Proposed language restrictions in the Pit

[emmaliminal]

Scissorjack, I tend to agree with you, but that brings up a question I have (that will probably get lost here): What does ***Ed ***see as the primary value proposition of the SDMB? Is it more or less advertising for the Chicago Reader, or for Creative Loafing, or for Uncle Cecil’s books? Ed’s explained that direct ad revenues here aren’t amounting to much. He’s also explained several times that it’s not that his overlords necessarily object to the “incivility” he’s talking about (though he’s not keen on them noticing it), but that *he himself *objects to it. Is he planning to spend a lot more time here than he used to, and so wants it to become his very own custom-made favorite pub?

Ed Zotti, can you tell us: what is your vision of the purpose of this place?

[John_DiFool]

Is the implication then that all the scatological/sexual curse words are going to drive away lurkers in droves? Is there any evidence that that has happened because of foul language in the Pit?

[SoulFrost]

@John_DiFool

Is the implication then that all the scatological/sexual curse words are going to drive away lurkers in droves? Is there any evidence that that has happened because of foul language in the Pit?

My understanding of Ed’s reasoning is that the Pit could, maybe, someday, cause them to sell fewer newspaper subscriptions than they otherwise might have.

Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t.

I would like to point out, though, that vBulletin allows individual forums to be hidden from anyone not in possession of a valid Username and Password. Such as most potential newspaper-buyers are likely to be.

I know that I don’t register at a board until I’ve looked it over at least once.

[Loach]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Why?

That is my basic question. Ed somewhat answered it with “because I don’t like it.” Ed I do appreciate that you opened this up for discussion. I hope you realize most of the frustration has been over the feeling that no one was listening to valid concerns. I think you are wrong. Unless you do away with the Pit or forbid every “bad” word there will be no change in the civility. It is very arbitrary to assign sexual comments as worse than any others. I just don’t understand it.

@Ed_Zotti

We’re trying to establish a (very) basic level of civility. If you go into a bar and sit next to a guy and he says, “[Some famous person] can go fuck himself,” you might think he’s obnoxious but so what. If he looks at you and says, “Go fuck yourself,” them’s fightin’ words. Simple as that.

That is a bad analogy. It is more like someone calls you up and invites you down to the bar so they can say “fuck you” and start a fight. You have the option to go or not. I like the fact that the rest of the board has a high level of civility that the mods enforce. I don’t see the need in the Pit. Banning some words in the Pit is only going to piss off some people, confuse others and do nothing to raise the tone. In all of the discussion about this you have failed to communicate why you think this is needed or what benefit will come from your actions.

[Ed_Zotti]

@Scissorjack

The pub is its customers, Ed and they are leaving, they are leaving in droves because your new rules are driving them away. You can tell yourself that it’s just a few hothead malcontents who were never satisfied anyway, but you know it isn’t so. You are losing your best customers, the people who have made this pub what it is for the last ten years: they’re leaving, and they’re taking others with them. Hell, a couple of the new joints they’ve started going to have had more interest in a week than some of your improvements have had in six months. Does that not give you pause to wonder just what you’re doing to this place, what has happened under your new management?

No. I’ve been managing the site since we opened on AOL in the mid-90s. We’ve had people telling us the place was going to the dogs more or less continuously ever since. We’ve never seen any noticeable fluctuation in traffic as a result of a board controversy, and we’re not seeing one now. Board usage is virtually unchanged over the past month. Traffic yesterday was slightly higher than the previous Monday.

[Ed_Zotti]

@Loach

That is a bad analogy. It is more like someone calls you up and invites you down to the bar so they can say “fuck you” and start a fight. You have the option to go or not. I like the fact that the rest of the board has a high level of civility that the mods enforce. I don’t see the need in the Pit. Banning some words in the Pit is only going to piss off some people, confuse others and do nothing to raise the tone. In all of the discussion about this you have failed to communicate why you think this is needed or what benefit will come from your actions.

You’re entitled to your opinion. If you think this was a completely arbitrary and insane decision on my part that will destroy the board, you’re entitled to that opinion as well. All I can I tell you is that I’ve heard this argument many times before. Yet traffic now is at a record high.

[emmaliminal]

@Ed_Zotti

If you think this was a completely arbitrary and insane decision on my part that will destroy the board, you’re entitled to that opinion as well. … Yet traffic now is at a record high.

I don’t think it was an insane decision, and I definitely don’t think it will “destroy” the board, but I’d still like to know more about why you made it. What the decision does or (more likely, I agree) does not do to traffic has almost nothing to do with what I’m curious about. I want to know what you see as the place of the SMDB in the world, what you think it’s for. Please?

[WhyNot]

**Loach **is right, it isn’t like sitting down at the bar at all. It’s like having *been *in the bar, having things get a little heated within the bounds of bar-civilised discourse, and then being invited “outside”. Your choice whether you do go “outside” or not, but you know that “outside” involves a high probability of getting a fist in your face if you do.

I’ll be clear: I’ve been against this from the start, but only for all the reasons already articulated, so I haven’t put my 2 cents in, cause they’ve already been cashed in. It’s absolutely not that I want to be abusive, because I don’t. (I was probably one of the MPSIMSers who came in and, in some posters’ estimations, “kitty-fied” the Pit; I’ve always argued that just because you can be abusive doesn’t mean you have to be abusive.)

No, my objection comes from the dictatorial tone, the vague wording and inconsistent “clarifications”, the threat of and actual carried out censorship - *especially *without an edit box (that is, a mod removing a word or words from a poster’s post without clear indication in the edited post that this had been done), and, most of all, the feeling of utter powerlessness. I don’t feel like this is a place in which I have any input or ability to shape things, because, well…I’ve been told I haven’t. I’ve been told that if I disagree, I should just leave.

Well, I don’t want to leave. But I don’t really want to stay under those circumstances, either. This place just feels oppressive to me, now.

I’ll still be around, for a little while, to see how things shake down. In the meantime, I’ll keep posting to threads I find interesting, of course. And I hope those are more numerous than they’ve been the last week or so. If not, I guess I’ll know I’ve outgrown the Dope as it’s become. That doesn’t make me angry, it makes me sad. Love you guys.

[Astroboy14]

@Scissorjack

It’s like a favourite pub with a great crowd of regulars, a good jukebox, a pool table and a pinball machine, where you can come to hang out, relax, talk, sometimes heatedly, about everything and nothing, or just sit and listen. The chairs are worn and patched, the staff are occasionally a little flustered, sometimes the conversations get a bit too heated, but that’s part of the charm. That’s what makes it worth coming back to. It’s real, and it’s unique.

You wanna go where everybody knooooows your name…

Obviously, we’re doomed.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!:eek:

[SkipMagic]

@WhyNot

[…] the threat of and actual carried out censorship - *especially *without an edit box (that is, a mod removing a word or words from a poster’s post without clear indication in the edited post that this had been done),

That’s an incorrect assessment. First, there was a note at the bottom of each post explaining I had removed an advertising link. Second, the lack of a placeholder for the deleted link was explained in this post, and third, I re-edited the post to fix the oversight on my part.

Also, if you want to see what was removed, feel free to look at the images linked to in this post.

[Kal]

@Ed Zotti

Yet traffic now is at a record high.

Traffic is just one factor when talking about the success of a message board.

For instance, going P2P caused the number of active members to drop in half (IIRC) and there were a couple of board dramas that most certainly saw members choose not to renew*. So board activity would have dropped, as would the number of active members, but if those people carried on reading the board then the traffic wouldn’t really have changed much.
*As an aside; When P2P started, you did announce the number of active members and also announced how many had subscribed. After the various dramas, people asking for the number of active members were told that the Reader (or CL) did not have to release that information. That did kinda make it look as though the numbers were down, but you didn’t want to tell anyone.

Actually, I’ll ask now: You’ve mentioned traffic (I think you gave numbers in another thread); how many active posters are there?

[WhyNot]

@SkipMagic

That’s an incorrect assessment. First, there was a note at the bottom of each post explaining I had removed an advertising link. Second, the lack of a placeholder for the deleted link was explained in this post, and third, I re-edited the post to fix the oversight on my part.

Also, if you want to see what was removed, feel free to look at the images linked to in this post.

I’m glad to hear it was an oversight on your part and it’s been corrected. That does make me feel better about you, in particular, as I’ve always thought you were a decent moderator.

What first triggered my “uh-oh” feeling wasn’t your action, by the way (you were totally being baited, of course, I understand your frustration there) but Ed’s saying that were Cervaise’s telemarketer rant posted today, he’d edit out the bits that he found objectionable. If it came to that, I’d rather posts be deleted or threads be cornfielded than words be directly censored. [Insert Godwin here]

[Ed_Zotti]

@emmaliminal

I don’t think it was an insane decision, and I definitely don’t think it will “destroy” the board, but I’d still like to know more about why you made it. What the decision does or (more likely, I agree) does not do to traffic has almost nothing to do with what I’m curious about. I want to know what you see as the place of the SMDB in the world, what you think it’s for. Please?

Why, to advance the struggle against ignorance, of course. Do you think the changes we’ve made are somehow at odds with that goal?

[Ed_Zotti]

@WhyNot

What first triggered my “uh-oh” feeling wasn’t your action, by the way (you were totally being baited, of course, I understand your frustration there) but Ed’s saying that were Cervaise’s telemarketer rant posted today, he’d edit out the bits that he found objectionable. If it came to that, I’d rather posts be deleted or threads be cornfielded than words be directly censored. [Insert Godwin here]

I entirely agree - this was something I thought better of later. Nobody really wants to get into editing posts. I think the approach we’ve got now, where we specify a handful of off-limits expressions, will do the trick.

[Loach]

@Ed_Zotti

You’re entitled to your opinion. If you think this was a completely arbitrary and insane decision on my part that will destroy the board, you’re entitled to that opinion as well. All I can I tell you is that I’ve heard this argument many times before. Yet traffic now is at a record high.

I don’t use these much but . I didn’t say insane. I didn’t say the board would be destroyed. Arbitrary does not equal insane. Saying that is just a way of dodging the actual questions. The important part was this:*In all of the discussion about this you have failed to communicate why you think this is needed or what benefit will come from your actions. * To make it easier I will break out the questions as I see them. I don’t guarantee I’ll like the answer but I won’t hammer you as long as you give an honest attempt at them. No less than I would expect from anyone else around here.

What do you think will be the benefit?

Why do you think picking what you consider sexually based words and phrases to ban will raise the tone of the board instead of other profanities?

What is your motivation? (hint just saying “because I don’t like it” means you haven’t thought too deeply about it)

Is board usage your only measure of telling if your actions are correct or do you take into consideration the opinions of your customers at all?

Are we just pissing in the wind?

I’m sure that there are other unanswered questions but this covers a lot of it. And for the record, I don’t think the board is doomed because of this. I just think this is a bad decision and it will make the board worse but not kill it. I will continue to post here at least for the next couple of months. After that I can’t say.

[Loach]

@Ed_Zotti

Why, to advance the struggle against ignorance, of course. Do you think the changes we’ve made are somehow at odds with that goal?

If that were the only reason for this place you should close everything except GQ and some of GD. That might be the logo but that is not the only thing this place is.

[Seeker_of_Truth_and_Beauty]

@Ed_Zotti

No. I’ve been managing the site since we opened on AOL in the mid-90s. We’ve had people telling us the place was going to the dogs more or less continuously ever since. We’ve never seen any noticeable fluctuation in traffic as a result of a board controversy, and we’re not seeing one now. Board usage is virtually unchanged over the past month. Traffic yesterday was slightly higher than the previous Monday.

Since you’ve been managing the site since the mid-90s, why, over ten years later, have you suddenly decided you can’t live with the culture as it’s been for so long?

In other words, what prompted this? Something did. You couldn’t’ve just woken up one morning and realized that you suddenly disliked sexual words.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Loach

If that were the only reason for this place you should close everything except GQ and some of GD. That might be the logo but that is not the only thing this place is.

Why? There are plenty of quite enlightening discussions in IMHO, the Pit, and even MPSIMS.

[SoulFrost]

@Seeker_of_Truth_and_Beauty

Since you’ve been managing the site since the mid-90s, why, over ten years later, have you suddenly decided you can’t live with the culture as it’s been for so long?

In other words, what prompted this? Something did. You couldn’t’ve just woken up one morning and realized that you suddenly disliked sexual words.

Ed, did you find Jay-Sus?

[Ed_Zotti]

@Kal

Traffic is just one factor when talking about the success of a message board.

For instance, going P2P caused the number of active members to drop in half (IIRC) and there were a couple of board dramas that most certainly saw members choose not to renew*. So board activity would have dropped, as would the number of active members, but if those people carried on reading the board then the traffic wouldn’t really have changed much.

I don’t mean to suggest board traffic always goes up. It fluctuates in response to technical problems, pricing changes, and - interestingly - page design changes, about which more below. Prior to P2P, traffic was increasing in the double digit range every year; after that it flattened out. We demonstrated that you could make steady money on subscriptions without having the board go into a death spiral - that was worth knowing. But P2P was clearly never going to be a big revenue generator, and we weren’t getting the new blood any message board needs, so we eventually went back to the free model.

Did board dramas have an impact on the P2P renewal rate? Hard to say, and it’s a moot point now in any case. My guess is that the major drag on renewals and traffic was lousy board performance. We made a lot of technical improvements over the past year or so (in some cases we’re just counting better), and over the past 15 months or so most of our numbers have shot up. My point is, the things that make a big impact have to do with money and technology, not whether X number of posters are pissed off this week.

*As an aside; When P2P started, you did announce the number of active members and also announced how many had subscribed. After the various dramas, people asking for the number of active members were told that the Reader (or CL) did not have to release that information. That did kinda make it look as though the numbers were down, but you didn’t want to tell anyone.

I don’t recall saying this; someone else may have. In any case, as I say, the numbers flattened; they didn’t really drop.

Actually, I’ll ask now: You’ve mentioned traffic (I think you gave numbers in another thread); how many active posters are there?

We currently have 82,000 registered members, but you’re probably more interested in how many have posted in the past 30 days or something like that. I don’t know of an easy way to generate statistics like that; perhaps Jerry does. I do know that in Feb 2009 we got 2,400-3,000 posts per day, with no noticeable trend during the month; in Feb 2008 we got 2,100-2,700 per day. So posting activity has increased something like 11% over the past year.

Here’s something that’s interesting, and which we’ll definitely have to fix: New SDMB registrations dropped sharply, starting in Oct 2008. From Dec 2006 to Sept 2008, monthly registrations were in the 700-1100 range; since then they’ve been in the 300-400 range. In retrospect this was clearly due to the redesign of the TSD home page introduced in Sept. The old design had a prominent link saying, “Subscribe to the Straight Dope Message Board”; the new design does not. I’m taking steps to get that fixed now.