Hello everyone,
This is kind of a meta discussion, so if it doesn’t fit the community, let me know and I’ll crosspost it somewhere else.
There has been occurrences of people making broad statements against instances, communities, mods or admins. As Lemmy’s recent versions (0.19.7 I think) allow to see someone’s moderation history in a click (see below), I tend to use it from time to time, especially when the person is targeting admins or not that are known to be level-headed and consistent.
If the modlog shows that this person is indeed known to be toxic or arguing in bad faith, I would then post something like “heavy modlog” with a link to the user’s modlog.
It seems like this behaviour could be considered harassment by some people. On the other hand, it allows people to identify directly if that person is arguing in bad faith, the same way very new accounts get regularly called out on their account age.
What do you think?
Here’s my take for what it’s worth:
Modlogs can be very useful to illustrating intent, track records, quality of character- or lack thereof, and context.
As a mod, I use them fairly frequently to determine what kind of person I’m dealing with before making a decision on content. Because oftentimes, things can be taken out of context. Modlogs can and have on occasion, saved an unnecessary removal of content.
As for people using them in debate/discussion, I’m also all for it. Provided that it remains within the theme of the discussion and is not used to derail the conversation, modlogs can be a helpful tool to keep people honest.
Lastly, there’s the idea (read: hope) that linking modlogs advertises to others who may not know- that their behavior is public access. Sometimes this is enough to help keep the peace and create respectful dialogue. The more people that are made aware of this, the better for lemmy overall.