Has the community become biased?

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#1

So, I’m bringing this because in the time that I have been on the devforum I’ve seen this happen varyingly. Also I wasn’t sure how to name the topic without sounding bias in anyway. I have also asked this before in a previous topic here and got no answer as expected.

Just a reminder that isn’t not aimed at anyone in particular. For the sake of this post all evidence and examples are entirely made up (using the same scenarios) as I don’t want to “name shame” or point fingers at anyone at all.

I like the community and all. But one thing that concerns me is how bias the community is. What I mean by this? “I mean that you’re an exception to rules depending on your rank/status”. We know that rules apply to anyone, regardless. Well this is not true.

Let’s say that we have two different “people” who have broken a rule.
In the below example we’ll use this rule.

Do not spam

Every reply must be meaningful, contributive, and on-topic. Do not re-post what others have already said, do not post memes or single-word posts such as “First!” or “bump”, and put effort into your posts. Use the Like button instead of replying “Thanks!” or other generic sentences. Do not circumvent any character limit requirements with clutter text. When replying to multiple posts, reply to all of them within one post instead of making an individual post for each response. Do not bump topics and do not post duplicate topics either.

Example

People: Top contributor, member

Topic - How to make a anti-lag? (Made that up) – Topic is going to get taken down as it doesn’t follow the guidelines.

Top contributor says:
No

Member says:
No

Consequences/outcomes – Example1
Top contributor:

Member: Message gets flagged, moderated and feedback from staff team is given (once again this just shows bias the community is. They flag a member who breaks the rule but doesn’t do for the other)

Consequences/outcomes – Example2
I’m not sure if staff moderate unless flagged but correct me if I’m wrong.

Top contributor:

Member: This time the message doesn’t not get flagged. Staff unlists and removes the topic. Thus they’ve seen the message whilst doing that. They moderate the message and give feedback.

You can see in both examples, that this sort of behaviour regardless of breaking rules is shaped by the forum hierarchy, and biases towards a particular one. Rules are rules. They apply to anyone regardless and this is what I find quite disgusting.

You might say a community is always going to be bias, that’s understandable but not in the case of explicit rules. I’m not fired up about this or anything but I just don’t like the behaviour. If you have reasons why this should be removed, please tell me. Thanks for reading this and have a wonderful day! I’m sorry if this a downer post.

Once again, this is not aimed at anyone. I appreciate the work that staff, Topic contributors, PA and others put in wholeheartedly :+1:t2: :heart: I’m sorry if this comes of as insensitive or offends anyone in any way.

#2

Are you implying the top contributor wouldn’t get flagged but the member would? Community flags posts, and they aren’t forced to do it. Community flags whenever for whatever reason. The top contributor flair inevitably gives someone respect, of course someone might be ‘scared’ of flagging a top contributor.

And by the way, moderators don’t need for a bad post to be flagged in order to take action against it. DET surely browses around the forum, and if they come across something against the rules they can take action from there.

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#3

I’m not implying that we should now flag top contributors. I’m just pointing out that if anyone breaks a rule for whatever reason depending on rank DET apparently doesn’t take action. I’ve seen this multiple times. I’m not hating on top contributors or ect, I’m just curious how people are bias in regards to this case and don’t look into it from a neutral stance.

#4

Moderation is handled on a case-by-case basis so it really depends on the scenario and such

#5

That doesn’t answer anything. If you looked into my examples, you can see how there are two identical scenarios where one is moderated and one is not. I just want the community to atleast have equity when it comes to these cases. To not look into a scenario one-sided. Plus rules apply to all.

#6

Your examples are quite confusing.

In example 1 and 2 does top contributor not say anything or why isn’t there any text after? And I am not sure what makes your example insusceptible to bias, therefore making this conjectural and a waste of time. I think that, if you provided real-world examples in DM’s maybe I could understand better.

and once more: moderation is handled case-by-case, not all same actions have the same outcomes, just depends on context and scenario and such

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#7

My examples are showing what happens with the consequences of identical scenarios.

When I said "Top contributor: " I’m implying that there is no consequence or ect.

Consequences
Top contributor: – Nothing happens
Member: Moderated, flagged, ect

I’ve also indicated that they both say the exact same thing.

I won’t do that because this is will target a user. I’m not sure what happens once it goes in DM’s and also sort of things are being said, shared, ect. I’m not taking the chances because like I said it’s discriminative.

Once again, this doesn’t explain any thing. It’s not just because the staff are enjoying their day so they feel they’re going to moderate. My point that you don’t seem to get across is breaking the rules applies to everyone, and therefore consequences need to be taken, regardless.

I’m not being bias, here. How do I know, well I seen it happen to me.

At this point, I think I should close and remove this topic.

#8

Not discriminative if it’s just in DM’s for clarity purposes. Not like im gonna put here what topic it was for everyone to see lol

And you don’t understand that moderation is handled case-by-case, for the third time. Of course there can be, but it depends on the case.

#9

I think you completely misunderstanding the examples. Everything I provided answers this question. What do you mean by case? The topic.

Similar cases with the OP providing a one line question breaks the guidelines. In both cases, the topic aren’t similar, yet the info they provide when you click on it are. I’m talking about that one line thingy once again. It doesn’t depend on the case if they’re pretty much similar except for the topic. What do you define as case?

#10

If the Member repeats exactly what the TC says, it’s obviously spam and should be flagged as such. I fail to see the issue here. I’ve also had plenty of posts flagged (some false, some not), so it’s wrong to say TCs never get flagged.

In regards to the main point of the post, everyone and every community is biased one way or another. People always use their own judgement when deciding what to flag/like/say, not just going by exactly what the rules might technically say. That’s fine. If you find a post you think should be flagged, just flag it.

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#11

If the post is inappropriate just flag it, the reason moderators don’t take down or, in your case, look at TC posts is because they’re more trusted. You would trust someone you know more than someone you don’t know as much.

Ironically, this thread is biased towards the fact that TCs get flagged less than members. But, realistically, they do get flagged, it’s just that it’s less frequent because there are so little of them and they don’t post as much as most members do.

Another reason is that people don’t want to look bad because they are hating on someone with higher status, it’s a proven fact, if someone is famous, you would be less inclined to say they’re wrong. That’s an additional point, because most forum members are too afraid to flag people of higher status.

#12

Other than the massive :heart: like discrepancy between the replies of TC’s and Regulars + Members, I’ve yet to witness TC’s getting treated differentially when it comes to actual rules.

That being said, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it does happen. Throughout my two years of Devforuming, I’ve always had the feeling of being somehow inferior to Regulars and TC’s as a Member.

1 Like
#13
#14