I skimmed some of this but I agree with @jmakin that my consumption of the site has waned in the last month. Many times I have just not posted because I didn’t want to get into it with anyone.
We have whatever this mess is, the Churchill/caffeine and Chris/Dan squables in covid and then the transition thread/Pete back and forth(which I will admit dragging Pete but have tried to not get personal). Like half the forum is arguing. It is rough to ingest.
I think it’s a combo of 9 months in a pandemic and going back to varying levels of hatred toward the Dems post election. I know for me I am more disillusioned than ever and I wonder if that is where all the angst is coming from? The election that we were all expecting to make us feel better didn’t. So now what. And so we have this.
I like pretty much everyone here and think there is no winning when you start these personal feuds. I speak on that from experience.
I double like that post. Hopefully you don’t take this as an insult, but I used to think of you as a fairly argumentative poster. I don’t recall if I’ve gotten into it with you, but maybe. Anyway, you’ve been nice lately even by non-internet standards.
I used to be much more argumentative and have realized it doesn’t really benefit me personally in any way so why do it? It always made me upset in my actual life and what did it get me here? A reputation that was less than I would want?
I still love getting in a debate over something that has merit to debate but I’ve tried to see everyone here as worthy of my respect rather than trying to score internet points by being an ass to people. Am I perfect. No. That’s why I mentioned the Pete thread because I certainly felt some of that anger creep into my posting there.
I don’t like that this has been your experience. I’m sorry my actions have contributed by their presence or absence to what you describe.
With all due respect, you are one of these people contributing to the very problem you’re fighting against.
I like you and adore your posting when you stop choosing to get wrapped up in these fights. You’re a good person that scares me when you turn hostile and violent. I understand part of that has been you feeling you had to act that way to defend yourself. I hate that you’ve felt that way and will work with you to make this a safer place. I just ask that you show me some compassion and patience. I am only human and need the opportunity to learn and grow as much as anyone.
I am really proud of the steps you’ve recently taken to explore healthier boundaries and limits with the forum. I hope this represents your continued growth in that direction. You’re a valued member, and I want your presence here to be a good experience for everyone involved, including yourself.
War Games is on Netflix for a few more weeks. Maybe we should have a watch party.
I think @JohnnyTruant hit the nail on the head. It’s really all about intent. There are a few words or phrases that bother me personally, which I will call out. No one on this forum has ever used any of them here that I know of. That isn’t the whole point, though.
To add to his post, it’s also about respect. If someone asks you to stop using a term or phrase because it’s offensive or harmful to them, please, just stop. It isn’t hard. If you insist on continuing despite being asked, then you’ve shown your hand.
**** “you” in this context is the collective/general “you”, not WitchitaDM
Your refusal to acknowledge your role in this ongoing feud is a reason it is still ongoing.
I guarantee if we did a survivor you’d win like 85% of the vote, I’m certain of it. You are clearly winning here, and I am about as an impartial observer as humanly possible in this particular spat, because I like both you and jalfrezi (a seeming rarity as it always seems like everyone in this kerfuffle has chosen a side)
I originally really started posting on 2p2 in the Poker Goals and Challenges subforum. There were a couple other regs from there who I got to know a bit. We all came up through the stakes around the same time, and all three of us started crushing the games. All making 12+ bb/hr, all going full-time successfully, and all relocating to poker hotspots. All talking strategy in our threads, dissecting hands, sharing knowledge, etc.
Meanwhile that community overall became a lot less friendly/positive and a lot more toxic, and all three of us started doing more hand breakdowns privately via text and a lot less on the site. A large enough portion of that community decided that anyone who didn’t play tight ABC poker for 6-8bb/hr was lying about their winrates or just fish on a heater.
Eventually we stopped posting and now update those threads once a year or so. There were others who I didn’t know personally but who were successful and crushing the games, and they also disappeared around the same time, so my guess is that it was for similar reasons. I don’t read it anymore, so I don’t know what the ultimate end result was for that forum - but I know they ran off a lot of high quality posters who instead just talked amongst themselves privately, and my guess is they continued to become more and more of a cesspool of low level discourse.
I get the same vibes here with regard to toxicity and good regs (imo at least) responding by posting less. There are more and more people from here talking via PM, e-mail or text, and posting less. Personally, every engagement that I have moved from the forum to PM/email/text has been a net positive for me because I get the discussion/info/answers I want without having to deal with trolls/arguments.
On the other hand, these discussions happening privately is a net negative for the community IMO. Anybody who wanted to read my side or the other side of the discussions didn’t get to, and anybody who didn’t want to read it could have scrolled past it anyway. But nobody got to make that choice or see that content.
Someone recently suggested our own version of an EDF style subforum here, where only certain regs were allowed to post but everyone could read. If you asked me six months ago I would have said it’s elitist and a bad idea. Now I’d be thrilled to see it happen, and I’d view it as a net positive for the community.
As another reg told me via text, there are maybe 15-20 people here that provide probably 70-80% of the really good content that we all enjoy reading. Losing just a couple of them or even having them just engage less often has a pretty negative impact on this place.
I know of at least four who have told me they’re posting less lately. Do with this information/take what you will, Unstuck.
He’s stopped on multiple occasions, only to be targeted again multiple times with the mods doing jack shit to step in and defuse it. So his choice has been to shut up and accept this, or fight back himself. It should be obvious that nobody should have to put up with that, but here we are.
I know I have probably been unkind on the whole Pete topic and I will apologize for that. It doesn’t change my opinion of him but if that has seeped over into seeming personal to you that was wrong. I agree we need to respect each other. We won’t be perfect but we should try to have every poster’s default setting be respecting the other posters. Of course we are here to discuss/debate things so conflict is something to be expected. I have to admit I have very rarely felt disrespected here. But when it happened I lashed out and that’s when the trouble started. That made me part of the problem.
I think there is some merit to what you are saying. I’m just trying to make the point that ultimately this place is the sum of all of our behavior. We can blame the trolls, the bad posters or the mods but that doesn’t get to the root of the problem. At the end of the day we can only control ourselves and we give oxygen to some of the very behavior we don’t like by turning every thread into a battleground for personal grudges.
If somebody wants to turn the other cheek, all the power to them. But we really shouldn’t expect people to, and we especially shouldn’t blame them for the problem when they choose not to.
And I felt the same way about the other “team” and said so when jman stirred shit back up a few weeks ago and somehow managed to be the only one not to catch a ban.
I don’t view you as having any need to apologize to me, but I appreciate the sentiment. You’re one of the nicest people here, and I didn’t realize that you only had mod powers to post sticky’s and such, which means you don’t deserve criticism for the modding overall, and you’ve tried to play a role in improving the situation.
I know I’m contributing to it by engaging when I’m attacked, but if the community isn’t going to step up and mod the repeat attacks, the whole community is contributing in their own way too.
I appreciate that, but I’m not choosing to get poked constantly. I’m choosing to respond to some of it, not even all of it, not even most of it.
I hope so but I don’t think it’s your responsibility to do so, and I think the community overall needs to actually want it to happen for anyone to succeed at making it happen. I don’t think the community cares that much right now.
Thanks, undoxxing myself has made it easier to ignore some of it. But I’ve also just moved some of my political discussion off this site.
I think I’ve acknowledged my part in it several times, referred to myself as an asshole several times, etc. I’ve also dropped it several times and it’s always been picked back up by others. My role in it at this point is pretty limited to responding some of the time I’m attacked.
Thanks, but I think it would be more like 25% for me, 20% for jal, 55% for “WILL YOU ALL STFU NOBODY CARES.”
That 55% is pretty hurtful as the person on the receiving end of the majority of the instigation/abuse. Is that overly sensitive? Sure, you could say that. But it strikes some personal nerves for me and flies in the face of what I thought this place was.
Thank you. I agree that nobody should have to put up with that. It’s a pretty big part of my moral code really, because I was bullied a lot as a kid. The bullying itself sucked, but the lack of other people responding/helping hurt every bit as much. So when I see something in life that I think is out of line, I try to do my best to stand up for people and show them that someone else cares.
Sure, but is that the message we want to send as a community? “Sure, you’re being subjected to some personal abuse here, but we can’t really be bothered to care and nobody ever died from ignoring it.”
Like I get your point, and maybe it’s silly me for thinking Unstuck had a chance to be better than the rest of the Internet, but damn I thought it did for a while there.
Yeah, being expected to by this community has been a pretty eye-opening and hurtful experience. There are some incredibly ironic parallels to our current political situation, and I get that this is a discussion forum and that’s American politics, but the lack of intellectual consistency is astounding.
Which is why I have mostly ignored it, especially in other threads. My approach has been to flag stuff or just quote it and point it out to others, because I know people aren’t paying attention. I’ve added people to my ignore list, but…
Regarding this part, I don’t think I’m the one doing that. If you have an instance of me doing that in a regular thread in the last few weeks (since the last blowup), let me know.
This is the About Moderation thread, there was a discussion about moderation and this community’s views on the c-word, and I shared my views and then received a bunch of personal attacks and fuck offs and I’ve contained it to this thread I think, even as others have spilled it out into others to circumvent the throttling.
You and I, I think are very similar. We feel like we are fighting a righteous cause and sometimes some guerrilla forum tactics are used. We think it’s justified because our underlying position is right. The problem is we create a toxic environment for everyone not in that struggle. They don’t like it. And so even if we are technically right we lose with that crowd also. Even if they know we are right.
Bottom line is you are a great poster getting dragged down by these back and forths. Once you ignore it and it isn’t fun for your tormenters to torment you they will stop. If you are truly an upright and virtuous member you will find you don’t need to fight these squabbles because a) 80% of the fun is the rise they get out of you and b) if you are no longer an aggressor there are lots of people who will point it out for you.
Ok, the community did ask for more modding. I’ll try it out. If I go too far, sorry, and feel more than free to recall me.
commonwealth, @j8i3h289dn3x7, @marty, @Jalfrezi, @fidgetUK - you’ve all been mean to each other a lot and have been repeatedly warned. Be nice or get temp bans. That means no outright insults, but also no veiled insults. If you want someone else on this list modded either flag the post or start a thread calling for a perma of the offender and if that’s not merited you’ll find the loss of respect here worse than being temp banned. Do not bring up old fights. If you complain about unfair moderation, do it without even referring to anyone else one this list.
I have been an advocate of community modding from the get-go and all that entails (rotating mods, community standards, etc.). This seems like a good time to volunteer. However, full disclosure, I too was a mod on 2p2 and expect that my offer may well be rejected (and I am perfectly fine with that).
Lol at making food and then seeing 65 more new posts about this. How hard is it to act decent or take some time off to cool off? Who would want to mod this shit? It’s COVID and we are all locked up mostly but jfc people.
