@Gargron Thank you for everything you’re doing. This a much more pleasant place.

@Gargron I don’t envy you. But I think as long as everyone is staying precious about not having a central mechanism (at least a centralized UI) you’re going to see these issues skyrocket exponentially. Things simply will not remain stable without some adaptation.

@Gargron Thanks. An occasional false positive is a small price to pay for a positive, constructive community. I would gladly accept an apology, knowing that the moderators' intent is keeping this space free of trolls and negativity.

@Gargron

Do you publish the demographic makeup of your moderation team?

#diversity

@Gargron mastodon rocks!!!!

@Gargron How many mods are American vs. European? Asking because US norms of anti-racism (~nobody calls it anti-fascism there) differ from ours a bit, and the case I saw of the Asian woman who complained of having to read books by white men would be an obvious no-violation-of-TOS case to an American anti-racist, but a white European may be unfamiliar with nonwhite anti-racist norms (and let's face it, Berlin Antifa spaces are very white - I don't remember seeing POC at B-Lage, Lovelite, etc.).

@Gargron I notice most of the replies here are supportive, but I have to say trying to do better isn't going to cut it if moderators aren't up to the job. A lot of newcomers think of these instances as being more official; expectations should be higher. I don't see any acknowledgement that you may have a real moderation problem here, and that changes will be made. I hope some deeper reflection and real changes are implemented before these instances are allowed to grow any larger.

@Gargron
Appreciate what you're doing, I'm going to migrate to another instance to help the cause

@Gargron Constructive criticism of moderation process (to help improve):

Any moderation action that will result in the suspension of a user account should be subject to a “two-person” approval - that two people with mod privileges approve a suspension.
The second person should be encouraged to be adversarial to the motion to suspend the user - “devil’s advocate” - and have the ability to escalate to a third person (one with executive agency) to tiebreak / document / improve the process.

@Gargron I just wanted to say thank you. A lot of hard work.

I've been on Mastodon for more than a week. In that time, I haven't needed to block or report anyone. I haven't even felt a slight urge to do it.

@Gargron good luck with it all, I’ve nodded on forums over the years, can be hard work. Considering the amount of signup lately, you have all s’kne brilliantly keeping this going smoothly. Still figuring it all out, liking it so far.

@Gargron We know you all are experiencing what "going viral" feels like. I am going to cut you a great deal of slack and I suggest others do the same.

@Gargron I’m sure It’s a learning experience.

@Gargron Are you still growing the moderation team at this time?

@Gargron Transparency and appeals being possible is a huge step forwards compared to say Twitter. Plus, worst-case scenario, you can join another server if the process goes sideways somehow. I feel like federated services will be much like democracy, terrible, but far less terrible than the other things we tried.

@Gargron A Would love to see a running ticker of new users at the top of the site.

@Gargron No system is perfect, nobody is infallible. Your team has had a lot to absorb. I have been assuming that you and they are operating in good faith and I will continue to assume that. Appreciate hearing from you on the challenges and efforts to address them.

@Gargron Is there a plan to address say 1 billion users (+bots) ? How is it supposed to work on volunteers alone. Either you have 10k users/instance (manageable by a small team of volunteers) but 100k instances, so an unmoderatable amount of links+debates to designate "good/bad" instances, or 1k instances of 1m unmoderatable users. Do some have perspectives about that ?

@Gargron I know it wouldn’t really help with the workload, but would it be possible to include a second set of eyes prior to suspensions?

Maybe, make the offending post invisible on the first mod action, and throw the account into a pre-suspension queue that can be looked at on more than just the singular post? Is there a trend?

Implementing a dispute process, that is more transparent than a “you’ve been suspended” screen?