Question Regarding Forum Moderation Transparency and Feedback

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Roughly five weeks ago the topic titled “Forum Moderation” was closed. With Jonah saying:

This is really hindering our ability to take in this feedback and discuss it amongst ourselves … going forward we are going to try to take this feedback into account, and hopefully have more to share soon, and in the meantime I hope you all can give us some time to do this without restarting this topic

Emphasis mine.

Since then there has been no communication from the Privacy Guides team, or forum moderators around what came out of this topic in regards to the Privacy Guides team and forum moderators “tak[ing] in this feedback and discuss[ing] it amongst [themselves]”.

I’m still holding out hope that the major issues raised in the original “Forum Moderation” topic don’t go ignored, however I am concerned that no public statement, or update has been provided to the community regarding how the feedback from the original “Forum Moderation” topic has been taken into consideration, or how it has potentially changed how the Privacy Guides team interacts with forum moderation actions.

So the question is has anything changed behind the scenes, and is there anything that the Privacy Guides team would be willing to share regarding the situation around the original “Forum Moderation” thread.

It is also important to note that I was not a major contributor to the original “Forum Moderation” topic, so I may not be able to speak directly to what the community saw/still sees as major issues regarding forum moderation, but I do hope that those members who did have concerns can respectfully elaborate them in a reply to this topic if it is appropriate to do so, and the moderators here have not already warned against doing so.

Note that my intention here is not to stir up unnecessary drama, accuse any individuals of wrong doing, or creating a duplicate topic which could be seen as “hindering [PG team/Moderation] ability to take in this feedback”. Further, I have not linked directly to the original “Forum Moderation” thread which I mentioned in this post, as while that thread is not unlisted, it is locked and I do not want to add any additional potential reasons for this post to be deleted. Anyone interested in viewing that original thread can still search for it on this forum. This post is a request for transparency in Privacy Guide’s team and forum operations above all else, and I hope that this topic can be resolved in a respectful and civil manner.

I enjoy spending time in this community and I would hate to see infighting and grudge holding tear it apart.

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PG has also “ignored” (by this point, ignored) many other controversial topics and there appears to be a lack of decision making on things one way or the other. This coupled with other inconsistencies in moderation has made several folks leave whom I used to follow before I became confident to make an account here and participate. Though I can’t say with certainty that this was the reason but the timing was suspect and hence my attribution of member behavior coupled with their comments and PG’s inaction makes this a reasonably deduced derivation.

I have no horse in this race but these are just facts learned from the powers of observation. PG can certainly do better. Not sure what’s else is going on internally either because they also had to let go of one their staff (Em) recently which was due to lack of funding.

Hope PG keeps up with member sentiment better. Deliberating and making decisions is a good thing. But when this much time passes, it amounts to apathy which is demoralizing.

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This is the topic in question.

It’s one of the few topic that hasn’t been unlisted or straight up deleted and I don’t see how there would be any rules preventing linking to it.

It took PG 3 months to answer here: Remove ProtonVPN - #143 by anonymous549

So maybe it takes a loooong time to deliberate privately on their part.

There’s also a trend where lots of veteran users are not posting much anymore.

Also, kissu has been banned for what it seems like the usage of the popcorn emoji which resulted in this weird change: Allow to remove or replace old reactions - #17 by jonah

All around, it seems the PG team is not so keen into constructive criticism and prefer silencing dissent.

I hope I can be proven wrong with a clear message to the community on what has changed or what will change. But for now another topic of mine was silently deleted 1 month after creation. So, I’m not holding my breath.

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This is pretty typical as @win11.shading291 noted it takes a while… and as @jonah has said he will not put any sort of SLA on answering matters, so don’t expect an improvement on this.

It would be nice if @jonah could circle back and give some updates about the subsequent posts such as…

This seems closest one to being completed with it being approved but I do not think the additional warning has actually been added.

This one they are “still discussing”.

This one has no solution so I guess that is still being discussed as well.

I don’t really know what should be expected of this topic. I had assumed any sort of resolution would be internal anyway. I doubt they are going to be explicit about this just because users love to lawyer about any moderator action, where its made it a bit of a “boy cried wolf” situation when there is a complaint.

This has been the worst thing to happen to the forums. There has been a massive brain drain of qualified users and, the ones that remain have drastically reduced their participation. Not sure I would go so far as to equate that with anything Staff or the Moderators have done. I tend to think people move on.

I think the ban expired at the start of the month. Probably just decided he did not want to participate anymore.

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Yes, @kissu was suspended instead of fully banned, and the suspension expired on April first.

With regard to what I’m expecting as for a “resolution” to the original “forum moderation” topic, and to some extent this topic is not so much a detailed justification for moderation action, and more so just to understand if any of the discussion mentioned by Jonah had happened.

Quite frankly I would have been fine with Jonah, or another Privacy Guides team member coming back to that original “forum moderation” topic just to say that nothing will change, but leaving the solution so ambiguous as to leave the community members involved in the thread confused as to whether or not any kind of internal discussion or change of process would occur as a result of the discussion.

I don’t want to “act like a lawyer”, and I don’t think an SLA on forum moderation matters is reasonable either. I simple am hoping for a civil, reasonable, and responsible clarification surrounding the original “forum moderation” topic.

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I am going to hazard a guess and say that it’s potentially difficult and very time consuming to moderate the forum, on top of the team’s other responsibilities. I don’t foresee this team being intentionally malicious when it comes to moderating.

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I thought this interview was insightful and it made me see and understand the PG forum and management of it in a much more positive way: Privacy Guides Panel - Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons Podcast

Edit: apologies if I caused confusion, but the discussion I’m referring to happens in the bonus content of this interview, which is for paying subscribers only.

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I’ve been meaning to listen to that interview. Maybe now is the time.

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I believe that PG is not being malicious or petty at all. But when discrepancies become pattern, that’s concerning.

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It may very well be a good interview, in fact I’d bet it is (don’t have time to watch it right now unfortunately), but actions speak louder than words and all one needs to do is look at the actions of moderators to know there’s a problem, and one they have not addressed, regardless of whatever positive spin they put on things during a podcast interview.

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I just listened to the whole episode.

I’m not sure how this interview is related to the topic at all?

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Listening to Jonah talk about his view on moderation made me feel a lot less irked by the PG forum, because his views were reasonable and considered. But what’s more for me, hearing both Nate and Jonah’s views on hardcore privacy vs privacy at your own level made me feel a lot more forgiving towards things that go wrong in the process of moderation, because I felt their views are strongly aligned with my own. If an individual moderator gets snippy about something I say or don’t say about GrapheneOS, then I can live with it/let it go more easily now, because I have a better sense of the overall direction Jonah wants for PG and this forum.

I understand that sounds idealistic if you are currently embroiled in something that feels unfair, but for me at least, hearing the interview helped me take stuff that happens on PG with moderation with a pinch of salt.

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All well and good. But what I said still applies nonetheless

The issue is that the decisions and inaction are no longer exceptions but becoming a norm. Hence the alarm. In the end, it’s PG who will suffer. Half of what PG is comes from its community, at the very least. You take away the community and they are but a glorified Substack with a knowledge base. That sounds harsh but is that not true?

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Mods here already removed the article I shared this morning. The censorship is as bad or worse than Reddit.

Plus, the “tech news” that is allowed/permitted to stay posted here is ALWAYS oooooooold news, and tech news moves super fast. Friday “live” shows are always weeks’ old news too. Blah. boring shit.

I thought this board was more than It is…I’m very disappointed.

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I agree that there is a lot of room for improvement. I personally feel a bit more hopeful for this forum after hearing Jonah explain his views to Carey, whereas right before that I was seriously considering just deleting my account, because it felt like what moderators do or don’t do was representative of the vision of the forum.

I personally wish that there were a number of privacy forums like this, and was sad to see Techlore shut down, but Henry’s reasons were in part to do with the craziness that comes with dealing with moderating a forum.

I hope people who are unhappy here will start their own forums, but I don’t see anyone doing that just yet. It is a huge and probably often thankless task.

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Hey - they won’t say it but everyone is welcome to stay or leave as per their wishes. Some people left. Some are still here. Let’s see what happens.

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Oh, I know and I’m sure my presence here won’t be long as I ditched Reddit when such heavy-handed censorship started. I do not feel a sense of community here at all. Sucks too.

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I hear you. Disappointing that PG doesn’t.

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You have a website. Add a forum or a community engagement of sorts to it. I’ll even donate a few dollars once someone gets it started. Participation rules can be kept simple or even as simple as “don’t be a dick”. And it can grow from there. Mistakes seen here and elsewhere can be easily avoided if the scope of the platform is kept in line.

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No way, dude! I want to stay sane, and writing for free takes up enough of my time. Why don’t you start one?

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