Moderation and Rules

rsl12 · 2024-05-24T17:50:21+00:00

A couple of people have brought up the topic of moderation. Perhaps Navindra already has ideas about rules, but I've started a new thread to discuss it. For...

twocats

Sgisela I think that one option might be to designate the beginner’s forum (or whatever forum serves in this capacity) as a place where the atmosphere is supposed to be particularly supportive

I like this idea! And also perhaps in that forum, people can indicate the kind of feedback and support that they want when they start a thread, and that needs to be respected by all commenters (ironically I only checked out the ABF recitals after joining PT, and I see that everyone chooses the kind of feedback they want).

Sophia

Sgisela People should feel like the ABF is a safe and supportive space to talk, get advice, and share. It is not the Pianist Corner, where blunt talk and criticism is to be expected.

I kinda hope that "blunt talk and criticism" is not going to be expected here in any of the forum sections, to tell you the truth 😉 I mean it's okay to disagree with someone. Heck it is expected to not agree on everything, that's what keeps us sharp and it's how we learn things. But I honestly don't like blunt talk and criticism just for the sake of it... no matter how much of an expert the other person is. We have a right to expect a certain amount of respect... no matter our skill level and wherever we choose to participate. I personally don't want a special forum section where we can feel "safe", we should feel safe everywhere.

twocats

Sophia We have a right to expect a certain amount of respect

I completely agree with this part. Regarding blunt talk, that is just how some people communicate and it's an open forum. But it does need to be respectful.

rsl12

I think a rule requiring extra sensitivity in the Beginner's forum is a good idea. How about this as a rule (sorry that it's long):
Note: I edited the original version based on comments below.

Because we want to encourage beginners to feel comfortable showing off their mistakes, permission must be granted before giving users critical comments in the Beginner's Forum. When sharing their performances, users in the Beginner's Forum can add the following words to the title of their posts:

~~Polite~~ Positive Comments only: no suggestions for improvement unless permission is granted (see below)
Critiques Allowed: ~~Kind, supportive~~ criticism is allowed
(maybe this can be handled with tags/flairs eventually).

If no such words are present in the title, "~~Polite~~ Positive Comments Only" should be assumed. "~~Polite~~ Positive Comments Only" means users must ask before giving criticism. For example:

Person With Critique: You played the beginning wonderfully, but I have a suggestion, if you want it.
Beginner: No thank you.
<end of conversation>

If a beginner feels comfortable with a particular person, they can also give carte blanche permission to give criticism at any time. Alternatively, they can tell another user they never want criticism from them. A polite example: "Sorry, but I would rather not receive your criticism. Your criticism style doesn't work for me. "

(If a user feels uncomfortable saying this directly to someone else, they could ask a moderator to do it for them.)

twocats

rsl12 I think a rule requiring extra sensitivity in the Beginner's forum is a good idea...

I love it. You're an excellent writer! But of course it's up to our fearless leader @navindra 🙂

Ithaca

rsl12 If no such words are present in the title, "Polite Comments Only" should be assumed. "Polite Comments Only" means users must ask before giving criticism. For example:

Person With Critique: You played the beginning wonderfully, but I have a suggestion, if you want it.
Beginner: No thank you.
<end of conversation>

I like the general idea that you propose - that posters should exercise extra care in the Beginner's forum, particularly when critiquing performances. But I think the only hard and fast rule should be associated with performances that are clearly labeled: Positive Comments Only. (That said, I'm not sure that even "positive" necessarily conveys the correct meaning.)

I think using the words "polite", "kind", and "supportive" are problematic, because ideas about what constitutes such behavior can vary wildly according to culture. In some cultures it's considered perfectly polite to tell someone that they look pregnant and need to lose weight. A friend of mine, living in the San Francisco suburbs, recently texted me to say that she's really sick of her colleagues repeatedly telling her that. At work, no less! But she knows that the people saying this genuinely believe that they are being kind and supportive because they're the same ethnicity as her, just not raised in the US. They're trying to help her get to what they are convinced is a better state of health - it's partly how they show that they value her. So even though she'd like to tell them to bugger off, she feels that it would be very impolite of her to do so.

In the opposite direction, and speaking as someone who was born and raised in the US but grew up spending a lot of time in two not-mainstream-American cultures: I can say that most Americans I've met don't have a real grasp of how incredibly impolite our behavior can appear in many other cultures. The way we often dress, they way we move through spaces, how we speak, how we interact with people, and what we speak about (while eating, at work, at funerals, at birthday parties, with children or parents around) comes across as very, very rude and disrespectful in many parts of the world. Americans aren't alone in this, for sure - I can think of at least one other large-population culture that is similar in its lack of awareness on these issues.

The primary reason I think that hard constraints should be set only on those performances that are clearly labeled as wanting solely limited responses comes from my experience with extremely large academic communities. What I've seen is that when the baseline assumption is that everyone has to be very careful about the possibility of offending someone, then both the volume and the depth of the conversations drop off. The major university in the town that I live in is planning on making significant changes over the next few years because the faculty, staff, and students generally report that they're reluctant to say very much for fear of being tarred and feathered if they accidentally offend someone. Everyone is, more or less, scared. It's not a healthy environment.

candela

rsl12 I think there could also be the option "No comments, please".
Just as an example: in places like "40 pieces a year", the posters are not posting with the intent of presenting 40 polished pieces but want to keep their momentum up and perhaps spend more time in the early phases of pieces where they feel they learn more per time spent. They are likely already well aware of many of the shortcomings but choose to only really polish a few pieces. And some are only uploading to keep themselves accountable.

Personally, I sometimes feel awkward getting polite feedback for something I'm not content with myself and have opted for "no comments" in at least one recital.

rsl12

I'm all for it, particularly if Navindra is on board. One of my other concerns was one expressed by Navindra a while ago: too many forums makes the main page cluttered. But it sounds like he's not worried about it, so I won't either. I hope the idea takes off. I prefer twocat's idea of a separate forum over the subforum tag idea. It's less fiddly.

Draft description:

Personal Journals - Users sharing their piano-related journeys/projects. Please respect any commenting guidelines users have stated in the first post of each discussion.

Then users can put something like this in their first post:

Commenting Guidelines: Positive comments only please.

I worry that guidelines will be easily overlooked, particularly if users are viewing from the "All Discussions" page. It would be nice if a warning message popped up any time someone was about to post a comment: "WARNING: You are posting to a personal journal. Please respect any commenting guidelines the user has stated in the first post of this discussion." A search didn't yield an appropriate Flarum extension, but I did find one other person looking for the same thing: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/21754-tag-instructions-warning-before-post

EDIT: Maybe a similar "please respect the commenting guidelines" message would also be good to have in the "Member Recordings" section.

EDIT 2: Maybe add the following line to the "description" and "warning" above: "If no commenting guidelines are provided, assume that only positive comments are allowed." (Our old discussion regarding the Learner's Lounge rules inspired this idea: rsl12 )

rsl12

Ithaca Based on your feedback, I changed the word "Polite" to "Positive".

I also foresee enforcement problems for subjective words like "kind" and "supportive". When I wrote them, I was thinking that the words serve more as guidance for the users than a line that moderators need to enforce. But I'm open to suggestions (and ultimately, it's up to navindra to decide if he wants to use whatever rule gets crafted here).

What originally spurred this line of action were comments from Josephine. I don't think these rules would totally satisfy her needs, but hopefully it's a step in the right direction.

BartK

Ithaca The primary reason I think that hard constraints should be set only on those performances that are clearly labeled as wanting solely limited responses comes from my experience with extremely large academic communities. What I've seen is that when the baseline assumption is that everyone has to be very careful about the possibility of offending someone, then both the volume and the depth of the conversations drop off. The major university in the town that I live in is planning on making significant changes over the next few years because the faculty, staff, and students generally report that they're reluctant to say very much for fear of being tarred and feathered if they accidentally off

A very good point. I wouldn't want everyone to be scared posting or have to wear gloves when participating in discussions. It should be friendly but casual. More like a Saturday barbecue than a dinner at the president's house.

Josephine

rsl12

Please forget about what I wrote yesterday, I just had a bad day.

twocats

Josephine it's not just for you, I would appreciate rules that at least encourage positivity here, and I wouldn't want others to leave because they have a bad experience here that could have been prevented.

rsl12

Josephine Sorry you had a bad day. On the bright side, your bad day got people to talk about a problem that's been on their minds.

rsl12

Unfortunately I have to go soon (and I may be gone for a few days, possibly weeks) so someone else will have to take over any other changes to this. Good luck!

Pallas

I'm very glad for this conversation, that so many people want this forum to have an inclusive and supportive culture. That's incredible, actually very moving, and encouraging. I agree that we should do our best to say what we want the environment to be. Then, to most effectively make it what we want it to be, we ourselves might consider being here often, helping people, all of the people, by consistently modeling the behavior we most want to see, and gently and respectfully influencing that culture into being. It can be a difficult change when you're used to either protecting yourself with force, or avoiding conflict altogether, but once you get used to respectfully and politely asking for the specific behavior you want, it gets easier, and everyone's experience - even the experience of complicated characters - can get a lot better. I'm not asking everyone to do this, only people who want to. Personal choice is critically important to me. I have your back either way.

I've seen it happen again and again. Sometimes the respectfully confronted person will get mad and take a break, but the thing is, when you're being confronted honestly, fairly, without insult, and with recognition of your value, and asked for a small, reasonable, specific change, it's pretty hard to stay puffed up and mean, because there's no energy for it if no one is insulting you, and the other person is being relentlessly objective and fair.

Do please remember that all of this peace talk is coming from someone whose first gut instinct is a knife fight in a phone booth. And I also believe in a protective use of force from a moderator if a ban is ever needed. But I deeply believe peace is possible, even with hard characters, provided we keep in mind that if we want to be fair, we'll speak to everyone the same way, with respect and with the aim of helping everyone.

If anyone wants to be directed to tools for leading and influencing people, and keeping the peace in this way, let me know, and I'll start a new meta-topic. I care about this stuff a lot. I love piano people, and I want to see this new place be a real haven for us.

Thanks for reading.

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