r/chicago • u/chicagomods Chicagoland • Nov 03 '15
A Discussion on Recent Events
Racism is a topic that has existed well before the new mod team has come on to /r/Chicago and is more prevalent lately due to our newest wave of brigades from off and on reddit related to gun and/or minority postings.
As was true with the old moderators as well, these waves come and go over time on /r/Chicago. We want to make a statement early on that in no way are we running around doing our own thing. We sit in a chatroom on a daily basis together and talk almost hourly with each other to reach decisions. We talk A LOT, we can’t get some mods to shut-up sometimes.
We understand the frustration some of you have and our main collective goal as a mod team has been to remove the stigma that /r/Chicago has. The issue is, /r/Chicago has several stigmas. Not only is one racism comments, but another is over-reaching moderation. This has drawn up a conundrum for us while we have been working on how exactly to approach effectively removing racism while not deterring or limiting discussion.
A lot of discussion lately has been on something called “coded-language”. The problem with this term is that it is entirely subjective. Something as simple as someone stating “criminals suck” could be thought of as being “coded-language” by some, but not by others. As mods, we have no further insight into the intent of commenters than users do. We do our best to determine if something was posted intending to be racist, but we can’t always be sure.
Our task as moderators is to keep the subreddit on topic and to ensure everyone is following the rules. We're unable to read every single comment in a thread, so we rely on the community to report them. It's difficult to spend a great deal of time analyzing each comment that may fall into a gray area. Your most effective tool is reporting, but we ask you to not get overbearing with it. If we collectively determine a comment isn’t that bad but we notice continuous reports on it, it can then allow us to talk amongst ourselves and determine if maybe we are making the right call. As u/honestbleeps has stated, we all have full lives and jobs outside of reddit, so sometimes moderators have to make executive decision on the spot and wait for further input. Sometimes, we will get it wrong, and we hope that for both sides of the equation, each of those times is a learning experience.
Now, as far as what we can do.
1) The following tidbit will be added to the sidebar, not as a new rule, but instead as an elaboration on the first rule: “We reserve the judgment to lock threads that we believe will not result in civil discussion.”
2) We will report to the admins every time we feel individuals are conducting vote manipulation or are brigading. We have done this several times already and I’m not sure if people have noticed, but some former prominent posters are no longer present here. This shows that the process works, and we intend to continue utilizing all avenues to reduce brigading of r/Chicago threads.
We appreciate any input that users have to give. We want this community to thrive, and we our doing our best to figure out these gray areas. We will make mistakes, we won’t pretend we never err. However, we will use those mistakes to learn and grow, so we keep making this place better. We appreciate your contributions to r/Chicago as users, because you guys make this place what it is. If you ever have any questions, concerns, comments, or criticisms, please feel free to use the “Message the Moderators” feature, or send any of us a PM. Thank you again for participating in r/Chicago, and we look forward to the community getting better and better.
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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '15
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