Absolutely agree. There is also the problem that on staff you can never really win. If you make one decision you have a bunch of angry users criticising you and if you make the other decision you have a different bunch of angry users criticising you. It can be very draining, no doubt especially for such a big site.
That's certainly not to say that criticism of decisions is never warranted or that people should not argue for their own positions but that should not descend into insults and personal attacks. I can't say I am perfect about that but I do try to avoid personal attacks as much as possible, though it can be difficult when emotions run high.
The other problem with mobs is that they tend to oversimplify things. To use an actual example. A forum I moderate has the policy not to allow people to make posts which admit to illegal activities for fairly obvious reasons. So then you remove posts about soft drug use and get accused of being anti-drugs. Even when you can point to somewhere else and say "we did the exact same thing on a different topic" or "Here I am supporting a change in drug laws" people just ignore it. It's something to bear in mind when these controversies arise that a lot of accusations against people are just not true. I know I've been attacked and accused of all sorts of things which are just not even close to true or the opposite of what I stand for.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Absolutely agree. There is also the problem that on staff you can never really win. If you make one decision you have a bunch of angry users criticising you and if you make the other decision you have a different bunch of angry users criticising you. It can be very draining, no doubt especially for such a big site.
That's certainly not to say that criticism of decisions is never warranted or that people should not argue for their own positions but that should not descend into insults and personal attacks. I can't say I am perfect about that but I do try to avoid personal attacks as much as possible, though it can be difficult when emotions run high.
The other problem with mobs is that they tend to oversimplify things. To use an actual example. A forum I moderate has the policy not to allow people to make posts which admit to illegal activities for fairly obvious reasons. So then you remove posts about soft drug use and get accused of being anti-drugs. Even when you can point to somewhere else and say "we did the exact same thing on a different topic" or "Here I am supporting a change in drug laws" people just ignore it. It's something to bear in mind when these controversies arise that a lot of accusations against people are just not true. I know I've been attacked and accused of all sorts of things which are just not even close to true or the opposite of what I stand for.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~