Revisiting the BBQ Pit- Boon or Bane?

About This Message Board
41

Except each time that was allowed here that I know of, the poster simply got banned again because they never learn anything.

Or, the Pit is a place where we let trolls and (I don’t care about morons) run free, just like they do on the rest of the board, except for the language. I don’t remember anymore if trolling is allowed in the Pit, but it certainly isn’t moderated.

I’d like to know that too.

I hadn’t thought about this idea, but that may be doable. Seriously, if you can’t keep your anger in check for the two hours a day you read a message board, maybe a doctor visit is in order. It will never fly, because the trolls thrive in the Pit and there are too many of them.

Or, no omnibus Pit threads about posters at all. If it’s so bad they need to be pitted, take the time to write it out yourself. No adding other stuff to the original complaint.

I don’t understand why posters don’t use this option more. It’s such a simple solution yet posters seem afraid they will miss out on something if they ignore a poster.

Why would you want to hash out a point with someone you already think is arguing in bad faith, lying, and sealioning? Doing that just adds to the problem. No matter how clever or smart or well reasoned your argument is, they simply don’t care.

You can ignore any forum you want thru your profile>Preferences>Categories. That’s why I never see five forums. They won’t even appear on the front page.

Not just the well paid mods, what we need is more posters that flag posts, and mods that will react to them. In a recent thread in this forum, the mods said they only get 10 flags a day (week?) total for all mods, and part of them are for threads to be moved etc.

Yeah, that doesn’t really help you if you ignore the pit, but you still have “Fuck Oredigger77” on the bottom of every post you make.

42

IMHO the SDMB would not be the SDMB without the Pit, “saving” the SDMB by getting rid of the pit would be like installing a dictatorship to save democracy, the thing you “saved” is no longer there specifically due to your actions to save it.

43

My experience is that this doesn’t work. You either get mods who are reluctant to think people are trolls, or you get moderation where expressing anger would be forbidden.

This board tends for the former, as it doesn’t really want to silence people. Plus, what one person considers trolling, another person considers perfectly normal talking. That’s part of the troll thread, as it helps us iron that out among ourselves.

Then there are the posters who clearly piss everyone off, but don’t technically troll or break the rules. Those are almost never going to get moderated. You wind up with “you need to be nice to these people who are aggravating you!”

The idea that, if the mods don’t do anything, that’s just the way it is–that’s not a great way to keep people around. If a place is a frustrating place to post, people just leave.

It’s very possible that, despite it looking bad superficially, having a forum like the Pit is actually part of the reason we’re still around. It is interesting that I can’t think of another general discussion board with the level of depth this one has. Is it possible that our choice to have a place to let off steam actually helped keep people around who would have left?

Also, let’s not forget that more than half the Pit is not about this board. It’s a place to rant about anything, keeping that anger away from hijacking other threads.

The Pit isn’t the same place it was when I first got here 12 years ago, that’s for sure. It’s just not so focused on flaming out people. I do sometimes think people discussing the Pit think about it as it was years ago not how it is now.

I mean, posters who fly off the handle really far for minor things seem out of place now, when it used to be the norm. You don’t see the invective filled rants all that much. You see a lot more attacks based on repeated behavior, not so much the little explosive islands.

And, well, other than posters who we all pretty much agree bring down the board, I don’t really see many pileons. And, when they do happen, there are a lot more people saying “Hey, this has gone on too far.”

The Pit seems a lot more balanced than it used to be.

44

The mods have some obvious gaps in their “seeing of problems”, and always have. Relying exclusively on them without a parallel community outlet like the Pit would make for a shittier Board experience for me, for sure.

45

Banning them all was just right. Not a one of those hadn’t racked up multiple warnings. Shodan, for instance, was banned for repeat misogyny, on top of trolling (three separate warnings for that alone). It’s a bit rich to pretend he was just banned for the word “harpy”

46

Divorced from all of that, I do want to address something higher level.

To what level should we be trying to change the SDMB to appeal to more people and get more people in? The Pit is something that has been a part of the forum since nearly its inception. If we remove it or completely change it, are we still the SDMB?

I’m all for removing things that are genuinely wrong, like racism, sexism, etc. I’m all for improving discourse based on past experiences. But is this level of change something we’d want?

I can’t remember if I actually brought up the idea that a new owner/admin might jettison the Pit in an attempt to make us more popular. I know it was in something I was going to say, but I don’t know if it ever got posted. But, in that argument, I was clearly saying it as a negative thing. It was having some person who didn’t know our history come in and try to make us more marketable. It was a way to describe selling out.

We also had a huge fallout when we just had a banned word list and had to actually be address mods in ATMB with respect and not Pit them. Clearly a lot of people find the Pit to be a very important part of the board.

I think this general trend of “what can we do to be more popular” may need this sort of reminder. There is a problem with changing who you are too much, and one that isn’t really a “boon or bane” style argument, but an identity argument–a cultural argument.

I hope this makes sense. It’s not something I’m really that good at talking about.

Short version: at a higher level, we need to consider how much we’re willing to change who we are when talking about our fear of the board being shut down—which is where I assume all this recent introspection is coming from.

47

If anyone deserved a bannin’ it was Shodan. Never paid attention to him until after he was banned, but holy crap did that guy get a long leash. He openly admitted to trolling.

48

Or, you know, you’ll get a group of dedicated and obnoxious trolls who always know EXACTLY how far they can push their trolling without being warned, while posters who get fed up with it eat warnings (the “I’m not touching you” school of trolling). And these trolls will stick around doing their shtick for years and years with no consequences. And when they FINALLY misjudge the line and get slapped, they get defended ever after as martyred mis-banned heroes.

Case in point… Shodan was a troll. He was banned for using the word “harpy” only after months and years of pushing the boundaries far past a word like “harpy” and getting away with it.

That whole mess was bad enough. Without a pit to call out a Poster like Shodan, you’d have had even more people baited into getting warned than you did.

49

Does the Pit temper that kind of aggressive behavior? I would think some trolls seek out that kind of attention. You know that saying, “Don’t wrestle with pigs. You’ll both get dirty but the pig will enjoy it.” If Shodan can be a destructive force for years before he’s banned, I’m not sure the Pit is really a useful tool to deal with trolls.

50

I think the idea is not to restrain the troll but to allow the non-trolls to vent their ire without being Warned themselves.

51

Disclaimer: I didn’t read the whole thread.

I read the SDMB for years before I ever visited the Pit, let alone took up residence there like I have since the trumpy years.

No one has to go there if they don’t like it.

52

Anybody who doesn’t like the behavior displayed in the Pit, should be thankful it exists. People are always going to shit on each other; might as well let them do it somewhere you can avoid.

53

I think the Pit hurts more than it helps. I personally find the concept bizarre that you can slag a poster with every insult in the most vile language and then go back to the other fora and pretend to have a civil discussion or conversation. OTOH, some of our posters deserved every bit of that derision. We need an exploding head emoji^ to express my reaction to reading that people who made life miserable here for years, even decades, shouldn’t have been banned or should be allowed back. Did someone take a melon scooper to your memories?

I personally would prefer a system where people can call out liars and trolls without needing to take it “outside.” There is no “outside” when Pit titles appear in other fora, in any case. Nor is there a need to keep threads about outsiders in a separate location just because four-letter words are used. You can’t worry that a board is aging out and not want to offend kids’ sensibilities simultaneously. Slap a NSFW label on the threads if necessary. Double the number of mods to handle the load. More mods = more banning. And that’s a good thing.

^ Does anybody scroll through those 10000 unlabeled emojis to find the appropriate one?

54

Shodan IS a good example, because he never used to be a troll. In my opinion, his later trolling was a direct result of the hostility he continually got on this board. He finally did a ‘fuck you’ and suicided by mod. I think that’s what happened to December as well, and a couple of other long-time posters whose behaviour changed over time. The place just became intolerable to them, so they flamed out. Others like Bricker and Scylla just left, but for the same reason. There’s only so much toxicity most people will put up with for their entertainment.

And I think there are people on the board who drove them to it and were happy at a mission well accomplished when they were finally banned.

55

Have you been pitted? Being part of the gang piling on is a lot more fun than being the person at the bottom of the dogpile.

If we had the ability and money to write extension code for this place, I’d say that the only people you should be allowed to pit are people who actually post in the pit.

Ignoring the pit is not that easy if you are the one being pitted.

56

? They are labelled. Here’s what I got from typing ‘explo’ in the search box: :exploding_head:

57

It would be a damn sight easier if there was a way to get rid of the links at the bottom of posts. In Discourse there’s no difference between calling someone a troll in the pit or outside it.

58

Agreed.

59

Huh. I didn’t hold the cursor over them long enough.

Still too many, though.

60

Pit is fine as is. Point seems moot to me. Even if we all agreed 100% one way or another, it seems unlikely that any changes would be made. At least ‘in time’.