@Wiimeiser
@Background Pony #62BF
@Barhandar
Sorry for the wait, I was at work.
Let me first preface this post with saying that I’m going to do my best to stay impartial. There has been enough pointing fingers and blaming each other during this whole shitfest. I’ll try to avoid moralizing. Obviously I have my own opinion, but I hope I’m not going to let it color what I say too much.
I believe that humans are, at their core, social creatures that instinctively seek some kind of order in a given community they’re part of. It gives our lizard brains a sense of stability and safety. Many of our actions and reactions are motivated by instinctual drive to defend and uphold that. A clear set of rules to follow. At the very core, I think that lack of this order was the biggest problem.
Derpibooru operated on a simple principle. This is an imageboard. There are users, there are several rules to follow, and there is a moderation team that is in charge of enforcing those rules. Sounds simple enough, right?
It’s unfortunately the moderation team’s actions that broke this little social contract - their failure to keep an unified front and enforce a clear set of rules to follow as agreed by the community.
One of the Luna mods, I forget which, recently said that the team was already considering and constructing means of removing Aryanne and other nazi content from the site. While I doubt any of us have any real desire to believe the moderators at this point after all that happened, I believe that this is at least partially true. There were several ways of doing this and at least a few could have worked without much fuss. For an example, starting with a site announcement that the moderation team felt they were not doing good enough work at enforcing rules and slowly cracking down on nazi content via rule 0; saying that due to some legal goobledygook they were forced to tighten the rules on posting nazi content; just saying nothing and slowly removing content, whatever. Slow and methodical process, boiling the frog slowly, however you want to call it.
Instead, the change was sudden, swift, and worst of all - in reaction to an event. And this was the first mistake of the moderation team.
I’ve no idea whether Aryanne ban in response to the drama was a panicked kneejerk, or was just seen as a good excuse. It doesn’t really matter here. What does is the fact it was abrupt and it happened in reaction to an event seen as outward influence. Lizard brain saw this as an agression against community from an outside source, and lizard brain defended.
At this point, there was no chance of getting out of this unscathed. Someone was going to get upset. Someone was going to get angry. Damage control was the name of the game. Unfortunately, the mod team failed at that.
I think the worst part of this whole disaster was the moderators’ inability to pick a decision and stick to it. Ban nazi content. Do not ban nazi content. Whichever would have been picked, it would be better than what happened. There obviously would have been upset people, people that would have felt hurt, people who would have left. Unavoidable at this point. However it would have been done - community vote, moderation team agreement, hell, even going
quia ita dicitur i.
This is the new set of rules, and this is how it’s going to be. Accept or leave. Damage done.
Instead, the rules kept changing. Rapidly. The mods failed to form an unified front. It became increasingly obvious that they are infighting, and it looked increasingly nasty. Lizard brain went, no leader, no rules, community failing.
So began the mad scramble to assume control and restore order. Worldviews clashed. Every faction tried to enforce their idea of order over everyone, by any means considered justifiable. Total chaos.
And here we are.
There were a lot of problems. Lack of transparency. Going back on others’ decisions. Personal bias. Unfortunately, dear mod team, you have utterly failed at your most important job - giving the community here a sense of stability. You couldn’t decide what to do and you were unable to keep order in the community that depended on it.
I don’t really
blame you for it. Moderating is hard and thankless work. You’re human, you make mistakes. This isn’t your
job, you’re - to my knowledge - all volunteers just trying your best.
But there’s no arguing mistakes were made. Trust was broken, and that was really the worst thing about it.
Now, of course, there’s a lot of details and nuance missing in this little analysis. That’s unfortunately the result of me trying to keep it impartial and not delving into morality of decisions made (not to mention being half braindead after work, lol).
But it’s hopefully a slightly different view on all that happened in the past few weeks. Food for thought.