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Nietzsche covered most of my points. USPol is a great source for news, and when that news actually gets discussed and doesn't turn into a slapfight by the worst posters, it's a fantastic source for context and background. But I've missed a lot of frankly important poo poo, because I pop in, read several pages of slapfighting, skip ahead 15 pages, and it's still going on. The thread was much more readable when slow mode was active, the fights were harder to get going, easier to put down, and easier to skip. I don't post much, so the 10 minute timer didn't seem to be an issue to me, and news seemed to keep getting posted and with less reposts since people don't have to read through dozens of pages of irrelevant poo poo. The arguments are long, vicious, and make the thread unpleasant to read and keep up with. Moderation needs to be better. If certain posters are constantly in the middle of dozen page slapfights, maybe they shouldn't just get their 123rd sixer. Every once in a while they get ramped, but far more often that turns out to be a one-off, and they go back to getting a string of sixers every couple days, only to come right back in swinging. And related, I don't want to call out specific IKs, but some of them have clearly taken sides in USPol, and it's absurd when they go from taking sides in an argument to declaring that they're aiming to cut down on the clique-fights, especially when the only probes happen to land on the other side of the argument. Tweet posting, now that people are being probed for posting randos without commentary, is better. Could still use some improvements though. Obviously inflammatory or inaccurate tweets should be dealt with quicker. I'm ok with rando tweets with commentary, I feel like knowing the various moods of the country is an important part of USPol, and I'm ok with verified tweets (I'd rather they have some commentary, but posting a news tweet or something like that without commentary, unless it's from The Hill or whatever, I'm generally ok with). I like satirical tweets, but maybe note that they're jokes. So, I guess my suggestions are: slow mode, harsher punishments for people who consistently poo poo the thread up, reign in the IKs a bit, and go just a little bit further with making sure posted tweets are good.
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Jan 5, 2021 22:19
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Grooglon posted:I also use USPol as a news aggregator, but I've found it to be a lot less useful lately. There are two big problems in my opinion. Agree with this post, and the second one in particular. Basically, my preference for USPol would be for people to discuss current events more (with the understanding that there are going to be derails) and for there to be fewer "slapfights" (i.e. arguments aboad broad, ideologically differences that are more about "succlibs" vs. "tankies" team sports than actual discussion). Obviously, when referencing current events, there are times when past elections or Presidents are relevant, but it does seem that a huge portion of the slapfights in the thread revolve around "Obama was bad" or the most recent Democratic primaries. If there is a way to vastly cut down on references to prior administrations, it would alleviate a lot of the circular arguments that lead nowhere, are mostly about posters e-screaming at each other. Also, I know it is difficult to define what a "derail" is, but I think we need to put an a limit on how many pages they're allowed to take up before they become their own thread. The recent DUI one went on for too long (I'm guilty of participating past its expiration date). There are some topics that come up every once in awhile and just devour 20 pages, among them: food, alcohol, how difficult it is to live within one's budget at various levels, superhero movies, and how a person is allowed to feel and react when somebody terrible dies. If the IKs notice one that keeps popping up over and over, maybe we just put a moratorium on the topic for awhile. e: I am against slow mode and I don't think it helps much. The bad posters are the ones who lurk by the button waiting to press it, the good posters just let interesting topics expire because the thread has moved on to either a slapfight or which city makes the best hamurgers.
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Jan 5, 2021 22:23
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:However, I agree that posting tweets from total randos, especially for the purposes of inducing rage, is bad for the thread. I like Discendo Vox's idea of introducing a requirement to identify the Tweet author, to explain why their take is valuable, and also to try to understand any potential reframing or contextualization. I support this. Seriously, people posting a tweet from some random weirdo without telling us why we should care is the worst thing ever. You never know if that guy tweeting is really important for local politics in Colorado for example, or just the poster's neighbor. Why is it so hard to just tell us why that tweeting person is so important their output has to be shared with us? 
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Jan 5, 2021 22:24
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Libluini posted:I support this. Seriously, people posting a tweet from some random weirdo without telling us why we should care is the worst thing ever. You never know if that guy tweeting is really important for local politics in Colorado for example, or just the poster's neighbor. Why is it so hard to just tell us why that tweeting person is so important their output has to be shared with us? I think this is a good idea, and who needs an introduction (a state representative that has not been important on the national stage much, for example) vs. someone like Lee Carter, who probably doesn't need to be introduced every time is something that we can leave at IK discretion.
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Jan 5, 2021 22:28
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catlord posted:And related, I don't want to call out specific IKs, but some of them have clearly taken sides in USPol, and it's absurd when they go from taking sides in an argument to declaring that they're aiming to cut down on the clique-fights, especially when the only probes happen to land on the other side of the argument. This is actually a major problem, I agree.
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Jan 5, 2021 22:29
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I like when mods step in and just end derails by fiat. Seems like a good way to stop the derail without getting bogged down in a bunch of hard to define rules.Sub Par posted:Edit: I do think people could be better about assuming good faith and limiting hyperbole It would be nice if the principle of charity as described in the rules was enforced. The DUI discussion this morning had a ton of extremely angry, wildly uncharitable dog-piling about what others were saying, and there wasn't even a warning. Clamping down on ludicrous misinterpretations of others' posts would help prevent everyone from slapfighting about stuff no one even said, and maybe even keep the derail discussion in the realm of being interesting instead of just seeing who can attack other posters the hardest.
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Jan 5, 2021 22:31
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US Pol is on-and-off readable depending on the news of the day. Sometimes it's a fantastic source for news and leftish commentary. But other times, yeah, it's a nasty slap fight over longstanding grievances and slights or even just basic ideological disagreements. Here are some thoughts I have as someone who reads US Pol just about every day. * In its current form, USPol could seriously benefit from serious enforcement of content guidelines as far as sources and tweets. No more incendiary headlines from The Hill, for example, or out of context hot takes from Twitter randos that are calculated to piss people off. It's extremely easy to fall into the circle-jerk trap of seeking out and posting content that confirms your prejudices, regardless of quality. Make posters liable for the reputability of the sources they post, and nothing like an image or tweet should be posted without some accompanying text or maybe at least a question. * Crack down on shitposting, personal attacks, and general hostility. It's very easy to read something someone else wrote uncharitably, to put it lightly. There's a tendency to assume the worst possible motivations about a poster you disagree with and to just lump them into the category of "those assholes" you probably already hateread on Twitter. Some effort to give people the benefit of the doubt and toning down the hostility might help relax some of the posting wars a bit. * Implementing permanent slow mode makes the thread painful to use and read, regardless of the high volume of shitposts. If I had to trade shitposts for slow mode, I'd prefer poo poo posts. * Splitting up US PoI would be a challenge, but I don't see why we can't try some experiments. In its current form, after the closure of the general election thread, discussions frequently become critiques of the Democratic Party, Biden, Obama, Kamala, Hillary, and so on. For me, at least, this is an extremely valuable discussion and I agree with the majority of the critiques. The problem is the "Democrats sucking poo poo" can become a totalizing topic that overwhelms everything else that's going on in US Politics. Since quarantining "dems are bad" to a separate thread would exclude an important US politics topic, a couple weeks back I suggested creating an additional, more GOP-focused thread to create more space to focus on the insanity going on in the Rebublican Party as well as inter-party politics. I personally like the idea because sometimes I don't want to scroll through six pages of poo poo I mostly agree with and its ndless slapfights before catching up on the latest existential threat to representational democracy. We used to have a Trump thread that in practice operated along these lines. * The fundamental disagreements between the liberals and leftists in D&D aren't going to be solved in a US Pol thread. Forcing it to play out there constantly doesn't really help anyone. It just becomes unreadable and honestly probably stirs up more animosity that way. Delthalaz fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 22:39
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I enjoy lurking USPol and I actively keep up with the thread as it goes, though I've learned to skim through the slap fights. USPol is at its best when someone posts a twitter post from some reporter and there is actual in depth discussion about what it means, and further context is added by additional posters. It's the combination of hard hitting news commentary and actual discussion and dissenting views. I agree with some earlier posts that people who have been constantly probated on USPol should probably lose the ability to post in it. I gravitate towards USPol precisely because it moves fast. Other threads don't seem to quite capture the speed of the news on some days, and it's nice that I can watch the thread as news breaks. When we've done news threads in the past its missed the part that makes USPol special - the actual discussion of the news. With news threads, since it is not the main thread of conversation it tends to move too slow to capture large news moments. I do get it though it's a pain in the rear end to moderate, but if we had view statistics on threads I bet it's way higher than anything else on D&D and possibly most of SA. That's because people want a thread like it. Most news sites are filled with sky is falling (or everything will now be better) style commentary, and I appreciate the posters in USPol who temper some of these things. Trying to get exterminate or split USPol is a fools errand because even with heavy moderation another thread will simply turn into it. This happens because the niche it fills is important and that eventually it will take more moderator effort to keep USPol split then it will to simply moderate the discussion within.
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Jan 5, 2021 22:40
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Actually I’ve changed my mind. “Less moderated” was the wrong choice of words. It just needs to be moderated purely on whether people are obeying the rules of D&D. The problem is the silencing of people who are saying things that are either supported by evidence, or at least falsifiable, and engaging in good faith. This results in competition to be the silencer rather than the silencee and motivates the ugly, seagull-like gaggles that form around anyone who disagrees with a certain point of view that rhymes with a certain viewpoint. Edit - and can we have a filter that replaces the word “electoralism” with the word “democracy”?
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Jan 5, 2021 22:43
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The two biggest issues I have with the current USPol is two bad behaviors that I have no idea at all on how to solve, so apologies for compalints without solutions. They also feel like aspects of the same problem and maybe someone else can offer some insight: 1) Elongated Strawmen: One thing I'll see is people will make a massively overly broad dismissal of some topic, and when people dispute, back off to a slightly more nuanced position while accusing those that disputed with having the diametrically opposed belief. Case in point, because it really annoys me, is the several times people have dismissed economics as an entire discipline. Economics has serious problems but also has a bunch of smart people working in it that can provide a lot of information and insight to support leftist politics. So you get an abreviated paraphrased version of this "Economics is a joke" > "Actually no It's not, it has some use" > "Well I guess it has no problems at all, huh Mr. Laffer" > "actually analysis is good and here's an example" > "Well that's OK but there are BAD ECONOMISTS" > "Yes but some are good" and on and on and on. The fundamental conversation is someone who's studied a lot of history and politics has a lot of encounters with really bad economists, who are in service of bad politics, just as white supremacist historians get used by racist politicians towards racist ends. But we end up having to spend pages to get the initial point back to a more nuanced one. It feels like this:  2) Thread Hivemind: Regularly people explain how "the thread believes" some position on a topic, which is wrong in hindsight, and I, the smartest poster and protagonist of the thread, was correct all along! Not only is this self serving and centering, but frequently that wasn't remotely a major belief of a majority in the posters of the thread. It's a very busy and popular thread, and undoubtedly there is 1 or more people who held a position, or something similar enough, but you end up with more circular arguments like above, where people attempt to explain how actually a lot of folks held positions that were different, and this disagreement with the "hero poster" mindset is seen as being someone who supports the opposite position and we spend 3 pages hashing out whether or not the thread hivemind has been disproved, when it never existed in the first place. I think both of these are problems that involve people not reading the positions of those they are replying to, or misinterpreting the positions of those they are replying to, tied up with the idea that if someone is disagreeing with you, they must your opponent. It's a lot of talking but not a lot of conversation. Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 22:45
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a post from uspol posted:you know, I think the 200th 6 hour is going to really teach <BAD POSTER> this time This is ultimately the problem. It's not that it's not moderated, it's that nobody is willing to really put their foot down. Make all the threads you want you're just going to spread things out.
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Jan 5, 2021 22:50
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I like the thread both for news and the commentary it spurs, which is the problem with splitting it. Even the rando tweets, provided they're funny, insightful, or at least treated like rando tweets rather than given weight they don't have. It's a big problem when -- Tweet from some random person with no history of being an actual insider is treated like an AP headline, no matter how conditional or implausible it is. This is true whether the original poster meant it to inspire rage or not. -- Alternatively, tweet doesn't accurately represent the article headline, which doesn't accurately represent the article itself, which may not even accurately represent its sources. Thread goes on for pages disregarding any content past the tweet itself. -- Bullshit from one of those two cases finally gets settled but all the people who got pulled in continue "Well, it sounds PLAUSIBLE!" like a Facebook grandpa shown a Snopes link. -- Same tweet gets emptyposted three pages later and the whole thing starts again. Bad faith arguments are also a problem. As appealing as the "Just don't respond if you're not going to make an effortpost" sounds, in practice it also leads to low effort hot takes and strawmen just going unchallenged forever, and responses to shitposts being more heavily moderated than shitposts themselves. Not sure there's an easy fix, but there's got to be some kind of sweet spot in rules/moderation and it doesn't feel like the thread is at it. Also holy gently caress have there been a lot of cases of IKs trying to police slapfights they are also participating in. Sometimes in a single "pizza's my favorite sandwich but probes for anyone else who weighs in even if they're cool and agree with me" driveby post. That's utter thread poison regardless of side or topic. Volunteer or not, even the appearance of that kind of moderation is worse than none at all.
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Jan 5, 2021 22:56
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fool of sound posted:I think it needs to be said again that we cannot effectively moderate USpol. In every other thread, when we get reports, we can go read the last page of the thread and usually get the full context and make an informed decision. In the handful of threads where that's not true, like auspol or ukmt, we have a single IK who keeps up with the thread who can do so instead. In USpol, arguments stretch back for pages and are frequently interwoven with a dozen other lines of conversation, and trying to get proper context for USpol reports is a lengthy and incredibly tedious affair. Even with five IKs helping provide coverage so much just falls between the cracks because nobody is routinely keeping up with the thread, and given my own experiences as a USpol specific IK, it's not really reasonable to ask someone to do so. This is a volunteer position, not a job; we're not around at all hours and have limited time and energy to spend on the forums. If you think USPOL is incapable of being moderated, I think we should find more and/or different moderators. The issue is not that there are rules that can't be enforced, it's that y'all have appointed a set of IKs who are actively participating in the constant in-fighting and using it to own their enemies, thus exacerbating the longer-term problem of inconsistent and unfair application of the rules that we nominally had. The problem here is coming from inside the moderation team, it's not that USPOL suddenly became much worse through no fault of anyone's. Trying to shift blame onto the very nature of the thread is just an effort to ignore the actual issue with the staff. eke out fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 23:00
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fool of sound posted:I think it needs to be said again that we cannot effectively moderate USpol. In every other thread, when we get reports, we can go read the last page of the thread and usually get the full context and make an informed decision. In the handful of threads where that's not true, like auspol or ukmt, we have a single IK who keeps up with the thread who can do so instead. In USpol, arguments stretch back for pages and are frequently interwoven with a dozen other lines of conversation, and trying to get proper context for USpol reports is a lengthy and incredibly tedious affair. Even with five IKs helping provide coverage so much just falls between the cracks because nobody is routinely keeping up with the thread, and given my own experiences as a USpol specific IK, it's not really reasonable to ask someone to do so. This is a volunteer position, not a job; we're not around at all hours and have limited time and energy to spend on the forums. 
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Jan 5, 2021 23:05
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eke out posted:If you think USPOL is incapable of being moderated, I think we should find more and/or different moderators. On the other end of this, as long as I've read D&D people have complained that the moderators are "whatever the opposite of my beliefs are and moderating to suppress dissent". Peopel who like to argue are going to argue when they get punished for arguing. But I do agree that IK's should not be involved in slapfights. If you are going to volunteer to IK, then your participation in actual discussion needs to be minimal and informational.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:08
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Jaxyon posted:On the other end of this, as long as I've read D&D people have complained that the moderators are "whatever the opposite of my beliefs are and moderating to suppress dissent". That doesn't apply here, because we have a situation where two of the four IKs in the thread have, in the past, voiced enormous disdain for the people whose debates and discussions they're now moderating.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:16
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Jaxyon posted:One thing I'll see is people will make a massively overly broad dismissal of some topic, and when people dispute, back off to a slightly more nuanced position while accusing those that disputed with having the diametrically opposed belief. Someone in the new atheist movement coined a term referring to the basic form of this as the "motte and bailey" strategy. A ridiculous, indefensible position that you immediately retreat from into an obvious and defensible one, while leaving your opponent to deal with your prevarication between the two. Pick posted:You're only allowed to post in one of those threads, like the Pokemon teams in Pokemon Go where each one has a representative magic bird and you've got to choose which bird you want to gently caress. 
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Jan 5, 2021 23:17
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eke out posted:The problem here is coming from inside the moderation team, it's not that USPOL suddenly became much worse through no fault of anyone's. Trying to shift blame onto the very nature of the thread is just an effort to ignore the actual issue with the staff. Each of the last several sets of moderators has tried to close or split USpol because it's a consistant problem. It is largely unique for being both extremely fast busy and very contentious. I don't have multiple hours every day just to deal with the reports USPOL generates, let alone monitor a single thread that gets the majority of all posts in the subforum, and more mods is going to mean less consistancy, not more.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:21
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fool of sound posted:Each of the last several sets of moderators has tried to close or split USpol because it's a consistant problem. It is largely unique for being both extremely fast busy and very contentious. I don't have multiple hours every day just to deal with the reports USPOL generates, let alone monitor a single thread that gets the majority of all posts in the subforum, and more mods is going to mean less consistancy, not more. Thorn Wishes Talon posted:As multiple other posters have correctly and rightfully pointed out, the foremost reason you're having to do this is because of extreme lenience towards and reluctance to thread-ban repeat offenders, of which there are only a handful — and they are very easy to identify, because whenever they aren't around, the conversations revert back to being reasonable and informative.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:24
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Youth Decay posted:I come to USPol after breaking news but I can't follow it for more than a few pages because it always distingrates into Dems Bad. I don't mind some derails but if I wanted to see people bring up the same old poo poo about how terrible LIBERALS are there's This really is a huge problem too if not THE problem with USPOL that is the source of most of the other ones mentioned in this thread IMO. Oftentimes it can feel like something huge can be happening in the world of U.S Politics that warrants analysis and is undoubtedly and imminently discussion worthy....and yet there's a really good chance that while just about everywhere that is invested in politics is knee deep in the story, if I come to USPOL expecting in depth discussion on that pertinent topic I'll instead be greeted with the latest redux of how nothing is worse than centrist Democrats and a whole lot of histrionics and frankly whining about how people (who probably don't even care compared to whatever fresh horror the GOP has cooked up that is unfortunately probably said big story nowadays) were told so about this apparent fact of life and how that's apparently the biggest problem there is still. It's exactly what I mean about VERY specific axe to grind posting that if it's going to be so honed in on with the accuracy of a Navy Seal sniper probably needs if not warrants it's own discussion thread for it. Like if people really want to have it about that very specific topic (within the scope of the rules, but that's a whole other can of worms) then absolutely let them....just for the love of god please give it it's own thread that it clearly all but warrants at that level of fixation and apparent need to be THE central topic most days of the week in USPOL. That way the other general topics that most people in the political sphere are concerned about day in and day out will get their due consideration as well. It really strikes me as a no brainer that is extremely overdue, especially since those people don't seem interested in the greater scope of U.S Politics as a whole, just one VERY specific sub-topic. I really don't see why a topic that's apparently that singularly important to so many regulars doesn't have it's own thread yet.....
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Jan 5, 2021 23:25
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fool of sound posted:Each of the last several sets of moderators has tried to close or split USpol because it's a consistant problem. It is largely unique for being both extremely fast busy and very contentious. I don't have multiple hours every day just to deal with the reports USPOL generates, let alone monitor a single thread that gets the majority of all posts in the subforum, and more mods is going to mean less consistancy, not more. You're right that more mods has created less consistency in the thread, but it's not because consistent moderation is impossible, it's because you've chosen poorly and allowed them to get totally out of hand.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:25
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Slow News Day posted:That doesn't apply here, because we have a situation where two of the four IKs in the thread have, in the past, voiced enormous disdain for the people whose debates and discussions they're now moderating. This sounds to me like "but this time, it actually is true that the moderators who are, in fact, succdems and hate morality" This thread would be a great place to actually hash that out, if thats what is happening, but what you said is exactly what always gets said.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:30
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Discendo Vox posted:Someone in the new atheist movement coined a term referring to the basic form of this as the "motte and bailey" strategy. A ridiculous, indefensible position that you immediately retreat from into an obvious and defensible one, while leaving your opponent to deal with your prevarication between the two. Yeah, I recall it coming from someone kinda lovely about a bunch of other topics, but that observation always felt like a sound description of a certain style of argument, which I haven't seen encapsulated cleanly elsewhere. It's not the same as a gish gallop since it has a position that actually is defensible. It just uses that defensible position to prop up mostly unrelated bullshit.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:30
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The minimum probation in USPol needs to be 24 hours. Consider it a high risk/high reward thread. Slow mode was good. If the primary function for the thread is a news aggregator, there’s no reason you need to post more frequently than once per ten minutes.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:31
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Suggestion: Rather than break it up into smaller threads, would it make sense to retool the thread as a sort of index (with links) for a new subforum of US(Pol) Current Events? By bookmarking the thread, people would still get their single-thread feed of news which they seem to value, and any subsequent discussion would be taken to individual, easier-to-follow and easier-to-moderate threads in that new subforum.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:33
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Moderation is not consistent at all and seems to feel more like whether or not the Mod agrees with the ideology . We need consistency. Sometimes people get hit with probes and it's like why did that get hit and not the other ones.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:34
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Reminder that if you have suggestions for IKs or mods, you can pm them to any dnd mod or athanatos. I genuinely appreciate the suggestions.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:34
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Killer robot posted:Yeah, I recall it coming from someone kinda lovely about a bunch of other topics, but that observation always felt like a sound description of a certain style of argument, which I haven't seen encapsulated cleanly elsewhere. It's not the same as a gish gallop since it has a position that actually is defensible. It just uses that defensible position to prop up mostly unrelated bullshit. Nicholas Shackel was the "inventor", not sure of his background actually.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:34
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One of the main contributors to D&D, the creator of the Polliwonks thread and the exceptionally good Book Review thread, had to stop posting entirely because of harassment by dint of becoming an IK. If the solution is "oh, we'll ideologically balance the IKs and that'll make you happy", it doesn't if it means both sides get +1IK, but then within a few weeks one clique's IK has been forced off the entire website due to threats of doxxing and harassment. And considering that situation was in no way resolved or even addressed, the offer of "making more IKs you like" is honestly just a way to identify and target users who are important to that part of the community.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:41
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Going the other way and saying there needs to be less moderation. I've been posting in various politics threads in SA since 2007, there's never been as heavy handed and arbitrary probation as I've seen in current day USPol. There'll be disingenuous posters or ones with flat out terrible views, but unless its a form of an -ism (racism, sexism, bigotry), letting people argue it out is the best panacea. Having mods and IKs jumping in to kick people out for whatever reason needs to be carefully calibrated, otherwise less and less people are gonna post.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:45
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The Artificial Kid posted:The biggest problem I’ve seen in USPOL is people dogpiling and using reports to eliminate people they disagree with. It’s a bit like high schools with zero tolerance policies where victims get suspended for fighting. Someone can say something completely factual, honest, polite and not motivated by any kind of malice, and because the facts are not acceptable to a group of posters they’ll make sure that it turns into a slap fight and get the person probated rather than arguing out the ideas/facts of the matter. This shouldn't be a viable strategy for "winning" debates, but I've had this happen to me in the past as well and found it pretty frustrating if not a little disgusting. It's often plainly obvious what a person is getting at in these instances and yet there's this willful ignorance by certain parties to miscontrue the completely benign post as something heinous because it comes from a poster that they probably butted heads with some time before and that they have a grievance with and want to "own" in the thread. Then that person basically becomes forced to defend themselves (not actually possible because they're arguing against willful ignorance and prejudice) by explaining again and again what should be bleedingly loving obvious to anyone reading it in good faith versus the dogpile of bad faith willfully ignorant reads. Eventually so much white noise is generated in the back and forth that everyone just gets probated including the person that clearly wasn't instigating anything and just trying to reconfirm their intentions and opinions against the sea of flagrant bullshit reads mischaracterizing them as some kind of monster. Like nobody wants to be mistaken as a Nazi, that's part of the whole strategy. It's the kind of tactics in debating that I'd expect from far right Trumpers or someone like Ben Shapiro looking to own the libs and flood the zone with poo poo, not people that often couch it all with self-titling of progressive politics and leftism. I'd also put it in the category of knowing it when you see it happening when it comes to moderation as well. Like it's all but always super bleedingly obvious what the intent and actual opinion being put forth was versus the bad read posting rival takes on it.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:47
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Shageletic posted:Going the other way and saying there needs to be less moderation. I've been posting in various politics threads in SA since 2007, there's never been as heavy handed and arbitrary probation as I've seen in current day USPol. There'll be disingenuous posters or ones with flat out terrible views, but unless its a form of an -ism (racism, sexism, bigotry), letting people argue it out is the best panacea. Less moderated spaces already exist. D&D does not need to become them.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:48
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I think on at least two occasions I've made like some benign posts and got immediately responded with "Finally going mask off eh!?", or just vile personal attacks. It's not about debate, it's about gathering evidence to confirm your biases that this person is an Enemy, and all debate and discussion is essentially under false pretenses to gather that evidence, not to debate view points between people who are fundamentally on the same side.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:51
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:Less moderated spaces already exist. D&D does not need to become them. We are talking about a single thread, not D&D as a whole. Other unmoderated spaces don’t allow the troublemakers to feel that they’ve stuck it to the people they don’t like, so they keep advancing until they find a space where they can flex and where there are victims to flex on. Nothing outside D&D will satisfy that need, but the victims need to be able to argue back without being probed.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:55
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The Artificial Kid posted:We are talking about a single thread, not D&D as a whole. Other unmoderated spaces don’t allow the troublemakers to feel that they’ve stuck it to the people they don’t like, so they keep advancing until they find a space where they can flex and where there are victims to flex on. Nothing outside D&D will satisfy that need, but the victims need to be able to argue back without being probed. Okay, but we've had many posters (and lurkers) in this thread post along the lines of "USPol is great, except when there are slapfights" and the only thing less moderation will lead to is increase the frequency and magnitude of those slapfights and alienate those users.
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Jan 5, 2021 23:57
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:Okay, but we've had many posters (and lurkers) in this thread post along the lines of "USPol is great, except when there are slapfights" and the only thing less moderation will lead to is increase the frequency and magnitude of those slapfights and alienate those users. If someone is saying things that at least bear some organised relationship to evidence/experience, and saying them reasonably politely and not being overtly hostile to others on the basis of race/religion/sexuality/etc (even if people think the person has unexamined prejudices that they are unknowingly expressing) they should be able to say their piece. Instead, a lot of probations are handed out on the basis of the presumed beliefs or motivations of a poster who is being perfectly polite and reasonable. The thread needs to be moderated, not gardened. It’s ok if it contains wrong ideas. It’s not ok if becomes a place where certain facts can’t be spoken.
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Jan 6, 2021 00:10
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fool of sound posted:Each of the last several sets of moderators has tried to close or split USpol because it's a consistant problem. It is largely unique for being both extremely fast busy and very contentious. I don't have multiple hours every day just to deal with the reports USPOL generates, let alone monitor a single thread that gets the majority of all posts in the subforum, and more mods is going to mean less consistancy, not more. This is again, the result of an unwillingness to actually take a stand on dealing with toxic posters, the last couple DnD mods have had the exact same problem if not worse. We have posters, IKs even, straight up leaving the forum because they are afraid of these posters. What the gently caress
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Jan 6, 2021 00:14
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The Artificial Kid posted:Instead, a lot of probations are handed out on the basis of the presumed beliefs or motivations of a poster who is being perfectly polite and reasonable. The thread needs to be moderated, not gardened. It’s ok if it contains wrong ideas. It’s not ok if becomes a place where certain facts can’t be spoken. I think rather a lot of probations are handed out to people who are behaving badly, but interpreting the moderation as if their ideas are being moderated. This leads to people getting probed for being jerks and then other posters saying "well I guess I can't express that viewpoint anymore in here/Help I'm being oppressed" In situations where the probe was obviously for behavior not ideas.
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Jan 6, 2021 00:15
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Jaxyon posted:
Please, please just make a rule about this, it's the worst. Any time somebody says "this thread believes" or starts arguing with "you people," you know it's going to get bad, and probably for pages. Address the poster you're talking to and not some bogeyman hivemind, and address the points that they're making and not "Of course YOU'D believe that" stuff. Anyone who posts "Ah, I see USPol is having a normal one" should eat a day.
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Jan 6, 2021 00:18
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Discendo Vox posted:One thing that's been better very recently specifically because there's been a degree of enforcement on dropping random twitter posts into the space. Twitter as a format breeds decontextualization and reactance. People see something, get mad, and are incentivized to effortlessly spread it without considering the source or context. Rules specifically addressing sourcing and preventing this pattern would be helpful. This does not mean that sharing all tweets is bad, but means that the practice requires some form of constraint. One possible option: require that users posting tweets also take the time to identify the person posting the tweet (including any reframing or contextualization work that's being done), and actually quote the material linked in the tweet. This...this really shouldn't be a burden to people. This was a really good point (and there are a lot of them in this thread--I'm pleasantly surprised).  Jaxyon posted:1) Elongated Strawmen: One thing I'll see is people will make a massively overly broad dismissal of some topic, and when people dispute, back off to a slightly more nuanced position while accusing those that disputed with having the diametrically opposed belief. Case in point, because it really annoys me, is the several times people have dismissed economics as an entire discipline. Economics has serious problems but also has a bunch of smart people working in it that can provide a lot of information and insight to support leftist politics. So you get an abreviated paraphrased version of this "Economics is a joke" > "Actually no It's not, it has some use" > "Well I guess it has no problems at all, huh Mr. Laffer" > "actually analysis is good and here's an example" > "Well that's OK but there are BAD ECONOMISTS" > "Yes but some are good" and on and on and on. The fundamental conversation is someone who's studied a lot of history and politics has a lot of encounters with really bad economists, who are in service of bad politics, just as white supremacist historians get used by racist politicians towards racist ends. But we end up having to spend pages to get the initial point back to a more nuanced one. This was really good too, and the image made me laugh. That's really how it feels reading the thread sometimes--people just endlessly choosing the worst possible five-second hot-take interpretation of a statement made and running like the wind. Thorn Wishes Talon posted:Less moderated spaces already exist. D&D does not need to become them. This. Holy poo poo. I don't know about automatic 24 hour probations like one poster mentioned, but ramp that poo poo up somehow. If you get a second sixer in the same week, it's a 12. A third is a 20. A forth means you're done posting for a week. Two weeks out in a month? Take the next month off. The problem solves itself. If you can't loving control yourself enough to not get probed repeatedly then that shouldn't be a problem for other posters. (Edit: And if there's really a moderation problem and someone's getting targeted, posters on this forum seem to be pretty good at pointing it out, IMO?) It's amazing to me to open someone's rap sheet and see an endless list of 6 hour probations on a daily (or even weekly?!) basis. I also like the idea re: if you're on X number of folks' ignore lists, then you could potentially get thread banned. This is open to abuse, obviously, via the upthread mention of dogpiles, so it would have to be used very carefully, but holy poo poo, if a significant percentage (majority?) of the thread has gone out of their way to not be subjected to whatever falls out of your pie hole then perhaps you shouldn't be posting. As far as mods being wrong/biased/assholes/whatever...eh...I've 100% disagreed with some calls that have been made (and have had mods just ignore the gently caress out of PMs, which is a bad look regardless--it takes 30 seconds to even reply with "leave me the gently caress alone", c'mon), but I also know it's a lovely job that someone's doing for free, so am hesitant to start lighting torches. I really think that this is mostly a problem with the "usual suspect" posters and less of a problem with moderation, thread structure, or overall discussion.
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Jan 6, 2021 00:20
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