Since said thread hasn’t started yet, I’ll mention my idea here: The problem is not so much not insulting any group of people. It’s not insulting groups of people on the other side of the debate.
For example, in a thread about abortion you can’t insult pro-lifers or pro-choicers. I had more examples, but my heads starting to hurt, so I’ll leave with just that one. Y’all are smart enough to come up with others.
No. The point would be to avoid feeding those who like to sniff around the edges of the SDMB picking at people for their own amusement.
Is that some not-so-veiled reference to that snarkpit I saw in the google ads? lol. Anywho, you basically pointed out that CircleofWillis left out a bunch of posters so obviously as bad as elucidator that it made you “curious”. If it was your intent avoid feeding the sniffers with your earlier posts, you probably had the opposite effect with that one.
I may have whetted some appetites. Only by providing names would I have fed them.
Personally, I’m inclined to think of elucidator as a sort of wickedly funny Greek chorus.
I think, like any other situation which variables are more prominent than regularities, all anyone can do is make a good faith effort and hope to average in the black, so to speak.
Each thread is as different as the individual posters it comprises. Not only must we rely on a moderator’s judgment to keep it on track, we must rely on our own judgment in monitoring monitor behavior for discussion in this forum. Like democracy, it’s the worst possible system, except for all the others.
In the situations that have led to recent ATMB threads questioning mod judgment, it’s my opinion that in most cases the mod was making the best of a less than ideal situation. I think that as long as the process remains relatively transparent–most importantly, that we’re allowed this forum as a kind of Fourth Estate–most such situations will net more positive than negative.
This is a brilliant description, exactly what I’d have written if I had thought of it.
I don’t really post in GD, so I don’t think I have any place suggesting how things are done in that forum, but from the outside it seems like a horribly difficult forum to moderate. I love the sort of pithy one-liners elucidator injects into threads, but I can’t say I wouldn’t find them disruptive and irritating if he was of the opposite political persuasion of me. Similarly, I think it’s human nature to fill in the blanks behind fact-free assertions that agree with your worldview and cut them more slack than those you already think are complete BS. So how do you create a system where mods can encourage better, more factual debate without inadvertently clamping down harder on viewpoints they disagree with? I can’t think of a way that doesn’t make the already-tough job of moderating GD completely unenjoyable for the volunteers who do it.
Damn! Another night of crying myself to sleep, sobbing into my banky!
I think that sums it up pretty well, Giraffe. And I don’t want to police humorous asides or things that make the site fun, but I’m looking at this as a possible way to get some more content into these debates and reduce the extra stuff.
Excuse me for pointing it out, but we weren’t discussing humorous asides. We were talking (ISTM) about fact-free rants and hate spew.
Snarky one-liners are one thing. “Conservatives want to hurt people and enslave women” is something else.
Regards,
Shodan
And I think elucidator’s posts, at least on average, don’t come anywhere close to “Conservatives want to hurt people and enslave women.” But if you think his posts or others cross that line, report them and we’ll take a look.
I don’t think they do cross that line.
We were not talking about his posts; we were talking about posts that do cross that line, very specifically. Der Trihs crosses that line rather regularly. Should he be allowed to do so, in GD?
Is that what was objectionable in the linked thread, that you tried to forestall? Or was it the fact that magellan01 responded to it?
Your semi-warning (or guideline, or caution, or whatever you want to call it) was directed to both magellan01 and Der Trihs. Does that mean that, if everyone simply ignored the fact-free hate rant, that there would be no problem? If so, then as has been asked, why does Der Trihs get a pass? Assuming that the idea is to cut down on fact-free hate rants.
Regards,
Shodan
No, his posts are not the hate-filled nonsense DT spews. But he just shovels the shit continuously, rarely making an actual contribution. And even rarer, actually being funny. I wish he’d 1) post less, 2) BE funnier if he insists in trying to be funny (not much of a chance there) and 3) get his substance to shit ratio above 1:500.
With all due respect, we were not. FTR, I am in total agreement with you, Fenris and magellan01 but I think you have inadvertently hijacked the real issue.
There is a distinct difference between “fact free” posts----of which there are no rules against, and hate spew, for which there is.
Here is the thread that inspired this one. Please, if you haven’t already, read KLR 650’s posts. With rare exception he was polite. His biggest crime------and I’m sure you 3 would agree-----was that he A) was espousing a view unpopular here, and; B) He was long on rhetoric and short on facts.
But the fact is, among those posters who are guilty of only crime “B” we have dozens of regular posters, and hundreds of intermittent posters. Dozens.
And crime “B” is not against the rules.
It is only those posters-----posters who throw up “content free” posts ------that KLR 650 should be compared to.
The very moment you bring in the radicals----posters like Der Trihs----the argument quickly devolves into a variation of “Why did **KLR 650 **get a rebuke when Der Trihs doesn’t?”
That is NOT the argument, and Der Trihs is not the posting parallel to KLR 650. There are dozens of left leaning posters who violate crime “B” every time they log on, and it is them that we should be comparing.
I submit that the only posters that the kind of rebuke that KLR 650 got are those who not only post “fact free” content, but do it from an unpopular position. (while the regulars who post PC fact free content go unnoticed and unrebuked.)
*****That is not against the rules, *and that is the discussion here.
Stuff that is against the rules (Hate speech, jerkish behavior) and stuff that is not (anemic arguments) and when you merge them into a single issue you cloud both the problem and the solution.
More on Der Trihs in another post
The moment you allow a moderator to determine the quality and veracity of a poster you will get moderator bias in that forum. I don’t want GD shaped in tomndebb’s or Marley23’s image.
They are great moderators, but IMV they should not be allowed to ask for “Cite” or lay siege to a posters cite as a moderator. We’ve already seen (IMV) a heavy bias already when asking for cites etc.
I do agree with the general idea of elevating the quality of debate, but giving the moderators these powers is tantamount to allowing Keith Olberman or Rush Limbaugh to moderate a presidential debate.
I’m open to ideas /discussion, but if this is allowed, the right of center cretins will be hounded away more hastily by moderator actions (they’re hounded away just fine without moderator help) while the left of center cretins will remain basking in their ignorance.
Der Trihs et al are not relevant to the OP or the thread that preceded it.
The charge against KLR 650 was not that he was trolling or jerkish, but rather inane, persistent and citeless to the point of boneheaded.
Those aren’t rules violations, although they don’t make for a quality forum. But as noted there are dozens of regulars who commit the same crimes as KLR 650 from a point on the political spectrum that is more popular.
When the right-of-center posters bring Der Trihs up, it’s not just not germane to the discussion, it’s not placing the discussion squarely where it does belong.
If Der Trihs is trolling, or being jerkish enough that he should be dealt with, than that argument does fall within the rules.
That—IMV----is a different discussion and a different thread.
I asked about this i the other thread, and never received a response from Marley23. DT issued one of his usual hate-filled turds and all I did was point to it saying it was “too good”. That was the entirety of the exchange. the Marley23 comes in 15 hours later, when there was no further back and forth between the two of us and decides to use his cape. I asked then and I ask now, why? are the mods so afraid of pissing DT off for some reason that you can’t just tell him to tone down the hateful stupidity he posts?
But more important, I think is Shodan’s questions. Please answer them.
There is a difference between fact free rants and fact free hate rants.
I think it’s a great idea that tomndebb, Marley23 et al, want to improive GD by cutting down on the more benign ‘fact free rants.’ But I don’t think the solution is giving moderators the arbitrary and capricious power to decide who is worthy and who is not.
Ed and the boys produced a sea change with the whole new Pit rules and we survived it. I would thinkl it is possible to make some changes, objectively codified in the rules that would improve GD.
We have the rules and the means to deal with the ‘fact free hate rants’ already, but in my view it is only because of bias and a double standard that posters like badchad get shown the door, and posters like Der Trihs are still here.
But, as I said, I think that is a different thread.
The thing is, I thought Der Trihs was the example we were giving. I don’t interact with him that often, but I do remember a few content-free posts from him, i.e., posts that seemed to be more rhetoric than argument. My very first interaction with him was a bunch of one-liners that my opinion was wrong, without bothering to explain why. This seemed quite similar to what KLR is doing.
So I’d like to humbly suggest that, if Der Trihs does not count, offer up better examples of left leaning content free posts. You can do what you can to strip it of personally identifying information. But without examples of content free posts that were left unmoderated, I don’t think we can have a productive discussion.
I think there is an overwhelming opinion----including many of the left-----that Der Trihs stands alone for the venom, the hate speech, and over OVER THE TOP hyperbole.
The 2 of them may share an aversion to facts/cites, but that’s not [currently] against the rules. The objection to Der Trihs is that his behavior is so hateful that he does cross over to violating rules for jerkish behavior.
(I do not consider him a troll, as I think he passionately believes what he posts and is sincere)