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I feel like I should say a few things about the old Chat-GPT thread and the new AI thread that I created. cinci zoo sniper posted:As a mod, I have an explicit duty to contain threads that are a persistent embarrassment to the subforum I watch, and the whole point of this debacle is to (ideally) stave off this thread from establishing itself as such. And my policy position on the question is such that much as we don't debate in D&D how the Iraq War would have played out if American soldiers had been able to spit 6 fluid ounces of hydrochloric acid at a 50-yard distance every 5 minutes, we will not be having a general purpose thread about ChatGPT engaging in substantial anthropomorphization of the software. If you want to make such posts in D&D, you will need to create a thread that leaves no doubt that the thread is about some system of belief, or to debate you personally, rather than about the factual nature of ChatGPT. What does the bolded mean? Is there a specific directive from Koos Group to avoid "embarrassing" thread? What does it mean to be an embarrassment? Are there specific criteria or is it completely subjective? Does there have to be a SYQ thread in CSPAM before it's embarrassing enough? Who determines what is embarrassing about a thread? Should there be a poll at the top of every thread so it's democratized? I was not embarrassed at all by participating in that conversation. It was a fruitful conversation where I gained perspectives from both sides of the issue. It's a tech issue so a forum with a bunch of people who are likely to work in tech are going to have negative stereotypes associated with tech weirdos, but I don't care if you have to deal with it all the time, it's part of the conversation. What is embarrassing is eliminating any discussion for that reason, especially in a DISCUSSION forum. This is the forum I went to post about AI in because people write what they think, they write long essays, they source things. I read their sources, their posts, I learn and enjoy them. I don't want to read about it in GBS and CSPAM where I'll get a bunch of poo poo posts. And if I do I would go there to get my laughs. You can't eliminate threads on these criteria because you remove subject matter experts with differing opinions, see KillHour. He hasn't posted at all in the new AI thread yet. Edit: I also think it's important to note that slow moving threads like the Chat-GPT thread can go through periods where it seems like somebody is just arguing against the mob. But they are not only arguing for themselves. When people are arguing, they are arguing their opinion for the audience of lurkers who aren't posting along with the person they are arguing with. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 17:16
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cinci zoo sniper posted:It is a specific directive from Jeffrey, which in the current rendition of the private mod guidelines reads as follows: Well, it's a directive from Jeffrey I guess I should take it up with him. But speaking to the mods of D&D I don't think that would be a relevant criterion for a discussion forum. There is no unified view on anything in these forums and embarrassment is completely subjective to the reader. Even a large group of people, such as a group of mods, is influenced by similar goals and ideas so running it by that sample size wouldn't be sufficient to determine embarrassment. I would really like to hear Koos Group explanation for this? Edit: I'm not going to take it beyond this forum because I don't think it's very useful and D&D could very easily just not listen to whatever that nonsensical order was from Jeffrey.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:30
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I was preparing to rename at the end of the week when it decided to combust, you're correct. The load-bearing problem I had with it was the distance between its title, its OP, and the conversation that de facto made home there, with this being a highly searched term considerably corroborating the situation in my view of it. If I may, your not being paid and it's a completely voluntary working relationship. If you take a lighter approach to what he wants it will make for better conversations in more open ended threads like the Chat-GPT/AI thread
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Mar 27, 2023 17:34
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Your current thread is literally under no restrictions, as I've mentioned earlier, and there's nothing I can do to make it even “freer”. It would be freer without an ever-present threat of mod "embarrassment" ending it. Maybe there is nothing you can do, but you can choose to say threads aren't an embarrassment to you if there is some kind of mod vote. Not because it doesn't embarrass you, but because you agree it's a dumb reason to shut down discussion.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:40
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Since “AI” is a fairly vague concept, thusly making the thread “let's chat about this vaguely defined thing”, it is not under a plausible risk to suffer an “anti-embarrassment” intervention. The goal of my moderation of the ChatGPT thread was to disassociate a specific topic from posts that don't suit it adequately, and a similar determination cannot be made for an intrinsically open-ended, conceptual conversation. Do you understand my larger issue that I'm using the ChatGPT thread to frame? The point is embarrassment isn't a good metric to shut down conversation in any case. Edit: Isn't a good metric to shut down conversation in a Debate and Discussion forum in any case would be better to say. Turgid Flagella posted:If I might make a suggestion - maybe gurragadon should be a thread IK (presuming they're willing?) For the ChatGPT thread? This way, an aggro mod would only have to come in and do a bombing run should the IK fail to keep the thread relevant and meaningful. I don't think I would be a good IK even if offered because I don't think any conversation should be moderated really. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 17:55
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I didn't think of it in a more general sense, in the context of your words, so I appreciate the follow-up. We'll have to respectfully agree to disagree here, I guess, as D&D should have some standards that are maintained, in my opinion. I guess the standards need to be clearly defined within ideological boundaries if we want to limit it by "embarrassment." I agree there should be standards in formatting, effort and sourcing when possible. But standards on ideas? That doesn't sit right with me in a debate and discussion forum unless were talking about clearly illegal things. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 18:08
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Alright, gotta go, but someone from American timezone should hop on sooner rather than later. There are inherently standards on ideas if you are using embarrassment as a criterion, how else would you feel embarrassed about it? My opinions on AI are embarrassing to you, I don't care that they are embarrassing, and they are no less valid than your opinions on AI. The thread was embarrassing because it was talking about ChatGPT and AI technology in a way that a certain technical expertise didn't agree with. KillHour posted their credentials, they know what you know, they just came to a different conclusion. Edit: If the thread title was really issue you would have just changed the title instead of the thread being gassed. It's a red herring and not relevant to the conversation. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 18:42
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Again, this has nothing to do with what ideas you or anyone else has, and differences in ideas don't make a bad post. Not knowing what you (as a figure of speech) are talking about is a robust way to write a bad post, however, when you're trying to talk not about an idea (e.g., AI), but about something that is exists in the real world and is epistemologically falsifiable (e.g., ChatGPT). The thread was not deemed and embarrassment for talking about the concept of AI. It was found increasingly embarrassing for misrepresenting ChatGPT in the wrong place at the wrong time. Part of this misrepresentation was rooted in poor use of facts, and part in a poor command of the debate of it, e.g., anthropomorphization, in my subjective determination of the expertise and the credentials of the most active posters of the thread as dismissible. Not knowing about a topic is also the perfect opportunity to make a good post questioning what experts are saying. Good faith is assumed in this forum, also many things were posted about the consciousness of AI and people that were not epistemologically proven, but it was just taken as if it was. For instance, when responding to a question about something that was stated by consciousness by Noam Chomsky I was immediately accused of anthropomorphizing ChatGPT. My question had to do with the nature of consciousness and its relation to AI. I did nothing to misrepresent ChatGPT but it was part of the "anthropomorphizing" that technical experts just can't seem to stand. You have no right to dismiss KillHour as a poster, you partly have a right to dismiss my opinions because I've made it very clear I am a non-subject expert. Nobody was scamming anybody with misinformation in that thread, anybody reading it could easily see that posters that had a higher opinion on AI capabilities constantly hedged their posts by saying, not saying ChatGPT is anthropomorphic to try to please experts who were upset with any discussion of the future. The discussion of anthropomorphizing particularly upsets me because nobody can put forth a theory of when consciousness develops or how completely. I don't think ChatGPT is there and I've said it many times, but I've also said we might not know how close we are and I don't understand why that's not valid. Edit: I think you need to have more trust in the audience who are reading these threads. As you can see by people posting in this thread, they don't even agree with KillHour. There was no mass misinformation that couldn't be countered, it was a discussion with two different opinions.
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Mar 27, 2023 19:16
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Koos Group posted:I'm not overly concerned with gassing threads for being "embarrassing," though if a thread has some sort of deep-seated issue that is preventing good debate and discussion from taking place, the fact that someone might see the thread and be less inclined to post in D&D as a result is something reasonable to take into consideration. Could you explain that? Deep-seated issues are usually related to one or more posters having strong opinions on a topic. It is a blessing and a curse to get rid of those posters. Sometimes a topic lives on life support until the next big thing comes around to bump it back into the general conversation and only the real dedicated people follow it. Edit: Sorry, explain how it would make people less inclined to post in D&D? I find I was MORE inclined to post in the ChatGPT thread than any of the regular ones. I understand you are not overly concerned with it but did you read the further discussion with CZS about why I believe it is a poor metric when ending a thread? It's clearly a directive from the site owner that I believe contradicts the point of a discussion forum. Why do you think it dosen't?
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Mar 27, 2023 20:17
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Koos Group posted:Examples of deep-seated issues might be an OP that frames a topic in a way that makes discussion difficult, a subject that the vast majority of posters are too invested in to debate in a civil manner, or a subject that is too vague to be rigorous or well-trod to be interesting. And in any of these cases posters would find a thread that's stupid, boring or frustrating and be less likely to read or contribute to D&D if they get an impression that it's like that. Wouldn't most of those be handled in a better way than removing a well-established thread? OP's can be changed after the fact, if debate can't happen civilly then probations for not following that rule or thread bans, interesting is so vastly different to everybody that you as a moderator or anybody else have a right to close a thread for that. I have no interest in 99.9% of the threads on Something Awful and nobody has interest in everything. You can't split a thread between the hypothetical and the actual so easily when the hypothetical becomes actual so quickly. Anyway, the thread moves slow enough already that it would just die if it was split. Could you really explain what is an "embarrassing" thread and the process for determining one? This is a feedback thread, and I am giving you feedback that it should be clearly defined what that means. I don't need to know in relation to the ChatGPT thread, that thread was the reason I learned about the policy. I am curious about the policy itself. Also, I would think keeping threads more open to branching discussion as a whole to encourage people from other subforums to engage if that is a goal. People come in from different perspectives and if a forum feels closed off to their way of thinking they will not engage. People who don't engage don't get to enrich the conversation with their perspective and they also don't get the benefit of engaging with others.
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Mar 27, 2023 20:58
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Koos Group posted:There isn't a process for determining whether a thread's embarrassing. It's not a word we use in moderation discussion amongst ourselves or one that appears in the rules. All I said was that if a thread is making D&D look like a place that is stupid or otherwise uninteresting, then that would be a factor in how we decide what to do with the thread, which could be closing it or just trying to moderate it differently. If you split people into different threads when there are different perspectives on an issue that is just further splitting any community that has formed. A community isn't always in agreement but a Debate and Discussion forum worth anything always has threads where people are being challenged to think about new things. I would ask you to reconsider relying on overly subjective moderation principles like something being "stupid" or "uninteresting." This community is already incredibly small compared to others online and as long as people are in good faith (which is a rule to assume until proven otherwise) they should be welcomed. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 23:19
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fez_machine posted:I looked and as representative example: I was on the other side of the conversation and agree with this. I mean if it was a poo poo post then it was mild enough that I didn't even notice TBH.
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Mar 28, 2023 02:04
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Koos Group posted:To be clear, I would not be splitting a thread based on different perspectives. As you say, that would defeat the point of debate and discussion. The division would be to facilitate discussion with a different focus. For example, if you believe anthropomorphizing AI is justified, or it isn't, both of those perspective would be welcome in the same thread (the philosophical one). I can understand that you think that subjective criteria such as interesting or stupid should be considered when moderating a thread. I think a good compromise would be that when a thread is gassed, the person who gassed it should be required to put their reasoning in the thread as the last post. If a moderator can't describe why they are gassing a thread than they should reconsider and consult with somebody more familiar with the thread. They also should be legitimate descriptions, preferably maybe even quoting some bad posters, this is a forum with some standards with referencing. But really it shouldn't be snarky reasons or just this stupid smiley  .I mean obviously a threads like "LOL MOds are so dumb" doesn't need some big reason, but any thread that's been around for at least a week or two should have explanations. When Second Quarter 2023 Feedback rolls around everyone can then refer to the thread and have a clearer understanding of what happened and what was decided in whatever threads were issues. That allows a chance to review decisions, but it also gives the community a sense of what the moderation staff finds stupid or interesting, because if you keep those criteria they need to be known or at least generally understood.
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Mar 28, 2023 05:17
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cinci zoo sniper posted:That is done more or less consistently where the decision to gas a thread is not straightforward. No one is going to bother with that when it's like a goatse or some other obvious problem, like when the thread just devolves into a worthless brawl, which the ChatGPT thread got gassed for. I really need to argue that it should be done with every thread that is gassed from this subforum then. Unfortunately, if given the option to not explain why the thread is gassed moderators default to that. You should have put a reasoning in the ChatGPT thread, it has been a major contention point in this feedback thread. I would suggest the rule is that it is done on a 100% consistent basis while gassing threads from now on. Even the goatse thread, edit it out and put a message about why you gassed it. There won't be any controversy but there will be receipts.
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Mar 28, 2023 15:11
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cinci zoo sniper posted:It has never been this, and the sole "exception" that gets made is to respect the first rule of SA: So you are just being dismissive in the feedback thread? This is why you are not a good mod Edit: I dosen't take hours to put out your reasoning and if posters are expected to than mods should be too. And furthemore, i've been lurking on this subforum since 2006 so you can just drop that. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Mar 28, 2023 |
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Mar 28, 2023 15:26
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I'm merely suggesting to make arguments not reliant on a misrepresentation of the situation, which you have largely avoided doing until now. For instance, when you say that the ChatGPT thread is “a major contention point”, the implication is that a large proportion of goons providing feedback in the thread do care about the thread, and find its story contentious. That is an evidently false statement, and the reason it feels “contentious” to you is because 1) you have multiple mods talking at lengths about it with you, and 2) you have a lot to say about it, especially in when it comes to prescriptivist treatment of moderation that is out of line with the present situation. I dunno people were talking about it in this thread before I showed up to put my two cents in, including yourself. Maybe I just shouldn't post on this subforum because I don't agree with the moderation principles. Obviously, the ChatGPT has more meaning to me than the Ukraine thread which I don't read. I was trying to use the ChatGPT thread to frame the issue of modding on subjective things like "embarrassment" which YOU said was a criterion. I believe there should be no moderation sure, but I also know that there will be moderation, I'm not an idiot. Thats why I was discussing a compromise I thought was a fair with Koos Group last night, which I think would satisfy a lot of people with thread gassing. It can be confusing to people about why something happens even if it seems apparent to you as the moderator. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Mar 28, 2023 |
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Mar 28, 2023 15:47
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Very often it's not really possible to tell what the poster is complaining about, e.g., the whole genre of “mods censoring politics complaints” that at times feel like people see D&D as the liberal counterpart to C-SPAM, which it isn't. Bringing like 3-5 recent examples makes the intent basically impossible to misunderstand, and is by far the fastest way to get an answer about a real or suspected problem. I've come to the agreement over the course of yesterday's conversation with you and Koos Group that I understand you need subjective modding tools sometimes. Thats why I said just put a message in the thread. It's not a lot of effort, and it really does help with understanding when these feedback threads come around. This thread it's me complaining about ChatGPT, but next thread it's just going to be somebody else complaining about some other topic. Give yourself the receipts to go back on, you're not going to remember why you gassed everything months ago or what was stupid about it. Maybe an issue comes up with a thread a previous mod gassed, it would be nice to be able to see there reasoning behind it even if they aren't on site anymore or a mod anymore. Thats why I think it should be every thread in this forum. This isn't GBS or CSPAM and its not treated that way by the mods or userbase, so threads shouldn't be gassed like they are in GBS or CSPAM.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:25
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