If we’re going to take cuse hypothetical situation where someone gets inspired to kill someone from this site, wishing death on the president every time he tweets might make some mentally ill person feel like something needs to be done.
I don’t think the behaviour of an irrational person is really the responsibility of posters on this forum if they’re not clearly inciting it, at least any more than (as was posted earlier) McCartney was responsible for the Manson murders.
I also think cuse wanted to clamp down on the the number of posts calling for blood because firstly it’s not who we are as a group and secondly because it might attract the wrong sort of people to the site (extremists/security).
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It depends in what direction we want it to grow.
Maybe, but I don’t think people take “Eat another Big Mac and keel over,” to be a serious threat in any way, nor do I think they should. Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe I’m misinterpreting things, but I feel like that’s a different vein of comment all together. I’m also not that concerned about whether we end up on a list, I’m only concerned that we don’t belong on a list - that we’re not influencing people the wrong way or anything like that. Also that we can easily defend the content that exists here.
Yeah, pretty much. It really just starts with I think it’s wrong and I don’t think it’s who we are or who we should want to be.
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Just remarking that these are great posts.
To me, I want to separate a discussion about what this community considers PERMISSIBLE CONTENT and what this community considers PERMISSIBLE FORMS OF DISCOURSE.
I can come up with all kinds of hypotheticals about content I consider impermissible, but I really have to stretch. What is more fundamental and far more objectionable to me are forms of discourse.
I think an easy objection to that is to refer back to the sort-of recent debate over whether it really matters whether you’re being civil, since bigotry is often civil, and resistance against bigotry is almost by default uncivil. But I don’t really mean whether someone is being polite, so I think it’s okay to throw that objection to the side.
Controversial or generally offensive topics can be confined to containment threads or subforums, but the style of discourse is (at least for me) what defines a community.
It’s not really a fair comparison, but think of @JohnnyTruant. JT has lost his damn mind a time or two, but he reflects, he works to be mindful and responsible not just for what he wants to say but how he says it and how that impacts the people around him. That doesn’t have anything to do with the topics he wants to discuss. Even if he doesn’t think he said anything wrong, he will listen if someone says wtf man.
Now just remove the name if that’s not how you see JT lol, but I hope you can see what I mean. What matters to me most is the form of discourse.
I want to participate in a community of people who value being reflective, mindful, and responsible. People who don’t align with that aren’t bad people. They just aren’t offering the kind of dynamic I want. Indeed, the kind of dynamic I believe is essential to have a productive dialogue regardless of the content or topic.
In my response below to prana, I will draw a crude illustration of my point.
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That started to happen back in July in the Moderation rules thread:
I’m not going to reread the whole thing but I think it would be good to work from that so we don’t have to start from scratch.
I agree with this but think some prior discussion of this would be necessary to decide on the concrete rules in step one.
Agree with this too.
Sounds good, with the caveat that many initiatives have gotten bogged down with process discussion since we left 2p2. I am thinking we’ll never come up with the perfect ideal of a democratic process that makes everyone happy. So really all we need is enough of the appearance of democracy that people don’t feel alienated enough by it to leave the forum. A proposal, followed by a discussion and vote, decided by a simple majority, should be good enough for this.
One final thing: I think we also need to come up with a process for selecting mods that imbues them with some legitimacy. What we have now is basically no process–the mods are mods just because they were in prior versions of the forum. (cite)
And along with that, some sort of “expectations and responsibilities” plan for mods would be helpful as well.
So, somebody get on that, okay?
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We’re human. We all have dark thoughts. Some darker than others. And I think we all need and deserve a place to express and process those things.
But I don’t even need to place a value judgment on those thoughts or the way a person chooses to express them to say that sometimes those things might not be compatible with different communities.
So if I could draw a crude illustration, maybe you like to paint using your own feces. GREAT. Should you be allowed to come to my paint nite with friends where we’re just trying to smoke and play with watercolors? Am I not permitted to say lol gtfo? What if the feces painter says wtf, I just want to paint?
It can seem like we’re trying to do the same thing. Aren’t we all painting? But we’re not. The guy who wants to paint with feces isn’t welcome to come into my home or my clubhouse.
Take it a step further. I tell the guy holy shit (lol), you have real artistic talent. We would value you contributing to our little group. Could you maybe just paint with watercolor paint instead of literal doo doo???
And his response is not just to keep painting with shit, but to tell me, “Nope. I will always paint with shit. Live with it.” Maybe he even rubs a little in my face to make his point.
I don’t see anything wrong with saying to that guy I wish you well, but this is a watercolor painting group. We would have to fundamentally change more than you imagine in order to integrate painting with shit.
I don’t see anything wrong with saying jfc, I don’t want to paint with shit, and I don’t want to be a part of a group that paints with shit. I just don’t. It’s not a value judgment. It’s a defined preference.
And it’s a more than reasonable request to make of someone who wants to paint with the group. If you can’t leave the shit on the other side of the door, think about what kind of compromise you’re asking me and the rest of the group to make.
The same thing if you’re a member of the group saying come on, let the guy who likes to paint with shit join the group. I don’t think that’s reasonable, but even if someone else in the group thinks it is, I hope you can see why I would no longer feel at home in that group.
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Excellent post and sound suggestions.
My proposal is that we have essentially elected officers/mods who we trust to make those decisions. A democratic republic, if you will. It’s never been tried before, but I think we should give it a shot!
Within that, we could have a meeting once a month where ANYONE is welcome to join in a discussion noting concerns and suggestions. This part is truly democratic in that if you show up, your voice will be heard. If you show up, your vote will determine any subsequence changes that come out of that meeting.
I would see this as meaningfully different than, for example, cuse putting up a poll that we’re still discussing days later. Some of us most involved in the discussion haven’t even voted yet lol.
This would have defined parameters. The discussion will take place during this period, and then we will make a decision by the end of the meeting. We wouldn’t be endlessly hashing out a discussion until we reach some probably-impossible consensus. Show up to the meeting, make your points in support or opposition to proposals, then take part in a vote. The issues are then settled, at least until the next business meeting. If you don’t join the discussion and the vote, that’s fine.
This only works, though, if we establish this as a community procedure. It will on occasion lead to decisions and changes that some people like, some people don’t like, but it’s all fine, because there is a process in place that guarantees nothing about the group needs to be permanent. If it truly is that awful for the well-being of our community, everyone will have a chance to address it post-haste in the next business meeting.
you summoned me with an @ so I will respond with exactly what I think this place should be. It should be like old pol. no stupid ass gatekeeping over trivial bullshit like M4A ( I won’t get over this ) that literally had like a 40,000 post thread devoted to discussion over it in the old 22 forum. Well, we just collectively decided, I guess, that anyone who isn’t M4A can GTFO. I feel in a lot of threads I cannot speak my opinion (which skews really liberal) because it isn’t quite progressive enough for people like cuse and several others here. Don’t even get me started on the bernie bros ( and before that gets hate, keep in mind i intend on voting for him in the primary).
There are a LOT like me. I know because my posts do get pretty consistent likes. If you wanna dominate the conversation and make it into the progressive utopia you always dreamed of, fine, count me out. I think it makes for shitty, boring discussion. We need villains like ikes, they make the discussion interesting. I don’t see that being possible in this current atmosphere.
I think people should be allowed to bring up a variety of viewpoints (no I’m not talking about fake ass, JAQ bullshit or concern trolling) without being jumped on by the mob. This includes the stuff by BruceZ, which THE COMMUNITY HAS VOTED ON already as being acceptable.
I don’t really care what offends you or makes you clutch your pearls. We live in an offensive world and terrible things are happening. Grow the fuck up and start living in the real world. That’s what I want from this forum. I am quickly realizing it isn’t going to happen, so like I said before, the way I approach this site going forward is going to change.
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I don’t think I’ve noticed people being jumped on by the mob here for posting different opinions, but I skim and grunch a lot of threads because of the time difference.
Do you have a link?
I’m mostly referring to the entire history of the “who will run in 2020 ?” thread across multiple boards, I am extremely lazy, and likely won’t post source material, but I know others know what I’m talking about. Cuse’s posts about gatekeeping around M4A sum it up perfectly.
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OK, so it’s mainly about people attacking others for supporting HRC or Biden?
Yes, that occurred to me and I agree with your thoughts. To use RiskyFlush’s analogy, maybe this is a group for painting with watercolors, and some folks were hoping there would be some knitting, too. Which is cool, but this group is about watercolor painting. You’re welcome to paint with us but you’ll need to find another group for knitting.
I like your thinking, and that you are obviously putting real consideration into this, but…
Trying to get something as structured as this in place was a notable failure at our intermediate home on the free forum. It was just too difficult and contentious to get all the way there from where we started.
Part of that was concern about small groups making decisions out of view of the full community. Your meeting idea attempts to address that, but I don’t know if it will be enough to assuage those kind of concerns.
I think that we are a small enough group that we can make decisions more directly as a group, most likely with discussions in threads and simple polls/votes.
I do agree that admins and mods should be trusted to do their work, but within the framework of the decisions that are made by the community, while understanding that they will need to exercise judgement at times.
So, to summarize:
The community decides
- A policy for what posts are allowed and what posts aren’t.
- A policy for enforcing content standards.
- A policy for how mods become mods and stop being mods.
The decisions are made by
- Discussing in a thread.
- Somebody guides the discussion toward a proposal that can be voted on.
- There’s a vote, simple majority decides.
Then we, as a community, turn loose our mods (chosen through an approved process), who carry out the will of the community by using our content standards and moderation practices as their guide. All of it in public with full transparency.
That’s pretty bare bones but it would be enough for me.
Lol, people who have shown even slightest support for Pete are getting ganged.
The HRC stuff I realize I’m in a minority on. I think people changed their tunes a lot in the last few years but that’s neither here nor there. My main point is, chasing out CLEARLY deep thinkers like bruce is an obvious unforced error, especially when the only cause is sometimes he makes you feel uncomfortable or hurts your fee fee’s (not speaking about you specifically, just in general).
I mean, maybe it doesn’t even need to be the way it is, maybe we can have separate sections of the forum for people who think alike/don’t mind seeing certain things posted. I think that is healthy.
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I support your proposal. Since there is far more joy in nitpicking where we disagree, though, I will just note one thing.
That doesn’t bother me. Or at least, I don’t see it as a worthy objection, in part because I don’t believe it’s possible to “assuage those kind of concerns” universally, not even within a small group. If that is an obstacle to ever making a decision, we will never make any progress.
My concern about a more modest, dare I say sensible, approach as yours is that it works best within a very small group, but I think we’re in agreement in saying it’s far more difficult to make that approach work past an undefined size threshold. I don’t know that my proposal adequately addresses the concerns you brought up that I believe deserve attention, though, so I remain open to further discussion and suggestions, particularly given that I’m not in a position to make a decision about this anyway.
those are both problematic posts to me. maybe not in isolation - but as a group, yea.
Greg,
Is Bruce your gimmick?
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I’m just kidding btw.
Greg is a freedom lover. NotBruce is a statist.
See the thing is there are people that micro that do hold far left beliefs (correct me if im wrong please) but dont feel the need to enforce them on others. Obviously the line can be drawn SOMEWHERE before calling nazis nazis becomes unacceptable. Come on, you’re better than this.
Greg hasn’t been calling any posters names. If he says mean things about Mayor Pete that seems very ok. It’s understandable that Mayor Pete supporters may take offense, but I don’t see how you can really have a politics forum that’s at all open where people can’t say any particular politician sucks.