JC can address that. I generally take the view that addressing specific issues is better than blanket approaches unless the thread is a total trainwreck. Collective punishment is not a great tool, though sometimes a brief hiatus can have a calming effect. I’m being vague on purpose.
One thing I want to mention is that we often get asked variants of, “why aren’t you doing X?” I wrote in a different thread, but it applies here:
This is typically my process.
Thanks. I’d appreciate it if JC would approach this. It may be that he was moderating under stress and didn’t really mean it; if that’s the case, it’d be good to get his clarification.
In the case of this thread, it’s full of a lot of really good information, and I’m checking it both to find the latest information, and to share what I’m learning. It’s also helpful to see some counter-arguments about the impeachment inquiry. It’s really far from a train-wreck, even if there are some people who are individually either going off the rails or trying to hijack the train.
Just raising my hand as another person who finds the thread very useful and informative, even if I have to wade through some . . . less useful stuff at times. It does not seem to me that the vast majority of the posting is problematic, so it seems overly (and strangely) harsh to me as well to threaten to close the thread and not allow a new one for days.
This is yet another example of a troubling trend I’ve noted. One poster will troll or sealion or otherwise disrupt a thread without providing any posts of value and the moderators do nothing, even though it has been reported. To the contrary, they do, unfortunately, moderate the comments of valuable posters understandably put on edge by the repeated rules violations. This gets the mods exactly the opposite result from what they profess to want.
It is not pure political outrage that a majority of posters can see for themselves that trolling, etc. is happening. It is obvious to all, especially those doing the trolling. They will get banned later, if not sooner, and when that happens everyone will look at the boards and wonder why they were allowed to continue their nonsense for so long. As we already do, all too often.
Seconded.
Bueno:
No bueno:
Please don’t kick me or others out of the thread because of a few bad apples, I’ve actually put some effort into research to build arguments that I plan on posting.
~Max
No, I absolutely meant it. I reserve the right to close threads and to declare a ‘no fly’ list for a day or so. Done it before and may do it again.
It’s not something I bring up lightly. It mostly comes when I receive multiple reports on a thread from both sides, look at things and realize the thread has broken down in such a way that neither side is listening to each other.
A problem we have, with such a small group of passionate posters, is that things tend to calcify. Just the presence of some posters in a thread increases the tendency of things going off the rails.
Let me clue you in here, the above paragraph is being read by people on both sides of the issues and both are thinking some variant of ‘That’s crazy, MY side is behaving fine. It’s the OTHER guy who’s being a dick.’
The proper response to sea-lioning is absolutely to ignore it. Don’t respond to the question that you feel is being asked in bad faith. All you are doing - when you’re compelled to engage with such - is provide validation if your debate opponent is genuinely in bad faith. You empower such people when you respond and you, yourself, derail the thread. The power, the agency, of doing so is yours and no one elses.
A few takeaways, then:
Thanks for the clue, but you’ll note that other people reported both sides, because they were annoyed at people on both sides misbehaving. Right? You did catch that?
Because what I’m looking for is not for you to pull the “TIME OUT FOR MY WHOLE CLASS” maneuver. I’m looking for mods to encourage moderation.
This is exactly the opposite of the problem. When you threaten to close the thread down because of the responses of other people, even when I’m not responding to the sea lions, the fate of the thread is removed from the control of responsible posters and placed–by you and your threat–in the hands of the irresponsible posters. The power, the agency, is theirs (and yours) and no one else’s.
Sure, you reserve the right to close it down. Nobody is doubting your moderator rights. I’m questioning not your rights but your wisdom in making the threat.
Please moderate with your finger outside the trigger guard.
It’s not about sides. If I’m trying to have a productive debate with at least one other person, it’s crazy to give some less numerous third-party the power to derail our discussion to the point of shutting it down and placing a moratorium on the topic. But it would appear to me that this is effectively what you are saying, one more issue in this thread and it’s closed and [nobody can] open another one for several days. You have empowered any one poster to ruin everyone’s fun by creating an issue. It’s entirely out of my hands. That’s your right as moderator, but it’s not fair.
It’s not like each “side” in the discussion is an organized hierarchy - as if there are sides in that thread. octopus can’t take away my internet privileges if I start shouting profanities at Left Hand of Dorkness (I would never do that, by the way). If you condition octopus’s participation in that thread based on my actions, that’s unfair to octopus. Substitute every individual participant for octopus, because it is actually unfair to every other participant if you shut down the thread based on my actions.
~Max
We certainly have our share of “armchair quarterbacks” who, ironically, would probably be horrible moderators themselves if given the job.
The fact is that the job of moderating can’t just involve a list of rules, it has to include subjective judgment based on many variables that can’t be included in hard wired rules. Many of these moderators have been doing this job for a long time and have seen many different kinds of posters and situations. I choose to trust in and go with their decisions because of that knowing that no process is perfect.
As the old saying goes, I enjoy fine wine, not a fine whine.
No, you know who’s empowering them? The mod who’s too lazy to do his damn job and actually admonish the people who are getting out of line, and instead threatens a blanket punishment for everyone, including the people who are following the rules and are just trying to have a civilized discussion.
…you seem to think that’s a feature. It isn’t, it’s a bug.
The ignore function is not supposed to be a enabler for trolls and jerks. According to the rules, they are to be warned and then banned if they keep it up. Nothing in the rules says that the rest of us have to put trolls on ignore and let them keep trolling. That’s contrary to every pronouncement the mods and admins have made for the 20-year life of the Board.
I’m stunned to read a mod saying this.
Agree. +1. Thumbs up. etc.
Agreed. And it’s especially egregious when it’s very likely that the entire purpose of the hijacks and the goading and the poor behaviour is to get everyone to stop talking about the topic.
So the moderation threat simply accomplishes what the rule-breaker is trying to do.
How do you think this is going to work in future when the poor behaviour has just been rewarded with exactly what the rule breaker wants?
Woooo hoooo! Open season on derailing threads that you don’t like!
That’s certainly a choice.
I wonder if it’d be helpful to examine a particular (in my mind, a particularly egregious) example of the sort of distorted argumentation that does not appear to be in good faith, and that can upend an otherwise reasonable discussion.
One poster, in an attempt to claim that the whistleblower’s report was partisan, provides this quote:
There’s no link and no attribution, so it’s not easy to figure out what the context is.
Well, I guess it’s easy if you Google the words, in which case you’ll find the full quote:
To my eyes at least, this quoting is fundamentally and deliberately dishonest. The phrase out of context has a meaning that’s almost diametrically opposite of the full sentence.
Yes, an argument like this can be subjected to criticism. But when a poster repeatedly engages in this sort of behavior, I’m not sure it’s fair to sanction the people who get frustrated with them more than you sanction the person engaging in the initial behavior.
If you think this behavior isn’t dishonest, sure, we should talk about that. But if you agree that it’s dishonest, I’m not clear why it should be allowed.
I saw this report and did not think it merited moderation. It did get reported by multiple people and I read through the sequence multiple times to make sure I felt comfortable with my evaluation. To elaborate a bit on the reasoning for lack of action, here was how I saw the sequence of events:
[ol]
[li]Assertion that Inspector General’s actions were not partisan[/li][li]Rebuttal with partial quote stating that there was some indicia of arguable political bias, i.e. partisanship[/li][li]Posting of full quote that provided context that the ICIG’s determination was not changed by the above mentioned indicia of arguable political bias[/li][/ol]
The way I interpreted it was that the original assertion did not hinge on whether the existence of bias impacted the ICIG’s assessment. The original assertion was whether any such partisanship existed at all. The snipped quote identified that there may have been some indicia of arguable political bias, i.e. partisanship. So while the full quote that you provided offered more context and allows the reader to make their own assessment on the merits and relevance, when we’re talking in the context of rule violation I didn’t think it crossed the line into bad faith. The response I viewed as pedantic and not much value add for sure, but not necessarily a violation.
My “ignore” function seems to have a slight malfunction. While I am blocked from seeing the blockee’s initial post, that post is still seen by me when it is quoted by others, and when that post is quoted or responded to by others the thread remains hijacked.
True but it does help. The one person I had on ignore has since left but it was easy for me to basically skip any reply he got quoted in as “so much further nonsense”. It isn’t a total ignore but more like a hammer to help wack those moles.
Welcome to the Terrkrahoma School of Debate.