I'm a former IC ZZL/P Mod = AMA

[SnoopRob]

I got question snoop. First a bit of a peace pipe. I was among your biggest critics. Likely because I could not shed my view as a journalist and belief that all views be accommodated and let the folks figure it out. I know it was a thankless job. You answered one question about the quick ban on conservative posters without a long history of posting. I always maintained that some level of decorum could have been maintained by aggressive moderating but whatever. I do think moderating was uneven. You, more than other moderators, were an active poster and obviously I think it is difficult to moderate fairly while participating in a thread. It would be like letting K officiate games with UNC. Surely you understand that position. So the question: why were you so active in threads you were moderating?

The ZZLP mods were volunteers and expected to be poster-moderators, meaning it was understood that they would be moderating a board and, at times, threads where they were participants. There was no expectation that volunteer mods refrain from posting on the board just because they were mods. If IC had wanted that, they would have obviously needed to pay folks to take on that kind of work.

As far as moderating threads I was posting on...rarely did I choose when and where someone would decide to break the rules. I could be posting along like a happy little guy and someone decide that they'd violate board rules. I couldn't simply ignore those violations because I was already posting on said thread.

As a mod team, we tried to take into account personal bias - whether or not we'd posted on a particular thread - by making major decisions as a team. We'd edit or delete posts unilaterally (although we'd typically leave a note for the rest of the mod team with what we'd done, including screen caps) and we would hand out short-term bans, where necessary, of 24-48 hours when a situation called for it to give the mod team time to discuss the issue. Also, if something broke out on a thread where one of us was participating and a serious issue broke out, we'd typically try to see if another mod was available to do the mod work. But if there were no other mods on the board at that time, you'd just have to deal with the problem yourself (unless it was a situation where a major ban was warranted and then the mod team would confer as quickly as it could).

So, to answer your question, I was active in a lot of threads because I enjoyed the ZZLP as a poster. Given that all the ZZLP mods are volunteers, there was an understanding that we'd end up sometimes moderating threads where we had participated. At the end of the day, the IC PTB determined that there would be volunteer mods chosen from the boards themselves and that meant that there would be times where the mods had to moderate threads they'd participated in.

 

[SnoopRob]

Snoop was far and away the name most commonly on the ban thread.

The software had issues with the ban thread(s) because they were locked and unlocked so often. After awhile, as I was the one who had started the last ban thread, I was the only one who could get it to work most of the time and therefore was pretty much the only person able to put bans into the thread. Ergo, I was the one recording all the bans into the thread.

 

[SnoopRob]

Pretty certain that Snoop never banned anyone. IIRC, a mod didn’t have the ban hammer - bans were done by the mods, not “a” mod. Don’t know if the decision had to be unanimous or a majority vote.

With the software changes, the mods were given the banhammer not long after I became a mod.

But you're correct that all bans over short-term ones (longer than 48 hours or so, although we aimed to make decisions within 24 hours) were approved by the mod team.

Typically bans were unanimous by the mod team. When we'd disagree, usually it was on length of ban rather than the ban itself, and we'd typically find a consensus answer.

There were also occasionally bans that would come down from the PTB that we'd have to enact and enforce. But those were pretty rare.

 

[SnoopRob]

What exactly did TrustinRoy do?

I have no idea. My memory is that was a sports board ban and I had no input or knowledge of what happened.

 

[CallMeTyler]

I tend to agree with heel79. Just because someone posts on here that FEMA is shooting people driving up the mountain to bring aid or whatever, nobody believes it. The kooks aren't changing any minds. They're just looking like an idiot. Most people can sort that out.

This is false. There are in fact people that believe in the conspiracy to such a degree that all federal and local agencies were forced to provide their own counters to the misinformation over social media.

Even politicians have had to interject.

Right-wing supporters are a danger to society. They’re tearing apart public trust with intent.

 

[SnoopRob]

He enjoyed the power of being a volunteer moderator a bit too much and now he's starting a J.D. Vance style glamour piece on a new board trying to hold on to his pathetic one and only claim to fame.

Ask you anything huh? I wasn't a frequent or well known poster but I had 2000+ posts over a 7 or 8 year period without a single warning of any kind. I got banned with no communication whatsover from anyone for a mild joke of the Chappelle variety. If it crossed a line so be it, but there should have been communication of some kind and at least a warning or temporary ban first. Why was that?

The bottom line is you are completely full of shit. You moderated like an insecure, power tripping little bitch and the moderating on the ZZLP board was completely arbitrary depending on how much insecurity you needed to overcompensate for on any given day. I easily came back under a different name and did the same thing I always did, mainly using the board as a news source and just commenting here and there. And the moderating always resembled something out of a sixth grade classroom when the teacher left the room and told the class nerd to "take names".

So I call bullshit on this little effort to save face on your shitty moderating. There was no rhyme or reason to it. It was at your whim, and I certainly hope anyone who enjoys that nonsense banning, splitting up fucking threads over bullshit, and locking threads up for no reason whatsover has a decent psychiatrist. You are fucking pathetic.

I can tell I shouldn't expect to receive a Christmas card from the PollosHermanos household.

Were you banned under the username LosPollosHermanos? If so, it looks like the ban was made in August 2016, is that correct?

 

[CallMeTyler]

He enjoyed the power of being a volunteer moderator a bit too much and now he's starting a J.D. Vance style glamour piece on a new board trying to hold on to his pathetic one and only claim to fame.

Ask you anything huh? I wasn't a frequent or well known poster but I had 2000+ posts over a 7 or 8 year period without a single warning of any kind. I got banned with no communication whatsover from anyone for a mild joke of the Chappelle variety. If it crossed a line so be it, but there should have been communication of some kind and at least a warning or temporary ban first. Why was that?

The bottom line is you are completely full of shit. You moderated like an insecure, power tripping little bitch and the moderating on the ZZLP board was completely arbitrary depending on how much insecurity you needed to overcompensate for on any given day. I easily came back under a different name and did the same thing I always did, mainly using the board as a news source and just commenting here and there. And the moderating always resembled something out of a sixth grade classroom when the teacher left the room and told the class nerd to "take names".

So I call bullshit on this little effort to save face on your shitty moderating. There was no rhyme or reason to it. It was at your whim, and I certainly hope anyone who enjoys that nonsense banning, splitting up fucking threads over bullshit, and locking threads up for no reason whatsover has a decent psychiatrist. You are fucking pathetic.

 

[SnoopRob]

Still looking for response to my question about commenting on threads you heavily moderated. I understand you suffered a massive head injury last night but when you get your senses back.

I put a note in the thread that I was going to be out for the evening and that I'd pick back up when I got back to the board.

Well, now I'm back and I'm answering questions.

You should learn to have a little patience, especially when folks explain what they're doing. Fucking stupid and entitled is a really poor combination of traits.

 

[bumeister]

I have nothing positive to contribute to this thread, other than to say that the ZZL Politics board helped me with my "arguing with assholes/idiots on the internet" compulsion. So, I guess, well done for attracting so many of them?

 

[CFordUNC]

Is it normal adult behavior to have this much obsession over internet message board moderation?

 

[NCK9]

I think you need to separate the opinion page, which I liken to a message board, and what goes on page 1. For me there was a lot more leeway on what passed muster in the opinion page. When some thought is allowed and other isn't there is an interest danger related to the goalkeeper. I think we saw that with the pandemic as do much misinformation was out out early to be corrected later. For example if some conspiratorial nut wants to suggest in a letter to the editor that Helene was manmade to steal lithium rights or whatever, have at it. I don't feel inclined to protect you from your in stupidity. Folks can sort it out. Page 1 is a different animal

Nuance between newspaper and message board is that in the paper the persons real name is printed beside the crazy opinion - unless it is someone on the editorial board (never understood that). On a message board it is an anonymous handle.

 

[SnoopRob]

I have nothing positive to contribute to this thread, other than to say that the ZZL Politics board helped me with my "arguing with assholes/idiots on the internet" compulsion. So, I guess, well done for attracting so many of them?

 

[SnoopRob]

Is it normal adult behavior to have this much obsession over internet message board moderation?

Normal is a wide range. And we're all here for the conversation.

So, maybe yes?

 

[bumeister]

Some were just idiots, some were just assholes, and some... well, some had both qualities maxed out.

 

[BlooVooDoo]

Nuance between newspaper and message board is that in the paper the persons real name is printed beside the crazy opinion - unless it is someone on the editorial board (never understood that). On a message board it is an anonymous handle.

And anonymity allows for multiple usernames so a handful of malign actors can appear as a growing consensus.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

This is false. There are in fact people that believe in the conspiracy to such a degree that all federal and local agencies were forced to provide their own counters to the misinformation over social media.

Even politicians have had to interject.

Right-wing supporters are a danger to society. They’re tearing apart public trust with intent.

Yes. I maybe misworded it. Absolutely there are people that believe that nonsense but how many people on here believe that nonsense?

 

[Heelscape]

Bullshit. We had many private messages that included Ben, where neither of you could tell me a rule that I broke.

I don't think we let posters consistently break the rules without getting bans (or at least warnings).

I know you're likely to bring up the "personal insult" rule, but that rule was announced as relaxed on the ZZLP when it was formed. (We can certainly have a discussion around whether that was a good idea or not, but it wasn't applied unfairly.) But "both sides" were allowed to make insults as long as they didn't break any other rules. (One issue that conservatives had is that their insults sometimes broke rules because they used bigoted slurs.)

We also tried to apply small bans and work up to bigger bans. We gave out small bans to folks all across the political spectrum. Some folks learned from those bans and some didn't.

Finally, we also tried to apply some standard of a ratio to posters in handing out bans. If someone comes on the board every day and engages in discussion in a decent way, they probably got a little latitude when it came to the occasional post that might be over the line (we'd clean it up and give then a warning PM to knock it off). If you have a different poster that only shows up occasionally and most of their posts seemed design to merely attract attention and disrupt discussion, then they're going to catch a ban more quickly after they'd been previously warned. If you post largely every day and you only occasionally have a questionable post, you likely add value to the board and you get a little leeway. If you only show up when there's a major political issue in the news and the majority of your posts on the board are problematic, you're likely going to get sanctioned by the mods. A lot of the conservatives banned

 

[CallMeTyler]

Bullshit. We had many private messages that included Ben, where neither of you could tell me a rule that I broke.

Too much sass, maybe?

 

[CallMeTyler]

Yes. I maybe misworded it. Absolutely there are people that believe that nonsense but how many people on here believe that nonsense?

I couldn’t say, but allowing disinformation like “FEMA is shooting people” shouldn’t have a platform anywhere regardless of the audience or their ability to discern fact from fiction.

Would you not agree?

 

[gtyellowjacket]

I couldn’t say, but allowing disinformation like “FEMA is shooting people” shouldn’t have a platform anywhere regardless of the audience or their ability to discern fact from fiction.

Would you not agree?

No. I don't agree. Let him spout some nonsense, we all make fun of them, and we go on with our day not believing the nonsense.