[CLOSED] Mods deleting comments

I am new here. What's the procedure to appeal/dispute a moderator's actions? I think if we express our displeasure enough times and loudly enough ( in an organized manner) that should influence moderators' future behavior up to the point of some of them stopping to be moderators.

Hi 42,
maybe it's because they've never seen a complainer like myself. I am Russian by birth, but now American for many years. We are a litigious society. Засужу на хр*н! I just need to know who's really in charge.

The comments were not removed. They are just invisible. You can see your own comments, but not as a discussion.
Problem is that there were so many comments unrelated to the translation, that it would be a gargantuan task for a mod to go line by line to delete them. I think if we adhere to the idea to come to a forum for the issues like that grammar dispute - rather than flooding the translation pages - it would be a win-win, no?

The relationship is the sentence provided by that link that says “If you do not agree with moderator’s actions, please contact the administrators” with the word “administrators” itself being linked.

I'll copy what I sent you via PM in a public way so everyone can know.

And let me say something directly to you: by even insinuating that we make things go 'down to trash' at our own leisure you're losing any kind of reason to argue you had - If you want anyone to take your side do not point fingers at staff members (it's not the first time I've told you that most things can be resolved with polite discussion and argument showing - from both sides). From what I've seen, comments had a reason to be hidden (as they had nothing to do with the content of translation). And yes, Admins condone that.

Juan,
do you think that it would be reasonable to expect that when you guys make stuff disappear from the the view or otherwise, you would make clear to the public that some comments were hidden/deleted and for what reason and who was the person that made the decision.
We are not voiceless peasants here. We provide traffic to this site. I would expect us to have some rights...

As a rule we must state anything we do that changes a page even in the slightest, and my fellow Mod did that (they left a comment in the page explaining their reasons) - and their comment seems very reasonable for me. I do not speak Russian, but based on the English comments left there, comments had little to do with the translation (and wasn't something like that a reason why a user suggested the 'Stop' button?). Politics and one's views of countries/governments is a very sticky issue, so it's better to keep said theme out of discussion. Why I say so? Because there's recently been a nationalist user who threatened and offended not only Editors, but a whole country, due to their view of how Turkish language should be dealt with. LT, a multicultural website that gathers people from most places around, is no place for this kind of discussion.

> As a rule we must state anything we do that changes a page
Juan, as a rule that would be totally adequate. For some reason I got an impression that not everybody' complying...

If someone told you we can, they're lying, sorry. Anything we do goes to a list of actions, so we ALL know which staff member did which thing (and that goes from unpublishing pages to banning spammers). We're even able to see things we did not do ourselves, we just need to filter stuff in the list. I could show you that myself, but I don't think I'm authorized to.

From my experience Mods in LT are extremely helpful, kind and tolerant. I remember when I told my fellows I'd leave the team, they were very friendly to me though we do not speak much around. I'm not sure why some people think we're bad, overuse our power and/or do evil to users to feel good - it's not as if we had a black notebook (or a black spreadsheet, as it's a website) on which we write names of users with whom we clashed with red ink. I've even been threatened with death in a PM recently and you don't see me being rude to whoever sent me it.

And honestly, I've told that around myself, if you knew me in real life you wouldn't say I'm the same person speaking here as I'm very hotheaded and tend to be impulsive and not rational. But as anyone can see based on my interactions, this is not the Mod me.

If any of the staff members are concerned about the content of ongoing or deleted comments they can contact me directly. I can provide a (simultaneous) translation preserving all the cultural and stylistic nuances, profanities, insinuations, biased trolling, and other paraphernalia of so many Russian community discussions. Not once have I asked mods to delete comments on my pages.

Comments were not deleted, they were just hidden from public and general view. I can still see them as a Mod and Admins will be able to see them as well.

I'm aware that there is an issue between Ww Ww and a few users, so you can always come to me (as I'm neutral regarding the situation) and say whatever is bothering you. If I can't help instantly, I'll ask for the opinion of my fellows. That's how we work. You all know that I'll gladly help.

For those wondering, this is the comment left by my fellow Mod back there - I don't see a problem quoting it verbatim as everyone could see it there.

Which sounds like a rational explanation and a valid reason to close and hide comments.

What if the author will write under his(her) translation, that he(she) doesn't want any comments. Would it eliminate the problem?
On the other hand, sometime you see an awful translation and the author doesn't realise how bad it is. We all learned on our mistakes, so, how that author will learned if no one will help and correct them. Some time they get uptight, but most of the times they thank you. I'm , for example, very grateful if someone will show me where I made mistakes.

I tried to keep it away from politics. I just told my experience with Ukrainian language. Sometime the truth hurt. Some guys on this site are simply vicious and try to pick up a fight. I've done enough fighting in my life, so, I just want to be left alone.

This will be a long comment, so you'd better have some kind of drink around.

[@Schnurrbrat]
1. I agree. However, I (Juan) was approached by other users reporting offensive comments in that entry. I do not speak in the name of Ww Ww, so I can't justify their actions and what they were thinking. Maybe they thought disabling comments would be better than just unpublishing the 'riskier' ones - and they were/are right to do it.

2. I agree with you and you're totally right to think like that, however, it is a semantic question. By titling this thread 'Mods deleting comments', Masha is insinuating that staff members come and delete comments whenever we want to and without a valid reason. Specially given that she wrote 'She just loves to use her power'. What that makes users think? That a specific staff member has a grudge against her and uses that feeling to attack. That is not true. We're aware of issues between said user and said Mod - and that was why I joined the discussion here, as I'm neutral regarding it and as such will listen to both sides before acting.

3. The 'notify translators' notification is to be used only with translations, not for anything out of it (language changing, video update, etc.). It's tricky because, at times, I do see random comments of my fellow Mods saying why they did something (unpublishing) in the 'Recent activity' tab.

4. People need to have some sense. There are users known to have a liking to instigate confusion and arguments (yes, I've also been contacted privately regarding that - my PM's, as I said, are always open for anyone to write). And that was one of the reasons why the 'Stop' button was suggested. I remember that we were not going to add it, but it became so annoying to see hatred directed at specific people that we had to do it. Some have been even more drastic, to the point of blocking people from sending them PM's. I think it's good that Mods that do not speak speak a given language participate in some discussions, that way we will likely be less biased and more neutral.

5. As I said, we can either unpublish specific comments leaving others intact OR disable/close them (hiding them or not). Always leaving a comment. But it varies from Mod to Mod. I'm not to judge the actions of my fellows. If they thought they did the right thing, I won't counteract and undo one of their actions (unless it was proven to be wrong, like the recent massive unpublishing incidents caused by a nasty bug).

[@Waran4ik] and [@Treugol'ny]
You don't have to publicly state you don't want comments because people need to have common sense. I've seen people using translations pages to instigate conflict based on a specific word choice, language, and even content of the original lyrics (remember when Aaron was accused of being a Nazi supporter?). Politics are not the purpose of this website, so keep it out of here. I've told people several times to turn blind eyes on things they disagree with. From what I could understand from that specific translation, it all started with language and a preposition(!), then escalated to accusations of disrespect between former Soviet republics, nationalist comments and a lesson on history. And even Jews were mentioned. What on Earth is the relation between the issue with the preposition 'in' and all comments that succeeded? That makes it valid for comments to be disabled.

I honestly am not surprised.

I'd like to make it clear that no single comment has been deleted - again, they've been hidden. For that purpose, we have the 'Stop' button, which was asked after users felt so harassed by others that they wanted to stop seeing their comments in their translations because they were very aggressive and rude at times. Alternative translations are allowed and people are free to speak their minds as long as it's not offensive, I just don't understand why people take a liking to fight so much in this website. Not even in political groups in Facebook these things happen. As for authors being able to close comments at their will, I don't think it will be suitable - users can use that to circumvent comments saying they did something wrong. It's a double-edged sword.

Please do, Ellen, if you allow me, I'll expand it with info I find relevant to mention ;)

Just to clarify, comments section was closed. This means comments will not be visible to users, see: https://imgur.com/j0IGSPA

A snippet of the comments to verify that they're still there: https://imgur.com/QRTl6xN

Comments can and will be disabled to keep things from escalating and give staff time to look into what happened. A native speaker (staff) will also be asked to look into it, later on the admins are notified and a final decision is made.

This would be a good idea but if changes are made to the lyrics then we would have to manually open the comments section up and leave a notification and then close it back up. It would only work if the comments section was closed to users and comments could only be left by editors/mods/admins afterwards.

Didn't you delete your account ? Answer is here: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/forum/lyricstranslate-guidelines/all-staf...

5. A moderator doesn't even speak my language and they're intervening.
→ If a moderator who speaks your native language isn't available at the time, another who is (and is familiar with you) will intervene. Later on, a moderator who does speak your native language will be asked to look into the issue.

Didn't you delete your account ?

Yes, I did. The moderator was incompetent and started threatening me. However, he could not connect two words in Russian. If such an unhealthy and biased environment persists here, I will delete my account from the site forever.

By agreeing to make an account on this site, all users accept:
1. Their work will be visible to the public (unless they delete it)
2. Are opening themselves up for criticism.

Criticism seems to be confused with "you didn't translate it like I would have" or "your translation is trash". Those two fall into the categories of:
1. If you don't like a translation, submit your own.
2. That's not criticism, you're not providing feedback.

I asked because I honestly don't remember, I've missed quite a good amount of updates in these last 2-3 months. I will actually look into this, do send me a PM with these "threats" as what you're saying is a serious accusation. At the end of the day, we can't make you do something like 'delete' your account, you're the one who has to press that button. I think your issue is with one particular staff member, not all of us. If this is the case, then something needs to be done about that. That tells me someone else (staff) has to intervene here and handle it from there.

Then the user had no idea of how it works (that we can hide comments or close them but that they're still technically visible if you know where to look). At this time, we can only unpublish comments one by one, not the ability to select multiple comments at a time to unpublish them. Though this is a good suggestion, perhaps an automated comment underneath each unpublished one that will notify the user why it was unpublished.

Again, 'their judgment'. Don't lump us all together, we've had this conversation before. Your past experience with a moderator shouldn't be the only evidence you need to feel you must judge us on.

Of course there's always room for improvement, people who say otherwise aren't fit to be where they are in the first place. Again, do look at my first response in this comment as to why that ability shouldn't be given to users. Also, that's why the admins implemented the 'Stop list'. Voting can still be made even when comments are closed, if I'm not mistaken.