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Report Back on "The Thread"
This is a community about how online communities function, and how design – both technical and social – can change everyone’s experiences and outcomes.
We recently had a thread that turned unpleasant, and essentially went unmoderated for a weekend (again, I’m really sorry about that.) I want to describe what moderation should have looked like in that case, say what will change going forward, and offer some observations about what happened.
The original post was, from what I can recollect of it (the original poster replaced it with another), about the constraints and limits of anonymity within Imzy. It was relevant to the topic of the community design, though it probably would have been more appropriate for discussion on the Imzy Meta community. My first soft moderation should have been around this – replying with a post that suggested a better place for the poster to discuss Imzy in particular, and moved the topic of discussion to the application of anonymity more broadly as part of community design. I think this might have changed the direction of what followed.
That said, the participants seemed to have previous history, and this that came through in their responses.
Reading what followed made me realize that our rules and Code of Conduct are more vague than they should be. We will be changing that after this week. Our current principles sound nice enough, but don’t indicate exactly what kind of content and tone we expect, and most importantly what we will not accept. “Safe and positive” sound very lovely but aren’t defined, either by us or by you as part of the community, and that ambiguity helped the situation to worsen without a clear breach of the rules.
For instance, the phrase “women’s issues”, that came up as a determinist description, is a no go for me. Yet some community members might not have reported it, as nowhere in our code does it state how we handle discussions of marginalized identities.
Intentional or not, I believe that many of Dreadmorbius’ responses qualify at least as clear microaggressions, if not straight-up insults. Members of our community should not have been exposed to this without swift intervention from me. I apologize for that specifically. That is part of a safe and positive community space, and should be explicitly stated.
Instead, what happened was a pile on from various community members. As soon as that occurred, I should have stepped in either to redirect the conversation or to lock the thread. If a pile on occurs, moderators need to step in as quickly as possible, either to be upfront about why they are permitting it, or to stop it completely.
Dreadmorbius reached out to me to ask that this thread be monitored or sandboxed, and received no prompt response. I apologize for that. At that moment, they acted responsibly, and the support that should have been present in the community to head this off was not there.
In summary, community members felt that they were forced to defend themselves in a discussion with no limits and no oversight, and so they acted accordingly. Human moderation was non existent and the guidelines were so vague there was no solid reference point about when they were breached – also they could well have little confidence that any moderator would see their report. It’s a textbook example of how dialogue fails through poor design and oversight.
During the conversation, GIFs, snark, profanity and antagonism were abundant, but still I am surprised at how civil the discussion remained. What I observed most often was how many Anons expressed that it was refreshing to be able to speak their minds and not worry about reprisal – that their responses to an abrasive interaction could be expressed fully without being afraid that they would be attacked in another place. I believe that that feeling of safety improved the quality of even the most caustic parts of this discourse. As bad as I feel about having failed our community around this, it was wonderful to see people being honest about the design around concepts that too often remain unsaid. Some of you seemed comfortable making observations and expressing sentiments that, while I often hear them in private, are rarely expressed in online communities because of fear of reprisal.
As we move forward and work to improve our oversight and guidance of this space, I don’t want to lose that aspect of what we have.
We will continue to work hard to improve this space.
- new guidelines. What is and isn't expected should be clear
- Better oversight : I fixed my email and my filters and will post when I am and am not checking as well as putting in oversight failsafes
- A space for meta: A place ( maybe this post ) for keeping meta discussions that can be periodically checked
Please let us know what other things you may need or any thoughts you have about this community in the comments below. While I take responsibility for the caretaking of the space, it belongs to all of us, and I want us all to be part of making it stronger.
I’m so happy you’re here.
Sydette




Heya Sydette,
I wanted to let you know that since this incident, we have fixed it so that you now can mute anonymous profiles in a thread. We're also working on additional block tools, including reverse blocking.
I've also used your report queue as an example for multiple conversations I've had with our designers, our director of product, and front end devs. When the report queue was first created, it happened without input from design. It wasn't ever intended to stay that way, and I apologize for the state it's in. We can and will make it better and less confusing.
The thread was also a fantastic example (in a rather unfortunate way) of the need we have to improve our comment threading. This is something we're working on.
Besides the ability to block/mute anons, issues with the report queue design, and threading, if there's other issues you saw on our end regarding the site itself and things we could do better, please let me know.
As a sidenote, when I had made a comment in that thread, it was before things had devolved, and my opinion on the thread was based on what I was seeing at the time (for instance, the comment was made significantly before any sniping or gifs appeared). If you think there's anything else you would have liked to see me do (or not do) as a site admin, please let me know. I very much value your opinion and the opinion of all the folks over at Coral.
(Making a separate non-distinguished comment because this part is more personal opinion)
One thing I really did notice in that thread was that despite the huge amount of kindling, things really didn't devolve nearly as badly as they could have. "Common knowledge" dictates that conversations involving fully anonymous users will always end terribly and with the very worst human nature coming to the surface. This wasn't the case, which I find pretty awesome and fascinating.
Thank you for the lovely reply, Sydette <3 I'm impressed with how much thought you're clearly given to this and I really appreciate it.
Just one small thing: it wasn't your fault. You took a week off and usually 99.9% of the time it wouldn't have been an issue, it was unlucky timing (not on your part! Just in general I guess). So don't feel bad if you weren't there. It happens. And you clearly care about this community, so please don't feel guilty or anything, okay? You're doing a wonderful job of as a leader! *hugs if you want them*
I, for one, just want to applaud you for both investigating the situation after the fact and also for taking full measures to prevent such in the future. I feel comfortable that this community is in good hands.
I participated in that thread, as one of the heated anons, and in retrospect I should have walked away long before I actually did. So my apologies for that.
I would also like to thank you for this really excellent response to the whole thing. I appreciate that you examined the situation with a cool head and outlined concrete steps to prevent it from occurring again, in addition to soliciting feedback. I also moderate a community, and I will certainly take this as an example of how to address any similar meltdowns. You are a shining star!
Yeah, as another mod, I've also saved this as an example for future reference.
This is a really good and thoughtful response.
This is a good response and you should feel good. I agree with almost all of it. My personal philosophy is to be wary of restrictive guidelines and allow a lot of mod discretion, but I think there is a sweet spot for every community, and maybe that conversation has helped this one move closer to that.
Thank you, Sydette!