Posting and discussing sources: a D&D feedback thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Posting and discussing sources: a D&D feedback thread

Cefte: Sep 18, 2004; tranquil consciousness

fool of sound posted:

what should the expectations be for posted sources? How responsible are posters for the sources they post?

The only expectation I have of a posted source is that it's readable - people who post tweets which are then immediately deleted, leaving nothing but the gripping commentary of 'wow' by the poster should be permabanned.

People post 'bad' sources because 'bad' sources are a core part of our current political landscape, and even a clearly false statement in a propaganda mouthpiece is worth raising as evidence of a school of thought.

If they're relying on a 'bad' source on a point of fact, you can refute them with multiple 'good' sources. If you can't, then you're faced with a matter of opinion, and it's an awful, horrible, loving horrendous idea to suggest that moderators or IKs should be deciding that particular named sources are banned from threads - if someone keeps spamming Seth Abramson, there's an ignore function.

None of the above applies to a literal stranger off twitter (apart from the readability issue) - I think Vox's suggestion for requiring contextualisation is bang on the money for that one.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2021 00:06

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:50

Cefte: Sep 18, 2004; tranquil consciousness

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

No, this absolutely should not become the expectation, because it takes far more effort to refute a bad source with multiple good sources, than to post that bad source in the first place. This is such a widespread problem that there is even a name for it: Bullshit Asymmetry Principle

Just like how the burden of proof lies with the person making a claim, the burden of showing that the source being posted is a good source should lie with the person posting it. Expecting others to do the harder work of refuting that source is ridiculous.

You seem to be confusing the act of 'debate' with something that can be replaced with moderation. Yes, debate is difficult! Yes, it takes effort to nail a slippery character! That's the point!

If people try a Gish Gallop, then, by all means, as has been the case (unevenly) for ten years, catch them on failure to respond to effort with effort, but handing mods & IKs the power to literally blacklist named sources entirely destroys the premise of an open debate forum. Sorry, you can't cite the IRGC in this discussion about Iran; they're not a good source. Sorry, you can't cite Krugman, he's almost heterodox!

I mean, christ, after the debasement of traditional media over the last ten years and the ongoing fracture between center-liberal and left media, not to mention the ever-present accusations of ideological moderation, you really want to endorse that?

UCS Hellmaker posted:

Great example.is anyone using rt tweets or articles as a source, a propaganda arm is not something that should be considered good faith, and it be the same as someone linking breitbart articles or the daily stormer, almost certainly false or so completely out of context that the underlying quote or story is completely different from what's written.

Yes, indeed, only Russian state media is a propaganda arm, let's ban them, and not, for example, Voice of America or the BBC, because Russia Today is the same as the Daily Stormer. Let's also ban CCTV, and then we can quote Tom Friedman articles at each other until our moustaches bleach and turn to dust in the cleansing light of the holy atom.

Kchama posted:

Part of the problem that caused all this to happen is that people were posting misleading bullshit and presenting it as real because they didn't bother to check the article or whatever, leaving to a pretty constant headache of people posting bullshit tweets designed to stir up outrage and then people having to go into the article to point out that the headline/tweeter is lying about what the article says and in the mean time there's several pages of people tantruming over what had been posting and also nobody saw the correction so it gets brought up later as being true. So I'd rather not go with 'post all the bullshit propaganda you like! Everyone else has to work ten times harder to refute you!' nonsense.

That's not a problem with 'sources', that's a problem with posters, and to a lesser extent, to twitter users. There are a bunch of twitter academics who get posted on and off in D&D who provide both analysis and opinion (Don Moynihan, Krugman, whatever), who have turned me around on 'twitter is a worthless hellhole', but a poster or random twitter user's editorialization of a source is not an argument for blacklisting sources, it's an argument for punishing direct misrepresentation of a text, which has been standard for donkey's years.

It's not a justification for another unpolled plebiscite to further empower D&D moderation to place guiderails on organic debate.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2021 20:10

Cefte: Sep 18, 2004; tranquil consciousness

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Where did you get the idea that I am calling for blacklisting sources?

This is a thread about moderator-enforced regulation of sources in debate. You chose to elide the specifier in my post regarding debate on 'point of fact', thus generalising the argument to all discussion, and posted to reject that position.

Here's the paragraph I posted.

Cefte posted:

If they're relying on a 'bad' source on a point of fact, you can refute them with multiple 'good' sources. If you can't, then you're faced with a matter of opinion, and it's an awful, horrible, loving horrendous idea to suggest that moderators or IKs should be deciding that particular named sources are banned from threads - if someone keeps spamming Seth Abramson, there's an ignore function.

And here's your reply.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Cefte posted:
If they're relying on a 'bad' source on a point of fact, you can refute them with multiple 'good' sources.
No, this absolutely should not become the expectation, because it takes far more effort to refute a bad source with multiple good sources, than to post that bad source in the first place. This is such a widespread problem that there is even a name for it: Bullshit Asymmetry Principle

Just like how the burden of proof lies with the person making a claim, the burden of showing that the source being posted is a good source should lie with the person posting it. Expecting others to do the harder work of refuting that source is ridiculous.

Is it that your position is largely unrelated to the content of the paragraph you selectively quoted? Because if so, I suggest that you avoid further confusion by stating your position as a standalone, to avoid the appearance of engagement.

Or are you asserting, in this thread about moderator regulation of sources used in debate, that your ringing rejection of the use of debate to determine points of fact in no way implied that the replacement was moderation? Because I find that difficult to follow, and in the absence of you actually enunciating your position, I suggest you expand on it.

Or is there another path, that you can best bring forward in your own words? Because, again, I suggest you take the opportunity to flesh it out.

Cefte fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jan 31, 2021

# ¿ Jan 31, 2021 22:02

Cefte: Sep 18, 2004; tranquil consciousness

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Cefte posted:
You sound unnecessarily combative. Maybe you didn't intend to come across that way, but you do.

That's alright, I'm not particularly concerned by your feelings regarding my posts' tone, particularly given the effort you're making to elide their content.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I stated my position in the first reply to the OP. I don't have a strong stance on whether mods should blacklist certain sources that are intended to be propaganda; I can see the arguments going both ways. I simply demonstrated why your particular argument opposing it is a deeply and fundamentally flawed one.

No, you asserted it, which is different from demonstrating it. I don't mean to be glib, but for someone who has rejected the premise that proving a point in a debate can require disproportionate effort, there's a certain dark irony that you're equating your own assertions with proofs.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I object to the suggestion that bad sources should be refuted using multiple good ones, and that it is not a problem if this places a disproportionate burden on posters who are objecting to the bad source. Your follow-up response of "yes, debate is difficult" is not a convincing one either.

So, to clarify, you object to the assertion that the appropriate management of the use of a 'bad' source on a point of fact is counter-citation and debate. What do you propose is the appropriate management?

Cefte fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Feb 1, 2021

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 00:02

Cefte: Sep 18, 2004; tranquil consciousness

Discendo Vox posted:

No one's proposing that mods run a blacklist of sources. That's obviously unnecessary and a burden on moderators. People talk about a blacklist specifically to make the idea of dealing with this stuff seem like too much work, and make the mods=censors argument.

Really?

Freakazoid_ posted:

We should probably have a blacklist or whitelist of acceptable/unacceptable sources, because once in a long while some goon will drop blackcrimestatistic.jpg and wonder why they got a ban+month.

UCS Hellmaker posted:

Great example.is anyone using rt tweets or articles as a source, a propaganda arm is not something that should be considered good faith, and it be the same as someone linking breitbart articles or the daily stormer, almost certainly false or so completely out of context that the underlying quote or story is completely different from what's written.

Deteriorata posted:

If a news item is legit, you should be able to find a reference to it in something more reliable. Putting the Washington Examiner on a blacklist is reasonable.

fool of sound posted:

I'm less interested in black listing sources, outside of egregious cases, and more interested guidelines for how posters should interact with sources. It's a moderation issue when posters misrepresent what their source says, its probably a moderation issue when a poster embeds a tweet of someone else misrepresent a source, but is it a moderation issue when a poster only reads a clickbait headline and writes some incendiary take based solely on that? Is it a moderation issue when someone agrees with a racist editorial that was published in the Washington Post it New York Times? Similarly, where does media criticism become dismissing a valid source for ideological reasons? These are more the sort of questions I want to work out. I'm not going to maintain a white/blacklist.

That's only between the start of the thread and the middle of the second page, when fool of sound put it to bed. Straight-faced requests for blacklisting preceded push-back against the same, and it demeans your argument to pretend otherwise.

Discendo Vox posted:

God help us we might actually have some loving nuance around here.

**You can't moderate your way to a better forum.** You appear to be confused, my friend; 4chan's /b is in a different tab; try your homepage.

Irony aside, the assertion I suspect you're paraphrasing badly is this one:

Cefte posted:

You can't generate good content through moderation, the problem doesn't scale. You can certainly kill it with moderation, though.

On the positive, your proposed checklist, once implemented, will end with a bunch of lazy posters probated, and would, accepting as a given your rosy perception of established norms, end up with every poster at least skimming the article they post.

Those are good things. They're not an increase in good content generation, they're a decrease in bad content generation, but if implemented in the best possible fashion, they'll increase the average quality of sourced posts in the forum.

On the neutral, posts by posters who have an ideological axe to grind (this is all posters, but fill in your desired out-group) will be largely unaffected by the proforma, like so:

Barkane, the climate-change denying dog posted:

Here's a quote from Roy Spencer, a tenured climatologist and an ex-NASA chief scientist for climate studies: his opinion on anthropogenic climate change is really relevant! I'm quoting his blog, so it's direct from the man himself!

Badislav, the small verdant human posted:

Here's some video of Ukranian fascist atrocities against peaceful Ukrano-Russians. It's direct from the source of our totally not Russian peacekeeping forces, and while they're obviously directly involved in the conflict, it's footage direct from theatre!

Beigel-Ding, the pastry with a PhD posted:

Here's a qualified healthcare expert, who is also a pastry, and who has been right about a lot of things as a result of a college minor in static horology, here to talk about the ongoing pandemic on Twitter.

Cooptation of academically qualified researchers is a trick old enough to draw a pension; on a similarly geriatric note, venerable scientists daily degenerate to the point that they mistake their area of expertise for general authority, or simply let the racism seep out of their amygdala. All that is aside from some random with a video on twitter: almost the definition of an unverified source, but is it the new Ngo, or Darnella Frazier? If they fill out the proforma with 'this is direct video of a breaking news event', what happens?

That's the crux for me, and the core source of negative outcomes that can outweigh the good, depending on implementation. The question remains open: what happens when someone (a poster, an idiot king, a mod) disagrees with credibility assessment provided by another poster? Here's the prompt that started this thread:

quote:

Some topics for discussion, by no means exhaustive:
---Clickbait articles with misleading headlines
---lovely editorials written to drive negative social media engagement
---Posting articles as an embedded tweet with an attached hot take
---Debating the validity of sources, or expressing skepticism about facts or subtext
---Discussing a useful article from a normally bad source, or vice-versa

Clickbait articles, lovely editorials and hot-take tweets are either unaffected by the proforma (here is an article that discusses a relevant topic, here is a published commentary in a local/national/international publication that is germane to the current political situation), or there are consequences for misrepresenting the credibility of the source, which, in the majority of cases that will actually occur, will devolve into a matter of opinion. This is not an argument for people posting A. Wyatt Mann cartoons - we have extant and working rules on racism, sexism and other bigotries, that this problem is purportedly in addition to. Debating the validity of sources or expressing scepticism about facts or subtext is, to bang the drum again, debate. Outside of a very tiny amount of topics, it's the core activity of the subform. We're not a journalistic editorial board, weighing up the content we've generated in-house for a broader audience. We're an internet forum that lives and dies off discussion of external sources. Until quite recently, posting about your lived experience was considered bad manners and the sign of a lacking argument, and if it becomes a commonplace occurrence that moderators are empowered to control the introduction of content through outside sources, that will close the tap on broad swathes of what are clearly ongoing debates.

So, where does that leave us? If the only outcome is you get probated for not filling out the proforma, it's neutral to good - some people will read articles they might not have, some tweets will be given appropriate context, and nothing will really be lost. On the other hand, if this consultation thread results in a 'consensus' that empowers:

Then that's worse than a blacklist, because it removes the point of contact between distinct ideologies from the sphere of debate, and places them smack bang in the hands of individual superusers, to be managed ex post facto, and to entrench a chilling effect. I value the breadth of ideological and personal opinion on these forums, and I value the friction between them, and I value that friction occurring through contact, rather than in inevitable meta-arguments centred around moderation decisions. That's not a statement preference against the presence of any moderation - it's a warning that moderation should not be advocated for as a substitute for debate.

Cefte fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Feb 11, 2021

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 18:21

Cefte: Sep 18, 2004; tranquil consciousness

Slow News Day posted:

It doesn't matter if DV's paraphrasing it badly, because it is a false claim anyway. I used to moderate a political forum that saw much more traffic than SA back when the latter was at its peak, and I've seen what is possible with good, effective moderation. Its effect is actually the complete opposite of what you are claiming: well-moderated spaces encourage people to post high quality content, and discourage the opposite and punish it when it happens.

I personally feel that SA's D&D has been a largely well-moderated space for the time I've been here, largely because there were clear guardrails that prevented individual moderators (and subsequently IKs) from directly injecting their own biases into the moderation of the discussion. I suspect we agree on the core assertion: motivated users produce content, not mods, because there are more of them. We disagree on the balance: "less" moderation that allows descent into noise is clearly a bad thing, but I suggest that "more" moderation, when that moderation empowers individuals to shape debate according to their own biases, is also a bad thing, because it exerts a chilling effect on the discourse.

Slow News Day posted:

Presumably, the issue is raised (either via PMs, or in a subsequent iteration of these feedback threads, or in QCS if it's egregious and urgent), the moderetor's decision is compared against the written guidelines (which we are about to have, thanks to DV) and the system is fine-tuned. The goal is not immediate perfection, and just because immediate perfection is not possible is not an argument towards not even trying new moderation policies or working towards improving existing ones.

You seem to have misinterpreted my question: nothing in Vox's guidelines empowers a moderator to probate or ban a poster solely because that moderator disagrees on a qualitative level with the description of a source provided by a poster. You are taking the moderation action as a given, which is remarkable, because nothing in Vox's post suggests it.

Slow News Day posted:

Arguments from futility suck, especially when they come from an ex-moderator of the space.

I would suggest that arguing for a balanced, even-handed and pre-defined ruleset is not an argument from futility, but then again, I was never a moderator.

Jarmak posted:

I feel like this post was sealed in a time capsule from 2009. I sympathize with it at some level, because it reads like something I would have ardently believed and/or posted myself, but it is stunning in its myopic refusal to learn anything from the last ten-plus years deliberate targeting, by fascist propaganda, of this particular weakness in the belief of the supremacy of discourse as a means to arrive at truth.

Yes, making judgements is difficult. Yes, empowering authority figures to make decision about basic credibility carries risk. But we've all spent the last decade, particularly the last four years, getting beaten bloody with the objective reality of just how completely unworkable and exploitable the alternative is.

Think of it as a post sealed in a time capsule from 2019 to the present day, when bad-faith source control across a Western country's entire institutional media persists as a primary tool to exclude the left from political discourse. I understand, very well, that your most pressing concern in a United States post-2020 election may be locking down fascist propaganda, but please, have the courtesy to recognise that we are not all American, and that our own political experiences are not myopic or outdated because they have fundamentally differed from yours.

Cefte fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Feb 11, 2021

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 20:09

Cefte: Sep 18, 2004; tranquil consciousness

Jaxyon posted:

Where are you posting from, speaking fluent english, where rising fascist propaganda isn't a concern?

I'm posting from the UK, where our fluency in English extends to discerning that gulf that exists between 'most pressing concern' and 'isn't a concern'.

Cefte fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Feb 12, 2021

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 13:29

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:50

Cefte: Sep 18, 2004; tranquil consciousness

Deteriorata posted:

Expanding the definition of "propaganda" to include anything ever written by anyone seems a bit overly broad.

I suspect that Bernays would find the contraction of propaganda to exclude the hundred leading newspaper and magazine editors to be somewhat narrow.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 17:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Posting and discussing sources: a D&D feedback thread