Fair enough.
Youâre missing a crucial step between your first and second points:
-people involved in the first dogpiles developed a taste for it which led to further conflict and âotheringâ
Eliminate certain topics and the expression of certain points of view.
Iâm of the general take that most people here wouldnât be for that.
I should also just generally say that I didnât post or read threads here a ton until recently again for about a year or so. So Iâm sure I missed a lot of the interactions. The Covid and Ukraine threads seemed to be particularly conflict filled and for the most part I havenât participated in those much(especially not recently) so that could be why I have a bit of a blind spot to your point.
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Believe it or not people just didnât like posters like Churchill posting awfully in the covid thread repeatedly. No one actually liked dealing with him.
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Thatâs fine, everyone has a different forum experience. I recall one thread in particular, the covid origins thread. At one point (iirc this was for weeks), the thread was throttled at one post per day per user. You could only make a post once per day! That was kind of a radicalizing moment for me where I thought that whatever this place is, itâs not a discussion forum.
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Churchill joined the forum some time after the first dogpiles, and in any case his posting in the covid thread turned out to be wiser than pretty much everyoneâs despite all the mutual backslapping and proclamations of âthe best resource for covid information on the internetâ.
Embarrassing.
Noooo no no no, I was never on the perma Churchill bandwagon but that is a bridge too far. He was posting John Campbell youtubes.
put some respect on that, itâs Dr. John Campbell
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jlawok.gif
RN John Campbell, apologies, you are right
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I think some here, and maybe all of us to some extent, fall into the trap of believing their opinion is the only good/right/just one or whatever. And the natural reaction is to respond to someone with differing views with incredulity at best. Ridicule, bullying or whatever you want to call it at the worst.
Even if poster x, y or z are objectively wrong that shouldnât mean they are treated like crap. Much less so when we are talking about things that arenât 100% fact or clearly right/wrong.
I know I have been guilty of it at times. I try not to do it but the temptation to hit back at the other personâs opinion or character is pretty strong and easy to fall into.
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Lots of people posted worse in that thread. Churchill made some prescient posts about variants and symptoms that he got banned for by MrWookie (who clearly believes himself to be something of an authority on the subject) that turned out to be correct and didnât even get an apology.
Thereâs your bridge too far.
Do you see the problem now?
Churchill posted horror stories about every variant until one ended up catching with mechanisms that made no sense repeatedly. Churchill also posted stupid shit about the UK v America, told someone to use a test with expired and open fluid, john campbell youtubez, and more. Youâre living in your own fabrication.
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That thread turned problematic in a number of ways, and churchill got dogpiled at times, but lets not retcon this into churchill was a sage voice of reason or anything.
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I donât know about those vids, but I do know that if you treat me like shit for a period, you might find I can become pretty shitty. For me it doesnât even take very long. Not saying thatâs what happened but church was treated like shit by assholes like caffeinNeeded describes above.
Leaving our difference in opinion about that aside, what action (if any) do you think moderation should have taken as the problems were developing that ended up with endless dogpiles onto the same person aka online bullying?
I can make you a list but probably shouldnât post it publicly
But anyway theyâre mostly leaving so itâs moot now, thankfully
I wouldnt characterize it as online bullying. I dont think that ascribes enough agency to churchillâs role. I do think he was given too much of the blame for problems in that thread and got piled on for posts that, if they were made by others, wouldnt have been treated nearly as harshly.
I dont have a moderation philosophy. Light touch and more heavy handed moderation can both work. So I dont really have a view on what proper moderation should look like. People not acting like assholes certainly makes moderation easier.
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