Explanation of update to Rule #0 for consistency and clarity especially in regards to racism

@Dieselkeough  

 
Do you mean racism, discrimination, or harassing others as an ideological train of thought?
 
And with regard to moderation bias, we use humans for this, and this is an art site so there must always be some subjectivity to it. But we work as a fairly diverse team to try to eliminate the worse of any bias - are you saying that our forbidding racism, discrimination, or harassing others is a bias?

@Dieselkeough  
gay rights aren’t political, they’re a basic human right  
LGBTQ+ people deserve the same rights as everyone else yet they’re discriminated against IRL on the daily whether it’s by doctors or strangers or even their own families  
talking about gay rights/LGBTQ+ things should not be banned anywhere unless you’re being a homophobic person 👁️👁️

@Derpy Whooves  
When what is considered racism, discrimination, and harassing has been repeatedly proven to be biased? Yes.
 
Remember that a futa Aryanne ass is too far, but Chrysalis promoting the murder of police was a-okay until there was enough push back to sacrifice it with the excuse that you people didn’t even look at it before saying it was fine, even though Princess Luna was arguing that the message wasn’t bad the whole time.

@Background Pony #AB73  
Oh, any can’t forget that Aryanne talking to the viewer about breeding a master race is bad, but a tag literally about racial supremacy and genocide but in the favor of zebras as a stand in for black people was stated to be fine, as well.

@Derpy Whooves
 
More extensive and organized deletion reasons would certainly be helpfull in my opinion and it would also help with transparency.
 
Sending a messeage to reporters when action is not taken might be a good idea on paper but as you said before you dont get responses to thise pms and it is time costly also only sending reporters a messeage doesnt solve the problem that users in the future will not know that the picture was already reported and might report it again giveing you more work. Perhaps a mix of this public mod note on picture and pms could be considered.
 
What i mean by this is that lets supose some person (like me earlier in this thread) reports an image and then mod make a decision that this pic is “barely ok” and doesnt take action on report, then said mod would fill a public mod note on the picture that will state the reason for not deleteing that image and then there would be a auto generated messeage to original reporter with something like this:
 
“Your report on the picture (pic id) was closed without action, to see the reasoning behind it click here(link to the public mod note)”
 
By automating sending that messeage and makeing a public mod note for other users to see you would(potencialy) make your work a little easier and still be transparent about it.
 
Of course i dont know how long making thiose auto generated messages would take so sticking with just mod notes would be ok in my opinion.

@CHurricane  
It was suggested before to have a place where deleted images are listed along with a reason.  
It would be useful for showing any blatant biased rule enforcement, even though I doubt they’d be willing to do this or show everything they delete to avoid people finding more holes in their rule application. Or if they do, they’d just do like they have been and ignore any attempts to show that, using their own logic, many more images violate the rules than they’re willing to remove.

@Derpy Whooves
 
That, in my opinion, is an accurate statement. But what can be derermined as harrasing a group? Now if an individual targets another and attacks them, I can definitely see it as harrassment. ACAB can be considered harrassment alongside antisemitism. Anything that directly attacks a group, rather than to potray an ideology and to expand on ideological thought ought to be looked at and action taken accordingly.
 
I am a moral subjectivist, meaning that I beleive that in every persons eyes, their ideas are moral, and i beleive that mirality is not an objective thing, but rather something determined by each individual.
 
Before i move on to this next statement, i would like to clarify, i do not support racism or transphobia, in fact i activy rally people against it. I, from my moral position support trans rights and I support BLM. However, what i am about to say is a thought experiment, or an examination into the ideas of others, of what makes people tick.
 
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, i would like to start this experiment. Suppose if for a moment, you were a racist, and you had the idea that some people were inferior to others. (I am not saying that this is the case, but rather this is looking in the eyes of a racist individual) Suppose that you genuinely beleived that groups of people ought to be in different nations due to skin color. You beleive that different races being together in a homogeneous society is a good thing and that generally people are better off doing such. Do you think that you would beleive yourself to be evil? Would you see that what you follow as a bad and evil thing? Who would follow an ideology that they beleive is evil? Racism, the the racist is a moral thing.
 
On the flipside, suppose you were an anarcho communist. Suppose you beleived that the workers ought to control the means of production, that capitalists and landlords siphen wealth from the laborers, that the capitalists are theives. Suppose instead the anarcho-communist advocated that the workers ought to enf unjust heirarchies by killing capitalists and landlords as well as the government to form their communes? Do they beleive that they are evil? Does the anarcho-communist follow that ideology because they beleive that it is unjust and immoral?
 
They follow the ideology because they beleive that they are moral,that they are good. That their ideology their ideas are just and will bring good upon the world.
 
You and the mod team beleive that censorship is moral and good, not because you see it as an evil and reactionary thing, just as the other side sees that censorship is inherintly evil, and that a lack of it is inherintly moral and good.
 
Now I will make in this final statement a continued disclaimer. I do not support racism, nor do I support communism, rather I look at all situations as if I were in the other fellows shoes.
 
As such, i beleive the best way to go forward is to either keep the old system, tags and all, maybe make a special tag for natsoc imagry, that will not only spoil, but will have a big discalimer about the specufic content to have those folks that dont want to see it feel content, and for the site to stay neutral,
 
Or we ought to ban all politics on site alltogether to be neutral in that reguard, like canterlot avenue or poniverse.

@taaffeite  

 
For you(and me) lgbt stuff is not really political but the fandom consists of people from all around the world and there are places where “not killing lgbt people” is a highly controversial political opinion.
 
This( and others) fandom sites are created for all people to enjoy so i can see a reason(even if i do not agree with it) to consider banning talking about lgbt related issues(not supporting homophobic views but just not talking about them bot negatively and positively)

@CHurricane
 
@Background Pony #AB73
 
I’ve actually created a thread about transparency/feedback. We could move that discussion there to avoid going Rule6: Offtopic on this one that is here primarily for changes to Rule:0?  
https://derpibooru.org/forums/meta/topics/site-suggestions-transparency-ajustment-on-reports-moderation

@Inucroft  
I would assume that transparency in the enforcement of this rule is entirely on topic for the thread about the change.

@taaffeite
 
To reply to your statement. I agree. Lgbtq+ rights are human rights. This us speaking from our subjective morality.
 
However to others, it IS political, as rights in of themselves are political what constitutes a right? Who ought to have rights? What determines who can have a right? Are righrs economic? Are they sociopolitical? Are rights a spook in the words of max stirner?
 
I am not saying that i do not beleive in gay rights and trans rights. I beleive that lgbtq folks ought to have the same rights as everone else, but i also beleive that rights in general are an inherintly political thing, and to say that they arent is to be ignorant of the political and philosophical nature of the concept.

@Background Pony #AB73  
For transparency for how Rule:0 is to be applied, I’d agree. Though I feel it’s a bigger issue than that of just Rule:0

@CHurricane  
This is what i was trying to say. Thank you.

@CHurricane  
It’s hard to be ‘organized’ any further than the existing rules, and every deletion usually has a rule associated with it. Beyond that, we type all the deletion reasons by hand and while we try to all use the same format there really is nothing like a ‘popdown of normal deletion reasons’. And sometimes the reasons things get deleted are very complex and long, like “Rule #0/4/6/8/n Stop it please just see a doctor what the fuck”.
 
But I’ve tried to make my deletion reasons more descriptive this month. Like, “Rule #0 - please do not personally attack others” or “Rule #4 - please filter the tag that offends you”. Stuff like that.
 
Is that a step forward?
 
Beyond that, we’re working with humans here, so while sometimes someone might get a ban reason that replies directly to their post, if there’s something we need to say to the poster we send them a PM. Because you really can’t assume that someone will see that their post will be deleted. There’s no notifications for that. So if we need to talk to someone about their behavior, then we talk to them. Especially if there’s a need for a warning that might follow up with a ban if they don’t change their behavior.
 
For those, reaching out to the individual (assuming they have a profile here) really is important, and those kinds of conversations really need to remain private.
 
Everyone has a bad day, after all. And someone shouldn’t be saddled with a public note if it was just them getting bad news at work and coming here and blowing off steam.
 

 
Hmmm .. that could get messy fast.
 
If the message is just to the user who reported it, that is going to take processing time every time the page loads, both to compare the reporter’s ID with the reports and then to see if there’s a note. So even if someone didn’t report an image each image that loads for that person is going to add some hamster time in the guts of the site.
 
If it’s a general message for everyone who opens the image, that might be more doable. Like, everyone sees the same information under the “Report” tab. We do that now for moderation notes, so that might be existing code that could be leveraged for this new thing.
 
I would very much like that second option - sometimes get 20 or more reports on an image, and even if we make a public post on the image explaining why people should stop reporting it, that comment will age and we still get more reports. So having a big red exclamation point on the “Report” queue where we could put a public response to reports on the image would be helpful.

@Background Pony #AB73  
Would you be willing to code that and propose it as a new feature for the site on the Github?

@Derpy Whooves  
Would you be willing to do anything to further staff transparency and accountability rather than giving snarky responses?
 
Your biased application of the rules need to be addressed. You made a thread for the polled images. Do something similar for the deleted ones.

@Derpy Whooves  
Some of what you said is what I’ve raised on my suggestion thread.  
There is an issue of lack of feedback.
 

Is a massive step forward. Though people only see that if they check their comment later

@CHurricane & @Dieselkeough  
Obviously, there’s a massive difference between how we handle images, and how we handle comments and posts.
 
Not least of which because of the inherent nature of postmodern art to ‘uncover’ or to contradict, satirize, and critique the society that inspires it.
 
Creating an actual checklist of what is and what is not ok is almost impossible. All around the planet countries and their jurisprudence have been working on this effort for centuries.
 
But if you start with the guideline of “Be excellent to each other”, then hopefully it’s not so fraught.
 
This reminds me of the Doctor Who episode “The Lodger” where he’s a roommate with Craig Owens and his timey-wimey communication device is discovered, and the doctor tries to pass it off as postmodern art.
 
DOCTOR: It’s art. A statement on modern society, Ooo, ain’t modern society awful.  
CRAIG: Me and you, it’s not going to work out. You’ve only been here three days. These have been the three weirdest days of my life.  
DOCTOR: Your days will get a lot weirder if I go.  
CRAIG: It was good weirdness. It’s not, it’s bad weird. I can’t do this any more.  
DOCTOR: Craig, I can’t leave this place. I’m like you, I can’t see the point of anywhere else. Madrid? Ha, what a dump. I have to stay.  
CRAIG: No, you don’t. You have to leave.  
DOCTOR: I can’t go.
 

 
That was a good episode. I need to rewatch that one.

@Background Pony #AB73  

 
To help with transparency I’ve been answering questions about yesterday’s spam attack. And of course at the same time people are complaining that I’m answering questions 9__6
 

 
That’s not a snarky response. It’s the truth. If you look at the staff page you’ll see our technical team is one person. Others are also helping with code changes, like Princess Luna, but that’s not a lot of developer hours in a week.
 
So if you have a new feature that you would like to see the site add, and you’re not willing to be patient and let the existing team create it when they have time and when they think it is a priority, creating it yourself is the best way to get it on the site.
 
@Inucroft  
Very agreed. So, like I mentioned, when the deletion needs to come with a warning (where the individual has a profile) then we write to the person whose post, comment, or upload was deleted so that we know they see it. If it was someone posting anonymously without a profile, then there’s really no way for us to communicate with them short of a reply to their post in the thread or by adding text to the deletion reason.

@Derpy Whooves  
Actually, there’s been a new feature that’s been on my mind for a while, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good time to bring it up or not.

@Derpy Whooves  
And you can just make a thread listing deletions and the reasons it violates the new rule in the meantime so that people can report everything else that fits. Then it can all either be deleted or the removed one can be restored.  
It’s pointless because I’m absolutely sure that you’re already removing images anyways and you’ll make sure to pick and choose what you list or claim that the other images are somehow different, but some faint attempt at pretending to care about fairly enforcing the rules would be nice.

I dont know why you mention “all around the planet” when it has been shown this site just cares about what the US politics of the week are anyways, and bases its rules on US understanding of things anyways. While beeing hosted in France, and probably beeing populated only by a american minority.

@Derpy Whooves  
And if you’re responding to concerns about the spammers, why aren’t you answering my post in the Spammers thread? You know, the one that’s not so subtly calling you a liar?

@Background Pony #AB73  
Pretty much this, there is no reason not to be public with what art you are removing, and why.  
it would allow for a modicum of transperancy, but we all know that only happens when someone has enough of it all and leaks logs.

@Inucroft
 
I will subscribe to your thread and i will join any eventual discussion when the thread takes off(if i will have time) but for the meantime to preserve continuity of discussion for other users reading the thread i will stay here.
 

 
 
@Derpy Whooves
 

 
This might be a potential place for improvement and optimalization for example when deleteing something you could have multi-box list to check what rules post/image breaks and then some pop down list with the most common reasons for deletion. It could speed up your work by not having to write 80% of deletion reasons by hand.(of course there will be those 20% where you will have to explain something more in depth)
 
Of course as i said before i dont know how hard something like that would be to implement
 

 
In my opinion it is indeed a good step forward.
 

 
The automatic message idea was only based on that you said before that you did send some users messeages writen by hand so i thought that mayby it could be easy to implement and make your job easier but i personally think that simple user vievable mod note on report page would be perfectly fine solution by itself.