They did get reviewed by the community manager, for what it’s worth, who decided to agree with the community decision there. I actually feel one of the two did not deserve being hidden at all, but I’m obviously not going to revert that agreement 
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Just to give a bit of an update on this – while I am working on investigating the lack of CoC enforcement, @reosarevok has been kind enough to step in an help out a little. Hopefully I will have more things to report soon.
Thanks!
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It’s great when discussions are normally respectful. That’s my impression, too. I’m not talking about these. I’m talking about the few discussions that are not respectful.
I believe it is necessary to give examples when I critique the lack of moderation.
It means that a certain number of people flagged the posts, causing them to be automatically hidden.
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The thread got derailed multiple times, at least half of it is off-topic now. And I believe it was done on purpose (with the help of people who can’t help but feed the trolls).
While I agree that the topic has been derailed and brought back to some degree multiple times, I don’t think this is different to many other topics in this forum. Our community (me included) rambles often, and this is a topic many of us do not know as much as we would want about. As such, I doubt it was really done in purpose (as in: with the intention to stop or disturb the conversation from reaching a useful conclusion), and I think we can still get the bits we need from there to reach an actual useful conclusion
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If that’s acceptable behaviour, please update the rules: https://community.metabrainz.org/faq#keep-tidy
The same people make the same (off topic) arguments over and over again. Of course it’s on purpose. Please read the thread again. Or is it too long to read again?
At the expense of way too much time and energy. What’s so bad about splitting off-topic sub-threads off to a new topic?
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You’re starting to sound so rigid… 
Well, it’s difficult for me to judge which posts are on topic and which posts are off topic.
I’m not a forum admin but it would be difficult to scrutinate each and every posts and move them to a cleverly titled new topic.
Posts can be marked as off topic but if you mark too many of them, you will probably drown the admins under the requests and marking them doesn’t necessarily mean that the admins will agree with that judgement, either.
The discussion is still more or less revolving around the same topic, I think.
Why not let’s keep its posts together, to get the whole picture?
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That is what the moderators have been doing for a long time, with many threads.
Credits to them for that.
But I believe you are labeling and confusing off-topic replies with replies that challenge the ideas and motives behind the original post.
Sure, perhaps the replies are somewhat ‘tough’ and unrefined sometimes, but If the original idea is valid and honest, it should be able to withstand some scrutiny about possible personal bias, motives, words used, the validity of arguments, and especially what the exact implications and consequences would be for other people and situations if they would get implemented.
If other forum members participate in the discussion, and simply challenge your ideas, or possibly disagree, that does not make these replies off-topic.
You are not the judge of that, simply because these replies may not support or sympathize with your ideas or some idee-fixe.
These are called forum discussions for a reason.
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The OP is about how to handle deadnames of transgender artists. Discussions about olympic athletes have very little to do with that. I’m pretty sure that imaginary conversations with Caitlyn Jenner are off topic. The music videos from the 60s are probably off-topic (haven’t watched them).
Post #17 of that thread clarified what a deadname is. Later in the thread, multiple people acted like they did not understand what it is. Either they were trolling or the thread became too unwieldy to read because too much of it is off topic and insults.
But if I’m right about that or not doesn’t matter here. The point of this thread is to find out if moderation is happening and what the moderation guidelines are. I need to know how the COC is interpreted by the mods, to decide if my energy is wasted on this project or not.
By the way, the insinuation that I’m not capable of seeing criticism or “challenging ideas” is a well-known far-right tactic. The insinuation that I want to suppress different opinions is another. I expect forum moderators to recognize these.
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From the outside looking in (and as someone who has lurked here without an account for a couple years and has recently begun contributing to the database as an editor), as well as interpreting the Code of Conduct by the loose definition of the original poster, the only content that seems in violation are quite a few posts from said poster.
The original post is in violation of rule seven.
Try not to pick fights by nit-picking other contributors.
Neither comment was incendiary, nor was the conversation “derailed.”
Secondly, it’s not “nit-picking” to a cite a… dictionary. Such an accusation is odd, considering the stated intention of the database as a whole is to archive citable information. Furthermore, taking another poster’s sentence out of context in what seems to be an attempt to have him dogpiled is textbook flame war initiation. See rule three.
- Don’t get into flame wars, and try to remain as neutral as possible.
Lastly, another violation of rule three occurs when the original poster spreads wild accusations of “far-right tactics.” Dog whistling is not specifically listed in the Code of Conduct, but this is another example right out of a textbook.
- Do not attack someone personally because you don’t agree with them.
The Report button via a Code of Conduct should not be used a method for those with sensitivities, strongly-held biases and/or beliefs to bludgeon opposing viewpoints into non-existence, it should be used to maintain order and structure, neither of which were lost in the threads relevant to the topic of discussion. If forwardness, directness and curtness from an individual is to be determined a “violation,” then so too should snide, morally superiority-feigning remarks from another individual be held to the same standard.
It’s best not to get into any of that, right… so the vendettas should be left alone unless there are very clear CoC violations of a poster’s content.
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Not to mention extremely offensive in certain parts of the world which do not have the same right/left setup as others.
Righties in one country are your friend, righties in another are the ones you are fighting against.
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The community is encouraged to solve conflict on its own. Staff, let alone the board, should rarely need to be involved.
- https://metabrainz.org/conflict-policy
- https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Code_of_Conduct#Conflict_resolution
See also this blog post series:
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I don’t even want to address it. I was supposed to be gone but this is just so disturbing in so many ways…
People don’t like to hear that they’re wrong. As such, sometimes they ignore the arguments of the other side, which is called “hearing what they want to hear”. Both sides have done this.
Here’s an argument for you: I was called out multiple times for enabling transphobia (one time literally at least). If every single argument I make is enabling transphobia, since I do not like listening to those who argue in such way, I skip the comment entirely after identifying it in the first two lines or so. Is that because I’m far-right? I literally can’t afford to be far-right in my country’s current state. No, I just don’t agree with you.
Some people have argued for your side and have been perfectly respectful. Some people have argued for that which is perceived “my side” (which is not, I’m just not left enough for you, and some on your side don’t like when i tell my real opinion. And yet, there is no reason to argue with someone who agrees with you, yet there we go. That is also derailing a thread and nobody has called it out, which I find unfair) and have been pretty damn disrespectful.
Sorry, if I was moderating this forum, I would lock the thread and ban anyone who started another similar one again. We have been extremely lucky that anyone is allowed to even debate whether or not her name should be removed from the database.
Neither side has been respectful. Neither side has been unbiased. Neither side has asked Patricia herself what she wants to do, and neither side actually completely cares, they just want to be right and they’re afraid that such a request would cause the discussion to end and set a standard for the future. (Nobody has actually said that but I can’t find another reason in my head).
The discussion was supposed to be about how to handle Patricia’s old name. It turns out it is not even her legal name. Not many people cared about that! The left side completely disregarded that argument and IIRC some decided to just, explain what dead-naming is again, as if that solved anything. Is that far-right behavior?
I don’t feel comfortable having participated in that discussion, but I wanted to contribute to not letting it get too biased. Eventually it got too heated, and I had to leave.
But calling normal [and chaotic, but that’s normal] human discussion “a well-known far-right tactic” is too far for me. Calling erratic but common human behavior “a well known far-right tactic” is a common far-left tactic, I’ve seen. How’s about that? It’s actually extremely toxic behavior to take something so human and say it’s exclusively political, then disregard that comment as inflammatory, then act like all dissenting comments should be censored. But what do I know. I’m not on the left, right? I shouldn’t be allowed to argue! 
For what worth is left, leave the thing unmoderated. Those who really care will stay and will be calm mid-chaos. Those that want to be right will call each other names and will avoid answering the other side’s questions. I don’t think anybody deserves any better.
I hate this so much. I really, really, seriously hate this, and everyone who can’t stay calm. Ironically. And I wouldn’t be proud to say I am neither left nor right leaning knowing this is the way people think and act.
I’m really sorry, but not really, to say this: The left has been extremely unkind in that thread. If the mods step in, as you want, they will go on both sides equally. Which doesn’t mean they will be equally affected; since most inflammatory comments are from the left, those will be more affected. At least from what I can see. You don’t see that, do you…
From what I understand, the reason the flames have been left alone is for those in authority to stay unbiased. If they did what you want, and moderated mostly the right leaning replies, they would be left biased.
And that’s wrong.
Stop calling everything you don’t agree with far-right/far-left, as an insult. That’s cult-like behavior. And it’s more toxic and obnoxious than calling out every logical fallacy by name.
I’m not good at typing out my thoughts… Excuse me for the mess.
EDIT: Edit.
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https://community.metabrainz.org/t/handling-name-of-transgender-artist/538657/225?u=mrr0dr160
this is why i find this lack of self-control disturbing.
why the hell was this post of mine flagged?
did three people come and flag my post it’s the most inoffensive post in the whole thread what
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The post portrayed someone else’s relevant contribution as of no benefit to them or anyone else.
That you see this portrayal as inoffensive demonstrates a basic misunderstanding by you.
Working together requires respecting the fact that others have different views.
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FYI: I’m not gonna read replies to this thread anymore unless they are from mods (my questions can only be answered by mods). I don’t have the time and patience to engage with trolls and (I assume) well-meaning people who have no clue how far-right troll tactics work. There is a large amount of information published on this subject online, you can look it up.
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Seriously though, is anyone in staff checking the flagged posts right now?
I’m going to keep this locked for a week. Hopefully during that time we can look at the flurry of flags coming our way. Please:
- Flagging everything back and forth does not help.
- Assuming bad faith does not help.
- Insulting each other does not help.
I’ll keep the actual topic about how to handle the name open - please post on that one only if you have ideas how MusicBrainz should best deal with the actual data issue, not to debate other people’s ideas about transgender topics.
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This topic was automatically opened after 6 days.