Good morning, everyone,
First of all, let me reiterate the following to avoid any misunderstandings:
Panos was stripped of his moderator status for one reason and one reason only. When someone becomes a moderator, they agree to abide by certain basic rules.
- They will set an example for the community
- They will always try to maintain a certain balance so that the standard of discussion is preserved.
Panos, through the way he expressed himself, failed to adhere to those two points — and it was not the first time — so unfortunately, his role as a moderator became incompatible with the way he conducted himself in the discussion.
His decision to anonymise his account was entirely his own. Although it did not come as a surprise to me, this decision saddens me, as I believe it saddens the community as a whole.
There was no specific disagreement between us; I continue to appreciate him as a person and respect his views, but I have always been, and remain, unequivocal about the two rules outlined above.
Also, to avoid any misunderstanding, some of you here mentioned that although I was harsh with Panos, I was never equally harsh with @liga_rosa. Two points:
- First, @liga_rosa was never a moderator, so there was no moderator status to remove from him. It goes without saying that I will be more demanding of a moderator than of a forum member.
- I have pointed out Nikos’s inappropriate behaviour to him personally and publicly on numerous occasions. Particularly with regard to issues concerning instrument makers.
First, allow me to give you some background on how I try to manage the forum and how I generally think about online communities. Since I took over the active management of the forum in 2018, I have constantly been balancing two quite different approaches. Both have merit, and quite often it is not entirely clear to me which one is right.
The first is that online communities should have complete freedom of speech. As long as the discussion is conducted with mutual respect between members, every opinion or statement should be able to be expressed freely. If someone disagrees with that view, they are likewise free to go into the topic and write their own opinion, explaining why they believe their position is the correct one. According to this approach, the moderator’s role is only to maintain the conditions of mutual respect between members during the discussion, not to intervene in its actual flow. The problem here, however, is that an obvious imbalance arises.
Let me give an example:
Suppose a member uploads their dissertation to the forum. It is a major personal undertaking that has taken them time and energy, and of which they themselves are proud. Naturally, they upload their work to invite criticism and spark discussion. The first reply they receive is: The title caught my interest, but as soon as I read that it mentioned X topic in the first paragraph, I stopped reading; I was genuinely disappointed. I don’t think anyone should mention this topic in their dissertation.
What is the problem with this message? The fact that although this person is free to stop reading at that point, they publicly judge an entire dissertation based on three words they read in the first paragraph. Suddenly, an entire discussion develops around those three words, moves away from the original topic, and the statement that the dissertation was disappointing remains publicly on the forum for ever. If the author wants to refute this view, they will have to respond with a lengthy text and spend extra hours and energy. By contrast, the person who judged the work from its first paragraph spent only five minutes reading that paragraph, giving up and writing three lines about how disappointed it made them and how no one should bother reading the dissertation. Obviously, if I were its author, after a certain point I would not want to write on the forum again, even though I might well have had many interesting things to say.
The imbalance, then, lies in the following: writing that something is not worthwhile, is wrong or has a problem often costs far less time and energy than refuting that view. And so online communities, from forums to Facebook and Twitter, are most often filled with negative comments, which very rarely receive any response. The difference with other communities, however, is that on a forum the written word remains, and someone searching for the dissertation in the example above will see that first negative comment before anything else, without reading the rest of the discussion. The impression has already been made.
It is easy enough to make the connection: if it is not a dissertation, it could be online bouzouki videos or lessons. If it is not lessons, it could be bouzoukis made by an instrument maker. Or anything else.
Our initial idea for dealing with this was to say that the opinions expressed must be substantiated. But who decides that? What “committee” decides whether an opinion is sufficiently substantiated? Is the person making that judgement always right? In any case, this is where restrictions on freedom of speech suddenly appear. You cannot write whatever you want. If the moderation team decides that something is not sufficiently substantiated, then you are not free to say whatever you want. And in practice, this makes the approach impossible to implement — except in truly blatant cases.
And that is where the second approach comes in: rather than there being complete freedom of speech, the role of moderation is to determine what may and may not be written on the forum. For example, the moderation team might decide that whether or not a book about rebetiko contains typographical errors is not of interest to the forum. Does that limit the members’ freedom of speech? In a way, yes. The problem is that this decision comes from a central body, the moderation team, and certainly not all members will agree with it. In a way, it is as our friend Teliso wrote: “fascist”.
So which approach is the right one? How should the moderation team behave? And to make this even more practical: The topic is titled “About freedom of speech”, but some of you here are asking us to take it away from two forum members. How do you think the moderators should respond to this request?
I will conclude by saying that I want to hear your views. The members’ concerns are my concerns too, and I want to make the forum better. We are not here to discuss only the easy things, but the difficult ones as well. Thank you all for taking part in this discussion.