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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2217 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 22, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I spend almost as much time on Janitor Duty as I do reading the threads and comments. How would everyone prefer I rate posts, by strict attention to the rules, or, by a fuzzy combination of rules + effort + novelty (which, being honest, is what I do now)?

I don't care how you rate them, but my ratings are something like:

High-quality: Convinced me of something

Good: I agree with this and it's well-written

Neutral: Everything else, including polite stuff I strongly disagree with

Bad: Lots of heat without any of the lower stuff

Deserves warning: Personal attacks on interlocutor

Deserves ban: Threats, e.g. threatening to kill interlocutor

As you might imagine, the vast majority of my ratings are Good/Neutral/Bad, though I've hit "deserves a ban" at least once (and it was, indeed, for a murder threat).

This is how I rate them, if I think the comment is breaking the rules but isn't likely to lead to more breakages then I'd say bad. If it breaks the rules and will likely lead to more breakages I rate it with a warning. I think I've only ever said something deserved a ban once but I save that for anything I think deserves a permaban only.

I'm more lenient than the mods (not lately though, things are pretty chill these days compared to reddit) but I also find it hard to ever say something definitely deserves a ban without context so most of the time I treat the warning as if it would lead to an actual warning/a short ban/a week ban because with more context it could be any of those things. I also rarely get served up with duty for egregious comments, anyway.

I mean how should you rate it? Use the metarule and treat janitor duty as a way to hopefully shape this place in the way you'd want it to be through suggestion. Otherwise I wouldn't dwell on it too much. I don't think they're using the janitors as juror votes.

We do see the overall results of the user moderation, but not the specific votes. I'm not sure how zorba set up the calculations behind the scenes.

I think it's good that you are basically seeing what we have to do.

Leave alone vs warn vs temp ban vs permanent ban. The added complication for us is that we have to also write something to go along with a punishment decision. That does make me marginally less harsh as a mod. Especially if there are just lots of small things wrong. But it probably makes me more harsh when it's just one really bad thing in an otherwise ok post.

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