Is this an abuse of power? I believe it is

Question

Moderator Brian Towers in response to the question "New Fritz 17 User" used the term "RTFM" as part of his original answer.

1. In the comments, a user called him out for using a profanity.
2. In response, he told the user something close to "he should get his eyes checked".
3. In response, I said that I have owned an IT company for 24 years now, and that the "F" is generally considered to the F-word", and said that if he Google it, it returns that as the first result.
4. He replied that "as a junior programmer" his "spinster" supervisor told him that it was "Read the flipping manual", but he did not edit his answer.
5. I responded that a "spinster" would not be likely to use profanity, but that it did not change what most people would take that to mean. There was absolutely no trolling, or abuse on my part. I did edit his answer to simply "Read the manual" at that point.
6. I then called him out on this second deletion, and he claimed it was a "vendetta" and trolling. Weak excuse to cover up his censorship.

Shortly after, he used his moderator powers to delete the conversation. I responded to that and left a message that I believed he abused his powers. He deleted that message too.

Sorry, but if you cannot be called out because you are a moderator, that is wrong. He abused his power to delete a conversation where he was simply in the wrong. There was no trolling or anything else going on there.

Moderation is not censorship, and does not give one the right to abuse the power. This is SO wrong!

What do you think?

Answer 1

Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct

Moderators should know it by heart. I don't mean to take sides here, but I see no reason for a moderator not to (try to) empathize. Moderators should not have the excuse of a bad day or the laziness of not writing clearly what they meant. "RTFM" is, at the very least, ambiguous. The interlocutors are not required to know what it means; they may even google it and find out an unintended meaning. Even in the case of quickly having typed "RTFM", they had a simple and friendly solution at hand: edit the answer (regardless of what the initialism meant for them, and regardless of any abusive comments they might have received).

Writing "RTFM" (and standing by it) is comparable to writing “You could Google this in 5 seconds.”, cited in the Code of Conduct as unfriendly.

Answer 2

Assuming the facts in question are undisputed, this is quite clearly a character fault on Brian's part. However, it is not an abuse of power. This may be confusing, but let me explain.

For a moment, let's set aside Daniel's (valid) point that RTFM is akin to "You could Google this in 5 seconds" which is against the code of conduct.

As a moderator, you will be exposed to people who view the world through a different lens than you, and you should defer to the least objectionable lens when possible. Thus, it does not matter if, for example, you've learned that RTFM is not rude or profane. But if others feel it is, then you should defer to that. If there were literally no other way to express the view, then perhaps it would be up for debate. But since clearly there are other ways to express the view without introducing profanity, there's no need to "stand your ground" on the issue. "Oh, I learned it different, my bad!" is a gracious way to exit, or just simply deleting your comment and the other comment is a less gracious but actually acceptable way to go about it.

The reason it isn't an abuse of power is that comments can be deleted at any time, for any reason, and we should never get emotionally attached to them. They are footprints in the sand, and we can expect weather closer to Mars than the Moon. They can and will disappear, and it doesn't really matter why.

So implying that it's too simple of a question is a CoC violation. Standing ground when called out is a character fault. And I believe that, everyone being adults, we can find a solution and move on. But from a moderator abuse perspective, I'd hesitate to call it an abuse of power simply because comments are so fragile. This is speaking from my 8 years as an SE moderator (wow time flies...)

Answer 3

The use of RTFM isn't necessarily profane or rude; it depends on the context. I sometimes use it at the office (spoken language, and just the initialism, not the words); everybody knows what it's supposed to mean, but when used in the appropriate situation, especially with non-verbal cues, nobody takes offense.

That said, I can imagine there are people who do find it inappropriate for a Q&A site like Stack Exchange. The solution is simple: edit the post:

When should I edit posts?

Any time you feel you can make the post better, and are inclined to do so.

You should respect the original intent of the author (see the sidebar widget on the edit page), but changing 'RTFM' to 'Read the manual' does so. And that is exactly what happened.

Now, regarding the deletion of comments: they are by nature [temporary] (https://chess.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment); once they've served their purpose, they're noise and may be cleaned up.

What are comments?

Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer.

There are simply too many comments on the site to clean up the ones which are no longer needed, but when it happens, please don't assume censorship. Also, they're not meant to hold a discussion:

When should I comment?

You should submit a comment if you want to:

• Request clarification from the author;
• Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
• Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).

Constructive criticism could here be "please change RTFM to something which is less likely to offend users" but it's easier just to edit the post directly; most active users here have enough reputation to do so. Discussions should be held on Meta (this question is a good example) or in chat. Therefore, I'm going to clean up the remaining comments as well.