
The Civic Labor of Online Moderators (2016) [pdf] - DoreenMichele
http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/ipp-conference/sites/ipp/files/documents/JNM-The_Civic_Labor_of_Online_Moderators__Internet_Politics_Policy_.pdf
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monksy
This paper starts out really oddly.

1\. Adrien Chen is a piece of work. He was enabled through Gawker to
publically dox a private individual. (Yes, ViolentAcres did moderate scuzzy
subs.. but that's an issue for the admins if they want that there or not)
Adrian's actions had real-world consequences for the person he decided to go
after. He also rubbed salt in the wounds when he did it.

2\. His quote about how the moderators represent the community again is
completely unjustified. This guy is a yellow journalist, and his statements
have no merit.

3\. Calling Moderating "Emotional Labor" is such a patronizing tone. It's
community maintenance. (I'm pretty sure that dang wouldn't consider cleaning
up and managing hn as something he does to make people feel better).

~~~
myrryr
It is technically emotional labour though. It isn't physical labour, but it is
still draining.

~~~
monksy
It's mental labor. If you're a good moderator, there's very little to no
emotions in your actions.

~~~
myrryr
Exactly. Which is WHY it is emotional labour....

From Wikipedia....

"Emotional labour is the process of managing feelings and expressions to
fulfill the emotional requirements of a job.

More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during
interactions with customers, co-workers and superiors."

The mods are expected to regulate their emotions.

Which makes it emotional labour by default.

~~~
Lkjhmnbv
What are your motivations for arguing this?

By this definition my response to you is emotional labor and you owe me for
that.

~~~
detaro
It's not really, no, unless it's your job (or "job") to write this reply.

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wiz21c
I don't understand why the word "civic". Most of moderators work for
commercial entities. They're there to make sure the entity remains
business/customer friendly. There's nothing related to citizenship in the
raison d'être of that work.

It's like saying that human resource mangement is here to make the people
grow. It's not, growing people is just a side effect.

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leibwiht
The title of this is extremely amusing to me because I've only ever thought of
online moderators as basically the lowest form of life, almost exclusively
petty tyrants and ego-tripping jerks who try to flatter and ingratiate the
people above them and are heavy-handed despots to anyone beneath them. Their
role as "gatekeeper of ability to communicate with people via the medium under
their control" is typically done by encoding their adolescent morality into
policy and silencing anyone who goes against the grain or threatens their
social standing.

It's actually gotten me thinking a lot about distributed moderation. Wouldn't
it be better if access to any particular medium of communication (a forum, an
IRC channel, a mastodon server) was federated? Democratized moderation would
mean that people could then subscribe to whichever style of moderation they
prefer, and people with unpopular styles of moderation (e.g. "ban everything I
don't like", the style of the vast majority of forum moderators) would cease
having so much power over mediums of communication.

~~~
tabletiptop
Speaking as someone who moderated a torrent site forum in my teens, there's
unfortunately so much truth in what you said in that first paragraph.
Especially the part about adolescent morality as policy.

