Dude. Take a look at their posting histories and you’ll see numerous shots being fired when I had one person on ignore, told him he was on ignore, and it still didn’t stop him.
I don’t really see how temp bans reduce that intensity if people are just bloodthirsty.
Previous bans have had pretty bad results as far as creating rest from shitshows.
I don’t know that there’s a solution to this. I’m trying to find the best way. What I came up with were some bans that may have helped a little, but may have done more harm than good. Also I tried a fair amount of polite warnings, which probably helped a little, but some of those inspired a backlash. So, ban or let this continue is a false choice imo. Action for the sake of it, even if it’s counterproductive is not what I prefer.
I would be lying if I said that the recent flareup doesn’t bother me a lot. I’m not gonna threaten to quit, but man, it makes me feel like the time I’m volunteering is for something that is not very worthwhile. I offered to help because I see this site as worthwhile. 1000 post long feuds about the C-word that devolves into hurling antagonizing posts at each other is not what I really signed up to maintain.
And if anyone sees me as a f***ing employee, lol. I know that was a joke or something but hellllllll to the nah. I already have one asshole boss (making a joke here, I don’t think you guys are assholes. and in case my boss is reading this, you’re not an asshole either).
I’ve never felt that a meme was so perfectly appropriate.
I mean, it would be amazing if this was a cohesive group of people who could self-moderate and would therefore not require any moderation or intervention. But this toxic back and forth isn’t going away because [whatever reasons]. I’m not going to blame particular posters because that would only add heat to the fire and make me appear biased, but I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a mod to step into an obviously-toxic situation and give a less-than-a-day temp ban as a way to say “Hey guys, let’s put a stop to this obviously terrible discourse”.
Maybe mods should be required to send a single PM cautionary warning before temp banning, if that would be easier to swallow? I don’t know.
Only a very small percentage of the people here participate in these fights. As you have shown there are lots of lurkers. So, lurkers don’t mind the fights. Perhaps they are what the lurkers want and we’re dancing monkeys. At any rate, it’s a small part of the people participating in this forum and if I weren’t a mod I’d probably be oblivious to it. I don’t think there’s any reason you should feel like you have to do something about it as admin, and very good reason that you shouldn’t feel like you have to do anything other than get notified when the results of a poll require admin action.
That’s not saying you shouldn’t care as much or little as any other poster here when your poster hat is on.
I’m not sure that’s true. What if the fights are the reason they are lurkers, and not active posters?
It’s a possibility. But, if they’re here because they’re interested in the covid or trump or biden threads, I’d expect they get into those well before they care about infighting, in much the same way we mostly participated in 2p2 for quite a while before we got into drama there.
it’s possible, I lurk politics threads mostly because I’m afraid to have my head bitten off and I just don’t wanna deal with it. I mostly participate in the off-topic threads (which is quickly becoming it’s own site, btw).
Micro, you know I always chime in on these things, even before I was admin. I don’t feel an obligation to do so, and in fact I am probably speaking out of turn, but I don’t care, because I care about this a lot. I can confidently say that if it were not for this place I would be in a much worse headspace during this pandemic.
I’m very much in poster mode right now.
This was bound to happen after Trump left. Once a group is no longer united by a common enemy, schisms and fissures form. It’s just people being people.
This is a good point, jman’s instigated a lot of these flareups by bringing up old grudges and somehow the blame gets directed at the UK “clique” for being drawn into whatever silliness comes up. micro is the only mod that publicly included jman in the group of people that needed to ignore each other as far as I know.
I agree with you - but in every toxic environment I have ever been in, there was someone at the helm not doing anything about it. Right now the helm is on the community, and it’s on the community to decide when they’ve had enough. If the community loves this - I mean, I guess, fine? I’ll just mute the threads and happily not have to read any of the bickering.
But the problem is the bickering tends to spill over into other threads and that’s when I get ultra annoyed. And it inevitably will. And then people start quitting. And then other people start posting less. And then it looks like OOT does now - a barren wasteland with the bottom of the barrel posters remaining. And then I don’t have this site as a resource for information, entertainment, and socialization anymore. That would be a big loss for me and I know it would be for others. I see no other outcome possible at this current trajectory.
I Iike everyone here, with 1 or three exceptions. Since I like everyone here, I wish everyone would just f***ing get along. But, that’s not gonna be the real world, I guess, so it’s a me problem now.
I’ll stfu and see myself out
It was just cw, jal and jman then. And to jman and jal’s credit, both of them PMd me “no biggie” or something like that.
Jman was very cool about it, maybe because he has been a mod and understands. Maybe also because he has little kids and understands that too.
What if lurkers want more drama because they find this Reality TV show entertaining?
(lol)
Did this all start up again because the c word thread got a month old bump or was it going on endlessly in other threads i somehow missed?
Because it seemed like things were going well and there was not to much back and forth in normal threads and it all started up from that bump of a dormant thread.
It had simmered down, but nothing had been resolved, so another flare up seemed inevitable.
Oh, but you understate what happened, thereby diminishing it. The bump was from a poster to say he thinks the thread is a trainwreck and should be locked. At that time, the thread had been dormant for 23 days and had 496 posts. That was 4 days ago and the thread now has over 1000 posts. Can’t make this shit up.
I have no fucking idea what’s going on. If we let people say ■■■■■■ will that appease Jal? I’m willing to give in on that point if it means things go back to normal for a while.
Please can you stop categorising me as someone who just wants to ■■■■ his way through life?
For the umpteenth time, I’m more than happy to drop that word in non-UK threads, and this has been the case for a while.
But that doesn’t match the prevailing narrative so let’s all pretend it’s just me who uses the word, everywhere, all the time.
What do you want, then?
Exactly what I just said. jfc
Use of the word at public figures in UK threads only as a sign of respect for our American friends whose culture is different wrt this.
Some reciprocity wrt words Ukers also find horrible because they demonise vulnerable minorities.
This
Isn’t
Hard