What do you think about bringing up someone's modlog when they start making claims about other mods/communities/instances?

Hello everyone,

This is kind of a meta discussion, so if it doesn't fit the community, let me know and I'll crosspost it somewhere else.

There has been occurrences of people making broad statements against instances, communities, mods or admins. As Lemmy's recent versions (0.19.7 I think) allow to see someone's moderation history in a click (see below), I tend to use it from time to time, especially when the person is targeting admins or not that are known to be level-headed and consistent.

If the modlog shows that this person is indeed known to be toxic or arguing in bad faith, I would then post something like "heavy modlog" with a link to the user's modlog.

It seems like this behaviour could be considered harassment by some people. On the other hand, it allows people to identify directly if that person is arguing in bad faith, the same way very new accounts get regularly called out on their account age.

What do you think?

18 comments

I think it has merit. If someone is constantly being moderated, it points to a problem user. However just saying "heavy modlog" without looking at the context of those mod actions, can poison the well about people with radical opinions. Sometimes this is warranted, but sometimes not.I can tell you with certainty that if I was inclined to wade into l.w. political comms with my anarchist takes, I would be heavily moderated as well. Hell, even on our instance's left memes comms ( !flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com and !leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) I get occasionally down-voted to the ground for riling up the libs.
I think it would make some sense to have a way to see how many different comms have banned that user, and how many different comms have removed their comments. That would give perhaps a better idea
- I think it would make some sense to have a way to see how many different comms have banned that user, and how many different comms have removed their comments.
  Good point, that's usually what I instinctively try to look at. Banned from a football due to polite support of their own team? Ok. Several pages of abuse against 15 communities? Not so good.
  
  Banned from .ml for calling out tankies?
  10 points to Gryffindor!
  
  Yes, but this becomes difficult to parse. The UI should be optimally be crunching that data for you.

I mean, there's a reason I added a button for "View [User's] Modlog History" to Tesseract long before any other UI even considered it. Take that as you will.
- I find it very useful to check users modlogs, especially if they're complaining about acts of moderation on them. It is the most available and direct evidence for any claim.

It’s definitely not harassment lol, calling out someone for acting in bad faith is the only way this comm will ever stay honest. Otherwise it’s just going to become a place for bad actors to whip up some easy bullshit

Wait modlog of how the use has been moderated or modlog of how the user has enacted moderation?
I though the mod who did the moderation was hidden?
Also modlog of how a user has been moderated could be biased against people who enjoy trolling tankies.
- how the user has been moderated
  This one
  could be biased against people who enjoy trolling tankies.
  Indeed: https://lemm.ee/post/53217062/17653902

I think heavy modlog is lazy can be easily abused
But if you see specific pattern of behaviour, then there is specific mod action related to similar behaviour. I think it is fair to point out and let the readers decide.
People over use term harassment I don't think I have seen harassment on fedi but if somebody got receipts, would be interested in checking out what people think it looks like.
Somebody giving you a Cheekey Rebuttal ain't it, IMHO

Here’s my take for what it’s worth:
Modlogs can be very useful to illustrating intent, track records, quality of character- or lack thereof, and context.
As a mod, I use them fairly frequently to determine what kind of person I’m dealing with before making a decision on content. Because oftentimes, things can be taken out of context. Modlogs can and have on occasion, saved an unnecessary removal of content.
As for people using them in debate/discussion, I’m also all for it. Provided that it remains within the theme of the discussion and is not used to derail the conversation, modlogs can be a helpful tool to keep people honest.
Lastly, there’s the idea (read: hope) that linking modlogs advertises to others who may not know- that their behavior is public access. Sometimes this is enough to help keep the peace and create respectful dialogue. The more people that are made aware of this, the better for lemmy overall.

I don't think it's harassment, especially if they're doing something like pretending to be on left while having a modlog full of bigotry

I think this is more likely to be used to harass people than to actually do anything useful. Modding is a shitshow on Lemmy as most of us have seen, so I don’t really think having mod actions listed against you is meaningful, especially if you’ve been an active user for a long time.
Not to mention the worst actors just rotate accounts anyway.

I think it can be helpful context, but it can also lead to tangential slap fights. I had someone in here digging through my modlog just because I told them they deserved their ban.

18 comments