Transparency in Forum Moderation Decisions

[cr****]

I want to raise something about the way moderation currently works in this forum, because this has happened to me several times now.

A post gets removed. I receive a warning with zero points. I am told that I violated the rules. And that’s basically it. What I am not told is what exactly in my post was the problem, which specific rule I violated, or what I would need to change in order to avoid the same *** in the future. And I don’t think that is a reasonable way to moderate a discussion forum.

A forum exists for discussion. People will disagree, criticize things, ask uncomfortable questions, and sometimes discussions will become controversial. Obviously, that doesn’t mean everything should be allowed. We don’t need to discuss whether insults, harassment or personal attacks should be moderated. Of course they should. But that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about situations where I am discussing something on a factual level, explaining my reasoning, asking questions, challenging an explanation, or criticizing something about the platform.

If something I wrote crosses a line, fine. Moderate it. But tell me where I crossed that line.

Simply saying “your post violated the rules” and deleting the entire post doesn’t help anyone. I don’t know which part was considered problematic, which rule it violated, or whether the problem was my argument, a particular sentence, the wording, or something else entirely. And without that information, I have no chance to understand the decision, learn from it, or adjust how I communicate in the future. How exactly am I supposed to avoid repeating a *** when nobody tells me what the *** actually was? You cannot expect a user to follow the rules in the future if you don’t tell them what they did wrong in the first place.

The zero-point warning itself makes this even more confusing. According to the platform’s own explanation of the penalty system, rule ***s result in warnings with penalty points, and the published scale starts at two points. Yet I have had posts removed while receiving a warning carrying zero points. So what does a zero-point warning actually mean? Was my post considered a rule *** or not? If it was, why does the warning carry no penalty points? If zero points are supposed to represent some kind of informal warning or very minor ***, why isn’t that explained? And why was the entire post still removed? There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for how zero-point warnings are supposed to work internally, but as a user, I shouldn’t have to guess what a moderation decision means.

There is another issue here as well: the information provided about forum moderation differs quite significantly depending on which language/version of the platform you are looking at. The English guidelines, for example, explicitly talk about moderators ensuring “fair play and consistency” and tell users to contact support if they disagree with a moderation decision. Other language versions provide different or less detailed explanations. That makes an already unclear process even harder to understand. The rules and the moderation process should not become more or less transparent depending on which language a member happens to use.

And to be clear, I am not asking for moderators to enter into a lengthy discussion with me every time they remove something. That is not the point. I am asking for enough information to understand the decision in the first place. The guidelines tell users that they can contact support if they disagree with a moderation decision. But how am I supposed to know whether I disagree with that decision if I don’t know what the decision was actually based on?

Before I can decide whether I want to challenge a warning, I need to know which part of my contribution was considered a ***, which rule was applied, and why. Otherwise I first have to contact support just to obtain the basic information necessary to decide whether contacting support about the decision is even warranted. And I don’t see how that is in the platform’s interest either. It creates additional support requests that could easily be avoided by providing this basic information with the moderation notice itself. That means more work for the support team, more time spent by the user, and ultimately additional costs for something that could have been communicated in one or two sentences from the beginning.

There is also a more fundamental problem with this approach. If the platform can remove a contribution without explaining what exactly violated which rule, then from the user’s perspective there is no meaningful way to distinguish legitimate moderation from the suppression of an unwanted or uncomfortable opinion. And this is where moderation starts to feel like censorship. I am not saying that removing content which clearly violates the rules is censorship. A forum needs moderation and rules need to be en***d. But there is an important difference between “This specific part of your post violates rule X for this reason” and “You violated our rules. We deleted your post.”

With the first one, I might disagree with the decision, the rule, or its interpretation, but at least I know what happened. I can look at the rule myself, understand the reasoning, and change my behaviour if I actually did something wrong. The second one gives me none of that. It simply gives the platform the ability to make a contribution disappear without providing a meaningful explanation. And when that happens to critical contributions, questions, or discussions about how the platform itself operates, it inevitably starts to feel less like moderation and more like censorship. Maybe that is not the intention, but without transparency, how exactly is a user supposed to tell the difference?

Beyond the individual moderation decision, I also wonder how this is supposed to encourage a healthy discussion culture in the forum. If people are expected to participate within certain boundaries, but those boundaries are never properly explained when they supposedly cross them, what are they supposed to do differently next time? At some point, people don’t become better participants. They simply become more careful about saying anything at all. They stop asking questions, stop challenging things, or stop participating in discussions because they don’t know what might get removed next. And in the worst case, they don’t just leave the discussion — they leave the platform. I don’t see how that benefits a community that is supposed to encourage people to interact with each other.

So why don’t moderation notices tell users which specific part of their contribution violated the rules, which specific rule was violated, and briefly why that rule applies? That doesn’t require an essay from a moderator or an invitation to debate every moderation decision. One or two sentences would often be enough: “This sentence violates rule X because Y.” Then I know what the problem was, I can avoid doing the same thing again, and if I disagree with the decision, I at least have enough information to decide whether I actually want to challenge it.

Right now, the process seems to work the other way around: first the content disappears, then I receive a generic warning, and if I want to understand what actually happened, I have to start another process just to obtain the information that should have been part of the moderation notice in the first place. That is unnecessarily complicated, unnecessarily opaque, and I don’t think “trust us, you violated something” is a particularly healthy basis for moderation in a discussion forum.

Cheers,
crane

[NathalieG]

Hello @crane_,

thank you for your detailed feedback – some of it is fair, and I'd like to briefly explain how our system works and where something actually did go wrong in your case.

Regarding the specific notice in your case: What you received is explicitly labeled above as a "Hint" – this is important to know, because a hint is different in content and meaning from a formal warning with a rule reference. In your case, however, the text shown to you wasn't a good match for the situation – that was a mismatched assignment, not the actual reason for the removal of your post. That's frustrating, and I'm sorry – it shouldn't have happened that way.

Regarding the general system: Our warnings/hints are limited to about 500 characters. This is a deliberate choice, because this system needs to work uniformly across all our platforms and in different languages. That means: a hint has to function and be understandable for moderation and support in the same way in Germany as in every other country we operate in. This consistency is important so that decisions remain traceable, consistent, and comparable across all language versions – but it also means we have to keep the wording short and can't fit detailed, case-specific explanations into the hint itself.

That doesn't excuse the fact that an unsuitable text was chosen in your case – that's a mistake we're looking into. But it does explain why we generally can't include a full rule breakdown with every notice.

Regarding the depth of discussion: There are also limits to how detailed we can get when discussing certain decisions publicly. We can't disclose internal processes, detection mechanisms, or the criteria we use to evaluate profiles or posts – this is standard practice on virtually every platform, for good reason: if someone knows the exact criteria used to detect, say, fake profiles or rule ***s, they can deliberately work around them. This doesn't mean criticism isn't allowed – but it does mean we can only go so far in responding to certain questions, even when we understand the background and can see why it's frustrating.

If you'd like to know the exact rule that applied in a specific case, please feel free to reach out to Support – they can provide details on the individual incident that don't fit into the hint itself.

 

Keep Kinky
Nathalie - FET Crew💜