w/r/t RMB and Inclusion

[HEM]

Hi all,

We take pride in Europeia being a safe place for everyone. Language that denigrates an individual or group based on their intrinsic identity is not and never will be acceptable. I don't think that stance surprises anyone who has been in our community for long.

Recently, comments were made on our RMB by a nation that called into question the existence of trans and non-binary folk. Specifically, a post used an anti-trans dogwhistle — feigned astonishment over a World Assembly resolution not using the term "woman" and instead using gender inclusive language. Things only went downhill from there.

When this first post was flagged, the initial moderation response was to conclude this did not violate our rules or policies, and later that, even if they did, moderation action should not be taken. This was not the right decision. That being said, we are all only human and moderation work is hard — mistakes happen.

But we want to be 100% clear: Language that makes trans and non-binary folks feel unwelcome and unsafe is against our rules and community standards (on the RMB, that is specifically rule #3 and rule #5).

Looking back, comments should have been the subject of an immediate warning and suppressed.

The issue has since been addressed with the offending nation — who in the time since has escalated his other-ing rhetoric and been formally warned and had certain posts suppressed. They have been told in no uncertain terms that any future infraction will lead to ejection, but that does not excuse the flawed initial response.

In the coming days we hope to put forward a framework for gameside operations that will aid in avoiding issues like this in the future. The RMB is a tough space to moderate — and as offsite administrators we are still finding the right footing there — but when it comes to denying people's value/identity, whether it's racism, transphobia, or any other such prejudice, there's no place for that.

As always, thank you.

 

[Prov]

Well said!

 

[Maowi]

Thank you for the statement, it's good to see this being taken seriously and I look forward to seeing progress made on RMB moderation.

 

[Malashaan]

One thing I want to add in my personal capacity, rather than an admin, is to try to remember to listen to the group feeling attacked in situations like this. In this case, trans people immediately felt threatened by the original posts because we recognize the dog whistle, but people who haven't experienced that might not see it as easily. I think it would have helped the situation a lot if there had been a bit more empathy for why the initial post was viewed as an attack by a certain subset of the community.

 

[UPC]

I am glad the admin team is handling this situation appropriately, though I am somewhat less glad that it has taken something like this for RMB moderation to once again become a relevant topic. Europeia has excellent offsite moderation, both here on the forum and on Discord, and it is disappointing that we even need to have a conversation about extending that protection to Europeia’s onsite properties. I look forward to seeing your proposed framework when that is released.

 

[HEM]

I am glad the admin team is handling this situation appropriately, though I am somewhat less glad that it has taken something like this for RMB moderation to once again become a relevant topic. Europeia has excellent offsite moderation, both here on the forum and on Discord, and it is disappointing that we even need to have a conversation about extending that protection to Europeia’s onsite properties. I look forward to seeing your proposed framework when that is released.

I'll just copy and paste what I said on Discord to provide more context on this piece:

To be transparent, [RMB moderation] has been really hard to figure it out. We are (as in, its in our NAME) off-site administrators and there are a lot of different factors in moderating on-site, including the fact that Nationstates on-site HAS moderators and we have to be careful about how we even brand ourselves.

For the last nine months, I think there's been agreement that something needs to change, but the last thing we want is to change something for the worse or not be able to live up to whatever is set up. frankly, the admin team exists to be a slow, deliberative bit of machinery — which is like the opposite of what the RMB often needs.

 

[UPC]

I am glad the admin team is handling this situation appropriately, though I am somewhat less glad that it has taken something like this for RMB moderation to once again become a relevant topic. Europeia has excellent offsite moderation, both here on the forum and on Discord, and it is disappointing that we even need to have a conversation about extending that protection to Europeia’s onsite properties. I look forward to seeing your proposed framework when that is released.

I'll just copy and paste what I said on Discord to provide more context on this piece:

To be transparent, [RMB moderation] has been really hard to figure it out. We are (as in, its in our NAME) off-site administrators and there are a lot of different factors in moderating on-site, including the fact that Nationstates on-site HAS moderators and we have to be careful about how we even brand ourselves.

For the last nine months, I think there's been agreement that something needs to change, but the last thing we want is to change something for the worse or not be able to live up to whatever is set up. frankly, the admin team exists to be a slow, deliberative bit of machinery — which is like the opposite of what the RMB often needs.

I appreciate the difficulty of the issue (actually I probably don't, I have no idea of the scope of the discussion going on behind closed doors...). To that end, the last piece of information on this topic that is easily accessible to me (with the caveat that I have very limited access, being neither a citizen nor a member (well a masked member at the moment) of Euro's discord server) is this post from Lethen in October of last year, suggesting that *something* was in the works, but was not a priority. That comment itself was a response to a thread bump by Spagtop, because there had been no followup in that thread since August. Before the issue that spawned this thread was brought up, was there any update from the off-site admin team to the Europeian populace regarding on-site moderation after Lethen's comment in October? Furthermore, has there been any effort to include relevant stakeholders (ie. actual participating on-site Europeians) in any of these discussions?

 

[HEM]

I am glad the admin team is handling this situation appropriately, though I am somewhat less glad that it has taken something like this for RMB moderation to once again become a relevant topic. Europeia has excellent offsite moderation, both here on the forum and on Discord, and it is disappointing that we even need to have a conversation about extending that protection to Europeia’s onsite properties. I look forward to seeing your proposed framework when that is released.

I'll just copy and paste what I said on Discord to provide more context on this piece:

To be transparent, [RMB moderation] has been really hard to figure it out. We are (as in, its in our NAME) off-site administrators and there are a lot of different factors in moderating on-site, including the fact that Nationstates on-site HAS moderators and we have to be careful about how we even brand ourselves.

For the last nine months, I think there's been agreement that something needs to change, but the last thing we want is to change something for the worse or not be able to live up to whatever is set up. frankly, the admin team exists to be a slow, deliberative bit of machinery — which is like the opposite of what the RMB often needs.

I appreciate the difficulty of the issue (actually I probably don't, I have no idea of the scope of the discussion going on behind closed doors...). To that end, the last piece of information on this topic that is easily accessible to me (with the caveat that I have very limited access, being neither a citizen nor a member (well a masked member at the moment) of Euro's discord server) is this post from Lethen in October of last year, suggesting that *something* was in the works, but was not a priority. That comment itself was a response to a thread bump by Spagtop, because there had been no followup in that thread since August. Before the issue that spawned this thread was brought up, was there any update from the off-site admin team to the Europeian populace regarding on-site moderation after Lethen's comment in October? Furthermore, has there been any effort to include relevant stakeholders (ie. actual participating on-site Europeians) in any of these discussions?

Yes, there has been a long-going discussion with relevant stakeholders on the matter. Most prominently with LL, who has been effectively acting as the moderator of the RMB to the best of his ability.

The initial launch of the conversation in August 2022 was put on hold, effectively, because I was dealing with a lot of stuff IRL in the fall of 2022. There just wasn't the mental bandwidth on my end, which is probably in October why Lethen characterized it as a lower priority.

The conversation never died, however, and picked up again in the winter by re-engaging different stakeholders and formulating a plan. As I mentioned in my Senate post in February, however, there was conflicting visions of how involved we should be — and to what extent.

At the end of the day, I take responsibility for this conversation being a long, meandering journey. But I also want to say, that part of the reason I've hemmed and hawed here, is because in many models (that involve a lot of admin oversight) I worry about my own ability to be effective and live up to what the community needs. I also think what the community needs//wants has been subject to a lot of discussion and differing opinions — which is great, but someone ultimately has to make a decision, and that's been hard.

 

[UPC]

The conversation never died, however, and picked up again in the winter by re-engaging different stakeholders and formulating a plan. As I mentioned in my Senate post in February, however, there was conflicting visions of how involved we should be — and to what extent.

I am glad that you got through the busy fall and appreciate you taking the time to catch me up -- obviously I am super out of the loop on basically anything that has happened in the last six or so months. I understand that this is a difficult situation and I am optimistic that these deliberations will prove beneficial in the long term. Thanks again for humoring me, I think it's time to step down off my soapbox and fade back into obscurity.

 

[HEM]

The conversation never died, however, and picked up again in the winter by re-engaging different stakeholders and formulating a plan. As I mentioned in my Senate post in February, however, there was conflicting visions of how involved we should be — and to what extent.

I am glad that you got through the busy fall and appreciate you taking the time to catch me up -- obviously I am super out of the loop on basically anything that has happened in the last six or so months. I understand that this is a difficult situation and I am optimistic that these deliberations will prove beneficial in the long term. Thanks again for humoring me, I think it's time to step down off my soapbox and fade back into obscurity.

I think they are good questions! I appreciate you asking them. I certainly feel this has been a bit of a failing in terms of figuring this out, I just wish I was like 10% smarter haha to get to the bottom of how this should work!

 

[Comfed]

I will say that with regards to site moderation, they do actually place some of the onus on us to moderate the RMB. Site mods moderate RMBs with a lighter touch than they do the NS forums because it's assumed that regions will want to have their own rules, and because with on-site permissions to eject, ban, and suppress posts, some degree of moderation can be left in the hands of founders, delegates, and regional officers.
https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?p=22495345#p22495345