Correct.
I disagree. This thread has been hijacked so much that I’ve almost given up on reading it. That’s why we have different forums. I don’t go to the Pit because it’s desigend for free-wheeling critques. I come to P&E for discussion of the issues.
I don’t see what Noem’s hat has to do with the shootings in Minneapolis.
This thread should not turn into a general attack on Trump, Noem, Miller, ICE, musical criticism,and so on, which is what the hijacks have all been about.
Or, if people want a general thread on ICE in Minneapolis, why not start that, instead of saying we can’t have a thread dedicated to the shootings?
You’re right, thank you for the correction. I somehow got Jonathan and Colibri mixed up.
Why does your desire to have a free ranging discussion trump other posters’ desire to have a narrow one? You could easily make a general thread but your take seems to be that they should cede the thread to you and do what? Make a new focused thread until posters hijack that one as well?
I’m a big fan of the tight moderation around hijacks. It’s frustrating to see a notification of a bunch of new posts, and find it’s just a few posters carrying on their own conversation about something else.
But that said, I can’t figure where the lines are in the Minneapolis shooting thread. Discussion of protests about the shootings is OK, but a song about the shootings isn’t? Is discussion of speeches about the shootings OK? If there’s a protest in Portland over the shootings, is that on topic, or only if the protests are in Minneapolis?
I appreciate that there has to be a certain line at which something is too distantly connected to the shootings to be on topic, but I don’t think posters can tell where it is, and it sounds like it’s a bit of struggle for the mods. Maybe that thread has run its course and needs a new one that’s a little broader.
Perhaps compromise and automatically close a “Breaking News” thread after a few days. On any and every medium, what starts as news soon morphs into discussion, analysis, and responses. The responses are often newsworthy, to be sure, but without context unless surrounded by discussion and analysis. If those are not allowed in the original thread, force a new one where latitude is greater. That’s a job for mods, not posters. If a significant minority can’t understand the rules and/or find the rules too obtuse to obey, then the rules are much easier to change than the posters’ minds.
I don’t think every (or even most) breaking news threads should be closed after a few days. The one in question is different than most in that the event has far-reaching impacts that are difficult to separate from the shootings themselves.
Hard agree. I hate when interesting threads are IMO ruined by hikacks.
Because a few people can’t be bothered to follow the format? No thanks.
Opening a new thread is easy. You can even do it in the form of a response to an existing thread, as What_Exit has said so often he’s canned the text. If you want a slightly broader thread that’s still in P&E, why not create one, with an OP that supports the breadth you think appropriate for the discussion you want to have. I’m pretty sure other posters will join you there.
I think this is a fair criticism. But the key word here to me is “discussion”. Just posting an AI-generated protest song with the words, “protest song,” adds nothing to the knowledge base about the shootings. It expresses no original thought about the events. It invites no discussion beyond, “cool song,” and “here’s another song!” and “is that AI-generated?” In a thread already fraught with hijacks, it was a poor choice.
The OP of this thread put far more effort into making this thread than they did in deciding if their post in the subject thread was appropriate, given all the mod notes to stay on topic. Had we not already issued so many admonishments, it would have probably been just a mod note in response to their post, and maybe not even that. But the subject thread has gotten stupid for the hijacks. Nothing helped. No frequency of mod notes or split threads made any difference. So… warnings. Mods are sick of being ignored in the thread.
To all, please note, we have dozens and dozens of threads in P&E/GD where there is little moderator interaction. That’s because most threads are more general and welcoming of far-ranging posts and views. We’re fine with that. But when a thread is started about a specific event, and there is no indication that discussion is invited around anything other than the specific event, then pay attention to what you post and to any mod notes already in the thread. Make sure your post is directly on the subject at hand and offers information and/or reasoned opinion about what you’re saying. Accompanied by cites preferred.
If there is no other thread that accommodates what you want to say, you know who can make a new thread? Anyone. As noted above by @puzzlegal.
So now sleep and caffeine and IRL needs taken care of. This is going to be a bit long, so you can skip to the “Start reading here” specifics if you like.
I’m speaking for myself as a poster first, since I’ve been a mod for less than a year. And unlike almost all of you, the current rules by Jonathan_Chance have been in force for the entire time I’ve been posting.
When I first started posting, there was still a good bit of overlap between enforcing the newer rules in P&E and the older style discussions, which was probably a lot more loose until the crop of then-Journeymods came in to provide more moderation. As I said (along with @hajario, @Northern_Piper , and @Cervaise explicitly) I greatly appreciated the tight moderation - makes it much easier to get quality links, sources, and new information quickly, along with a good bit of fact checking and enlightened speculation. I don’t mind (again, poster) a bit of local color, but I appreciate it not taking over its thread (see my posts in the off-topic ATMB thread).
But P&E threads attract a lot of passion, pro and con, and remained prone to hijacking, side conversations, excessive joking on a theme, and not-so-thinly-veiled personal attacks. So a common tactic was to see notes, more notes, maybe a warning, and finally threads would get moved to the Pit if it got taken over by rants.
And posters complained strongly about this! Fairly, for OP’s who saw their conversations derailed (sometimes deliberately!) and closed because of bad faith, or posters who posted in good faith during a conversation getting raked over once it was in the Pit. Not a great solution. So no more of that without the OP’s permission. Fair.
The next “fix” leaned heavily into the ease for Discourse to “spin off as a related topic” - it’s just a few clicks more than writing your off-topic post would be, or taking time to look for a fit in a different forum. I’ve suggested this a lot, as have all the other P&E mods. A few have done this (though rarely without a mod prompting), but largely? Crickets.
Next, we get moderators putting in the work to manually split threads off as the hijacks get out of control. Spinning off new threads along what seem to be reasonable lines to keep the content available to all. Or if the hijack was small enough, hiding the individual posts and instructing others to not reply. Result? Some minor success, though lots of other complaints (at least two for the ICE thread!) about it happening.
After complaints about splitting threads, shutting down threads, or hiding posts, a number of ATMB threads were opened saying just moderate those responsible for all the hijacks and let the rest of the thread continue.
Which brings us to today, and how I’m responding as a mod.
Start reading here if you didn’t want the perspective, and speaking as a Mod
Now we’ve stopped noting people for an ongoing issue, and warned them for the behavior we said would lead to warnings. Direct, and holding the individuals responsible. For @Peter_Morris’s direct question to me upthread - if you wanted to complain about @Aspenglow’s moderation of @MikeF you could have opened up a thread here at that time. Instead, you decided to just keep posting on the tangent because you felt your reasoning was enough (as stated upthread here).
[aside, you only protested the words “Protest Song” and a video clip, this is not exactly a high quality post for P&E, and required posters and mods to watch it to review for appropriateness]
What you should have noticed is that we are finally at the stage of issuing Warnings because the problem kept re-occurring. As well as the cites of the many “off-topic” notes, and how even MikeF mentioned it was probably better for CS.
I think I more-or-less completely responded to @smapti in the last post, though they can reach out to me here or in a PM if they have other questions.
So now we’re at a point where the moderation staff has tried ever trick under the sun to ask nicely, to offer easy ways to do things (Discourse tools), split things off for you (with protests), hide posts that are hijacks and encourage more, and finally warn those who are directly offending and we’re told it’s still not enough by some? So we should make new rules or loosen the rules entirely, at the cost to those who are following them, or are writing their OPs with the hope and expectation that they are listened too?
Sure, we’re a small community, more like an extended family, and everyone has some shared perspectives and unique ones as well, but because of that, I think people are becoming a bit too relaxed. It’s NOT hard to try any of the options we’re suggested above, or to create more appropriate posts. It would be incredibly hard (I’d say nearly impossible) to create a new set of rules that lets everyone get what they want out of every sort of discussion, so that’s why we have so much moderator discretion and don’t punish or Warn arbitrarily.
The most common compliment I see about moderation on this board is that it does keep discussions at a much higher level than the random places of the internet. And that we rarely arbitrarily hide, delete or lock posts and posters. The sheer number of mod notes in this thread is proof of our efforts to keep things moving, clear, and without excessive consequences. And now, yes, we’re taking the step only after this great length to go to the next step of Warning people.
The complaints that the thread was being hijacked time after time all over the place seems to contradict the idea that this was just “a few”. I think a reasonable principle can be applied here: if rules are constantly being broken by well-intentioned reasonable posters, maybe it’s the rules that need changing.
I get it. I’ve sometimes opened threads that had a lot of recent activity, interested in what was new, only to find that it was a bunch of back-and-forth on something irrelevant to the topic. That happens most often in the Pit but it can happen anywhere.
But there’s another side to this coin. I’ve sometimes opened a thread in order to post what I thought was an interesting and relevant piece of information, only to find a stern moderator note against any further hijacks. So I had to consider whether – with this heightened sensitivity – my post would be regarded as properly on topic or not, and what I sometimes eventually say to myself is, to hell with it, and I don’t post at all, even if it seemed pretty much directly relevant and informative.
It is, for sure. But the result can be a proliferation of threads on the same general topic that make it difficult to remember where you saw or where you responded to a particular comment, because they’re all so much the same.
Despite my complaints, I appreciate the great efforts being made for reasonable accommodation and I understand that there’s no solution that will satisfy everyone. I’m just expressing my perspective on the virtues of slightly looser moderation, though obviously many disagree.
FWIW, I think this was the right place to draw the line too. But it is a line, and somewhat arbitrary. Mods can’t be expected to explain where every line lies, so it gets tough for posters to figure it out on their own.
The question arose for me yesterday when I was considering posting in that thread about a protest in Portland Saturday evening. The protest was against the killings in Minneapolis (so on-topic), but also against ICE in general (off topic?). Despite a peaceful protest, ICE deployed teargas against a crowd of families and children (government response to the protest is…on topic? off topic?). The Portland mayor released a statement calling for ICE to leave Portland and for ICE agents to resign (probably too far from the topic?).
By the time I got to the Portland mayor’s response, I figured it was too many steps away from the original topic, but I don’t know which one was the step too far. I’m guessing the mods would have to think about it and have a discussion to come to agreement on it. I considered a new thread, but there’s not a lot to say about it beyond the context of the original shootings. So I bailed completely – probably the right decision, but it’s not conducive to discussion when people don’t know what they can post.
A lot of the off-topic posts in that thread have been due to carelessness by posters, but not all. The thread has been uniquely challenging for me, and I assume others, to know where the lines will be drawn. I thought I had a handle on it – only discuss the shootings, the victims, the perpetrators and consequences – but the guidance today that protests of the shootings are acceptable has thrown me off again. So when you say…
It is, and I really appreciate all you mods for this. But for this thread in particular, I think the number of mod notes is also proof that it’s hard for well-intentioned posters to know what’s going to be allowed.
Emphasis mine in the post below. My point, exactly.
I saw your response after posting mine and briefly considered editing to add “or what wolfpup said.”
In the Minneapolis thread post: Protest in Portland Saturday evening against the killings in Minneapolis (Details and discussion in {new thread}).
I do appreciate you politely expressing your preferences, and fully acknowledge that there are many that share it. But there are many that prefer the tighter focus. And it’s largely us moderators that try to provide the balance between those desires.
But in all seriousness, I, you or anyone in this thread could create a new general purpose discussion thread even in P&E with some clear guidelines. One of the threads I linked too for a split off came about when I realized I myself had participated in a tangent, so I took the time to create a new thread on the tangent and direct other posters to it.
Sure, writing a quality OP is a bit more work (ideally) than a casual reply, and yeah, there’s the worry that it’ll get nothing but crickets, but speaking only for myself, between the ATMB threads and moderating the Main ICE thread, I’ve spent HOURS on this.
@TroutMan, I do get it. In a prior ATMB thread on this subject, @SenorBeef asked me to clarify and try to set things out, as I was simultaneously doing so in the actual thread. But it’s in part the little bit pregnant thing. People were hijacking very early on (see my points about Noem’s hat), and expanding the topic. So we let it happen, trying to keep the evolving discussion continue, and when it was a bit more stable, we tried to set up at least general boundries.
Jonathan_Chance’s comments on Hijacks have been quoted a lot, but I really think posters would benefit from reading through the whole thing, but I think I’ll just quote a couple of small sections that tend to get forgotten in the heat of discussion and debate:
In our new world of Great Debates and Politics and Elections, posters are expected to encourage and enhance the ability to participate in discussions without distracting or discouraging others from reading and participating.
and
Keep threads specific and debatable. No wide omnibus threads. We want to see clear, specific topics and thread titles. Large omnibus threads are actively detrimental to the long-term success of the boards. A thread entitled, “Tax Policy” is too broad. One entitled, “Should a National Sales Tax be enacted” is better. Keep it clear and specific. This also requires participants in the thread to remain on specific topics as well.
We’ve generally been much more lax about the latter point, because of the repeated poster concerns about organically evolving conversations, but we could go back to being much more serious on it.
Seriously, if I had a time machine, I’d have gone back and set it up with a Breaking News thread on the shootings, a P&E thread for discussion of the political consequences, corrections and fallout of the events, and a Pit thread to express our feelings on things.
But the irony of this whole discussion, is that it seems to me that this is asking for a MORE formatted board, where the moderators (or a few “trusted” posters) are the ones in charge of setting up all the threads with either very strict or very loose rules, instead of our “trust the posters to run themselves and only step in as moderators when things get out of control”.
Sigh. Where to begin.
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You still have not answered or addressed the actual question, which I shall repeat:
How is a song that references the shootings off topic to a discussion about the shootings? -
I DIDN’T complain about the moderation of MikeF. In fact, I have already stated that I agree his post was off topic. I quoted the moderation in that case to demonstrate that I DIDN’T break it.
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I did not post “on a tangent”. The post addressed the subject of the thread.
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I did not require anyone to watch anything. I posted a link to a protest song, and labelled it “protest song”. People seeing it knew it was a protest song because of my label. Anyone seeing it is free to choose to watch it or not to watch it as they wish. Those not interested in hearing a protest song may just scroll past it without clicking.
I’ll leave out the derogatory “sigh” and repeat, for the last time my responses to your points.
- (and you should really be talking to @aspenglow but…) you’re saying the song references the points, but you didn’t (see 2. below) even bother to describe it. And a musical tribute to the events is very possibly of artistic merit, but it doesn’t further the discussion of the shootings themselves, the actual fallout from the events, and the political (P&E!) efforts to address them, while it DOES invite further follow ups on it (see Smapti’s posts). You obviously feel differently.
- If you had complained, here, not in thread, that you felt that was unfair and why, then that would have been a step in the right direction. Instead, Aspenglow gave the thread a note, and issued a warning, making it clear that we were very serious about what we consider off-topic notes. You instead felt that your understanding was the correct one, posted a very unclear post that was nearly a bare link, and then insist your interpretation is the only one that’s correct.
- And for the third time, we disagree.
- I didn’t say you broke a rule on it, but that it’s very heavily frowned on, which, was already the subject of an extended hijack in that same thread, moderated by @What_Exit. And your line:
Doesn’t actually defend against it being off topic - just that you posted it in a P&E thread, without effective commentary, which immediately prompted a new hijack!
Again, I certainly disagree strongly with you. But I don’t think I can be more clear on that other than what I’ve provided in several long posts.