When is he coming back?

he died for our sins

Think he needs a show of support in that post in the comments, simply ridiculous situation

← 4 messages moved from The h Bar

@JohnRennie Come on, this is resembling the kind of "censorship" AFT talked about

@SirCumference I have just moved the posts to the physics meta chat room. If you want to continue the discussion please continue it there.

A survey of destablisation phenomeon across the globe and cyberspace:

1. Middle east

2. Brazil strikes

@SirCumference Topological?

3. Australian messy politics

4. Stuff in EU, USA, China etc. I don't know about

...

w. 0celo get suspended for one year

w+1. Help vampires

Please don't describe people as help vampires

w+2. h bar instability

@JohnRennie even when there is evidence that suggests so?

It's an offensive phrase

ugh fine

anyway, while chat have evolved beyond the need for 0celo to sustain activity, losing him will rob a lot of maths discussion from the chat and that is no good

It's just bizarre to see him suspended for that reason, and have next to no response from mods

yeah

also I have not seen balarka for some time already

@Secret Wasn't he banned too?

I thought that's only a short one the last time I saw that happened?

shrugs

I think I might have missed the actual longer ban probably took place during my sleep

but anyway, I ma stop here else we will be at mercy of being banned by speculation

The only thing I can say is the following:

Conspiracy Theory

It seems as we get closer to that Trump-kim summit, political secrecy seemed to be seeping in from all corners

and it seemed to be affecting h bar too

@bolbteppa You have some catchup reading to do, mostly in this room.

← 29 messages moved from The h Bar

that... is a lot of catching up to do, hmm...

@rob I have read the past week, what is the point of you mods if you are going to tell us you can do nothing to protect the people posting in subject-specific rooms from wider policies, and instead tell us to send messages about this ban chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/44803874#44803874 while you simultaneously tell us we have no information on and are "not qualified to decide" on this same issue?

@bolbteppa We've also said that if actions from folks outside are not appropriate that we can push back. This is easy to oversimplify.

Look, I have to run away and switch my laundry and clean my kitchen and go to the grocery store and take my kids swimming in a minute. But let me invite you to see things from the moderators' perspective.

We don't like issuing suspensions. It's no fun.

When there's a prolific user whose behavior fits the penalty box criteria, and suspending that user will have a big impact on the community of the site, it's not a decision that we make lightly.

And furthermore, it's important to us that the messiest details be kept private, because the internet never forgets anything.

We want the user in question to be able to participate normally when they return, not to be haunted by people saying "but three years ago you said 'butts' in an inappropriate context" or whatever.

That puts us in an awkward place with respect to revealing information.

Here's a story from my childhood. My sister and I were eight and ten or so, and she wanted some information from me that I didn't want to give her. I don't remember the actual issue.

I told her that I wouldn't tell her, but I wasn't going to deceive her either.

She asked me, "Is it X?" I said no. "Is it Y?" I said no. "Is it Z?" I said, "... maybe." She said, "It's Z. You're stupid." And of course she was right on both counts.

Big suspensions are made by the entire mod team. We look at all of the stuff that's happened, each of us weighing things in our own way, and don't usually act unless there's a consensus.

There are other folks with varying degrees of privilege and insight into the process that have seen different segments of the information that went into this particular decision. Some people have seen the mod message, other people can see the chat suspension record, other people have participated in the room-owners' discussion, and other people have stepped in to participate in actual chat discussions with some regularity over many months.

The general trend is that, the more partial information these other observers have, the less likely they seem to be to complain that the decision by the moderators (who have the whole picture) was unwarranted or extreme.

But the less information that folks have ("I enjoy chatting with this person and now they are gone") the more upset they seem to be.

And you know what? I think that's a good thing. I think that means that we've struck a balance between making a good call on the suspension without leaving a publicly-accessible trail of turds for the internet to remember forever.

@rob lets assume this decision to ban this user for period X is 100% justifiable, the idea of a year ban is tantamount to kicking a person off the side completely, but you've simply said with such a ban that whatever was done is not bad enough to merit that, they can come back in a year, a year, it's simply vindictive to place a full year instead of a few days, there is absolutely nothing to be gained from a year ban, it's completely unjustifiable as a 'punishment'

But every demand for more information, or for us to backtrack, or a (right or wrong) guess about the private information that wants to be confirmed or refuted, is an opportunity for us to screw up that balance.

So that puts us in a tight spot: defending our own actions in public would be easy enough if we revealed information that we'd rather not, but being cagey is hard to distinguish from the outside with hiding something ugly.

It comes down to a matter of trust. I hope that the way the moderator team behaves in less controversial circumstances has given you guys reason to trust us here. But that's pretty much all I can offer you without getting into the "No. No. Maybe." situation that I described above.

Sorry.

@rob there is absolutely no trust on this users part that the moderators made the right decision, e.g. this user was banned in the past for I think a month for saying something to me that was most definitely a joke

@bolbteppa If you really feels this strongly, please escalate the issue to the SE team (there's a "contact us" link on every SE page) and other people who have access to all the information but no stake in the chat room. I've really said everything that I can say here and I'm genuinely sorry that I can't show you detailed reasons why.

@rob I would hazard a big guess another very frequent user of the room, @BalarkaSen mentioned in the user's meta post physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10634/…, would similarly argue the mods again completely failed by misinterpreting jokes between them two

@rob But surely you see that the majority of the people who has taken part in this conversation centering around the suspension issue has disagreed with the moderation on whatever bits of the aspects they have argued on? We trust you in the sense that you're laying out a coherent, reasoned debate which helps us gain insight into the moderation policy. But almost all of us (who have taken part in this discussion) have disagreed with various aspects of your application of the policies.

Anyway, I have to finish the errands I mentioned above and get the kids to the pool before the long arm of the tropical storm closes it later today, or I'll have a much bigger sound-but-unpopular decision to justify.

@rob as I said, what is the point of the mods if you guys are going to ask us to bring up issues you simultaneously argue we simply do not have enough information on? I am happy to pretend the user deserved a ban, but a year ban is simply reprehensible

> a year ban is simply reprehensible

I have no wish to escalate this to the SE team. I do want to point out that the moderating team shouldn't be as condescendingly self-righteous as it is right now.

The fact that you think this (a year ban is simply reprehensible) means, I think, we're going a good job.

of striking the balance between public and non-public information.

Pool time. Cheers.

This is very childish on the moderators part

after a year, probably that user has forgotten to come back.

@BalarkaSen I think the main problem is that we have tried to talk about suspensions in a general, formulaic way because that is the only way we can talk about it without going into the details of a specific suspension. And you (and others) have pointed out ways in which these formulaic aspects are problematic, and I agree with some of the points -

but since we do not adhere strictly to any formulae when deciding upon a suspension, you see a lot of "self-righteousness" where we seem to ignore these criticisms because we look at our internal process and say "no, that's not what happened here", but are unwilling to substantiate that because of our guardedness against revealing information that's too specific to a single suspension. Now, of course, that is probably also "self-righteous" -

we claim to be able to unbiasedly tell that these criticisms don't apply here. But there's no way out of this without breaking our tenet of not discussing individual suspensions. And between being "self-righteous" and exposing the details of a suspension to permanent public record, I'm afraid our collective position is that we'd rather seem self-righteous.

@ACuriousMind Fantastic summary. I agree with the essence of everything you wrote.

Here's my follow-up based on your summary that people have been trying to debunk. My prediction of what will happen because of it is: Since the moderating community has put itself in a self-imposed double bind in the lines of what you described, it has to be self-righteous. There's no other option out of the dilemma.

Therefore, it will appear to be self-righteous to the users of hbar as well, precisely because the community is consciously projecting that impression. There is no question of "interpretation" at this point.

Once that happens, a growing disconnection will take place between the chat users and the moderating team, where the former will always be hostile towards the latter because self-righteousness is an inherently obnoxious trait even though it's an inevitability on the latter group's part and there is no way to change that.

This will culminate to a dispute of so large a scale that the room will eventually be frozen, unless a significant proportion of users stop interacting and the room becomes inactive.