Recent events regarding the artist nippachi

HyphenSam said:

In regards to the negative feedback on nth color (user #1141717, I will refer to him as snale from now on), I don't believe there was sufficient communication between him and Provence. I've talked to snale on Discord and he said there was zero communication between him and Provence prior to these events. Snale has Provence blocked on Discord for a separate matter, so AFAIK they were not talking on the Discord server, but him nuking his messages makes this hard to verify. If Provence has sent a DM to snale prior to sending the feedback then I'd like to see it.

At the top of the feedback screen, there is text saying "Before giving a user negative feedback, you must communicate with them privately first to tell them what they're doing wrong and how to improve. A negative feedback should only be given after they've been warned first, unless the user is deliberately breaking the site rules, such as engaging in intentional vandalism or ban evasion." To my knowledge, snale hasn't been communicated first, or warned about the bad behaviour snale exhibited. The feedback mentioned to stop approving actual bad images but did not elaborate any further and if snale was warned on this. I have talked to Provence about sending feedback without DMing and he viewed it as a guideline and not a hard rule, which I disagree with.

People in this thread have talked about the Discord server is an official extension of the site, and talking on there counts as informing the issue. I am a little iffy on this because it is harder to prove if you've warned someone on Discord than a DM on a site, which cannot be deleted and is easily provable. I think for serious events, a DM should be sent even if they have been communicating on the Discord. But I am open to other people's opinions on this.

Snale has said he didn't believe the admins didn't want him around and were dismissive of this issue in private DMs. nonamethanks said post #9132677 was only approved as an inside joke even though snale has told him he approved it because he genuinely liked it, so snale felt ignored, and overall felt like none of his contributions mattered. Snale talked to another admin on his feedback who was also dismissive, but I won't be naming him. Taking all this into account, I can completely understand why he decided to leave the site.

Sorry if this comes off as a ramble. Snale deleting his account has been bothering me, and I really don't want to see another good contributor deleting their account over a completely preventable incident. But I don't see any serious effort to prevent this from happening again, so it will likely happen again.

The feedback got deleted, without communication I might add.
The feedback was issued because he approved a garbage post after another feedback has been sent to another user. And that feedback is still up. And it was a negative one.
You speak so much of fairness, how is it fair then that the feedback to loom is still up while the one to snale is not?

MaybeSnale should have thought twice if an approval of a post that he knows lead to a negative feedback for another approver is out of the question.

But since enough tantrums were thrown around, you got what you wanted while another user is kept in the mud and it is much easier to defend loom's negative than it is Snales. Yet Snales' feedback got deleted.
I hope you're happy hat an user got off the hook who displayed very questionable behavior while another one got hanged, also without former communication.

Provence said:

You speak so much of fairness, how is it fair then that the feedback to loom is still up while the one to snale is not?

I think initially the negative feedback to loom was unwarranted and should've been removed. After seeing loom's behaviour in the Discord, I can see why a mod/admin decided to undelete the feedback, but in my opinion I think the only negative feedback from loom's 1 day ban should remain on his user record. When I first saw Bionic's feedback, I didn't treat it seriously and thought it was a joke. I'm still not taking it seriously, but I am less emphatic towards loom because of his behaviour. So I'll leave it to the mods on how to handle it. I don't believe I am being unfair towards loom.

Provence said:

Maybe Snale should have thought twice if an approval of a post that he knows lead to a negative feedback for another approver is out of the question.

This statement alone is enough to convince me you lack the empathy towards snale and didn't care enough to at least converse with him about your issue. As I said, this incident was entirely preventable. There's no need to escalate things to the point of sending a negative feedback without any prior communication.

Provence said:

you got what you wanted

I haven't. Deleting the feedback is a nice gesture, but it won't bring snale back, and deleting it wasn't my goal when writing my post. I just want the mods/admins to be aware of this situation and try to prevent something similar from happening. I don't want another good contributor gone.

HyphenSam said:

This statement alone is enough to convince me you lack the empathy towards snale and didn't care enough to at least converse with him about your issue. As I said, this incident was entirely preventable. There's no need to escalate things to the point of sending a negative feedback without any prior communication.

I have already proven there was prior communication. If this communication happens directly between two users or through the site itself (feedback records) is not relevant. Also, the feedback records are available to everyone. If Snale chose to never visit that page, it does not excuse that he didn't know.
But regardles: Other users also say that Snale was aware of he "shit" that was "stirred" before he approved the post.

I know you want to believe that Snale is innocent in this case and was a victim caught up in the heat of the moment, but that's sadly not the case.

I would like to see this communication because snale himself said there weren't any prior to these events. And I don't expect everyone to be actively watching the feedback records, so that is not a good excuse. Another approver was unfairly banned because they simply weren't aware of the drama surrounding this artist. It is unreasonable to expect them to know what's going on because they haven't checked the feedback records.

HyphenSam said:

I would like to see this communication because snale himself said there weren't any prior to these events. And I don't expect everyone to be actively watching the feedback records, so that is not a good excuse. Another approver was unfairly banned because they simply weren't aware of the drama surrounding this artist. It is unreasonable to expect them to know what's going on because they haven't checked the feedback records.

Here's a quick chronological rundown of these events:

1. loom approval on April 11th, 16:54
2. Bionic's feedback to loom on April 11th, 17:35
3. Flag for that post on April 11th, 23:13
4. Snale approval on April 14th, 22:53

While the user records are now whiped, this post under the latest flag has received 21(!) poor quality marks. I think it is very fair to assume that a similar number was present for Snale, as he has approved that post almost on deadline (the post only had 20 more minutes on the clock for it to hit the three day mark). A rejection message was even sent that the joke approvals should stop. And I can't blame that rejection message.
The approvers were annoyed and rightfully so.

On top of that, another approval (loom's) has resulted in a negative feedback for that approver. That is way too much "coincidence" to me.

Cool, so you still have provided no evidence of properly communicating with snale before leaving a negative feedback, which is the crux of my argument. Your argument about it being justified falls flat when this should have been directly told to snale instead of after he deleted his account.

HyphenSam said:

Cool, so you still have provided no evidence of properly communicating with snale before leaving a negative feedback, which is the crux of my argument. Your argument about it being justified falls flat when this should have been directly told to snale instead of after he deleted his account.

If Snale chose to follow the pointers given to him is up to him and he did not. The site clearly communicated to him that this post is off-limits. As a year-long approver he was bound to know.
The fact he deleted his account is unfortunate, but the feedbackk itself is entirely justified.

If that is what you consider "communication", then I have nothing else to say. We live in completely different worlds.

HyphenSam said:

If that is what you consider "communication", then I have nothing else to say. We live in completely different worlds.

The post was also topic in the local Discord server where it was clearly stated that this post is off-limits as he was in a longer conversation with Bioneko about it.

Provence said:

The post was also topic in the local Discord server where it was clearly stated that this post is off-limits as he was in a longer conversation with Bioneko about it.

Next time, please send a site DM to someone before you leave them a negative feedback. This is what I mean by "communication", because all users must privately communicate before you send them a negative feedback. This is the main takeaway from this discussion that you should consider. I have nothing else to add because you don't seem to be listening in anything else I say.

HyphenSam said:

Next time, please send a site DM to someone before you leave them a negative feedback. This is what I mean by "communication", because all users must privately communicate before you send them a negative feedback. This is the main takeaway from this discussion that you should consider. I have nothing else to add because you don't seem to be listening in anything else I say.

The communication that has happened on the Discord is more than enough for Snale to know that he was heading into a minefield and he stepped on a mine.
You don't have to write a DM to an user before issuing a negative feedback to them. That is and was never the case before. You could always issue a negative feedbackk for a user based on conversations in the forum, in comments and of course, DMs.
The wiki does not state Discord because the wiki never did get properly rewritten after a good chunk of communication between users happens on the Discord server but it should be seen as a proper way of communicating with users.

I don't know why you think I'm threatening you. That was not my intention when writing my post. I'm giving you a warning so this doesn't happen again to someone else.

At the very top of the page when issuing someone feedback it explicitly says "Before giving a user negative feedback, you must communicate with them privately first to tell them what they're doing wrong and how to improve. A negative feedback should only be given after they've been warned first, unless the user is deliberately breaking the site rules, such as engaging in intentional vandalism or ban evasion."

Yes, you must communicate privately with them before giving them negative feedback. The communication on Discord you describe does not sound like you are directly conversing with snale about your issue with him. I agree with the wiki needing a rewrite in help:user records.

HyphenSam said:

I don't know why you think I'm threatening you. That was not my intention when writing my post. I'm giving you a warning so this doesn't happen again to someone else.

At the very top of the page when issuing someone feedback it explicitly says "Before giving a user negative feedback, you must communicate with them privately first to tell them what they're doing wrong and how to improve. A negative feedback should only be given after they've been warned first, unless the user is deliberately breaking the site rules, such as engaging in intentional vandalism or ban evasion."

Yes, you must communicate privately with them before giving them negative feedback. The communication on Discord you describe does not sound like you are directly conversing with snale about your issue with him. I agree with the wiki needing a rewrite in help:user records.

The wiki says the following:

"Negative feedback should be given sparingly. Before giving a user a negative feedback, you should communicate with them privately to tell them what they're doing wrong and how to improve. Negative feedback should only be given for flagrant rule violations, or for continued bad behavior after having been warned. A neutral feedback should normally be given first, unless the user is deliberately breaking the rules, such as engaging in intentional vandalism or sockpuppeting."

Given what happened between Bioneko and Snale beforehand, it is very fair to say that Snale did this deliberately.
What the wiki describes here are things like tagging etc. It is meant that we should not expose users in comments for tagging poorly for example. But we should kkeep it "private".

That does not apply when an open discussion takes place. It makes no sense to contact that participant via DM again after said discussion has happened.

I agree somewhat.

I don't think it's reasonable for any user to be aware of all feedbacks / warnings other users are getting, or the fine details of why. And it's somewhat unreasonable to count someone bearing witness to a conversation about a negative feedback as understanding it.

I think it's OK to warn someone in a Discord channel rather than a 1:1 discussion, but you still must be addressing them directly and specifically. Snale being part of an open discussion on bad behaviour doesn't count as warning Snale and Snale acknowledging that the discussed behaviour is wrong.
But if you address Snale's behaviour directly in this same channel, then that would count even if you never DMailed them or sent them a direct message on Discord.

Edit: You clarified that you didn't sufficiently warn Snale on Discord before giving feedback, but normally follow roughly these guidelines, so I've no concerns. And Strobe Red deleted the feedback, so whatever. Obviously, the user deleting their account is an overreaction and they had multiple reasons to, anyway.

Provence said:

That does not apply when an open discussion takes place. It makes no sense to contact that participant via DM again after said discussion has happened.

Why? A direct communication with the user makes sense when you plan on giving them a user record, especially considering this "open discussion" does not involve you directly talking to snale. I do not believe this counts as sufficient communication prior to giving snale a negative feedback. But this may be where we disagree because I feel like we are talking past each other and disagree on what counts as proper communication.

At the very least, in the future I want you to DM users first before giving them feedback so we can avoid this drama happening again. Can we at least agree on that? And no, I am not threatening you again.

nonamethanks said:

...

And since you're trying to rule-lawyer yourself out of an undefendable position, your feedback was in fact initially deleted, and only undeleted after you started doubling down on approving garbage being the right thing to do, proving that the feedback was absolutely correct.

...

• nobody on the mod team bothered banning either of them, and by the time I had come back to the site and started becoming active again, several months had passed, so in my opinion there was no point in banning them other than for putting up a show. Since people had accepted Kringe back, I figured they had done the same with KSG

...

For the record, amongst those who knew about KSG, she was generally welcomed back. TrueKringe on the other hand was still being annoying and engaging in the exact same behavior that got him banned last time, except this time also boasting about how he was "let back". IMHO, to my knowledge at the time, the way he went about it was way, way worse, since it showed exactly 0 signs of any improvement whatsoever. The sinfulporcupine account however had a good track record, so people didn't really have issue with that per se.

As for my personal opinion on loom feedback: I think using behavior after a shitty feedback that also didn't involve prior contact (which, according to the wikis, is what should be done, especially for a negative feedback), is a horrible idea. By that logic I could just go hand out random feedbacks, and if someone loses their shit over one it's suddenly valid despite that being after the fact? The ban I don't feel that strongly over, but the initial negative feedback is just ridiculous for the same reason the feedback on Snale is at least slightly questionable:

Blank_User said:

I agree with you on this. I don't see how "should only" can be interpreted as anything other than a hard rule.

...

To be honest, this seems like a bit of an overreaction on snale's part. The "inside joke" comment wasn't singling out snale. The main point was that Approvers should have the judgment to see that a post like that doesn't meet quality standards. I know Approvers are encouraged to approve things they like, but there are limits. Just because you like something doesn't mean it belongs here.

On the other hand, only 44 out of 50197 posts he approved were deleted. With such a low amount of deleted posts, I don't see how a pattern of bad uploads can be established. We need to accept that Approvers aren't perfect and will make bad calls once in a while.

On the other other hand, snale shouldn't be hyperfixating on that post. He approved thousands of posts that are still active, as well as recently received a lot of positive feedbacks, and he thinks his contributions don't matter to anyone simply because of users' reactions to that one post that obviously did not meet quality standards? That is completely irrational.

While I'm not a massive fan on how the snale feedback went, at least there was *some* communication. I don't think it should've been a neg, and ideally could've just been a dmail to address the user personally and directly, but at least there was something. That said, I agree with Blank_User that it was also a massive overreaction on Snale's part. For some context, this is the 3rd time in recent-ish history they deleted their account (with the original account being reinstated the first time), and at least the past two times have followed the similar pattern of these extreme overreactions. Since this pattern had already started a few weeks ago, I honestly think it was just a matter of time until *something* caused them to nuke their account again. I honestly like them as a person and as a user, but having to handle someone with velvet gloves because they got some weird idea stuck in their head was somewhat annoying the first time, but this time it was just extremely annoying and tiresome.

Provence said:

Here's a quick chronological rundown of these events:

1. loom approval on April 11th, 16:54
2. Bionic's feedback to loom on April 11th, 17:35
3. Flag for that post on April 11th, 23:13
4. Snale approval on April 14th, 22:53

While the user records are now whiped, this post under the latest flag has received 21(!) poor quality marks. I think it is very fair to assume that a similar number was present for Snale, as he has approved that post almost on deadline (the post only had 20 more minutes on the clock for it to hit the three day mark).

It's important to note that "controversial" posts like this always get way, way, way more "poor quality" feedbacks than any normal post, so after like 5 it's irrelevant how many it actually got. I do think the approval was at least in part a sort of "rebellious" approval, but it feeds into the somewhat self-destructive behavior I described above.

LQ said:
And a moderator deleted the feedback, so whatever.

Yes, but for a different reason than the supposed non-existing communication HyphenSam claims.

i think using actual count of approver pq/disinterests for this discord meme thing as a judge of "objective unapprovability" is not very useful

usual garbage gets maybe 1 pq but more likely just a few disinterests, most things that get 20+ approvers pressing a button aren't because they came up naturally checking the queue