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