For those who are interested in understanding
how/why I moderate, I suggest watching this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW4LTqRJDW8
It is fundamentally deep and I don't think that this sketchup quite does justice to the
full theory in Kegan's book, so consider this a starting point for trying to understand rather than a starting point for debate or asking me to clarify. It's crucial to realize that while maturity often correlates with age, maturity is not caused by age so the vid showing different ages can be misleading. Levels do build on each other ... building the next level typically appears in a step-wise way in which one can spend decades at one level before suddenly jumping to the next. Second, one might be more mature in some areas than others ... in particular, there's a strong risk of exhibiting some very immature behavior for topics that are emotionally meaningful to oneself.
I've noted before that in terms of the adult (age 18+) population, 14% are Kegan2, 58% are Kegan3, 35% are Kegan4, and 1% are Kegan5.
Within this framework, I think practically all moderation issues are caused by Kegan2 behavior, that is, when a person posts in a way that objectifies other people (e.g. women, muslims, reds, blues, immigrants, elites, religious people, ...). The calls for heavy content based moderation, I think, is mainly motivated based on a preference for Kegan3, that is, "traditionalism" in the sense that Kegan3 would prefer that we stick to certain pre-aproved topics such as e.g. investing, budgets, FIRE, house and car questions, ... and so on. Kegan3 requires the ability to stop seeing [certain] other people as objects---in other words "be nice" but requiress that this happens within carefully constructed guidelines.
However, I prefer to orient the forum towards Kegan4. This is what I mean when I point out how the forum mainly consists of FIREd people who discuss anything but FIRE. Kegan4 allows one to go beyond the restricted guidelines and objectively consider multiple angles of any problem. Kegan4 tends to be annoyed with Kegan2 behavior for that very reason. In Wheaton level terms, to Kegan4, Kegan2 are "the assholes that are destroying the world" and Kegan3 "should try a little harder". Kegan4 also represents "modernism".
What is Kegan5? In forum terms it's the recognition that there's not one objective truth (modernism) but that truth is found by subjective agreement on the objective frameworks. In practical terms, what I try to do when I attempt to "steer" conversations is to make the participants (the subjects) look at
similarities instead of
differences. For me this is an old physics lesson I was fortunate to pick up very early. It's supremely human (possibly based in Kegan2) to mostly look for differences and define everything according to that. It's also a lot easier. Kegan5 requires one to be able to hold more than one framework in the mind simultaneously at the
subjective level in order to compute. This requires a lot of deliberate practice at Kegan4 trying to identify [subjectively] with each objective framework one considers before trying to synthesize. It is the subjective experience that delineates Kegan4 and Kegan5. This is essentially "post-modernism" but as a truly felt and lived philosophy---not just as an intellectual excuse for laziness ala "anything goes in terms of correctness".
Anyhoo ... even if this explanation does not make sense now, this is why I moderate the way I do. So 1) If you got dinged by the moderator stick, it's highly likely that some Kegan2 behavior was involved---likely because of a subject that carries special/personal emotionality(*). There is, as far as I know, no way I can walk Kegan2 through "why you did a bad thing" before you get to Kegan3; and 2) If you wonder why I don't want a giant Kegan3 party (this would after all appeal to the majority of people (58%) ), it's because I'm not interested in the problems that are solvable at this level. That's like teaching middle school. For me, ERE is an exercise in personal development. There's far more to this [life] than solving the financial problem. That shit should only take 5 years.
(*) For example, I might be afraid of dogs because I had a particularly bad experience being attacked by a dog. Therefore when it comes to dogs as an objective group, I would be afraid of all of them. I would likely rationalize why this is objectively the case at which point I'd be stuck in Kegan2 until I realize that the dog that attacked me does not represent all dogs (Kegan2.5) and maybe that I can have good relations which individual dogs (Kegan3). With such experience with a bunch of dogs, I realize that I dogs respond to how I behave (Kegan4) and perhaps that the original attack was due to me being tense as a Kegan2 ... and so on ... This sounds simple when put in those terms, but rest assured that humans do exactly that to each other all the time.