It's difficult for me to respond to the criticisms raised here. Some of them I think are valid, but at least as many I think are a little off the mark. Yet anything I say will be colored by the fact that I'm a moderator here and was a primary proponent of the room. I guess all I can do is recognize that and then say what I think anyway.
First, I appreciate all the feedback and input. IMO, the fact that we have a thread like this that
itself is constructive and contains no flaming or nonsense is something that pretty much never happened in P&N, at least since I've been here -- even when a forum director started the discussion.
In particular, glad to see input from folks like pyonir who normally didn't participate in P&N. I think it's important for the P&N regulars who are now DC regulars to remember that at least part of the point of this place was to create a more friendly environment for people who would never set foot in that place. It's understandable that many of those folks won't post here often, and that's okay, but it does mean they tend to be less visible, yet shouldn't be forgotten.
My main issue with the critiques here is that I think they fail to recognize both the fundamental goal of this place, and the difficulties and trade-offs inherent in setting up and running it.
For example, a number of folks have commented that DC is "only like P&N but without trolling / with less noise / with less fighting".. but that they thought it would be something more. But that was the primary idea behind the DC. This was an alternative to what most of us really wanted, which was a resumption of proper moderation of P&N (which I would still prefer, because I think that room is an embarrassment in its current state). The admins went this route out of concern that forcing everyone in P&N to behave would be more work than it was worth.
Abraxas, you in particular seem to have very different ideas about what the purpose of this room is than I do. For example: "Name calling was never the problem with P&N and if all this forum is is just P&N with the no insults rule brought back, it is redundant." I'm sorry, but that's simply not the case. Name-calling was and is one of many problems in P&N related to poor behavior, which the DC was created specifically to address. Not
just name-calling, mind you, but also trolling, flame-baiting, thread hijacking and so forth. Reasonable discussion is possible here, and it isn't in P&N, so I don't really see how this place is redundant even if it is nothing more than P&N where people behave like adults.
You also said "moderation needs to be proactive, not reactive". My response to that is that it already is. We get very few reports here. I'm very active and I jump in and try to steer threads back on track where necessary, without waiting for reports. EK also has moderated threads without reports being filed.
But we need more help from the community. We can't read every post, and more than that, we can't read minds, so we don't really know when someone thinks a post is inappropriate unless they tell us.
I think you also strongly underestimate the difficulties in moderating a forum for unsupported claims or logical fallacies. These are subjective assessments, which means they involve personal judgment and there is likely to be little agreement on them. Whether something is fallacious or not, or unsupported or not, is largely a matter of what side of the argument one is on. Jumping in as a moderator to criticize someone for this sort of thing is, IME, as likely to create problems as solve them.
As an obvious example, in a recent thread eskimospy and I argued over the NYC soda ban. We're both pretty smart and pretty rational people, and we are often on the same side of issues. Yet in that thread we were at each other's throats -- not just over the topic itself, but over how each of us was arguing. He felt I was being unreasonable, and I felt he was. The truth is that probably both of us were, but to a lesser extent than the other person claimed.
And this isn't even two people on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
The fact that this room is moderated doesn't mean the moderators are here to micromanage all of the arguments. Being on staff here is an unpaid, volunteer position; even now, we don't have time to read every post and evaluate whether its claims are "properly supported" or not. And as the room grows, that will become even more unrealistic. If someone thinks that someone else is not properly supporting their argument, then they should respond saying so, to challenge that person to support it. The moderators should only get involved in the event that someone repeatedly dodges such challenges, or is being deliberately deceptive.
The folks who want this place to be more formally run may not realize the difficult balancing act we have to play here. They may feel things are too "loose" and not formally managed well enough. But when we first set this room up as "Debate Club", we had a major problem with people feeling intimidated about posting
specifically because they were afraid of having their posts assessed against stringent quality standards. We had individuals flatly saying they were afraid of posting new threads or adding posts to existing threads. That almost caused the place to fail before it even got started.
So, we deliberately backed off. Because, again, the idea here is to have a place not where every post is individually judged to ensure that it is logically perfect, but to have a place where it is possible to challenge someone else's logic without a flamewar ensuing. It's an important distinction.
Regarding the claim that DC leans left compared to P&N, well, that's more a comment on P&N than DC. We have a number of intelligent, capable right-leaning posters here. What we don't have is a bunch of far-right-wingers who post dozens of times a day, nearly all of which is heat rather than light. Again, that's a feature, not a bug.
Finally, regarding the comments to the effect that the place has less noise but not more signal -- I'm sorry, but I'm feeling a bit like the Little Red Hen in that regard. I'm not going to name names, but there are a number of people around here who complain about the lack of "signal" but do very little themselves to create any. I looked up one individual's posts since the DC started and found he/she has 10 times as many posts in P&N as in the DC in that timeframe.
This is a pretty common occurrence in new forums, so I understand why it is occurring. And I also understand that it's easier to feel motivated to respond to a thread containing obvious stupidity and flaming in P&N, because I often feel that compulsion as well. (My wife jokingly mocks me when I get too wrapped up arguing with idiots, reminding me of that XKCD cartoon where a guy can't get off the computer because "someone on the Internet is WRONG!")
But the Discussion Room won't flourish if everyone is waiting for someone else to create "more signal". Everyone has to participate and contribute. So, if you think there isn't enough signal here, please help us by adding some. Instead of wasting your energy with a completely irrational troll on P&N arguing about the same topic for the hundredth time, find an interesting article and tell us about it, or give us your thoughts on an existing discussion.
Thanks for listening.
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