I could change the Bills of Rights so that 98% stays exactly the same, and you’d feel like you were living in prison, too. Big shit.
Surely the Pit could be left as it is if all threads concerning admin/mod actions were restricted to ATMB. That seems the natural home for them anyway and there would be no confusion about rules there. Members could question rulings or complain about moderators without resorting to personal abuse. The Pit was never the right place for those threads; I’ve known very few boards that allow vitriolic attacks on their staff.
The fact that this is different about the SDMB is what I think has made people feel this is a real free community and not someone’s private little sandbox - even though it is. While we are always reminded that rights of free speech don’t legally exist here, trying to give a semblance of it is important to it’s character. That’s why I specifically asked if Ed has some other board in mind as an example to follow. Which of these more strictly modded boards has posters who think they are members of some new-world online Athens and often call it their “home on the internet”?
For as long as I’ve been here the mods have always joked about the jackboots and mod-pitting contests. It seems that behind the scenes they weren’t laughing so much.
Gimme a break. The bill of rights doesn’t allow you to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, and doesn’t allow you to defame or libel another person, and doesn’t allow you to sell porn in an elementary school. Do you feel that you are living in prison on account of these restrictions on the Bill of Rights?
There seem to me to be two positions that people can take at the moment, regarding possible changes to the Pit rules:
(1) Go ape-shit, rant, rave, and scream, spray spittle, scream and yell (engage in recreational outrage) because obviously ANY change is bad. Any change is always bad. No change is ever good. Nothing good ever comes of any change. Etc etc. Of course, when the actual changes (if any) are decided and revealed, your outcries may feel a bit stupid and misplaced, but that’s never stopped recreational outrage.
OR
(2) Wait and see what’s being proposed and then put together reasonable and rational arguments for or against.
Is it really so outrageous of me to suggest that you WAIT until something is decided and announced before jumping into battle mode?
Well, given some of Ed’s recent decisions… yeah, shields up.
(Interesting to me: When someone starts a thread about the end of the world because there are discussions going on about changes in board policy, we can count on certain posters to start ranting and raving and screaming in fear and worry. When someone starts a thread about the end of the world because the Mayan Calendar runs out of dates in 2012, these same posters laugh in derision. “O wad some Power the giftie gie us…”)
Depends on which reasons you look at, I suppose:
I quit. - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board
That’s because people who literally believe that the world will end when the Mayan Calendar runs out of dates are crazy. People who believe that changes in board policy will make the Straight Dope Message Board worse off than it was before are not crazy, and have some historical basis for feeling that way. Nobody literally believes that changes in board policy will bring about Gotterdammerung. (I’m pretty sure.)
Umm, how does that little metaphor, that isn’t really much of an explanation of anything, counter QED’s point? Or does the winky smiley mean you were just kidding?
This is a fine idea, and it’s really what my usual approach is, but I think a lot of posters are worried that this is not a workable approach on the SDMB, given that the board’s administration tends to have a “once I make a decision, the decision is made, dammit” attitude. I will be shocked if Ed comes out and says “here’s what we’re thinking…what do the customers think?” and allows the response to influence the policy.
The point to my post, of which you’re easily capable of grasping the subtlies on your worst day (assuming you have any interest in doing so), Dex, was that like the Bill of Rights, the Pit has been functioning with mere interpretations for some time, and running like a German clock the entire time–changing 2% of it is scary, not because 2% is all that much, but because changing the wrong 2% is potentially disastrous. If the change agent were benign (if, say, Barack Obama proposed taking an editing pencil to the Bill of Rights) I might be skeptical but I’d be optimistically skeptical, because he’s seemed eminently sane and thoughtful the entire time I’ve been aware of him. But if some whackjob like, oh, the ex-Governor of Illinois or Al Sharpton or Sarah Palin put him- or herself in line to change 2% of the Bill of Rights, I’d volunteer to serve as a human projectile if that’s what it took to stop any of them.
Your boss has not impressed many of us with his thoughtful understanding of the culture around here generally, and in the Pit his lack of history and comprehension has been particularly appalling. So (while I am NOT literally suggesting that I intend to be shot from a cannon in order to cause **Ed **to die, which moronic parody of a disclaimer you can expect to be reading, in various forms, for years to come as the result of his appallingly poor interpretation of Sapo’s recent FOAD post) Ed is much, much closer to being the B-Rod or the Rev. or Sister Sarah in my analogy than he is to being the current Prez, and he has no one to blame that perception on, other than his own self. Shifting the blame to imaginary posters who “Go ape-shit, rant, rave, and scream, spray spittle, scream and yell (engage in recreational outrage) because obviously ANY change is bad” is strawman nonsense, and unworthy of you.
I think it’s incredibly insulting to characterize anyone with a dissenting opinion at this stage among the first group you mention. It is entirely possible to be wary of changes without being as reactionary as you are making people out to be.
I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily at odds. I’m fairly certain that the rule changes coming down the pipe will make the Pit a place I don’t want to moderate. It remains to be seen whether they’ll make the Pit a place I (or others) won’t want to post at. Before I stepped down, nothing was finalized.
To continue with the legal analogies, one can easily imagine laws that would be very tricky for judges and juries to parse, but which wouldn’t affect the most people in their daily lives. One can also imagine laws that would upset most people in principle even they are exceedingly unlikely to ever apply to them in practice. I can’t say which way this is going to go, but I’d echo Dex’s suggestion to wait and see before getting too worked up.
OK, let’s continue, then. Adding 2% to the current Pit rules, that 2% being to codify “Piss Ed off and get banned,” which seems to me a likely oversimplification of what people are concerned about, is akin to codifying judges’ discretion to allow death sentences for infractions of any felony or misdemeanor, adding that this discretion is to be exercised only on occasions that the judge is really offended, and that the death sentences are not subject to any review whatsoever.
Even before the first judge passes such a sentence, which leave 98% of the Bill of Rights intact and which affects no one directly before the first exercise of the new law, the entire populace is left wondering “Did I just break the law and risk my life in filing my taxes/ crosssing the street/ jumping the turnstile?” A terrorized population, which would be the effect (if not the aim) of a “Don’t piss Ed off” proviso is highly undesirable.
And maybe people are protesting so vigorously in advance for fear that they won’t be willing to take even that risk after the new rules are announced.
Believe me, if I saw people saying, “I am wary of change,” I wouldn’t have bothered to post. What I see are some people getting all worked up about imagined nightmares, rather than just waiting to see what happens. I see prr worried that the new rule will be “Don’t piss Ed off.” I see references to any standards being “prison.” I see the jokes about “jack-boots” being taken seriously. I don’t see “wary.”
And, frankly, for those who think that setting any standards for behavior towards each other in the Pit will “destroy” the Pit? There are plenty of un-moderated boards out there, that would suit you better. Our goal is now, and has always been, to try to build an online community… and that requires some minimum of civility to each other. As I say, that’s usually not a problem: it’s just a small (but often very vocal) minority of situations that need to be toned down.
To answer one comment: We have, in fact, got plenty of opinions from the membership. I dunno how many threads there have been on these topics. We do NOT, however, assign greater weight to opinions that are spoken loudest or with the most vehemence… nor to posters who post their opinion over and over and over. We know what they think, and their opinion is not more heavily weighted for repetitiveness.
The most understandable fear I see is that the rules might be unclear or inconsistently enforced. We’ve been discussing this for months, and avoiding such pitfalls has been the major focus of our discussion. Remember that the original rule was just “Don’t be a jerk” rule. That has an admirable simplicity and clarity to it, but we’ve had to clarify and specify that over the years. This new standard will be another clarification. We’re not trying to stifle discussion, we’re not trying to halt flaming, we’re not trying to reign in opinions, we’re just trying to cut down on jerkish behavior… and we’re trying to define that more clearly.
At the moment, there’s very little concrete. There’s probably going to be a rule about harrassment – following a person around on the boards to dig at them. I don’t think that’s very controversial or worrisome. It will affect a very, very small number of situations, but it will give the moderators the ability to handle such situations with a clear reference to a specific standard, rather than “you’re being a jerk.”
I really don’t think there’s anything to be upset about. I think when the rules are finally put forth, there will be a small handful of people who will feel their freedom of speech impinged upon, and who will raise up a shit-storm. Many of these people would do the same if the new rule was that the sun comes up in the east. OK, I’m tired of posting here since I’m just repeating myself in different words.
prr, that’s what I was trying to get at with the “laws that would upset people in principle regardless of whether they’d actually be likely to apply to them.” I think those would make the Pit a place that’s unpleasant to post at, for the very reasons you cite. However, don’t take my quitting as a sign that such rule changes are imminent.
Dex, wait and see = too late. People are expressing their opinions now because of they feel there is an unwillingness to admit mistakes by management around here. If changes are put in place and they suck, we are stuck with them.
Why?
How would this be enforced? From the poster’s point of view that feels like they’re being followed, would they just need to point out several threads where the same poster has insulted them? Because I’m thinking that from the other poster’s point of view, they’d just claim that they weren’t harassing anyone–they just happen to be in the same threads with the same person and that they’re insulting them in every thread because they don’t like what they have to say in each one.
My Bolding above
I think there have been some actions lately that give good cause for posters to be worried. They have Otto, **Baldwin **and indirectly **Sapo **at least as reason to worry. If you are telling us not worry, that is good news, but you cannot dismiss the reason why there is worried as completely unjustified.
**Sapo **was only suspended in the end and the official reason was for being too much of a jerk. Well fine, that is of course the right of the admins and mods to make that judgment. I can even see the point. However, considering the actions that led to it were clear over-reactions by mods and admins to “butthurt” and “FOAD” I think it is obvious that we either have new requirements for dealing with some mods and admins which is a cause for some worry as we don’t even know what they are. On the surface it appears that it is fine for a mod/admin to engage in a loud argument and taunts but if it reaches and uncertain point, Bang! too far, warnings and suspensions.
Anyway, I am not sure if I made my point correctly, but my point is that the cause for concern appears to be legit. That and dopers enjoy bitching and hyperbole is often a method of bitching. 
Jim