Hey,
They have not been unbanned, but will be on Tuesday at the end of the moderation-team agreed temp ban period, which they were informed of by me within moments of the ban having been executed.
Apologies, I didn't quite understand what Jonas was talking about, I understand now.
OTOH, they were specifically asked not to keep talking about it here on list as this is not an appropriate venue for appeal.
I think this is 50/50, mopar is arguing that the moderation action was wrong. By appealing in private the case is not seen by other members. The membership elects the board and the council, the board has elected you (the moderation team) to moderate, if the conduct of moderator(s) is to be questioned, then I don't see why there shouldn't be a case taken to the membership on the mailing list. On the other hand, the drama is undesirable.
If you want a chapter an verse from the Code of Conduct for some reason, the usually cited sections are "2.4 Be Respectful" and "2.5 Be Friendly and Supportive".
You don't need to justify your decision to me. I also agree, he was not being respectful. However this is quite common when discussions get heated, or when people get emotional. I myself have lost my cool within the operators channel. This is why assuming good faith is required, and I can't honestly feel like any of the moderation staff involved in said incident assumed any good faith. Sometimes discussions are hard to keep civil (especially ones of a political nature), and its important that people take a step back when that boundary has been crossed or are about to be crossed. A mute would have been more than enough to satisfy this, mopar became argumentative, he refused to take a step back, mute him. It seems the actions taken from moderation was in bad faith and that mopar is out to verbally abuse everyone, so he must be banned asap. This is exactly how a heated argument blows up into this. I will note I have been given two bad faith warnings for moderation in the past. One of them was actually me trying to be productive but was assumed to be insulting, and the other was issued for a discussion between where me and someone else choose to spend our cash, in fact, we were discussing an operator meetup. So I know first hand that at least one of the moderation staff assumes bad faith, so this is a problem.
infomred their conduct was inappropriate by several moderation team members
I am sorry but this is not entirely true. Ge0rG said:
moparisthebest: please stop it now.
With mopar's response obviously being argumentative:
why? you gonna sue me ?
and then you responded:
That's really rather inappropriate
in which mopar stated directly after:
lol I'm done too
in which Ge0rG then replied:
moparisthebest: no, I would moderate you and then you can sue the XSF, me, or anybody else to get that lifted.
So observations: 1. Only one person pointed out that his comment was inappropriate (singpolyma), with no threat of moderation or highlighting that it violated the CoC, aka no due process. 2. There was at no point a warning of code of conduct violation and a threat of moderation from Ge0rG. 3. Mopar actually finished only to be banned the moment he did. (Obviously anything sent in private I can't see, and thus there could be more to this) I am sorry, as much as I would love to blame mopar, this entire drama was caused through woeful moderation, no due process which you explained to me was followed, no clear warning of moderation was issued, and a ban issued after the drama had seemingly ceased.
(due to the temporary technical issue that accidentally rescinded the ban as has been described up thread).
As a result of this and the aforementioned moderator action, led to mopar returning angered about the moderation action, and also the drama on the list. Which all seemed avoidable with a simple mute, or just letting it go and letting the drama cease for everyone's sake.
and continued even after a ban had been effected
I don't know what was said in private, but all I saw this morning was mopar opposing moderator action, and if we get to the point where someone is moderated for disagreeing with the actions of another member then there's a problem.
The mod team has been discussing and is very aware that communication about this action was weak. There are a number of excuses here, but no matter it has been resolved to communicate around these actions more verbosely in the future to avoid misunderstandings.
I think this evaluation is severely lacking. Moderators were too heavy handed (IMO) and I am not the only person who seems to hold this opinion, on a heated discussion which started from what looked like a legitimate question about the usefulness of the XSF having a legal entity. You can not throw petrol on a fire, and then take credit for putting the fire out and ignoring the collateral damage caused. This has lasted an extra day than it should have, spread to the mailing list because a member complained about their treatment, which I don't entirely disagree with. No due process, no clear warnings, and moderation after the drama would have potentially ceased. That's not just merely poor communication, that is a total failure. And mopar how hard is it to apologise for your conduct? A sure way to get unbanned if you feel like you have been wrongly banned is to first apologise, you don't even need to agree that your conduct was wrong, just apologising that if you had offended anyone during your discussion is the best way to de-escalate a situation. This all was entirely avoidable (IMO), and you both (that being the moderation team and mopar) are as bad as each other. So could the bureaucracy be cut, and people accept the incident for what it is, a discussion which got out of hand. Please stop throwing mud at each other, and accept you both acted wrong. For the sake of the mailing list and the other members in the community. I hope the 2 hours I spent drafting this email might help avoid this repeating all this drama the next time there is a CoC violation. Take care, -- Polarian Jabber/XMPP: polarian@icebound.dev