Call me a bootlicker if you want, but I think this place needs more moderator action to deal with personal attacks.
I’d like this forum to be a place where people can relax their guard and share things without those things being used as ammunition in a personal attack. In my real life social circles, my friends and I would never tolerate the kind of attacks we’ve seen recently on this forum. Why should we put up with it here?
Briefly, I propose the following:
When a post is made that violates this principle mods do the following:
If it’s a mild-to-moderate attack, the mod posts a response noting the bad post and asking the poster to knock it off.
If the attack is really out of bounds (I’d classify the recent attacks on SUB and ■■■■■■■■■■■ as such), the offending post is deleted, partially or entirely, and the mod makes a post explaining what they did and letting the poster know to knock it off.
If the attacks continue, or the poster of the attack won’t drop the issue, the mod should be empowered to move on to timeouts. Exact form of timeout (“silencing” vs. banning) and duration TBD.
If the poster keeps at it after the initial timeout, the severity and duration of timeout escalate through a few increasing steps.
If the poster just can’t or won’t stop, they get the permaban. (This step should probably involve community input, TBD.)
In my opinion:
This process is compatible with the guidelines that we ratified early on (to the degree that anything has been ratified in this community).
Our moderators are in place to be “the hands” that enact the collective desires of the community, and should be trusted to use their judgement in difficult situations.
Posting here is not a right, and having a post hidden or deleted is not a violation, or really even that big of a deal.
From having slogged through all the drama and blowups since our exodus from 2p2, I know that many objections will be raised, and there are specific situations this doesn’t cover. But if it’s possible I’d like it if we could “decide” something about this as a community.
Note: I’m not going to try to ram this through, or even work that hard at advocating for it. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.
So, how about it?
Yes, that’s what I want (or substantially what I want) too.
I want something like that, but different in some important way.
No, I’m also dismayed at the situation but don’t think this approach is good.
No, I like things the way they are.
0voters
Post your reactions, thoughts, suggestions and let’s see if we can agree as a community to try a new approach to improve the climate here.
P.S. This could even be something we try out for a defined period of time as a “pilot” of sorts. Say through the end of this month, or if more time is needed, two or three months. Then we could reconvene and assess how it worked for everyone.
It doesn’t seem like there are many personal attacks around here from what I’ve seen.
But maybe I’ve missed some bad examples you could repost. I did see the one on SUB and that was obviously over the line, but he ate a temp ban, which was appropriate.
If that’s the case, then this shouldn’t be much of a big deal to enact then, right?
Also, there may not be that many personal attacks, but a single attack of the type we’ve seen recently can be a major deal for the person attacked and for the forum. Which, in my opinion, merits us having an agreed-on process for dealing with them.
I like to think about this place as a community rather than a battleground. I consider a lot of you to be friends that I would love to have a beer with. Whatever we can do to make this place more of that and less petty bullshit I am for.
One important difference between your friend group and people here is that there are some unpleasant people here. I wouldn’t tell a friend to fuck off. I would just stop being their friend. That doesn’t really work here.
If the problem were truly nonexistent, then the mods would never need to use their newfound powers, right?
To a degree, I actually agree with you that the number of personal attacks has been low so far. Good for us as individuals and as a community!
But there absolutely have been some personal attacks, ranging from very minor, to really vicious uses of personally shared information to hurt other posters. These instances are what I’m hoping we can figure out a way to reduce (along with the associated drama).
You’re right in that there are plenty of people here who I wouldn’t be friends with in real life.
But there are other people here who I would like to be friends with, and allowing the “unpleasant” people to virtually punch my friends in the face doesn’t seem that great to me.
As individuals we have some tools to deal with the unpleasant people, like using the ignore feature, and I feel like we as a community should have additional tools we can use when it’s warranted.
In other words, I actually think we as a group can “stop being their friend” i.e., timeouts or banning, if we want to. We don’t have to put up with abusers if that’s not the kind of place we want to be.
That’s a decision that should best be left to the community as a whole, not delegated to mods. If someone is being abusive and needs to change their behavior, start a thread, post some examples of their abusive behavior, and have a vote.
Personal attacks don’t really seem to be a problem to me. I think allowing interpersonal drama to run wild is where things are going wrong. Moderators should be willing to act much earlier to deescalate conflicts before they flare up into community-wide shitstorms. There are a lot of ways this can be attempted, including some as simple as asking people to tone it down.
Deescalation is also something the entire community should strive to do better with. The next time you see a drama bomb go off, don’t post in it. All you are doing is giving it oxygen and making it worse. Your participation is never going to improve the situation.
I guess I could have been more clear, but the timeouts I’m suggesting in step 2 of the OP could be very mild, starting with less-than-a-day duration (provided the forum software can accommodate that).
If you think that should require an OP with evidence and a community vote, that’s where we disagree. Like I said in my proposal, my take on the moderators’ role is that they should work to enact the desires of the community as expressed by “rules” such as these, using their judgement when necessary.
And we are not depriving people of liberty or property here, just a short timeout from an internet forum, so it doesn’t merit that much process.
For permabanning, I agree that in cases involving regular posters, an OP with evidence and a community vote should probably be the standard.
If we’d had an UP convention back when we started it’d be better. After covid, if there ever is an after covid, we should have one. Once you’ve talked to someone in person it’s a little harder to throw the fuck-off’s around.
I’d be friends with all of you.