Clarification and Addendum to the "No Insults" Rule

[Corn]

I think removing the anonymity of the poster would do well to bring up the level of civility in p&n. Enforce open profiles and visible confirmed elail addresses as a requisite to posting/viewing p&n. Mass bannings does the same thing. The membership majority wants a more civil environment. That a vocal mi.ority of posters want to continue slinging insults should be valued as it is: some people only post here to insult and harass, other considerations are secondary. Drop the bomb.

 

[cybrsage]

Open emails would be useless as people could just make throw away email accounts for posting.

 

[Infohawk]

yeah, you are right, you called my bluff. I was just making all this up to entertain myself, ya know, because I have oodles of time to not only deal with the overflowing reported-post queue but also because I have oodles of time to make up stuff and take the time to post it up. You called me out, got me dead to rights.

I don't think you understand. I'm not saying YOU are lying. I'm suggesting that the people you are messaging about the incidents are misrepresenting the situation. Think of the schoolyard fight analogy. The two kids are likely to lie to the teacher about whether it's a real fight. I have no doubts there are posters telling you it's no biggie. In this thread alone we've had posters admit they like the insulting and that they don't want it to be a rule. Of course they're going to downplay it if you contact them.

Just to put data to words, and to highlight just how out-of-balance the resource demands are for P&N versus all the other subforum combined, here is a pareto chart of the most recent 200 reported posts across the entire forum:

Is this really surprising? People are discussing the most contentious things possible here.
Also, as I said earlier, there have been instances where posters have been continually warned but not punished for some time. Of course you're going to see complaints continue if the posters are not actually punished. I still think that if posters were summarily vacationed for saying "you are an idiot" you would make your life easier. No asking if they were joking or not or asking if they were offended, just a short vacation at first. In the 2% of the cases where they were truly joking with a pal (again, never seen this) they will learn to joke in another manner in the future.


With that said, if there aren't enough moderator resources, there aren't enough moderator resources. In that case, maybe it makes sense to explicitly remove the rule altogether.

Additionally, eliminating personal insults removes what I consider to be a valuable tool of community sanction for badly behaving members.

Some other people have made this argument and it makes no sense to me. Everyone thinks they're sanctioning everyone else. Nobody actually gets sanctioned. Have you ever seen someone stop posting because they were insulted? From what I've seen, it has the opposite effect.

 

[fskimospy]

Some other people have made this argument and it makes no sense to me. Everyone thinks they're sanctioning everyone else. Nobody actually gets sanctioned. Have you ever seen someone stop posting because they were insulted? From what I've seen, it has the opposite effect.

No one is saying that we're going to drive people to stop posting because they were insulted, but I've definitely seen people on forums alter their posting behavior after being confronted with community condemnation. Without a doubt.

Regardless, there are simply far too many ways to be antisocial on here even without personal insults. It's a heated topic with strong opinions, people are going to engage in that way. Enforcement of one arbitrary aspect of antisocial behavior seems to be a total waste of time in my opinion. The good news is that it seems from this thread that a number of those who voted for the rule to begin with are now leaning against it. Hopefully when it comes up for a 'revote' it will go away.

 

[Infohawk]

but I've definitely seen people on forums alter their posting behavior after being confronted with community condemnation. Without a doubt.

Any examples? How do you know those posters didn't receive a mod warning?

 

[fskimospy]

Any examples? How do you know those posters didn't receive a mod warning?

I'm talking about other forums that I used to post at. EDIT: Although on here, now that I think about it, Pro-Jo used to spam the boards with right wing crap constantly. After everyone shit on him about it for long enough he didn't stop posting them, but he was more responsible in how he did it. A definite improvement.

Sure there are some people who won't, but those same people just find a way around whatever rules you put in place anyway.

 

[Infohawk]

That a vocal mi.ority of posters want to continue slinging insults should be valued as it is: some people only post here to insult and harass, other considerations are secondary. Drop the bomb.

Unfortunately, it's close to 50% of the posters.

 

[Infohawk]

I'm talking about other forums that I used to post at. I am not going to go pull up an extensive list of posts to show someone's progression, but I've absolutely seen people alter their behavior after the community expresses its strong disapproval. Sure there are some people who won't, but those same people just find a way around whatever rules you put in place anyway.

At other forums? I'm talking about this one. Over a decade from what I've seen HERE is that insults just create pissing matches and derail threads. In the few cases where everyone condemns someone for an over-the-top insensitive comment (and it has to be really extreme for that to happen on this forum) the mods get involved anyway so it's silly to think it's other posters having an influence as opposed to the mods.

 

[fskimospy]

At other forums? I'm talking about this one. Over a decade from what I've seen HERE is that insults just create pissing matches and derail threads. In the few cases where everyone condemns someone for an over-the-top insensitive comment (and it has to be really extreme for that to happen on this forum) the mods get involved anyway so it's silly to think it's other posters having an influence as opposed to the mods.

See my edit.

 

[Moonbeam]

If I were paying for a technical web site in a universe of competing technical sites where quality of product matters, I would want any forums connected with that site to demonstrate quality too. I Wouldn't give a crap what so called human nature can sink to when free to discuss politics, I would seek the forum maintain my standards. I wouldn't want to bust my hump to provide excellence of product and pay at the same time for some idiot with emotional problems get a free lunatic asylum to play in to kick intelligent people in the teeth with childishly immature insults or to simply over and over insist that what he or she says is so without any ability to build a case for that point of view. Without some sort of standards and rules of behavior, it seems to me that what you will get is a pile of shit.

The thing that I think is constantly forgotten in this increasingly libertarian culture is that with freedom comes responsibility. Let folk who function at the level of a two year old go someplace else. Here we are nothing but guests and the natural response of a guest, in my opinion, is graciousness.

 

[cybrsage]

This Pro-Jo guy really left a mark. I am going to have to do a forum search and read his posts.

 

[Infohawk]

See my edit.

Projo got PMs from the mods, which fits into my point nicely. When you see "improvement" it's usually because the mods got involved behind the scenes, not because people are calling someone a jerk.

 

[Bowfinger]

At other forums? I'm talking about this one. Over a decade from what I've seen HERE is that insults just create pissing matches and derail threads. In the few cases where everyone condemns someone for an over-the-top insensitive comment (and it has to be really extreme for that to happen on this forum) the mods get involved anyway so it's silly to think it's other posters having an influence as opposed to the mods.

And you see a difference with a no-insult rule? Insults are peripheral to pissing matches and derailing threads. It seems to me like there are just as many of both as always (or actually more thanks to a fresh contingent of dedicated trolls). While insults shouldn't be a first resort, they are perfectly appropriate when responding to someone who is acting in bad faith, intent on disrupting a thread rather than engaging in productive discussion.

If P&N is ever to be a forum for productive discussion, that's the behavior that needs to be moderated and those are the posters than need to sanctioned -- and quickly banned unless they reform. There are people here who are clearly and obviously NOT willing to engage in honest debate, especially once their claims are seriously challenged. They're intent on being heard, then ensuring contrary information is buried in pages of noise: blatant fallacies, outright lies, childish semantics games, etc.

Insults may add an edge to the noise, but they aren't the source of the nose.

 

[Infohawk]

And you see a difference with a no-insult rule? Insults are peripheral to pissing matches and derailing threads. It seems to me like there are just as many of both as always (or actually more thanks to a fresh contingent of dedicated trolls). While insults shouldn't be a first resort, they are perfectly appropriate when responding to someone who is acting in bad faith, intent on disrupting a thread rather than engaging in productive discussion.

If P&N is ever to be a forum for productive discussion, that's the behavior that needs to be moderated and those are the posters than need to sanctioned -- and quickly banned unless they reform. There are people here who are clearly and obviously NOT willing to engage in honest debate, especially once their claims are seriously challenged. They're intent on being heard, then ensuring contrary information is buried in pages of noise: blatant fallacies, outright lies, childish semantics games, etc.

Insults may add an edge to the noise, but they aren't the source of the nose.

I had noticed an improvement. We'll see what happens now.

It depends what you mean by personal insults. If you mean being allowed to point out that someone is a troll or intellectually dishonest, I don't really see that as an insult. An insult is something like, "you're dumb." It is never really appropriate or useful (see my discussion with eskimospy).

The other issues are simply not related. Ideally, it would be nice to stop people who are engaging in blatant fallacies (though I'm confident there aren't the moderator resources to address the issue). But that is separate from personal insults. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing.

 

[Bowfinger]

[ ... ]
The conclusion from the top would more likely be "since our forum is a tech forum, and we cannot allow hateful, harassing, obscene or threatening posts, and we cannot seem to provide people the opportunity to discuss politics and news without those same people degrading their environment to the point where it is no longer managable by our limited moderator resources, this 'lets have a P&N subforum' thing was a bad idea from the start".

And perhaps it was, if Anand wants a purely technical forum, without the greater community that comes with hosting both technical and social forums. It seems to me that in a social community, people will discuss politics, and politics is inherently a subject that invites high emotions. Ultimately, it's his sandbox and he can shape it as he sees fit.

I am curious about that comment, however, about the conclusion at the top. When I asked what was behind this sudden focus on cleaning up P&N, we were told it was an altruistic move by one or more moderators (you, I assume) to try to make P&N a better forum. I'm pretty sure there was no suggestion at all that Anand was behind it, or that P&N was even on his radar. Has that changed?

 

[Bowfinger]

I had noticed an improvement. We'll see what happens now.

I can point to several threads with 20+ pages that suggest otherwise, but I have no objective data beyond that. As I said, it seems worse to me.

It depends what you mean by personal insults. If you mean being allowed to point out that someone is a troll or intellectually dishonest, I don't really see that as an insult. An insult is something like, "you're dumb." It is never really appropriate or useful (see my discussion with eskimospy).

Perhaps, but the new rules don't differentiate between the two. The definition of "insult" is thus ambiguous and solely driven by self reporting. It is therefore inevitably influenced by the crybaby factor.

I personally can't imagine reporting an insult. I usually find ones directed at me funny because it shows the source is incapable of addressing the points I've raised. Some people, however, are far too thin-skinned for political discussions. Others are obviously intent on suppressing contrary points of view, and will run to the mods every time they can find an excuse to report an "opponent". Since those are the same people who are trolling and intellectually dishonest, calling them on those behaviors may or may not be sanctioned depending on how loudly they squeal and the mood of the moderator who sees the complaint. The very existence of the no-insult rule suppresses valid discussion.

The other issues are simply not related. Ideally, it would be nice to stop people who are engaging in blatant fallacies (though I'm confident there aren't the moderator resources to address the issue). But that is separate from personal insults. It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing.

Sure, agreed. Where we disagree, however, is that I think fallacies and trolling are far more disruptive than insults. To me, insults are a non-issue. They aren't material to P&N's greater problems. You seem to have a different view. Reasonable people can agree to disagree.

 

[LunarRay]

What I understand from Idontcare's most recent posts is that Anand wants his forum as Idontcare provided; that there are limited resources to manage at least one aspect of the moderation needs of the sub-forum and that there are three options that will be implemented...
Door 3 has been opened and if it don't provide the prize then Door 2 and finally Door 1 at which point the issue is solved.

So I guess there it is... Let's help when and where we can. That seems simple enough.

 

[Infohawk]

So I guess there it is... Let's help when and where we can. That seems simple enough.

Help how? They don't want you to report anything unless you're the one being insulted.

 

[Craig234]

Just to put data to words, and to highlight just how out-of-balance the resource demands are for P&N versus all the other subforum combined, here is a pareto chart of the most recent 200 reported posts across the entire forum:

This subforum consumes nearly half of all our resources allocated to the reported-post queue.

That is unacceptable for a number of reasons - including the fact that we are supposed to be a tech-facing forum, not a politics and news outlet, and our resource allocation ought to reflect our priorities as a business. Right now it is hard to argue that this is the case.

AT made the choice to have a P&N forum. P&N is inherently going to have a lot more personal attacks than technical forums.

It's unrealistic for you to demand that P&N have a number of flames proportional to how much of AT's business it is.

Wrong approach. Either 'do it right' - or ask if you want to have a P&N forum.

Hopefully the increased moderation with some standards will reduce over time.

 

[Idontcare]

Help how? They don't want you to report anything unless you're the one being insulted.

Building on the schoolyard analogy employed earlier, peer pressure works.

I know firsthand it works in the forums as well, as it worked in the CPU forum.

Remember that the point here is to figure out a way to give the community the tools it needs to maintain itself in the manner to which it wishes. Mods are one of those tools. The ability to pm one another is yet another tool. The ignore member feature is yet another tool.

So in this case the way to help is to be mediators yourselves, in the discussion as you see it going downhill before your very eyes as well as in pm's with both sides.

You don't need me to pm someone and ask them to chill out, or to pm someone and ask them to report the incident for which they were the recipient of a personal attack.

Mods are like traffic cops. We don't set the speed limits, the community does. We are tasked with enforcing the speed limits, but we can only do so much with the resources given to us by the same community that set the speed limit in the first place.

Does every person driving 26 mph in a 25 mph zone get a ticket? Pretty much never. Maybe if you are going 30 mph and the cop is having a slow day (reported post queue is low), but pretty much the traffic officer is going to manage his time while he is out on the beat so that he is available to catch the most egregious dangers to the community. The guy going 45 mph (or faster) in the 25 mph zone.

Give us the resources to put a cop on every corner, or a mod in every thread, and we'll be able to enforce the rules uniformly and consistently.

But give us a resource constricted environment and we are going to simply do the best we can to avoid descending into chaos and anarchy.

So do what you do now if you are on your front lawn and some jackass goes zooming down the street at 40 mph, wave your finger at them and let them know in no uncertain terms that their antics are not appreciated...but do it politely so as to avoid casting yourself as a rule breaker in the process. Two wrongs don't make a right.

By far the biggest help I can foresee the members doing is (1) watching their own posts to keep the convo to the high-road, (2) peer-pressure (public or privately communicated) to set expectations of members who might not be "getting it", and (3) contacting members who are being insulted to make sure they know they need to report the incident if the forums are to improve in a way that is manageable and sustainable.

 

[cybrsage]

Give us the resources to put a cop on every corner, or a mod in every thread, and we'll be able to enforce the rules uniformly and consistently.

This is something I do not think can ever happen. Without an outside body to ensure the cops do their job properly (the court system), cops would do as they please. At AT, the cops ARE the court system. The cops get to decide if their own actions are proper or not - and of course they are going to always say their own actions are proper. One mod will not think ZYX is an insult while another mod will, so if two people are reported for the same thing, if one opens one report and the other opens another report, you will get one person sanctioned and another not sanctioned - for the same action.

Not making this a call out at all - it is simple human nature. Of course, in the real world we can have an outside body police the police, at AT we cannot, so it is a moot point.

 

[Idontcare]

This is something I do not think can ever happen. Without an outside body to ensure the cops do their job properly (the court system), cops would do as they please. At AT, the cops ARE the court system. The cops get to decide if their own actions are proper or not - and of course they are going to always say their own actions are proper. One mod will not think ZYX is an insult while another mod will, so if two people are reported for the same thing, if one opens one report and the other opens another report, you will get one person sanctioned and another not sanctioned - for the same action.

Not making this a call out at all - it is simple human nature. Of course, in the real world we can have an outside body police the police, at AT we cannot, so it is a moot point.

No, that is not a call out, I quite understand. As a matter of simple human nature, checks and balances are required. Who's watching who's watching you, and all that.

There are a number of models for addressing this. In universities you have an Ombudsman (or an office thereof) in which an individual essentially acts as an advocate for the members to ensure due process is adhered to and so forth.

The challenge in this environment is not coming up with a way to build a system of checks and balances, rather the challenge is coming up with a way to do anything in light of the fact that pretty much no one actually wants to do anything themselves.

There is no shortage of people who are willing to lend their opinion and advice, but very few people who are willing to step up an invest their time, effort, and energy implementing those ideas.

Just keeping enough active moderators in the ranks is a challenge as it is. I can think of all kinds of wonderful ways to improve the fairness and checks/balances of the system but all of them require more resources (more people).

And the unfortunate reality is that pretty much anything one would do to add checks and balances to a volunteer moderator system is going to come at the expense of demotivating and disenfranchising the already tenuous base of volunteer mods as it is.

There is one thing a volunteer loathes above all else and that is red-tape and beauracracy. Anything we do that increases the red-tape results in higher attrition in the mods, which ultimately becomes counter-productive as your managers to worker-bees ratio skyrockets and rule enforcement nosedives.

This is a topic I find intriguing to contemplate, and I don't take the mere discussion of it as being a mod challenge or callout, so discuss away (without turning it into a mod-callout thread). I'd love to hear people's ideas and thoughts on this matter. It is a serious matter, but it is one that outstrips my own meager cerebral faculty.

 

[dank69]

...

By far the biggest help I can foresee the members doing is (1) watching their own posts to keep the convo to the high-road, (2) peer-pressure (public or privately communicated) to set expectations of members who might not be "getting it", and (3) contacting members who are being insulted to make sure they know they need to report the incident if the forums are to improve in a way that is manageable and sustainable.

I, like many others here, have tried to explain why insults aren't the problem. The problem is blatent trolling and willful ignorance. So what I need to do is (1) not insult trolls and idiots, (2) tell the trolls to stop trolling both in public and by PM and then maybe they'll 'get it' , and (3) convince members to report insults when I don't believe that insults are the problem.

I'll try to explain why reporting insults is stupid.

Example A:
Troll X: 2+2=5
Poster Y: No, 2+2=4
Troll X: Nuh uh!
Poster Y: Yes, 2+2=4. Everyone knows this.
Troll X: No! 2+2=5!
Poster Y: Why are you being such an idiot.
Troll X (a worthless poster dragging the forum down) now gets to report Poster Y (a decent member who does not drag the forum down).

Example B:
Poster Y: 2+2=4
Troll X: No! 2+2=5

Poster Y: 2+2=4
Troll X: No! 2+2=5
20 pages later:
Poster Y: 2+2=4
Troll X: No! 2+2=5
Poster Y cannot report the troll because there is not enough resources to stop retards.

Oh! Oh! But in example A, Poster Y can take the high road and just not insult Troll X.
Great, now you just end up with another example B.

 

[cybrsage]

The problem is that not everything is so cut and dry as math. Also, many times people will quickly jump to the word troll in order to "gain the high ground" so they can ignore everything said by the other person regardless of what it is they say.

Who gets to decide what is trolling and what is not trolling? We do not even have a definition of it in use on this forum.

 

[Infohawk]

By far the biggest help I can foresee the members doing is (1) watching their own posts to keep the convo to the high-road, (2) peer-pressure (public or privately communicated) to set expectations of members who might not be "getting it", and (3) contacting members who are being insulted to make sure they know they need to report the incident if the forums are to improve in a way that is manageable and sustainable.

There's about a decade of evidence that the members aren't really able to control themselves or influence others in any meaningful way. Why would it change now? I'm not going to be contacting other members when 50% of them don't agree with the rule in the first place. (See below for a case where it would be useless to try and convince the person to report an insult.) Heck, I'm not even sure I'll be reporting personal insults against myself since it's 100% guaranteed that it's me who reported and may just end up giving the insulter satisfaction.

I, like many others here, have tried to explain why insults aren't the problem. The problem is blatent trolling and willful ignorance. So what I need to do is (1) not insult trolls and idiots, (2) tell the trolls to stop trolling both in public and by PM and then maybe they'll 'get it' , and (3) convince members to report insults when I don't believe that insults are the problem.

I'll try to explain why reporting insults is stupid.

This is not a free-for-all on what's wrong with P&N. We already had a thread on that. Certain priorities were voted on. Right now this is just a discussion about personal insults.

Also, your example is ridiculous. You realize there are just about zero political or news issues that are as simple as basic arithmetic? Also, your own example shows that insulting accomplishes nothing anyway.