I think several have suggested that you report that post. Not ignore it. Not have you been dismissed.
Clearly several here are offended. But what do you suggest the mods do about it?
Ridiculous. If you posted in the Pit, you might justify this. You didn’t. You posted it in ATMB as a major change in the rules of the Board. You don’t get to tell the rest of us to shut up and go away if we don’t immediately grasp what you’re talking about.
You messed up in a big way on an important subject. And I’m still waiting for somebody to give other examples besides Skald.
This is not the way a board debate should be handled. Everybody needs to know all the facts. Everybody needs to know the entire history. Everybody needs to know how widespread the problem is. You haven’t gotten one percent of the way there.
You put it in public for the entire membership to discuss. OK, we’re here. Educate us on the whole, entire problem. Or, even better, somebody other than you do so.
I don’t think most people realize that you embedded a link on the smiley.*
There are few interesting things I realized as I read through that. There are similarities in the discussion, but very few people said “just ignore it” or denied that it was happening.
I found a few quotes that I think apply to where we are now and explain why people feel so frustrated. Women in particular feel like their concerns are being minimized and ignored because of their gender (although some men are supportive/also offended). Skald is the focal point, but he isn’t the only time this happens. He just happened to be the last straw.
So, here we are. Many people have said they are uncomfortable, and for the most part the response has been, “well, just ignore it” or “you just want attention so you’re making this up”.
I don’t know what the right answer is - maybe it’s spoiler boxes, or maybe Skald could not do the sex stuff anymore - but I do know that the right answer when someone tells you that something sexual is making them uncomfortable is NOT to tell them to ignore it or that they are making it up (or that it happens other places on the Internet, or in books, or in movies, or your friends do it, or whatever).
*For the record, kayaker and Morgenstern both apologized for that joke and are both very supportive of women on the Dope.
How about you fight your own battles and stop trying to derail the actual discussion we’re having here with your pointlessly inept attempts to make it all about you? In other words, go away, the adults are talking now.
Count me in . . . so nine.
In the past, I’ve left the board twice (once for several years) due to the misogyny. It’s a little better these days, but it’s still frequently uncomfortable.
I really don’t think this is a fair criticism. Of the current moderators, only 2 were mods at the time that Cesario was limited then banned (2008).
That’s silly. I think we’re adult enough to be able to identify an issue and discuss it, even if there is a need to reframe it.
Do you have a suggestion?
I think you’re vastly overstating your case here. I take your point that you don’t want to be surprised by content that is distasteful. I think that’s fair.
When you say that you will not tolerate it, what does that mean? What action are you suggesting? Do you have a suggestion for board policy or practice?
I find this mildly offensive - just because some folks may not share your views it doesn’t automatically mean it’s because they are men or you are a woman. And I’m not saying I disagree, I just don’t think it’s a very good point to try and make.
I am open to suggestions of general board policy though, so if there is one I think that can be constructive. I heavily favor the ability for open discussion about any topic, and I simultaneously don’t think it’s a good practice to try and fool the audience into discussion they don’t wish to participate in. That’s the guidelines I think are in play here.
Ten.
How about flagging ops that feature humiliation porn, or similar?
What are you even talking about. Notice, that’s not a question. This isn’t the place to personalize arguments or take shots at other posters. Don’t do that here.
Same thing with this. There can be a discussion of board policy here. This includes discussion about an alleged pattern of dismissive behavior towards various issues. There is irony in telling other posters to go away. Please keep discussion civil.
[/moderating]
You’re right, I was wrong, my apologies to you.
Ok, but where do we go then?
I got no issue with giving Skald a topic ban on this. I have no issue with his threads that cross this line being labeled or closed either. I do agree they get a bit skeevy and uncomfortable. But we’re also supposed to be adults here who get to talk about adult subjects. Yes, putting the man on ignore is a reasonable, viable ADULT solution. It isn’t telling you to pay no attention to someone yelling in your face or catcalling as you walk by, because that isn’t happening. You have to choose to open his threads and read them.
If someone is making harassing statements directed at you, then yes, they should be reported, they should be warned. Unfortunately, we have a lot of people on this board who write ignorant, racist, sexist and trollish things. Is the board going to start warning and banning them too? Or only men who make women uncomfortable in how they talk about certain issues?
Silence of the Lambs featured some pretty nasty stuff. Should we mark such topics as NSFW (which I have already stated that I don’t have a problem with), or do we start banning topics that make anyone uncomfortable? Do we ban discussion of this and other movies because the movie contains offensive ideas or content? Do we ban the discussion of books and offensive speakers as well? Can we talk about Roy Moore, or Donald Trump’s despicable actions toward women? Or are those banned because they make some women uncomfortable?
Where do we stop? Because if we can’t talk about uncomfortable topics here, then the Chicago Reader may as well pull the plug on the site.
Indicate that in the thread title. As I said, I clicked on a thread that looked innocuous but it had unnecessary crap in it. Not everyone will have been around to know who are the “skeevy” posters.
It’s like somebody coming up to you and asking to talk about something ordinary and then whipping out their willy and waving it about. Make them wear the raincoat so you can see the creeps coming. Disclose the skeeviness in the title and don’t make it look more innocuous than it is.
A wide variety of suggestions have already been offered in this thread.
Here’s a new, additional suggestion: since some posters seem to think this is an important issue, how about the mods/admins discuss the matter and give us some official feedback, telling us how you plan to handle this matter?
We don’t get to tell y’all what to do, so “we don’t plan to do anything except help Skald with his blindness-induced typos” is certainly a possible response. I’m sure many of us will be unhappy if that’s the official position, but at least it would be a TPTB acknowledgment, which would be something more than we’ve heard so far.
Holy crap! It was that long ago?? I would guessed 2012-ish. Given that, fair point.
I’m trying to crowdsource this a little bit - at least as a method of brainstorming. One thing that is always challenging is crafting guidance that is clear and actionable. Some of the suggestions thus far have been around clear labeling - but we already have rules around descriptive thread titles. Perhaps that can be applied in these types of cases. There’s also been suggestions to disallow topics of this nature which I think is a larger lift. What I think would be constructive would be things like, ‘I think there should be a rule that says XYZ’
Descriptions of sexual abuse/assualt/rape should be spoilered.
I got this wrong. It was Feb-2010. At that point it was 3 of the current active mods (plus 2 currently less active). Split the difference?
Once again, this is not about generic “offensive content”.
It is about bait-and-switch inclusion of prurient sexual material in posts that appear innocuous, and in a manner and pattern where the poster appears to derive some level of sexual gratification from doing so.
It is about being mislead into nonconsensual participation in someone’s sexual activity.
“Just ignore the posts” does nothing for people who don’t know that certain posts are likely to contain prurient sexual material. It implies they have to learn by trial and error who and what to avoid, and that’s not OK.
Here’s another way to think about this: If you introduced your mom, or SO, or daughter, or some other woman who wasn’t a generic object to you to the boards, would you feel the need to tell them “FYI, those posts sometimes have graphic sexual content in them?”
Like I said, I don’t typically read his threads, but mostly because I recall them being really convoluted.
On the one hand, my point still stands that if you put him on ignore, you won’t even notice it. To me, that’s like walking out of the room when the guy that makes all the dirty jokes walks in. OTOH, I 100% understand what you’re talking about. If his posts bother you, you should feel free to voice that.
In the end, I suppose the winning side (for me, won’t speak for others and about this specific thread) is that…I’m not a woman and it’s really not up to me to decide what should or should not offend women.
I could understand him having to use some kind of tag, but I don’t think it would work, for two reasons. It may be a spoiler, but if people (not all, but some) don’t want to ignore his threads, I’m not sure warning people would make a difference. Streisand Effect and all.
I suppose my suggestion is that he could be topic banned from anything deemed overtly or purposely offensive to woman, at least if that’s a common topic for him.
Perhaps people should report the threads they find offensive (not disagreeable or ‘eww’ but really offensive. The mods could keep track of how many reports they get on specific types of threads.
Again, I’m not the offended party so I don’t want to speak for them. The one thing that caught my attention was talks of porn (incest porn or otherwise). One thing that always bothered me about people being offended by porn is that their issue seems to be that these women are coerced into doing it. I’d wager that the majority of women aren’t coerced into it, they do it because [for any number of reasons] they like and/or want to do it. As for incest porn, that’s nothing more than the name of the video and maybe the first line or two. Hell, I’ve seen porn videos recycled into incest porn. Same exact video, the only thing that changed was the title. It’s not that it’s actual (step) siblings/parents doing this but from what you see in the internet a lot of people seem to be under that impression.
To reiterate, if what he’s doing offends/irritates/bothers enough of the SDMB population, I see no reason why there shouldn’t be a topic ban. Hell (and this is in general) it doesn’t even matter if it’s not offense. If someone came in constantly started threads about high end bikes, found ways to shoehorn high end bikes into random topic, generally spoke about high end bikes every chance they got, the same thing would probably happen.
The knuckleheadedness in the Pit is far more liable to be off putting than stumbling onto a random and rare “pervy” thread.