That same sort of behaviour is also considered perfectly acceptable here when it comes to Blacks, yes. People have outright said that Blacks are brainwashed into voting Democrat, for instance.
You could even go a step further and start a thread saying they’re genetically-inclined to be less intelligent. As long as you phrase it right. Try getting away with that for women.
No, no “for instance” and another completely unrelated (and incomprehensible) example. Are you seriously telling me that it is acceptable on this forum to say that black people should go back to the past when they weren’t allowed to vote and had to put up with segregation because they were happier and that they have been brainwashed by “victim ideology” into believing that they have rights and are free to express them? Because YOU know better than they do and because they didn’t speak out about any of it, they must have loved it? Go on, show me how. Start a thread saying that.
I don’t know why you want to make it a competition but a lot of BLM threads have people talking about how that unarmed teen wouldn’t have been shot if he just followed a cops orders or not tried to act so gangsta. But I guess that’s not a good analogy because it’s not literally about going back to the past and women aren’t shot disproportionately by cops.
The management has a few ways they have to improve. Please don’t make this into a “women have it worse than black people here” thing.
It’s a perfectly analogous statement.
Yes, that’s what i’m saying. Not exactly that wording, but that sentiment.
I’m not going to do that, because I’m not a racist.
But feel free to search the board for the words “black”, “brainwashed” and “Democrat”. You’ll find lovely gems like thisand this. Now show me where people were modded for what they said in those threads.
Don’t be absurd. I’m asking whether the specific conduct is acceptable in relation to other groups. I’ve never suggested any such thing.
Is it acceptable to REPEATEDLY tell other posters what they think because you know better, and that if they would only go back to shutting up and having no rights they’d be perfectly happy?
Personally, I don’t think you need to go into whether it is racist, or sexist or another term.
It’s pure offensive rudeness.
AFAICT, the mods see the central issue in the debate about misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc., as one of free expression of ideas (maybe sometimes along with the pious plea that if just one mind is changed, all the intimidation women, Blacks, and gays experience will be worth it? ). I disagree. Civil, sometimes contentious discourse is still around, but it’s increasingly drowned out by today’s trolls, whose goals are far more socially and politically aligned than the troll smoking weed in Mom’s basement 8 or 10 years ago.
A 2016 Time magazine article points out that while liberals also troll,
[Emphasis mine.]
Trolls can’t be changed. If we want the SDMB to be the place for civil, substantive discussions, mods will have to earn to recognize trolls’ new MO, determine whether a pattern of behavior by a poster indicates this type of troll, and ban–no bright lines, no warnings, no one-forum-only bans.
Here are quidelines I’ve devised. Hopefully others will improve or add to them.
-
Does the poster) post substantive, specific replies to the specific questions and challenges of others, or does he repeatedly ignore them and/or use diversionary tactics such as whataboutism?
-
Does the poster repeatedly claim he’s addressed those questions and challenges even though he hasn’t?
-
Does the poster repeatedly consign everyone who challenges him into a single Them group, such as liberals?
-
Does the poster repeatedly use ad coetus attacks as a means of sliding around ad hominem attacks that might get her banned?
I used “he” exclusively, but of course some trolls are female, but “he/she” got pedantic.
on another forum (or forums) there is a rule “attack the post, not the poster”. Personal attacks are reportable and will be removed.
Going into the (imaginary) motivations or reasons for why somebody doesn’t agree with you or why they’ve said what they’ve said=personal attack. It is off-topic.
Saying why you disagree with what they’ve said or just that you disagree is not a problem.
The minute somebody gets the idea to start bandying about the word “you” instead of “I” they get into trouble and start arguments. Unfortunately, it can be common and many don’t see the problem. Their opinions are “right”, telling the person who is “wrong” what is wrong with them isn’t an issue…
Example
I liked it back in the 1960s when there were more rigid gender roles. It suited me just fine.
compared to
You only disagree with the fact that things were better in the 1960s because you’ve been brainwashed by lefty propaganda
OR
I like baked beans
compared to
Anyone who doesn’t like baked beans doesn’t have any taste at all and is a moron.
this is an excellent point. A structural problem with this board is that the “don’t Junior mod” rule makes it hard for minorities to effectively tell others what is offensive and why. I suggest a relaxing of the rule, allowing women (or others) to say publicly, “that’s misogyny and offends me” in addition to reporting it. Doing so would have the advantage of instructing and sensitizing the decent posters who may never have thought hard about the impact of certain types of statements.
No, women have a different experience living in our society. Which means the answer to “who is allowed on this women’s panel” should be “anyone who has experience living as a woman.” So, cis women, transwomen, and transmen, if they transitioned post-puberty.
When we have an issue with misandry, and a lot of men say they are considering leaving because they are uncomfortable here, we can geta panel of men to alert others to the particulars.
We already HAVE a panel of men who shout loudly about every imagined slight to penis-people–and that’s why this thread and about a score of other current ones exist. I think we’re all pretty safe in setting aside any concern about the needs of straight white men to have their concerns aired. It’s covered, fam.
Yes. precisely. It is necessary only to keep the pretense of the intellectualized language.
This is an excellent point. There’s no problem of white men or men in general being shouted down or otherwise made unwelcome on this board, because there are tons of cis-male posters who are, let’s say very, very sensitive to such things, and will bring it up at the first minuscule sign.
I know I sure love it when some asshole uses his very fanciest of faux intellectual JAQoff verbiage to explain why experiences that can wake me up screaming to remember are actually no big deal and anyone who’s upset by them is just a mean old social justice warrior out to stifle the free speech of clueless white men. Makes me all warm and fuzzy, that does.
This is brilliant. I’d only add that as a general rule, it doesn’t matter what a troll thinks, it matters what they post. Mods spend too much time trying to ascertain the motives of trolls, whether or not they are sincere. This is impossible unless the troll admits he’s only posting to rile people up. Mods should look at what a poster does, and how it affects discussion. These guidelines are an excellent template for that.
Agreed. Patterns of behavior.
This is especially true since the alt-right playbook has trickled down and been adopted by other conservatives unintentionally. A lot of people aren’t “trolling” in the sense that they’re not necessarily posting in bad faith, but rather using tactics they’ve observed their side using which seem to, to some degree, work.
Which of course doesn’t mean liberals and leftists don’t use these same tactics ever, but they’ve been especially weaponized and refined rather intentionally by far right actors, especially the 4chan crowd.
There’s a whole youtube series (in progress) dissecting these tactics. I also recommend Hope not Hate’s “The International Alternative Right” document, where they spent a year both infiltrating the movement and observing it to give a very thorough review of their tactics, key actors, and culture. https://alternativeright.hopenothate.com
Unfortunately, you have to give your email to get it. I’d be willing to give it to anyone by PM if they want to avoid that.
These are excellent criteria for recognizing disingenuous arguing; I’m not sure how congruent that is with trolling*, but probably close enough.
Can you (or anyone) elaborate on how this might work in this environment, with usually two unpaid mods per forum? In other words, tracking this for even one poster seems like a lot of work. How many of these offenses, and how often, would you expect someone to commit before they should be labeled and banned?
If I were going to add something, then I would add that disciplinary action for these situations could be taken on agreement of the mods for that forum, or if one is absent include TubaDiva or any other mod to make the decision quorum. Requiring discipline decisions to make the rounds of the mod discussion loop takes too long (and probably takes up too much mod time).
*I can conceive of cases where a non-troll has gotten himself into a tight corner and is too stubborn to admit he is wrong, so he might resort to these tactics on that one occasion. I can also conceive of cases where a new poster might start out this way but might also be teachable. In the first case we have a body of work to compare this occasion to. In the second case, we could be banning a potentially decent poster. I don’t know how to resolve the second case - maybe suspension for a new poster and really clear guidelines on what they did wrong, along with a short leash when they are allowed to return.
Maybe what we need to do is ban discussion threads about controversial topics, like politics, sexism, religion, guns, etc. I’m tired of gun threads getting taken over by posters who want unlimited access to guns for everyone. I’m tired of political threads getting taken over by conservative derp. I’m tired of sexual assault threads getting taken over by nitpickers who insist it didn’t happen unless there’s recordings from 4 video feeds and everyone is visibly holding their drivers license. Those kinds of threads are always going to be controversial and antagonistic. There are plenty of other places on the web to discuss those topics.
One other problem with those kinds of topics is that’s typically where I form bad opinions of other posters. For most other benign threads, I don’t really ever think that. I may think their answer is wrong or stupid, but I don’t think that they are a bad person. It’s in those threads about controversial topics that I form strongly negative opinions on other posters. SA is one example. I think about the cardboard tube incident every time I see him posting on any thread. I end up being biased against them even when they aren’t posting in those controversial areas.
So I would say that rather trying to deal with trollish behavior in these controversial topics, just prohibit those kinds of threads altogether.
Then what do you have left? Your solution pretty much guts the board of non-trivial content.
Filmore, I don’t normally go this route, but if you don’t like these threads, don’t open them, don’t read them. Also don’t deny them to everyone else.
Two questions:
-
So women can view an alleged misogynistic post dispassionately but men can’t?
-
Can we implement a council of Republicans to mod the “All Republicans are deplorable ignorant racist women-haters.” posts?
The key to this is that it’s a pattern of using these tactics. It’s done repeatedly.
That’s a good point. Since mods already rely on the rest of us to call their attention to dubious posts, I suspect the rest of us would have to call a pattern like this to their attention off-thread, as we do now, and with corroboration of the pattern. I’m assuming it won’t be so frequent an occurrence as to suck up a whole lot of mod time, especially once the number of trolls is reduced.
Excellent point! Thanks!
If a non-troll repeatedly uses these tactics, then he or she isn’t a non-troll. Again, the key is that it’s repeated.