I think what it comes down to is where we draw the line between personal and political.
No one should be modded for their political beliefs, and if you seriously believe that you are, then by all means bring it up. That’s a road that I don’t think anyone wants to go down. But do not conflate people arguing with you about your views on something with personal attacks. If you hold a minority view, you should expect pushback and argument and discussion, and not take it personally.
However, I agree these back and forths that go on for 10s-100s of posts need to be modded somehow…I’m just not entirely sure where or how that line needs to be drawn. Based on number? Content is tricky because it can be civil and still be a troll.
I think we should have some sort of personal attack rule, not to appreciably increase the amount of modding of petty insults but to handle cases like this, where posters are engaging in a sustained campaign of defamation.
lol @ comparing the telling of a couple poster engaged in an open troll campaign to fuck off with an abuse of power. I’ll happily submit myself modship to community referendum on that being over the line if any two people who have not posted in the French BBV abomination think so. I would also like to see if anyone who’s not posted in that abomination thinks that being told to fuck off is a more severe insult than being called a perv or a faker.
I hadn’t really considered the bot thread as a slight against the far left of this forum, but if nothing else, it’ll likely have outlived its utility by the evening of Jan 20th.
I can’t be arsed with your bollocks any more. There’s no getting through to people with a vested interest in only seeing a part of the picture. I didn’t expect any better, so I’m not disappointed.
Now let’s get back on topic with how we can give mods even more power.
I don’t mind disagreement, and I’m happy to talk to people about what I believe if they’re sincerely interested in hearing from me, but people like Clovis instantly leap to “you’re an idiot for even thinking that, unlike me, the smart and virtuous politics guy.” Or leap to insulting people for sticking up for their beliefs when other people press them, or whatever. Dealt with that enough in my life that I don’t need to open up another avenue for it.
maybe so-- doesn’t seem very provable or falsifiable-- but in that case he’s a good example of how a few bad-faith loudmouths can create an unwelcome environment even if they aren’t the majority or part of the popular consensus.
eta: He’s not the only problem poster I’ve encountered, just the first and most prominent / consistent one. The handful of times I’ve said anything about politics here the large majority have been met with insults from Clovis or people like him, or people blaming me for a conversation that someone else started, etc. So I don’t bother.
How should that thread have been handled Jal? We had two posters who were both responding to attacks by the other person and letting nothing go. At a certain point who started it doesn’t matter because neither poster was interested in ending it. What should we have tried to do to get those two posters to stop attacking each other?
Well I have certainly been guilty of this from time to time, I dont think I do this all the time. If you honestly feel I am being under-moderated I believe I have volunteered a solution a few posts up by openly asking for more moderation, ON JUST ME, when mods feel it is appropriate.
I now understand why teachers give detention to everyone involved in the fight in the hallway. By the time it gets to the point of needing modding, it doesn’t matter “who started it.”
I supported moving it to French BBV so it didn’t affect the community’s enjoyment of the forum and didn’t appear at the top of the thread list. I’d have liked to seen it excised there sooner.
If people want to scrap somewhere out of the way, let them imo. What I find hard to understand is knowingly entering an area where two people are who’ve been arguing vehemently with you (they didn’t even invite you), and when it turns out badly going off crying for sympathy.
We don’t want people just flinging shit at each other though. And both of the posters showed an inability to regulate their vitriol to a single thread.
This isn’t your private forum, telling people not to look at the bum fight if they don’t like it doesn’t make the bum fight moral. The posters involved could be told the same with regards to the other poster’s attacks; if you don’t like them don’t read them.
I am sure I speak for every mod, past, present and future, when I say none of us want to go through the trouble of excising a thread every time you feel like flinging some poo at someone.
It’s hard for some people to draw a line between political attacks and personal attacks in an era where identity politics are meaningful.
I’m not necessarily going to go out of my way to soften the blow if my argument is effectively the same as saying that your personal identity is worthless.
I consider them all insults. There’s a lot of motivated reasoning going on by people attempting to draw major distinctions between them.
If a poster chooses to post insults and tell people to fuck off, then they necessarily have to find a way to draw a line between what kind of insults are proper vs. improper behavior that coincidentally makes what they do OK, and what others do worthy of moderation.
Very much appreciate your clarity of thought. You are one of the posters I initially put on ignore but have come to appreciate is more than worth a little discomfort on my end.
It’s a small thing but if everyone removed the letters “lol” from all responses if the intention is to really say “your dumb” or “that’s dumb” it would be a big step forward. I’ve never read a post, mine included, that were improved with the inclusion of lol.
I’m back for a minute… I’ve been working today so I don’t have time to go through and respond to individual posts like I was doing last night. It looks like there’s been some good discussion though.
One thing that I noticed nobody commented on was the idea of making this shift in policy & moderation a “pilot” with some pre-defined duration.
I’m a little surprised by that since it seems like a lot of the people voting or commenting “no” are concerned about giving mods too much power, or that they’ll use the power unfairly. My thinking is that if we approach this as a “test” to be evaluated and then either continued or discontinued we’re minimizing the risk of creating monsters out of our mods.
I actually think we as a community can and should change our minds about things like these at any time, but maybe explicitly setting a time limit would be helpful? Or we could even agree to do a post-mortem debrief after the first “instance” of the new policy in action.
