Are members discouraged or indeed prohibited from discussing the changing rules and zeitgeist in the forum?

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Orionz

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I have been in this forum on and off for almost 20 years now. It evolves with time and often reflect local sentiments. Moderation standards and rules also evolve to follow up with the dynamism.

Are we now prohibited from discussing this dynamism and change in moderation, often a result from evolving forum zeitgeist and sentiment? I understand the "do not inciting against hwz team" argument, but why not just infract the relevant post instead of doing such blanket prohibition?

Feedback threads here are closed very promptly without given any room for community discussion. I am of the impression that threads opened now attempting to discuss about moderation precedents are seemingly being stamped out in the name of preventing hate against the team. Seriously?

Using @Dragon 's analogy, why do you feel the need to shut down every panel commentary or discussion about referee decisions? These decisions are final anyway. By allowing discussion and analyses, you help the community digest these (perhaps controversial) decisions and accelerate the change you want to see.

Please consider my feedback and provide some clarity.
 
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Dr.Vijay

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Are we now prohibited from discussing this dynamism and change in moderation, often a result from evolving forum zeitgeist and sentiment? I understand the "do not inciting against hwz team" argument, but why not just infract the relevant post instead of doing such blanket prohibition?

Feedback threads here are closed very promptly without given any room for community discussion. I am of the impression that threads opened now attempting to discuss about moderation precedents are seemingly being stamped out in the name of preventing hate against the team. Seriously?

Hi Orionz,

To the question, of whether such discussions are allowed, you can see and tell that no constructive replies come out of this. Only the affected parties chime in, and most of the time, they chime in such a way that they are not at fault or they would even misconstrue the scenario, sometimes on purpose. How far can this go without seeing a string of moderation bashing? It almost never happens.

That's not to say we don't allow criticism. Criticism is good grounds to improve a situation and moderators and admins have personally partaken in such discussions where we've seen it being constructive. I'm not going to dig to show examples, because we don't mask our intentions or what we mean. All are in public view if one goes to search for them.

If there is a mishandling, this forum section and feedback email has served to correct/realign the matter at hand.

Apart from that, we don't see a need for such discussions if the basic issue of not conforming to the forum decorum isn't met. If one is wronged on this matter, there's no further discussion to be had. And a big portion of the forum infractions handed out is for this.

As for closing the matter after a feedback forum thread is replied to, this is a result of members who aren't able to have a decent discussion and only nitpick on issues endlessly. If you recall, it wasn't always this way, but as moderation standards went up, the pushback and complaints against warnings went up as well. Clearly, the resentment is because one can't be as 'free and easy' going as they once were. And to that, I've also replied previously things have changed and one can't live in the mindset of the early internet years.

If the issue is resolved from our POV, which is in line with the forum decorum we want to maintain, I don't see a reason for it to drag further.

If it's about improving something, start a new discussion thread and keep to that topic on how to make it better and not dwell on someone else's issue that we have resolved at that point in time.

The need to maintain proper forum decorum is one aspect, but any feedback also has to weigh in against the tech feasibility (it's a different BU, not someone at our beck and call for non-critical matters) as well as the moderation team's availability to a particular aspect discussed. It has to be realistic, plus the forum is primarily a free service, and we're under IMDA's purview to maintain certain standards. So you can see, there are multiple concerns about anything raised that we need to weigh against before considering something.

Most of all, we need members to be understanding.
More often than not, there is a reason why we take certain actions the way it's done.

Yes, selective post-removals might work if the pain points are really contained to them. At other times, it's really obvious that it's not useful to keep a discussion thread that way when we've other constraints to work with, so it's better off being removed.

It's also to no one's advantage if we were to infract users who keep criticizing us. Won't that lead to more resentment? That's not our goal either and as such we don't do this unless it's outright slander.

Lastly, I'm not replying to any particular discussion or issue, but this is just a note in general.

Thank you.
 
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