Moderating for knowledge, not truth

Question

Religious sites are among the most challenging moderation tasks. Before I was hired as Community Manager, I was an active moderator on Biblical Hermeneutics, so I feel I have some justification in saying that. One problem we see time and again is the tension between Truth and Knowledge. We each come to the sites with a predetermined understanding of what it is true and those beliefs are often in conflict with what other people belief is true. As humans, we have a deep commitment to Truth even to the point of violence.

Stack Exchange is geared to propagate Knowledge, not Truth. Pandya makes the case very clearly in Concerns about brigading:

We know that among all the religions, Hinduism has very much diversity, there are various beliefs and philosophies. The problem we often face is due to the difference in thoughts and beliefs or different Sampradaya. Let me tell you that proving particular beliefs superior than others is not the objective of this site. We should respect all Sampradyaya, their beliefs and philosophies.

In the context of you own Sampradyaya, there are statements that are true, statements that are false and statements that have not been decided. It's tempting to go through and answer all the questions from your own understanding of Truth. But that is unhelpful since each question would end up flooded with contradictory answers. Voting would mean that whichever Sampradyaya has the most users on the site would always appear to be the right answer.

Fortunately, every question of truth may be converted to a question of knowledge:

Are there multiple universes?

===>

Why do modal realists believe in the concept of the multiverse?

The second isn't really asking whether the multiverse theory is true, but rather discussing a particular group of thinkers and their teachings. The beauty of this system is that:

1. Anyone can ask and answer these questions with equal authority.
2. Disagreements can be resolved with evidence (by looking at the texts held sacred by the particular Sampradyaya).
3. Visitors to the site will have greater understanding of Hinduism in general and the Sampradyaya in particular.

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I bring this up because I'm looking at a handful of complaints about moderators on this site and I think it'll help to understand my point of view. If you want to listen, I can talk for hours about the difference between the sensus plenior and historical-grammatical methods of biblical interpretation. But everything I know about the Shiva vs. Vishnu debate, I learned right here on meta. Fortunately, I have an easier task than sorting these two (or maybe more?) positions. Good moderation strives for Knowledge even at the expense of Truth. This job belongs to everyone and not just the appointed moderators. If you are willing to put aside your own beliefs for the sake of helping others understand Hinduism, I honor and respect that sacrifice. If your own beliefs are too important to be set aside, I respect that too, but would suggest this is not the site for you.

If you've contacted us about the site and moderators in particular, I'd like to apologize for taking so long to answer. (It's been busy around here lately.) Moderators are human, have their own biases and might slip up from time to time. If I see any examples of that, I'll contact them and let you know what I found privately. One of the reasons we have three moderators is so they can watch out for each other. If it seems the moderator team isn't keeping each other accountable, I'll coach them through that too. My goal is to help this community productively field all sorts of questions about Hinduism.

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I should also take special note of what I call stump-the-chumps questions. These are questions asked less out of a sincere desire to know the answer and more out of an attempt to advocate a particular point of view. These questions can be very enlightening, but I've seen a few examples on this site that ended up sparking debates in the comments that seem more divisive than constructive. Since diamond moderators are tasked with handling comment flags and since their tools are somewhat limited to delete some comments or delete all comments, it's not surprising when comments supporting a particular position are removed.

If you want your writing on the site preserved:

• ask a curious question or
• write a supported answer.

Comments are prone to deletion. It would be an unusual circumstance to cause me to think a moderator is hopelessly biased because they deleted some comments.

Answer 1

Thanks for writing an elaborate blog, which showcases that the culture and philosophy of StackExchange network is not about right/wrong but about knowledge sharing.

However, the root problem with the most opposed moderator, is mainly to do with the bias treatment to the users, who match & unmatch their thinking.

Here is a limited list of problems:

• I had at least 6 answers deleted by this Mod, which met the objective criteria of this site (answering the question and sources cited). See this, this, this, this, this, this.
• User moonstar, who actually identified the Mod's bias the first, also had their answer[s] deleted. The most discussed one, is this answer, even when it was upvoted and accepted.
• User Rickross, had their answer not only deleted, but also marked as spam. Another answer is here, which was deleted by this Mod & restored by another Mod.
• Certain other users also have harmless contents edited or deleted
• I advise you to refer the moderators, to see the amount of opposition has been happening against this particular Mod.

Now there are another set of users, who are never touched upon by this Moderator, for no clear reason, even though they break the site rules consistently.

• A recent example is this (and also can be this)
• This Mod hasn't deleted their own answers, even though they don't match the site criteria. I have listed them in this post

At special times, this Mod doesn't require any flag to delete an answer. The Mod deletes these special answers from self-inspiration. These answers belong typically to those users who don't match the Mod's thinking. On the other hand, we have sent the DB query of all 400+ answers, which are delete-able as per the site rules of citing sources; then the Mod demands that we raise flag to each answer for their review!

There are many posts, in which the users have demanded to remove this Mod. See this example.

Many of us feel that, this user is suitable as a very good contributor and not as a moderator. The abuse of power has to stop. Due to their high reputation, the user anyways has an access to the moderation tools.

Several users agree that, we can run this site well without this particular Moderator, as anyways the flags raised are not near capacity.

_{Users are free to edit this answer.}