A "removed because it got locked" rule creates the ability for anyone who understand gaming systems to arbitrarily get posts removed by starting fires there. Don't expect that.

A "timing locks and removals after both sides spoke" for an arbitrary amount of sides doesn't seem vaguely usable as a moderation standard.

"Never remove or lock anything" sounds like a recipe for a loud, tire-fire like free-for-all that really betrays the "85% softer than normal reddit" brand of /r/boardgames that is vociferously loved by many.

We are going to be painted as milquetoast, reactionary, feckless or censors no matter what choices we make here. What's that old line about compromises being good when that everyone is somewhat unhappy.

Publicly shaming people in a group rarely helps to get anyone chiller, or less likely to cause problems. The mod team has been trumpeted as the savior of the sub in a /r/metaboardgames post (since deleted) after I moderated a random fistfight, then condemned by the same person (who then sent a "so long and thanks for all the fish" message) when I said "No, we shouldn't ban KIA posters out of hand". Y'all give me whiplash yo. There is such a thing as people experienced existing in a mix of environments and dealing with people stirring shit while letting a lot of stuff go. We're not looking to be your parents, but we are looking to run something that doesn't scare people off out of hand. We're not looking to join your intellectual in-groups, or let your groups run wild over the sub. We are tone policing and making a safe space at once. Deal with it.

We pretty loudly state how to exist here in the rules. Trolling has always been moderated out of places. So if being angry and uncivil is against the rules, and moderating actions trying to make people angry and uncivil is happening, it sounds like to me we're doing our job, and making /r/boardgames about board games.

We do ban people, but we rarely ban them immediately, we do tell people who to improve, or where they're causing problems, and it almost never is "stop feeling like they're going too far" it's "damn dude, please say something else than 'Fuck Wil Wheaton', like you know, about playing games". All the moderation staff and a couple /r/metaboardgames posters have gotten these personalized to them messages about conflicts. That's not censorship, that's conflict resolution. If you've not worked in a place what has that, I'm sorry if the first encounter of it is unpleasant, but all large organizations and clubs do have to do that.

We are more likely to moderate and eventually ban someone who almost every time we see them is involved in acrimonious, negative, controversial stuff as opposed to someone mostly instead talking about miniature painting, the superiority of worker placement and the role of voting to win in the context of war games, then occasionally going off the rails. 99% of people moderated we don't talk to more than 1-2 times a year. We are more likely to moderate the person who seems to only be picking fights. That is because they are constantly being acrimonious, negative, and uncivil, or trolling people, and literally without context, many comments then fit the bill for removal. Not because of their politics. The OP of that particular sub gets moderated as well. Long patters of nothing but being a pill do indicate intent, or functional intent, and do end up counting against you. No one has been getting a pass, and we've done a good job of not reactively taking sides and assuming bad intent, and giving people a chance to prove to us they can or cannot handle the public responsibility of publishing commentary and posts in /r/boardgames. That pace is infuriatingly quick for the person who eventually works themselves out of the sub, and infuriatingly slow for people who constantly fight with them. We definitely do have success stories from this approach.

Moderation is done by moderators, selected by past moderators, because the people appear to have judgement related to context in discussion and other skills needed by the moderation team. If you think the rules for moderation are simple...well, lets say "pain is the game" when you are a moderator. Every nasty thing said here that gets removed we see. Many borderline things we don't remove or do and waffle on, we see, and we struggle with. We have a private subreddit where we go "how do we deal with this, why the can't those two be reasonable about this" so much. We check in with each other, we disagree, and we even sometimes moderate publicly things we think personally we shouldn't be moderating that way. We can't publicly express the nuance because then all of a sudden random sub that disagrees with the exact call gets an link to it and shit hits the fan. Yay. I'd love to be tons more transparent than we are, but reddit is not conducive to that. The takes are hot, low effort, and the tolerance is low.

Locked threads happen primarily because they're a ever burning pile of anger that's off topic to boardgames, or just way too angry. We then look at causes, and address them when possible with people, as we do with report heavy threads devolving into yelling. All the while, the mass of most /r/boardgames folks go "whew, that stopped". When we do address things, many people (again of both sides of the culture wars) go "okay, I can't do that thing I do elsewhere on reddit here." and stop. Others go "how dare you! I will leave then if that's how this gin joint is run". Again, of both sides.

As to the perceived "sides imbalance": If there were conservative folks who put out polished video game reviews and occasionally put in an idea from their side of the culture war like SUSD does with out going over a line that would be one thing. That doesn't appear to exist, or get submitted here, or upvoted if submitted. I know a ton of church going, wonderful folks from my life here in the South who talk like adults about this stuff who'd be wonderful reviewers, but most of them do not do so. Nor do I see anyone making the case "I like this stuff", "This stuff is part of my sexuality", "I like the history of this being treated like it happened and has historically been portrayed" in third party content. People making the third party content who do state these things, often do it reacting to the people they dislike criticizing it rather than issuing a positive, coherent standalone product. One of the allegedly "unbalanced" video series in particular does have a family connection to someone who is directly tied to the aforementioned cultural disputes that isn't really tied to board gaming, which seems to be a reason people focus on them more than the actual video gaming videos (which I think personally think are overproduced and rely on a pretty face and good comedic timing). I've been panned for liking Meeple Like Us...because it basically is the answer to <insert complex social situation in a WSIG> including the "gaming with people who are bothered by brown meeples" occasion. I have also literally gotten anger from the staff of MLU for not moderating the other way. The amount of errant tribalism here is astounding and sometimes frustrating.

I personally dislike basically every video series that doesn't 1> correctly teach me how to play a game without commentary kept till the end and 2> play a game in front of me and 3> allow me to quickly watch it at high speed. I dislike several of the video people you do. Yet, it's my job, and good for the sub, to remove the personal attacks around that. This includes TableTop, SUSD, and more. I literally said angry things about them before the explicit/detailed civility rule was around, and less angry things after it was. But I said it a very small amount of times, and didn't follow around every video trying to get an asterisk. That's called not being tiresome, and called being civil. You do not have to respond to everything every time. You do not need to revisit every discussion every time. I live in the south, have friends and gaming pals of every stripe and persuasion, and I have professionally played traffic cop and more while managing people in a professional setting. I assure you, things are being managed, just because /r/boardgames don't look like the exact standard of cookie cutter past attempts to do something, don't think we're not working. Just because of the format we can't loudly show you how they're working, they are. We're stopping the culture war here decently well, and we're not doing it but hopping on the preferred format of any one side.

If anyone reads this finds yourself saying "why don't I stir up some stuff", I beg of you to find more stimulation in your life, perhaps from a cup of coffee, or a trip to the doctors to gets some meds or talk, or playing a wonderful board game with friends. Properly treating under-stimulation and concentration abnormalities is life changing. I speak from family and personal experience with people diagnosed with minor but real illnesses (physical or mental) that were cratering quality of life and causing them to be more argumentative. Internet trolling may be cheap, but the ability to go about your day creating and being happy is far more fulfilling.