All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part IX

[Labster]

All of you telling me to pay off student loans first: I do hope you all paid off all of your credit cards, home loans, and car payments before you start spending money on a hobby.  Because that's the same thing you're telling me to do, except y'all would be paying more interest than me.  PROTIP: It is possible to make more money than the student loan interest rate simply by investing in index funds.
I think one of the reasons I didn't pick up on Lulzkiller causing real distress here is because I do real-life politics.  And real life politics is profane, because people are really passionate about their issues.  Like here are three stories from the California State Democratic Convention last weekend with heavy profanity.  I've carried a protest sign saying "Healthcare is a Human Right" and told to "fuck off" or "get over it, Trump won", or "I'm going to come back with my gun and shoot you fucking liberals" (with IRL visible ???? on his forehead).  It's no skin off my back, because it's all part of the game.
So when I read LK's statements, I was all like "that fucker really wants some policy change", when in reality John was feeling offended and harassed.  Which is not to say his experience is invalid, it's just that it's hard to tell between different communities what standards really apply.   That's really why this community missed the signs. If LK had treated me the way he treated John yesterday, well, I'm not sure how I'd react.  On rereading it, I doubt it would do much but make me angrily justify my policy positions.  Just like I angrily argued with Amanda, God rest her account.  And it's because I get angry easily that I do not take an active moderation role unless I'm uninvolved.  Or more to the point, whenever my decent INT score can be rolled instead of my dump stat WIS.
We've all decided that what LulzKiller said is not appropriate for ATT staff, because an angry tone that causes a crisis is kind of the opposite of the meaning of "moderation".  But as a general policy?  Maybe I'm OK with abrasive speech as long as people aren't feeling harassed.  It's makes a very hard-to-enforce policy, but I don't want to quash opinionated speech just because I don't like the mode it was presented.  But LK definitely crossed the line, enough to be dropped from the admin team for quite a while.  I'm not saying "never", but it had better be long enough to gain some maturity and learn from his mistakes.
But I feel like there were mistakes on the Miraheze side too:

• John opened with a post that was essentially a come-on or a troll, to go ahead try and remove him from power.  He should have seen that I was already trying to moderate LK on this forum, and asked me to go further.
  
• According to IRC logs, John had already decided that he LK should be banned after his first LK's first reply, but kept replying in-thread anyway, in an attempt to "give him enough rope" in what was essentially entrapment.
  
• John incited the incident further by including phrases like "Clearly you only care about manipulating things to make it look like you're are correct."  This is not as bad as things LK said, but it was making the debate worse.
  
• John gave a "final warning", but never explained what the consequences would be if that warning was not heeded.  NDKilla considered that warning to be sufficient notice, which means that John was acting as a steward in this case.
  
• John said that he would not take action as an involved party, which means that he was not a steward in this case.  If that's right, then the last point is false, and no one tried to moderate the situation before "actioning".
  
• NDKilla acted without informing the banned user of what was going on for six hours.
  
• Miraheze staff was, in general, blind to their group bias, but if you read the private logs it was definitely there.
  

I was really, really trying my hardest to be impartial here.  The truth is that I was trying to keep both sides happy.  I apologize for my failure to do that.  But just because LulzKiller was obviously in the wrong does not mean that Miraheze did not make mistakes here.  Because I criticized John does not mean that I am siding against him.  This is not about loyalty; this is about duty.  True friendship is telling your friends what they need to hear.  Of course, true friendship doesn't really exist.
I feel like Miraheze would be well served to have new policies to help prevent mistakes:

• If at all possible, if a steward is a party in a dispute, they should play no role in a disciplinary process other than as a witness.
  
• Any steward acting in a disciplinary role should explain the consequences to the relevant parties, both before and after taking action.  The "before" step should be a chance to let the behavior stop.
  
• If disciplinary actions are taking place within one of our wiki communities, stewards should give notice to local staff (particularly bureaucrats) before taking the action.
  

The main point would be to prevent mistakes, to prevent the community from thinking that the process was corrupt or whatever.  It's not saying we need an ArbCom or anything, just that we follow some sort of a procedure.  And it would be nice if we had all done Exponential Backoff Editing too, but that and a pony will get you a unicorn.  Wait... Well, you get the idea.
Honestly, I don't know what's going to happen at this point.  I've asked NDKilla to make us a backup of ATT.  I'm not sure if people are going to be comfortable around Miraheze or not.  I'm not sure I am, either.
-- ∇×V