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I’d like to see more people pay attention to quote:---Good discussion requires good information, something that is increasingly hard to come by in the age of 140 character non sequiturs and blogging grifters presenting as experts. Make an effort to vet your sources before you post them, and when you do make sure that you make clear the following: who is the source, what do they have to say, and why should they be considered valid. If you're posting commentary on an article, make the effort to also post the article in question, not just a screenshot of the bit being commented on. It should go without saying, but you should also read articles before you post them; you may be punished if an article doesn't say what you claim it says. When people have done this I tend to ask them to give more details so I know what they’re on about, but that got me probed. I later reported that post for my ~~concern~~ and they got probed but I wish that wasn’t necessary. If posters want an RSS feed there are other subforums and apps for that. Also I think the Tucker thread should be in GBS or BYOB, there’s less serious discussion about Tucker than there is in the Glenn Greenwald thread, just tweets and stuff. mawarannahr fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 19:50
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mawarannahr posted:I’d like to see more people pay attention to I think you might be seriously misunderstanding the point of BYOB if you think a thread about tucker carlson belongs there.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:03
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empty whippet box posted:I think you might be seriously misunderstanding the point of BYOB if you think a thread about tucker carlson belongs there. Maybe, I thought that’s where the current events chat went.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:06
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mawarannahr posted:Maybe, I thought that’s where the current events chat went. CCCC is not the same as BYOB proper.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:07
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Agreed on the number nuance, I fully believe that people inside the problem threads overestimate it, myself including, and just speculate that people out of them are likely to underestimate it. It’s definitely a thread-level problem as well, rather than some grand conspiracy. That's interesting, if unfortunate. I think thread bans are actually a pretty elegant tool and in an ideal scenario solve a lot of issues. That said, I think regular old long probes or bans for proven troll behavior outside the bounds of a subforum's rules would do the trick as well. People who post in a subforum should know that sub's rules and be willing to accept the consequences for loving up there. Strong sub wide policies to enforce the accepted culture of that sub make sense to me. Lots of thread specific gotchas I'm not so thrilled about. empty whippet box posted:The problem with this when it comes to bigots saying bigoted things is that if nobody says anything in the thread, and just reports it, then what winds up happening is the poster will get a 6er for bad discussion practices or something, and not for their bigotry. And then the thread moves on and the person was allowed to post their bigotry with absolutely no pushback at all. A probation for not dotting your i or crossing your t is not the same as a probation for being a bigoted sack of poo poo. When I see someone posting something harmful and bigoted, I feel the need to tell them to gently caress themselves with a sideways rake because I think of someone coming into the thread and seeing no pushback against them at all and thinking "wow, this really must be what people think here". There were examples of this in the trans athletes thread as well, where posters being obviously bigoted were repeatedly called out for being bigoted but then were probated on a posting technicality. That's not a good look. But koos did not strictly follow the no posting about posters rule there, because (this is my perception of why, anyway) it was obvious that it was warranted in this case. Yeah, the premise of my suggestion relies (as I said) on the first two bullet points being set up and taking priority to the third. To get to the point where you could be strict about the posting about posters rule and backseat mod rules, you first need to have unambiguous exceptions to the "all positions are valid" rule, and mechanisms to enforce those exceptions effectively from a moderation standpoint. Otherwise you're just arming the biggest assholes with the loudest megaphone and restricting everyone else to do anything about it, which I am clearly not advocating for.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:10
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mawarannahr posted:I’d like to see more people pay attention to Out of curiosity, I checked. No, you got probated for doing “just asking questions” over the course of several posts, where your motivation was obviously bad faith (i.e. you disliked or disagreed with the tweet being posted).
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Apr 24, 2022 20:10
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Koos Group posted:This is one of my major concerns with moderating positions. It's incentivizing people who have those positions to hide them, only making insinuations. In other words, acting in bad faith. No, society already does that. It's already not socially acceptable to be a bigot. Most bigots do not believe they are bigots, they just think they are right. They will act in bad faith because there is no depth to their beliefs, because their position doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny. No matter what your moderation style, the bigots will always say they're not bigots and just honestly curious. Context matters. The lives of transgender people aren't idle philosophical questions where your ideals matter more than their pain.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:13
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The whole “well I was trying to do the right thing but I got probated, so maybe D&D doesn’t actually want to improve?” poo poo is insanely dumb and disrespectful. People aren’t stupid.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:14
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Agreed on the number nuance, I fully believe that people inside the problem threads overestimate it, myself including, and just speculate that people out of them are likely to underestimate it. It’s definitely a thread-level problem as well, rather than some grand conspiracy. I'm still in favor of threadbans and, in the cases where they're the best option, forumbans.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:16
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Jaxyon posted:Ther is no light bigotry. Your intent does not lessen the impact. That's why ironic bigotry is just bigotry. I don't think the people PMing Cool to thank her are bigots probably? I wonder why they're so fragile! Anyone remember when a guy said he was an economics professor and the first 2 replies were insulting him because economics isn't real and he posted on DND like one more time after that? No loving wonder.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:19
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Slow News Day posted:Out of curiosity, I checked. No, you got probated for doing “just asking questions” over the course of several posts, where your motivation was obviously bad faith (i.e. you disliked or disagreed with the tweet being posted). You’re wrong about my motivation. 
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Apr 24, 2022 20:20
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Koos Group posted:Good points, and I haven't talked about one of my motivations for this, which has to do with my age. I've seen the whole transition from racism and other bigotries being acceptable to completely unacceptable. I've seen the passionate, righteous and intelligent arguments people made against these things when it was still necessary to do so, and that led to us winning culturally. But now that we have won, and equal rights is becoming an axiom, I fear some people might be forgetting the actual justifications for it. I don't believe moral and social progress is durable in the same way as technological progress, where we'll simply stay at the most sophisticated level we've reached because we have all the necessary knowledge; but rather it's something that we'll need to always be vigilant to maintain, because it involves human beings rather than physical laws. I think this is a noble philosophy, but I'm not sure if we (and I'm not even sure if I mean D&D or the people talking politics online in general) are capable to have such conversations in principle in the post-truth world. I know that this is not useful, but I cannot help but wonder if this is a medium where such principled conversations can become a baseline at all. At a risk of sounding as a broken clock, I suspect that the answers depends on whether if people genuinely hold their beliefs, or just post in a pattern that earns them the kind of attention they revel in.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:21
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Quotey posted:I don't think the people PMing Cool to thank her are bigots probably? I wonder why they're so fragile! Economics isnt questioning someone's humanaity and it's a field with a large amount of actual debate. I personally called out the assholes making GBS threads on economics, but it's not the same thing at all. If you are feeling fragile about bigotry thats on you. You dont get safety at the expense of marginalized peoples safety.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:26
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Quotey posted:I don't think the people PMing Cool to thank her are bigots probably? I wonder why they're so fragile! There's actually a whole bunch of people who love me and want me to continue posting. They're posting too, just out of frame.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:27
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OwlFancier posted:I'm sure it happens sometimes, but what I mean is that I don't think that the likelihood of anybody, personally, debating someone into not being a transphobe is very high. And especially I do not think it is as effective a conversion method as simply enforcing the desired position via whatever appratus you have and the enthusiastic participation of as many people you already have onside as possible. This doesn't really make any sense. After all, social pressure requires that a broad group consensus already exists in support of the idea. But originally, transphobia was the group consensus, and the social pressure was largely being used to push people toward transphobia. Supporting trans rights (or even believing in the existence of trans people at all) was the outlier minority view that was being crushed by social pressure. Trans people and trans advocates were the ones being ostracized and mocked without even having their arguments listened to. And the fact that they were able to shift the needle on that is proof that discussion can have more impact on people's opinions than social pressure can. If social pressure was more effective than discussion, then no one's views would ever change, because social pressure would prevent people from ever deviating from the majority mainstream viewpoint. I'm not saying that everyone can be convinced, of course. The tiny number of Americans who still oppose interracial marriage more than half a century after Loving v Virginia aren't gonna give into discussion or social pressure, they're probably gonna take that stance to their grave. On the other hand, transphobia was totally normal and accepted (even here on SA) just a few years ago. And while it's encouraging to see how quickly things have shifted in the past few years, our own knowledge about queer issues didn't arise fully formed out of nowhere - we learned it by listening to others and having our misconceptions torn down and debunked. A lot of the time, that happened right here on these forums. I still dimly remember LF's embassy threads to GBS, where they'd go educate the broader SA population on progressive stances to issues. Maybe we don't want that anymore, maybe D&D isn't the place for that anymore. But it just seems utterly ridiculous to write off everyone who disagrees with you as fundamentally un-convinceable...especially when there's still clearly a ton of people out there who disagree with us. Now, one important caveat on all this: these types of discussions should be short. If someone comes in and argues something clearly wrong, then I think it's a good thing to explain why they're wrong rather than jumping straight to probations. But if they don't accept that, things quickly go to arguing in circles or get nasty as the person making the wrong argument often gets stubborn, while the rest of D&D eagerly jumps on low-hanging fruit. Clearly and verifiably wrong positions don't actually take that long to debunk, so if it drags on more than a couple of days then it's probably a thread where a bunch of frustrated and miserable people are arguing in circles, so it might as well be closed. Main Paineframe fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 20:28
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empty whippet box posted:There's actually a whole bunch of people who love me and want me to continue posting. They're posting too, just out of frame. Also this.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:29
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I think this is a noble philosophy, but I'm not sure if we (and I'm not even sure if I mean D&D or the people talking politics online in general) are capable to have such conversations in principle in the post-truth world. I know that this is not useful, but I cannot help but wonder if this is a medium where such principled conversations can become a baseline at all. At a risk of sounding as a broken clock, I suspect that the answers depends on whether if people genuinely hold their beliefs, or just post in a pattern that earns them the kind of attention they revel in. It's a really noble philosophy but I think it also highlights one of the huge problems with D&D, we love having noble philosophy that has nothing to do with what's actually going on in threads. In the same way D&D aims to be impartial and moderated in a way that's non-political the head admin also has a philosophy that's pushing them to curate certain discussions and push out others. It's the same way 99% of the time D&D is just the liberal politics zone and everyone is very happy with that but you can't call it the liberal politics zone because liberal politics adherrants believe that their politics are just the way of the world. In short, all of the D&D philosophy shouldn't really produce multiple conservative mock threads, a thread about a war that's primarily a news feed of your enemies getting owned, and a lot of the other threads we have. There's not even anything wrong with them, it's just that what we say we want and what we want in practice rarely match up. A lot of the pain would go away if we just honestly slapped "this is the liberal left posting zone" on the door because well, it is.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:32
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Gumball Gumption posted:It's a really noble philosophy but I think it also highlights one of the huge problems with D&D, we love having noble philosophy that has nothing to do with what's actually going on in threads. In the same way D&D aims to be impartial and moderated in a way that's non-political the head admin also has a philosophy that's pushing them to curate certain discussions and push out others. It's the same way 99% of the time D&D is just the liberal politics zone and everyone is very happy with that but you can't call it the liberal politics zone because liberal politics adherrants believe that their politics are just the way of the world. What positions do you believe I'm pushing out?
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Apr 24, 2022 20:45
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Gumball Gumption posted:A lot of the pain would go away if we just honestly slapped "this is the liberal left posting zone" on the door because well, it is. I'm not so sure this would fix the problem. Even the most conservative posters in the US CE thread would be considered left wing by American standards. I don't think I've ever seen someone argue against the concepts of universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, or forgiving student debt for example. The main point of contention seems to be a more pragmatic "how much of this is because the dems are bad?" which ranges from 0% to 100% depending on the poster.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:48
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Koos Group posted:What positions do you believe I'm pushing out? I mean based on your philosophy you're pushing out people who think D&D isn't a place to educate bigots and think the only way to build a tolerant place for discussion is to push them out. There is counter belief that allowing any tolerance even in the effort of education is creating an intolerant atmosphere. I don't think I even land on either side of that argument, just that at some point you need to pick because you're not going to have a noble philosophy that pleases everyone and at some point you need to decide who the audience is for D&D. We already self select for a specific audience so who is the audience you're moderating for?
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Apr 24, 2022 20:55
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Gumball Gumption posted:I mean based on your philosophy you're pushing out people who think D&D isn't a place to educate bigots and think the only way to build a tolerant place for discussion is to push them out. There is counter belief that allowing any tolerance even in the effort of education is creating an intolerant atmosphere. I don't think I even land on either side of that argument, just that at some point you need to pick because you're not going to have a noble philosophy that pleases everyone and at some point you need to decide who the audience is for D&D. Ah, I was confused about what you mean by "push out."
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Apr 24, 2022 21:01
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Gumball Gumption posted:It's a really noble philosophy but I think it also highlights one of the huge problems with D&D, we love having noble philosophy that has nothing to do with what's actually going on in threads. In the same way D&D aims to be impartial and moderated in a way that's non-political the head admin also has a philosophy that's pushing them to curate certain discussions and push out others. It's the same way 99% of the time D&D is just the liberal politics zone and everyone is very happy with that but you can't call it the liberal politics zone because liberal politics adherrants believe that their politics are just the way of the world. This comes up pretty regularly in D&D feedback threads and from an objective, quantitative view it's not accurate. If you look at actual posting traffic D&D is well under half US politics posting and US CE itself has a very strong left presence. Have a look at the top 30 posters in US CE: https://forums.somethingawful.com/misc.php?action=whoposted&threadid=3997306. About half of those are vocally on the left and post in opposition to liberals and liberalism. Last fall (before the war in Ukraine) I crunched some numbers on thread traffic and the UK thread by itself gets similar posts and views to US CE. If you combine the other non-US threads, US politics posting is well under half of the forum traffic, it's quite international. It's just that US CE and US politics in general produces most of the drama, reports, and moderation action. It's certainly not the goal of moderation to enforce a "liberal politics zone" experience. I'm not dismissing your perspective or others that feel that way since this is a feedback thread. It's not really borne out in the posting traffic numbers, though.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:03
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Koos Group posted:Ah, I was confused about what you mean by "push out." Yeah, I realized you probably thought positions and that's not what I mean. I'll be totally honest I've jumbled a few points in my head but I think my overall position is just figure out what the gently caress D&D is, what a specific thread is, and moderate for that and be honest about that. If you think D&D is a place to let bigots come in and allow themselves to be educated and people need to be tolerant of that and accept that to post her than fine, but put that on the door because not everyone wants to be around that and them not knowing your philosophy caused them to think they could act in ways that you don't want around and punished. To use CE as a less charged example, is it a political philosophy arena or a news feed of current events? Mods and admins seem to want a news feed and hate the fights but also encourage them through their posting and moderation. Figure out what it is and stick to it.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:07
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Fritz the Horse posted:It's certainly not the goal of moderation to enforce a "liberal politics zone" experience. I'm not dismissing your perspective or others that feel that way since this is a feedback thread. It's not really borne out in the posting traffic numbers, though. I think you're slightly misinterpreting the post you quoted given their usage of "liberal left." You're right that there's quite a bit of back and forth between liberalism and leftism, but actual unironic rightist viewpoints are less common and tend to be immediately correlated to bad faith. I don't think that's bad, it's more about forums culture and what SA is or has become (vs reddit, etc) Is SA or D&D less good if it's more or less openly acknowledged that it isn't a place for rightist / conservative viewpoints? That we don't engage with some arguments from these standpoints seriously? speng31b fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Apr 24, 2022 |
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Apr 24, 2022 21:09
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speng31b posted:I think you're slightly misinterpreting the post you quoted given their usage of "liberal left." You're right that there's quite a bit of back and forth between liberalism and leftism, but actual unironic rightist viewpoints are less common and tend to be immediately correlated to bad faith. I don't think that's bad, it's more about forums culture and what SA is or has become (vs reddit, etc) You're right in general except for one extremely relevant topic: transphobia. The sports thread was full of literal right-wing transphobic talking points and it took an admin to actually shut all of that down, the D&D mods were worthless here.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:14
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Unless there are consistant standards none of this discussion will be productive. D&D mods need to make a statement about what is allowed and what is not allowed, and they all need to sign on to it. "We must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children" - Is this a topic that's open for debate here on Something Awful? Each mod should say whether that's an acceptable debate topic here. I assume it is, because I've been told that extremely racist stuff is ok to debate, but unless the mods all take a position on it, it's unclear. It shouldn't be hard for each D&D mod to say "yes that's acceptable."
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Apr 24, 2022 21:15
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speng31b posted:I think you're slightly misinterpreting the post you quoted given their usage of "liberal left." You're right that there's quite a bit of back and forth between liberalism and leftism, but actual unironic rightist viewpoints are less common and tend to be immediately correlated to bad faith. I don't think that's bad, it's more about forums culture and what SA is or has become (vs reddit, etc) Yeah, I mean liberalism into socdem. Unironic far right and most liberal right posts are met with a lot of hostility. Communism and other far left tendencies are accepted but are met with a lot more skepticism and occasional hostility but also have CSPAM. And CSPAM avoids a lot of this problem by just being honest about who the intended audience is and the fact that you'll be met with open hostility, especially if you're just there to antagonize. Is it as noble as a grand philosophy? No, but it's a lot more honest and how pretty much every discussion forum I've ever been in has actually worked in practice, you have an audience and you work with them in mind. And I know there is the idea that the audience for D&D is anyone who wants to come in and have an enlightened discussion about any topic but it's also not that right now. And I think to get there you'd have to be really strict against a lot of moralism and SA in general seems to not want that for any of their political discussions so I don't think there would be a lot of use for that version of D&D.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:19
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Koos Group posted:If that's happening, it isn't my intention. I would like praise and criticism to be held to the same standards, which is that it's specific, supported, logically sound and fresh. Agreed. After thinking on it more I believe what I'm getting at is that identifying transphobia in an individual poster's statements is more feasible because as the poster posts more and more their intentions and underlying beliefs reveal a more clear picture. The person possibly harboring what we might determine to be transphobia is right in front of you and the discussion will reveal new crucial elements to make a final determination. Whereas identifying the presence of genocide out somewhere in the wide world, the relevant information is prone to being warped several times over before it ends up in our hands and so not being able to discuss and investigate in the same form means you just run in circles. There is still a great deal of personal value sets and interpretations of 'good vs bad Faith' that has to occur, but that's the nature of discussion.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:21
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Colonel Cool posted:There's so many places on the rest of the forums that are extremely supportive places trans people can go to feel comfortable. I don't think D&D needs to be that place. transphobe spotted.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:29
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Stairmaster posted:transphobe spotted. Note, if anyone is having a hard time understanding this, replace the word "trans" with "gay" or "black" or "Jewish" and see how you feel!
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Apr 24, 2022 21:32
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So actually reading the rule around bigotryquote:---In keeping with the SA rules, bigoted statements against users is not permitted. It is technically not against the rules to make arguments with a bigoted implication or conclusion, but these will naturally attract a great deal of scrutiny. (Edited by Koos Group) My suggestion is to just add on that part of posting in D&D is that you will be required to either entertain bigoted statements that may be made maliciously or in ignorance until the mods personally have sufficient evidence or hold your tongue and not participate. The fall out might be bad but that seems to be what's actually happening in practice.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:34
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Gumball Gumption posted:So actually reading the rule around bigotry There is already a general rule about good faith, Mr. Gumption.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:36
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Koos Group posted:There is already a general rule about good faith, Mr. Gumption. When do you plan to start holding yourself to that rule, and assume the people claiming to be upset about the environment of transphobia you are deliberately cultivating are actually upset about the environment of transphobia you are deliberately cultivating? You still seem to believe that your good intentions excuse the terrible outcomes from your poorly thought out ruleset. You did this, you did it willfully, and you've continued to ignore feedback from people who are being targeted in the environment you have authority over.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:37
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Gumball Gumption posted:So actually reading the rule around bigotry Never take the bigot's side, even tacitly.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:38
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Koos Group posted:There is already a general rule about good faith, Mr. Gumption. Yeah but it's obviously not clear enough for people to understand what it actually entails. The rules need to be more explicit because of an incident that happened. It's like when they slap a "don't stick your dick in here" on things that are obviously not where your dick goes, someone did it so it's not that obvious. It's confused enough people between the trans thread and this thread that it would have gotten a sixer for being confusing.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:38
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Bel Shazar posted:Never take the bigot's side, even tacitly. I definitely think the other way is better, intolerance of intolerance. But D&D as a collective should decide, I'm just throwing out what I think the likely pick would be. And we have a political sub that's intolerant of intolerance so there will still be a place for people if the experiment fails.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:41
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ram dass in hell posted:When do you plan to start holding yourself to that rule, and assume the people claiming to be upset about the environment of transphobia you are deliberately cultivating are actually upset about the environment of transphobia you are deliberately cultivating? I have not accused anyone in this thread of acting in bad faith, and I believe the individuals who've said they're upset are upset. I also don't believe my rule set has had any terrible outcomes thus far.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:41
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Bel Shazar posted:Never take the bigot's side, even tacitly. Good faith rules don't require you to take the side of your opponent in any manner.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:42
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What do people actually want from SA and D&D? At the risk of using the old forums cliche, at least for me, it's a (dead, etc) comedy forum. When I was more than a decade younger and also a stupid moron, SA was one thing. I don't need or want D&D to be a beautiful pure philosophical discourse from all possible perspectives. I don't need to engage in a valiant quest to slay the dragon of someone else's ignorance. These days if I find myself in a serious argument with someone who may or may not be looking to promote their bigotry, I don't have the emotional energy to engage that with complete sincerity. Just speaking for myself, I don't need or want SA to be the place it was more than a decade ago, or even just a few years ago. As they say, "and nothing of value was lost."
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Apr 24, 2022 21:43
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Koos Group posted:I also don't believe my rule set has had any terrible outcomes thus far. you believe this because you don't give a poo poo about trans people, which is disqualifying. resign.
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Apr 24, 2022 21:43
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