I agree that saying no personal attacks won’t stop the real problem as there are so many ways around it.
My suggestion would be a rule along the lines of: “No non-substantive personal attacks that are not related to the current issue.”
So if someone makes a post you think is pervy it’s ok to say “You’re a perv because …” It would not be ok to just say - “Fuck you, you pervy POS.”
It also would not be allowed to make unrelated personal attacks. So if you’re arguing in a different thread with the same person on a completely different issue, you would not be allowed to bring up the prior post you found pervy, or in general refer to the person as a perv.
I would also add that you should only be allowed to attack the poster(s) you’re arguing with. So something like - “That is the type of bad argument I’d only expect JonnyA to make” - would not be allowed if I was not involved in the discussion.
I think the above are often what lead to the personal feuds never-ending and blowing up constantly.
All you folks admitting you’re guilty of the thing you want to address. Will you be doing any introspection? Will you try and change? I mean … most people here seem to be trying to maintain the OK to keep doing what they do. If you really can’t debate without resorting to personal attacks, that seems like something you’d want to do serious work on. I really think all personal attacks should just be eliminated, if we actually want to build the community people seem to want.
Well, modding is not exactly causing a big love fest. Like, I guess if every mod always perfectly moderates every party in every argument exactly the way that every party thinks is fair this might…wait, that’s unpossible. The niceness is going to have to be like 95% from the ground up.
Microbet and others have made the point. Increased moderation is not the solution, or at least it is not central to or the only solution. Also, very few people want the level of moderation (including our current mods) that would be required to eradicate the lion’s share of “personal” attacks.
My prediction for the forum in six months is:
Some people will have left (maybe even some “key” people)
Mod mix will likely be different
Forum grudges and feuds will revert to simmer
Similar discussions to the one ITT will periodically take place with similar views and results.
Agree there JT. I used to think tolerance meant finding a way to live without boundaries against the things I find intolerable. Now I see that boundaries are not the same as intolerance, no matter how much you might get told it is by people who can’t stand anyone’s boundaries but their own.
Dammit I’m sorry I missed this. Like, I had big plans to suggest this even if nobody else did, so people needing some company could hear me talk shit and nonsense for hours with my weird ass speech cadences.
Then I pulled almost a double all-nighter and quite literally slept through christmas. Went to bed at 11am expecting to be up by 10pm or so at the latest. Then, suddenly, it was 4am today.
But NYE lets do it. Unless there’s no more covid in 5 days. Fingers crossed.
Generally on your side on both things, but as far as I can tell, in the last day you’ve cast the ‘what about the flu’ bait in the covid thread (and hooked one fish), and this post seems like it could have easily been composed without all but explicitly calling certain people snowflakes. I don’t know if you’re trying to restart anything, but if the c word policy has not been decided to your satisfaction, let’s try to focus on that constructively.
FWIW, it’s been somewhat more pleasant to log on recently without this thread being active.
What goofy said. The thing where there were hundreds of posts of people talking about whether or not this is a place they want to be was much more about the flame war that almost everyone is glad died down. It’s about protecting all the people who have nothing to do with it.
