The issue of over-deleting and the resulting outrage over this is an age-old problem on webgroups, forums, and communities, and especially relevant today (a lot of people here are also on reddit, where the anti-authoritarian heavily-against-censorship ideal is very prevalent). I think the big question here is: How can we differ from censorship and moderation when the duties of (forum) moderation seem so like censorship? What’s the defining factor?
Censorship and
moderation – for some users on this community, the two terms are synonyms. However, where censorship stifles speech, moderation has the ability to diversify our communication.
There is one crucial difference between the two:
- In censorship, someone is granted power to prohibit speech about a particular topic or event across a wide range of communication platforms. They can deny communication about particular topics.
- Moderation is the practice of prohibiting speech in a particular virtual community by authorities within said community. A topic that is moderation on one virtual community can be communicated elsewhere. It occurs in distinct forms in different communities.
Moderation allows for a diversity of speech, because online groups can stifle the speech of members of other groups without resorting to regulation. Like every other action one can take, communicating in a forum has its costs and benefits. It also has its network effects (Wikipedia: network effect). The benefit increases as there are more interested parties in the forum.
Censorship inhibits communication by either making it too costly to communicate, or by making the benefit of communication minimal.
Moderator
1. An arbitrator or mediator.
2. A presiding officer, esp. a chairman of a debate
Censorship:
The practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.
A moderator
steers the tone of the debate, but he does not try to rewrite history.
How many posts/complaints have I seen for a while now that the “tone” of EscapeRestart has changed, and that the “friendliness” is gone and there are too many personal attacks and arguments and dank memes are general drama? It’s an everlasting cycle, drama after drama, and now this. There
are (so-called) shitposts, and something
needs to be done about them.
This is a community for playing videogames. I think everyone is taking this, themselves, and the community, way too seriously. Things definitely need to get deleted and locked, but
in moderation. And for God’s sake, we don’t need a reddit-like public outcry every time something gets deleted- It’s pathetic and a waste of time.
If nothing were to get deleted, we’d quickly devolve into 4chan or a similar community. Still, it’s sometimes hard to determine what content should and/or should not get allowed, and sometimes things get deleted or locked when they shouldn’t be—this is wrong, but it does not warrant this kind of drama. It’s an honest mistake. Being an internet moderator is a thankless job, and they are not flawless.
People will criticize and get upset regardless of what you do- I don’t think that this in any a fault of the admins given that this is human nature and cannot be avoided. This event/these few threads are classic examples of why
open discussion does not work.
The biggest problem EscapeRestart has right now, in my opinion, is its
uncertain content and it hasn't made its mind up yet as to what content should be the primary content in the community-- what should and should not be allowed. There are so many stupid memes and jokes (first answer in this thread being a prime example) and in my opinion they should get removed, BUT—this is, apparently, exactly the kind of content that people like. It’s low-effort, it’s downright stupid, but people like it. Of course, almost everyone likes jokes and memes. And if half of the posts on this forum are like that, how could one ever justify removing it?
These memes and jokes hinder discussion, which should be the prime "product" of a forum. They promote low-effort content, instead of actual thought-out messages. To be fair, the community is incapable of discussing things anyway... and it has been for many years. Every thread like this, without question, devolves into drama, hostility and jokes. This is a direct result of moderation—It devolves into that because moderators allow it. But... they kind of have to.
Anyway, I’m rambling at this point...
TL;DR People are the problem. Moderation should be allowed but... in moderation. I don’t know what should or should not get deleted (more) because either way it’ll cause drama or steer the community in a certain direction. Shitposts are inevitable and by hammering down on them you’d lose like half of your playerbase. All I know is that I wouldn’t want to be an admin right now.