New mod author comment moderation features and updated terms of servic

[JimboUK]

In response to post #10331716. #10352651, #10370336, #10374896, #10381170, #10388943, #10393106, #10402784, #10407275 are all replies on the same post.

@TheThirdRace I'm not missing the point at all, I just don't think authors are these insane people you seem to think they are. Again, why would an author ban someone who hasn't done anything wrong from one or all of their mods?

[TheThirdRace]

In response to post #10331716. #10352651, #10370336, #10374896, #10381170, #10388943, #10393106, #10402784, #10407275, #10407912 are all replies on the same post.

@jim_uk
Sorry, but yes you are missing the point. You still prove it by repeating your misconception over and over. I said SOME (not all) authors. So stop thinking I (and the others) say that every authors are evil egomaniacs. They're not.

You aren't a professional programmer (or at least I hope so because that's basic 101) so let me tell you about one of the very first law we learn: Murphy's law. Murphy's law says:

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong

You can also supplement this with:

The less you want something to happen, the better the chances it will

What you should now see is that no matter how good are your intentions, if you let a door open for the system to fail then it will fail, it's absolute certainty. You can argue however you want, but you can't win against mathematics...

Now the real question is: When this will happen, are the consequences acceptable? That is a subjective matter, from the looks of your answers I guess you're thinking it is. By the looks of my answers you can guess I'm thinking it's not. Your approach will be abused for the wrong reasons, mine can't and this isn't subjective. Edited December 2, 2013 by TheThirdRace

[JimboUK]

In response to post #10331716. #10352651, #10370336, #10374896, #10381170, #10388943, #10393106, #10402784, #10407275, #10407912, #10407987 are all replies on the same post.

This has been running for a week now and Dark0one posted on the authors board to say there's not been one forum thread or any complaints to staff about the system, the only news was an author and user sorting their differences out over a ban. if things were going to go badly wrong we'd have seen at least something by now. This works on other sites, there is no reason whatsoever why it can't work here.

[Asyrin]

At the end of the day, an author's mod is their own hard work. The time invested belongs to no one but them.

 

They should have the right to determine who has the privilege of downloading their work.

[seancdaug]

In response to post #10412468.

They always have. If they really don't want certain people experiencing their work, maybe they should reconsider posting it on what has historically been a public website like the Nexus.

[seancdaug]

In response to post #10331716. #10352651, #10370336, #10374896, #10381170, #10388943, #10393106, #10402784, #10407275, #10407912, #10407987, #10411037 are all replies on the same post.

@jim_uk I think you're still dancing around @TheThirdRace's point. That current mod authors aren't abusing the system isn't the issue. The issue is that the system is designed with a honking big hole ripe for that kind of abuse. It doesn't matter if the problem manifests in one day, one week, one month, one year, or one decade: the potential for abuse should be immediately self-evident. If I leave my car unlocked and the keys in the ignition overnight and no one drives off with it, that doesn't mean I'm safe or secure. It just means I'm lucky that I wasn't made to suffer for my poor personal security this time around.

[Fleetstdemon]

@Jim_UK I sincerely hope that your statement that people have no rights here was some sort of ill conceived attempt at humor.

 

I also think there is a distinction between a privately owned vs a private site. This site is privately owned but it is freely open to the general public.

In fact it is not only freely open to the public, but the public are actively encouraged to enjoy and participate in the site and community.

 

When you open your site to the general public you are at the mercy of the public.

People on the site will find themselves interacting with people whom they may dislike for any number of reasons. Such situations can and will cause conflict which will manifest in any number of ways.

 

Some people will be civil to those they dislike while others will insult and rage. Others will use ill conceived administrative tools to ban users they dislike for reasons the banning tool was not meant for.

 

The point is that the mod author banning tool can, therefore will, be used inappropriately.

Without some form of oversight and appeal process the people who do abuse the banning system will never be found out and punished. Those who are banned unjustly will lose access to areas of the site they enjoy for no good reason.

 

People on this site have the same rights as they do at any other time. This site being privately owned in no way exempts it from human rights laws nor civil liberty laws.

 

Example: A mod author bans someone after they find out a mod user's sexual orientation.

That said mod user has the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sexuality on this site just as they do anywhere else.

 

The fact that there will be no oversight on mod author bans means no recourse for the mod user and also opens up the nexus owners to prosecution for enabling discrimination on their site by failing to provide adequate oversight of their members behavior.

The nexus is responsible for its users conduct, as they are only too happy to remind us in copyright infringement matters.

 

To be clear, I am not against more tools and protection for mod authors. I am however against this implementation as it gives mod authors protection at the expense of protection for mod users, can be used as a weapon against other users against which they will have no defense and is therefore broken at its core.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Fleetstdemon

[lifestorock]

In response to post #10439537.

Did you actually read the entire news post and comprehend its content? I guess not. Your main argument is based on the false fact that mod authors can do whatever they want to do with user posts without the fear of consequences.

Let's compare two of your passages with the news post:

Without some form of oversight and appeal process the people who do abuse the banning system will never be found out and punished. [...]

-- or --

Example: A mod author bans someone after they find out a mod user's sexual orientation. That said mod user has the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sexuality on this site just as they do anywhere else.

Dark0ne:

What actually happens is the post becomes hidden to everyone except the staff. We’ll retain a copy of all posts deleted by mod authors to ensure that the feature isn’t being used for nefarious means.

What happens to abusive authors? They get punished in according to the site terms. In your example the author will for sure earn a permanent ban from the site for insulting and discriminating behaviour. Edited December 6, 2013 by lifestorock

[TheThirdRace]

In response to post #10439537. #10444500 is also a reply to the same post.

@lifestorock
It's funny you used the "convenient" parts of the post without their context. So let's put what you wrote in context...

lifestorock:

Dark0ne:
What actually happens is the post becomes hidden to everyone except the staff. We’ll retain a copy of all posts deleted by mod authors to ensure that the feature isn’t being used for nefarious means.

With more context:

Dark0ne:
The new functionality is two fold. To begin with mod authors can now delete comments from their file pages.
[...]
Examples of what we consider “nefarious means” would be things like getting into a flame war with a user and then deleting all your posts while leaving the other user’s posts to try and make the other user look worse. This system isn’t being put in place to allow mod authors to cover up any indiscretion, it’s there to allow mod authors to keep their file comments clean and tidy and ensure the discussion going on in their file page comments is to their liking within the boundaries of our terms and conditions.

If you read the first sentence of the paragraph where you took your quote, you can see the whole paragraph is about deleting comments, not the ban feature. The second part of the paragraph indicates mod authors' can't manipulate the post section to make a user look bad or to cover up their bad behavior toward a user. Nothing is about the ban feature, it's all about the post deletions.

lifestorock:

What happens to abusive authors? They get punished in according to the site terms. In your example the author will for sure earn a permanent ban from the site for insulting and discriminating behaviour.

Let me ask you something. How can you prove the intent of a mod author if that author doesn't post their discriminating behavior and just ban the user outright? There's a big hole in your theory right there.

To add to the mix, here's a quote from Dark0ne:

As far as the staff is concerned I’m not planning for the moderation team to get involved with this aspect of moderation at all. If you’ve blocked a user from your file pages then that’s that. We’re not going to deal with the justified and/or petty squabbles between mod authors and blocked users in this regard so if a mod author blocks you from their files do not come running to the moderation team about it because we’re not going to be removing any blocks.

So as long as the mod author doesn't offend the user and just ban him instead, there are no consequences for the mod author. The user will be punished with or without reasons and there's no appeal process. Dark0ne explicitely says here the staff don't want to get between the mod author and the user, which means they wash their hands from the blood spilled.

For the final nail in the coffin, a couple posters and I have been posting about this for a week now and at no time ever did a moderator or Dark0ne himself contradicted what we interpreted from his original post. They did post about that it shouldn't get out of hands and they have faith in mod authors, but they never ever said our concerns were not founded. Why is that? Why aren't they head over heels trying to debunk our reactions if they aren't true? Simple, they know the system can be abused badly and they decided to wait until the problem rises instead of fixing the whole in the system right away.

Granted, they've been very busy lately, but that is no excuse. They didn't have to roll out the tools if they didn't have time to deal with the consequences. As a professional programmer, I never change a system on Christmas eve because I know I don't have time for the problems that could come up. So they should suspend this feature until it cannot fail in a bad way or until they have time to act on those problems.

As for personal experience, yesterday I was debating to some guys on someone's else mod page that the author should consider to make his mod NMM compatible. The users derided me (NOT the mod author, the USERS) because they felt it wasn't hard to copy 2 files (which is besides the point). No amount of logic changed their minds and they became rude but with some restraints which didn't warrant a permanent ban. What do you think I wanted to do in the spur of the moment? I looked on how to ban them from my mods. The problem is, I didn't go overboard in my posts and stayed relatively polite, so if any moderator would have checked the situation, they would have conclude we were just in a squabble and stayed out of it. What would happen then? Well, I now tasted the power of this tool, so why not use it? It's there, it's easy and nobody cares except the user. As for the user, getting ban out of the blue for an insignificant squabble will lead him to just stop posting or begin to kiss mod authors' posterior. That won't show immediately in any hard data, but the problem will creep up relatively slowly over the years and stay undetected.

The morale of this story is as long as I mind my manners, I can ban whoever I want for whatever reasons at the blink of an eye without anyone doing anything about it. And I don't think it's right... Edited December 6, 2013 by TheThirdRace

[fiewiel]

Here is an example:

I browsed the new files of the nexus and saw a mod called "combat drama overhaul". Went and read the description, what I did understand was that the author tried to be funny in a giant wall of text but I simply couldnt understand what this mod was about (something with killmoves maybe). Not sure though. So I wrote

"Could you describe in 2 lines what this mod is actually doing?
Beside a bunch of nonsense as description I see nothing.
Thanks."

Im no native english speaker and what I did read was nonsense to me. Beside, I think the description of a mod should describe what its doing and not be the plattform of some lewt speak (or how this is called).

Anyway, he blocked me and 3 posts later mod author wrote "I will be uploading a video to show off its features in the very near future. It's hard to describe."

Its no big deal IMO its just an unimportant mod, but I do not think that my post was insulting or aggressive and I feel the block is way over the top.

This is just an unimportant example, but I bet were going to see a lot more of it in the future. With no moderation in place its individual rights to supress thoughts/opinions.

Edited December 6, 2013 by fiewiel