Wasn’t December banned for plagiarism? Or am I thinking of someone else?
Wouldn’t have mattered, nobody knows what the exploding head one is from seeing it anyway, it’s too small and poorly done.
You could have picked a way worse example. You were easy on yourself.
Me too. And the best thing is, the first two could start right now. These are totally moddable today.
Well, one guy could ask for it to be done, but last mention of getting rid of the linking said Discourse came with it as is. In other words, it’s a feature not a bug. If you also mean codinghorror, you can forget that, his profile says account removed and he hasn’t posted since May.
This whole post is a great read, especially coming from someone that is a mod. (Not that your post here is a mod post) Thanks!
This is a problem with mod rules that needs to change. The troll rules seem to apply only to those who are so over the top everyone knows they are trolling, usually new posters, or people who actually admit they are trolling. That has to change, let the mods use some judgement calls instead of waiting years for a troll to be sanctioned.
Thing is, in this situation, you are part of the problem. You don’t have to right everything you see wrong on the internet. This situation just drives everyone else out of the thread while three or four posters lecture back at each other, saying the same thing over and over again. You know neither side is going to change their minds. If you really feel you need to do this after a couple of posts, why not just say “Hey, let’s take this point to another thread so we don’t derail this thread for everyone else?”
The lack of civility on the Boards is breathtakingly bad. It’s never been as good as I’d have liked but it’s getting distinctly worse.
I’ve not been here as long as some (only ca. 2008 or so), but that has not been my experience. Diogenes the Cynic, Scylla, Masta Wang-ka, Clothahump, and probably many others I can’t remember could be downright vicious. The pit in particular used to be much worse, and from what I can tell lower levels of snark are tolerated now in GQ and GD.
If the SDMB was doing well in membership we wouldn’t be having these conversations, anyway, and the hostility is one of the reasons it’s not doing well
Do you have any actual reason to believe this, or is it simply your opinion?
If they’re a troll, report them and the mods will deal with it.
Yeah…no. Moderators on the board don’t moderate trolling unless a poster full-on admits to trolling in those words, and sometimes not even then.
Thing is, in this situation, you are part of the problem. You don’t have to right everything you see wrong on the internet. This situation just drives everyone else out of the thread while three or four posters lecture back at each other, saying the same thing over and over again. You know neither side is going to change their minds. If you really feel you need to do this after a couple of posts, why not just say “Hey, let’s take this point to another thread so we don’t derail this thread for everyone else?”
The thing is, what you’re describing here is exactly what the pit is best at. The pit gives the conversation another place to happen, free of a disruptive poster. There are certain topics on the board that basically cannot be discussed in other forums because one poster dominates the thread, usually in a way that shows that they are not really interested in an actual conversation, and are not open to being convinced. Moderators are very, very slow to curb this behavior, possibly because they’re not reading the threads in question, possibly because they want to appear neutral. So make a Pit thread, tell that poster what an ass they’re being, and fairly often an interesting discussion happens between other posters in the thread when the person derailing the original thread either doesn’t show up, or fucks off.
And this doesn’t just affect the poster being Pitted. It affects everyone who has to look at it. It poisons the well. It’s disruptive. It’s not working.
I think the creative Pit thread titles can be great fun, but given how Discourse works, if we want to link to other threads in the Pit, we should stick with neutral titles for specific posters. e. g. Ultra Vires, a Word Please. The way it’s currently set up basically allows people to lob personal insults in any other forum on the board.
If there is no way to prevent the link from appearing in Discourse, I would not be opposed to a rule that links in the Pit must be broken if they are insulting to a poster. I agree that it is often inappropriate and distracting in other fora.
To me, this is going the long way around. People on this board need to learn how to ignore trolls. Doing post after post after post with cites is exactly what they want from you. They just have you doing their dance and they care not even a little bit what kind of cites you throw at them. The more you post, the happier they are. If they can’t get an audience here, they’ll move on.
There’s two problems with that. First, it allows the troll to get the last word, and allows them to just continually respond until they eventually get a rise out of someone. Second, you will never manage to convince everyone on the board to ignore the troll, and if even one person responds the thread can be ruined. The Pit might not be an elegant solution, but it works well enough IMO.
I know it won’t work, because people are people. But, I have never seen a single place on the internet in all my life that ignored trolls, have you? People always engage with them. It’s like having an addiction. Many posters here manage to get along fine without interacting with trolls.
Why do you even care about that? It’s not like someone is keeping score, and you win a prize at the end.
On a different forum I frequent, the pit is rarely used. And almost never against another member. This is because speech is not so closely policed. We are all adults, and are expected to act as such. If you are taking the thread off topic, you will be directed to either start another topic to discuss further, or take it to the pit. For the trolls, they are locked in the box. Usually permanently, though I have seen reprieves.
All in all the system works pretty well, it’s a nice community.
It is the purpose of a message board to foster a (more or less) civil exchange/debate of views, fact-based and otherwise, on a range of topics.
Some people are more prone to post stupid and/or offensive views than others.
Personal insults and taunts get in the way of civil debate.
As such, it makes sense to have a Pit to provide a place for calling out stupid/offensive posts and posters in a way that does not trigger mod sanctions. If there is no place on the SDMB for such “calling out” posts, they will migrate to another site. That does not seem like a good strategy for either increasing the number of visitors to the site or retaining those already here.
Having civil discussion in the Pit makes no sense. Civil discussion tends to get drowned out in a sea of insults/taunts/etc. Given the existence of the rest of the board, there is no reason why civil discussion should be allowed in the Pit (and all current Pit threads could easily find a home in a different forum… except those attacking other posters and posts). Overall, the goal is getting more site discussion subject to the clearer rules governing non-Pit threads while still providing an outlet for those interested in uncivil attacks on other posters and posts.
Honestly? Yes, sometimes that’s the best course of action. If a significant number of the other participants apparently don’t want you there, and the remaining people aren’t telling them to knock the attitude off, that’s not going to change so you’re either going to have to suck it up and ignore it, or save yourself the grief and stress and give up and find something else to do.
We have plenty of civil discussions in the Pit. We have love, joy and camaraderie in the Pit. We have hilarity in the Pit.
That’s why I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and all that. There are parts of the Pit that are brilliant. We just have to figure out how to reduce the toxicity.
In non-Pit threads, strong suggestions in the form of mod notes and warnings is the system currently in place. Have they worked? Most posters who have been banned received multiple warnings about changing their behavior, be it a lack of civility or some other offense, and it ultimately did not prevent them from engaging in the same behavior. Some people - especially those lacking emotional maturity - are incorrigible. Repeated offenses will eventually do them in, though it can take some time.
Putting more discussion under non-Pit thread rules seems likely to weed out the incorrigibles more efficiently.
I see no problem with expressing “love, joy and camaraderie” and hilarity in the Pit. My only issue is with civil discussions which do not mix well with the toxic nature of the Pit.
We have (almost) entirely civil discussions outside of the Pit. That is the point: why do we need them in the Pit? It’s redundant and pointless. Worse, it glamorizes the Pit, making it seem less toxic than it really is.
I don’t particularly care - I’m mostly a lurker, so I generally don’t get in any words at all. But there are people who do, and I think it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to change all of their minds, so I don’t think your solution is practical. As you said, people are people.
In Pit A you can swear all you want, call out companies and public figures and even political parties in wildly general terms, produce contentless rants, and so on – but not against another poster, whether by name or thinly veiled.
In Pit B, you can attack another poster: you can call them a liar or a troll or a sealion or a sock or a serial hijacker or a bully or a racist etc. or willfully ignorant. But you can’t just rant at them, call them contentless names, or attack them without providing evidence for your attack. Sequences that amount just to people shouting at each other ‘no, you’re the jackass koolaid drinker!’ will be shut down.
It actually is possible to have a civil discussion about whether, for instance, somebody’s serially hijacking threads; or repeating the same false information over and over; or repeatedly asking for information they’ve been provided multiple times. It ain’t easy, but it’s possible. And it might even be useful.
And, as has been said, it lets the moderators throw some discussions out of other forums into the Pit, without having to shut them down entirely. (Though the extra work that might be involved in moderating Pit B might make them unhappy – )