I'm sorry, is there some footnote or addendum to the code of conduct I'm overlooking?

This really comes across as: "you can be rude if you're right", which leads to more divisions and bad feelings. Please think carefully about this approach. I don't think it's helping meta

Flags have always been for people to look at an issue. Every single action we take gets dissected, turned in the worst light, and folks intentionally have been threatening to turn the community on us. There's means other than flags and suspensions to do things. But if folks want to intimidate mods into going a certain way... not cool

I'm sorry if you feel intimidated. That's not my intention. But I will let you know if I disagree with you. I hope you can see the value in that.

@JourneymanGeek the question is not about the flag. The question is about whether it's acceptable behavior, allowed within the rules set by the code of conduct. If it's not, you could edit it out. I'm not going to start an edit war over this as a regular user. By allowing this, but not allowing much less aggravating behavior you're acting as a king, banning users you dislike and allowing worse behavior from friends. We have a community, if we can keep it.

Those are fighting words. And a pretty serious accusation. Are you sure that's a rock you want to throw through my window? Cause literally there's other ways to deal with this. As a moderator, suspensions, and other punitive measures are not my only tools. I have other, slower, better tools.

@JourneymanGeek it's an observation. I'm not accusing you of anything. I am saying a lot of users are disappearing and when people ask about that they get nonspecific answers like this one. Now, I've read about various users who've been suspended here that there was no warning and they don't know why they were suspended. Unfortunately, it seems that asking questions that may be perceived as questioning executive actions can already get you silenced. So I don't think it's safe for me to continue this discussion. The question still stands, is this an acceptable comparison given the CoC rules?

Sigh. And yet, this and what you said earlier sound exactly like accusations. In a good many situations we choose not to validate a RA flag when there's other means to handle things. Its called diplomacy - and we can use a lot more of it. As I said, better, slower tools. "I don't think its safe" insinuates we make people vanish when they disagree. Yeah, I have some small authority here. But clearly you're not familiar with what got my ass in this seat.

@JourneymanGeek while I am not accusing you, I do think there's mismanagement in general here (but that's not what I am accusing you of, nor is it what I am arguing here). So back to this question, I flagged something I thought was offensive and it said there is no evidence to support that. Therefore, I am inquiring if there is, that's not an accusation, it's about my trying to understand. I get that you want to be diplomatic and that there are other ways to handle situations, but I don't see why those require denying flags as lacking in evidence. That declination sparked my question.

@JourneymanGeek and if you want to point out which statements of mine were accusatory, please do so. Like I said, I want to learn about how to interact with you and other moderators here. You seem like a friendly guy, you mean well. So do I, yet we seem to run into each other every once in a while. I'm fine with that, I think it helps both of us understand how other people think, but if there's something that's bothering you about my behavior, feel free to say so. :)

R/A flags kinda have extra weight. The whole pesky them being the same as spam flags. I mean, if you want a fight and extra drama, this would be a great way to do it. Or one can ask, politely and see what happens. The voting spread on that's kinda mixed. I've literally told someone I'm not a babysitter once, and thinking on your post is a great idea. A lot of my official mod replies sit on my PC an hour or two. So... eh, in many situations, I prefer they be saved for outright trolling. In this specific case - a good question is "what's the good and bad here?"

"Now, I've read about various users who've been suspended here that there was no warning and they don't know why they were suspended. Unfortunately, it seems that asking questions that may be perceived as questioning executive actions can already get you silenced." seems pretty accusatory. You might find people somehow miss many warnings. And considering the standard suspension lengths, possibly more than once. I'm not acting like a king - and tbh, there's flags I have in the queue where I'm not even sure what's the right thing. People see the power. They don't understand the responsibility.

Rene said "This isn't kindergarten". That's not implying that users are toddlers, it's stating the opposite. I suppose the implication is "Don't act like a toddler, because that will force the authorities to treat you like one". Sure, that's stern, but it's hardly offensive, IMHO.

And it was edited.

Yup, that's one viewpoint I considered!

@JJforTransparencyandMonica nothing is more annoying than... well...

If we looked at a flag, we look at a flag and we act accordingly

Sometimes we leave flags to handle later cause developing situations

@JourneymanGeek Ok, the new version's a lot more diplomatic.

Stuff takes time!

@JourneymanGeek I don't want to brag or take credit for your work, but meta.stackexchange.com/a/339928/387405

@JJforTransparencyandMonica I don't really care about credit :/

Its about positive outcomes

So, lets say, I validated the R/A flags (and as you can see, they are at least a bit ambigious) and suspended Rene... what then?

@JourneymanGeek and for that you should get credit. That's how responsibility works. When good stuff happens under your watch, you get a thumbs up. When bad stuff happens, you get critical questions.

@JJforTransparencyandMonica I'm sceptical. Over the last couple of months I've seen people posting pretty unpleasant stuff, and then after it's deleted & they get a small punishment they react all sweet & innocent, asking "but what did I do that deserved this punishment"?

@JourneymanGeek You could have simply validated the custom flag saying you're looking into it and do whatever you previously referred to as diplomacy. ;)

@JJforTransparencyandMonica eh, maybe, but repeated flags are something we want to discourage

there's a user I won't name who... kinda abused those.

But that's context I can't expect you to have, it was pretty much stuff that started before I was a mod

@PM2Ring well is there a naughty list on me? Know that users have, at least to my knowledge, no way of getting to know what list of offences mods hold against them.

@JJforTransparencyandMonica there's no real 'naughty list'

Formally - there's a few things

Informally - I think nearly everyone who gets suspended claims innocence - even when they know exactly which post got them suspended, or just claims we're drunk on power.

Don't forget, we've had a year or near quiet then, well, lots of high attention, high context, high maintainace stuff going on. But we're also folks who either have had a significant amount of time as elected mods, high meta familiarity, or just a really hard docket to deal with.

Ok, a lot of stuff has happened, & maybe sometimes mods have reacted with a little more force than required. But we don't see everything they see, so it's hard to judge. And if someone's been skating on the border of what's tolerable (and getting warning comments & deletions) it's perfectly appropriate IMHO for a mod to give a suspension when that person finally goes over the line, even if that final offense doesn't seem to warrant suspension.

The person has demonstrated over time that they are not acting in good faith, so they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Yup

@JourneymanGeek So you don't maintain a list of the offending posts? Then you can simply point to that and say 'this is the reason'. I mean, everything that happens here is on the record, so everything can be pointed to somewhere on the record.

Nope

Ideally we shouldn't even have to

And in some cases - folks create problems that other sites might not have

The reason we have humans as moderators is that often moderation is a very human task requiring flexibility and discretion

Same reason there's a minimal mod team size of 3

@JourneymanGeek right, but you have a reason for suspending people. So if a user claims innocence, it's not that weird to be able to point to the reason, which must be something that's on the record, because everything on this site is on the record. There's no hearsay evidence so to speak.

@JJforTransparencyandMonica Mod messages point to the reason.

@JJforTransparencyandMonica Every suspension is accompanied by a moderator message

We don't discuss suspensions publicly. So if you're suspended and don't get it... Well, you get 1 reply to your mod message, use it wisely.

You get an email

I THINK you can see and reply to it once on a site

(I've never been mod messaged ._.)

I can send you one for science ;)

But discussing mod messages is something we typically avoid. We certainly would not do that without the consent of the person suspended but one often finds that they rarely end well

@Tinkeringbell I've been resisiting - I do have aibobot to test :D

@Tinkeringbell oh I've had one, can't you see? Just via the site though, not via email.

@JJforTransparencyandMonica you should get an email if its a valid one

If it isn't please don't use those disposable ones. Folks keep getting hacked through those and its unfun.

@JJforTransparencyandMonica I probably can see if it was sent on MSE and I'm no longer on mobile

I can check ;p

@Tinkeringbell no on ELU. Actually a mod wanted to follow up on a flag of mine. Or maybe that was just a chat room invite? IDK

@JJforTransparencyandMonica probably the latter

Its changed a bit

they removed mod names to protect us from harassment

@JourneymanGeek yea, closest I got was the 'Please take the new Moderator Engagement survey' and looking back it probably wasn't even meant for me meta.stackexchange.com/q/313478/387405 ;p

... yea

you haven't gotten one

and mod messages/suspensions are kinda rare