They infract harmless postings, while ignoring purposeful trolling. You can get infracted simply by asking someone if they are trolling for an argument. While the poster you directed the query towards, can continue making personally directed attacks while escaping even a warning. Dropping the big bad T word is for some reason worse than calling someone stupid, paranoid, clueless, etc (not that those are all that bad, but aren't they worse than asking if someone is trolling?). Those mods fail on an epic level if the point of their policing is to foster civility.
I see that a lot, too. This is where taboo topics come in. Or "groupthink"--if you choose to call it that, though groupthink is a bigger taboo than the T-word. Where bias is present in a forum, it's almost always enforced and encouraged by the moderators. And forums usually have their resident trolls, people who post rude, disruptive, and off-topic comments in response to those who express unpopular opinions, and longtime members say, "Oh, he's harmless; he's our bad little monkey."
I've had the experience, many times, on political forums, of being dogpiled by vicious attack comments, only to be banned myself when I finally speak up about the flaming. Or I'll be making a perfectly rational argument, providing good sources for my claims, and refuting the claims of others, meanwhile batting off flames and resident troll comments, only to be labeled a troll myself. Why? Because I'm promoting an unpopular opinion on a forum that doesn't want to hear it. That's "trolling" to some people.
Community policing can be great, but it can also enforce an underlying bias. Look at Digg, for example, where the moderation system is systematically abused, comments being flagged "spam" when they have nothing to do with products but merely express an unpopular (among Digg users) point of view.
I like that the Elemental forums don't have a thumbs down button.
I think that the highly focused nature of this forum--we're all playing the same build of a game that hasn't been released yet and offering feedback on it--insulates against some of the challenges more general purpose forums face. So hardcore moderation just isn't as necessary. When the retail build goes live, I hope the culture will stay the same. I know how hard it is to resist the temptation to go in and moderate everything.
