Warning Level.

[renif]

(03-11-2015 01:07 PM)Geir Isene Wrote:  I am a bit sceptical to comprehensive systems for handling interpersonal realtions. My experience is that relations between people are best handled by direct communication with the people involved and not by any set system.

Total agreement with your observation! Problems with human beings, especially in internet fora, are addressed the best way on a human basis, not in an automated system. That said, it is also necessary to impose a certain frame of rules to prevent future problems. In the end, the success of moderation depends on a reasonable balance between both targets. Something, an automatic system never will achieve.

IMHO the forum needs some sort of rebalancing, not on the side of automatic warning levels, but in the the way moderation work is done. Above all, a good moderator never discusses any conflict with a user directly in a thread. He or she should discuss the issue by sending an PM ("direct communication" as said above by Geir Isene), because it's not the aim to make someone look like a fool, nor to insult any user. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened recently.

A good moderator knows how to mitigate a conflict even without an automatic warning system, that's why we call him moderator at all (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/moderare).

Greetings