My Thoughts on Safe Netiquette (Re: Bombcast #26)

I'm currently getting caught up on episodes of the Giant Bombcast, working backwards from the most recent episode, and I'm now on episode #26. I've reached the little discussion by Jeff and Ryan and the rest during the middle of the show about how bad people on the internet can be, and solutions for this. I tend to be to the point about a lot of things, and I'm going to be kind of to the point, or points here.

However, before I get started, a few disclaimers. I'm not telling any moderators here how to do their job. The moderators and staff of Giant Bomb and all the other Whiskey Media sites do a fantastic job, and my hat is off  for them. I'm not tipping it because there's an oil lamp in there and I don't want that to spill.  This blog post and forum topic is meant more to show my own thoughts on moderation, based on moderation on another site I visited heavily before Whiskey Media got started (and I still visit as well) - RPG.net - and on other sites I write for.  
 
Also, I'd like you to head over to RPG.net and read their forum rules, and take a look at their Trouble Tickets forum a bit. This isn't meant to advertise, instead, it's meant as reference material that I'll be referring back to over the course of this post.  Some of the moderator rulings in that forum will reference material from Tangency Open, which is a forum limited to registered users, so there's a heads up on that.
    
To be frank, everything I learned about moderating sites I learned from the RPG.net forums. I'm going to go into what I learned in this post, and how it can be applied to other forums in this thread, using Whiskey Media as a common frame of reference. Again, this is not meant as a mark against the moderation on the Whiskey Media sites. This is meant to provide a common frame of reference for readers of this post (which I may transfer to my blogs on Comic Vine, Screened, and Anime Vice), as well as to provide examples outside of the vBulletin framework. This is also meant to address some of the complaints that Jeff and company voiced on episode #26 of the Bombcast, in terms of ways to get rid of some of the hateful noise on the internet, and on various forums.
 
One of the first things that RPG.net's forum philosophy does that in my opinion helps reduce the noise, is forbidding group attacks and personal attacks. This isn't just a matter of forbidding racist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise derogatory insults though it does that. This rule also helps keep a more even tone for forum posts - by forcing people to not make things personal. This doesn't always make cooler heads prevail, but I've found that this rule, and similar rules on other sites, helps. 
 
Related to this, RPGnet has in their guidelines the recommendation that posters be polite, essentially serving as a sort of loose "Don't Be a Dick" rule. If your site doesn't have a guideline like this, having some sort of statement admonishing people from being a dick in the forum rules certainly can help. Don't make "Don't Be A Dick" a literal hard and fast rule though - it can lead to trolls turning the report button into a weapon against their enemies, though if your moderators and posters communicate well, this could end up backfiring to trolls. Whiskey Media essentially has these covered. It doesn't have the explicit admonition against personal attacks, though it can safely be inferred, This leads to... 
 
Point Number #3 - Be open in your rulings and your moderation. Transparency in your moderation rulings isn't just meant to show to posters how just and merciful and even handed you are - people will still complain about how you're a iron fisted fascist tyrant running a right-wing/left-wing/socialist/capitalist echo chamber. Being open in how you moderate the site helps show the readers what kind of behavior is or isn't allowed better than just reading the rules does. Rules documents are dry, dull, and boring, and sometimes, no matter how many times we read the rules, some things don't always click. 
 
This is where transparency comes in. RPG.net does it in Three ways, and Whiskey Media does at least one of these. First, make your moderators and staff very clearly visible as such. On RPG.net, Moderators and Staff have distinctive avatars, text stating their position in their signatures, and recently, distinctive colors for their screen names. Whiskey Media, in my opinion, does this even better by having a box under the username of moderators and staff saying that they are mods or staff members. 
 
Additionally, RPG.net moderators use a distinctive font color to separate mod rulings from non mod text. This concept doesn't work quite so well for Whiskey Media sites (though it can be done), and may not work well on other sites where posters can't vary their font color. However, having some way for posters to tell, at a glance, when a mod is making an official ruling in a post very helpful to the non-moderators on the site, as such formatting quickly catches the reader's attention and draws the eye. 
 
Also, RPGnet has a special forum for users to discuss site policy with moderators. Posts related to banning, threads being pulled backstage, as well as bug reports are supposed to be made there. In particular, when a poster is temporarily or permanently banned, a post is made stating who was banned, why, and a link is given to the offending post, or the ruling in that thread on the offending post. Whiskey Media has something similar, with the "Bug Reporting" post, but it doesn't have something for stating rulings. Having some way to do that, in my opinion, helps make clear why a poster has gotten banned, and can also help make clear to users what behavior they were doing was unacceptable. This also provides posters with a method of public appeal for some rulings, as moderators are just as fallible as everyone else and on rare occasions make mistakes. Obviously, some rulings get no appeal - if someone is banned for racist, homophobic, or trans-phobic language, then it's clear that there should be no appeal. However, if a poster with a history of trolling provokes a personal attack from another user, and the user making the attack is banned, a more lenient sentence could, in theory, be provided on appeal either by E-Mail from the original poster, or from appeals from other posters. 
 
However, banning someone permanently is ineffective if you can only ban their username. Thus, I would recommend that any posters who are considering running their own forums for anything in particular, choose a platform for running their forums that allows them to ban offending posters IP addresses. This saves the moderators work from having to play "whack-a-troll." I've had prior experience with this particular problem when I used to moderate a list-serv. It is not a problem to be under-estimated, eventually you will perma-ban someone, and he won't get the hint. Having a way to get rid of him in a more long-term fashion will help. 
 
These moderation ideas will likely drive some posters away, as they may find them too harsh. However, in my opinion, the ideal forum site is one where female posters can be open about their gender, if they so choose, without fear of harassment. The same with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or Trans-gender posters and their gender identities and sexual preferences. In my opinion, GLBT posters should be able to out themselves on forum sites like RPGnet, or Giant Bomb, or just about any other forum site on the internet, safe in the knowledge that if they are harassed, they have a safe recourse. 
 
Anyway, those are my abstract ramblings about how I think forum sites in general can be run in a better fashion, but that's just me. Feel free to post your thoughts (and any constructive criticism in particular), as well as any questions you might have, as I suspect my post was more than a little rambling and disorganized. 
 
EDIT: Just one more thing I want to make clear. In my opinion, RPGnet and the Whiskey Media sites are generally islands of calm in the raging tempest that is the internet. They are both excellent sites or families of sites (respectively). However, hopefully these horribly disorganized thoughts will help address some of the complaints brought up on Episode #26 of the Bombcast, in terms of posters here who may moderate sites elsewhere, and who agree with the sentiments expressed by the Bombcast Crew on the show.

I'm currently getting caught up on episodes of the Giant Bombcast, working backwards from the most recent episode, and I'm now on episode #26. I've reached the little discussion by Jeff and Ryan and the rest during the middle of the show about how bad people on the internet can be, and solutions for this. I tend to be to the point about a lot of things, and I'm going to be kind of to the point, or points here.

However, before I get started, a few disclaimers. I'm not telling any moderators here how to do their job. The moderators and staff of Giant Bomb and all the other Whiskey Media sites do a fantastic job, and my hat is off  for them. I'm not tipping it because there's an oil lamp in there and I don't want that to spill.  This blog post and forum topic is meant more to show my own thoughts on moderation, based on moderation on another site I visited heavily before Whiskey Media got started (and I still visit as well) - RPG.net - and on other sites I write for.  
 
Also, I'd like you to head over to RPG.net and read their forum rules, and take a look at their Trouble Tickets forum a bit. This isn't meant to advertise, instead, it's meant as reference material that I'll be referring back to over the course of this post.  Some of the moderator rulings in that forum will reference material from Tangency Open, which is a forum limited to registered users, so there's a heads up on that.
    
To be frank, everything I learned about moderating sites I learned from the RPG.net forums. I'm going to go into what I learned in this post, and how it can be applied to other forums in this thread, using Whiskey Media as a common frame of reference. Again, this is not meant as a mark against the moderation on the Whiskey Media sites. This is meant to provide a common frame of reference for readers of this post (which I may transfer to my blogs on Comic Vine, Screened, and Anime Vice), as well as to provide examples outside of the vBulletin framework. This is also meant to address some of the complaints that Jeff and company voiced on episode #26 of the Bombcast, in terms of ways to get rid of some of the hateful noise on the internet, and on various forums.
 
One of the first things that RPG.net's forum philosophy does that in my opinion helps reduce the noise, is forbidding group attacks and personal attacks. This isn't just a matter of forbidding racist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise derogatory insults though it does that. This rule also helps keep a more even tone for forum posts - by forcing people to not make things personal. This doesn't always make cooler heads prevail, but I've found that this rule, and similar rules on other sites, helps. 
 
Related to this, RPGnet has in their guidelines the recommendation that posters be polite, essentially serving as a sort of loose "Don't Be a Dick" rule. If your site doesn't have a guideline like this, having some sort of statement admonishing people from being a dick in the forum rules certainly can help. Don't make "Don't Be A Dick" a literal hard and fast rule though - it can lead to trolls turning the report button into a weapon against their enemies, though if your moderators and posters communicate well, this could end up backfiring to trolls. Whiskey Media essentially has these covered. It doesn't have the explicit admonition against personal attacks, though it can safely be inferred, This leads to... 
 
Point Number #3 - Be open in your rulings and your moderation. Transparency in your moderation rulings isn't just meant to show to posters how just and merciful and even handed you are - people will still complain about how you're a iron fisted fascist tyrant running a right-wing/left-wing/socialist/capitalist echo chamber. Being open in how you moderate the site helps show the readers what kind of behavior is or isn't allowed better than just reading the rules does. Rules documents are dry, dull, and boring, and sometimes, no matter how many times we read the rules, some things don't always click. 
 
This is where transparency comes in. RPG.net does it in Three ways, and Whiskey Media does at least one of these. First, make your moderators and staff very clearly visible as such. On RPG.net, Moderators and Staff have distinctive avatars, text stating their position in their signatures, and recently, distinctive colors for their screen names. Whiskey Media, in my opinion, does this even better by having a box under the username of moderators and staff saying that they are mods or staff members. 
 
Additionally, RPG.net moderators use a distinctive font color to separate mod rulings from non mod text. This concept doesn't work quite so well for Whiskey Media sites (though it can be done), and may not work well on other sites where posters can't vary their font color. However, having some way for posters to tell, at a glance, when a mod is making an official ruling in a post very helpful to the non-moderators on the site, as such formatting quickly catches the reader's attention and draws the eye. 
 
Also, RPGnet has a special forum for users to discuss site policy with moderators. Posts related to banning, threads being pulled backstage, as well as bug reports are supposed to be made there. In particular, when a poster is temporarily or permanently banned, a post is made stating who was banned, why, and a link is given to the offending post, or the ruling in that thread on the offending post. Whiskey Media has something similar, with the "Bug Reporting" post, but it doesn't have something for stating rulings. Having some way to do that, in my opinion, helps make clear why a poster has gotten banned, and can also help make clear to users what behavior they were doing was unacceptable. This also provides posters with a method of public appeal for some rulings, as moderators are just as fallible as everyone else and on rare occasions make mistakes. Obviously, some rulings get no appeal - if someone is banned for racist, homophobic, or trans-phobic language, then it's clear that there should be no appeal. However, if a poster with a history of trolling provokes a personal attack from another user, and the user making the attack is banned, a more lenient sentence could, in theory, be provided on appeal either by E-Mail from the original poster, or from appeals from other posters. 
 
However, banning someone permanently is ineffective if you can only ban their username. Thus, I would recommend that any posters who are considering running their own forums for anything in particular, choose a platform for running their forums that allows them to ban offending posters IP addresses. This saves the moderators work from having to play "whack-a-troll." I've had prior experience with this particular problem when I used to moderate a list-serv. It is not a problem to be under-estimated, eventually you will perma-ban someone, and he won't get the hint. Having a way to get rid of him in a more long-term fashion will help. 
 
These moderation ideas will likely drive some posters away, as they may find them too harsh. However, in my opinion, the ideal forum site is one where female posters can be open about their gender, if they so choose, without fear of harassment. The same with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or Trans-gender posters and their gender identities and sexual preferences. In my opinion, GLBT posters should be able to out themselves on forum sites like RPGnet, or Giant Bomb, or just about any other forum site on the internet, safe in the knowledge that if they are harassed, they have a safe recourse. 
 
Anyway, those are my abstract ramblings about how I think forum sites in general can be run in a better fashion, but that's just me. Feel free to post your thoughts (and any constructive criticism in particular), as well as any questions you might have, as I suspect my post was more than a little rambling and disorganized. 
 
EDIT: Just one more thing I want to make clear. In my opinion, RPGnet and the Whiskey Media sites are generally islands of calm in the raging tempest that is the internet. They are both excellent sites or families of sites (respectively). However, hopefully these horribly disorganized thoughts will help address some of the complaints brought up on Episode #26 of the Bombcast, in terms of posters here who may moderate sites elsewhere, and who agree with the sentiments expressed by the Bombcast Crew on the show.

Very long, but very well-argued. Nice job.