*

[AverageJoeGuy]

*

Edited June 27, 2017 by AverageJoeGuy

[Gaarst]

These are the official forums. They are managed by Squad, so they are pretty much allowed to moderate how they want, go to Reddit if you want less moderation.

 

EDIT:

 

EDIT2:

The above is true. Now I'm going to stop talking because I'm breaking a lot of the rules.  

Edited June 24, 2017 by Gaarst

[regex]

8 minutes ago, AverageJoeGuy said:

 insane abuse of power

These forums are owned by Squad, they can do whatever they want however they want using whatever methods they want in terms of this forum. You are a guest here using their free services, if you don't like the service or how it works, there's always Reddit.

[razark]

Lock the forum into read-only mode.  If nobody can write to the back-end database, then there's no chance of this happening.

 

But is that what you really want?

[AverageJoeGuy]

*

Edited June 27, 2017 by AverageJoeGuy

[regex]

2 minutes ago, AverageJoeGuy said:

But to have one's entire post history destroyed because some forum pedant doesn't like what you PERSONALLY had to say?

I don't think anyone's really happy about that but I don't see any reason to rage on the forum. The moderator had their privleges stripped according to @UomoCapra's post on the Reddit thread, which was an appropriate action.

Quote

We also want to assure you that the power to do something like this in the forums will be restricted going forward to Squad’s community managers only, so something similar doesn't happen accidentally again. The moderator responsible for the incident has been stripped of his status.

 

[Mike Mars]

Seems to me that this is Squad's free playground, so asking us to play by their rules is not unreasonable.

If you don't like their rules, you have the freedom to play somewhere else.

MM

[LordFerret]

Quote

While there is no “undo option” for recovering the posts, we are researching and will speak with the forum vendor to see if there’s any way to fully recover the account's content.

I can't help but ask: Why are your SQL database files not backed up on a daily basis? Why do you not have the tools to go in and restore/merge selected record content?

It's clear to me, you folks have issues.

[Deddly]

I'm not in a position to answer the technical details about the database, but as far as the interface goes, (and especially on a mobile phone) it was actually possible to accidentally flag a user as spam with just a few simple clicks in the wrong places with big thumbs. 

How bad is that? Well, flagging a user as spam automatically removed all posts, status updates, pictures and personalised details that the user had put into their profile. Here's the worst part: there was no undo button. It was hard-deleted, with no way to get it back. Very good for dealing with spam bots, but extremely nasty if it were ever applied to a regular user. 

The moderators are not Squad employees. We are not paid to do what we do. All of us were active members of the community before being asked to help moderate the forum, which means we are members first, moderators second. So why would we be interested in shutting down a legitimate discussion? Even if we wanted to do that, why would we only do it to a single person and no everyone joining in? It doesn't make sense. 

To be clear, this is something that we would never even consider doing on purpose. What kind of stupid and unkind action would that be? Is that really the kind of people you think we are? Wow, guys... 

 

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I moved this thread to Kerbal Network, since this isn't about KSP but about the forum.

[Just Jim]

17 minutes ago, Deddly said:

To be clear, this is something that we would never even consider doing on purpose. What kind of stupid and unkind action would that be? Is that really the kind of people you think we are? Wow, guys... 

I'm finding it hard to believe anyone would do this on purpose either. At least without a really, really good reason. I've been on this forum for quite a while, and I've never seen any kind of malicious behavior on the part of the moderators.

However... accidents happen, and forums sometimes crash... so I've taken the precaution of backing up all my Emiko Station story.... and I'd recommend any other writers, or mod-makers, or anyone with a lot of time invested on here to back up your work... it never hurts.

 

[Deddly]

@Just Jim, but if you make backups, how will we be able to deviously wipe you and your content from history?

[Just Jim]

Just now, Deddly said:

@Just Jim, but if you make backups, how will we be able to deviously wipe you and your content from history?

Yup, I've foiled your devious plans.... 

[Kerbart]

28 minutes ago, Deddly said:

(...) it was actually possible to accidentally flag a user as spam with just a few simple clicks in the wrong places with big thumbs. 

How bad is that? Well, flagging a user as spam automatically removed all posts, status updates, pictures and personalised details that the user had put into their profile. Here's the worst part: there was no undo button. It was hard-deleted, with no way to get it back.  (...)

The moderators are not Squad employees. We are not payed to do what we do. All of us were active members of the community before being asked to help moderate the forum, which means we are members first, moderators second. So why would we be interested in shutting down a legitimate discussion? Even if we wanted to do that, why would we only do it to a single person and no everyone joining in? It doesn't make sense. 

To be clear, this is something that we would never even consider doing on purpose. What kind of stupid and unkind action would that be? Is that really the kind of people you think we are? Wow, guys... 

Consider the other side though; the community has even less knowledge and visibility on what goes on at the moderating side of things. Power tends to corrupt, and not always in a grandiose Emperor Nero style, but sometimes in smaller, yes hardly noticeable actions. As a group, the moderators do a great job, but personalities can clash and we've all had some less satisfying experience with some moderators—this is a forum where members are passionate about what's discussed, after all, and emotions can flare up.

We seen incidents in the past about deleted posts, not because of unacceptable content, but because of unwanted content. As others pointed out, it's Squad's forum, and in the end they can do what they want, regardless of the long-term health consequences for the forum as community communication platform. But then this happens: user posts something that is not in flagrant disregard of forum rules, nor is in any way offensive (I personally don't agree with the Take Two rhaaagh omg panic posts, but that's besides the point).

Next thing we know, user is deleted from forum history. Occam's razor: means, motive, opportunity. This is not rocket science. Squad/Mods: it was an honest mistake, what do you hold is for? I find it hard to believe that this particular user got flagged as spam by accident. What I am willing to believe is that the moderator who flagged it did not realize what the results of such flagging were. “If I flag him now, he can't continue to post those aggravating posts, and then I'll unflag him an hour from now, when everything has cooled down.” That makes perfect sense to me. Obviously that was not what flagging as spam does, as the poor moderator found out.

So yes, I'm willing to believe that the result was an accident—it was likely not the intention of the moderator to wipe the user from the forum's history. I doubt that the action was an accident though.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Kerbart

[Deddly]

All the moderators know very well what the Spam tool does, and the other tools we have available would be much more suitable for that eventuality, Kerbart. 

It's no secret that if we really have to, we can remove posts, merge them with an existing thread, put a user into the moderation queue, temporarily ban them etc. It's also no secret that we avoid all of those as much as we possibly can. We also go to great pains to be as transparent with our moderation work as possible, though without breaking confidentiality (which is why you should always see a message from a moderator if your content has been edited or removed).

We have a long-standing policy never to remove posts just because we don't like them. We will always try and merge similar threads so as to avoid cluttering up the forum with repeats of the same discussion, but we won't remove posts unless they break the rules (an exception can be when it's necessary to remove a whole set of messages that aren't rule-breaking in themselves but that reply to one that does). If you ever see a moderator apparently abusing his or her powers, it's almost certainly because you can't see the whole story. But I do hope you remember rule 3.4 if that ever happens:

3.4 Contesting moderation action

All of the moderators are active community members who try to set a good example and apply the rules as appropriately as possible, but they are only human and can make mistakes from time to time. If you disagree with something they have done, please contact them or a senior moderator privately, and the issue will be re-examined.

[Gaarst]

33 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Consider the other side though; the community has even less knowledge and visibility on what goes on at the moderating side of things. Power tends to corrupt, and not always in a grandiose Emperor Nero style, but sometimes in smaller, yes hardly noticeable actions. As a group, the moderators do a great job, but personalities can clash and we've all had some less satisfying experience with some moderators—this is a forum where members are passionate about what's discussed, after all, and emotions can flare up.

We seen incidents in the past about deleted posts, not because of unacceptable content, but because of unwanted content. As others pointed out, it's Squad's forum, and in the end they can do what they want, regardless of the long-term health consequences for the forum as community communication platform. But then this happens: user posts something that is not in flagrant disregard of forum rules, nor is in any way offensive (I personally don't agree with the Take Two rhaaagh omg panic posts, but that's besides the point).

Next thing we know, user is deleted from forum history. Occam's razor: means, motive, opportunity. This is not rocket science. Squad/Mods: it was an honest mistake, what do you hold is for? I find it hard to believe that this particular user got flagged as spam by accident. What I am willing to believe is that the moderator who flagged it did not realize what the results of such flagging were. “If I flag him now, he can't continue to post those aggravating posts, and then I'll unflag him an hour from now, when everything has cooled down.” That makes perfect sense to me. Obviously that was not what flagging as spam does, as the poor moderator found out.

So yes, I'm willing to believe that the result was an accident—it was likely not the intention of the moderator to wipe the user from the forum's history. I doubt that the action was an accident though.

Since the moderator in question got demoted, we can speculate that, as you said, this was more than an accident, at least in intent. Either way I'm personally satisfied with the forums moderation, and don't feel censored in any way: I (and many others) have been able to openly criticise Squad and/or Take-Two without any consequences (as long as we stay polite, but that's courtesy, not censorship).

It's a shame that this mistake happened, especially for the users involved, but it's not really our business.

 

1 hour ago, AverageJoeGuy said:

This I not about moderation. Squad admitted there was nothing wrong with what the user posted, and even went so far as to unban him. But to have one's entire post history destroyed because some forum pedant doesn't like what you PERSONALLY had to say? And you guys are 100% ok with this happening when SQUAD admits there was no rule broken and it 'shouldn't have happened'?

The ban was an mistake or an error of judgement, it was reverted (with the posts being lost unfortunately) and the concerned moderator punished. That's as far as it goes for me.

I've not had any problems with the moderation personally, as far as I'm concerned they are doing a good job. Speaking of "abuse of power" in a forum maintained by Squad themselves is kind of absurd, especially when (as with any decently written rules) the Guidelines specify:

Quote

Staff can take any action they feel is necessary, even if no specific rule applies.

Even if the action was not a mistake and justified from a moderator standpoint, there is little we users would have to say about it, since we've all (consciously or not) agreed to these Guidelines. As was said earlier, if you want freedom of speech (or a moderation that isn't related to Squad) r/kerbalspaceprogram is a good place, but personally the situations where such conflicts happen are way too scarce for me to bother.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Gaarst

[Deddly]

I think it's important that we please don't include in this discussion speculation about the motives of the moderator, since that would be unkind to him.

If anyone would like to speak or complain in this thread in general terms about moderation, well that's OK if it's done politely, but please try not to go into details about specific cases as it isn't kind to the people in question. Actually, the best place for that would probably be in the thread for asking moderators questions about the forum.

[llanthas]

Again, I'm kind of stunned that this was recognized by the community - I don't think that I'm all that well-known, but it means a lot that someone noticed and called them out for it. I guess I can't blame Squad or the mods, if the story is true.  I don't like it, but spilled milk is spilt. 

I work with SQL a lot in my career, and I'm pretty amazed that anyone would allow a deletion proc on their server, without any kind of backup/revert capability.  It should only require a simple ROLLBACK TRANSACTION command, if the server is run properly, but perhaps that's not the case.  I also find it odd that my post count is still stored, but everything else is wiped.  If that's a live count (which I'm almost certain it is), then the content is still floating around in there somewhere.  Whatever, so be it, like I said - it's annoying for me, but really a shame for the newer users, and I did enjoy posting some helpful tips in the Gameplay Questions area.  

  I'll still be around, but I have to admit this episode has tamped down my enjoyment of the forums.  I'll still be launching kerbals and looking forward to the next iteration of the game, and it's still the best 15 bucks I've ever spent for gaming.

Edited June 24, 2017 by llanthas

[monstah]

16 minutes ago, llanthas said:

I work with SQL a lot in my career, and I'm pretty amazed that anyone would allow a deletion proc on their server, without any kind of backup/revert capability.  It should only require a simple ROLLBACK TRANSACTION command, if the server is run properly, but perhaps that's not the case.  I also find it odd that my post count is still stored, but everything else is wiped.

I'm also not one of the tech guys, but there's a few things I know about this:

1. Your post count isn't actually a count of anything in the database, it's a just number that's increased when you post. It never goes down, regardless of any moderation action or accident or whatever, unless someone bothers to go in the database to actually change it.
2. I remember there was another problem with hard-deleted content once, before I was a moderator, and what they told us was that, while, yes, the deleted content was backed up, reverting it would mean deleting everything else that had been posted since the backup. If you've worked with snapshots rather than live databases, you'll get the idea.
3. The "report as spam" button (which is close to other moderation controls) was deliberately made to ban but also hard-delete content, since there's no point keeping the history of what are essentially chatter bots... until an accident happens. The button doesn't do that anymore, at least not until someone else has verified that it wasn't clicked on by accident.

I think point #3 also answers the question in the title. Action has been taken so it doesn't happen again. But still, I'm sorry your content had to go

32 minutes ago, llanthas said:

I have to admit this episode has tamped down my enjoyment of the forums.

Also, totally understandable

[AverageJoeGuy]

*

 

Edited June 27, 2017 by AverageJoeGuy

[regex]

2 hours ago, AverageJoeGuy said:

Also that's a lousy backup plan to have. Restore some content by deleting a bunch of others.

No, it's a reasonable backup plan for a free-to-use forum for a video game company focused on making a game. If it gets messed up somehow it's easy to simply rollback, apologize to users, and move on. In cases like this though, it's really not worth restoring the entire database again and the workload involved in restoring a single user's posts from a mistake will likely cost much more in an actual employee's paid time than it is worth than to simply "fire" the offending moderator and lock up the tool.

If we were paying for using this forum I would have much, much higher expectations but we're not; we're guests on a free-to-use forum with unpaid moderators helping out a company that probably would prefer to not have the overhead of hosting a forum but still does.

[Snark]

EDIT:  Most of my original post removed, because on second thought, I don't think it was the right tone to be taking.  Basically I was defending the overall integrity of the moderator team against some accusations that have been leveled in this thread, which I regard as baseless and frankly rather hurtful.  I spent a few pages' worth of point-by-point responses to them, and that's what I've removed here.  Regardless of the merits of my arguments, it's not the right message to be sending in a situation where an innocent user's posts have been deleted due to an accident on our part.  Why?  Because users are rightly concerned about the situation (e.g. "could this happen to me?") and that's what's important, not any personal feelings in the matter.  Red Iron Crown says it much better a few posts below, so there's really no need for my post here.

Apologies to the community for letting this get to me.  I allowed myself to become riled by public accusations against people whom I work with on a daily basis and regard as friends.  Nothing wrong with having such feelings, but a moderator needs to have thicker skin than that.  So I'm just removing that part of my post.

I've left intact the latter part of my post, below, which is more appropriate.  Thanks to @llanthas for being a class act about this, as Red points out.  And to the rest of the community, thank you for your patience.

 

23 hours ago, llanthas said:

I work with SQL a lot in my career, and I'm pretty amazed that anyone would allow a deletion proc on their server, without any kind of backup/revert capability.  It should only require a simple ROLLBACK TRANSACTION command, if the server is run properly, but perhaps that's not the case.  I also find it odd that my post count is still stored, but everything else is wiped.  If that's a live count (which I'm almost certain it is), then the content is still floating around in there somewhere.

Yes, I can see how from the outside, it looks nonsensical.

Please bear in mind, however, that it's not as simple as you might think.  For one thing-- and this is the elephant in the room, here-- Squad did not write the forum software.  It's a commercial product by a third party, and it has many nice features, but it's far from perfect.  Yes, it's somewhat customizable and configurable, but only up to a point.  There are some bugs or design warts that simply can't be worked around until and unless the company that produces the forum software makes changes, and that's not up to Squad.  If we moderators run into a problem, we can report it to the IT folks at Squad, who can report it to the company that makes the software, but that's about it.

I'm sorry that we're not at liberty to discuss internal technical details.  I can say, however, that this was not an easily solvable technical problem.  I apologize that you'll just have to take my word for that.

23 hours ago, llanthas said:

I'll still be around, but I have to admit this episode has tamped down my enjoyment of the forums.

And we're really, really sorry about that.  I know that if something like that happened to me, I'd be absolutely devastated.

I know that telling you that it was a simple mistake-- imperfect technical systems, coupled with an accidental fat-fingering-- doesn't bring your posts back, at all.  It sucks.  And we're very sorry that this has happened.

 

Edited June 25, 2017 by Snark
Second thoughts.

[HebaruSan]

My condolences to @llanthas, it's awful to lose that much content that you've worked on, and it probably could have happened to any of us. Hopefully they'll be able to work something out with IPS. (It sounds like the "undo button" talk is about the UI presented to moderators; if they had access to a raw SQL prompt they could probably ROLLBACK TRANSACTION just fine, but that would be a pretty crazy level of access for mere moderators to have.)

I wonder if we'll see more spam now that deleting it just got harder. Presumably there's a reason this option was so easily accessible.

[regex]

[snip]

I'm not defending Squad, per se, but rather showing why a company, any company, that runs a free-to-use forum wouldn't bother spending money restoring a single user's mistakenly deleted posts when it likely represents a lot more time, effort, and money than the solution they've already taken.

[HebaruSan]

[snip]

UomoCapra did say this on Reddit though:

Quote

we are researching and will speak with the forum vendor to see if there’s any way to fully recover the account's content.

It sounds like they're trying to set things right, above and beyond what's reasonable to expect from a free-to-use forum.

[regex]

Just now, HebaruSan said:

It sounds like they're trying to set things right, above and beyond what's reasonable to expect from a free-to-use forum.

Well that's nice and I applaud the effort.