I think folks can dispute my sources. That is fine. I have tried lately to not drag out back and forth on an item. I state an opinion or a source / link. Perfectly fine with me if it is disputed. Maybe just keep it short and a few. So as not to meander off too much. But don’t ban it. Information and opinions on sources is good.
But it’s neither information nor opinion. It’s propaganda.
I rest my case.
It should be.
I already mentioned that, and pointed out that this does not qualify. There is absolutely no history on this board of pro Russia threads that have been debunked over and over. If you can’t live with one poster having a different opinion than you, make use of the options available to you rather than trying to force everyone to only see what you think is appropriate.
You choose to waste time on it. No one forces you to read his posts. Indeed, we have an option to never see any posts we don’t want to. Just use it and leave everyone else the option to make their own decisions.
No we don’t. This is a message board, not international politics. There is no mission here. If you really wanted to fight ignorance, you would do what is being done right now: He posts something, others debunk it. That’s fighting ignorance. Forbidding it is not fighting it.
You have been told over and over again that this isn’t what is going on.
You can say it’s not, but it is. It’s not (yet) against the rules to be pro Russia. That includes propaganda. If the much ballyhooed intelligence of the board is true, we shouldn’t need the mods to craft a special rule to protect us from it. If the mods are going to start vetting sources, they are going to have to hire a lot more people. You already have the tools available to get rid of his posts, use them. Leave everybody else alone.
I submit that a breaking-news thread should be regarded as a special case within the broader board. Its primary function is to inform. Fast-moving events will often generate initially tenuous reports, but where later developments contradict earlier information, the thread will be inherently self-correcting. But there’s an understanding that participants are engaged in a well-intentioned best-effort attempt to share basically factual information with one another.
It is a fundamental violation of the premise of a breaking-news thread to share articles and analysis that are known to be inaccurate, from sources whose acknowledged sole purpose is to dishonestly represent reality in order to promote a skewed perception of events. The propagandist, I argue, should absolutely be barred from disrupting this kind of thread.
Now, if the propagandist wants to start a different thread, or even many of them, to advance the arguments being promoted by the state to which they are loyal, they are free to do so. I would have no objection at all to a Putin fan launching dedicated topics asserting that the West bears at least some if not most of the responsibility for provoking Russia into this invasion or that the just-concluded referenda represent a fully legitimate statement of desire for Russian identity by the people of Donbas et al. or any of the other positions being advanced by Russian loyalists. In those threads, the propagandist could offer all the Russian state-media links and videos they want. It would be genuinely illuminating to see how Russian leaders are trying to justify their imperial adventuring to themselves, to their people, and to the world, and the inevitable counterarguments would be confined to the respective threads.
But none of that should happen in a breaking-news thread. The propagandist wants to do this in a news thread because they want to skew the discussion; they don’t want a dedicated argument because their advocacy will be laid bare. We should not allow them to use the discussion venue as camouflage for their intent. They can argue their position, but they should do it transparently and fairly. Breaking news is the wrong place for this, full stop.
That is the sole point I’m advocating here.
I agree, but the reality is that it already happened. There was a ton of fake/misleading info at the start of the thread.
I have no problem if the mods would want to stop misleading posts starting now, but don’t go back and move the pro Russia stuff to it’s own thread. That’s history at this point. What I would also like to see is for posters to stop being in such a rush to post something new that they don’t take time to consider sources.
For example, everything that Ukraine puts out officially is always posted as gospel. I think we can all agree that they have a vested interest in putting forward the most flattering info they can. And they are very good at it. They certainly aren’t going to publish anything that would have a bad effect on morale, civilian or military.
Basically, go ahead and split the threads now. I don’t think it needs to be done, but I don’t really care. Just require a little more thought into what constitutes breaking news from the Ukraine side of things. A little less unknown twitter and mil blogger posts, more hard news.
This is flat-out not true. Many posts include appropriate caveats on this point (“this is from Ukraine’s defense ministry, so grain of salt, but…”).
I agree with you that it would be a waste of mod time to go back and try to clean the thread by segregating historical posts.
Personally I wouldn’t like to see a thread ban for the poster in question. He (she?) has their way of following the war and they are sharing it with us - and I find it interesting to see. We are all sophisticated enough to know that different sources have differing reliability, especially in a conflict like this. Plus I think we are doing a decent job of challenging and asking the right questions. This is a discussion board after all, not a publishing platform, and the poster is not trolling as far as I can see. I like to see different voices in the forum.
Having said all that, I spend a lot of time in that thread and I’ve worked in the media for over twenty years so I like to think I’m pretty sharp with identifying and judging sources - so perhaps it’s a different experience for others.
And I’m also guilty of posting speculative stories and bias links. Hell, I’ve posted multiple screenshots of Russian losses published by the Kyiv Post. I did usually write “claimed losses” or something though…
Yes, but he may (I haven’t seen it but it could happen) post something worthwhile in another thread/topic. Ignore poster is a very large hammer.
And watching him get slapped down other places is entertaining.
Well put. We are adults here, presumably we can figure out what sources are useful. Suppressing posts is not the way to do it. Having only one point of view makes for a poor discussion.
I’ve never seen him post anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t doing so. Do what I do and just use the scroll wheel when I see his posts. Works fine and doesn’t interfere with the way other posters read the thread.
What about those who respond directly to his posts, and those who are sidelined by his posts?
Ignored users posts are hidden and all you have to do to view is click on view hidden reply. You can also log out to read the boards and read all the juicy posts from your ignored list.
It’s not a big hammer at all.
How is that anyone else’s problem but your own? If you don’t want to see his posts, why would you want to see the people that replied to him? Scroll wheel, use it. I’ve read about three of his posts in that thread and I have missed nothing at all by scrolling past them. Same reason I don’t read gun control threads. I know exactly which side will post what. I have no idea what sidelined means.
The complaint is that all the appropriate debunking of his sources clutters the thread. It’s a volume issue, not necessarily a content issue.
This, this sums it up very cleanly.
Come on, there’s 9000 posts in that thread. His posts and responses to them are barely a blip in all that. Does .0000001 count as a volume problem? What rule do you think he’s breaking? Because I don’t see anything. Just do like I do and scroll past the posts. Really, it doesn’t hurt at all.
For some time now I have found that thread to be far more interesting as an example of the effects of propaganda. More incentive just to observe it, than try and contribute. It is very disturbing.
Folks don’t really have to worry about me taking up much space in it lately. But a post that clashes with the tone of the dominant palette, is just too terrible. Factual or speculative.