[Jamie89]

Originally Posted by Maru

The point of a PM explanation is not resolve all user dissension. That will always occur. It's encouraged by our democracy after all. Uprising against the establishment.

I truly believe the PM system is designed to have a ripple effect on rapport... on forums I've been active on and forums I've modded, this worked better because both mods and reasonable users didn't require as many explanations... it means focus on the real hard cases... it also reduced nastygrams between both sides imo because the system tells you pretty much... write a professional alert to the user the decision... if they respond, reply the rule that is significant and why and leave it there. Other than that, take it to the admin. I would not have my mods arguing back and forth with users with personal commentary (much less in threads). It can be very well intentioned and they could very well be in the right, but it just looks biased... they after all are only following the rules.

The nice thing about PMs too from a mod perspective. Most complaints could be reduced down to accusations, which were harder to prove on the user end... so then easier to justify escalation (if even just to ourselves) as needed to infractions and possibly eventually be banned... eventually people give up and change their ways and move on.... make it personal and they will never give up. You'll have a counter forum developed behind your back and lots of drama could ensue off-site... I know this from experience!

On the front end, it will help filter between the reasonables, the unreasonables and the plain undesirables (trolls who you know will get themselves permabanned eventually). It invites a response, and by no means, does a mod have to respond to that response exhaustively, much do they need to respond to the response of the response... most places that did this, they left a note saying they would take their objections into consideration after the initial response... and if needed, reiterating a stated rule so that they understood that some decisions would be more final than others... nothing personal, nothing exhaustive. Because frankly, mods are a volunteer cast and they can't afford the time to provide an exhaustive explanation to how they mod the forum... most is based on personal judgement and a thick skin and you just sometimes hope you've made the right decision that won't cause too many problems with users.

The work in my field is based on communication through the design of information. So for a living, I have to take into consideration the psychological behind the appearance and presentation of information on websites... small things like changing from infractions to a PM system feels more personal to the user and more inviting than merely leaving a time bomb in the explanation box... it depends on the situation though and eventually some users will exhaust their courtesy PM's and we move to an infraction and then eventually a ban situation... but in general, I think the system is good because it builds rapport with the core user... that's the main benefit from an administrative perspective... not to stop all dissension.

Oh yeah I totally see all that, but do we really have the resources for all of that? Tibbs only a small site so I sort of think if something's not necessary, as much as it would be a nice to have, then is it worth putting mod resource into it? I imagine the infraction system is a much easier method of moderating (granted, I'm sure it also leads to mistakes or unfair judgements on occasion too), but I dunno, what you've described sounds like it would take a lot of mod time that isn't really available, and considering the size of the site would it be worth introducing a whole new administrative process?