User:Simetrical

Below I have summarized a number of principles related to the operation of the site that I developed over my four years as TWC staff. They represent only my own opinions and thus currently have no binding force.

Foundational principles

The goal is numerous, active, happy members.

Sometimes it's useful to step back and ask ourselves: what exactly is our purpose here? TWC is a large site, and its members join for many reasons. Those who participate in site policy have a lot of different goals. Some people want TWC to be an excellent resource on Total War. Some want it to be an interesting and mature political debate site. Some want it to be a model government. Some just want to chat.

When it comes down to it, though, TWC is a community. We're focused mainly around Total War, but if the Total War series were to end, we would likely find a new purpose. What we really want to do, in the long term, is gain more members, keep the ones we have, and encourage people to contribute and participate as much as possible.

This seems a little circular. Why should we care about having more members per se? Shouldn't our goal be to make TWC useful, or otherwise a good resource? Sure. But when it comes down to it, the value of the site by most standards is proportional to the contributions we get. TWC is not a medium for the administration to convey content to the members. It's a place where members provide information or discussion for other members. The more members we have, the more useful TWC is to anyone, by any metric.

Of course, not all activity is valuable. We don't have threads or forums set aside for people to spam in, for good reason. The point is useful activity, the creation of posts (or other content) that people will want to read. We don't try to be the best place for everything, either. We aren't likely to become a great resource on, say, gardening or the stock market anytime soon. It's a lot easier to be useful if you're specialized, and we shouldn't try to overreach.

But in short, we should always ask ourselves: what will tend to attract more members, overall, and keep them happier and more productive? We shouldn't lose the forest for the trees, or confuse the means with the end. If you find yourself proposing policies on the basis that they'll make it easier to enforce the ToS, or will facilitate discussion about your favorite topic, or whatever, be sure to think about whether those are really benefits in themselves.

This principle is really almost the only important one. But it fits into the category of "easier said than done". If we really knew what would attract members, we'd be up on the charts past Facebook. The other principles here therefore serve mostly to set out positions on how TWC, specifically, should best go about keeping its members numerous and happy in the long term.

The Hexagon Council is in charge of the site.

Every institution needs some kind of governance. When (not if!) disagreement arises, there needs to be some way to resolve it. Ideally, the procedure for conflict resolution will make everyone happy as often as possible, and will make decisions that are as correct as possible. But in any event there needs to be some resolution. Even a poor resolution is better than endless debate.

For most of the history of TWC, including from January 2007 continuously to the present, the final authority on TWC has been the Hexagon Council. Hex is composed of veteran TWC staff members, mostly moderators, who were appointed by previous Hex members as the most trustworthy and competent people available. All other bodies on the site derive their authority from Hex, and the decision of Hex is final on all issues. It is the court of last appeal on any dispute, whether among members, Citizens, or staff.

The Hexagon Council is fairly odd, for the governing body of a website. Most web forums have an owner, or a few admins, who make decisions more or less unilaterally. TWC has Hex, a group of several equal members who make decisions by consensus where possible, majority vote otherwise. We used to have a single admin running things, from mid-2005 to late 2006, but staff had problems with that system, and eventually we settled on the current Hexagon system in late 2006. Barring some conflict with the owners in the beginning of 2007, the site has ticked along steadily ever since, with a minimum of drama and strife.

As with any group of more than the smallest size, you can't really have a few people running everything directly. So Hex deals with a few matters itself, like supervising senior staff of all branches, mediating disputes among prominent modders, and serving as the bridge between Curia and site administration. Everything else is delegated to others, who are trusted to carry out their duties responsibly ― but not trusted quite as much as Hex itself. Hex provides guidance and may participate in decision-making, but the bulk of the work is done by others. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, the Hexagon Council is responsible for everything that occurs on TWC, and can intervene anywhere if it feels it's necessary.

Principles of moderation

Moderation causes harm as well as good.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for moderators to scrutinize every discussion. We would not have to censor posts, or take privileges away from members for their infractions. Everyone would be, if not completely polite and helpful, at least polite and helpful enough. Troublemakers would be reformed by peer pressure, and people would mostly get along by themselves. Staff would exist only to make sure the site kept running, and would threaten action against a member under only the most extraordinary circumstances.

There are certainly some online communities that can operate along these lines, but TWC is not one of them. Our membership is composed mostly of adolescent males looking for recreation, and that is not a demographic that tends to behave well if left to its own devices. Without swift and sure punishment for flaming and spam, the atmosphere of the site would quickly become outright poisonous. Useful posts would be swamped in mounds of irrelevant garbage, and all members would be subject to withering scorn and vitriol for pretty much anything someone else takes issue with. Only the thickest-skinned would stay for long, and eventually they would give up as well, bereft of targets. The site would die. It would be nice if this were a paranoid fantasy concocted by authoritarian admins to justify their own importance, but experience shows it's nothing but the truth for gaming websites.

So, we have moderators. We keep people from getting too far out of line, because it's necessary. And certainly, moderators do valuable and important work, and should be respected for that. But we should always remember that all moderation has negative repercussions. Every post edited is a member slighted. Every infraction given is a user angered. Our goal is to help members, not to punish them. Every time we deprive a member of a privilege that made him happy, destroy a post he worked hard to create, or change his words to something he didn't say, we are eroding the purpose of TWC: to let people collaborate and enjoy participating in our community. Yes, moderation is necessary. But never forget to consider the harm that it causes as well.

Prevent if possible, deter if necessary, and avenge never.

There is a concept that the wise and worldly sometimes allude to, known as Real Life. In this Real Life, there is a perennial debate about the purpose of punishment. When we lock up a murderer, is it to prevent him from murdering again? To discourage others from following in his footsteps? Or is it really right to punish murderers in itself, regardless of any other benefits that might accrue to society?

On TWC there is no debate. Nobody deserves to be punished. Seriously: it's an Internet forum. Yeah, so maybe some people are losers and make trouble. So what? Practically all deliberate rules violations on the site stem from immaturity, and that's hardly an unforgivable or even serious sin, no matter how extreme. Trying to get back at some kid for being a jerk isn't just pointless, it's petty and stupid.

We do what we have to do to keep the site useful. If that means we absolutely must remove some content, or poke someone with a virtual pointy stick, then so be it. But we don't act out of spite or malice. We should never be moderating except in cold blood. If you feel yourself growing angry with a member, take a step back and let someone else handle him. Nothing here is worth getting angry over, or avenging.

The ideal of moderation is to prevent the ToS from being violated in the first place. If we can somehow guide members into following the rules to begin with, whether through explicit request or unconscious direction or simple technical mandate, that's the best of all possible worlds. It's rare that a technical fix works well to enforce the rules. We do it for the profanity censor and some signature/avatar size limits, but not much else. A more generally applicable but less effective type of prevention is to discourage bad behavior by setting a good example. We can also try to make interested members aware of the rules, by posting public explanations when we take action and by being available to explain things in the case of doubt.

But some people will still break the rules, knowingly or unknowingly. When this happens, we should still try prevention for the future. If it's practical, we should explain the problem to the member and suggest that they edit their own post. We shouldn't lay down the iron glove of law if we can avoid it. A member who's asked nicely and complies willingly is much better for us than a member who had his post edited and was told about it only afterward. The first will feel like a responsible adult who made a mistake and rectified it. The second will inevitably feel attacked, even if just a little.

(Unfortunately, it's not necessarily practical to ask members to fix their own mistakes before we crack down. For one thing, leaving problematic content up sends the wrong message to other members who see it. For another, if a moderator doesn't act immediately, it's easy to forget about the issue and never take any action. And for still another reason, we want to be able to centrally track what moderators are saying to members, and the best way available to us right now is the infractions system. But this is a less than ideal state, and something we should work on improving.)

Some people there's just no stopping, though. Some members won't listen to polite advice, either because they don't agree with it or because they have difficulty restraining themselves. Then we need to resort to more heavy-handed tactics. We need to figure out a way to get the member to behave, for lack of any better option. In practice, we resort to threats. Someone who's signed up to the site evidently wants to post here. We can threaten to make posting here less attractive. And to make our threats credible, we have to carry them out eventually. There's just no other way to stop people from breaking the rules.

What we should not do, however, is punishment for punishment's sake. We don't punish members because they're bad, or because they deserve it. That's the wrong attitude entirely. We punish members because we aren't smart enough to figure out how to keep the site running in a less damaging way. Penalties cannot be imposed with an attitude of self-righteous satisfaction. They must be dealt with humility, regret, and a wistful feeling that there should really be a better way.

External links

• Forum profile
• Risen From Prey (personal website)