"Is something wrong?" Yes: Pervasive ad hominem and judgmental behaviors

Question

RPG's users and moderators have a number of problems as summarized in this question's answers. However, several mods have said that they can't accept meta feedback in the form of anything other than individually-separated questions. While I think that's unnecessary and contrary to common meta practice here and elsewhere, in the spirit of taking all possible approaches to getting us started on resolving these problems, I'm reposting my observations as a series of questions instead of a single answer. I'm hoping for answers that generally agree with the problem statement and go on to give proposals for fixing that (and may post later with my own ideas), but answers that explain why the problems observed are less severe (or more severe) or characterized differently than stated would also fit well.

This post is about…

Focusing on personalities more than behavior, judgment more than characteristics

Writing this out and thinking about it, I realized I'm not doing as well on this as I'd thought or hoped. Sure, I might avoid flipping the bozo bit on people… but it's still too easy to just express disbelief that someone could think doing XYZ is a good idea, rather than explaining why it's a bad idea. Here's why these are bad ideas:

1. Writing someone off as a hopeless malcontent or incompetent — but not removing them permanently from the site — fosters lingering resentment and frustration, since they're still there, still doing things, still having an obvious influence. Most of the people involved in the various site dramas have fairly significant rep that's still actively growing, and we all know that means they're being listened to. There's no resolution from this, just gritting teeth harder and harder.
2. Manually ignoring people turns out like Add the ability to ignore users, but without software support. That's still a bad idea for all the reasons given there (especially this answer).
3. Writing someone off also breeds a cavalier attitude toward anything those users are involved in. I think this has particularly affected one or two mods, resulting in saying things like "the five upset people will always be upset", which can easily drift into "anyone who's upset about this is one of those five, oops I mean six, oh I guess it's seven, always-upset people". Once things truly spiral to this point, it's very hard to get back to a place where people can actually tell you you're wrong. And there's always a need for that, since we're all human.
4. Writing someone off, or seeing someone written off, breeds distrust and fear. Each developing "side" is unsure to what extent the others are able to cleverly manipulate things to hide their influence, or to what extent they themselves are being ignored with rolling eyes. The smallest of cues are seized on for evidence either way, even far out of proportion to any conscious intent. It becomes difficult to take even apparently friendly overtures as anything other than an even more deeply-concealed plot. Somehow.
5. Focusing on calling something a bad idea rather than explaining how it's a bad idea sparks defensiveness in anyone who thought (perhaps hastily, or perhaps even rightly) that it was a good idea. It's awfully hard to completely get rid of that reflex, but focusing on the facts first can defuse it to some extent.
6. Discussing the factual up- and down-sides of an idea can lead to exploring more of the subtleties, possibly mitigating some of the problems, or at any rate allowing a deeper understanding of them.

Summary

Just because someone is prone to causing trouble does not mean they should be routinely ignored, unless they're causing trouble on purpose, in which case ignoring is the wrong response: site discipline is needed. And just because an idea seems stupid doesn't mean the reasons it is stupid are obvious, so take the time to think and maybe explain a bit more. All of us need to make sure we're doing a good job — a better job — on these, but ♦ mods have an especial need for this, due to their higher visibility and the greater trust necessary for them to do their jobs properly.

Answer 1

I wrote a long response to this, and I might post it later, but it needs a lot of editing before I'm ready to post it.

However, as I wrote it, I really started to think about what's actionable in all of this. And really I think the problem is one of trust, and in order to rebuild trust we need a commitment both from the users and the moderators to work towards a culture of peace on this site.

That means that we all work to break up arguments before they turn ugly. We make a conscious personal effort to stop arguing. We flag discussions (so moderators can step in) before they get heated. We call out specific instances of moderator misbehavior on meta so they can be discussed and audited.

Basically, I'm calling for "if you see something, say something" type behavior from everyone. The best way for you to "see something, say something" when the behavior is problematic users is to flag that behavior (if no flag reason fits, a custom flag is fine, and if it's a general thing, any post is fine). That way we can be made aware of it.

If the issue is with a moderator, flags can work there, but it probably is also wise to go ahead and open up a meta discussion about it to give the moderators a chance to talk about the reasons why behavior you might see as problematic is happening. That way issues don't fester and things that might look like they are abuses of power can be explained.

I know I'm not perfect, and I (and by extension we as moderators) make mistakes. We've made a number of them in the past few months alone that we recognize. We aren't going to get it right (or do things the right way) every single time. But what I hope is that when we do make mistakes we can take a look at those mistakes with the community, move on and improve both individually and as a group. We're here to serve you, the community, so if we're not doing that well, and there are specific, actionable things we can do to improve that, we really really want to hear about those things.

Answer 2

This is endemic to the online community, and it's about sending and receiving messages in the text based format.

I made an error in an answer very early on as I was taking notes. I then went about six steps into a supporting point, having built upon a foundation of sand, and made the answer. As I was puzzling over some down votes, and edited it a few times, two people chose to not play the all-too-common-AC and provided feedback on my error:

@xanderh wrote this:

"you add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll" seems pretty clear to me. I don't see how you could possibly interpret that to mean that you don't add the superiority die to the damage roll.

contrast the tone (I received it as hostile) in that comment with

@ bmaderbacher

Where do you get the idea that the damage has anything to do with the saving throw DC? The saving throw DC is clearly defined as 8+prof+(Dex/Str) at PHB p.73 for all battle master maneuvers.

As read, the tone in the former came across as hostile, the tone in the latter came across as neutral, but it might have been identical in intent with both senders.

Was @xanderh really being hostile? He might have seen a few edits where my core error wasn't corrected, and was frustrated with my trying to polish a turd. I can't mind read, so I don't know.

My reply comment on how I arrived at that (since deleted) was a bit snarky, since his comment wasn't well received by me due to received tone. My response to the other comment, which nailed the core problem to the floor, got a thank you from me. I then sent a thank you comment to xanderh as it dawned on me that his feedback was trying to get me to see it differently.

Part of the problem is sent/received communication. We can't control how someone takes/receives our comments to them. On my second read through of xanderh's comment, it "felt" less hostile since I had gotten the other comment and had had that "aha moment" through which to see it differently.

All the more reason to take Be Nice! guidance to heart.