Dennis asked: You close a question / delete a comment thread / take a normal moderator action and get called out on meta. The post blows up. How do you handle this?
Oliver Salzburg answered: That depends, did I make a mistake?
DragonLord answered: I'll post an official response about the action. In doing so, I'll try to address as many of the key concerns raised by the community and retain a fair tone to the user involved.
slhck answered: Well, if a post blows up, it'd be time to lock it, at least temporarily, and get in touch with the user personally. The post can be unlocked if there's no obvious hostility anymore, or deleted if there's no sign of the user starting to discuss properly. We're not censoring anybody, but we certainly wouldn't like personal accusations … overall, "being nice" is important, and discussion about the actual content.
Daniel Beck answered: As I am directly involved, I'll ask him to keep it technical, and otherwise ask another moderator to handle it (if he thinks it requires handling).
Daniel Beck continued: Discussions must be kept civil. He can strongly defend his case, but personal attacks are not appropriate. I'll ask him to stop the personal attacks, inviting him to chat or ask other moderators about it if he's interested in clearing up the issue, and keep to the issue at hand. Either that works, or he continues forcing me to lock the meta topic or temp-ban.
soandos answered: I think that the way that it was handled with me in this meta post was best. Basically, just try and deal with it. If it gets out of hand, let another mod deal with it in an impersonal approach
KronoS answered: Privately talk to my other mods. If I'm emotionally involved, I'll remove myself and let them handle the situation. I know that I won't be perfect, and I'm willing to accept any mistakes that I may make, so if there needs to be corrective action on my part, I'll be open to that as well.
