Moderators deleting on topic posts

[Taramere]

Hi

I know moderators sometimes shift posts to a new thread if they think they're a separate topic - but on occasion they're deleting them altogether.  An example being posts about hate speech laws and the chilling effect they might have on free speech.  No explanation has been provided for the deletion of these posts, so I can only assume the moderator decided that they were off topic.  Was this because they referred to laws outside the US and therefore unlikely to be of interest to a predominantly American readership?  The topic of free speech is a wide ranging and often complex one - and the topic of how hate speech laws impact on free speech is highly relevant, topical and discussed in numerous articles and academic works.  Deleting posts that people have put time and effort into, without proferring any explanation for their deletion, seems a bit heavy handed. 

[Paul]

Hi Taramere,

We typically provide no explanation when posts are wholesale removed, for no reason other than we have no mechanism to do that quickly and easily today. If we could let people know something was deleted, we would do so. Having a feature that allows us to do that is on our radar. We do notate why something was deleted, though it is only visible to other moderators at this time. When we edit something, we try to provide an explanation in the "edit reason" line you'll see at the bottom of posts. I have one here as an example.

We would not delete something because of the level of interest any particular group, American or otherwise. We try, as best as we can, to only remove things if they're inappropriate and not easily modifiable (as an example, a reply that might just be a string of obscenity directed toward another participant). We will also remove things that are in reply or reference something that was deleted for being inappropriate (as an example, a reply to the previous reply that told a poster it wasn't nice to say such things). Assuming that's not what happened here, it's possible that there were multiple claims of fact without appropriate source attribution. If, for example, someone were to say: "There is a law that prevents this from happening in Germany," this would be an example of a claim of fact. Such a comment should include a link to the law itself or a credible journalistic source that establishes the fact. This is part of our fight against the spread of misinformation. See:

Off-topic things will be removed in instances where someone goes off on a tangent that can't easily be separated from the rest of the thread (all this talk about first dates makes me think of this recipe for fried chicken I ran across last week. So tender and juicy!), or two or more posters start having a private back and forth that isn't relevant to the rest of the thread and that would be better suited to a private conversation.

When we delete things, we sometimes make mistakes and we are able to review and restore those deleted things. All of the things we do are logged and audited for review after the fact, so we're happy to go back and review specific instances. It can sometimes be tricky to find things, but if you contact us privately with some details about posts/threads you recall that are no longer visible, we'll be happy to tell you what we can without infringing on the privacy rights of others (we won't tell you details about posts made by other people).

If it's something you yourself posted, we'd be happy to talk it through freely.

Please don't hesitate to reach out!

Best,
Paul

Edited March 3, 2021 by Paul
Added a note sharing that you can see our edit reasons here.

[introverted1]

I have noticed on-topic responses in threads also being removed without any stated reason.  It is starting to seem that the only acceptable responses to OPs are those that absolve the poster of any accountability for the outcome they post about.  Isn't one of the purposes of LS to help posters understand how their own thoughts and behaviors give rise to the unhappy events they post about?  How else does growth occur?

[Prudence V]

On 3/3/2021 at 7:19 AM, Taramere said:

Was this because they referred to laws outside the US and therefore unlikely to be of interest to a predominantly American readership?

I noticed this too - together with the topic being changed to refer to “first amendment” which immediately makes anything non-US based off-topic. Which is a pity, really, for the international membership. 

[Taramere]

38 minutes ago, Prudence V said:

I noticed this too - together with the topic being changed to refer to “first amendment” which immediately makes anything non-US based off-topic. Which is a pity, really, for the international membership. 

I think there's sometimes a problem with moderators taking the view that if they haven't heard of a source or a law then it's not reputable or credible.  I'm not really keen to add extra wordiness to my already massive text wall posts by explaining why any source I cite is a decent authority, but I can understand that maybe it causes unwanted work for moderators to check sources.  I also agree with you that if the First Amendment is used as focus for a thread, then that does make it more difficult for non Americans to post without being likely to get their posts moderated out...particularly if we refer to laws that are very well known in our country, or in Europe that we think are relevant to the discussion.  I think there's a pretty strong likelihood that non Americans are far more likely to be moderated simply because our moderators aren't as familiar with our legal systems as they are with the US.  Nobody would be expected to link to the First Amendment to prove that it exists, but I've a feeling that if I were to refer to the European Convention of Human Rights I'd have to do that extra legwork to prove that it's a thing:

https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf

Then I have to prove that the above linked source is credible.  Is it enough to point out that it's published by the European Court of Human Rights?  If I have to include notes explaining why the authorities I'm using are credible...that seems like a lot of work for posting on a message board.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Taramere

[Prudence V]

1 minute ago, Taramere said:

if they haven't heard of a source or a law then it's not reputable or credible.

Yep, I’ve found myself sometimes having to “dumb down” sources (e.g. find a media report summarising something, rather than the source document. Especially if it’s specialist stuff - as an example, Wonkhe wouldn’t pass muster here as it appears to have the format of a blog; it is located on a .com domain... yet everyone who writes for Wonkhe is employed as an academic in a university, and people only write on their specialist areas. Pieces are commissioned.  The authors are, by definition, experts, engaging on policy for others in the field as well as for lay readers (like the media). Government advisers read Wonkhe. Many of us use it in our teaching. But I’d have to go to the dumbed down article in the Times Higher which quotes the Wonkhe piece, rather than the Wonkhe piece itself, to cite here. (And the Times Higher is often behind a paywall, making it doubly frustrating). 

[Paul]

4 hours ago, introverted1 said:

It is starting to seem that the only acceptable responses to OPs are those that absolve the poster of any accountability for the outcome they post about.  Isn't one of the purposes of LS to help posters understand how their own thoughts and behaviors give rise to the unhappy events they post about?  How else does growth occur?

I don't think that's the case. As an example that I think is relevant to what you're thinking of, if a poster asks a general question to the community that is not about the circumstances of something they've previously disclosed in a different thread, then bringing up that previous thing can often side-track the thread author's intended conversation. It can be tricky to get this right.

We're not thinking about accountability at all, and we're not here to drill an idea into people's heads. We're here first and foremost to listen, to accept what people say as their own valid-for-them truth, and give feedback in a way that's treats everyone with respect and dignity.

If a poster says that the sky is green in their world, maybe mention that your take is very different without calling them a liar, insane, or color blind.

[Paul]

3 hours ago, Prudence V said:

I noticed this too - together with the topic being changed to refer to “first amendment” which immediately makes anything non-US based off-topic. Which is a pity, really, for the international membership. 

On this particular thread, the thread author specifically mentions the first amendment in the opening post. It was a bit unclear what exactly the thread was about (it still is), and it's one we're actively looking at. "Free speech" is a very nebulous term, yet the person starting the thread decides the subject of the conversation, and to try and keep people from getting confused about what the subject or question is, we try and add better context to a thread title when possible and able to do so.

[introverted1]

7 minutes ago, Paul said:

I don't think that's the case. As an example that I think is relevant to what you're thinking of, if a poster asks a general question to the community that is not about the circumstances of something they've previously disclosed in a different thread, then bringing up that previous thing can often side-track the thread author's intended conversation. It can be tricky to get this right.

 

Agreed.  But in the relevant example, the OP brought up the "previous thing," however, only responses to it were removed, not the post where there OP re-opened the earlier discussion. 

I do appreciate how hard it must be to moderate a site as active as this one, and the getting the balance right is not an easy task. Thanks for the exchange.

[Paul]

3 hours ago, Taramere said:

I think there's sometimes a problem with moderators taking the view that if they haven't heard of a source or a law then it's not reputable or credible.  I'm not really keen to add extra wordiness to my already massive text wall posts by explaining why any source I cite is a decent authority, but I can understand that maybe it causes unwanted work for moderators to check sources.

This isn't happening at all, and I'm not sure why that's the perception. We simply want to make sure that if someone claims something as a fact, that they provide a good place for others to validate that claim and learn from it. It's a good thing, it's a higher bar than most places, but I think it's important for this community. Laws in many countries are typically published somewhere, and should be easy to link to directly or written about in some journalistic article. I think our current moderators are fairly spread about the world and it would be a mistake to say that we were all coming from a US-based perspective.

The overwhelming subject matter we discuss here is subjective in nature, and it's important that when we talk about things, we do so in a way that makes it clear we're stating our opinion instead of expressing ourselves as if our view of something is factual for all. We most often talk about the way we feel, the opinions we have, and the generalizations we make about others. A statement like, "It's been proven that all <members of group x> are <quality y>" needs to be expressed here in one of two ways:

• This linked study in The Journal of Such and Such shows that <members of group x> are 56% more likely to have <quality y>. Here's a link: .....
• It seems to me/My personal opinion is/I think that <members of group x> are <quality y>.

When it comes to determining if a source is appropriate or not, we do our best and if it's something we haven't heard of before, we look into it and often talk about it internally. In most cases, someone forgets to provide a source or incorrectly states opinion as if it were a claim of fact.

Finding reputable sources is hard! It's not a innate thing we're all born with. And we realize it presents a challenge. Yet, we think it's the ethical and morally correct thing to do rather to have this place be yet another that perpetuates misconceptions as fact. The facts we talk about here that are on-topic are important enough to get right. We want to speak about findings and facts involving sexual health, domestic abuse, intimate partnerships, social injustices, etc. in ways that make sure people have the opportunity to gain important knowledge to help them on their personal journeys.

[Paul]

3 hours ago, Taramere said:

Then I have to prove that the above linked source is credible.  Is it enough to point out that it's published by the European Court of Human Rights?  If I have to include notes explaining why the authorities I'm using are credible...that seems like a lot of work for posting on a message board.

No, we should strive to use sources that are innately credible. I'm not sure what's in the linked document, but presuming it was relevant to something discussed, and the European Court of Human Rights was an authority in whatever it was, then I see no reason for it to be an issue. Sometimes, people include links that have nothing to do with what they've posted. For example:

According to this NASA article, cilantro will make you infertile 45% of the time when eaten with one leg in the air. https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/high-tech-computing/index.html

If there's a question about the legitimacy of a source or finding, then sometimes it's good to talk about it in a thread. For example:

Yes, I see that the study you linked to in the Journal of Such and Such, a widely respected publication in the field, notes that the ingestion of two jelly beans per day prevents unwanted pregnancy, yet that study was done in 1834, and has been widely debunked. See this article in the Journal of the Other Thing, and this Washington Post article that talks about the embarrassment of what happened to the principal investigator who was discredited and had his license taken away. Link: .....

[Paul]

3 hours ago, Prudence V said:

Yep, I’ve found myself sometimes having to “dumb down” sources (e.g. find a media report summarising something, rather than the source document. Especially if it’s specialist stuff - as an example, Wonkhe wouldn’t pass muster here as it appears to have the format of a blog; it is located on a .com domain... yet everyone who writes for Wonkhe is employed as an academic in a university, and people only write on their specialist areas. Pieces are commissioned.  The authors are, by definition, experts, engaging on policy for others in the field as well as for lay readers (like the media). Government advisers read Wonkhe. Many of us use it in our teaching. But I’d have to go to the dumbed down article in the Times Higher which quotes the Wonkhe piece, rather than the Wonkhe piece itself, to cite here. (And the Times Higher is often behind a paywall, making it doubly frustrating). 

I don't think you need to do this. I've not heard of this site before, yet clicking randomly at three of the links on the home page, they were editorials. It appears that some summarize findings published elsewhere. It would be improper to back up a claim of fact with editorialized (or opinion, no matter how educated) content, unless the fact you were trying to establish was that the author of the opinion piece wrote about a the opinion presented.

If you were to claim, however, that:

It has been found that collaboration, not competition, will help students struggling with their mental health.

And then provided a link to the following:

https://wonkhe.com/blogs/collaboration-not-competition-will-help-students-struggling-with-their-mental-health/

...that would be a completely inappropriate source. This is the published anecdotal opinion of a single author, with no research-based literature to support what's written there other than being the opinion of the author only.

[Prudence V]

43 minutes ago, Paul said:

On this particular thread, the thread author specifically mentions the first amendment in the opening post.

Sorry to not-pick on this, but this thread was split off from a different point in a fairly arbitrary place. The first mention of hate speech legislation in that thread was this post which referred to proposed legislation in Scotland. That the moderator who chose to split the thread chose to do it further down the conversation, after previous discussion of hate speech legislation which wasn’t in a US context, seemed (at least to some of us not from the US) to be signalling that our contexts and concerns were less important. Basically, we can no longer discuss those in the original thread (on “cancel culture”) because  it’s also been reframed and renamed to exclude that, and because there’s an existing thread now on hate speech... but nor can we discuss our contexts and concerns on the hate speech thread anymore because it’s been refocused on the US. 🤷🏽 It may not have been the moderator’s intention, but that’s become the result. 

[Paul]

45 minutes ago, Prudence V said:

Sorry to not-pick on this, but this thread was split off from a different point in a fairly arbitrary place. The first mention of hate speech legislation in that thread was this post which referred to proposed legislation in Scotland. That the moderator who chose to split the thread chose to do it further down the conversation, after previous discussion of hate speech legislation which wasn’t in a US context, seemed (at least to some of us not from the US) to be signalling that our contexts and concerns were less important.

Thanks for the context! We're actively reviewing and discussing both threads internally.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Paul
Accidentally quoted the wrong person. Oops.

[Prudence V]

1 hour ago, Paul said:

that would be a completely inappropriate source.

I would agree on that example. First person accounts can be illuminating, but they’re not generalisable without a proper structure situating them in context of other studies, theory, argument, etc. There are better examples that report proper academic studies, but I’m not wedded to Wonkhe in this context as I don’t post too much about HE here 🤣. What is the feeling on The Conversation? (“Academic rigour, journalistic flair” is their strapline. ) 

[Paul]

Just now, Prudence V said:

What is the feeling on The Conversation?

I think that with any attribution, the context and content matter (as well as the legitimacy of a source based as best we can on the opinions of others in the same field). The New York Times is one of the world's most respected newspapers, recognized by those in the profession of journalism to be a reputable source, yet a link to an editorial or opinion piece would be inappropriate to support some claim of fact.

[Prudence V]

3 minutes ago, Paul said:

the context and content matter

😎 The Conversation typically publishes scholarly research (published elsewhere in peer-reviewed journals) in “lay format”. We’re encouraged to disseminate our research there as “public engagement” (though the level of engagement is rather like arguing with the drunk guy in the pub) and the advantage is, it’s not behind paywalls... but I suppose it’s hypothetical until a concrete example tests whether it’s deemed appropriate. 

[Prudence V]

7 minutes ago, Paul said:

editorial or opinion piece

...or a book review. 
 

They do have some cool recipes though.