I’ve called for one person to be banned for continually violating the rules. I defended you NOT to be banned until you all came back into the threads immediately to violate the rules you were just banned for. I’m regretting that defence now.
Obviously emulating 22 isn’t what we’re shooting for here. And I would argue it’s gone pretty well this far.
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It really pretty much is or is trying to be. I understand message boards generally aren’t, but we’ve literally only imposed rules once they’ve been discussed and voted on, haven’t we? We’ve never undertaken any major action without it being discussed and voted on, as far as I know. In what sense is that not, functionally, democratic in operation?
We are simply disagreeing on the limit. Is there a limit for you? What would that be? 5 three day bans, 10?
To me, three in a short period of time tells me the community has said they don’t want that behaviour and he has responded he doesn’t care one bit. This is doubly true when the behaviour begins immediately following a return from a ban.
Clearly, based on the number of likes you got and the fact that I’ve been called a whiner by three posters, with several likes, I am in the very tiny minority. People do not see things how I do.
I hope he changes and I am wrong.
If whatevs was even a centrist he would have been perma’d a while ago. I would bet my hard earned money on that.
Maybe that’s a good thing that we value the content he’s attacking over the attacks itself, I honestly don’t know.
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Congrats on all of this - sounded like you were really hit with a lot at once after your move. It’s like the skies are finally parting
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I don’t like this idea. I think it should be acceptable to make a personal attack on the understanding that the person can respond in kind and there it must end. After that, actions may be taken.
As people have mentioned, ‘no personal attacks’ just breeds a courtier-like culture where people find ways to be snide that can’t properly be called ‘personal attacks’ — or can at least be assiduously defended as not being personal attacks even if they definitely are. Then people are just lawyering it up trying to game ‘no personal attacks’.
What people should try to remember is that personal attacks are or should be frowned on because more than a tiny number of them make threads less enjoyable for everyone else, not just the person being attacked. Shitting up a thread with mutual vitriol is pissing on everyone’s cornflakes. Part of it is just how things are online, without in-person social cues to rein people in. Would it be possible to make this image (a GIS result for ‘reproachful look’) appear in the Reply panel? It would be interesting to see if it had any effect.
Nah, fuck that. Swearing is fun, cathartic and approximately never the part of a personal attack that causes problems, the one notable exception granted.
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Obviously that’s the issue. As far as I can see 100% of his posts are ‘fuck you’ type. If his fuck yous were aimed at Bernie and AOC he’d be gone by now.
Not saying that’s bad thing. Just an observation.
I do think that posting only negatively is bad for a community. Fuck yous gotta be mixed in.
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If you’re just talking about general moderation policy and not lobbying for watevs to be perma’d and really hope he is less abusive in the future, why not try to help diffuse the situation and either give it time or at least not attach him to your questions about how many temp bans lead to a perma?
@Yuv, Fwiw, and this is just me, I would not have voted to perma Inso, let alone be harsher to a centrist.
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There’ll always be a carve-out for actually being funny, though. Like, if smrk had kept that up over multiple posts, it would’ve stopped being funny and presumably someone would have asked him to lay off.
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Good question. I wasn’t here from the beginning so I don’t have first-hand knowledge. I was going off of replies to earlier posts that I made about those rules. I think the replies were from @MrWookie and @zikzak
Victor is right about that post about CW being mean. If we want to be a kinder place maybe we should delete it? What do you think smrk? Yeah it was funny, but maybe let CW have his exit?
Or maybe we don’t want to be that kind?
IIRC those were Discourse forum guidelines that we never voted on. Our history of rule-making and rule-voting is sporadic and sparse (with several reasonable rules not being “enacted”).
lol come on man, have you seen the constant attacks, underhand insults, and demeaning posts made by centrists in threads that discuss ideas further left than Bernie. But it’s not even only them, everyone gets a lot of leeway on here if they word things a certain way.
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I haven’t noticed anyone who is purely ‘fuck you’ as whatevs. I get that he’s being attacked a lot too, so it’s kinda feeding itself.
Although I generally support them, additional rules and/or increased moderation cannot prevent political discussions from being heated, passionate, and, yes, personal. That is true even in a forum such as ours that is skewed towards one political orientation.
What I think has become clear is that we need to tamp down on over-the-top personal attacks and grudge-harboring/grudge-seeking posts. Both in the moment and over time these chip away at the fabric of the community.
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I think personal attacks are fine. Have at it! Don’t a lot of us enjoy a good ribbing among friends? That balance is partly how we build trust among play, like when my kittens or puppies gradually test each other’s limits through play that might look like fighting but is both fun and how they help each other grow.
Just be willing to say heh fair if someone says whoa there buddy, a little too far. Some days a joke about my face makes me laugh. Others it makes me cry. I’ll be mindful of whether I’m feeling something out of step with reality if the other person will show compassion when right or wrong, the feeling is too significant to just ignore. We need to be friends then, not arbiters of truth.
We all do well to express boundaries even in no-stakes situations with each other if for no other reason than to build trust that we can rely on each other to do so when it is most needed.
This sort of thing can of course be abused, but lol, think that through to the worst case scenario. Let’s say someone really does behave with such sensitivity that everyone finds it impossible to interact with that person without triggering them into a rage fest or self-harm or just a generally bad day. People will make whatever accomodations are within their means, and if we still aren’t compatible, that’s okay. We can’t be all things to all people.
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Is the purpose of moderation and specifically increased moderation to try to get people to bicker less and be less abusive or is it just that people want punishment meted out?
Eta: Goofy, I’ve said this a lot and I’ll continue to say it I think the personal attack rule is stupid if it’s just about the most obvious insults. It’s trivially easy to dance around that and it’s not substantially different.
You make some fair points here and it really highlights where I seem to differ from the majority of the board.
I have no issue with every idea I post being attacked. That’s the fun part. Let’s fight and hash it out. That’s when I actually get to learn things here which is the most +ev part of being here.
I have an issue with attacking people. As you rightly point out I’ve certainly not been innocent of this either.
However, we differ on what is an attack.
The forum I want is one where we argue and hash out ideas without calling each other morons, shitlibs, Bernie bros etc.
You are not drawing as bright a line as I am between calling someone out without name calling and character assassination and calling someone out by calling them a name or telling them to fuck off. That’s fair. I am sure I will be accused of calling for “decency for decency sake”. Also fair.
But I think I am backed up by a decent amount of social science that shows name calling simply hampers discourse. It adds nothing of value.
I see a huge difference between,
“Your centrist ideas are really terrible and have harmed people in the case under discussion. Here is how”
And
“Lol always a shitlib being a shitlib”
Again, I need to do better here too but the difference between these two has a real effect on discussion, in my opinion.
Anyway, I’ll admit when watevs got so much support today and I was called a whiner by several people I started fantasizing about pulling a commonwealth. Then I thought “wtf you dummy, if everyone thinks something different than you, it’s probable you are wrong!” Perhaps I am. I hope so.
I am going to take Johnny’s advice and give watevs and you the benefit of the doubt. I am taking you both off ignore and I’ll do my best to have real discussion in the future.
What better time to bury the hatchet than Christmas!
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