LukeDing appealed the decision; we will reach out to them and ask them if they’d like us to feature a response from them under this comment.
As some of you might realize, some people on the moderation team have conflicts of interest with LukeDing, so we wanted to clarify our process for resolving this incident. We uncovered the norm violation after an investigation into suspicious voting patterns, and only revealed the user’s identity to part of the team. The moderators who made decisions about how to proceed weren’t aware of LukeDing’s identity (they only saw anonymized information).
Is more information about the appellate process available? The guide to forum norms says “We’re working on a formal process for reviewing submissions to this form, to make sure that someone outside of the moderation team will review every submission, and we’ll update this page when we have a process in place.”
The basic questions for me would include: information about who decides appeals, how much deference (if any) the adjudicator will give to the moderators’ initial decision—which probably should vary based on the type of decision at hand, and what kind of contact between the mods and appellate adjudicator(s) is allowed. On the last point, I would prefer as little ex parte contact if possible, and would favor having an independent vetted “advocate for the appellant” looped in if there needs to be contact to which the appellant is not privy.
Admittedly I have a professional bias toward liking process, but I would err on the side of more process than less where accounts are often linked to real-world identities and suspensions are sometimes for conduct that could be seen as dishonest or untrustworthy. I would prefer public disclosure of an action taken in cases like this only after the appellate process is complete for the same reasons, assuming the user timely indicates a desire to appeal the finding of a norm violation.
Finally, I commend keeping the moderators deciding whether a violation occurred blinded as to the user’s identity as a best practice in cases like this, even where there are no COIs. It probably should be revealed prior to determining a sanction, though.
I would prefer public disclosure of an action taken in cases like this only after the appellate process is complete for the same reasons, assuming the user timely indicates a desire to appeal the finding of a norm violation.
It does intuitively seem like an immediate temporary ban, made public only after whatever appeals are allowed have been exhausted, should give the moderation team basically everything they need while being more considerate of anyone whose appeals are ultimately upheld (i.e. innocent, or mitigating circumstances).
We also want to add:
LukeDing appealed the decision; we will reach out to them and ask them if they’d like us to feature a response from them under this comment.
As some of you might realize, some people on the moderation team have conflicts of interest with LukeDing, so we wanted to clarify our process for resolving this incident. We uncovered the norm violation after an investigation into suspicious voting patterns, and only revealed the user’s identity to part of the team. The moderators who made decisions about how to proceed weren’t aware of LukeDing’s identity (they only saw anonymized information).
Is more information about the appellate process available? The guide to forum norms says “We’re working on a formal process for reviewing submissions to this form, to make sure that someone outside of the moderation team will review every submission, and we’ll update this page when we have a process in place.”
The basic questions for me would include: information about who decides appeals, how much deference (if any) the adjudicator will give to the moderators’ initial decision—which probably should vary based on the type of decision at hand, and what kind of contact between the mods and appellate adjudicator(s) is allowed. On the last point, I would prefer as little ex parte contact if possible, and would favor having an independent vetted “advocate for the appellant” looped in if there needs to be contact to which the appellant is not privy.
Admittedly I have a professional bias toward liking process, but I would err on the side of more process than less where accounts are often linked to real-world identities and suspensions are sometimes for conduct that could be seen as dishonest or untrustworthy. I would prefer public disclosure of an action taken in cases like this only after the appellate process is complete for the same reasons, assuming the user timely indicates a desire to appeal the finding of a norm violation.
Finally, I commend keeping the moderators deciding whether a violation occurred blinded as to the user’s identity as a best practice in cases like this, even where there are no COIs. It probably should be revealed prior to determining a sanction, though.
It does intuitively seem like an immediate temporary ban, made public only after whatever appeals are allowed have been exhausted, should give the moderation team basically everything they need while being more considerate of anyone whose appeals are ultimately upheld (i.e. innocent, or mitigating circumstances).