strypey@socialhub.activitypub.rocksContinuing the discussion from How to participate in the W3C Working Groups on AP:
Attn: @angus
It appears that I misrepresented the SocialHub admins/mods, and that the hiding of my post in the topic about the newly chartered W3C Working Group was not a mod action by them, but rather by a community member who didn’t like my tone. My apologies for the error, and for going off half-cocked without first investigating what had happened.
However, I stand by the criticism that it’s unwise to enable individual members to hide each others’ posts from public view by flagging them for moderation, as this lends itself to abuse (eg hiding a post then mischaracterising its content, or censorship driven by dogmas or agendas). On the Trisquel Forums it takes a number of members flagging a post to hide it from public view. Even then, any site visitor can click on a ‘read more’ style link to see what’s been hidden, keeping the crowdsourced moderation system accountable.
The flagging and hiding is standard moderation functionality that comes with Discourse forum software, and is also part of the wellbeing procedures of SocialHub, as it allows things to cool down when controversy and heat comes into a discussion. And allows moderators to take a neutral position between the persons involved, so they can come to reason and reconciliation without having to perform on a public stage, facing tribunal for what may be only a minor thing. And also and on public media channels that may be archived forever, carving your bad Monday in stone. Thus I think it is a very good thing, and not doing so is comparable to a manager that calls an all-hands meeting with the entire company’s personnel for any minor workfloor conflict.
I was the one who flagged two consecutive posts, and mentioned publicly that I did. A well-moderated forum would see the community staff enter DM’s and bring the two of you together and ask both “how can you reformulate that text more friendly and in line with our CoC, and are you willing to do so?”. The outcome of handling the flag determines the visibility status. Severe harrassment would remain invisible, and minor things might be left unchanged or revisioned, where the forum still offers the revision control to see the original text.
That said, there is something to say for a downvote treshold, before flagged posts become hidden. I don’t know if the software supports that. And also it is more appropriate for active forums that are frequented with many members who truly care about community health. Not the low visitor numbers of passers-by that this forum has, and where there really is no such thing as “community” in any other than the most general sense.