote willythemailboy, who had some interesting things to say about his time as a mod.

Personal bias is pretty minimal in most cases. Since there's no reason any particular mod has to handle any specific message, it's easy to skip ones you feel you can't be impartial on. The user relations I mentioned were users that disagreed with my views on the politics board and absolutely believed that any action against them was solely due to a mod trying to suppress their views. Thus I got blamed for any moderated message - accurately, but for different reasons.

At the time, I was the only mod active on the politics board. Wally posts but has stated that he does not moderate anything posted on that board, and I have good reason to believe that to be true. I would moderate any violations I saw while reading topics, regardless of who posted them. Most mods do not, and it really annoys me when I see a mod post in a topic with blatant violations in it; they either didn't read the topic before posting, or did and chose to ignore the violations. For 2 or 3 years nearly every moderation on the politics board was from me, simply because no one else was doing it.

I also asked if it was true that a moderator could no-action their own messages, having heard an allegation on the politics board that someone was doing it  - and due to the nature of the info, if my memory was correct that this happened it had to have been either wally or willy who said it (and it sure as heck wasn't wally):

It was true (I don't know that it still is or not) that *any* mod could no-action their own messages if they got marked. Note that a no-actioned message can still be moderated, but the post shows up with a big "this message has already been no-actioned by another moderator" and is given a very low priority in the queue if marked again. And, of course, the same moderator could no-action it again if it showed up in the queue again. The automatic system could easily be abused by a mod defending their own post, but it could also be bypassed by bringing a blatant violation to the attention of a different mod, and I suspect a mod caught abusing it would not be a mod very long.

Finally I asked Crazymaori about a post of his from last year:

Crazymaori(Moderator)Posted 10/5/2013 4:28:18 AM
"After CE, console boards and GTA5, I think that board receives the greatest percent of marks from what I usually see. An opinion that isn't the same as someone else's is always marked for trolling."

I think you're correct with the part where you mention that unpopular views are more likely to be marked, but perhaps not moderated. I'd like to think that there aren't any moderators on the team which actually take a bias into account. I know when there are marks which involve something I'm sensitive about (which isn't often) I tend to just leave it and see what action was taken on it at a later date. 

I tend to avoid trolling marks for the politics board. Offensive/off-topic etc I'll happily handle since those moderations tend to be straight-forward. Trolling on the other hand is a lot harder because I simply do not understand the intricate details of US politics...

I think trolling is a lot harder to put on someone in general, because you have to look at them and decide motive. Especially when the person marking it can do it just because they don't like that person. With a 'community-oriented' system, could we say the dominant belief dominates what can be said on the board? If someone on 19th century gamefaqs says women should vote and the board says poppycock, this man has been inhaling the vapors and is behaving as if he were a troll, does that view go bye-bye not because it was insincere, but because it wasn't popular enough to be protected as a legitimate view? My assumption is that everyone's not a troll until proven otherwise, and there's a bit of a golden rule going there because there's always someone calling someone else a troll just because they don't agree on the same things.

Give me a shout if you have any thoughts, and keep your eyes open! Maybe you'll hear from me next.