Proposed bill to regulate forum moderation

Hi, recent events have made me aware of the unchecked powers of forum moderators. Currently, any forum moderator can delete, alter, and lock posts and threads, and ban a user from the forums with hardly any oversight.

I think this is a threat to the freedom of speech. In particular, a forum moderator can use his or her power to stifle the free expression of a citizen who may have a legitimate grievance. For example, a post critical of the city, or one of the city's personages may be deleted or locked without any due process, or oversight.

Thus I am proposing a set of regulations that I hope will protect the right to free speech that every nburg official is bound to uphold.

Some notes:
1. If the bill is passed, forum moderation will be optimal if there are 3 moderators.
2. These regulations will necessarily slow down the process of moderating the forums, and limit the power of a single moderator. I posit that this is good. It is better to err on the side of freedom rather than on the side of censorship.

Please comment on this, and tell me if it's any good.

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Summary:

Any deletion, alteration, or locking of threads and posts in the Neualtenburg forums should be approved by a majority of the forum moderators. The banning of any person in the Neualtenburg forums must be approved by a simple majority of forum moderators.

All moderators decisions must be recorderd, and the RA may review and reverse any of the moderators' decisions. If at any time there is only one moderator, no threads or posts may be deleted, locked, or altered, and no person may be banned from the forums.


Philosophy:

The Neualtenburg constitution binds officers of the city to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among these rights is the right to free speech: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

Unbridled, the moderators' sweeping powers to delete, modify, and lock threads and posts, as well as their power to ban people from the forums constitute a threat to the right of free speech. Thus there is a need to regulate the moderators of the Neualtenburg forums.


Procedures

The decision to delete, edit, or lock threads and posts must be made by a simple majority of the forum moderators. The decision to ban a person from the forums must be made by a simple majority of moderators as well. Once a majority is reached, the moderators should then act on the decision. Moderators are required to publish the reason for the decision, as well as who voted for it.

Editing a post:
Prior to editing a post, a copy of the post must be archived in case the moderators' decisions are to be reviewed. The reason for editing, and the names of the moderators who voted for editing the post should be placed on the edited post.

Deleting a post:
Prior to deleting a post, a copy of the post must be archived in case the moderators' decisions are to be reviewed. The reason for deletion, and the names of the moderators who voted the delete the post should be placed in lieu of the deleted post.

Locking a thread:
Prior to locking the thread, a post whousl be appened with the initial post detailing the reason for locking the thread, and giving the names of the moderators who voted to lock it.


Deleting a thread:
Prior to deleting a thread, an offline copy must be made of all posts in the thread. A new thread should be started, with the initial post detailing the reason for deleting the thread, and giving the names of the moderators who voted to delete the thread.

Banning a user from the forums:
A new thread should be started, with the initial post detailing the reason for banning the user, and giving the names of the moderators who voted to ban him.

Review and oversight:
The RA shall have the power to review any decision of the forum moderators, and reverse any of moderators' decisions via a simple majority vote.

Single moderator:
If at any time there is only one forum moderator, no threads or posts may be deleted, locked, or altered, and no person may be banned from the forums.

You're going to run into problems with the constitution on this one, meaning it will be rejected as a law by the SC. Also, before drafting a bill, the topic is usually discussed in the forum to reach a consensus.

Moderation can only be performed by members of the SC who act as the enforcing and judicial body of the city. Currently, I am the only active moderator of the forum but we can certainly add Gwyn and Aliasi if she's confirmed.

I should note that in my year and half of moderating this forum, there has never been a permanently deleted or locked thread, only one permanently deleted post, and no edited posts. Today alone we had six. I would submit the problem is not with the moderation.

I will accept this, provided it is passed with an accompanying bill which charges damages to posters that print disparaging remarks or threats against others in the forum. Given that the disparaging remarks or threats could spend several days in the forum before three moderators can be brought together, the damages assessed should be sufficiently high to discourage attacks.

This violates the constitution. The RA has no power to reverse SC decisions, aside from the ratification and impeachment process. This would be like Congress or the President in the U.S. being able to overturn Supreme Court decisions.

The freedom of expression stops when that expression impinges on the freedom of others. Free expression does not include harmful expression.

For instance, in the U.S. it is illegal to incite individuals to violence, threaten the life of the President, or to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. Individuals can be held accountable for libelous or slanderous claims made in public. Further, lying under oath in court (perjury) is a felony. The list goes on and on.

In regards to the post of yours which was edited twice, it contained personal threats which are absolutely not protected expression.


I will accept this, provided it is passed with an accompanying bill which charges damages to posters that print disparaging remarks against others in the forum. Given that the disparaging remarks could spend several days in the forum before three moderators can be brought together, the damages assessed should be high enough to compensate the target of the attacks.

I see

Which is why I posted this here and solicited comments.

I have no problems with all 3 members of the SC (I have no doubt aliasi will be confirmed, she is an excellent nominee) being moderators.

How many of those six should have been edited, deleted, or locked? And should one person be able to arbitrarily decide that without due processs, or oversight?

Given 2 or 3 moderators, only 2 moderators need to agree to get a majority vote. Sanctions for people who have gone beyond the bounds of free speech is acceptable to me, so long as the person gets a fair trial. However, there is the question of posters who are not citizens of nburg.


Hm, what I was aiming for here is that there should be an avenue for a person who thinks he was wrongly censored to appeal the censorship. After all that person's side was never heard in the decision to remove/delete/etc. his posts.

The question is, when is something harmful expression, and when is something humor, or a legitimate criticism, or grievance? Should this be arbitrarily decided by one person without any due process?

If I printed a slanderous comment in the US, am I not given the right to defend myself in court?

You mistake me for someone else.

Should there be sanctions if the moderator was found to have acted inappropriately?

You mistake me for someone else.

The intention was to have at least 2 moderators to the forums (the thing listed at the bottom of the page). However, for those times that there is only one moderator (say one moderator abruptly left SL), the remaining moderator will not be allowed to act on the forums (forcing the SC to act immediately and put in another moderator).

I also think it would be wise to codify in law an unspoken rule that's existed since the beginning of the N'burg forum, that discussions or personal conflicts that arise in the LL forums be kept out of the N'burg forum unless it directly affects the city.

To use the posts from today as an example, what would be unacceptable is:

1. Calls to crash the sim in retaliation to external posts.
   
2. Name calling or mocking in threads in retaliation to external posts.
   
3. Personal threats posted in retaliation to external posts.

Acceptable posts would be:

1. Discussions on impeachment.
   
2. Discussions concerning bills on moderation reform.
   
3. Discussions on how posting in external forums affects the city.

~Ulrika~

The SC acts as the enforcing body and the judicial body. I see no reason why the posts couldn't be reviewed by the SC after locking by a moderator, however the knife cuts both ways. The SC should review the posts and decide if action should be taken against the poster as well for their remarks.

This is decided by the moderator (member of the SC) on the spot. That's why they exist. It is certainly available for review, as long as that individual is willing to be held liable for their comments as well. How do you think you'd fare if you were taken to N'burg court to discuss a statement calling to crash the sim?

Yes, but only if you're charged with a crime. Are you saying that you want me to charge you inciting damage to the city?

Instead of increasing the amount of bureaucracy associated with moderation, I think it would be more beneficial to clearly outline the ramifications for damaging speech in the forum. With clear penalties, perhaps we won't need much monitoring at all. After all, there has only been a single deleted post for 1.5 years until today.

Also, I would like to apologize. I had you confused with Jsecure, who made the threats to me in the forum.

~Ulrika~

Just to add something very briefly (sorry, I really do have limited time for this). "Freedom of speech", when quoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is never an "absolute" right. The last article on the Declaration, often disregarded, clearly states:



This means that you cannot exercize your "freedom of speech" right to, say, incite violence, promote destruction of public property, threatening people, and so on. Actually, in my country, we currently have a problem with right-wing parties doing public demonstrations against homosexuality and inciting racism, on the basis of the "right to peaceful assembly" (article 20 (1) on the declaration of human rights).

The same applies to Neualtenburg. Discussing "freedom of speech" is a very difficult moral and ethical question which I would try to avoid. One of the many reasons for including things like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Neualtenburg's Constitution is to have an overall guideline for dealing with these ethical questions, without discussing them first. We have accepted in good faith a 50-year old document, written by wise people, that works for perhaps 6 billion human beings

Sure, Gwyn, this is the reason why no moderator should have the right to delete a post only because she feels to do so.

And we should not forget that RL laws override SL laws.

If we decided to edit or delete posts in the Nburg forum that does not fit into "game rules", RL law would possibly not allow to do so.

We have to stick to RL laws in this public forum.

If there is any doubt whether a certain post does really violate the law we should not edit or delete it at all.

Mel

I agree with this post and with the proposal for greater democracy over moderation processes of this forum. Yesterday Ulrika didn't care for what I had to say so she deleted and/or edited my posts. That's not a responsible use of a power of moderation, so this power should be controlled.

I don't know how I would fare, but I would have defended myself. And whatever the court's decision, I would have abided by it. I think this course of action would have been infinitely better than arbitrary deletion and locking of my posts.


If you'd like to.


We need to plan for growth. If nburg grows as a community, there will be increasingly diverse political and moral viewpoints in nburg. Debate *will* become more strident, and nasty things will be said. Do we want to risk the stifling of debate in exchange for an orderly forums? Or do we want to risk a chaotic forums in exchange for a free and open exchange of ideas? I believe the latter is more preferable.


Np, we all make mistakes. However, this does bring up the sticky question of deletion of posts made by non-nburg residents. Since they cannot be held responsible for their words under nburg law, I think the moderators should have more latitude to delete/edit/lock them. ( Sorry JSecure, you could join nburg, if you want ).

However, you must remember, when it comes to Neualtenburg.. We have RL laws, then SL laws, then the laws of Neualtenburg. Every citizen agrees to these laws when they become a citizen of Neualt. Every citizen also has the power to vote for the RA seats (or form or join a party and run for an RA seat themselves). You must work within our current laws though even if you seek to have them changed.

Absolutely d´accord!

Mel

I agree with this part as well. I want our citizens to be able to speak their minds in our forums. But personal attacks or attacks that would be aimed at a group of citizens should have some consequence I think. Debate and differing viewpoints is good and I don't want to see that go away.

This of course applies only to Neualtenburg citizens in my opinion. Non-citizens I would have a much more strict ruleset for.

I suppose you should remove me from being a forum moderator

However, Melinda, RL law does not apply, insofar as the servers are based in the US, in the state of California. So far as the US is concerned, Neualtenburg (and Linden Lab) are private entities who may place whatever restriction they like on how someone uses their equipment, i.e. the forum software.

This is not to be understood I support restrictions on what one can say; rather, that "sticking to RL laws" is not a consideration (unless we start a thread on assassinating a public figure or some such; that's frowned on).

Being a private entity does not mean that a company does not have to follow RL laws, does it?

BTW, I am not expressing an opinion. I had this kind of debate in the past several times .... finally lawyers told us (it was not only me) how this is being dealt with at courts. I also used to think that the provider of a forum is not only responsible for the content of the posts but has also the right to delete posts without notification (especially *because* he is responsible for the content), but I learned that I was wrong, at least in Germany.

Anyway, I think the whole story is a bit theoretical now. Nobody here really wants to delete posts, right?

Mel

The other members of the SC, Aliasi and Gwyn, have been added as forum moderators.

I left Kendra as a moderator, as I've been thinking it might be a good idea to keep the head of the AC as an observer. Unable to moderate, she'll still have the ability to look over deleted threads to make sure everything is OK with the SC. It's a way of adding transparency to the system.

However, leaving Kendra as an observer is equivalent to me making policy for the RA, which is not allowed. The reason I did this is, that I'd like to add the AC observer clause to the moderation bill and I figured it would be easier just to leave her there instead of removing her and then adding her again later (we have to pester Jeska to do this).

~Ulrika~

I'm sure we'll have to hang you from the tallest tree in the sim for this blatant disrespect of the law.

Seriously, we do have to deal with the practical realities - since, after all, these forums are ultimately a Linden Lab sphere of influence, we just squat on 'em. I can't see a serious objection, contingent on removing Kendra if the bill is submitted and fails, of course.