Friends of Captain Awkward

((Moderator note: the first two posts in this thread were moved here from a different thread, as explained below.))

“abbreviations and shorthands frequently used on other sites, such as GC and SG and NMother, are not in general use, and most readers will not understand them, nor is there an easily available glossary to help people unpack your use of that jargon. ”
Even if I’m not completely familiar with the abbreviations or terms used in the original request, I understood the situation. How can anyone posting tell if the phrases or words they choose will be understood by all FOCA readers?

Those did seem very specific to a sub-community. I read the first post and was lost. I thought the mother was a narcotics officer, and GS meant nothing, nor did it come up in any searches. It wasn't until I googled "GS" and "Narc" together that the relevant information appeared.

((Mod hat on))

I posted a moderation note in this thread: http://friendsofcaptainawkward.com/foru ... 18&t=12980

Grangiest answered me and started a sub-discussion. I have moved the sub discussion here so we can respond without derailing daisybelle1984's thread any further. Here is a copy of my moderation note:

((Mod hat on))

daisybelle1984, when you join a new community, it is incumbent on you to make sure you are following the norms of that community, and not just importing the norms of another community.

Here, abbreviations and shorthands frequently used on other sites, such as GC and SG and NMother, are not in general use, and most readers will not understand them, nor is there an easily available glossary to help people unpack your use of that jargon. It would not even be sufficient to expand GC to "golden child" because that phrase has a very specific meaning in other communities, and when it's used in that way, it expects the reader to be able to fill in a lot of blanks. Since these terms are not in common use in this community, you cannot assume that readers can fill in those blanks, and should take care to spell out what you mean clearly.

On the other hand, we do have rules about the use of ableist slurs that are not in force in other places, and you used one of the ones we moderate for most often. We also have rules against diagnosing people who have not received formal diagnoses in real life. Therefore, we require that our users make a distinction between a parent who has been diagnosed as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder and one who simply exhibits behaviors that might (or might not) be sufficient to obtain a diagnosis.

We want you to feel welcome at FoCA, but we also want you to take the time to make sure your posts conform to our community standards. Please go back to your original post and remove the jargon not in common use here and replace it with content that makes clear what you mean to people who don't know the jargon. At the same time, you may find a review of our rules ( http://friendsofcaptainawkward.com/forum/rules.php ) and our posts about ableism ( http://friendsofcaptainawkward.com/foru ... f=6&t=8228 and http://friendsofcaptainawkward.com/foru ... f=6&t=8880 ) helpful.

If your editing window has expired, please feel free to send me a PM with your desired edits, and I will make them for you. Or you can use the Report function to send the editing request to the entire admod team and someone will handle the edits for you (the Report button is the one near the top of your message with the ! In a triangle).

((Mod hat off))

The first two posts in this thread were that original thread, because they concern the moderation, and do not move daisybelle1984's thread forward in any meaningful way.

Just to keep the sizes of my posts remotely reasonable, I am going to respond to the two moved items in a separate post.

((Mod hat still on))

Grangiest, your post asking about a mod note addressed to another user in that other user's thread is a derail. It did not move the discussion of that user's problem forward at all. Derailing is against our rules, and so is posting issues with moderation in a forum-wide way. See Rule 5.1, which includes this:

If you think a mistake has been made, a quick message to the team member in question might clear things up without having to make a forums-wide announcement.

The appropriate way to raise your question would have been to either PM me directly and ask it or report the post using the ! In the triangle at the top of the post and ask the mod team in general. We would have responded. This would have prevented alone1 from inadvertently contributing to your derail, although she did a good job of illustrating why we think daisybelle1984's use of jargon made her post unnecessarily difficult to read and understand.

In the future, please do not derail other people's threads with questions about moderation.

And alone1, we appreciate that you tried to help by providing yourself as an example of someone who misunderstood the jargon being used. You were not the only one who had a similar problem, but you illustrated the issue very clearly.

Grangiest, since you managed to break two rules in one post, we are issuing a formal warning on your account. In the future, if you wish to discuss moderation or ask clarifying questions, please use PMs or the Report function.

To answer your specific question, there were ways to tell that these terms are not in common use here. For example, no other posts here use those abbreviations and jargon. There is not a glossary that includes those items (although there is a glossary for Captain Awkward and these forums here: https://criminalreviews.wordpress.com/2 ... -glossary/ )

In general, the way you tell whether jargon you want to use will be recognized here is you use some combination of these actions:

— recognize that things like "GC" and "NMother" are jargon, perhaps recalling that at some point, you had to learn what they meant

— recognize that you would not approach a random stranger and use this jargon, since you would not be able to expect that a random person would understand specialized terms

— notice that the communities that do use these terms almost all have glossaries that explain them

— read posts here about issues with parents and notice that this jargon is not used

— check out the Captain Awkward glossary and notice that these terms are not included

— err on the side of caution and do not use jargon in a new community unless you have absolute reason to believe people will understand you

Again, I want to stress that we do have users who misunderstood what was being said. Communication takes two people to be successful, and it's the responsibility of the person who is talking to make sure they are using a langauge they hold in common with the person/people they are talking to.

((Mod hat, finally, off))

Where is the glossary?

It’s linked on the main Captain Awkward site, here: https://criminalreviews.wordpress.com/2 ... -glossary/

It's also linked in my post.

Mod note:

Grangiest, we are issuing a 24 hour temporary ban on your account.

You were just issued warning for derailing to push back against moderation, and now you have responded to that moderation by failing to read the message and demanding information that you were given in the moderation message you just received.

The ability to receive moderation is mandatory for participating in this space. That means you must read and process and abide by the moderation that you receive.

This is your 3rd and final formal warning. Our next step will be a permanent ban. You must know and follow the rules of this space in order to participate in this space.

Mod note end.