Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Bootleg Trunks
Jun 12, 2020

Aineris posted:

Yep. They choose not to be counted, when they are easily countable, because they do not give a poo poo. The kind of people that are turned away from homeless shelters are those that can't do the minimum amount of work to participate in society, and so they don't deserve to be represented. Remember, these people aren't participating in society in any capacity. They're not employed, they're not paying taxes, they're not voting, they're not doing anything productive with their lives whatsoever. They can do better, but they choose not to.

For the purposes of government representation, it's important to count people that want government representation. If they don't want to be represented, then who the hell cares?

I love how this is treated as a good faith post worthy of legitimate discussion in uspol.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

eke out
Feb 24, 2013



Bootleg Trunks posted:

I love how this is treated as a good faith post worthy of legitimate discussion in uspol.

literally more than a dozen people are telling this person to gently caress off and it's already been reported, i'm not sure i see your point

Epinephrine
Nov 7, 2008
It's been about 24 hours without an answer, so I'll re-ask this question in hopefully better terms because it really makes a difference wrt to my feedback: Do the mods believe they have been enforcing the ramping policy, as it exists, in the past month or two? How that question is answered leads to different suggestions on how to proceed in the immediate future.

If no, then my previous post applies. Sure, let's suss out what ramps should look like going forward, but at the same time enforce the policy as it exists on the premise that even imperfect ramping is better than no ramping at all. It'll be easier to think about what a new ramping policy looks like if we see the old policy enforced. And fwiw I'll stand by the argument that ramping is a good thing. I see ramping less as a three strikes law as it has worked in practice and more as a way for mods to nudge posters in the right direction without having to resort to more draconian measures. A sixer and a PM is enough, I trust, to send the message to good-faith posters that this kind of post shouldn't be in D&D. But, at the same time, the evidence on the ground suggests that a sixer is often treated as a cost of doing business: eat it and keep posting like an aggressive rear end in a top hat. If that's observed, then there's a clear need to escalate to the serious probes and bans Cefte advocates for as the first line.

If yes, then we really need to build a common understanding of what ramping is because, at least from my perspective, what the mods define as ramping is different from my conception of it. If I have this misunderstanding then I can only assume that others have it as well, and that is a problem if we want to not only discuss ramping, but figure out a ramping policy going forward. Without a mutual understanding of what we mean by the term, it's impossible to actually discuss what the ramp policy should be because each of us has different interpretations of the word "ramp" and therefore different conceptions of what a written policy will wind up being in practice. Once we agree on what ramping is presently, we can discuss what ramping should look like and, critically, how we adjust current policy to get from what is to what ought to be.

Epinephrine fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Oct 14, 2020

BougieBitch
Oct 2, 2013

Basic as hell

eke out posted:

literally more than a dozen people are telling this person to gently caress off and it's already been reported, i'm not sure i see your point

I think that's really an illustration of what people were saying about threadbans being the right response if literally everyone in a thread wants someone to gently caress off. This sort of thing happens like once a month. It probably makes less sense if people are trying to make a clubhouse thread or w/e, but USPOL is pretty all-encompassing and this is the kind of poo poo where the usual slapfighters do the "white and black arms clasped in unity" meme to shove them out of the discussion because it is just so obviously bad faith and reprehensible.

Edit: went back to the last two probes and its basically the same poo poo, and it's also an illustration of "this is a person who ramping clearly didn't do anything for" looking back to the last series of probes

BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Oct 14, 2020

Lemming
Apr 21, 2008

eke out posted:

literally more than a dozen people are telling this person to gently caress off and it's already been reported, i'm not sure i see your point

A mod was quote replying to him, what does reporting do in that situation exactly

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

Bootleg Trunks posted:

I love how this is treated as a good faith post worthy of legitimate discussion in uspol.

fool of sound posted:

Because my hope is he's just a guy who has bought into lovely right wing framing and can be convinced otherwise and start the learning process. If not, he either won't respond or post some snide nonsense, in which case I can confirm he's not interested in a discussion and deal with that appropriately, or he'll have a bigoted meltdown and I can toss him out.

Anyway, he's had time and hasn't responded, so I put in a probe now, and going forward I know he's not posting in good faith and can just toss him out.

BougieBitch
Oct 2, 2013

Basic as hell

fool of sound posted:

Anyway, he's had time and hasn't responded, so I put in a probe now, and going forward I know he's not posting in good faith and can just toss him out.

So as an illustration, will this one just be a 6er? They got another probe for similar reasons a week ago and they made a series of racist posts in the corona thread a couple months ago, so are we all required to assume good faith from this person when they get back on tomorrow?

Edit: I guess basically I feel like these series of posts represent a more fundamental refusal to engage with others and respect basic humanity, as opposed to the usual "posting about posting" or "derail to get in the same argument again" kind of offenses that 6ers are really supposed to cover, and represents more of the sort of behavior where ramping seems appropriate, in contrast to the usual circular posting which is just tedious rather than offensive

BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Oct 14, 2020

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

BougieBitch posted:

So as an illustration, will this one just be a 6er? They got another probe for similar reasons a week ago and they made a series of racist posts in the corona thread a couple months ago, so are we all required to assume good faith from this person when they get back on tomorrow?

Edit: I guess basically I feel like these series of posts represent a more fundamental refusal to engage with others and respect basic humanity, as opposed to the usual "posting about posting" or "derail to get in the same argument again" kind of offenses that 6ers are really supposed to cover, and represents more of the sort of behavior where ramping seems appropriate, in contrast to the usual circular posting which is just tedious rather than offensive

I gave 3 days and a warning that next time is a subforum ban.

Zachack
Jun 1, 2000




I think Ronya got it right when they described the actual problem as a lack of transparency coupled to what appear to some to be specific injustices, and a resulting desire to automate the process in order to prevent future injustice when automation appears to be the only tool available and with any chance of working, drat the consequences. There is a confusing amount of opacity regarding what a mod can and/or will do and I feel most routes of breaking through that fog have been reduced to PMs, which imo require an unpleasant sort of lonely confrontation (which could be solved if PMs ever get cc functions).

If ramps are to be deployed "for real this time" I think it would help to explain why previous deployments were not real. Ramping rules predate the lowtax fallout so it can't be because bans were in the danger zone, and often it seemed that ramps would build only to suddenly reset for unknown reasons.

Freakazoid_
Jul 5, 2013


Buglord

fool of sound posted:

Anyway, he's had time and hasn't responded, so I put in a probe now, and going forward I know he's not posting in good faith and can just toss him out.

Since this incident got brought up here, it reminded me that we should consider bringing back the no dogpiling rule. Look how many responses that got, and out of all of them only 3 (and that's including your response) were thoughtful and well reasoned. The rest is just needless white noise.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost
Thread bans are much more useful and easier to track than ramping, but honestly I don’t really care if you ramp so long as you do it if you’re going to do it, or do something else if you aren’t. You need to kick people out of threads who are toxic, who are chasing out subject matter experts, who are ignoring basic facts and so on.

I’m much more concerned with the near-constant effort being met with no effort posts, the constant strawman posts, and so on. Half the reason threads become unreadable is because folks have to post the same thing two or three times in response someone else decided to twist their meaning or use some similar logically fallacy.

This is explicitly against the rules of this forum, why is it tolerated?

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

Cefte posted:

I'd suggest removing sixers, removing any idea of ramping, and go back to one-day, one-week and one-month probations, and bans, as standard tools, and do less of all of them, because that's my nostalgic memory of the structure of D&D back in, oh, 2008 or so. The more you moderate, the more people are going to want you to moderate, and the harder it's going to become.

I think that this is probably the best advice here. The 6er is oftentimes a nuisance at best and completely missed at worst. If the 6er comes down hours after the post that poster may not even notice that they were probated. I've got a few probes in my posting history that I never even knew happened until after the fact because they never actually stopped me from posting when I was going to post something and those were all 1-day probes.

A 6er would only work, theoretically, if it dropped right after the post and that's pretty much impossible.

TheOneAndOnlyT
Dec 18, 2005

Well well, mister fancy-pants, I hope you're wearing your matching sweater today, or you'll be cut down like the ugly tree you are.

Freakazoid_ posted:

Since this incident got brought up here, it reminded me that we should consider bringing back the no dogpiling rule. Look how many responses that got, and out of all of them only 3 (and that's including your response) were thoughtful and well reasoned. The rest is just needless white noise.
While I agree with you in general, I've always felt like one of the unwritten rules of SA (and I mean all of SA, not just D&D) is that when someone makes an egregiously bad post, the mods generally look the other way for a bit to let the rest of the forum post a bit less seriously and poo poo on that person. Maybe that's not appropriate for a heavy topic like homelessness, but if I'm being honest, when I was reading that post and the replies last night, I didn't see anything wrong with the dogpiling or feel the need to report it.

It's definitely an unwritten rule that's been weaponized a little too much in the recent past (QCS used to have a lot of problems with posters taking this approach to any suggestion they didn't like), but I don't think I'm alone in saying that this sort of dogpiling is kinda part of the SA culture, provided that it's only used on the worst of the worst posts.

BougieBitch
Oct 2, 2013

Basic as hell

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

While I agree with you in general, I've always felt like one of the unwritten rules of SA (and I mean all of SA, not just D&D) is that when someone makes an egregiously bad post, the mods generally look the other way for a bit to let the rest of the forum post a bit less seriously and poo poo on that person. Maybe that's not appropriate for a heavy topic like homelessness, but if I'm being honest, when I was reading that post and the replies last night, I didn't see anything wrong with the dogpiling or feel the need to report it.

It's definitely an unwritten rule that's been weaponized a little too much in the recent past (QCS used to have a lot of problems with posters taking this approach to any suggestion they didn't like), but I don't think I'm alone in saying that this sort of dogpiling is kinda part of the SA culture, provided that it's only used on the worst of the worst posts.

I'm also on the "you love to see it" side when it comes to this, it's a good reminder that even your supposed posting enemies agree on the fundamentals and it's easy enough to see coming that you can just skip to 3 pages later if you don't want to read dunks (I always want to read dunks).

Booourns
Jan 20, 2004
Please send a report when you see me complain about other posters and threads outside of QCS

~thanks!

Taerkar posted:

I think that this is probably the best advice here. The 6er is oftentimes a nuisance at best and completely missed at worst. If the 6er comes down hours after the post that poster may not even notice that they were probated. I've got a few probes in my posting history that I never even knew happened until after the fact because they never actually stopped me from posting when I was going to post something and those were all 1-day probes.

A 6er would only work, theoretically, if it dropped right after the post and that's pretty much impossible.

IMO 6ers are entirely worthless when it comes to trying to improve how people post, and if someone makes a post that a mod/IK thinks is worthy of punishment they should be required to put in a probation that requires approval, also to stop the whole "you can't complain about the bad probations being handed out, they're only 6ers"

Doctor Butts
May 21, 2002

Freakazoid_ posted:

Since this incident got brought up here, it reminded me that we should consider bringing back the no dogpiling rule. Look how many responses that got, and out of all of them only 3 (and that's including your response) were thoughtful and well reasoned. The rest is just needless white noise.

OTOH, responding to it in earnest is akin to validating that they may have a reasonable point of view.

It's just absurd to me that the thought process to not probating the guy outright was "surely he's just confused...". Those aren't the words of someone who is 'confused' about anything. They know where they stand.

Kaal
May 22, 2002

through thousands of posts in D&D over a decade, I now believe I know what I'm talking about. if I post forcefully and confidently, I can convince others that is true. no one sees through my facade.
Personally I'm super tired of seeing decently-argued posts get responded to with a bunch of effortless shitposting, often followed by probe for being "disruptive". I don't see why it's tolerated in D&D. Seeing something that you disagree with, screaming insults, and hammering the report button is the absolute opposite of discussion.

Even if the poster deserved a probation for having an overly conservative opinion, and that's debatable, most of the the responses to them amounted to "You're a monster, gently caress off". And to my mind that should indisputably should be penalized. It's classic shitposting and contributes nothing while making any kind of discussion or rebuttal impossible. They're exactly the kind of posts that ramping is nominally intended to prevent, but I don't think it really does much when they aren't even probated for it.

Kaal fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Oct 14, 2020

Flying-PCP
Oct 2, 2005

Kaal posted:

Personally I'm super tired of seeing decently-argued posts get responded to with a bunch of effortless shitposting, often followed by probe for being "disruptive". I don't see why it's tolerated in D&D. Seeing something that you disagree with, screaming insults, and hammering the report button is the absolute opposite of discussion.

Even if the poster deserved a probation for having an overly conservative opinion, and that's debatable, most of the the responses to them amounted to "You're a monster, gently caress off". And to my mind that should indisputably should be penalized. It's classic shitposting and contributes nothing while making any kind of discussion or rebuttal impossible. They're exactly the kind of posts that ramping is nominally intended to prevent, but I don't think it really does much when they aren't even probated for it.

Are you talking about Aineris? Conservatives come around rarely enough that there's not much point in not being specific.

BougieBitch
Oct 2, 2013

Basic as hell

Kaal posted:

Personally I'm super tired of seeing decently-argued posts get responded to with a bunch of effortless shitposting, often followed by probe for being "disruptive". I don't see why it's tolerated in D&D. Seeing something that you disagree with, screaming insults, and hammering the report button is the absolute opposite of discussion.

Even if the poster deserved a probation for having an overly conservative opinion, and that's debatable, most of the the responses to them amounted to "You're a monster, gently caress off". And to my mind that should indisputably should be penalized. It's classic shitposting and contributes nothing while making any kind of discussion or rebuttal impossible. They're exactly the kind of posts that ramping is nominally intended to prevent, but I don't think it really does much when they aren't even probated for it.

The dude linked the Wikipedia page for "Commitment", do you real think that qualifies as "decently-argued"?

Edit: Here, have some of the "decently-argued" posts:

Aineris posted:

I don't think you know what a census actually is. Think it through. Clue: Homeless shelters will give anyone that wants one a reliable address if they need it.

Aineris posted:

There are better ways of solving this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commitment_(mental_health)

P.S. You get a permanent address that way, so that the census can reach you without all of this other BS.

BougieBitch fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Oct 14, 2020

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

I'm with BougieBitch on this one: one of the main reasons this place isn't a cesspit of neo-nazis is largely because when some jackass trundles in with a straight-up evil take (gently caress the homeless, they don't deserve to be treated like humans, for example) that everyone can join together for a moment to go tell them to eat poo poo.

We don't need to all pretend to be debate club big brain geniuses and hem and haw and write big dissertations about well have you considered this my goon sire? at any old hard right bullshit some rear end in a top hat wants to post.

Aramis
Sep 22, 2009



Pentecoastal Elites posted:

I'm with BougieBitch on this one: one of the main reasons this place isn't a cesspit of neo-nazis is largely because when some jackass trundles in with a straight-up evil take (gently caress the homeless, they don't deserve to be treated like humans, for example) that everyone can join together for a moment to go tell them to eat poo poo.

We don't need to all pretend to be debate club big brain geniuses and hem and haw and write big dissertations about well have you considered this my goon sire? at any old hard right bullshit some rear end in a top hat wants to post.

While I agree with this in principle, I have two quibbles with the way that's implemented in practice:

First off, once the initial rally is done, people jumping in to the dogpile pages after the conversation has moved on really is nothing but white noise.

Second, berating effort posters that take the time to actually respond to the vile stuff is straight up terrible. A substantial portion of the population subscribes to some of this horrific stuff, and knowledgeable people providing good rebuttals to that is useful for everyone reading the thread. Heck, we literally had someone request almost these exact talking points for a family member today.

BougieBitch
Oct 2, 2013

Basic as hell

Aramis posted:

While I agree with this in principle, I have two quibbles with the way that's implemented in practice:

First off, once the initial rally is done, people jumping in to the dogpile pages after the conversation has moved on really is nothing but white noise.

Second, berating effort posters that take the time to actually respond to the vile stuff is straight up terrible. A substantial portion of the population subscribes to some of this horrific stuff, and knowledgeable people providing good rebuttals to that is useful for everyone reading the thread. Heck, we literally had someone request almost these exact talking points for a family member today.

I don't read that as berating, simply that while you may choose to take the time to make your own points clear no one should feel obligated to spend 20 minutes or whatever countering something like that point by point because dehumanizing posts like that are like brain poison- its the exact reason why many of us have no interest in participating on Facebook or Twitter, because reading too much of that makes you feel like you are the crazy one for trying to explain why you should care about other people

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

Kaal posted:

Even if the poster deserved a probation for having an overly conservative opinion, and that's debatable, most of the the responses to them amounted to "You're a monster, gently caress off". And to my mind that should indisputably should be penalized. It's classic shitposting and contributes nothing while making any kind of discussion or rebuttal impossible.

Why exactly should anyone bother constructing a well-reasoned response to absolutely monstrous poo poo like that though? If I come in and write an impeccably well-sourced and cited article arguing that Hitler was Actually Good, should people have to write effortposts to try and convince me he was bad? What does that accomplish that just posting "gently caress off" wouldn't?

Jarmak
Jan 24, 2005

Crane Fist posted:

Why exactly should anyone bother constructing a well-reasoned response to absolutely monstrous poo poo like that though? If I come in and write an impeccably well-sourced and cited article arguing that Hitler was Actually Good, should people have to write effortposts to try and convince me he was bad? What does that accomplish that just posting "gently caress off" wouldn't?

The problem is the example you use is "Hitler is good" but the actual posts getting treated this way are more like "economics is real".

Flying-PCP
Oct 2, 2005

Jarmak posted:

The problem is the example you use is "Hitler is good" but the actual posts getting treated this way are more like "economics is real".

The posts we've been discussing here are quite far removed from "economics is real", don't equate it with the discussion going on in the other thread.

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

Jarmak posted:

The problem is the example you use is "Hitler is good" but the actual posts getting treated this way are more like "economics is real".

I hope you're not referring to the same post I am, because it was about how homeless people aren't really people, when you think about it

If that's the post you're describing as "economics is real" then I say sure thing Mr Bateman and back out of the room slowly

OJ MIST 2 THE DICK
Sep 11, 2008

Anytime I need to see your face I just close my eyes
And I am taken to a place
Where your crystal minds and magenta feelings
Take up shelter in the base of my spine
Sweet like a chica cherry cola

-Cheap Trick

Nap Ghost

Crane Fist posted:

I hope you're not referring to the same post I am, because it was about how homeless people aren't really people, when you think about it

If that's the post you're describing as "economics is real" then I say sure thing Mr Bateman and back out of the room slowly

no, there's a post in the Athanos thread from an economics professor who said that he was reluctant to post in D&D because he felt there was a hostility to economists on D&D

6 minutes later in the thread someone compared him to a cop and drone bomber and and said that he didn't want people like that posting in D&D

Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!
On probation and ramping:

I think it'd be instructive to answer the following questions (and I'd appreciate if any mods/IKs were willing to give their perspectives):
1: What is (are) the purpose(s) of a probation?
This one is deceptively simple, I think. For me, it's threefold. First, as corrective discipline for the poster in question. "This was bad, don't do that again." Second, as notice to other posters in the thread and the forums. That's why we can see (USER WAS PROBATED FOR THIS POST). Third, as community maintenance, halting the posting of those who are behaving detrimentally. When probations are serving their purpose, I think we'd agree ramps are unnecessary. What purpose, then, does a ramp serve? And is it the most effective way to accomplish that goal?

I see more severe probations as a way to differentiate from sixers. A sixer can be anything from "I thought this would be a funny bit", to "this is mildly annoying, please stop doing it", to "That was bad, never do that again, but it's your first time doing it", to "take a break, you're on one right now". Which muddles the message both for the recipient and the community. Frankly, I'd rather have sixer taxonomy resolved by probation reason than "you've done like a dozen annoying things in the past couple days without any severe rulebreaking so my options are to let this continue unabated or else give you a week off". A ramp's purpose for notifying the community? I feel like if it's a community issue, that's better resolved by more widespread probes than by lengthier ones. Community maintenance is where I see ramps having use-this person is consistently disruptive or a generally negative contributor to the thread/subforum/forum, and other posters deserve a break from them.

2: What does it mean when a probation expires?
This one, on the other hand, is that simple. Does it mean that the poster has completed what the mod has determined is appropriate discipline? OR does it mean that the behavior that merited the probe will cease? It really is one or the other, and it's the difference (repurposed from my QCS thread) between "Never poo poo in the kitchen again" and "Don't poo poo in the kitchen for the next 7 days". Those are different messages, and lead to extremely different environments.

With that said, I much prefer threadbans and eventually subforum bans as we discuss ramping. Picture someone who consistently shits up AlaskaPol and is also a solid contributor to Politoons- Politoons would suffer for a 2 week probation, to say nothing of the stellar work they do in The Book Barn, but is that outweighed by the improvement in AlaskaPol? That used to have to be, at some level, a consideration. Threadbans means it doesn't. I'd like to see this piloted ASAP in USPOL, General Election, and Polliwonks as thread probes. Especially now that the sale to Jeffrey has gone through, I believe "You can't post in this thread on November 3rd" is a much stronger motivator than :10bux:.

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

OJ MIST 2 THE DICK posted:

no, there's a post in the Athanos thread from an economics professor who said that he was reluctant to post in D&D because he felt there was a hostility to economists on D&D

6 minutes later in the thread someone compared him to a cop and drone bomber and and said that he didn't want people like that posting in D&D

I can see how that's a problem but also my first thought was lmao. owned bitch. I'm of the opinion, which might not be widely held that people who are like oooh I'm afraid to post because people might be mean about my made up rear end field of study and refuse to respect my inane credentials are not a demographic the mod team should worry about catering to

KingNastidon
Jun 25, 2004

Crane Fist posted:

I can see how that's a problem but also my first thought was lmao. owned bitch. I'm of the opinion, which might not be widely held that people who are like oooh I'm afraid to post because people might be mean about my made up rear end field of study and refuse to respect my inane credentials are not a demographic the mod team should worry about catering to

What's your position on free university without any constraints given you believe people may spend that time on a "made up rear end field of study"? Is this not an inefficient allocation of resources? Why should we eliminate the debt of people that made the choice to focus on something that is not only worthless, but potentially detrimental to society depending on how they use those credentials? They deserve harm.

KingNastidon fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Oct 15, 2020

Jarmak
Jan 24, 2005

OJ MIST 2 THE DICK posted:

no, there's a post in the Athanos thread from an economics professor who said that he was reluctant to post in D&D because he felt there was a hostility to economists on D&D

6 minutes later in the thread someone compared him to a cop and drone bomber and and said that he didn't want people like that posting in D&D

Yeah, honestly I was phone posting and mixed up which thread I was reading.

Freakazoid_
Jul 5, 2013


Buglord

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

I'm with BougieBitch on this one: one of the main reasons this place isn't a cesspit of neo-nazis is largely because when some jackass trundles in with a straight-up evil take (gently caress the homeless, they don't deserve to be treated like humans, for example) that everyone can join together for a moment to go tell them to eat poo poo.

We don't need to all pretend to be debate club big brain geniuses and hem and haw and write big dissertations about well have you considered this my goon sire? at any old hard right bullshit some rear end in a top hat wants to post.

But you can allow debate club AND keep away the neo-nazis! You don't need to resort to white noise when they drop an opinion, our arguments against them are (usually) air-tight. The way fool of sound handled that situation is basically ideal: Give them room to explain their position and if their explanation sucks or they say nothing, kick 'em out.

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

KingNastidon posted:

What's your position on free university without any constraints given you believe people may spend that time on a "made up rear end field of study"? Is this not an inefficient allocation of resources? Why should we eliminate the debt of people that made the choice to focus on something that is not only worthless, but potentially detrimental to society depending on how they use those credentials? They deserve harm.

It's simple: everyone gets free university if they want it, but they're not allowed to study economics. Given the harm economists have done to our society, it's just good sense- unleashing more Sommers and Greenspans on the world is akin to if a university ran a class on making and mailing pipe bombs, for example.

Dixon Chisholm
Jan 2, 2020
Let's talk about ramps, bay bee
Let's talk about d and d
Let's talk about all the good threads
And the bad threads
Hap pen ing

Epinephrine
Nov 7, 2008
New idea: if you know someone got probed or got a warning for a thing (a mod might know this if you, say, acknowledged the thing), then you go and do it anyway, you get ramped as if you made the other post yourself.

Epinephrine fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Oct 15, 2020

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

OJ MIST 2 THE DICK posted:

no, there's a post in the Athanos thread from an economics professor who said that he was reluctant to post in D&D because he felt there was a hostility to economists on D&D

6 minutes later in the thread someone compared him to a cop and drone bomber and and said that he didn't want people like that posting in D&D

That goes back to my point about subject matter experts. There are a lot of them who post on this site, that won't post here, who are literally the most informed people to be posting in this subforum. And there's quite a bit of hostility towards those who remain. Now, not all of these people are experts on every topic, but the real strength of SA as a community is its role as a brain trust.

And even if you disagreed with "economics", being able to ask someone who is trained in it or understands what economists are talking about, is useful. The same way--if we assume "economics is bunk"--that a chiropractor would be useful in a discussion of whether, say, chiropractic services should be covered by insurance.

"Economists are cops" is the kind of complete garbage that is like... youtube comments. I mean come on.

Classon Ave. Robot
Oct 7, 2019

by Athanatos
If someone with an economics degree wants to post about economics I don't see why they need to point out their degree? If nobody is being forced to respect them based on the fact that they were able to afford to pay for a degree then what's the problem? Their arguments should be able to stand on their own merits regardless of which expensive pieces of paper they own.

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

Aramis posted:

While I agree with this in principle, I have two quibbles with the way that's implemented in practice:

First off, once the initial rally is done, people jumping in to the dogpile pages after the conversation has moved on really is nothing but white noise.

Second, berating effort posters that take the time to actually respond to the vile stuff is straight up terrible. A substantial portion of the population subscribes to some of this horrific stuff, and knowledgeable people providing good rebuttals to that is useful for everyone reading the thread. Heck, we literally had someone request almost these exact talking points for a family member today.

Freakazoid_ posted:

But you can allow debate club AND keep away the neo-nazis! You don't need to resort to white noise when they drop an opinion, our arguments against them are (usually) air-tight. The way fool of sound handled that situation is basically ideal: Give them room to explain their position and if their explanation sucks or they say nothing, kick 'em out.

I think that the white noise dogpiling on legitimately vile poo poo is extremely valuable: it shows, unambiguously, that the ideas are rejected by the community, not the handful of individual posters who are willing to invest the time and energy in to explaining why it's bad. If the cost is having to scroll through a block of "gently caress you, get lost" posts, I think that's a small price to pay.
Moreover, nothing prevents effort posts elaborating specifically why the bad post is so bad, and in my experience these tend to happen anyway, typically conveniently after the block of "gently caress you" posts. The system works, IMO.

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012
I spent approximately 2 minutes writing my refutation. It really isn't hard, and it doesn't have to be a full effortpost like atomickrabs or sneeze of the decade made. All I ask is "this is an awful opinion, and here is why".

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

fool of sound
Oct 10, 2012

Crane Fist posted:

It's simple: everyone gets free university if they want it, but they're not allowed to study economics. Given the harm economists have done to our society, it's just good sense- unleashing more Sommers and Greenspans on the world is akin to if a university ran a class on making and mailing pipe bombs, for example.

"People who study economics are basically terrorists" is pretty obviously nonsense and also not the sort of feedback this thread is for. If you really want to argue that we should permaban all the economists or something I guess do it in the Ath thread but do it at your own peril.

As a reminder, this thread is about ramping policy, threadbans, and subforum bans.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply