I think that’s a pretty good start. I might add something about bad faith trolling, like,
Post in good faith. Trolling is ubiquitous on the internet, and no one wants to moderate a little light taunting, sarcasm, cheerleading for one’s favored party, team, or candidate, or a certain degree of devil’s advocacy. Plenty of things that could fall under an umbrella as broad as “trolling” are part of a healthy online community. But, we believe in facts, so repeating lies in the face of their proven falsehood is likely to be moderated. It’s not hard to tell the difference between someone who doesn’t understand the argument another is making, and someone who’s deliberately misconstruing that argument for their own amusement. There’s a difference between posting passionately about a subject and spamming a thread over and over. Posting citations to support one’s arguments is encouraged, but throwing down a litany of citations, declaring victory, and not addressing any follow up is a bad look. These are just a few examples of bad faith, and expect the moderators to take action if you are engaging in it.
Sorry I thought you were busy today (I am too) and we were starting in earnest tomorrow. What I would have sent you would have been more concise but no different in content than what you and wookie have here. Concision isn’t always a virtue. I like these.
This is the last bit of what I sent to Johnny, but this is a first draft at addressing the more controversial bit
More specifically about posts that include scenarios of violence:
Posts that entertain the demise or serious harming of a specific person or political groups where most of us live for whatever purpose (whether it is to express anger, incite a rebellion, or to troll people) are subject to heavy moderation starting with deletion, warnings, temporary bans, up to permanent exile at the discretion of the moderator. If your post, in whatever way, contains a violent scenario in which a person or groups end up dead, make it as fantastical and preposterous as possible, post it at most once in a while, but ultimately, consider not posting it at all.
Note this is a draft, “kill the rich” may be an exception or require tweaking this rule. As written I think this covers our pro punching Nazis constituents. Covers, as in, it’s allowed.
Just a couple of quick responses (besides saying this is a great start).
I think you intend your Rule 2 to be an umbrella of sorts but umbrella rules can sometimes be overly “broad”. We should probably explicitly rule out certain content such as islamophobia, homophobia, racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, white supremacy, etc.
We probably need something about links to videos. No hit-and-run links (descriptions are mandatory). Content of links must comport with forum rules.
Finally, I will simply echo what Wookie posted. An explicit rule prohibiting trolling (in all its flavors) is essential. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that can disrupt a political discussion worse than trolling.
I don’t want it to derail this thread, so I started a separate thread for all key moderator actions. I’ll be posting mine there, other mods are free to do as they wish as there are no rules about it. I banned NotBruceZ for 48 hours for a suggestion of, essentially, doxxing the MLB umpire in response to a post calling for him to have an “accident.”
I posted it here because I don’t want any accusations that I’m trying to hide it, but please contain discussion of NotBruceZ and specific moderator decisions to the NotBruceZ thread or the log of moderator actions.
I didn’t mean “broad” as in coverage. I meant “broad” as in vague. Lumping everything into a prohibition against “hate messaging” is problematic to say the least. “Jews own all the banks.” “Women are too emotional to be effective leaders.” “The US was better off when white people ran things.” Etc. It might be hard to call any of those statements “hate messaging”, but I sure as hell don’t want posts like that on this site.
My specific listings were meant as an addendum to JT’s rule, not a substitute.
That’s all fair enough, but it should be fairly simple to make clear to anyone who is crossing that line and we can also refine stuff like that more down the line. I don’t think we should get too bogged down on that type of stuff just yet.
Also, JT, I’m currently on vacation all week which is part of the reason I haven’t spent more time on this yet beyond that quick list.
Reposting from the closed thread. JT if this kind of discussion is ahead of where you want to be lmk
This is a perfectly fair framework to start with or even end with, but you’re taking a general approach to all posts without trying to find/possibly not agreeing with a more specific approach to address the more problematic subset of posts.
For example, if a person posted “I’m advocating that so and so be killed” that seems like an open and shut case of advocating violence. Let’s say this is severe enough the first time and you give the person a one day time out. They come back a day later and post again, “I’m advocating that so and so be killed”. You decide to tell them that if they say that again they willed be banned forever and give them a three day ban. Now that person comes back in three days and says “I’m not advocating that so and so be killed, but I wouldn’t mind if somebody killed so and so”. Is that a post you let stand? Is that poster no longer advocating violence but simply condoning it, which triggers the looser response flowchart? What if they only said, “I’m not advocating that so and so be killed, but I wouldn’t mind if somebody killed so and so” the first time, no action?
I don’t propose we go insane covering every possible good faith/bad faith case, I’m just proposing that we consider prohibiting posts in which the heads of state where most of us live and travel meet grisly and untimely ends by means of intentional violence. But I don’t want the standard limited to advocacy. I don’t want to see it condoned, trolled about, or ideally even joked about. Perhaps @lawbros can help clarify this standard or at least help explain the problems a person may face if they, even on twitter, had dozens of serious but not serious, well I’m joking but not joking, but joking posts where, punchline, somebody in government gets killed.
If this is too nebulous, take any post, and if you can substring find some proposition “kill x” or “x is killed”, then the propositional attitude concerning that proposition better be something like “hey shut the fuck up about this”. In cases where we can’t substring find that, we use the judgment of a community supported mod enforcing this standard, assuming it is adopted, it may not be.
You ask a great question for which there is no easy answer.
I will say that I think a good set of rules is critical for the long-term success of any internet forum. The best rules are “bright line” rules with clear definitions and applications. Unfortunately, not all rules can be bright line and their application will often require keen moderation judgment (like a prohibition against trolling).
Nevertheless, as I said above (echoing Wookie), having a rule against trolling is very important. A mod can point to that rule to sanction a poster who otherwise is breaking no other forum rule. To give an example still fresh in my mind, we recently had two annoying posters on 2p2 that were breaking no rules except they were very very likely trolling. I temp-banned them for posting indistinguishable from trolling. (One came back after the temp-ban and apologized and is now a member in good-standing. The other came back after the temp-ban, racheted up the trolling, and got perma-banned.)
Having said all that, you are undoubtedly correct that it is sometimes difficult to discern true trolling from garden-variety terrible posting. Pattern of behavior can be looked at, history, etc. But there is no easy answer.
All this so someone could tippy toe around the line of acceptability and push boundaries. The guy basically admitted to purposely trying to get a rise out of people. Well done. ffs
Think of the recent NBZ “fiasco” as highlighting the importance of having an agreed upon list of forum rules/moderation protocols.
If you don’t think this forum needs an agreed upon list of forum rules/moderation protocols, I don’t know what to say other than you should probably not post much in this thread.
You know what, it’s definitely abusive speech and I apologize, @jmakin. It was not one of my finer moments. I was out of line, and I’m sorry. I should not have responded in kind when you called me “fucking unhinged” and a “thin skinned, dictatorial mod” or to any of the other abusive speech you directed at me throughout that thread.
That doesn’t make it okay for a mod to use abusive language, I should be held to a higher standard and I failed to live up to it. I’m sorry. I should not have taken the bait, and I do think people should be allowed to be harsher to and more critical of mods than other posters.
I don’t think I deserve a ban for it, though, but if another mod disagrees I won’t fight any punishment doled out.
On the topic of violent rhetoric, we could try to define it as something that a reasonable person could think has a chance of inspiring/causing/encouraging/etc violence in real life. It’s still subjective, but it gets to the crux of the issue for me. It’s not about offending us/other readers, it’s about the moral risk of letting it go unchecked because of what it can mean in real life.
There is a massive difference between saying “fucking unhinged” as a descriptor and “fuck you” as a directed attack. I am also not a mod. This is also in response to repeated attacks like this towards me.
Also, fuck you. You are clearly too emotional and reactive for this.