overwhelmed moderators.
I'm certainly not overwhelmed. In fact, I probably could do with more reports coming my way. Finding posts to take action on is a little different as I'm only one pair of eyes, but I'd estimate over 80% of actions I take are from posts I find rather than them being reported. Certainly, over 50%.
Lets take a look at some of the past months:
Period Jan 04 - Feb 03. In this period, 1457 reports handled as good, 65 handled as bad, 145 unhandled.
Period Dec 05 - Jan 04. In this period, 1870 reports handled as good, 65 handled as bad, 106 unhandled
Period Nov 05 - Dec 05. In this period, 1268 reports handled as good, 77 handled as bad, 83 unhandled.
The vast majority of reports are handled every month/period. In those 3 periods, we have over 90% handled consistently. Unhandled below 10% consistently. Also, do remember that unhandled reports don't mean they haven't been seen or reviewed. Leaving reports unhandled is a perfectly valid option at times. I would estimate (without any evidence of course) that more than 80% of those unhandled reports were seen and reviewed by someone. It could also be based on the time theymos retrieved those stats, it might be that the time theymos retrieves those stats, is a particular hotspot for unhandled reports. Also, some might be in local sections which don't have a dedicated moderator, and therefore no or very little knowledge of the languages between the mods. So, we have to take all those things into consideration.
Personally, I don't think that looks like the mods being overwhelmed. I think we have a little more than 20 moderators including theymos. Lets just say 20 to be safe though. If we take the total of those three periods: 5136 reports and divide that by the amount of mods, thats a little more than 250~ reports across three periods for each moderator. That's a little more than 100 if we take the busiest period of those three for each moderator. That's like a couple reports per moderator each day right?
The height of ICOS and airdrops you might consider it a heavy workload, and a lot got missed then due to sheer amount, but that was when the forum was at its highest activity level. Well before the influx of AI issues, but I don't think the current moderators are overworked per say. Its more like, there's not enough eyes, this was supplemented by a highly active community reporting things, but that has declined over the years, which I would like to see some sort of positive encouragement towards getting more users to report like the report badges or something.
Just for transparency I've handled 2 reports in the last hour (which includes making this post also) and taken 13 actions myself. So, absolutely reports don't make up our entire workload, but that's the only statistics we have to base on when considering whether we are overworked or not.
Why do moderators ignore repeated behavior violations? I have asked multiple times to address these issues but nothing has changed. The Selectively Enforced Rules 3 and 8 BTC are concerning. The forum has guidelines. Rule 3 states no trolling and Rule 8 states no threats. I have noticed threads descend into chaos. People repeatedly break Rules 3 and 8 without facing any consequences like the ones in this post. Broken rules send a message to members raising questions about whether the rules are real or just suggestions. We need consistency. If we want meaningful discussions we cant enforce the rules only when it suits us or when a user is unpopular. Consistency is essential for the platform. If we have Rule 8 a death threat should result in a ban not a discussion. I have noticed that the unofficial rules do not mention AI which I think is a significant issue for the forum. People often interpret arguments differently. It is important to respect varying perspectives. While I recognize that relying solely on AI is not ideal it can improve the quality of many projects. Raw unedited writing can be hard to understand. The initial public response to Bitcoin looks similar to current views on AI. What are moderators plans to do about these issues?
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