So, for one reason or another you (all) cannot make a post or a thread which publically references - directly or indirectly - either a moderator, another user, or a moderation decision (even if the identity of the moderator who carried out that decision is referenced pronominally or not at all). Before I begin the main idea of this thread - the “Why?” that I’m sure you’re all looking forward to - I’d like to say that this thread is not meant to call in to question any particular moderation decision, moderator, and/or user, was not made because of any moderation decision, moderator, and/or user, and that any discussion of a moderator decision, moderator, and/or user in this thread should be considered off-topic and should, from a moderation standpoint, be dealt with separately from this thread, the original poster (yours truly), and all other postures herein.
Now, my simple question I have is “why” can we not discuss moderation decisions in general? Why is it so illegal to reference a specific moderation decision and discuss, with the community, whether or not the rules, subjective as they are, should be enforced in such a fashion?
Please do not get me wrong, I am not in favor of taking moderators out to the “town hall” as it were, putting them before a group of 20 or so disgruntled users, and allow them to be pelted with angry complaints at a rate which makes it impossible to reply to all of them, resulting in more complaints about the lack of response to the initial complaints and the general apparent incompetence of the moderator in question because “they won’t answer me”, or anything of that nature. And, due to the fact that almost all moderation decision are done anonymously and behind closed doors on here, the reference of a particular situation avoids that conflict altogether unless the “victim” of the moderation outs the moderator in question.
No, what I’m talking about is the reference of specific decisions when discussing the overall legitimacy of a rule or the application thereof (widespread or isolated as it may be). If I made a very polite thread about how 343’s moderators should stop banning people who like the color green and that 50% of all bans on here take place because someone stated that their favorite color was green, that argument wouldn’t get past a few posts because I’d have no way of proving this without photoshopping or altering a screen cap of a post or message in my or someone else’s inbox. However, lets say this inquisition of the lovers of the color green was going on, and I was able to cite several instances, with direct post links, of where 343’s moderators WERE banning people who liked the color green, the thread now carries exponentially more weight and, as long as no personal attacks are made on the pronominal moderator, no other rules but the “don’t discuss moderation decisions” one are broken.
So who is harmed in that situation? Nobody. As long as everyone in the discussion is referred to pronominally and without ad hominem, I don’t see the problem with the situation. Is it that 343 doesn’t want their rules and applications thereof to be called into question? Is it because they’re unwilling to change them based on community input, however compelling?
That is the question I pose in this thread, both for speculative and (unofficial, of course) definitive answering and discussing.
P.S. And please, moderators, don’t just come in here and go “it’s in the rules and it’s not changing so this is getting locked”. Yes, it’s happened before.