Was Shog9 reprimanded for his use of bad language here?

Question

I see that the chat "Mos Eisley" was canceled due to a few users. But what concerns me is the language of a mod for the site, namely Shog9. Being that I was I banned at the time (I have been banned a few times) I was not able to voice my concerns.

But I am extremely offended by the language that was used by a site moderator. I post this with utter disbelief that a moderator was allowed to conduct themselves in this manner.

Was Shog9 reprimanded for this gross infraction of the "be nice" policy?

Here is the link to the issue, Mos Eisley

Answer 1

Let's add some context.

He also renamed the room to several offensive things, referencing rape and various other atrocities, then held a separate room wherein he implied vaguely horrible things and stated intents which would get any other blue canned.

We spoke with the other CMs, who agreed his conduct was off the rails, but Shog retains his employment only through his employer's good will and Stack not being a publicly traded company.

There is no justice, the Be Nice policy is a lie, and life has been much better since leaving this heap.

Answer 2

Pedantic answer: we don't know.

Reprimanding normal users for bad behaviour might take place in public or in private chats/messages.
Reprimanding moderators for bad behaviour would usually take place in private chats or emails.
Reprimanding Community Managers ... I don't know where that happens, it's above my pay grade. Maybe in company meetings? Not in front of volunteer moderators or community members, that's for sure. So technically we don't know whether Shog9 was reprimanded or not, because we wouldn't have seen it anyway.

Practical answer: almost certainly not.

Use of swear words is, in itself, not cause for reprimand for anyone. Some chatrooms ban swearing, but Mos Eisley was never one of them. Swearing at someone, or in an offensive way, is never acceptable, but that wasn't what was happening here. So I see no reason why Shog9 would need to be reprimanded for his use for bad language in this context.

Context is, of course, important. There was a lot more going on here than that single swear word, or even that single conversation. For one thing, Shog9's outburst marked the termination of a chatroom which had caused a lot of headaches for multiple SE employees; when his colleagues became aware of what he'd done, I suspect their reaction was more along the lines of "thank God we don't have to worry about that room any more" than "oh no, he said a swear, we should reprimand him". For another thing, more problematic than saying "shit" was his renaming of the room to "The SciFi / Valorum / Himarm molestation room"; he himself thought better of this and changed it to "Valorum / Himarm poisoned this room; it is defunct" an hour later, and after some private discussion another CM changed it to "Poisoned room; it is defunct" a fortnight later. Whether any "reprimanding" went on around that is, again, something we don't and can't know. But I'd say it's still highly unlikely: at least from the company's point of view, Shog9 is not a community member throwing around random swearwords, but a company employee doing his job, and any apparent lack of professionalism was probably excused on the grounds that he (and other employees) had had to deal with a lot of shit relating to this room in particular and had simply had enough of it.

Answer 3

It about a situation as much as the wording.

Quite frankly the Mos that was, was a mess. Folks made a lot of attempts to fix things and it failed.

It's about intent and to an extent how we deal with folks as much as what's said.

I've said I have has enough of, well, that word.

If you consider the names of the room, it was the very incidents and personalities that resulted in it's downfall.

Mos is dead. It wasn't Shog or the mods that killed it.

It's folks constantly doing things they probably should have known better than to do. I don't know what good reprimanding Shog would do. If a mod on SE lost his cool once or twice, I think we would get a polite talking to but not much else. In fact as a mod, my typical response to sporadic bad language is a gentle reminder and making things go away.

I don't see any benefit in going further unless there was a pattern of behavior.