Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.
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@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
It's time consuming because nodebb is shit about splitting threads. Hence the idea of deleting the offending posts (which as Roz brings up, means the person being lashed out at no longer has to see it). The thread could stay intact, it's an actual consequence, and it takes up less time overall.
I thought the proposed solution was just to say "Hey knock it off" and leave the offending post until things escalated to dumpster fire levels?
That's how it has been done and clearly doesn't work. We've discussed deleting the offending posts and some people are very opposed to it.
The number of times my 'Hey this needs to be taken elsewhere' has actually worked is nil. I haven't seen it work for Gany, either. Sometimes people listen to Ark when he steps in, but....
I try it, because it's what people want (being given a warning for behavior they know full well is in poor taste), but at this point I'm feeling like it's just so people have more fodder for insisting we're useless/half-assing it/whatever insult is the favorite of the week on us three.
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@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
That's how it has been done and clearly doesn't work. We've discussed deleting the offending posts and some people are very opposed to it.
But... that's not what Ark said?
@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
What we are considering doing instead is placing a warning into the thread itself ("Please stop attacking people here") and if it's not respected then we'll start deleting offending messages. If it keeps happening, well, we'll break out the banhammer to give those posters a time out.
I have the same concern @Sunny mentioned that by leaving the original post and just deleting any follow-ups it basically enables a one-time bully pass to whoever escalates first. Which seems like it would only make things more toxic, not less.
The original post needs to be nipped in the bud. That's the only way this will stop. Whether that means temporarily editing it (if nodebb allows mods to do this) to say "This post is in timeout" until the offender has time to edit it to meet the board standards, or deleting it, or moving it to the hog pit. Leaving it in the thread hasn't worked and IMHO will never work as an effective means of deterrent.
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There are three resources here, and I'd like any raised or newly proposed solution to take all three into account:
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Our time. On a MUSH as @Auspice pointed out in private a 12-36 hour response time is typically quite acceptable, but here I've literally seen protests because we didn't step in within an hour of someone getting out of line on a Friday evening.
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Our tools. Sure, we could move everything to a different platform but we looked into the possibilities and none satisfied all of our criteria; some were technologically old and it showed (for example they had no chat, WYSIWYG editors, etc) and others were even more bleeding edge than this one. Just because we can solve one problem it doesn't mean we want to lose valuable features or generate new issues elsewhere on top of losing years worth of data.
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Our administrative neutrality. MSB isn't worth the space it's running on if it can't provide a safe environment for people to air their thoughts without having to worry about the moderators taking sides.
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@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@auspice said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
That's how it has been done and clearly doesn't work. We've discussed deleting the offending posts and some people are very opposed to it.
But... that's not what Ark said?
I didn't think so, but perhaps I didn't word it right.
@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
What we are considering doing instead is placing a warning into the thread itself ("Please stop attacking people here") and if it's not respected then we'll start deleting offending messages. If it keeps happening, well, we'll break out the banhammer to give those posters a time out.
The reason for that phrasing is that I didn't feel comfortable simply barging in and deleting posts without warning. The idea would be to warn first, then act, other than for repeat offenses.
I have the same concern @Sunny mentioned that by leaving the original post and just deleting any follow-ups it basically enables a one-time bully pass to whoever escalates first. Which seems like it would only make things more toxic, not less.
If aggression occurs once - and anyone can be carried away occasionally - I don't think it's such a big issue. Maybe @Thenomain sees an anti-Mac post and just loses his shit, who knows! In that case I'd feel okay stepping in to tell him and whoever he's being rightly trolled by to cut it out then leaving the posts there.
If this behavior continues then we'll go in and delete posts as needed, not just by one party but all of the bickering. Nodebb's UI doesn't get in the way of that.
If however this is someone baiting @Thenomain for the upteenth time then we're past the stage of warning - that's not the point of this system. Repeat offenses will be addressed in private, but at that point we've moved past simply sending a message either in words or otherwise to signal a change in behavior is warranted.
Does that clarify the original post? Note this doesn't mean it's already decided it's the way we'll go, just that it's what was meant at the time.
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If you do not have the time or tools to implement things successfully, and you are aware of it, those things should probably not be on the table as options for you to implement.
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@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
If you do not have the time or tools to implement things successfully
I trust you can see how this could be construed as offensive.
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@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
If you do not have the time or tools to implement things successfully
I trust you can see how this could be construed as offensive.
I actually don't, but I apologize that I came across that way.
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@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
Faraday calls Bob all kinds of names, against forum policy.
Mod says "Be nice"
Bob still has to look at the post sitting there calling him all kinds of names but isn't supposed to respond.This (and the rest of the post surrounding it) is my problem/concern. It is currently happening this way, and it is my opinion that the deletion of posts will make it worse, not better.
When this has happened, my response in chat with Auspice and Arkandel has been invariably between "nuke it from space" and "burn the heretic."
Supposing that an offending post can be identified, I would simply step in and delete that message and every obliquely-referencing message that follows. That seems to be the most neutral thing to do: acting without regard for right or wrong, and simply adhering to the rules as directly as possible. This is especially so on advertisement threads, where it is very easy to pick out where a conversation veers into offensive territory.
I think there are plenty of dissenters to that position, however.
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@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
There are people here that have, in my opinion, gone on crusades against others to assassinate their reputation on a board with little or no accountability.
This is absolutely the case. It has some nuance to it, however, and that's important to recognize.
Some people are acting out of hate and sheer mean-spiritedness. Those examples are rare and often obvious. They still do damage, and as it stands, that damage is permitted to stand, even if it is a full-on campaign of slander and outright lies.
That is not and should never be OK. I'm not talking about matters of opinion, here. I may think someone is acting like an ass and say so; someone else may disagree and say that as well, and frankly, that's fine, and should remain fine. That's a difference of opinion.
We have seen things that aren't differences of opinion stated as wholly unsupported fact about others. We've seen people accused of concrete actions without evidence, and those accusations stand without challenge. Whether someone speaks up to say 'that isn't true' or not, if that person is not in the board gossip circle, they are frankly fucked nine times out of ten.
And maybe let's stop pretending that isn't happening, too? That there isn't a group of people 'in the know' that are communicating broadly outside the board about any given issue, and then when it comes to the board, those not in that rumor mill are completely at a loss about what the hell is going on? Because it's obvious. The evidence is everywhere. Someone speaks up and gets a chorus of 'we all know what you did!' while the rest of the board is left scratching their heads and trying to figure out what the actual problem is.
Go back to ye olde Internet Drama and You and look at the description of the commiseration spiral. It's textbook. Practically the entire gripes and peeves thread looks like this now in the chorus of vaguebooking posts and responses to them, save for the old saws we have been banging on about -- pose length, idle times, purple prose, etc. -- for an actual generation now.
This starts to cross the line into the 'accusation without evidence' territory as well. And don't think I don't understand how it comes about; it is right there. There is usually something that spawns it, but that something is only known to a select few -- and the rest of us get our heads torn the hell off for commenting objectively on what is actually being presented here, which does not include that, often with substantial attacks on anyone who comments. That's utter bullshit, y'all. Wake up to it.
We could shove all of the mean-spirited jibes and personal insults into the closet, and we could tell everyone "hey, it's okay to be shitty in the closet, but be nice out here because the folks that cannot or unable to defend themselves will surely not be affected by whatever vomit you spew in there," but we all know -- we all should know -- that this is not the case.
I agree with this to a point, but only to a point. Were it not for the circumstance described above re: glaringly obvious outside commiseration spiral going on somewhere that often leads to piling on and wild accusations, it would be a lot easier for people to speak up for themselves. As it stands, the same circles jerk each other off over the subject and behave as though whoever is commenting has access to all the information they do, rather than the information that has been brought here and presented here. And at that point, it has been brought here, so people are going to comment. If you're going to rip someone's head off for commenting 'because they don't have the whole story', you better be prepared to deliver it rather than casting aspersions on them or making wild-ass claims about how they're terrible fucking people in some way or another for reacting based on the information available to them.
And this feeds into the same circle jerk, which by now would put the yiff-flood from College Humor's 'Furry Force pt. 3' to shame for the amount of... what it releases into the community. (Which I'm not linking, you can look it up on youtube when you're not at work.) Those wild-ass claims and nasty assumptions get discussed and tossed around and treated like fact because -- hey, same thing -- there's nobody there to disagree, no one there to offer up actual facts to contradict them, etc.
People here are for the most part very capable of defending themselves from unreasonable attacks when they are not a tidal wave of circle jerk yiff jizz, which is increasingly the case. This isn't weakness. This isn't dodging a bullet. People can dodge metaphorical bullets; this is like shrapnel grenade launchers.
The problem is that, like Fight Club, expecting no consequences from that is foolish, and the sheep are understandably anxious.
I wouldn't call anyone here a sheep, unless directed toward those 'blindly following whoever barks the loudest'. Many of the people who have been voicing concerns have been in this community since its beginning, have survived a hell of a lot of shit-slinging and awfulness, and are still here speaking up about things they think are important, still calling bullshit where they think it's warranted, and voicing views broadly accepted now that were outliers back when without backing down an inch. They are anything but sheep.
I agree about the matter of consequences. I have certainly pissed off more than a few people here over the years for things I have actually said or done; I don't think ill of them for being pissed off at me for it if they are. That's up to them. Making up a lot of gross bullshit to pile on top of that to bully, threaten, and try to frighten, hurt, or shame someone into silence is something else entirely.
Everybody here probably has some fuckup or another they're ashamed of, regret, etc. For the most part, people own that. Making up things out of whole cloth -- supported only by gossip circle speculation reinforcing itself -- and trying to force those labels on someone is different. Just because someone could gather up a dozen people to say, "Bob fucks camels on the weekends" doesn't mean Bob needs to own fucking camels on the weekends if he doesn't fuck camels on the weekends, and we're seeing a lot of that pattern of late. It's a problem.
How to address it? I have no idea. Policing things that happen off board is not only not possible, it's just not something the mods should be asked to even attempt. 'Back your shit up before you throw it' being called out, though, regardless of where it's happening on the board, is something we should all be getting better at calling out, because it's something that is not happening enough to even slow the roll of this behavior, which only seems to be gaining momentum rather than being recognized as the problem it is.
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@arkandel said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
The idea would be to warn first, then act, other than for repeat offenses.
And @Sunny and I have expressed concerns that this approach basically gives the first instigator on a thread a free pass for mudslinging, knowing that all they're going to get is a warning. Meanwhile everyone else is (theoretically) handcuffed in their ability to respond but (in reality, based on historical evidence) will probably just escalate.
If it gets moved to the pit, where the mudslinging belongs, then those inclined to do so can at least respond. And those who don't want to see that crap don't have to look at it.
It's like graffiti. The solution to someone spraypainting your house isn't to say "hey please knock it off" and then leave the graffiti there. That's just giving them a pat on the wrist with no real consequence, and leaving your house a spraypainted mess that basically invites future graffiti.
I keep hearing different messages from @Arkandel , @Auspice and @Ganymede about how this will be handled and I think I (and others) are understandably confused. If you want to say "hey it's gonna vary by mod - deal with it" then fine. But otherwise it sounds like y'all are contradicting each other and it's confusing.
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@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
Faraday calls Bob all kinds of names, against forum policy.
Mod says "Be nice"
Bob still has to look at the post sitting there calling him all kinds of names but isn't supposed to respond.This (and the rest of the post surrounding it) is my problem/concern. It is currently happening this way, and it is my opinion that the deletion of posts will make it worse, not better.
When this has happened, my response in chat with Auspice and Arkandel has been invariably between "nuke it from space" and "burn the heretic."
Supposing that an offending post can be identified, I would simply step in and delete that message and every obliquely-referencing message that follows. That seems to be the most neutral thing to do: acting without regard for right or wrong, and simply adhering to the rules as directly as possible. This is especially so on advertisement threads, where it is very easy to pick out where a conversation veers into offensive territory.
I think there are plenty of dissenters to that position, however.
If this is the proposed solution, I am 110% on board, EVEN for those cases when I am the one being a jerk. If the WHOLE mess gets deleted, if that's the intention behind it, this is fine by me.
As far as the rest of it goes -- what @surreality and @faraday are saying. I'm coming off terribly because I REALLY care about this, and I'm worried and concerned and a little afraid of what ultimately this is going to mean.
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@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
I'm coming off terribly because I REALLY care about this, and I'm worried and concerned and a little afraid of what ultimately this is going to mean.
FWIW, you're not coming off horribly at all from where I sit. You're another of the people who has been here for-fucking-ever and has seen the evolution of things here.
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@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
I keep hearing different messages from @Arkandel , @Auspice and @Ganymede about how this will be handled and I think I (and others) are understandably confused. If you want to say "hey it's gonna vary by mod - deal with it" then fine. But otherwise it sounds like y'all are contradicting each other and it's confusing.
This is because we are not speaking with a unified voice here. We, like you, are tossing out opinions and ideas. And, as you can tell, our approaches to matters are different by design, but the goal is to explore every facet so that, at the end of the day, a better decision is arrived at by virtue of dissonance.
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@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
This is because we are not speaking with a unified voice here.
OK but the way it came across was Ark saying basically "This is what we are considering doing..." which has a very strong implication that you moderators had already discussed this amongst yourselves and come up with a joint solution. So to hear you and Auspice then saying completely different things is honestly a bit baffling.
ETA: It's one thing to say "Hey let's brainstorm". It's another to say "This is what the mods are planning to do - feedback?" and then see the feedback elicit "But that's not what we want to do" from the mods.
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It's worth mention: all three of the mods here are people I think have good heads on their shoulders, and are well-intentioned people who do their best to make ethical choices in their role as moderators.
Just... maybe divide up the tasks, then? If there's disagreement about how different things are handled, divide up the tasks into 'we can all more or less agree that X should be handled in Y manner, and <mod> is best at that, so that task will primarily be <mod>'s wheelhouse'.
Y'all might get a little further with that approach, or at the very least, it would mean that when X situation crops up, if it's always handled by <specific mod>, folks will have a better idea of what to expect.
(Yes, this is separate from generic posting, and should be. We're all entitled to a shitpost lawlgif here and there, an unpopular opinion or criticism, and whatnot, including the mods when not in their role as mods. The collective we forum-wise should try to be the smart people we are about telling the difference.)
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@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
OK but the way it came across was Ark saying basically "This is what we are considering doing..." which has a very strong implication that you moderators had already discussed this amongst yourselves and come up with a joint solution. So to hear you and Auspice then saying completely different things is honestly a bit baffling.
I understand.
So, I'll say it for myself: I'm speaking from my mind right now. If I'm speaking as part of the group, I'll make that clearer.
Lots of thoughts here. I think we're going to meet and confer soon enough.
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@Ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
When this has happened, my response in chat with Auspice and Arkandel has been invariably between "nuke it from space" and "burn the heretic."
Supposing that an offending post can be identified, I would simply step in and delete that message and every obliquely-referencing message that follows. That seems to be the most neutral thing to do: acting without regard for right or wrong, and simply adhering to the rules as directly as possible. This is especially so on advertisement threads, where it is very easy to pick out where a conversation veers into offensive territory.
I think there are plenty of dissenters to that position, however.If we are going to seriously consider this, can we also embrace @Surreality's suggestion and stop pretending that there isn't a nigh untouchable cabal of folks that try this shit basically all the time, skirt right on the edges, usually get away with it, and end up getting even more leniency due to sheer desensitization and fatigue?
Because there is.
And they do. Already.
And we need to start being honest about that of this whole mess is gonna work.
Edit because stupid quoting code is stupid. Sorry @Sunny and @Ganymede!
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As an out of left field (ish) thought...:;
I am really kind of wondering what would happen if the hog pit just went away entirely and 'mildly constructive' just became the general discussion forums with SLIGHTLY less lax rules than at present. Yes, there are people that would quit here if that part of the forum went away, and there would be a lot of screaming, but...
I don't see a 'new' hogpit style forum wakening, or the user base splitting. I see...people being pissed off, some leaving for a while, and ultimately everyone coming back. There are reasons for gloves off possibilities, but I think that those reasons could be crafted into the semi-constructive rules to allow for it.
I dunno. I keep hearing folks say they really would prefer that, except for a very vocal few, and I'm not sure why we as a culture/community are letting a vocal few people make us keep the hog pit around instead of making the decision that we need to be better.
(I mean, elephant in the room and all.)
ETA: Even Blizzard is coming down on toxicity in their communications between players. Microsoft's ToU is updated along these lines for Xbox. People are realizing that the hands off free for all nasty is REALLY damaging to gaming communities.
We are a gaming community.
I trust the mods enough to craft the rules in such a way to allow for the honesty that is the one necessary and healthy part of the pit. I honestly do think it's possible, and at the end of the day (year), we would as a whole community be a lot happier.
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@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
I'm not sure why we as a culture/community are letting a vocal few people make us keep the hog pit around instead of making the decision that we need to be better.
Making the already-weak rules on the rest of the forums even more weak isn't a step towards getting better IMHO - it's a step towards getting worse. I don't see why we as a culture/community would want things to get more toxic unless the mods just completely threw in the towel and decided to let the whole board become gloves-off.
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@faraday said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
@sunny said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
I'm not sure why we as a culture/community are letting a vocal few people make us keep the hog pit around instead of making the decision that we need to be better.
Making the already-weak rules on the rest of the forums even more weak isn't a step towards getting better IMHO - it's a step towards getting worse. I don't see why we as a culture/community would want things to get more toxic unless the mods just completely threw in the towel and decided to let the whole board become gloves-off.
Different rules? IDK how to say what I'm trying to get at. I don't disagree with you. I just think that it should be allowed to warn people about folks like Sovereign.