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I see CSPAM as a distinct community, but not a monoculture, if that makes any sense at all. Like I think we all have broadly shared values but those values shape different corners of this forum in different ways. (I'm not really talking about different opinions but, say, the ways that the more chatty threads are different from the more topic focused threads, are different from the threads focused more on activism or specifically on Marxism, and so forth) Which I think is mostly good but can lead to some odd tensions you don't necessarily see anywhere else on the forums. Like for example most of the mods coming from the high traffic chattier threads can lead to a large swath of CSPAM feeling under or unrepresented. (Look for example at the IKs, who are drawn from a wider background, generally not being targets of the venom aimed (rightly or wrongly) at the mods. What I like most about CSPAM is that it's a place where conversations are free to happen. What I mean is that if I say something stupid, or something that just goes against the grain of the thread, I might be argued with, ignored, told I'm an idiot or to go gently caress myself, but no one (or at least no one whose opinion matters) will tell me I'm talking about things the wrong way. And, particularly as I get older, there's no loving time for Roberts Rules of Bullshit. There's things I'm less fond of but rather than post about those (right now at least), my supper is ready and while I'm not gonna post about it I am gonna eat it.
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Jun 25, 2021 00:29
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To understand CSPAM is basically to understand that there are three or four distinct CSPAMs. This isn't really a problem in my opinion, but failing to understand that, particularly when attempting to moderate, is. Part of the difficulty here is that people, including and especially moderators here, fall into seeing their corner of CSPAM as if it were the whole thing. We're all in cloisters and we might occasionally pass by a window. That's not even a judgment on any given mod. There is no way in hell anyone could keep up with every thread, and that means in this case not really being familiar with a significant number of posters or the context in which they post, and when you're expected to moderate those people, well, we've seen how it can go wrong. What's the solution? hosed if I know, though leaning on IKs to keep things in order seems to be halfway working. And, not for nothing, I get not wanting people taking cheap shots at D&D or wherever, but we're gonna have to talk about CSPAM's difficult relationship with other forums on SA sooner or later. If it needs to be later, that's cool but the problems there are real, they're not just limited to a few bad eggs (on whichever side) and they will not go away on their own. And I don't know what the solution is there either, but not talking about it isn't it. And that conversation needs to be at least as candid as the rest of this.
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Jun 25, 2021 04:35
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For my part, I don't see the existence of "off-topic" or chat threads as a problem. Which isn't to say that every such thread is good, but CSPAM is, again, a community (or rather several communities) first and a politics-focused forum second. The problem with moderators exclusively coming from, say, the I understand that some people would prefer a more focused forum in one direction or another, but that's where I come from. I think the people we've gathered, good, bad and indifferent, are more important than the ability to put CSPAM neatly into a little topical box.
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Jun 25, 2021 14:01
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:Well, sorry I worded it that way I guess, but cspam is absolutely treated as a den of violent maniacs lusting for death and/or fully blackpilled nihilist doomers itching to go on forum invasions and doxx wrongthinkers. I genuinely wish I knew how to combat this perception given that the response in this thread to this topic from probably the most reasonable fair-minded admin we've got (no offence Shine, I think you're probably super-reasonable and fair-minded too, I just don't know you as well) was Athanatos posted:Yeah, this is another one of the bigger issues. There tends to be a LOT of Us vs Them that comes from "cspam." (I mean it was in this thread even, and there are reports for it right now in the queue) Which reads to me like it's seen as a one-sided conflict that (a few posters in) CSPAM are instigating all on their lonesome against Poor Innocent Insert Other Subform Name Here. And while I certainly won't deny that this sort of thing happens, it's quite far from the whole story. We get "brigaded" about as often as we "brigade" (and I kind of hate that term because of what it implies about how posters should just Stay In Their Lane and certainly not post in two different forums), we get people demanding that our threads get gassed or moved to some other forum or that we be shut down on almost a daily basis in QCS (which sure isn't necessarily something that should be taken seriously, but it's probably a semi-useful barometer), etc. We've seen in the not too distant past what happens when a single forum becomes the scapegoat for all of Something Awful's ills. I'd very much like that to not happen again to anyone, much less to my favorite Something Awful forum.
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Jun 25, 2021 16:05
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Athanatos posted:It's most of the time someone who was just involved in making fun of that person in a CSPAM thread. There are a couple of problems that I see here, and they're all problems of perception, which are the hardest to deal with because it doesn't actually matter what the facts are if most people believe they're something else. 1) Does "most of the problem posters I deal with are people who've been posting in CSPAM making fun of other posters" necessarily equate to "most people who make fun of other posters are a problem"? Or is it the problem of the doctor who forgets that there are healthy people in the world because they only ever see sick people? 2) Is this standard being applied to every forum equally? (The answer here is "obviously no" if you include FYAD, but we can exclude them as an outlier because they operate under different rules...er, for some reason, but I think it's still no).
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Jun 25, 2021 21:15
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Forums jubilee. Erase all bans and permabans and welcome all our prodigal sons and daughters back with forgiveness and open arms except the actual pedophiles I guess. Hit the big ol' reset button and see what happens next. (I am honestly not sure if I'm joking about this or not.) Anyway, on the megathread topic, I'm generally a believer in not disrupting existing threads without a really loving good reason for doing so, because that's going to cause a lot of chaos and hurt feelings, and the benefit would have to be really massive for it to be worth it. "I would be more comfortable if every thread fit into its proper box" is not what I would consider a really loving good reason, nor really is "a few people from this thread are generating complaints elseforum". I think the monthly reboots of the Trump Thread As Was worked well enough. I've fallen away from the current chat thread though I used to post regularly enough in the old Trump Threads, but that's okay, people seem to like it, and I don't see that as a bad thing. (Also I think the line between 'focused topical thread' and 'chat thread' is a lot blurrier than some might like to think, and may even just be 'do I approve of this thread and its posters or not' in some cases.)
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Jun 26, 2021 21:08
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I could honestly see pretty much anyone with an IK star in CSPAM right now doing well as a mod.
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Jun 27, 2021 03:42
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Athanatos posted:Even if the threads are NOT that, they are seen as that by more than a few people. That just makes it more important for anyone modding those threads to actually educate themselves on them, not less, for much the same reason that modding CSPAM in general should probably not use the sort of QCS poster who thinks that "I agree, let's close CSPAM and D&D" is a hilarious thing to throw into every thread over there as a primary source of CSPAM intel.
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Jun 28, 2021 19:07
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BgRdMchne posted:Is it still gated behind plat? I lost my pms when I got myself banned during the Lowtax thing, but I can still click the report button. I think they unlinked reports from plat some time ago, yeah. (Plat people might have a higher reports/day limit.)
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Jun 28, 2021 20:40
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