Admin Accountability

[kalakh]

Thinking about it, a rule such as “don’t be a fucking asshole” is broad and clearly up to the judgment of the person enforcing the rule, but it generally works fine enough because most folks have a pretty good idea of what ‘fucking asshole’ entails, their lines are just drawn in different places. A firm nudge is generally enough to course correct provided the person isn’t actually intending to be in ‘fucking asshole’ territory, and for people egregiously over the line, everyone can basically look and go ‘yep, they were being a fucking asshole’.

But, this again goes back to trust, otherwise it doesn’t work at all. If the people in the community trust that, even if you draw your lines somewhere differently than they do, you will be reasonable and open about where they are and what you do when someone crosses them, and - very importantly - that this standard will be applied evenly to everyone, it works. Even for people who start out distrustful because they don’t know you or your community well enough to know how fairly the rules are applied, their concerns are often settled with time and seeing the rules in action.

If you’ve broken everyone’s trust, especially if you did it via uneven, unfair, and heavy-handed application of punishment, especially especially if you then insist that your rulings were justified, then suddenly that rule doesn’t work at all. People want to know, really want to know, exactly where your lines are. They don’t trust your judgment and they certainly don’t trust that you’ll be fair about it, so they want to make absolutely sure that they don’t accidentally cross said line. It’s no longer seen as a boundary, but a cliff, and the result is fear, defensiveness, and resentment. At that point, though, writing a novel about all the ins and outs of exactly what ‘being a fucking asshole’ means isn’t likely to work either.

[Pavel]

@KarmaBum said in Admin Accountability:

I had like a whole post typed up and then decided: The fact that you’re even concerned about this probably means it won’t be an issue for a long time.

You guys seem to get it: You’re traffic cops, not federal agents.

I’m a librarian. I make sure that stuff is in the right spot, there’s no running in the building, and I’m woefully underpaid for my job.

[eye8urcake]

@Pavel

[Pavel]

@eye8urcake Oh man, now I have to watch those films again.

[tsar]

@KarmaBum said in Admin Accountability:

You guys seem to get it: You’re traffic cops, not federal agents.

I’m a federal agent.

And an assassin.

And a history professor.

[Testament]

@KarmaBum said in Admin Accountability:

I had like a whole post typed up and then decided: The fact that you’re even concerned about this probably means it won’t be an issue for a long time.

You guys seem to get it: You’re traffic cops, not federal agents.

[Pavel]

@tsar said in Admin Accountability:

@KarmaBum said in Admin Accountability:

You guys seem to get it: You’re traffic cops, not federal agents.

I’m a federal agent.

And an assassin.

And a history professor.

And you’re 19 with three PhDs, right?

[tsar]

@Pavel said in Admin Accountability:

@tsar said in Admin Accountability:

@KarmaBum said in Admin Accountability:

You guys seem to get it: You’re traffic cops, not federal agents.

I’m a federal agent.

And an assassin.

And a history professor.

And you’re 19 with three PhDs, right?

Yes

[eye8urcake]

@tsar said in Admin Accountability:

@Pavel said in Admin Accountability:

@tsar said in Admin Accountability:

@KarmaBum said in Admin Accountability:

You guys seem to get it: You’re traffic cops, not federal agents.

I’m a federal agent.

And an assassin.

And a history professor.

And you’re 19 with three PhDs, right?

Yes

And a model.

[Juniper]

Clearly the solution is to store the board on the blockchain.

[Testament]

@eye8urcake said in Admin Accountability:

@tsar said in Admin Accountability:

@Pavel said in Admin Accountability:

@tsar said in Admin Accountability:

@KarmaBum said in Admin Accountability:

You guys seem to get it: You’re traffic cops, not federal agents.

I’m a federal agent.

And an assassin.

And a history professor.

And you’re 19 with three PhDs, right?

Yes

And a model.

With a tragic backstory.

[Pavel]

@Testament said in Admin Accountability:

@eye8urcake said in Admin Accountability:

@tsar said in Admin Accountability:

@Pavel said in Admin Accountability:

@tsar said in Admin Accountability:

@KarmaBum said in Admin Accountability:

You guys seem to get it: You’re traffic cops, not federal agents.

I’m a federal agent.

And an assassin.

And a history professor.

And you’re 19 with three PhDs, right?

Yes

And a model.

With a tragic backstory.

All backstories usually start with “I was born” which is enough of a tragedy in itself.

[Mourne]

@Pavel said in Admin Accountability:

All backstories usually start with “I was born” which is enough of a tragedy in itself.

For me it’s rare that I would write a background in the first person. I don’t write first person in game, why would I write first person in a background?

I also typically start with a characters environment rather than their birth, because the actual birth or creation is a given… as the character does exist.

[mietze]

I think having a team (and taking as much care as possible to keep retaining/adding on folks so that it is a team) that works well together and can collaborate together helps a lot in in the long run. That requires some community buy in as well. If you have a team that works well enough/is comfortable to speak up when there’s a decision made that should be revisited, when respect can be there even when there isn’t always a face of 100 percent unity (because there will come a time when that is not possible or doesn’t happen in a given moment), and most importantly when there’s enough people on deck that when a break is needed it can be taken–I think that is often even more important than any policy or procedure for long term health. It’s hard, though. And I think keeping the admin team numbers up is often something that is neglected first; it’s so easy to do when burnout isn’t present, but so hard to rectify once that burnout starts to happen full force.

And while it’s fine to have disagreement and different approaches, I think it works best if the people involved do have respect for everyone else on the team. The first crack at accountability almost always comes not from the membership but from the admin team itself. Once it falls to the community to hold the admin accountable because there’s evidence that they are slipping from that and not holding each other accountable, it’s just really hard to recover from.

[eye8urcake]

@Pavel said in Admin Accountability:

All backstories usually start with “I was born” which is enough of a tragedy in itself.