Moderation feedback

Bring back vBulletin.

Also relevant to the moderation process:

That’s not the way the system works. Anyone can flag anytime and depending on what button they press it sends an auto-reply to the user. As I said above:

Mods don’t always know why someone clicked the button. So it goes into the Mod que and sits, awaiting a decision.

In your specific comment case I can see it just fine, no evidence a flag even happened. So that tells me Dodger or Dan probably disagreed with the flag and left it as-is.

Shawn is correct.

More specifically, when a post is hidden as the result of being flagged by a community member, a message is sent to the post’s author (with subject line “Post hidden by community flags”, explaining why and what will happen next.

For example:

Your post was flagged as off-topic: the community feels it is not a good fit for the topic, as currently defined by the title and the first post.

This post was hidden due to flags from the community, so please consider how you might revise your post to reflect their feedback. You can edit your post after 10 minutes, and it will be automatically unhidden.

However, if the post is hidden by the community a second time, it will remain hidden until handled by staff.

You flagged that message as off-topic - i.e. “This post is not relevant to the current discussion as defined by the title and first post, and should probably be moved elsewhere.”

I reviewed your flag and I disagreed with you.

I do:

is moderating this forum your principal duty as Foundation lead?

I would have enjoyed to have read those comments from @noamchom @zerodartz @lawzec @BrunchTime - all are regular positive contributors to the Forum. Does the “kind reminder” also include removal? Did you flag those posts or did other members of the community?

I have flagged @silentZcollector post for violating the forums CoC:

Examples of unacceptable behavior include:

• Trolling and insulting or derogatory comments.

ok, did not expect that…

i had a weak moment there, i and others too get tired of reading his/her topic on raising the supply cap, even more when he/she is spamming other topics with that.

i start to believe that he/she is doing that on purpose to spam and bring discomfort here, his/her intentions are not good.

sorry for my language

I’ve flagged and hidden a number of posts in this topic that I considered to be inappropriate or off-topic.

I recommend that everyone re-read the Code of Conduct and consider whether they are meeting the standard it sets forth:

Forum members should strive to be kind, respectful, and interesting. Ideally, your presence in the community should improve the experience for everyone.

I want to share some general thoughts in response to some recent feedback, and to some of the behaviours displayed recently.

The principles of free speech and anti-censorship underpin the Zcash project. However, in the context of providing a forum where people can constructively discuss and debate the Zcash project, we’ve adopted a Code of Conduct.

For example, we prohibit personal attacks. We expect forum participants to debate the idea, not attack the person who espouses the idea. Does that prohibition limit forum participants’ free speech? Yes.

If you don’t like the restrictions imposed by the Code of Conduct, you’re welcome to provide feedback in a constructive and respectful manner. You’re also free to start your own forum, where you can set the moderation policy.

Forum participants who respect and comply with the Code of Conduct are welcome to discuss topics that are relevant to Zcash (modulo specific topics that are prohibited for legal or regulatory reasons - e.g. gambling, political lobbying) including proposing changes to Zcash (e.g. changing the emission curve or supply cap).

Others are welcome to express their disapproval of or opposition to such proposals.

They’re also welcome to simply ignore them.

@silentZcollector - Nobody is forcing you to read the topic about raising the supply cap. If you don’t want to discuss it, simply ignore it.

If someone repeatedly raises a subject in multiple topics, simply flag the posts that you consider to be off-topic and the moderation team will review them.

In case it isn’t obvious, the moderation team doesn’t read every single post on the forum. We rely on users to flag posts that they believe are in breach of the Code of Conduct. Flagged posts are added to a moderation queue, and the moderators can hide, move or delete the post (or reject the flag if they don’t agree with it).

Pro tip: If you believe that a post breaches of the Code of Conduct, don’t reply to it. Just flag it and move on. It mystifies me why some users will flag a post as, say, “off-topic”, and then reply to it, thus exacerbating the problem!

Replies or responses to posts that are hidden/moved/deleted may also be hidden, moved or deleted, when appropriate. For example, if someone posts a personal attack and someone else replies to that post, it often makes sense to hide or remove both posts.

Posts that question or reference the hiding/moving/deletion of other posts may also be hidden, moved or deleted.

Always bear in mind that our goal is to balance freedom of expression with the goal of providing a forum where people can constructively discuss the Zcash project. Moderation is difficult and almost all of it falls within grey areas. Human judgment is fallible, and perfect consistency is effectively impossible.

Also bear in mind that moderation never happens in isolation. If you are kind and respectful, if your tone is generally positive and constructive, if you make an effort to learn about the history of Zcash, how it has evolved and how it works, so that you can make well-informed and meaningful contributions to discussions on this forum, then you are likely to receive the benefit of the doubt.

If, on the other hand, you are snarky and disrespectful, if your tone is negative and confrontational, if you consistently pick arguments and denigrate others, if your presence has a generally negative impact on others’ experiences, then you should not be surprised if you find that you are subject to greater scrutiny and harsher judgment.

A post was split to a new topic: Alternative forum platforms

Is there any way I can see what happened here? I can sign a waiver or whatever in case reading these messages harms me in some way.

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its shielded

You can start your own censorship-resistant platform built on the Zcash network…

Posts are hidden for a reason (usually because they contravene the forum’s Code of Conduct, or because they respond to or quote posts that contravene the CoC).

this is a funny thread

You’re not wrong. We can agree to disagree. As I have mentioned before, I think focusing on price is a fruitless waste of time for many reasons.

Like:

1. There will never be a good enough price to stop talking about price. "ZEC is $20 today, it should be $100, ZEC is $100 today , it would be better if it was $200, ZEC is $1000 today, why isn’t it $2500 like ETH?, etc… etc…
2. As I mentioned before, ZF and ECC do not talk about price unless it’s in the context of disclosure of their current holdings, therefore users constantly asking about what they are doing to prop up the price is also a waste of energy.
3. If price is the be all, end all goal of discussion on the forum then users can take literally any topic and invent some tangentially related reason to make the topic about price instead of the OPs intent of making the thread in the first place.

There’s a reason other forums like Polkadot, Ethereum, the Zcash Community telegram, Namada, etc … ban any price discussion: because there’s never an end to it and it gets in the way of other conversations. IMHO this forum should take the example from those others and simply disallow it or move it to a single thread where users can vent and not interrupt everyone else.

I was a mod here for 6 years so I tend to think with my mod hat on when viewing conversations (old habits die hard) and I know the CoC has rules against:

Please do not:
Derail topics.
Repetitively post in the incorrect topic.

So when I see users constantly repeating the same content that they already have two or three threads about I feel it’s derailing and inconsiderate to the others that are trying to have a conversation.

But ultimately that comes down to how the current mods choose, or choose not to, enforce the rules.

(Which is also why I’m replying in the mod feedback thread, to keep from driving the other thread off the rails even further)

That’s categorically false. IF Zcash actually maintained some semblance of parity amongst other cryptos during this bullrun then I guarantee you would have way less people concerned with the price talk.

Why shouldn’t they? They work for the holders and the people that fund them via the devfund? Especially if they are continually dumping the ZEC for USD, it shows:

1. ZEC isn’t private digital cash
2. They are not confident enough to believe #1

All examples of other coins that haven’t had a down-only trajectory. It’s mentioned so frequently because all the schizos (myself included) are the only ones to seem to feel like it’s necessary.

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As far as I can tell, your opinions are not the same as moderation rules.
And nobody but you are compelled to retort everything that you feel is contradicting of your opinions.

Again, we can agree to disagree.

When threads, and entire company meetings, are held to talk about Zcash Adoption but the topic of ZEC price is ignored, that is when I’m compelled to speak up.

Because somebody has to. I understand why the majority inside of the block reward teams remains diligently focused on how to create new people/ merchants to sell their ZEC to. The incentives are lined up that way (when ZEC fall out of the sky for some parties in this ecosystem).

But for the ecosystem (i.e. the Zcashers who exist outside of the ECC), somebody has got to advocate for the most inclusive strategies about how to grow our project.

The Zcash ecosystem pays for the initiatives of the ECC, so why wouldn’t you expect for some members of the ecosystem to speak up about ECC strategy sessions that are lacking in their framing around challenges like adoption.

I don’t think that the free block reward model creates the appropriate economic/ behavioral incentives to create a virtuous growth cycle for Zcash.

Creating these 2 American Non-Profit Companies as the central controllers/ promoters of Zcash looks more and more like a foundational mistake to me. Why? Because they are legally cornered into a situation where they can’t act in the best interest for Zcash to succeed.

i.e. they are legally protected to liquidate the hell out of their free ZEC, but they’re also legally prohibited from discussing the value of ZEC?! That equation reads like an obituary to me.

It has slowly began to look like as foundational of a mistake as it was to make the low effort copy-paste of the Bitcoin halving schedule for ZEC coin issuance. We’re still suffering the consequences of that decision (or non-decision).

Mistakes are made, they have been made, they will be made again in the future. Mistakes are inevitable.

We’ve all got to live with them! But we do ourselves no favors to ignore them or act like they don’t exist.

What separates the successful from the unsuccessful is how they respond to mistakes.

Banning the discussion of price makes a lot of sense in engineering threads. If you ever see me going on about price, within engineering or related threads speak up. I think this forum and its moderators do a good job at keeping threads generally in the correct lane.

ZEC value-price falls under the umbrella topic of Adoption/ growth/ project relevance/ etc.

Agree. This is why I keep noting that there is a 101 level comprehension problem here in the forum. Some members simply do not comprehend how central coin price/ value is to the equation for success.

If ZEC were healthy, and had sustained value like hundreds of its peers, the ECC, ZF, ZCG would be financially strong. ZEC holders would be feeling alright, and the stress of everybody losing (except the teams taking in block rewards) wouldn’t be such a dark cloud over the ecosystem.

I’ll continue to use the phrase: virtuous growth cycle