In this post it was stated by Jonathan Chance that:
Given that:
Moderators have not created a board rule against sealioning
Moderators have never moderated sealioning
Moderators haven’t even established a definition of sealioning
Most board members don’t even agree on what it is
It is resolved that:
It is not junior modding to characterize a posting pattern as sealioning, as no such rule exists.
It is not name-calling to characterize a posting pattern as sealioning, because it is directed at the post, not the poster
Calling out sea-lioning does not violate any board rules whatsoever.
If I said someone was “badgering” me, would that violate “various board rules”? It’s the same thing, an animal-based characterization of a particular style of posting.
If moderators don’t think that sealioning is a thing, then by what logic are we forbidden to talk about it? Should I likewise take caution not to identify “badgering” behavior? Are there any other off-limits animals that we should steer clear of?
Sea lioning is a form of trolling. Since we aren’t allowed to accuse others of being trolls, and sea lions are trolls, we cannot call someone a sea lion.
Got it in one. It’s unreasonable to expect a detailed catalogue of all types of trolling, just as it is unreasonable to expect a detailed lexicon of “forbidden words.”
I don’t think that’s true I explained in my OP, it doesn’t seem like there’s any consensus that sealioning is even a thing, and definitely no consensus that it’s trolling.
To my mind it’s the same as accusing someone of badgering. If I accuse someone of badgering me, have I run afoul of troll-designation rules?
One is not allowed - in general - to accuse other posters of pretty much anything that involves a negative. Each of them - trolling, sealioning (as ill-defined as it is), lying, arguing in bad faith, whatever - are destructive to good debate and are therefore prohibited. Accusations of lying are specified because, my God, it happens a lot.
Really, making direct statements accusing other posters of any behavior is never best practices. If you suspect someone of debating in bad faith - regardless of reason - report it and allow the moderation staff to investigate and intervene or not as they may determine.
Again, our posters tend to be very invested in the debates. We encourage that. But a part of that seems to be - based on the reports we get - a tendency to demonize their debate opponents and see them in the worst possible light. That I’d like to discourage. I hope everyone can treat other posters with respect and not lash out at disagreements or other oppositional debates. Leave that to we on the moderation staff. It’s what we’re here for. If, from time to time, we do not sanction a poster you believe should be sanctioned, realize that our perspectives differ from yours and what looks horrid to you may look very different to someone with a little more perspective.
It seems to me there’s a loophole you could drive a truck through, in that one could “innocently” ask repeated questions, responding to good-faith answers only with another question. As I see it, this is as destructive to good debate as anything you’ve named above. It doesn’t seem to be prohibited; mods don’t seem interested in inferring intent. Some of our most notorious trolls disrupted debate in this way for years before they were banned for some other nitpicking thing.
In the thread I mentioned, a poster would ask some glib question, then I’d put in a high-effort response, and they’d respond with a different glib question. It was clear they were never going to counter with any of their own insights, they were just there to shoot down anything I said (and I assume get me to concede the debate in that manner).
Anyway, if we’re expected to report this sort of thing, what’s the most effective verbiage? Sealioning? JAQing off? Is this just not a thing that can be moderated?
It is neither possible nor desirable to write specific rules for every single instance of debating in poor faith. Not only would you have a list a mile long, it would never be complete because someone would always come up with something that wasn’t on the list. It is too legalistic and rigid of an approach to moderating.
Moderators are very versed with this Board venue and how it works. Through years of experience, they can tell if people are debating in good faith, or if they are trying to skirt the line without obviously crossing it. Sure, some calls are easy because the violations are obvious or severe, but sometimes they have to use judgment based on experience to make a determination. That is vital to the process, but many of the complaints I see here tell me that some people just cannot accept that.
I have certainly moderated both of those things in the past. It’s a high bar for action but it’s there.
You may report it however you wish. We just had a thread here in ATMB about JAQ and such which I’m not in a position to link to right now. You might find some value there.
One piece of advice, though? If you suspect another poster of sealioning - again a very broadly defined term that I see used on what appears to me to be innocent questions at times - you can report it, yes. But also? No one is requiring you to respond to questioning you believe is made in bad faith. Report it and move on to respond to people you believe ARE debating in good faith. Do not feed the trolls is a thing, after all.
Also, if it frustrated them and they start hectoring you with the ‘why don’t you respond’ over and over they may commit some sort of infraction and get warned. Harrassing other posters is against the rules, too, after all.
To be fair, when Bone was a moderator, he did explicitly use that term in a mod note to a now-banned poster, and indeed that continuing behavior was one of the reasons the poster was eventually banned. Sealioning is “defined” as much as it can ever be by this famous Wondermark cartoon. One may disagree on whether someone is actually engaged in that practice or not in any given instance, but the meaning, in my view at least, is fairly clear: it’s relentless bad-faith questioning in the guise of “civil” discussion, intended to frustrate and annoy rather than present an actual argument, and is therefore a form of trolling. But it’s a subtle variation on trolling which superficially appears to be within the explicitly written rules but violates the intent and spirit of the rules and good-faith debate. Our dearly departed poster was quite adept at it.
Irishman, HMS Irruncible wanted to know IF he accused someone of badgering would he be violating a rule regarding trolling. His question has since been answered. He didn’t ask what action he should take if he feels he’s being badgered.
This feels like we’re getting into Karen territory here, I don’t want people constantly reporting “they’re badgering me”.
I would rather have the ability to simply point out that someone is badgering, hounding, sealioning, or dog-whistling without it raising a mod note. I think we can and should be able to call out certain arguments for what they are without the automatic assumption that it’s about the person.
Take ThelmaLou in that thread, for example. I don’t have any beef with her in general, in fact I agree with her more often than not. But in that thread she took exception to my position, and she engaged me by asking questions that demanded some investment on my part, and she dodged those answers by repeatedly posing more low-effort questions. To my reckoning, that’s the basic bar for sealioning, though she probably wasn’t consciously trying to grind me down by wasting my time, as others do.
Sometimes people do that consciously, with malign intent. I don’t think ThelmaLou was doing that. But regardless of intent, I think we should be able to call the behavior pattern out for what it is.
For what it’s worth, my inner dialogue when evaluating a position I am generally against consists entirely of questions. I don’t conceive of fully formed arguments, I conceive seemingly random questions like how would it work under these conditions, is it even compatible with X, what is the basis for this statement, etc.
And then often times I’ll be reading an interesting opinion without even having a position myself. I am want to see if their opinion stands up to my scrutiny - that is, I would only be pushing back and never taking a side. I push the burden of proof on them.
Sometimes I ask myself whether I’m just lazy, but I tend to think that’s just how I process ideas. I am of the strong opinion, however, that this is a valid form of skepticism.
The animal in that picture is, in fact, a California sea lion. These are the most commonly seen “trained seals” seen in water circus acts. They are fairly smart, trainable, and have that uncanny skill of being able to balance a beach ball on the tip of their nose. (If you watch closely, it is clear how they do that.)
The sea lion depicted in that famous Wondermark cartoon is a California sea lion.
You don’t *have *to type out your inner dialogue directly into your posts. In fact, *please *don’t do that.
Yes, this *is *lazy. You’re not doing any of the mental work, leaving it all to others. Which is bad because self-analysis is one of the ways we develop our reasoning skills. You might *think *you’re sifting people’s replies for grains of truth, but all you’ll really dredge up is our old friend, Confirmation Bias.
Don’t fall into the trap of “this is how I think” That’s bullshit. *How *you think is a learned process, that can be changed through better praxis. Your mind is a plastic organ that can be retrained and improved.
“Not having an opinion” is not a good form of skepticism, IMO. It’s valid, in that it is an existing form, but that’s not the same thing.
It’s interesting that you *do *have a strong opinion on this, but not on the things you choose to debate here. Start a GD thread on what is valid skepticism, then, rather than peppering a bunch of questions into debates where you do not.
I just took a look at that thread. The very first question she directly asked you is the first post she quoted you in (post #98). It appears that question was more rhetorical, and she was making the point that it takes a long time to reach the Supreme Court. Answering her wouldn’t have taken any time investment on your part as she wasn’t literally asking you to supply her with an average for how long it takes to get to the Supreme Court. But okay, let’s say she was. How many more questions did she ask before you accused her of sealioning? Zero. You accused her of it in post #99. She didn’t sealion you, badger you, etc.
Why not just do that without the sealion label? Your fourth numbered point in the OP was “Most board members don’t even agree on what it is.” Then wouldn’t it be best to use a better label? When “sealioning” is Googled, the words “troll” and “trolling” come up a lot in the hits on the first page. Yeah, it would be better to just describe what she’s doing rather than use a word that seems to be generally defined as a specific form of trolling.
So again, why not describe her actions? Or use a better label? Why don’t you just report what you think is an infraction? Maybe you can ignore it until it becomes a problem? How about just turning the question back on the poster? And why do you associate negative attributes to so many different animals?
