Rule 0 General Thread

@Background Pony #4EBB  
I understand that, I just wanted to point out why it was a bad idea. It was a discussion policy thread where you couldn’t actually discuss the policy in detail by pointing out flaws in someone’s arguments.

@Princess Luna  
Not to be incendiary, but people could see TSP’s “kick me” badges and that wasn’t a problem until it was revealed what they were. I’m not sure how this would be different.

@Princess Luna  
The Derpi staff isn’t exactly a beacon of trust right now, so it should be of no surprise that people believe you’d stoop to that.
 
I mean, you did implement request throttling, shadow filters, shadow staff, TSP’s badges, and so on.

@Iamunknown  
I don’t think a poll is a good idea because it’s too hard to gauge who’s still using the site. Like, a bunch of people that haven’t used the site for a long time could skew results one way or the other. More importantly, the wording would decide the poll before anyone voted.
 
If the poll was “Are you pro-Nazi?”, pretty much everyone would vote “No”. But if the poll was “Are you pro-censorship?” pretty much everyone would also vote “No”.

@Background Pony #0CC5  
True, probably would have been better to have a mention of “Keep inter-user disagreements to a minimum” if they wanted the thread to just be a feedback dump / user-mod discussion rather than a true discussion thread.  
But hey, at least we got to actually give feedback rather than this happening completely behind closed doors, progress is progress.

@Princess Luna  
How is it a “conspiracy theory” when we can see in the logs staff talking about altering votes? You don’t have credibility to stand on to try to dismiss concerns like this, you SHOULD be taking steps to ensure transparency and reliability in any poll instead of saying “Pffft, we only said we’d alter that other poll, not this one! What are you, a tinfoil hatter?”

@Background Pony #82AB  
So in regards to user polls (I in my last post had misread; thought things were about the internal polling, although the same argument applies): I did want a big questionnaire (search the logs and you’ll see it all over), but those things can take a lot of time to set up and are pretty vulnerable to abuse. The internal polling was really set in motion before there was a chance to seriously consider a questionnaire rather than it being immediately shot down; I think this can mostly work, although of course it’s much harder to show we actually did listen.
 
@Background Pony #6D26  
I don’t recall anyone talking about tampering with poll results.

@Princess Luna  
So a more general question to the staff: why are you pressing ahead with a half-baked compromise option when it’s quite clear from the other thread and from polling that most registered and active users don’t want it?
 
Second, but related, question: can you guarantee that there will be no further encroachments into free expression in art, including but not limited to MAGA references and foalcon, now or at any time in the future of the site? Or should we expect this to be the first of many erosions of what we can post here?

@Princess Luna  
Start here.
 
@Background Pony #CC83  

 
@Background Pony #6D26  

@Background Pony #4EBB  
We had been giving feedback for almost 2 weeks to Raptorshy before TSP came in and just disregarded all of it. So you’ll forgive my lack of optimism regarding user feedback actually being heeded. Especially considering all the deleted posts from the last thread that were deleted for discussing the effects of the site policy, rather than the site policy directly.

@Princess Luna
 
You say it can take a lot of time, but frankly how hard is it really? I am doing Web Development myself as part of my profession and i think you are overselling the amount of effort needed.

@Princess Luna  
They’re talking about
 

 
It’s talking about only counting votes based on reasonable criteria that was mentioned directly afterwards, but people can and are interpreting it as “Filter out people who disagree with us.”  
Like i said, a poll would be useless since people on all sides would believe it was rigged.

@Background Pony #4EBB  
Not really, as long as the parameters were public for who would be filtered.

@Background Pony #0CC5  
My own optimism is so far in the ground it’s currently approaching the planet’s core, but i’m going to keep trying to help fix things until hope’s completely at 0%.  
Got nothing better to do right now anyway.
 
 
@Frosku  
“They Lied.” / “They were fooled.” / “Some other reason.”  
For a topic as hot and divisive as this, it’d actively harm things to have a poll.
 
We literally have data showing that Nazi content is on the decline year by year, it’s posted every time someone mentions the site being used as some secret nazi recruitment or trying to push nazi ideals, and it’s ignored or dismissed every single time.  
Trust in the mods from the anti-censorship side is completely shot at this point.  
We literally have Dilarius on Twitter trying to get Derpibooru branded as a hate platform despite all this shit going down and it being abundantly stated by everybody involved that “Nazis = bad.”  
We’ve got some anons on /mlp/ that just want this whole site to burn because ‘lol’ or because they hate the mods while the rest of us are trying to put out the fire.  
Even if it was the most perfectly crafted poll question in history, with iron clad filters so that it couldn’t be brigaded by anyone and the data was 100% accurate, both sides would look at the results of a poll and determine their own different conclusions from it.

Dear @Princess Luna I hope I have not fallen prey to a conspiracy theory (and if it matters it’s all mine ideas)
 
I am afraid that this may sound too antagonistic. I rue that I have not done more during the 2018 Tumblr purge so my words could have at least some freight. Nevertheles…
 
1
 
You say that you try to solicite community help to diminish “subjective biases”. however
 
2
 
You talk about Nazi salutes with\without combination with flags. Which is may be example for “Content containing blatant hate speech, or promotion of or propaganda for prejudicial views” it hardly generalizible. Are you writing value-neutral policy or ar you just deciding whether to add Communism to Nazism or maybe not?
 
3
 
Again “internally… [you]… don’t yet have a thread for figuring out what to do”. Which is maybe why there is no thread about what to do on site either, however
 
4
 
You “probably” already know what new policy will resemble.
 
 
Isn’t it all a bit too much? Raptorshy get removed for leaking the data, TSP stays and retains vote (issuing ultimatums is a-ok). Both of you Lunas do not inprove trasparency much (though I must admit inclusion of inactive sraff as a postive step - but it’s only a single step), people are allowed to talk how like or dislke your possible rewrite of rule 0 but it must be accepted from the start to be necessary.
 
Most importantly - even amobg people on rge forums gow many actually participate in discussion? Did you really seem fit to inform users of DB of possible changes in advance, to actually build a picture of community?
 
Finally - do you have any timetable at all? So far it seems that after installment of Lunas averything has been running full tilt to impleement some changes which we may not know about yet but which are mentioned in logs, which are also has been mostly unaddressed.

@Background Pony #4EBB  
While I don’t agree with you on the topic at large, I do completely agree about the poll thing.  
Polls are kind of a fickle thing, and no matter what results come from what poll any ‘side’ of this situation could weaponize it, I guess for lack of a better word, to stir up the shit show even more

Rule 0 is a vague rule that has been observed to have been very selectively enforced.  
Selectively enforcing rules is bad.  
It erodes trust in the mods, and the site as a whole.  
Given recent events, it has become abundantly clear that the mods (and everyone involved in the site on a level higher than the average user with an account) have a very well established history of consistently behaving in untrustworthy ways.
 
I think that one of the only ways to fix this would be to make the rules extremely clearly defined, such that mod leeway and subjectivity in enforcement is eradicated. No political/ideological bias can be permitted.  
If this kind of ideal enforcement of the rule is maintained consistently for a period of probably around 4 years, then the issue with the bad enforcement that’s currently happening will likely be forgotten.  
This is the only way I see to start rebuilding the trust from the community. At least the members of the community that are moderately well informed on the current situation. It will not be forgotten, but in a best case scenario, it just might be able to be moved past.
 
Trusting the enforcement arm of this website with any level of ambiguity is not something that many people can do right now. Not when that trust has been betrayed over and over again.
 
This has implications that spill over into other rules and other elements of the current events, obviously, but I think this is a pretty good summary of my thoughts on Rule 0 specifically.