I recommend reviewing fcc facebook group moderation politics

Contributors
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Hello my friends,
I recommend reviewing the politics on fcc facebook group moderation. Moderators should not have completely autonomous power to determine who will be blocked. There should be a hierarchy to review the moderation of the moderator.

A few days ago, a guy named Saverio blocked me the first time from the group, because I made a post complaining that the update of the website erased all of my data(which I found later on that it was not true, my progress was intact). But the guy named Saverio didn’t like that I used the expression “this f@qin website”(and I wrote exactly like this, with the special characters). He said that I should apologize and I did… But he was not satisfied, he wanted more. He said that I should be more cute in my apology, which I ignored, then he got angry that I faced his moderator superpower and blocked me.

Bad language is really terrible, but I don’t think it should be a reason for permban. I did not commit any harassment, trolling or spamming, which are the infractions expressed in the fCC CoC. I was trying to solve a problem related not only by me, but by many other users. A simple notification would suffice to fix the bad language in the post. I sent message inbox to him, he ignored. I created other facebook profile and got into the group again, but he discovered and blocked me again. He continued saying that I was being sarcastic in my apology, which is not true. In my opinion, it’s already personal. He just don’t want me in the group, and he’ll make up every type of argument to try to justify that I should be blocked. He just does what he wants. A moderator named Christopher Lowery was very helpful and kind trying to solve my problem talking to Saverio, but he is too busy hating me to get me unblocked.

So here are my recommendations:
1 - This guy, Saverio, does not seem to have emotional maturity to be a moderator. I recommend reviewing his participation on it.
2 - I found a little weird that a user can only be unblocked from the group by the moderator who blocked him. There should be a hierarchy to review the moderation of the moderators. Moderators should not be given god-king powers.

Just wanted to leave this registered here, so the community can improve its moderation politics also.

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Hi, Murph Strange and senior moderator for the group you went nuts in. I reviewed your incident, and boy, you left a lot out of your post. Like your apology, which came across as snarky, and the fact that after you got the boot you came back with a fake profile to proclaim so everyone knows how ineffective the ban was and say some pretty awful things about the mod. What you have failed to do is understand your own actions led to your ban. And instead of taking responsibility, like an adult, you acted like a real jerk. And now I see you continuing that here.
Folks like you, who get banned for their own stupidity, sure like to pretend we moderators have any real power to influence their lives. I mean. seriously, you would stop getting kicked out if you apologized, like you mean it, and take back what you keep saying about the mod team. Or, make another profile. And this time, lay low, don’t announce so openly that you are the guy we banned before, like a complete jerk, and just follow the rules. I review our group policies regularly, and the bans and mutes, and in this case, the mod acted appropriately. Next time, own up to your mistake, and just apologize, instead of blaming everyone else for your bad day.
You even said it yourself, your progress wasn’t actually lost. Had you ask a civil question instead of flying off the handle and swearing about it in the public discussion, we would have been happy to help you. Also, please understand, our team is small, and the group is huge. We do what we do the way we do it because if we didn’t trolls like you would run rampant and we wouldn’t get anything done. And we are all volunteers, and we all talk to each other and discuss our actions as a team, so every mod on the team is aware of what got you kicked out, and the inly one who voted against your removal thought it was a language barrier issue, but, as we can see, your English is fine. Go troll elsewhere

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Also, I only know of one perma-ban. Pretty much everyone we ever kick out can come back if they apologize for what they did, like they mean it. Not like your half hearted one. But you have to respect the group, and the site, because it’s giving you a free education, so you have no right to complain about the quality (even though the quality is pretty amazing for something made by unpaid volunteers, so show a bit more respect, nobody made any money providing this to you, and nobody needed to do it at all).

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As for “only the mod who bans can unban”, thats to keep us from undoing each others work, because trolls like to pick fights with one mod, then cry to a different one to get let back in. But I assure you, the entire team is made aware. We have a private chat and a private group where we can refer such matters.
And “God-king powers”? Dude, its a facebook group, not Savage Land. You give a handful of volunteers too much credit on the actual level of power they wield. We have two real options, mute you, or ban you. Mutes new. But again, you already showed how effective that is, I mean, you make another profile and ta-da! You can get in again. And as I said, to get your original profile unbanned, it would have merely taken a real apology for your actions, and owning up to the fact that what you did was uncalled for. And then continuing this behavior of pointing fingers and crying about how unfair everyone is. Grow up.

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@drunkfurball These statements you made suggests that there may indeed be a moderation issue that needs to be addressed:

and…

The first statement suggests that you and other moderators may ban people for “their stupidity,” which can mean a lot of things.

The second statement makes it seem like you might ban/mute people if they say anything bad about fCC.

Both ideas are not healthy for a fCC community.

That said, I agree with your specific decision in this case and agree with what you write here:

Thanks for sharing this hear. It helps reinforce my thinking that Facebook is not the place for me. :sunny:

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If you choose to take a totalitarian view to my statements that’s on you. I was addressing the op’s post, as he fails to mention that a lot of what happened happened because of how he chose to approach the issue. If he had been a little less fire and brimstone from the o set, his entire experience would have gone much smoother.

It’s a small team, and none of us enjoy punishing people, and we don’t like banning people. But yeah. You are expected to be respectful of the fact that the site and the Facebook groups and most of the content associated are provided for free, by volunteers. That doesn’t mean you can’t take issues with things, just expect your level of tantrum to be met with an equal level of not wanting to deal with your attitude. We are human, we make mistakes too, but we also won’t put up with being treated like some evil organization with sinister plans to ruin your life because dark mode didn’t work or whatever.

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Also, participation in the group is voluntary. You’re allowed to leave whenever. We aren’t keeping people hostage or anything. I checked.

Point is, the OP here took an insulting approach to solving his issue from the start, gave the volunteers who tried to help him a lot of attitude, and now thinks we need to rewrite our policies because he didn’t get his way. We do have a review process. His case was through it before he even had to ask. Every team member gave him benefit of doubt, until he made it obvious we were not misreading his statements. He got a fair punishment, if you can even call it that, because as he saw for himself, to get back in you just make a new profile, or as I said, apologize like you actually mean it, and stop bad mouthing the people that are trying to help.

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And the stupidity I was referring to was not his lack of skill, but again, choose to interpret as you choose, because trolls gotta troll. Anyone participating in the group knows I am a firm believer in no such thing as a stupid question (I host #StupidSaturday, an event where I answer any question, no matter how dumb it might sound, BECAUSE there is no such thing as a stupid question, so you can go somewhere else with that argument, son), but stupidity can be many things. including the way a person treats others, which yeah, Is a bannable offense in that group. You have to be nice if you want to participate there. Its like, our one big rule. And that means being nice to everyone, moderators and members alike. We are volunteers, giving up our free time to do what we can to help others. Is it too much to ask that you treat us like human beings? We recognize we don’t have any real power, so it’s insulting when folks insist what power we have has gone to our heads, which is usually the first argument we hear from someone who gets banned. Oddly enough, I’ve yet to see anyone banned who didn’t do something to deserve it, but I have seen a lot of bans overturned because the person behaving stupidly by mistreating others, apologized and stop being a jerk. Adding “by mistreating others” since that statement will be taken to mean I ban people for not knowing basic things, which has never been my stance, but, gah, trolls everywhere. For crying out loud, guys, you gotta stop twisting our words to make us sound like bad guys. We have no evil agenda, we don’t sit around cackling about the hardships our actions cause anyone. It’s exactly that kind of frustration our small team of volunteers faces every day. I’m very used to it, but I still won’t put up with being insulted, and I tell my team they don’t need to endure it either. We aren’t paid representatives of some megacorp you can hurl insults at and expect the mask of pleasantness to never slip. That’s never been our role. We are fathers and mothers, and college kids, regular folks just like you, assisting you between running the kids to soccer and making dinner. And We fight back, because sometimes folks forget the way they act towards us is completely uncalled for. We are allowed to defend ourselves, and our position on issues. We don’t work for fcc, we work for the members of the group. We use every tool we have to coordinate our efforts, because 12 people vs 1000000+ is steep odds, we can’t possibly help everyone when everyone decides to turn on us. We admit we don’t always get it right, but a lack of understanding and patience isn’t going to help us fix it. If everyone follows the Be Nice rule, we all get along so much better and solve issues like that one the op had, but turned out to be his own misunderstanding anyway, so much faster. But when you are rude, we don’t have the time or patience for you, because you are rude, and we aren’t paid anything to put up with your rudeness, and we are sacrificing our time to deal with you. We don’t have to. We can walk away and let the group tear itself to pieces, and it would actually be less stress on the 12 of us. It would be really harmful for the new members though, who face abuse from elitists who think asking questions is a crime for some reason, or harassment from folks who think women or minorities can’t code. Or terrorists trying to use our group to spread propaganda. Yeah, in case you didn’t know, we face Real issues occasionally. Only reason we are even doing this job is because we care. Y’all got a bad habit of forgetting that soon as you face any kind of repercussions for your actions. So take a step back, and ask if a little respect isn’t a fair thing to ask for. And stop making everything we mods say and do out to be some totalitarian agenda.

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Hi, here is that “guy named Saverio”.
Just to be crystal-clear, you have not been banned because you criticized fCC or because you used foul language; you’ve been banned because you direspected (twice) all the volunteers that put a lot of effort and commitment in developing fCC… and respecting people is among the basic rules of any community, whether it is written in a “code of conduct” or not.

When you’ve been asked to apologize (to them, not to me - I haven’t written a single line of code for fCC), at first you replied with sarcasm and then you reiterated your offence.

That is the reason why you’ve been banned; because you demonstrated to be unable to behave in a civil way. I did not get angry at you, I did not get “power-drunk” (that would be really stupid, considering how limited the “power” a mod can exercise is and how ephemeral that “power” is); I just did what my role requires me to do: I gave you the possibility to make amend for your mistake, you chose not to and you had to face the consequences.

Then you created a fake profile and you sent me an unsolicited private message, full of sarcastic remarks, and posted a public message similar to the one you posted here. In other words, you gave a further demonstration you’re unable to respect the basic rules of civil coexistence and you have no intention to start respecting them. And you got banned again.

I know it’s easier to think you’re persecuted rather than reconsidering your own attitude but your problem is not persecution, is your own lack of civility.

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@drunkfurball You talk about my offense… But I can’t even count how many offenses you tried to do and the aggressiveness you expressed on the messages you just posted. Let me see if I understood… You’re not paid to work for fCC, so you give yourself the right to act the same way with rude people, or being even ruder, am I right?
I was dissatisfied with Saverio’s behavior, but close to you he is a gentleman! You came to try to defend him, but you ended up messing the whole thing up! lol
Seriously, I really wanted to come back to the group, but taking in consideration that I’m going to be moderated by people like you both, it’s actually a relief to be out of it. I really don’t like this thing like “hey, I’m doing a voluntary job, so you have to kiss my feet!!”.
I’ll just stick around with the other groups over the internet. But thank you anyway for your contribution on the problem, even though it made me more relieved to be out of the facebook group than wishing to be part of it again.

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Thank you for your input, but I’m getting pretty sick of this thread based on how you’re approaching it. Generally, even if a person has a public meltdown in a forum, it’s easy solvable if they are polite and reasonable and apologetic. I’m not quite sure what your standard is, but your posts here: polite and reasonable they are not. You aren’t helping your case, and you’re digging a very large hole. You’ve severely pissed off two moderators, who afaics were absolutely correct in their actions. You’ve then moved to an associated forum and started calling them out: I’m not sure what is going through your mind that makes you think this is a great idea. Neither moderator is saying that you have to kiss their feet at all. In any way. Please stop and take a step back, this does not paint you at all in a good light.

You acted badly on an internet forum. You were banned. You then came back with a different account and started up again. Both of these things will get you banned on most forums, and the second often results in a permaban on many forums [with stricter rules]; the mods have not acted strangely here, they reacted as would be reasonably expected. If you act the way you have toward them, they will ban you, they are not under any obligation to put up with your behaviour.

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@secan You admitted that you did not act based on fCC CoC. Admitting you acted based on what you feel and on your own personal opinions and not on expressed rules or rational principles is a good start!
You say that you banned me because I disrespected the people who volunteer to the website… But has anyone told you that they got offended with the “f@qin website” thing? Did they elect you so you could speak in their name like you did? I don’t think that anyone with a minimum of maturity would feel hurt about it… But you. It was very easy to see that it was a joke.
It’s funny how you demanded apologies even before trying to help or understand my problem. There was a confused user thinking that the website deleted his data, and you didn’t move a finger to try to understand what was going on or try to help. I felt it was a little like “hey, first you kiss my feet, after this I can see if I can help you.” I felt you were more interested in playing the boss than trying to help.
Yes, the website is free, but I spent time on it, and nothing in my life is more valuable than my time. So if I come to think that the website deleted my progress I will also feel disrespected, because I spent my time on the platform trying to register my progress. Codecademy had an HTML & CSS course once, then they divided this course into 2 and deleted the previous one, and I lost my progress. I didn’t like it… I felt that they don’t give a damn about the time I spent on the website. I don’t trust them anymore. When I thought that fCC deleted my progress, that’s what went through my mind, and that’s why I was worried.
So that’s my suggestion: before you demand that a user should kiss your feet, you could try to understand what’s the cause of his dissatisfaction with the website. And I don’t think that you should do your moderation in the name of others… A person with enough maturity would laugh at something silly like “f@qin website”, and not being hurt by it. You should do your moderation based on rules and rational principles, and not based on what you feel, even less based on what you think others would feel without being elected by them for doing so.

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I did not say I acted on my feelings and personal opinions; that is your misrepresentation of what I wrote.
I acted on the basis of the most fundamental rule of every community: you have to respect other members or you cannot belong to it.
You keep saying it was a personal issue but it seems to me you are the only one taking it personal. Trust me, I do not know you and I do not care about you more than I care about any randomly picked human being… but I volunteered my time (which is at least as precious as yours) to keep fCC Earth group a civil, useful and possibly pleasant place and you chose, with your actions, to become an obstacle to that goal hence you’ve been removed. That’s all and it’s pretty simple.

And yes, I asked you to apologize before tackling your issue because, in order to enjoy the benefits deriving from belonging to a community, first you have to be part of it… and you had just put yourself out, with your actions.

Now it"s almost 1am where I am and my alarm is set to 5am so, if you want to continue this conversation, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Good night.

P.S. Oh, by the way, I am not into feticism so I have no interest whatsoever in people kissing, licking or otherwise abusing my feet. :wink:

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In this case, the rational rule would be that if a forum member is being rude, disruptive and making direct attacks on moderators in the forum, that member gets banned.