Forum Moderation

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Moderation inconsistency

I personally do rarely interact with the moderation team.
And the few times I was in the wrong, it didn’t bother me a lot: I just accepted and moved along.
Overall, no awful experience so far.

I think that maybe the broader issue here are the inconsistencies between the various moderators and how each one of them might deal with the issue in their own way?

You might find Jonah’s takes good but maybe ModA is quite much more unfair in their way of dealing with the issue? ModB is amazing and you love them! But which one will it be today? Roulette. :man_shrugging:t2:

Inconsistency[1] and unfairness in the 1:1 DM exchanges is probably where things escalate? :thinking:

And yes sorry but

This doesn’t sound like a responsible and half-decent behavior coming from a moderator.
People cannot improve if they do not have any kind of feedback.
Might be obvious why someone is in the wrong to you, yet the actual person might not get it.

I can also look down at someone and think how stupid they are without providing any kind of constructive feedback. Then once they come back to me and ask how they did, I’ll tell them how awful and rubbish pieces of human being they are.
They won’t be happy + will not even understand what wrong they did.

Both sides lose there just because one was too lazy to even context-ify the wrongdoings.

Deletion concerns

This also fuels the loop of anger when it comes down to moderators needing to delete something again and again. No feedback → another wave of deletion/ban/person leaving/mean interaction. :recycling_symbol:

I mean, let’s not start deleting specific messages either[2], that sounds even more awful of a behavior if we’re honest (even more shadow-y). :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

It is also next level that on a public forum like this, some people developed this behavior of

Damn, let me quickly backup this thread before it’s deleted so that I do not lose some precious info.

How did we ended up here again? :sweat_smile:

Assuming that a DM is sent to everybody that wrote in the thread yes.
If only to 1 single person, not that great because all the others will still be confused as of why it disappeared.

As suggested by an active member here, maybe we should take the Qubes approach?
And stop deleting if not critically needed? :hugs:

“Create a blog” concerns

Let me quickly self-host a Discourse, post a comment there and link it here so that I could reply to you. :face_with_peeking_eye:
I could almost do that to prove a point[3].
Yet quite a lot to ask to your non-developer regular forum visitor indeed. :melting_face:

Overall, the forum doesn’t always need to be starting with an extensive wall of well-researched piece of text.
It can be a discussion starter and ramp up slowly instead.
Some would argue it’s actually even better[4].

Simple example, this one, should I just tell OP how awful, lazy and unprofessional they are posting a quick short question without making a DEEP and thorough research for hours before posting[5]?
Hm, I could yes. :smiling_face_with_horns:
Instead, I am trying to take a more relaxed and patient stance on the topic and link other topics first.
Empathy is important to newcomers.

Some will do a lot of research upfront and that’s amazing! :star_struck:
Now, if the first post should be deleted if low effort, oh boy we’ll see 90% deletion rate of posts in Questions with a deletion-enabled-discipline-tight moderator[6].

Unrelated but part of this whole side-topic

We should allow people to potentially suggest threads title edits besides OP. Some threads are indeed super nice but hard to find because of their approximate title that got sidetracked[7].
Hence sometimes, having it reflect what’s inside of the topic could be nice[8].

Moreover, we’re not talking about the Do you guys use whonix?-specific thread specifically here, but as a general mood. Since your statement was written from a generic stance, I quote

If you want to make a very long detailed post to share your opinions with people, perhaps consider starting a blog?

And that’s :index_pointing_up:t2: the red flag people are concerned about here[9].

Moderator burnout

I am not sure on how to solve those kind of threads from a moderation/healthy discussion POV myself

CleanShot 2026-03-10 at 08.04.47@2x
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Hence I do not really engage in those lengthy text-written discussions, so no huge opinions on that one. :person_shrugging:t2:

Meanwhile, I do know that burnout is a real thing, especially when dealing with humans and the need to keep things in line over an extended period of time.

I had a few people reply to me privately[10] and saying along the lines of:

  • “I don’t think we’ll ever get the good old days back…”
  • “I find a lot of users recently do make this place less chill than, say, a year or two ago”
  • they feel like this forum is not as nice place to interact with people on anymore

I’m not active (as in non-lurking, actively interacting) with people on this forum for long enough and maybe cannot grasp all of the reasons as of how/why all of this ended up in this situation.

Yet I do think that:

  1. if you spend enough time doing something you do not enjoy fully[11] then you’ll become bitter, more abrasive and less kind
    • then, why not simply stepping down? PG’s forum is not an open-source project (as in code) where you really need someone that aligns deeply with an overall vision + specific skillset
    • being somewhat in line with the core values of the team and willing to volunteer for such task might be good enough to maybe help with the moderation?
    • one simple rule: don't be a di*k and ask us if not sure on how to handle a particular situation would be a great start :military_medal:
  2. fresh blood might be a nice positive to everybody
    • I think that a few people that recently left would have been fine assisting with the moderation task by offloading some of the load from the few people involved into the current moderation
    • having more people should be beneficial assuming they’re “upgraded” from their regular user rights based on their contributions on the forum
    • if the rules/guidelines as of what should be punishable are obvious and publicly understood, being a moderator is mostly a matter of [are you active enough here + being a decent patient person + following simple rules] → good enough outcome for the role :+1:t2:

I personally do not have any beef with any moderator, yet I’ve heard a lot of complaints targeted at specific people.
And this feeds the vicious loop of:

  1. people do not like the moderators
  2. people do not want to volunteer or help anyone
  3. bonus :star:: people might divergent and just want to mess around with the team
  4. people join/stick around less because the place is not as cozy[12], hence not injecting any positive behavior into the loop
  5. moderators become more sour by the day (hence back step 1.)

If nothing breaks this loop, we will indeed have more stress + load + angry people and the forum will hence become emptier by the day.
Let’s maybe fix the situation before we end up there? :face_holding_back_tears::light_blue_heart:

PS: posted a chonker reply but given that we do have a 4 hours cooldown now, I feel like it’s a decent way of replying down here. Hopefully it’s well structured enough for everybody. :+1:t2:

  1. just saw that it was already mentioned above actually ↩︎

  2. if not illegal, obviously disrespectful etc ↩︎

  3. …but since it’s a tiny bit passive-aggressive, I’ll just behave as a grown-up and behave properly without wasting my time doing childish things like that :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: ↩︎

  4. especially if you got your wings burnt once by having a chonky message deleted. Fine if it’s a platform/tool bug but hey, as someone keeping a lot of stuff in “drafts” here, I can attest that Discourse is actually very good at keeping things properly backed up here, it’s not as awful as Notion :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: ↩︎

  5. especially given all the similar questions posted a few days ago on the same topic. Or the recurring VPS provider one maybe? ↩︎

  6. been there with such enabled rights on another platform, oh boy it creates a very toxic :radioactive: place that people do not like hanging around on if not forced to ↩︎

  7. side tracking is an entirely different problem, I might be part of the problem myself sometimes with my ADHD-enabled rabbit holing behavior here, but hey you’re currently reading this in some details + footnotes so I guess it’s half-disruptive of the main flow, hence keep scrolling nothing to see here :laughing: ↩︎

  8. while at the same time, keeping the link intact by having some aliases/redirects to not break the SEO/references from other places. Again, the technical aspect here is probably not the issue given that Discourse has a good plugin ecosystem as a whole :+1:t2: ↩︎

  9. People will (sadly) realize that it’s actually the most sustainable and stable way to do things, but we’ll also lose quite a few voices down the road with that one unfortunately. :smiling_face_with_tear: ↩︎

  10. and not really willing to voice their concerns publicly here, which is totally fine :+1:t2: ↩︎

  11. or have other changes in your life ↩︎

  12. they just hop in and out after a quick question ↩︎

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