@ColleenV I now have the moderator stating in bold, on Meta, that Also note that there's a subtle difference between 'discussing viability' and 'outright arguing for its deletion'. The latter was what was happening, Now, I'm angry. Of course if the comments had been left intact then she could point to the numerous comments I left arguing passionately that Mobile Phone.SE had to be closed/deleted. But the comments are all deleted, and that is the image visitors will have of me.

She can espouse her view about me, indirectly. No, let's change that to directly because the question has a link to the Q I posted yesterday and users can see I have been suspended. Maybe she's angry because of my new profile info....possibly. I openly expressed puzzlement that a website which to all intents and purposes is no longer "living" i.e. healthy, had outlived its stay. Especially, especially if its raison d'être, the Windows Phone, had stopped production in 2017.

I even included in a screenshot two other small communities, I see now I should have explicitly said that those two websites had better chances of surviving and why I could see their utility. In the end, I was curious to know the criteria for closing a SE website. That's it. I was not going behind anyone's back as the moderator accused me of in a now-deleted comment.

After that new Q on Meta there's a fat chance of my suspension being repealed. I seem to recall a recent post asking for users what makes a moderator great. It was asking for examples, and asking users to mention a few those essential skills. The irony.

She said that I should have joined WP and write a question on their meta site. The last question posted there was in February 2021–an answer by Glorfindel. Then an official announcement, a year of moderation, by JNat posted in January–no answers.

(last mess) Another post by JNat talking about Promotion Ads (March 2020)–no answers. In January 2020 a post by Shog9 about a year of moderation in 2019–no answers. Then it's August 2019 congratulating WP on graduating–one answer. This happy announcement followed Shog9's post on January 1, 2019 –no answers. Two meta posts in 2019.

Don't reply. I had to let off steam. I suspect this outburst of mine will gloriously backfire, and I will pay the price.

@Mari-LouA I saw that and got really angry, but restrained myself from doing anything about it, because anything I did would just make things worse

It's really hard to swallow when people with unchecked power decide that their righteous anger trumps basic due process and fairness.

this might merit a complaint of a mod abusing their power. I mean Tink seems to have it out for you.

I miss the days when the CoC was centered around "Be nice" and "Assume good intentions"

@ColleenV Last time I escalated and sent a formal complaint, it did no good at all. If a CM is pally with a mod, why would they even bother seeing the interaction as objectively as possible. For what reason would they say the mod's suspension was wrong or too heavy handed or consider lightening the suspension. The CM who handles complaints of abuse of mod power will be the same person.

You don't need to have "be nice" and "assume good intentions" written in a code if that is your ethos in life. I shall now presume TB strongly distrusts me, and I will this day forward avoid any communication with them, and the other two/three accomplices.

Did you complain about the suspension specifically, or a pattern of picking on you in general? I think "abuse of power' complaints have to go through a formal process

Where suspension appeals are more informal

I'm trying not to jump on my horse and start crusading for you lol. It just seems really unfair to me

@Mari-LouA You weren't trolling, you weren't being disrespectful. It seems obviously personal to me.

@ColleenV I have to dig up that letter. Once something is concluded I prefer not to dwell on the incident. It's there somewhere.

I mean where is it written that it is forbidden to discuss sunsetting a community on Meta? Or even implied?

@Mari-LouA Well I've had to work pretty hard to learn when to let things go, so I understand not wanting to dredge it up again.

I may spend more time on codidact.org

@ColleenV read between the lines. Look at the IPS stats. Look at participation on the main page and on meta. The site lost momentum, lost some good people, lost enthusiasm, and lost some very active users, qualified, who knew how to give out great advice. Basically it was (and still is?) basically an agony column. I enjoyed being a part of it, if but briefly.

Every time I spend more than a week here, some act of self-centered irrational authoritarianism pisses me off. Maybe the problem is who stayed, not who left...

@Mari-LouA Yeah JR and I were talking about the problems with adding sites like IPS to the network

Yes, there's a lot of subjectivity in some parts of English, but there are rules and grammar and such that you can refer to for objective support of your point

For IPS answers to be "well-supported", you'd have to refer to studies that most lay-people can't read and understand

I'm still hanging on for EL&U. Had a wonderful short exchange with Sven today because I learnt something new. And that's always a plus. You don't see him in any of the other sites, he's focused he is! His answers a tad long tho.... :)))

ELU has some great discussions. It's just a shame it gets deluged with low quality questions

Maybe I should just try staying off of Meta and sticking to ELU

Colleen, Colleen, Colleen, Colleeeeeeen! (Joleen) I beggin' you I hafta go. :))

@Mari-LouA :) Have a good day. Or else.

Thank you. I will. The rush of anger has passed. Deep breaths. Bye x

@ColleenV it was in April and he suspension was for one week. I got irritated with a user, and I made the HUGE mistake of flagging the discussion to the mods and asking for their opinion. But my responses to the users (two?) were judged to be rude by TK and I was suspended. The comments were not rude, I didn't "scream" at the user but indeed I was ticked off. I was annoyed by the user's behaviour (not their comments) which I considered egotistical and ultimately spiteful.

They are a person who has dedicated hours and days editing the FAQs on meta and when someone else tries to do it, they will rollback the edit. When this happens 3 or 4 times, and to other users too, I think I'm justified in feeling miffed. In fact, I barely touched the FAQs then and now steer well clear of them. So that was when something snapped inside of me.

@ColleenV This was my flag. For obvious reasons I won't name the user in question: "Please look at the previous edit [mine] and judge whether it was helpful or not. Thanks"

Bye. And thanks again.

@Mari-LouA It just really seems like you've been labelled as "problematic". Maybe it's just because my husband's family is Italian that I'm just used to people saying exactly what is on their mind and don't get offended by it. People aren't robots. They get emotional over stuff and punishing them for it isn't the most constructive way to deal with someone forgetting that it's difficult to capture emotion in text.

People can misread text to be angry, joking, mean, etc. even if the author didn't intend it that way, and if we don't stop and say "Hey, I'm having a negative reaction to that. did you really mean X?" things just escalate.

Moderators who get really upset by some commentary should always ask for help from another moderator.

JR was a great resource for that. So was snailboat. I'd just pop into mod chat and say "Hey, can someone else handle this? I don't think I can be objective about it"