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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   21291 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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I find it disappointing that you're directly taking a side in a thread within a mod post. Or at least even though you aren't posting with red text, you're posting with mod-only information a moderation decision and understanding of the rules.

I find it disappointing that you're directly taking a side in a thread within a mod post.

Mods are allowed to have opinions about the topic of a thread and "take a side" on it.

While I don't care to litigate what does and does not count as a "mod post," there is also no requirement that we are to be dispassionately neutral while making observations as mods. A lot of people need to let go of the idea that we are customer service bots.

Since nobody is getting modded, your objection reads as petulant.

I'll second phailyoor here: the standard I'd want is "the mod hat should be on or off, per post".

If you're going to make a post that's part of your position as moderator, it shouldn't be combined with actual engagement in the discussion: people have to pay attention to moderator posts as it might be "stop it or you're getting banned", so adding Amadan-the-user commentary with it unfairly privileges Amadan-the-user's viewpoint ahead of other users. People are free to read or not read wraelk-the-user posts, and it should be the same for Amadan-the-user.

I thought there was some kind of mod-hat formatting this site had, and I'd expect the original post (as well as the one I'm responding to) to be in that formatting, with the actual engagement in the discussion moved to its own non-mod-hat post. That way users can pay attention to mod-hat formatting as conveying important mod information, and regular formatting as just being the on-equal-footing user having a regular discussion.

I put a modhat on for "stop it or you're getting banned" posts. Those are the ones that have the red flag. Me saying "I see a lot of stupid shit in the mod queue" or "No, I am not modding this post" is not the same and does not obligate me to go into customer service bot mod.

I generally do not opine on the thread itself when I modhat a post. We especially avoid using a modhat in a thread where we have already been engaging (or arguing).

That is a general practice, not a hard and fast rule.

Note that the topic of modding (whether or not someone was being unnecessarily antagonistic) was orthogonal to the topic I expressed an opinion about (LLMs).

We will not be following the practice that "I may not refer to anything to do with moderating or what I see in the mod queue if I talk about the thread." Once again, we are not customer service bots, and while we're mindful of appearances and community trust in our diligence and best efforts at fairness, there is a limit to how much weight we're going to give someone sore at being disagreed with.

Whatever you say, you make the rules here. But it certainly has the appearance of a situation where you mod the people you disagree with and don't mod the people you agree with, whether or not this is true in this particular case.

If you seriously believe I didn't mod SecureSignals because I happen to agree with him about LLMs, and otherwise would have, I don't know what to say to you - you've been here too long for me to believe you actually believe that.

Well, phailyoor said that it had the appearance of such a situation, not that this was actually the case - I think the idea is that mods should avoid even the impression of impropriety, and thus, should remain neutral in "mod posts" even when their reason for modding someone in this particular case is clearly unrelated to any personal disagreement, so that it never looks as though they're modding someone for disagreeing with them. This doesn't seem crazy to me in principle. Although you guys get accused of bias so frequently anyway that I'm not sure officially adopting such niceties would move the needle in terms of public perception.

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