Forum Moderation

win11.shading291 · 2026-03-09T23:16:58.894Z

phnx:

It also seems to me that a lot of complaints basically come down to thinking unlisted posts demonstrate a lack of transparency, but I don’t know how else we can be expected to remove posts which violate the rules.

Hey there, I would simply suggest to communicate more on your intentions.

Meaning, if you unlist a topic, state which rule it violated.

Same with deleting. Sending a pm can help.

This has been going for some weeks now (or maybe more I don’t know) and when we’ve asked questions, we weren’t provided with answers. We were provided with unlisted and deleted topics.

Also, kindness goes a long way in these communication messages.

However, I do understand that moderating can be heavy and it’s not fun to receive criticism when you do that for free and just to help a community you want to see thrive.

Please note that this criticism also comes from a place of love with a desire to protect that same community. I think people have good intentions, they’re not here to bring it all down We all want it to see it thrive.

phnx:

In the spirit of transparency, we are currently engaged in a conversation regarding this internally, but it has not yet yielded anything for us to share.

Thank you for that.

Would PG have engaged in that discussion if some of us didn’t push for it? Hopefully, yes.

If yes, then I believe it should have been mentioned in my post (which is now deleted and I’m still not sure why) or other people’s post simply asking questions.

Onscreen5341:

So this whole “violations of user right to be forgotten” is merely a complete nonsense.

It isn’t nonsense if it’s a policy of PG though. Not saying it is, but they could decide to implement such policy.

jonah:

If you or one of the 10 people who reacted to your post can elaborate further

It’s dismissive. It’s like saying “go back to your own country if you don’t like it here.”

hTahaCi was clearly in good faith throughout all that “Is Constructive Feedback on Whonix/KickSecure Being Censored” topic. Disclaimer: I have not seen the content of the first topic and I’m not saying the moderation action was the wrong one. I don’t even know what whonix is, and it honestly doesn’t really matter to this topic.

hTahaCi also explained it themselves:

I’m really sad — you gys have full control to remove posts, and my threads are automatically marked as “solved” without my input. I don’t feel I have any control over my own contributions here in this privacy community. I’ve always used a covert account during my vacation days to quietly share knowledge and help others. But the way I’m being treated is deeply hurtful. I’m genuinely trying to help, and it’s painful when that effort is dismissed. I think I need to step away.

The fact is that they opened a new topic to understand why they thought they were being censored. You can objectively say they were in good faith.

Then that topic got unlisted and deleted. Again. At least a reason was provided in that one. But it shouldn’t have been deleted.

TinFoilHat · 2026-03-09T23:47:23.782Z

It was simply a third party tool supported by the platform. It allows automatic “announcement" of moderation actions done via that tool to a dedicated channel. Be it automatic triggers or manual actions. IIRC the format was something like:

{ACTIONTYPE}

DATE: {YYYY-MM-DD}

TIME: {HH:mm:ss}

MODERATOR: {MODERATOR_USERNAME}

AFFECTED USER: {USER_USERNAME}

MESSAGE LINK: {URL}

REASON: {REASONS}

I was not using Discourse, and I am not sure if discourse offers similar features.

privacy.slouchy · 2026-03-10T01:03:30.706Z

any1:

This is the thing I find most frustrating: some threads get unlisted (which is fine in most cases) but then are completely deleted after a few days

Expert4870:

I don’t think stuff should be deleted unless it is graphic or illegal/unethical

I second this. The bar for permanently wiping the public records should be very, very high. Lock bad threads, ban disruptive posters. Only delete harmful comments (to do: define “harmful”)

Mods should also be required to disclose one piece of PII per each moderation action (pause for laugh)

jonah:

If you or one of the 10 people who reacted to your post can elaborate further, that’d be great

This wouldn’t have moved the needle if it came from some normal dude. Odd to see the forum admin publicly tell a poster to kick rocks. I briefly thought I was on the GOS forum (pause for laughs)

Anvil · 2026-03-10T01:20:19.532Z

lyricism:

mass flagging campaign with another user

I think that other user was me.

jonah:

it sounds like your replies also caused more off-topic posts since you had to send more than one.

I don’t believe I replied to the off topic comments but my account was also silenced for two weeks. It was not obvious to me how to appeal the silencing either, so I reached out to you about it for an explanation since I remembered that statement you made about how people should flag posts more often and avoid engaging. I never received a reply. I attempted to reach out to the moderator team, which the site did not let me do. So rather than trying to guess who I should message, I just decided to wait out my sentence.

All this to say another issue is the appeal process and knowing who to reach out to. You receive a message from the automated system with an incredibly vague explanation but that’s pretty much it. The format @TinFoilHat describes sounds like a major improvement.

Needless to say I rarely flag posts now. Why should I go out of my way to help the mods in good faith if I risk being punished for doing so?

I do appreciate the (eventual) explanation from Jonah though that it is not necessary to flag more than one off topic comment in a given thread. I agree this should be in writing somewhere.

lyricism · 2026-03-10T02:25:15.802Z

jonah:

If you or one of the 10 people who reacted to your post can elaborate further, that’d be great

Well, I for one see what your problem was with that post, it was worded and framed not at all productively, but at its core there was a reasonable discussion to be had there of any issues others have had with Whonix recently. I think the most productive thing to do moderation-wise would have been to tell the OP to edit their post to be more conducive to a beneficial conversation and leave it up if they did so. I don’t think it’s good for the community to tell people to basically just go somewhere else because they swung and missed on one attempt at writing an OP.

In fairness, I think it becomes a lot more reasonable to tell the OP that if they had a history of doing such things without correcting it, and I don’t know if that’s the case here, but still maybe not in public because of how it comes across to others without that context.

Just my two cents.

Anvil:

I rarely flag posts now. Why should I go out of my way to help the mods in good faith if I risk being punished for doing so?

This was also something I took away from the experience.

Anvil:

I do appreciate the (eventual) explanation from Jonah though that it is not necessary to flag more than one off topic comment in a given thread. I agree this should be in writing somewhere.

Fully second this. Had I known this created extra burden on the mods I obviously would not have done so. I thought I was being helpful by basically pointing them to each specific post I thought needed review. I have never moderated a forum like this so I recognize I was making an assumption that it seems turned out to be wrong though.

overdrawn98901 · 2026-03-10T03:06:03.636Z

privacy.slouchy:

Lock bad threads, ban disruptive posters. Only delete harmful comments (to do: define “harmful”)

This seems like the most plausible solution. However, if the goal is to have PG forum be curated for well meaning discussion, then I can see the angle of unlisting as to keep keep the search and info digging of quality on the forum. But this should be an explicit well communicated intention of the forum.

Otherwise, locking is a pretty standard. (Public) deletion is frowned upon.

If anything, utilizing locking as a means to socialize why you are locking. Close a thread, say it violates XYZ and why, and now we can all learn. Or, utilize it as a teaching opportunity to guide biases towards a more open discussion. Unlisting hides this knowledge from users, and so there are hidden implicit edge cases we don’t know about. If something is funky with a decision, we can reach out and ask why. Can’t ask why if it’s not there, I have no reference to the thread in mind.

I’ll always say, forum rules are more like guidelines, and admin can always do whatever they want. But it’s generally a trust thing to enforce explicit rules and minimize handwaving (some amount will always exist, and doesn’t need to be a law book), and when enforcement happens it’s transparent. This is also speaking as a mod of previous forums, occasionally receiving flak for some decisions.

kissu · 2026-03-10T07:47:56.890Z

Moderation inconsistency

lyricism:

I can’t speak for everyone but for me personally even just that helps restore a decent amount of confidence in the moderation here.

I personally do rarely interact with the moderation team.
And the few times I was in the wrong, it didn’t bother me a lot: I just accepted and moved along.
Overall, no awful experience so far.

I think that maybe the broader issue here are the inconsistencies between the various moderators and how each one of them might deal with the issue in their own way?

You might find Jonah’s takes good but maybe ModA is quite much more unfair in their way of dealing with the issue? ModB is amazing and you love them! But which one will it be today? Roulette.

Inconsistency^[1] and unfairness in the 1:1 DM exchanges is probably where things escalate?

And yes sorry but

Valynor:

Sometimes no answer is an answer, too.

This doesn’t sound like a responsible and half-decent behavior coming from a moderator.
People cannot improve if they do not have any kind of feedback.
Might be obvious why someone is in the wrong to you, yet the actual person might not get it.

I can also look down at someone and think how stupid they are without providing any kind of constructive feedback. Then once they come back to me and ask how they did, I’ll tell them how awful and rubbish pieces of human being they are.
They won’t be happy + will not even understand what wrong they did.

Both sides lose there just because one was too lazy to even context-ify the wrongdoings.

Deletion concerns

seize:

have seen users quickly recreate essentially the same thread within a few days either because they could not find their original thread

This also fuels the loop of anger when it comes down to moderators needing to delete something again and again. No feedback → another wave of deletion/ban/person leaving/mean interaction.

seize:

however using deleting whole threads (not just singular posts)

I mean, let’s not start deleting specific messages either^[2], that sounds even more awful of a behavior if we’re honest (even more shadow-y).

It is also next level that on a public forum like this, some people developed this behavior of

Damn, let me quickly backup this thread before it’s deleted so that I do not lose some precious info.

How did we ended up here again?

win11.shading291:

Sending a pm can help.

Assuming that a DM is sent to everybody that wrote in the thread yes.
If only to 1 single person, not that great because all the others will still be confused as of why it disappeared.

As suggested by an active member here, maybe we should take the Qubes approach?
And stop deleting if not critically needed?

“Create a blog” concerns

privacy.slouchy:

Odd to see the forum admin publicly tell a poster to kick rocks

Let me quickly self-host a Discourse, post a comment there and link it here so that I could reply to you.
I could almost do that to prove a point^[3].
Yet quite a lot to ask to your non-developer regular forum visitor indeed.

jonah:

…and then other people are upset with me for telling them to take it to their own venue

Overall, the forum doesn’t always need to be starting with an extensive wall of well-researched piece of text.
It can be a discussion starter and ramp up slowly instead.
Some would argue it’s actually even better^[4].

Simple example, this one, should I just tell OP how awful, lazy and unprofessional they are posting a quick short question without making a DEEP and thorough research for hours before posting^[5]?
Hm, I could yes.
Instead, I am trying to take a more relaxed and patient stance on the topic and link other topics first.
Empathy is important to newcomers.

Some will do a lot of research upfront and that’s amazing!
Now, if the first post should be deleted if low effort, oh boy we’ll see 90% deletion rate of posts in Questions with a deletion-enabled-discipline-tight moderator^[6].

Unrelated but part of this whole side-topic

We should allow people to potentially suggest threads title edits besides OP. Some threads are indeed super nice but hard to find because of their approximate title that got sidetracked^[7].
Hence sometimes, having it reflect what’s inside of the topic could be nice^[8].

Moreover, we’re not talking about the Do you guys use whonix?-specific thread specifically here, but as a general mood. Since your statement was written from a generic stance, I quote

If you want to make a very long detailed post to share your opinions with people, perhaps consider starting a blog?

And that’s the red flag people are concerned about here^[9].

Moderator burnout

I am not sure on how to solve those kind of threads from a moderation/healthy discussion POV myself

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Hence I do not really engage in those lengthy text-written discussions, so no huge opinions on that one.

Meanwhile, I do know that burnout is a real thing, especially when dealing with humans and the need to keep things in line over an extended period of time.

I had a few people reply to me privately^[10] and saying along the lines of:

“I don’t think we’ll ever get the good old days back…”
“I find a lot of users recently do make this place less chill than, say, a year or two ago”
they feel like this forum is not as nice place to interact with people on anymore

I’m not active (as in non-lurking, actively interacting) with people on this forum for long enough and maybe cannot grasp all of the reasons as of how/why all of this ended up in this situation.

Yet I do think that:

if you spend enough time doing something you do not enjoy fully^[11] then you’ll become bitter, more abrasive and less kind
- then, why not simply stepping down? PG’s forum is not an open-source project (as in code) where you really need someone that aligns deeply with an overall vision + specific skillset
- being somewhat in line with the core values of the team and willing to volunteer for such task might be good enough to maybe help with the moderation?
- one simple rule: don't be a di*k and ask us if not sure on how to handle a particular situation would be a great start
fresh blood might be a nice positive to everybody
- I think that a few people that recently left would have been fine assisting with the moderation task by offloading some of the load from the few people involved into the current moderation
- having more people should be beneficial assuming they’re “upgraded” from their regular user rights based on their contributions on the forum
- if the rules/guidelines as of what should be punishable are obvious and publicly understood, being a moderator is mostly a matter of [are you active enough here + being a decent patient person + following simple rules] → good enough outcome for the role

I personally do not have any beef with any moderator, yet I’ve heard a lot of complaints targeted at specific people.
And this feeds the vicious loop of:

people do not like the moderators
people do not want to volunteer or help anyone
bonus : people might divergent and just want to mess around with the team
people join/stick around less because the place is not as cozy^[12], hence not injecting any positive behavior into the loop
moderators become more sour by the day (hence back step 1.)

If nothing breaks this loop, we will indeed have more stress + load + angry people and the forum will hence become emptier by the day.
Let’s maybe fix the situation before we end up there?

PS: posted a chonker reply but given that we do have a 4 hours cooldown now, I feel like it’s a decent way of replying down here. Hopefully it’s well structured enough for everybody.

just saw that it was already mentioned above actually ↩︎
if not illegal, obviously disrespectful etc ↩︎
…but since it’s a tiny bit passive-aggressive, I’ll just behave as a grown-up and behave properly without wasting my time doing childish things like that ↩︎
especially if you got your wings burnt once by having a chonky message deleted. Fine if it’s a platform/tool bug but hey, as someone keeping a lot of stuff in “drafts” here, I can attest that Discourse is actually very good at keeping things properly backed up here, it’s not as awful as Notion ↩︎
especially given all the similar questions posted a few days ago on the same topic. Or the recurring VPS provider one maybe? ↩︎
been there with such enabled rights on another platform, oh boy it creates a very toxic place that people do not like hanging around on if not forced to ↩︎
side tracking is an entirely different problem, I might be part of the problem myself sometimes with my ADHD-enabled rabbit holing behavior here, but hey you’re currently reading this in some details + footnotes so I guess it’s half-disruptive of the main flow, hence keep scrolling nothing to see here ↩︎
while at the same time, keeping the link intact by having some aliases/redirects to not break the SEO/references from other places. Again, the technical aspect here is probably not the issue given that Discourse has a good plugin ecosystem as a whole ↩︎
People will (sadly) realize that it’s actually the most sustainable and stable way to do things, but we’ll also lose quite a few voices down the road with that one unfortunately. ↩︎
and not really willing to voice their concerns publicly here, which is totally fine ↩︎
or have other changes in your life ↩︎
they just hop in and out after a quick question ↩︎

parkerchandler1979 · 2026-03-10T10:12:16.482Z

Having read this thread, there is one thing that should somewhat also be highlighted is that while I was a lurker for the past 2 years, there were many other people on here contributing well. A lot of great info and commentary on things.

But I too have noticed several people leaving and it can only seem indicative of moderation issues. Of course, we don’t know why they all left but the timing of it all reasonably implies some correlation but I can’t prove it. These are just powers of observation.

One thing I am sure of is that moderation is not consistent. It is an issue. Same rules are not always applied to all 100% of the time. Only having 4 paid staff is just not enough for PG. And there needs to be new additions to forum rules of having zero tolerance policy if a user uses certain words and denigrates others in their comment (no matter how regular of a member they are).

Again, considering the activity on this thread and support for and from many feeling the same way given the reactions, PG should take a step back and recalibrate how they want to keep functioning and operating an online discourse that’s far superior from many other places to keep it there.

pine · 2026-03-10T11:09:15.764Z

I’ve only lurked for a few years prior to becoming a member just recently, and I haven’t run into any issues with the mods, so I can’t speak to the negative experiences with mods and deleted threads.

However, I want to add a viewpoint to this:

parkerchandler1979:

But I too have noticed several people leaving and it can only seem indicative of moderation issues. Of course, we don’t know why they all left but the timing of it all reasonably implies some correlation but I can’t prove it. These are just powers of observation.

I’m not so sure that the moderation is the core source of it. If anything, I generally find them well-reflected and fair, especially considering how many of them are volunteers, and the other tasks I imagine are on the tables of the small paid team parallel to having this forum.

Rather, I resonate with this sentiment:

phnx:

frankly, this forum has been a much less chill and respectful place recently

My experience as a whole is that in the past half a year in particular, there’s been an uptick in cluttered threads, personal antagonism, bad faith reading, and less good-will in general, even if I also see users actively trying to counteract it (which I truly commend). It can feel off-putting to participate, and I’ve seen a number of users deactivate their accounts after negative interactions with other (non mod) users.

I don’t think the request for more transparency from the mods is unreasonable, and I also recognise instances where mods can come off short. But I want to speak against pinning this solely on the mods and admins; that feels off-target for actually resolving the forum’s broader tensions.

On Jonah's ask

jonah:

If you or one of the 10 people who reacted to your post can elaborate further, that’d be great,

I just agreed with the point that it didn’t feel very constructive, in the spirit of the discussion of admin/mod influence of discourse; as others pointed out, it was merely an example. I’m genuinely sorry if my like came across as part of a mob mentality or a criticism of your character.

TinFoilHat · 2026-03-10T11:18:05.086Z

To be completely honest, it is very difficult to have a roughly aligned moderation practice, even with a one-foot thick prolicy and guideline, it is very difficult to align everyone’s

tolerance on languages (native speakers might have lower tolerance given their deeper understanding and higher sensitivity on their native language),
immediate judgement on subjects
understanding and interpretation of different values (esp. freedom of expressions) because of different culture and personal history

Also, moderators being human will have some natural bias, and enforcing zero tolerance without considering the context of the posts or the thread, would more likely causing more damage than improving the atmosphere, because of the difficulties I mentioned above.

TBH moderation is more like a customer service / PR job, not police nor judge.

I am against people asking for tighter controls, I am also against putting too much duties on moderators, esp. expect them to work on multiple levels at the same time. Different levels require slightly different mindset, mixing them up is problematic.

kissu · 2026-03-10T12:53:08.212Z

PS: I wanted to edit my previous message with some more context but apparently, edits on previous posts are also subject to the 4 hours cooldown, hence be careful when it comes down to making tyops.
Heads up for people posting down below (not sure if mistake or on purpose).

I know that some platforms do some actual elections every year to onboard some new people and have a vote, here is an example: https://stackoverflow.com/election/16

Not sure but maybe this could be a good idea in case of somebody willing to stand forward and become an extra volunteer moderator so that way we get the seal of approval from the community (democracy).

parkerchandler1979:

Of course, we don’t know why they all left but the timing of it all reasonably implies some correlation but I can’t prove it

Some might join back to give some of the reasons. They’re still considering if its worth their time.

pine:

I generally find them well-reflected and fair, especially considering how many of them are volunteers

I do agree with you, yet you and me have not experienced any issues with any moderators so it’s hard for us to judge if we’re never been in that position.
Normal people do not complain about cops in their city, until the cops start bothering them. Now, the question would be: are the cops are bit too tight or were the citizens doing something not so great, that’s a totally different topic whatsoever.

But again yes, the difference here is that the moderators are not paid and do help the forum on their free time. Free (hard) manual labour is not always easy when it becomes draining + piles up.

pine:

My experience as a whole is that in the past half a year in particular

Noooooo, this is when I joined here.
I guess I missed the golden age?

Still trying to bring positive vibes and some help best as I can nonetheless.
But in the end, the kind of community a place attracts is not something you can fully control I guess.
Moreover, I guess that topics like hacking, privacy and security are prone to attract a specific kind of people? I don’t know myself but we probably have quite a diverse age + culture range across the forum overall.

pine:

and I’ve seen a number of users deactivate their accounts after negative interactions with other (non mod) users

That’s always the issue with communities in the beginning, you can be met with someone very rude and label the entire community as toxic/lame/immature.
Exactly the same happened to me but I went over it. I can agree that not everybody would persevere to that point unfortunately.

Good thing is, you can always hand pick the users you resonate the most with and converse with them more than with the ones you disagree quite a bunch.
Even better, those disruptive people might just leave the place altogether (happened to me recently) meaning that you do not need go through those Discourse features because they happen to just naturally once bored being detractors on here.

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pine:

But I want to speak against pinning this solely on the mods and admins

This goes back to the unfortunate vicious loop I described above.
Not sure how much correlation there is between cool people leaving and the moderation situation, but definitely some.

TinFoilHat:

tolerance on languages

I identify myself here as being in the middle of the pack.
Not blessed with native-english level yet still above the majority (if considering a worldwide community).
I’ve indeed interacted with some people in my life where I thought

Wow, you’re a real di*khead huh!

Then realized that their communication skills are just inferior to a minimal base and allowed for more leash.
On a forum with just a few possible lines, your tone can be greatly misunderstood and you’ll be punished for something you do not even understand.
Still, I guess it’s quite obvious when someone is just here to F around or is clumsy in their paragraph.

TinFoilHat:

because of different culture and personal history

Yes. And I’ll add age + needs/boundaries/resources.
Hard to cover all of people’s needs without asking for personal things too.

TinFoilHat:

TBH moderation is more like a customer service / PR job, not police nor judge.

Yes.

TinFoilHat:

I am against people asking for tighter controls, I am also against putting too much duties on moderators, esp. expect them to work on multiple levels at the same time

I indeed saw quite some ideas of having double-validations before deleting a post/etc etc, I’m not sure how realistically those are (probably not a lot) but there is definitely a middle ground.
I can meanwhile understand people being angry at unfair decisions/deletions.

Yet everybody here is trying their best to push this whole thing forward, it is mostly just a matter of soft-skill and taking 5 extra seconds before making a decision.
Goes a long way to have patience and take it slow but that again…can only be achieved if people do have more bandwidth, hence more volunteers hence more empathy/will to positively contribute.

A virtuous loop is probably achievable too.
Not sure how but listening/reading further users’ feedback here might help narrow something sustainable and healthy in the long run so that way we’re not having moderation being overwhelmed with gangsters doing parkour on each thread for endless chaos.

fiqiluvo.epileto · 2026-03-10T13:26:23.147Z

I have a couple of examples of bad moderation/illicit community behavior. I’m not sure whether the problem is in the autoflagging system since i believe i was told posts are being automatically hidden if enough people flag them, but regardless:

image766×584 43.5 KB

Cloudflare CEO threatens to withdraw services in Italy

General

The quotes were on point. I have no ideology to defend, i was merely trying to understand the course of action you were suggesting CF to take since you’ve said contradictory things. So what do you want in the end? Are CF allowed to leave Italy or not? The proposed narrative for deplatforming was debunked, Kiwifarms users never drove anyone to commit suicide. Doxxing was prohibited and users were punished for it on forums. CF left Kiwifarms due to social pressure, regardless of the facts. I us…

I think it’s safe to say this forum has a community moderation problem. In this example, the person in question got offended by the mere usage of a word “kek” and “woke“ and mass flagged my replies. Or simply because of the fact i was arguing with him, i’m honestly not sure.

People are obviously power tripping. My general point is that this policing attitude towards conversations alienates people from the forum. People are often hiding posts under the pretext of offensive language while silencing their critics. I’m obviously bad at politics and have decided to quit instead of trying to do something about it.

I remember being done with this forum after i asked some posters to stop recommending to an Iranian guy to try using Wireguard back in January, before the shutdown. People came in and started recommending silly things like trying to use known to be blocked protocols and censorship evasion strategies and i calmly replied to them explaining how they were wrong until one poster told a guy to try to connect using Wireguard, which would’ve provably lead to authoritarian attention towards an Iranian citizen.

I explained to him how his post was very harmful, and that he should rethink his attitude towards engaging in topics he doesn’t know much about since in this example it led to him giving an awful advice.

Mods removed my “heated“ reply and left the harmful post i was replying to. At this point, even if you avoid engaging in topics with people claiming to be offended by the usage of kek and lol, your post will get flagged because you told somebody to be mindful and not post for seemingly just social score points.

Mods aren’t capable of moderating technical conversations and shouldn’t be expected to. Mods shouldn’t police heated conversations. Heated conversation on technical topics are OK.
People should see the whole chains of thoughts. Problematic, controversial replies shouldn’t be hidden just because they rub some people the wrong way. I’m fine with disinformation staying as long as a thread has a qualified reply somewhere in it. Silencing speech is why posting here has become miserable. I can admit to logging in a few times a just to reply to egregious and ragebaiting stuff because of the fact no good conversation survived.
Move the politics and news to the activism category. Prohibit people from signaling their politics in threads with technical topics since it would inevitably lead to politics leaking into the main forum.

I really dislike the attitude of some people and their tendency to mass flag replies and i think that the moderation team should review the past usage of the community flags.

ignoramous · 2026-03-10T14:30:28.501Z

jonah:

hardly tops the charts of things I’d do differently.

That’s what this thread is about? The mod team has long been on its high horse. I’ve mentioned this in multiple forum posts & DMs to you. You tersely replied to one of them with ‘all mod actions are final’.

I mean, I have been asking for a post that was incorrectly removed by Niek as offtopic for over a year now (on DM which you’re cc’d) without reply.

phnx:

that requires all parties to engage in good faith, which I think we can probably agree is not currently the case

You’re turning the thread on its head. The case being made here is y’all, the team / the staff / the mods not engaging in good faith, not applying the same rules to your own posts & threads (recently, Jonah posted an ICE-related political thread; but when @maltfield posted about AI use in the current iteration of the Gulf War resulting in 150+ dead children attending school, it was flagged & removed by @Valynor as “moderators will have a discussion about whether this kind of political post is appropriate for the PG forum”. These discussions, btw, seldom reach any meaningful public-facing conclusions ).

Valynor:

Sometimes no answer is an answer, too

“No answer” is not “an answer”; it breeds ambiguity (“any answer”) and sows distrust.

How’s this for an answer?

kissu:

Some amazing people left already, let’s stop the bleeding

ThePrivacyDad · 2026-03-10T14:37:42.361Z

I think the delayed response feature is great. I support the idea that deletion should only happen in extreme cases.

About ‘go blog somewhere else’:

privacy.slouchy:

jonah:

If you or one of the 10 people who reacted to your post can elaborate further, that’d be great

This wouldn’t have moved the needle if it came from some normal dude. Odd to see the forum admin publicly tell a poster to kick rocks.

@jonah - it’s the above: your position makes it a strange public reply.

About forum moderation:

On the PG forum, members labelled ‘Team’ get into the debates with all the regular users, also expressing opinions, mostly for the better, but not always.

In traditional face-to-face debates, a moderator is expected to be

knowledgeable
guides using questions and summary
models a constructive tone
is transparent about rules and consequences
steps in as a disciplinarian with reminders (tone, length, staying on topic)
acts and justifies where necessary (freeze, ban, lock)

In traditional in-person debates, moderators do not

express their own opinion
dismiss someone’s opinion
favour a side of the argument

The adjective ‘moderate’ means “avoiding extremes of behavior or expression” (Merriam-Webster). An online etymology site uses the word ‘restrained’. Moderators not only act to restrain the rabble, but have to be models of restraint, so we can have the best possible discourse.

I don’t know if adopting the traditional moderation model above (i.e. - not express opinion in discussions) would work in an online forum like PG or not. The Team members have a lot of knowledge and insight. I’ve benefited from the Team’s feedback and opinions, and occasionally felt put-off or burned.

Perhaps it could be an idea to focus on the sharing of knowledge, fulfilling traditional moderation roles of guiding by question asking and being transparent about the rules, and show restraint with personal opinion.

That would be a pity for moderators who also want to be users and engage in the debates on PG as users, (and there is no other forum but PG) but having this separation between what it means to be a moderator and a forum member could lead to an improved environment for discussion, and mitigate some of the concerns raised in this topic.

maltfield · 2026-03-10T14:53:27.147Z

Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be contributing content to the PG Discourse anymore after that experience

FranklyFlawless · 2026-03-10T19:29:01.141Z

Okay, see you (possibly) at the NovaCustom Community and Qubes OS Forum then.

kissu · 2026-03-10T19:38:58.321Z

Forwarding this here because very relevant to the discussion: The Banality of AI (Hallucination → Bomb School?) - #8 by ph00lt0

anonymous549 · 2026-03-10T23:00:17.944Z

Just stop circling the wagons everytime someone on staff or the moderation teams screws up. There is very little accountability for staff or moderator actions.

overdrawn98901 · 2026-03-11T00:42:04.008Z

maltfield:

Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be contributing content to the PG Discourse anymore after that experience

I personally thought the thread was off topic (can’t read OP so could also be wrong). AI + War isn’t really a privacy topic, and belongs in an off-topic category (or a sanctioned political one). Historically PG closes political threads that don’t have a clear overlap with privacy, as politics are grounds for people yelling at each other, and there is enough FUD in privacy to deal with already. Jonah mentioning ICE arguably does have some overlap with Privacy, given the ICE is surveiling its own citizens and has continued discussions there, but I’d personally argue that connection isn’t there for your topic. Also to be blunt, Jonah lives in the place its happening, so yeah he can do a shoutout.

However, as to why this isn’t in the rules of the forum at this point means the rules should be amended to make this clear. And it circles back to the other point: we as a community can’t learn some of the more implicit rules if threads go hidden. I know this as I’ve been around for a bit, but its not clear for new members.

On double checking, are these the rules in the FAQ? Minor nitpick to rename the Forum Rules or something.

anonymous549:

There is very little accountability for staff or moderator actions.

Threads like this are accountability. I mean, there isn’t like a third party judicial process for this, and its slightly table stakes if I’m honest. Also here for the internet drama

ThePrivacyDad:

That would be a pity for moderators who also want to be users and engage in the debates on PG as users, (and there is no other forum but PG) but having this separation between what it means to be a moderator and a forum member could lead to an improved environment for discussion, and mitigate some of the concerns raised in this topic.

I don’t think its a huge deal for mods to be a part of the discussion. It shows they aren’t pure sentinels and care about being a part of the community. No disrespect for those who focus on maintenance, but I enjoy the participation.

However, being a mod means being in a position of authority, and that comes with more expectations. Paid, volunteer, etc, the root of it is that there are expectations of how mods conduct themselves apart from regular members. i.e., if a regular user gets heated and lashes out in a convo, not as big of a deal, but Mods do not get to lash out at regular users no matter how hair-pulling frustrated they are. If mods break the rules they enforce, it doubles down on mistrust. While users don’t have to exactly apologize for breaking rules occasionally, I expect Mods will publicly or personally reach out. In this case, I don’t really see mods doing eye-brow raising reactions, but I will say the reply from the team in the AI unlisted channel isn’t what I would consider good moderation.

We are all human though, and I also occasionally misconstrue text or maybe reply in an inflammatory way, but I’m first to apologize on reflection if the intent/impact don’t align (I’ve done so a few times here). Mods don’t have to be perfect, and there will be friction, but that’s fine, most active users here are pretty nice. But its nice to hear a “sorry about that” apology as well.

kissu:

people do not like the moderators

people do not want to volunteer or help anyone

bonus : people might divergent and just want to mess around with the team

people join/stick around less because the place is not as cozy , hence not injecting any positive behavior into the loop

moderators become more sour by the day (hence back step 1.)

This is a bit of a slippery slope argument.

Mods can’t satisfy everyone, that is also part of their job. How they do their job guides the community, and it either turns away people from that vision or the people that stay are fine with it. I’m happy this isn’t a free-for-all fist-fighting and sucker-punching like discussion place. In this regard, I don’t think the mods are doing a bad job, I just think the vision of the mods is misaligned with the vision of the community, and it just needs some clarification.

But mods don’t get to be sour. Not to say we should all leave, but if we all leave, there is nothing to moderate. So if the community has a problem, its kind of a requirement to find some path of remediation. Staff getting upset about problems being raised (even if they are non-issues) is not putting additional trust.

But also consider the counter-hypothesis: more people aligned to the PG have stayed because moderators are filtering out the noise of bad discussion. I think this also happens too, but its not publicly acknowledged as its not quite happy announcement material (yay we banned foobar everyone!), but I think the disagreement on is the transparency of it.

With this, I do believe mods unlist threads as this forum is geared towards high quality discussion that is highly targetted towards privacy, and the staff have a vision that this is a meaningful searchable place externally to improve privacy for those stumbling into the forum from outside - a reasonable goal to accomplish imo. If this is true, would be great to make this clear in the FAQ, but I’ll assume this is true:

Below are some immediate actionable suggestions.

On unlisted threads

Lock threads, keep it public, state a reason, and allow community members to understand why things get locked. We all learn, we all can ask questions as needed.
If a mod would normally unlist a thread in a scenario, have an automation that unlists threads in a specific tag/category (i.e. an unlisted special tag) after X days. This gives active members a chance to review, but also prevents search indexing. Unlist threads that are actively harmful or illegal of course.

On transparency

Update the FAQ with clear guideliness, and consider stickying a post in about it, so it is more easily discoverable for new members (I had to hunt for it). New members will absolutely not read the FAQ unless its in plain site. I know I didn’t. Also say non-privacy related political discussions will be locked and unlisted or something.
A meta discussion thread like this is pretty useful, but its often seems to become a dogpile, indicating members don’t vent want to vent their frustrations in public (until its already public and silently upset). Then also not replying to users is also not good. A dumb idea is a monthly survey for users with some rank or however Discourse determines it, that way you get feedback in a batch rather than a mega-thread or several direct messages, and can iteratively steer the course of things. Even something like an e-mail address to take feedback and then review it once a month is something.
The hand-wave rule is required to be flexible in enforcement. However, just as we developers preferring static typing over dynamic typing, elevating common hand-wave enforcement to clear-cut rules prevents issues down the road.

On teaching

phnx:

There is nothing shadowy about the fact that, frankly, this forum has been a much less chill and respectful place recently, which is absolutely regrettable, but it’s outside of my power to change that.

Soft disagree. For black and white cases, sure lock the thread. But for grey-area cases, its a great guiding opportunity to reach out in kindness. I try to do the same in active conversation, but I also am not as active nor am a mod in a position to really do that as directly.

Valynor:

The post in question had an expletive in it. The moderation told you to remove it.
You chose to replace it by asterisk-ing most of the letters out but it was still rather obvious what you meant at which point another member of the moderation removed the post AGAIN because this is a clear violation of the PG CoC.

Asterisks and bleeping is live television rules fine for kids. But if the expectation is no swearing or cursing, even in *****ing asterisk form (I promise I said fudging ), append the FAQ and make it a teaching opportunity. If the rules change, productionize them once a month and make a quick announcement of changes.

lyricism:

The best explanation I got was that I “Consumed disproportionate amounts of staff time”. However, I was even more confused when a decent number of the posts I had flagged were removed for being off topic. So, wouldn’t the person who consumed the disproportionate amount of staff time be the ones who had been posting off topic replies? Further, in the same breath I was told “You are NOT supposed to fight it out in the thread yourselves, notify the moderation and let us deal with it.”, which was exactly what I was doing that apparently got me muted. I mostly tried not replying to the off topic posts except to point out they were off topic (I expected those replies to get removed alongside the off topic posts if moderators took the action I expected).

Learning opportunity. I also didn’t know this. Update the FAQ, post a pinned thread stating report a topic or a message once, and mods will review surrounding context. Multiple reports should be avoided.

Blackbird · 2026-03-11T09:05:00.784Z

What, now comments are being deleted right away??!

Topic	Replies	Views	Activity
Missing thread Meta discourse	12	460	Nov 2025
Question regarding tool suggestion policy General	4	327	Jan 2024
State of this forum, better moderation Meta discourse,other	23	1.5k	Oct 2024
Why keep “rejected” or “accepted” tool threads open? Meta discourse	4	340	Feb 2025
Recommend some newcomer’s privacy forum General	17	918	Apr 2025

post by win11.shading291 on Mar 10

post by TinFoilHat on Mar 10

post by privacy.slouchy on Mar 10

post by Anvil on Mar 10

post by lyricism on Mar 10

post by overdrawn98901 on Mar 10

post by kissu on Mar 10

Moderation inconsistency

Deletion concerns

“Create a blog” concerns

Moderator burnout

post by parkerchandler1979 on Mar 10

post by pine on Mar 10

post by TinFoilHat on Mar 10

post by kissu on Mar 10

post by fiqiluvo.epileto on Mar 10

post by ignoramous on Mar 10

post by ThePrivacyDad on Mar 10

post by maltfield on Mar 10

post by FranklyFlawless on Mar 11

post by kissu on Mar 11

post by anonymous549 on Mar 11

post by overdrawn98901 on Mar 11

post by Blackbird on Mar 11

post by anon54537205 on Mar 11

post by ph00lt0 on Mar 11

post by Blackbird on Mar 11

post by ph00lt0 on Mar 11

post by parkerchandler1979 on Mar 11

Closed on Mar 11

post by jonah on Mar 11

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