I do. This thread is such a kick for selfreflection.
It was not clear as I started to read it that it were PMs. In fact I was pretty shocked and thought that Sabo started the thread. So… your accusation that I am keen to know your PMs is empty. I am thinking now how did I actually get that this are PMs… In fact only after the reading of the admin post, where JM stated that this are PMs.
edit: I am sooooo… I am still knocked out of my shoes that you are such a coward after all your talk here around. Boy, did I judge you wrong.
I’m not really sure how to feel about any of this. There are several posters in this thread that I would miss and miss their posting if they left. That being said it is obvious that there is some serious hatred between some here at this point. It’s hard for me to see that being resolved.
I’ve said this several times but I’m quite certain that I could go and have a beer with anyone here and resolve any internet squabble we had. My feeling is that it’s easy to blast off steam or rip someone to shreds by typing a few lines into your phone. Hell I’ve done it plenty here unfortunately. I think we would be better trying to see each other as more than the avatar picture and sn (I mean I pretty much picture suzzer as Gritty crusing around Central America in his suv at this point).
That’s one of the reasons the best threads here are the more personal threads. The dog thread, the travel threads, the music threads, etc. That’s because sometimes I find out I have a lot in common on a personal level with someone where all of my previous interaction was combative in the politics threads.
I of course searched my name and it was posted I’m on team #justbanthem. That isn’t exactly true. Frankly I wish the people bickering would just drop it. Has anything productive come out of the thousands of back and forth posts? Or better yet talk it out via phone or text or something more personal. I don’t really want to lose 98% of people who post here. At this point though it feels like the cold war that has been brewing has gone full ww2 though. So the time for that may be over.
Turn off the forum, its done. LOL at even letting Ikes post here at all!!! Failure to ban the worst of posters killed it. I think that might be resonating.
There’s zero real discussion on the threads that should should be the main draws and feature of this board any more in fact they’re basically dead. We failed, Mason and Klansky wins. Also, despite the fact that I’m mostly on their side and I like them and their posts, a special fuck you to the posters who continue to post on 2p2.
That was the idea behind the new subforum: a place where we could try to foster the friendliness, sense of comradeship, and community that characterized the early forum.
West of house
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
Ikes has been ethered.
> _
I said I don’t use PMs but maybe I should send SwankyWilder one to swap details before this place collapses - been meaning to suggest we meet for beers on the beach sometime if/when the plague finishes.
I was added to the PM chain after my LC post a few days ago, but I haven’t contributed to this conversation because I didn’t really know what to say. My primary feelings were and continue to be confusion and disappointment.
Many of the posters considering starting a new subforum and/or leaving I’d put in the group of posters that I find myself agreeing with the most, yet I must be the most oblivious person in the world because I’ve never once thought that things were over-modded or that they were victims of any sort of in-group / out-group feud. I’d have a hard time even identifying who the supposed in-group and out-group members are, and that’s after reading some of the posts in this thread and others.
My primary concern with starting a new subforum is duplication and further fracturing of an already small community. Will we have two separate threads to discuss COVID news? Two separate threads for election live-sweats? Two separate low content threads? I guess this concern is moot since the fracturing has already happened, hence the feeling of disappointment.
I’ve always been more of a low-content poster / lurker, but if more/different mods is what we need, I volunteer to be one. I will acknowledge, though, that if someone asks me which current mod I’d be most similar to I’d have no fucking clue how to answer, because I’ve never noticed the mods. Maybe that’s just my own obliviousness.
This is basically my take on the situation. People value debate (arguing) but don’t actually value or respect disagreement. It’s ultimately a self-destructive cycle where people seek out and magnify divisions to give them an excuse to dunk on each other as savagely as possible, and then when the dunkees give up and stop posting, the search is on for a new fissure to play the game across. (To preempt the obvious response, this is a self-criticism as much as it is a criticism of anyone else.)
I think both Chris and Keed have made some good points. I don’t think there’s a rules-based solution to any of this, and all these community-based/RFC/whatever systems are mirages. All voting-based systems can be subverted to produce most any result by agenda control, so those systems mainly launder decisions made by the groups who control the agenda with a veneer of democratic legitimacy.
At the same time, I think the argument that “it’s the internet lol no one should care,” is not quite true. An internet community is a community, so people care about it because community and belonging are important to people. What should not be important is particular moderation decisions because those will often be wrong and people are just going to have to live with that reality.
Fundamentally, the only thing that will really work is a cultural shift that emphasizes respect. If you want to argue with people while thinking that the people you argue with are total shitlords, of course it’s not going to work. You can’t build a community on mutual hatred. You can have a community where lots of people hate each other if they’re ultimately there to talk about poker, but it can’t be the foundation.
Absent that kind of cultural change, it all seems hopeless. That said, some governance changes would be helpful. Generally, I think moderation should be almost exclusively 1-day to 1-week bans and should be aimed more at supporting community norms of respectful debate than dealing with “problem” posters. Bans should be explained in the post that triggered them, not in the drama forum, so that people can develop a collective sense of what’s in bounds and what isn’t.
Moderation also needs more turnover. There’s no reason to have really long-term moderators. Six mods serving three month terms, with two replaced each month by rand() from the pool of posters above a certain level of activity. Some sort of mechanism to veto really bad choices by supermajority vote.
Somewhat separately, having a rogue admin reading and publicizing PMs is nuts, and we need to get the replacement in as soon as humanly possible. People digging around trying to dig up dirt is also bad stuff.
We’ve had people defending them for a year plus, correct, that is the problem.
Fidget is the best current example. It was clear as day he was trolling wookie, skydiver and others. Then it was revealed because they bragged about it. We’ve had people spend hundreds of posts defending them in the past, but literally zero from the same crew now. Weird!
I’m logging back in the 2nd this, I will not post again in the main forums until Jmakin has been IP banned and all his PM are shown to the forum along with FidgetUK being unbanned.
I have personal information in PM’s that I do not want shared by or read by ANY admin.
I owe a personal thanks to @Trolly for telling me to be careful of personal information in PM’s and to have a throwaway Email account, thanks Trolly as it sure was good advice.
