About Moderation (old original thread)

[anon38180840]

@BusinessGenius

It’s funny because I started that thread, but everyone just assumed it was a Sabo quarantine area, with posts excised from elsewhere, mine happening to be the first

I wonder if I’d said Abolising Landlord ing would anyone have budged on their assertion that it was a call to mass murder

FWIW while I don’t think we should abolish landlording I think it’s an interesting discussion to be had - but every time I looked in that thread, Sabo was just trolling it and not engaging. So my views haven’t been challenged or changed, when perhaps they could have. Like I think big corporate landlords suck, and I think we should regulate the shit out of it. But I don’t have a problem with mom and pop landlords.

My landlord now used to live in this house, plans to live in it when he retires, and is renting it out in between while living elsewhere. That seems ~fine to me.

[Trolly]

Does Jmakin still stop by there? (serious question)

[microbet]

Shrug. He’s not just a left-dem. He’s not a Scandinavian type social welfare state guy and is pretty far from the average around here.

And tolerate? He may not have been banned a lot, but his threads were consistently throttled, closed and moved. That’s not really toleration. And he didn’t go running into threads he didn’t care about making trouble. Yes he was abrasive and abusive, but that was pretty well confined to his more radical threads that people could very easily have ignored or just tolerated.

[microbet]

Yeah, I better stop because I’m getting mad again. People get accused of trolling because they are different in any way. Some of it has been fucking disgusting, like what was said to and about Bryce. And that’s definitely not the only case.

[anon38180840]

@NotBruceZ

Without referencing the other side, without putting it in terms of what you do not want it to be, what do you want this place to be?

A place to discuss news, politics, and whatever else in good faith with good, intelligent, and right-minded people. A place where we keep each other informed and analyze what’s going on in the world, while respecting others and avoiding malignant derails.

A place where we can challenge each other’s views when it’s needed or interesting, but not hold grudges and re-litigate it in perpetuity.

In short, a place for high-minded discourse.

And if every now and then we made a difference in the world, that sure would be nice too.

[NotBruceZ]

@anon38180840

So my views haven’t been challenged or changed, when perhaps they could have.

The forum shouldn’t be moderated so as to maximize its personal value and relevance to you.

I have framed this in the past as the reader experience vs the creator experience. Some users want the forum to be moderated so as to maximize their enjoyment as a reader of posts. Other users want to the forum to be moderated so as to maximize their enjoyment as a creator of posts. I strongly lean towards the latter side. I think moderation should enhance the reader experience by pruning derails into their own threads, but I don’t think it should delete posts that some posters, even a majority of posters, don’t want to read.

[smrk4]

@BusinessGenius

The same as when people call him “literal hero of the people” to tear him down.

Wasn’t trying to tear him down, one can be an exceptionally good/effective person irl and an obnoxious horrible poster on the internet.

[anon10396289]

exactly

[Trolly]

@microbet

Yes he was abrasive and abusive, but that was pretty well confined to his more radical threads that people could very easily have ignored or just tolerated.

You’d think so, but man when someone makes a thread specifically dedicated to trolling you personally and bumps it over and over, it’s hard to completely ignore it.

[anon38180840]

@Vict0ar

just bc someone doesnt agree with you, or present arguments exactly how you want, doesnt mean they are trolling. like, get some perspective and self awareness.

He was refusing to engage with people who showed up in good faith on a topic that he supposedly wanted to discuss. Call it what you want.

@Vict0ar

this is the go-to argument of this site. there has literally been no single case where someone disagreed with Cuse, Wookie, Goofy, CN, Tilted, Matt, etc and they werent trolling.

This isn’t true at all. Plenty of people have disagreed with me repeatedly in the stocks thread, COVID and monkeypox threads, and over various Dem strategies and none were trolling nor was I.

I’ve also had heated exchanges with plenty of people only to move on and forget about it after a couple days and post together with no issues from then on.

@NotBruceZ

The forum shouldn’t be moderated so as to maximize its personal value and relevance to you.

That’s not what I was suggesting. There’s a discussion over whether Sabo was trolling the site or not and that thread is at the heart of it.

@NotBruceZ

Some users want the forum to be moderated so as to maximize their enjoyment as a reader of posts. Other users want to the forum to be moderated so as to maximize their enjoyment as a creator of posts.

These aren’t mutually exclusive.

[anon10396289]

@anon38180840

Then like a week or whatever it was later, you not only acted on a flag on your own post by dismissing it, you also banned me for flagging it. Two things that are “illegal” on UP.

this is a lie, I didn’t dismiss the flag.

[NotBruceZ]

The only way to avoid derails, malignant or otherwise, is with heavy-handed moderation that aggressively prunes anything that starts to stray off-topic.

I don’t think most people are good at challenging each other’s views. I don’t think people tend to ask each other the right questions. We complain about softball interview questions that the media gives to politicians, but maybe we need to be like that with each other, at least at the beginning of a conversation. To have quality discourse, we need to be able to state the views of others in a way which those others would agree is accurate. Not agree, just know what the other side believes.

[BusinessGenius]

I think I’ve purposefully avoided calling you sad (might be misremembering) but maybe that was a mistake

[NotBruceZ]

@Vict0ar

there has literally been no single case where someone disagreed with Cuse, Wookie, Goofy, CN, Tilted, Matt, etc and they werent trolling. jfc you are a poker player, thats gotta be one hell of a parlay. every. single. one. is trolling. its almost like its impossible to present a perspective outside of yours.

At the same time, it’d be the same sort of hell of a parlay if every single one was not trolling.

[microbet]

This is a fair point in your case. He really went out of his way to troll you.

[clovis8]

I just want to say I think I was wrong about Sabo based on people’s opinion I respect. I just couldn’t get on the same wavelength with him no matter how hard I tried. I really did try hard!

My apologies to him and any role I played in his banning.

Although I don’t think I voted to ban him.

Cheers

[anon84698652]

@anon38180840

Yet they have no interest in posting here constructively. They just want to make sure that there’s no peace on UP, only in their private forum.

There are dozens of posters there who regularly post both there and here and have never engaged in any forum feuds. Some of them have posted in this very thread.

You may want to think everyone there is plotting to burn down UP, but that’s simply just wrong. It isn’t any more true than asserting that this site was launched to burn down 2p2. Some people here wanted to stay part of 2p2 community, some didn’t, some never were part of 2p2. Not everyone at the other site is even from UP.

The reason the other site isn’t discussed more openly here is because many there want to stay part of this community, and it would be just as rude to laud that site here as it would be to laud UP on 2p2.

Requoting a goofy requote…

Hopefully your community does not develop any fractures down the line that require either rethinking your policies or just living with annoying fighting forever.

The funny thing is that the other site is by no means a group think. There are even posters there that openly dislike each other. There is disagreement in threads. There are alternative viewpoints.

The difference is that no one person or group of persons has the power to silence other views. Contrary to what many think here, open trolling and fighting isn’t what anybody wants (well maybe a couple, but nobody is defending them). If there were a spammer or blatant racist or other obvious troublemaking, it would probably be handled in some way that’s not dramatic. But without recourse to ban or silence posters based on highly subjective tastes, there really is no drama. Everyone behaves like an adult. If people get mad, they vent and move on. Nobody wins any points by getting someone kicked off. The difference between that and here is stark.

That doesn’t mean this should get rid of moderation. Nobody has really asked for that.l, and nobody to my knowledge at the other site, thinks UP should be modeled exactly the same as that site. That’s no different than posters here who are happy to participate at 2p2 or other forums with different site models.

I think what many here want, at least those that were either disenfranchised from participating or sympathetic to those that were, is a forum more tolerant of different viewpoints held by long time posters. Those posters have invested their time and energy to voluntarily participate in this community, as reg poster, occasional poster, or even lurker.

That tolerance can certainly include temp bans and even permanent if needed, but that should be a very high bar that should be obvious to an overwhelming majority of the community. As we saw with Wookies recent RFC to perma Churchill, posts that some saw as egregious others see as completely benign. We’ve also seen how many want one side to eat bans without a whimper (which they usually do), but then often complain loudly when they receive them. We literally just saw that (again) yesterday. That’s the crux of the drama, it plays out that way every flare up.

A sense of more fairness and respect, even to unpopular but regular posters, is warranted. The poster you may dislike may be the same poster others elsewhere on the site enjoy interacting with, perhaps just reading their views even if they disagree. When you punish that poster, you punish them as well.

I hope this doesn’t garnet a typical “hahahahaha lolol hypocrite” type of response. The forum is a lot better when folks aren’t constantly trying to score points. That includes everyone.

[Tilted]

@Vict0ar

@anon38180840

Sabo was just trolling it and not engaging.

just bc someone doesnt agree with you, or present arguments exactly how you want, doesnt mean they are trolling. like, get some perspective and self awareness.

this is the go-to argument of this site. there has literally been no single case where someone disagreed with Cuse, Wookie, Goofy, CN, Tilted, Matt, etc and they werent trolling. jfc you are a poker player, thats gotta be one hell of a parlay. every. single. one. is trolling. its almost like its impossible to present a perspective outside of yours.

I’ve seriously never argued with a single person here except Keed about the moderation issue and maybe JT when things got spicy in the COVID thread which I recused myself from. I have opinions about people but I pretty much just ignore them. The fact that you think I belong on that list shows you just have some implicit bias that you refuse to acknowledge.

[NotBruceZ]

@anon38180840

He was refusing to engage with people who showed up in good faith on a topic that he supposedly wanted to discuss. Call it what you want.

I never had a problem engaging with Sabo. Sabo understood the position of those who argued with him better than they understood his.

I don’t think he refused to engage with people, but he did sometimes make it difficult for people to engage on their terms.

[BusinessGenius]

@Vict0ar

this is the go-to argument of this site. there has literally been no single case where someone disagreed with Cuse, Wookie, Goofy, CN, Tilted, Matt, etc and they werent trolling

woo, yeah, this post nailed it, boy I’m getting heated in here