I think “serious” is a helpful qualifier here, FWIW.
that’s a fairly dishonest characterization. I am against mods enforcing their own personal belief systems against the will of the community. That’s all I’ve ever been about since the beginning of this. The community feels one way, the mod should go with it. We don’t have that. That is why I asked my question. Who doesn’t feel the mods should work in accordance with the community?
I think reading that post and saying I’m calling you a liar is a dishonest characterization of what I said. I certainly did not mean it that way.
This:
There are also some folks who are not interested in reading other people’s fantasies of pain and suffering on anyone regardless of possible influence of outcome.
is blatantly not a fair characterization of what’s going on here. That does not make you a liar.
Just skimming and perhaps trying to a bit of a pain because I feel like subverting stuff is good in general and there should be some sort of input saying something like “this really isn’t that big a deal and shouldn’t be taken so seriously” but w/e…this is a good video. I went to see Henry Rollins a few years ago do a thing where he just rambles on at high intensity. It was fun.
I am having difficulty understanding what you are saying here.
There are also some folks who are not interested in reading other people’s fantasies of pain and suffering on anyone regardless of possible influence of outcome.
These people would clearly vote for a strong version of the rule (such as my example vote option 1).
There is a disagreement of the definition of advocate apparently.
I see no reason why we couldn’t simply specify what we mean (a definition) by “advocate” in the rule somewhere.
I am totally baffled here.
Some people just don’t want to read stuff wishing harm on people regardless of whether it is advocating or just venting.
That’s why the word “entertain” is in option 1. People who don’t want to read posts that bring up violent scenarios. Those people would vote for Option 1.
Are you saying that there are members who don’t want to read posts that “entertain” violence but they do want to read posts that advocate violence??
I am totally lost here since I think there is a “violence spectrum” that runs something like:
… mention … entertain … propose … support … advocate … threaten … incite.
People who don’t want to read posts that entertain, propose, support, advocate, threaten, or incite violence would vote for Option 1.
People who think we should allow posts that entertain, propose, and support violence, but prohibit posts that advocate, threaten, or incite violence would vote for Option 2.
What am I missing?
Taking half a step back, this should be about finding out what people here want. I think basically everybody agrees that if we can figure out what most people want, then the job of the rules and the mods is to realize and respect whatever those preferences are, whether it’s to be relatively permissive about edgier violent posts or to be relatively strict, or whatever. I’m not sure I’m any closer to understanding what most people want aside from now knowing that our css theme wizard supports? throwing Molotov cocktails at ICE agents. That is too caliente for my liking, so that is what I want to avoid, but I could literally be the only one who wants to avoid that, I don’t know.
Maybe we should write out 10-20 potentially incendiary, violent, edgelording statements and do some anonymous polls about whether people support statements of that kind being made here, kind of like my original NBZ polls although more precisely defined as to their purpose. Like that left right libertarian authoritarian thing half of us just did.
3 Likes
For example, consider the statement
The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion - the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world; with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is its merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose - to destroy it.
Do you agree with allowing this statement?
- Strongly Disagree
- Disagree
- Agree
- Strongly Agree
0 voters
consider the statement,
A white cop just got hit in the face with a Molotov cocktail; I hope the alcohol didn’t suffer.
Do you agree with allowing this statement?
- Strongly Disagree
- Disagree
- Agree
- Strongly Agree
0 voters
etc.
We can think of this in terms of ranges.
At the extreme level, we have advocacy of violence. There could be some argument as to whether advocacy of future violence is worse than approval of past violence.
Perhaps some will disagree, but I would say that lesser than advocacy/approval is condoning or tolerating violence, which would be saying that some form of violence was understandable or forgivable.
Beyond that would be discussing violence neutrally in terms that permit it being viewed as having positive qualities without negative qualities.
Going even further would be only allowing discussion of violence that opposes violence in the same way that the Hays Code required that movies never encourage audiences to have sympathy for depictions of vice, requiring that sinful characters either be punished or redeemed.
We can also treat legal violence (such as war) differently from illegal violence. If this site existed during the 1770s, at what point would it have been acceptable to support an American war for independence?
We could set a bright line at one level as ban-worthy and set another bright line at a lower level as being where everything below that is always permissible so that mods should overrule community attempts to hide posts (which makes me think that rule #8 should read “Don’t use the forum rules or features as a weapon against posters or opinions you do not like”), while the community can decide on its own a line somewhere in between where posts get flagged and hidden but no one gets banned and the evolving community standards can shift that line based on current events.
Let’s use a non-political violent action from a violent activity as an example: Myles Garrett bopping Mason Rudolph on the head with a helmet. Here is a list of possible reactions someone could have posted:
-LOL Steelers
-I wish it had been Rapelisberger
-I hope Rudolph can’t play next week
-I hope Rudolph is out for the season
-Obviously, it should be a suspension, but I wouldn’t give Garrett more than one game
-I just ordered a Myles Garrett jersey
-I’m getting a Mason Rudolph pinata for my birthday
-I’m not saying I approve of his behavior, but I explicitly decline to condemn it
Would any of those reactions have been ban-worthy? Would any of those reactions deserved to be hidden but not punished with a ban?
I think ggoreo has made some good points during this discussion. Any suggested rule should address this.
—-
Do we agree that there are at least some (explicit or implicit) calls for violence that should not be allowed?
Threats directed at community members including encouraging self-harm or suicide. Anything we think has some real possibility of leading to investigation or whatever by the police (FBI or whatever).
4 Likes
So far 57% of respondents agree or strongly agree with allowing the molotov cocktail statement. I truly don’t know what’s wrong with some of you. Disgusting.
If that holds, just cancel any future votes, lock the thread and we’ve got our answer I guess.
I voted “strongly agree” because it’s a joke. If you change the statement to “I want cops to get hit in the face with molotov cocktails” I vote strongly disagree. If you change the statement further to “cops in [country]” I might strongly agree or disagree depending on which country.
2 Likes
So I just read thru a bunch of these replies and have concluded that while this topic is the hinge pin of the issue the forum is facing, it is not where it will be solved.
Basically, no we will not get a rule that represents the consensus of the forum with a bright line that is easily applied without bias. Too bad.
So that leaves us with the issue at hand. Mods will be using judgment. Their judgment should reflect the community’s wishes. I don’t think we can pre-litigate that and it is likely to change anyway depending on a lot of outside factors.
So, let’s get past this rule IMO and we will get to the final showdown at a later date–either when we discuss the enforcement procedures and guidelines for mods, or someone tests a mod again and we reach that ultimatum point we are all chomping at the bit for. Then people can do what they gonna do.
So, it is a needle in a haystack at this point to find the proposed rules. I am going to do my best to outline the choices I found, if I missed yours please repost it, if you have any feedback on edits or additions, shoot. I hope to get the final vote up today, otherwise, I can’t promise anything for timing as I am starting a new job and single dadding it the rest of the week.
Thank you all for your patience throughout. I was purposefully dragging this out at times to shed some of the urgent intensity around it, but I overdid that, also got distracted, and it got too non-urgent then reignited anyway. Observe the attrition technique over-applied.
-
No rule
-
Discussions of violence. Posts that entertain causing the demise or serious harming of a specific person or group for any purpose (whether to express anger, incite a rebellion, or troll people) are not allowed. If your post contains a violent scenario (or a scenario designed to create an opportunity for violence) in which a person or groups could end up dead or seriously injured, make it as fantastical and preposterous as possible, post it at most once in a while, but ultimately, consider not posting it at all.
-
Discussions of violence. Posts that entertain, support, or advocate the demise or serious harming of a specific person or political group are not allowed.
-
Discussions of violence. Posts that advocate the demise or serious harming of a specific person or political group are not allowed.
Let’s go.
I still think there should be a distinction between legal and illegal violence. The government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force/violence and we should be able to discuss how that power should be used and to advocate for its use against people we consider bad actors. Terrorism is bad because it is a usurpation of the state’s monopoly on political violence. (It may be bad for other reasons, but that is the biggest reason for why the state should be concerned about terrorism.)
If I want to advocate that we should deal with Syria by droning Assad or that we should be willing to go to war with Putin over Crimea, under which versions of the rule would that be allowed?
I submit that these should be the only hard and fast rules about advocating violence, but we should always have something about how if everyone thinks you’re an ahole, you’re out. That could cover a lot of shit, but it wouldn’t be something a mod would just auto-ban someone over.
6 Likes
Sorry. Then no rule 7 needed as long as something else says you’re out if everyone thinks you suck, but then we probably don’t really need a rule for that either. That one could just take care of itself I think.
1 Like
Change “are not allowed” to “may be subject to moderator actions including but not limited to warnings, deletions, temporary or permanent bans”.
We can add additional language that clarifies what is or is not allowed.
Sure, makes sense. Scratch everything after “actions”.
We still might want to explicitly explain what moderator actions can be expected somehwere in the rules but once should be sufficient.
1 Like
Johnny, you’re doing great. You’re not taking this too seriously and you’re not treating it too flippantly. I feel like you are giving exactly the correct number of shits.
2 Likes