Has there been a change to general moderation policy?

Crossquoting from another thread:

I have a feeling that the moderation used to be more "hands off" in the past and I'd like to know if there has been a clear decision to change this, that I didn't read about yet, and if we really should open new threads for everything instead of "derailing" running threads?

Normally I'd just have asked you in the thread where you said this and I feel super weird for making this a new thread, but it sounded like... I'm supposed to now?!

Also, does cross-thread quoting still trigger a notification for you?

 

I don't know about changes but plenty of off-topic chat go on in several threads from time to time. Funny fact that I personally clicked unwatch in the referred thread after the last page was filled with only gun talk

 

I can't comment on moderation policy but, yeah, if discussion is on another topic it should be moved to a new thread. It makes discussions easier to find and stops getting in the way of whatever the old topic was.

 

That was a notice from a moderator. It’s case by case depending on the situation and thread.

 

It's exactly what zombie said. Moderators all have different styles and the general rule is we basically use common sense. If you're looking for hard rules, check the community guideline stickies and any stickies in general. Moderators have to have some flexibility though as this is why we exist, otherwise you might as well just offload it to AI.

And Musk doesn't recommend that.

Honestly, just post. Forget there are rules. Example: Some people go too far and inconvenience others without intending to so we have to judge what might make most if not all people satisfied and pick that. I haven't seen any moderation that's personal or biased yet.

I thought about if I should say "we" or "I" from that quote, and settled on we because of previous evidence of other mods letting things slide too. You would not like us if we clamped down on the law as it is, because you and pretty much everyone on these boards, including moderators and Unity staff are breaking those rules, constantly, in tiny ways. To chase such things is really a mark of insanity.

That is why for me, they're guidelines. It's a community, not a court of law, mods should be really just provoked to act or forced to rather than act all the time. A healthy community is self governing and only given the occasional nudge - my personal thoughts - and I have been a moderator since the 90s on various boards. I ended up here by invitation not request.

 

I agree with all of that and I think you guys have done a great job so far! But your statement that I quoted in the OP about going to just delete offtopic thread derailments in the future really bothers me, because I'd hate to see that content lost and the Unity Developer Network Rules state:
"4. We will not delete posts unless they are spam, abusive or threatening."
I'd be fine with everything continuing as it was, or at least getting an official warning before off-topic-talk gets deleted, but if the new official (or at least your personal - doesn't really make any difference to me) stance was to delete offtopic talk without warning, then I would just post less in general, because much of what I like to talk about is "not strictly on topic, but also not important enough to make a new thread for it".
I just hoped for some clarification on that issue, because taken at face value the quote from the OP sounds scary and unwelcoming to a huge part of how discussions in the general forum tend to go. Personally I see the meandering to other topics as a big plus (at least in #general, less so in #scripting of course [where I never hang out though]) because it is a way of discovering new things and perspectives. I'll freely admit that my "veganism in gamedesign" thread was much more of a S***show than I feared it could be, but there were still things of value to be found for me, like all the talk about visual novels. You know what I mean? If you had deleted that, you'd have removed one of the few good things about that thread, but of course it was offtopic as hell. Or the "becoming a producer..." thread - just going by the OP I'd have said "nothing good can come from this", but it briefly brushed a topic I happened to be interested in right now and was an opportunity to interject a quick offtopic question for which I promptly received 2 very useful answers. If I would make a new thread for every such quick question that I have, I'd make more threads than Arowx and likely many people would be annoyed by that (and rightfully so in my opinion, because if everyone did that, then half the threads would slide to page 2 with 0 replies and never go anywhere).

 

P.s.: You've edited your post a couple of times, you can see in my quote which version I read before replying, but my point mostly still stands.

This mostly answers my question I guess. I very much agree with what you say and it is 100% in line with my own forum experience. Every "intensly moderated" forum that I every used turned sour over time.

 

Yeah I will often do that (edit my post a couple of times) so long as I don't see a reply. If the reply comes in then I will correct it after. I should read it before posting but I don't like to spend long on the forums. I nip in do tonnes of damage and teleport out hopefully leaving it on fire.

 

Glad to see I'm not the only one with this approach to posting... I was starting to think I was the only insane one.