Mod Abuse of Power,what should you do if you sense that a mod is biased against you?

[bejapuskas]

1 hour ago, Keyhole said:

My main concern is that you guys can't spot trolls.  This place is overrun with them.
I would look into troll tactics and how they work to keep this place bug free.  That's pretty much it.  The only things I have been annoyed with mods about is their lack of education on how troll tactics work.

Could you please educate me?  

1 hour ago, Keyhole said:

No, I think it is better for people here to be distant and professional.  I have noticed that the more people attempt to interact and get to know one another, that is when problems start - but when we are focused on ourselves then everything runs smoothly.  I think a somewhat cold, professional atmosphere is for the best.  Otherwise it always crashes and burns, public places like these.

There are other places to get emotional/mental needs met/make friendships and the like and that this place should be used solely for personal growth and sharing progress.

Personally, I am here for data collection/organization.

Sure it definitely has its benefits, but some people enjoy being reached out to. Sometimes that can be a distraction from growth but not always. Also some people do not have friends, or they want to connect with people who are interested in spirituality and they have not yet met anyone near them. 

That's good too, people are here for different reasons.

37 minutes ago, Danioover9000 said:

   Try to contact that mod to seek clarification, and if that doesn't work, try and pm Leo, regarding say warnings.

   Getting a ban and resolving that might be more difficult, because it may take other users to raise this issue.

Please not that electrobeam, even though I am glad he was brought back, was banned for quite reasonable reasons in my opinion, and I definitely feel for the person who banned him. Super large doses of psychedelics can be very dangerous. 

[Gesundheit]

I think Mods here could do better at detecting trolls. Trolls get away, and innocent people fall victims of the merciless ban hammer. I think there should be more awareness and understanding of how trolls work, especially developing skills such as emotional intelligence, pattern analysis, better guesswork, using triggering techniques, understanding personality types, etc... Some trolls are very obvious to me from the sight of their very first posts, some are more subtle. I find it strange how it's lost on the mods a lot of times. I think mods should be better than that.

Edited December 19, 2020 by Gesundheit

[Danioover9000]

@Gesundheit

2 hours ago, Gesundheit said:

I think Mods here could do better at detecting trolls. Trolls get away, and innocent people fall victims of the merciless ban hammer. I think there should be more awareness and understanding of how trolls work, especially developing skills such as emotional intelligence, pattern analysis, better guesswork, using triggering techniques, understanding personality types, etc... Some trolls are very obvious to me from the sight of their very first posts, some are more subtle. I find it strange how it's lost on the mods a lot of times. I think mods should be better than that.

   We do need some examples of trolling behavior. In the past I was joking to some other users, but didn't even know that I was trolling and my sense of humor was different to normal people and got some warning points.

[Gesundheit]

@Danioover9000 @Keyhole One thing that comes to mind is levels of investment. If someone is really investing in the content of the forum then chances are that whatever mistakes they make will be done unconsciously and without bad intentions. However, if someone opens a new account and immediately starts to cause disharmony and stuff, then chances are they're just trolling. I mean that should be obvious. In some cases, someone who is really invested can actually be a troll, but judgement should be made carefully.

[bejapuskas]

12 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

We do need some examples of trolling behavior. In the past I was joking to some other users, but didn't even know that I was trolling and my sense of humor was different to normal people and got some warning points.

I think maybe all of you guys on this thread have different definitions of what being a troll means, so I do not really know what to take away from this. Usually the kind of members you are describing though get banned in terms of hours. You are definitely underestimating the hard work some of the mods here put into detecting these individuals. It is hard to imagine for a regular user what it is like to be a moderator, I mean, a moderator does not have time to check all the threads and detect all of the trolls. But if you guys detect somebody like that, just report them, there is the option to do that and it makes the job for all the moderators much easier.

[Preety_India]

What if the moderator bans someone who is actually not a troll? 

 

[Leo Gura]

I keep a close eye on Mods to make sure they are well-behaved. And for the most part we have an excellent Mod team here that requires little guidance from me.

If a Mod repeatedly makes mistakes and shows poor judgment they will lose Mod status (which has happened once or twice in the past). I'm generally very careful about selecting Mods to begin with, so it really don't get much better than this. Don't forget, Mods are human. They will never be perfect. I'm not perfect either. Policing this forum is a lot of work and policing will always involve an element of subjectivity.

If you have a problem with Mod behavior you can always contact me about it. But if you do, you better present a solid case with solid evidence of abuse. Just because a Mod issued you a warning you disagree with does not mean the Mod is abusing their power.

This forum would be a hell-hole without all the work our Mods do (for free).

[Preety_India]

@Leo Gura  you need to provide an avenue for users to contact you directly if they got unfairly banned. What if they don't have friends to bring them back on here? 

After they're banned they can't do anything to get access to the forum. 

I'm not sure how it works because I was never banned. 

But I assume there is no option given to banned users to talk to you? 

Please make these policies transparent. 

In the absense of such transparency, users suffer fears and Insecurity. You need to make existing users aware of their individual rights in a fair manner. 

 

[Preety_India]

@Leo Gura also take my feedback given in the original post into consideration. 

It's perfectly legit to have a transparent grievance redressal. 

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

After they're banned they can't do anything to get access to the forum.

If they reach that point, they've already screwed up badly. We don't just ban people willy-nilly here. To get banned usually requires many offenses or a single very serious offense.

Sorry, but my time is limited and I'm not going to bend over backwards for people who get banned.

In all my years banning people, I have never seen a single banned person who was willing to correct their behavior. Not one. Even if they are willing, they are simply constitutionally incapable of it and I am not going to wait around for them to grow up.

[Preety_India]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

If they reach that point, they've already screwed up badly. We don't just ban people willy-nilly here. To get banned usually requires many offenses or a single very serious offense.

But then electroBeam was banned? 

He wasn't a troll and he was a daily contributor as well. Then? 

Thanks to a friend he could come back on the forum, otherwise? 

 

[Preety_India]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Sorry, but my time is limited and I'm not going to bend over backwards for people who get banned.

You're not getting my point. I'm not talking about those who got banned for offenses. I get your point that you don't have time to deal with them. 

I'm talking about those who got unfairly banned by mod's mistakes in judgement or inherent biases. 

We're all humans. Mods are humans. They could suffer biases as well. 

What options have you put in place on Actualized.org forum for specifically those users who suffered an unfair ban due to biases from moderators and who don't have any contacts outside the forum to get them back here? This is my question. Please answer it directly and let me know those policies. 

Leo,

 

You really need to be more direct and succinct here. This issue has been hanging over my head for many days now. 

 

 

I humbly request you to reconsider my feedback and give users some opportunity, authority and power so that they don't feel unfairly targeted in any way. 

I hope you are able to give full clarity to all users of Actualized.org thanks

Edited December 20, 2020 by Preety_India

[Nahm]

Nobody’s perfect, and everyone deserves to know their power of Forgiveness.

[Forestluv]

@Preety_India The only auto-bans I’ve seen are obvious spammers or previously banned trolls with new accounts. Other bans involve prior warnings (either formally or informally)  in which the user has had an opportunity to contact the Mod who issued the warning, another Mod or Leo. Occasionally there is a warning that was too excessive and after a bit of mod chat (or Leo stepping in), the warning is downgraded. So there is an avenue for this.

I don’t think it’s fair to say users have a concern to say “I may get banned for writing this, but here I go. . . “. I think it’s more fair to say “I may get a warning for this, but here I go” or “I’ve already received multiple warnings so I may get banned for this, but here I go”.

If a user has had multiple warnings and carries 15+ of warning points, yea they should be extra careful about not crossing forum guidelines, since the next warning could put them over the top and get them banned. 

And warnings to regular users are relatively uncommon. A very small percentage of posts on the forum get a warning. 

[bejapuskas]

7 hours ago, Preety_India said:

But then electroBeam was banned? 

He wasn't a troll and he was a daily contributor as well. Then? 

Thanks to a friend he could come back on the forum, otherwise? 

He was banned yes, he is back now luckily. And I don't think things like that happen too often on this forum, most of the bans are spammers. I was trying to say that the person who banned electroBeam banned them for like an actually quite serious reason one should not just overlook. I think he was talking about taking some extremely high doses of psychedelics that might be dangerous. By the way there are people on this forum who became schizophrenic because of taking too much mushrooms, I spoke to them. Doesn't seem pleasant at all in my opinion. I don't know how much I can trust the people who go down the psychedelic path to consider the safety measures etc. but then it is something that is not just a small issue. It's just that Leo mentions so many of the safety measures that probably most people don't even follow, so somebody talking about tripping on such a high dose might really mess somebody's life up if they are like confused in this matter. And just look around, there are quite a few trip reports of people saying "I wish I didn't try to take a shortcut with psychedelics", but like Leo mentioned that they shouldn't do heavy doses right off the bat. I am glad he is back, but I just have to keep repeating this, because I think this thing about electroBeam wasn't just black and white kind of situation as most people see it. Although I love electroBeam so much and I like to have him on this forum, I also feel the need to defend the moderator.

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

In all my years banning people, I have never seen a single banned person who was willing to correct their behavior. Not one. Even if they are willing, they are simply constitutionally incapable of it and I am not going to wait around for them to grow up.

Unfortunately I have to second this, and I mean, the mods really do give people a second chance if they screw up. There are people here who have about like 5 different warnings. (At that point they are still not banned! How many more warnings do they want?)

7 hours ago, Preety_India said:

I'm talking about those who got unfairly banned by mod's mistakes in judgement or inherent biases.

I don't know how serious of an issue is this. As Forestluv mentioned, people get small warnings and they would need like a lot of them in order to get banned. And when somebody makes a serious mistake, it is quite obvious.

23 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

I don’t think it’s fair to say users have a legit concern to say “I may get banned for writing this, but here I go. . . “. I think it’s more fair to say “I may get a warning for this, but here I go” or “I’ve already received multiple warnings and I’ve been temporarily restricted from the forum, so I may get banned for my 3rd offense, but here I go”.

If a user has had multiple warnings and carries 15+ of warning points, yea they should be extra careful about not crossing forum guidelines, since the next warning could put them over the top and get them banned. 

This is actually so accurate. Thank you. 

 

Could we make a conclusion that we want people of this forum to express their opinions more by reporting users (there are only a few users that use the report function frequently, big thank you to those) or DMing mods and Leo about serious concerns? 

Also that users should not be as afraid of getting banned, because it requires many warnings to arrive at that and also warnings can be taken away from a user if we see an improvement in behavior? (this has happened) Probably the only issue with getting a warning is that it might be a reason for Leo not to choose to make a person a moderator in a future, which is something many people want for some reason. (I mean it is some work, it does not make your life better, it does not make you more conscious... why would you want to become a mod?)

Any more conclusions?

[Preety_India]

@bejapuskas do you want a conclusion? 

Do you know that I used the report button and I reported to the mod (I don't like reporting too often) and the mod simply ignored and told me to basically suck it up? 

How do you simply arrive at conclusions without even considering a user's perspective? 

You're mod and he is a mod. A mod is supporting another mod. Is that hard to see as biased? 

I'm talking about how are you all going to make users feel Empowered? 

Do users have rights or a recourse? 

It's like complaining to the police about the police. Do you see how this can get complicated?

What if all mods are supporting one another? What if a mod is approached about another mod, and he happens to agree with the other mod? 

Leo hardly got any time to respond to users.. 

There should be a committee or a thread or a way to ensure that users also have a voice. The only people who are without a voice here are users. 

Leo says that he keeps a close eye on mods. I hope he does. 

 

[DnoReally]

@Preety_India here take a (you), you seem to be in dire need

[Preety_India]

@DnoReally ? 

 

[Thewritersunion]

It is time to invoke the rath of god

[diamondpenguin]

@Preety_India its a business, dont take it personally, life goes on. But on a serious note, what if I complained to you about you. That's how deep the problem goes. People wont admit when they're wrong and same with the police, they are humans who think they are the best and the most righteous, just like all the other people. Like me, like my mother and mother before her mother. It's an endless cycle people out on the streets not coming up with a plan, but just perpetuating the same sht. 

Edited December 20, 2020 by diamondpenguin