Grievance Against Discourse Moderators

I need to know what rules are the moderators, admins of Discourse bound by? Or, do they have absolute power, to the point that they can violate even the ‘Principle of Natural Justice’ (#1)?

I’ll give the specific example where this has happened, once I’m ascertained that Moderators/Admins don’t have an absolute power, for otherwise it’ll be a sheer waste of our time.

#Moderator #Moderators #Admin #Admins

(#1) Giving out the reasons behind a punitive action, before it’s actual execution (except where it’s not practically possible) is one of the Principles of Natural Justice.

On creation of your account, you agreed to these rules. In addition to these rules, we have project-wide community guidelines.

Given your nickname, I assume you want to complain about the post that has been deleted by me yesterday. Well, third-looking at it, it might have been actual content, but it got auto-flagged for spam as you are using an IP address out of a subnet that is used by spam bots spamming this wiki, so… too bad. Don’t proxy your request through a shared hoster, please, because it makes you look like a spam bot. :wink:

2 Likes

Well, Dennis, thanks for your message.

Ironically, it’s now that I’m using something dubious (a VPN using an US IP Address) to access discourse, as even my IP has been banned.

I’m from India and at the time of making the post in question, I was using the world’s largest 4G network ‘Jio’, without any proxy etc. I’m not sure why my ISP assigned such a dubious IP to my connection. :confused:

Alright then, all that I ask of you now:

  1. Please make some arrangements so that whenever some post/account is flagged, and the account is removed, an email be sent mentioning what to do to prove that theirs was a genuine post. I don’t think spambots shall care responding to such emails. :blush:

  2. Please, if possible, restore my previous account, it’s my favorite username. :blush:

Cheers,

Ranvijay

PS: : Could you please share with me the secret of the magic you use in your sentences? I came here furious; your words calmed me down like they were some magic spell. :grinning:

Meh. Yeah. The unfortunate truth is that in India, there are a lot of companies focusing on distributing SEO spam and other fun for profit, so I am not surprised to see entire subnets on blacklists… That is horrible for the legitimate users, though, but sadly, there is nothing I really can do about this. :confused:

Well, no. Sending emails to the accounts from those spambots is actually a bad idea. In the case where we acidentially block someone legitimate (which, for the record, has occurred only two times so far: once in the wiki and now you), there are a lot of channels people can use to get the mistake rectified. I think it’s not needed to have a dedicated process for that just yet.

I unblocked your IP and your email address. Unfortunately, I cannot restore your previous account. However, feel free to change your username to the one you previously had. Do do that, click on your profile picture in the top right corner, and click the little cog wheel to access the preferences. There should be a pencil icon next to your username, allowing you to change it.

I also cannot restore your previous post, unfortunately. However, I can provide you with the original contents, if you want. If so, please send me a message here (click on my profile picture, there should be a message button).

You’d be surprised by the amount of people who would have been utterly offended by my words. Glad to hear you liked them, though.

1 Like

Alright Dennis! Agree with all that you said and I can actually understand, and will take your word for what I don’t really know (e.g. emailing being a bad idea).

Ok. Feeling relieved to be able to disable this proxy. Thanks. I’ll see what would be the best approach to get my previous username/email combination.

Don’t worry about the post, I have a screenshot of it, so it’d be better to leave you to do more productive things than retrieving my post. :slight_smile:

Thanks & Regards,

2 Likes

[applause for such a good resolution!]

5 Likes

I would prefer that:

  1. Instead of silently deleting the post, it was confirmed to be genuine and human - before! A captcha (all except recaptcha are good, this one is just very very very very very annoying to solve) should be enough. Spam cannot be made bypassing captchas in a significative amount, if at all. Confirmation by other users are a good idea too (at least a few of others). Although not the best solution, because some subjects may eventual be wrongly “made” spam just to get rid of them here (users’ opinions biasing, I am pointing here).

  2. To send an email to the user is very very good! To send back all the removed content so, in any possible continuation, there will never be a dissatisfied user by losing data. If a post is considered spam for any reason, there is no problem in sending an email to the (possibly new) user. If the user is possibly a spam bot, in whatever may, that is another issue! Doing differently makes users go away from Diaspora! It makes no sense (should not make)! Rinfinity showed reasons that should make this issue happen several times with several less skilled users. Enumerate what she/he had to do to make his one time issue looked at! The user here is a hero, congratulations to her/him. Everything that happened is something to be ashamed of - and I am.

And I really hate the fact that I can only use discourse with javascript enabled, and all annoying consequences of that (and the usual “features” that come with this fact).

1 Like

This is a factual lie. Once your site as reached a certain popularity, spam companies (which, just for the record, is an actual business with lots of money involved) just hire thousand low-income workers to solve captchas and create accounts. This is no fiction, it’s the reality.

There is no way to distinguish a user who “acidentially spammed” and a well-written spambot. That’s exactly the point here.

Quite frankly, lol, no. Humans make mistakes, and as long as this is not something that happens repeatedly, that’s something to deal with on a per-case basis.

Since this issue is resovled and I feel the strong tendency of dragging this deep into unproductive off-topic territory, closing this as resolved.

2 Likes

Resolved.